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  • Silverlight Rehab

    Just loved the team's latest Silverlight video. Props to Adam, Laura, Nic, Monica, Dan, Scott and Tina.
  • MIX08 for Non-Attendees

    At last, the mad rush is over. The run-up to a conference like MIX is always frantic: for me, the first three weeks in February involved a constant juggle of competing priorities. With the exception of one last-minute firedrill, the worst was over by late Friday afternoon. Now it's the calm before the storm; it's too late to fix bugs, to rewrite labs, to rearrange the schedule! Instead, it's a perfect time to write a few blog entries. I'm looking forward to meeting a number of you at the event (do stop me and say hi if you see me!), but I know that the vast majority of folk reading this aren't able to join us in Las Vegas for various reasons. It's therefore my goal over the next few days to relay as many of the highlights as schedule permits. So what's worth looking out for over the next day or two? Firstly, if you haven't seen Scott Guthrie's blog over the last week, you should check out his two most recent posts on Silverlight 2. I never understood how Scott managed to write such in-depth blogs at the same time as running half of DevDiv, but I've finally discovered his hidden secret and it's time for me to reveal it to the world. Scott actually has an identical twin brother named alterScott and the two of them work shifts. alterScott works the night shift - when Scott goes to bed, alterScott is burning the midnight oil constructing lengthy tutorials on Silverlight 2 and Expression Blend . You'll never see alterScott in public - he's painfully shy and is also very pale since he never sees the daylight. But I snuck into building 42 early one morning and managed to take a quick photo of him before security forcibly removed me. Anyway, just on the off-chance that we decided to release a build of Silverlight 2 this week, you could do a lot worse than to work through alterScott's tutorials if you want to quickly get up to speed. Secondly, the real Scott will be sharing tomorrow's MIX keynote with Ray Ozzie and Dean Hachamovitch (GM for Internet Explorer). If you're into web development at all, that keynote is going to be required viewing - we've got lots of new announcements, some great demos, and one or two surprises. You can watch the keynote live at 9:30am Pacific / 5:30pm GMT by clicking on one of the following three streams: 750kbps , 300kbps , 100kbps . Thirdly, if any of the breakout sessions or panels take your fancy, you'll be able to view them online within 24 hours of each session...
  • Watch Jackass 2.5 - Free and Exclusive on Silverlight!

    Although we're all too proud to admit it, I doubt there's anyone reading this who doesn't love to while away the odd bit of free time perusing sites like YouTube and break.com for funny videos of stupid people doing dangerous things. However, there are few individuals who have been more successful at combining funny, stupid and dangerous than the team behind the popular MTV show Jackass , and the several blockbuster movies based on the same premise of a few guys doing everything they can to humiliate and physically damage each other in the name of entertainment. With their latest movie, Jackass 2.5 , the studio is trying a transformational new approach to movie distribution. Instead of relying on box-office revenue, they have partnered with Blockbuster to make it available for free directly over the Internet, funded through advertising. This is an Internet first - an online premiere of a full-length feature film, distributed exclusively using Silverlight and a rich media content distribution network provided by Limelight Networks and Microsoft. Blockbuster anticipates that this will drive millions of streams over the next couple of weeks, and their choice of Silverlight over alternative competitors is evidence of its ability to provide a powerful and reliable solution for a high-volume project. Silverlight is taking off - we're seeing downloads of the 1.0 plug-in rise exponentially over the last few weeks as many big sites go live. Jackass 2.5 will be available online, right here , free to anyone in the US aged 17 or older, between December 19th and December 31st, 2007. It's exclusive to Silverlight at first, and then will be made available for sale online. As my mother would say, it's not funny, and it's not clever. But I'm guessing she doesn't fall directly into the Jackass target demographic...