I’m at the MIX ’06 keynote this morning.
Bill Gates is on the stage He stared with an overview of the state of web development and the issues involved in targeting different sized displays and devices.
He’s now talking about IE 7. It’s going to be a free download for XP users and will be the browser people will get with Windows Vista. He also promises that IE 7 will not the end of the line. There’s already a team working on next version. He says that Microsoft will be sure not to let IE languish like it has in the past.
Bill Gates is now talking about the programmable web and modularity of web components that can be leveraged on the site itself or between web sites. “Live clipboard” is a part of this.
Now he’s onto Ajax and Atlas. The talk is much like a bullet list. So far no demos. He’s talking about how Microsoft and Office is using these capabilities. For instance in Excel and InfoPath you’ll see rich interactivity in the browser. Atlas works with any modern browser. Today Microsoft is announcing that the Atlas framework is going live and can be used. Demos are coming he says.
Personally, of all the technologies on topic at MIX, Atlas is the one I’m most interested in learning about.
Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is the topic now. He’s giving an overview of how WPF abstracts out the GPU even better than before and provides a declarative model for providing rich graphics experiences on the desktop.
Vista Gadget bar is also going to be an interesting target for web developers. This is another area I’m keen on learning more about.
Now he’s talking about different platforms. Media center48% of all retail PCs last year were media center PCs. Six million sold. Wow. He’s now also holding up a couple different phones, including the 700W.
Origami time. Gates is holding up the Samsung UMPC and talking through each of its features. Flashes are going off in the audience. No demo. Just a photo op.
It’s hard to keep up with all the topics he’s going through.
Now he’s onto Windows Live, Office Live, and more.
OK. Now demo time. MySpace is here. The CTO of MySpace is here. Aber Whitcomb is talking. Growing by 260,000 users every day. They have about 23 billion pages. 65 million signups. Their traffic outpaces now just passed even MSN. Uses ASP .NET 2.0. They use 64-bit SQL servers loaded up with “huge amounts of RAM” so that they don’t have to have as many servers. Results of switching to ASP .NET 2.0:
* Reduced CPU usage from 85% to 27%
* Reduced web farm from 246 servers to 150
Now the director of engineering (Alan) is onstage.They are walking through sample pages of what people typically post on MySpace. Now they are showing a MySpace Slide Gadget running on Vista. Aber says that photos are one of the most popular features on MySpace. They will be launching this feature in the Vista timeframe.
MySpace is also going to be adding what they are now calling Profile 2.0 which uses Atlas 2.0 to drag and drop modules onto a “designable” page. Someone yelled out in the audience that they’d like to see open APIs…yep this is a live event. No response though.
Now Ashley Highfield (Director of New Media & Technology) from the BBC is onstage. He’s talking about how there’s been a huge shift in the last year of the consumption of multimedia on BBC’s site. He says that in terms of cost that Internet distribution is two magnitudes less than what it is for the same channel over the air. It costs about $70,000 (pounds I assume?) a year, he says.
He’s talking about using new technologies to try to improve online video quality including peer-to-peer for distribution and multicasting on the “broadcast” side. This is their top technological issue. DRM is the second most important issue. It has to be easy to use. He wants to be able to control DRM by territory, trial periods, etc. He’s now demoing a Vista Gadget that is a gateway to BBC programming. Content is flying onto the screen and merging into a page. Interesting transition effect. As he places focus on a window the window zooms in. There’s a tight thumbnail view that filters out based on what you type. And then an episode starts playing. More fancy transition effects. I sense WPF behind the scenes. He shared a video by dragging and dropping a thumbnail of it on a picture of a contact contained in an animated Rolodex. Again, more nice transition effects. Now he’s showing a video clip being played on a Media Center. The challenge he says is getting the content down to the PC–which he says turned out not to be that hard although moving the content onto the television screen is what they want via the Internet distribution model. He’s not talking about how critical indexing, searching, and distributing will be for their large video archives. Demo over.
Bill Gates is summarizing now. Keynote is over…..oh….Tim O’Reilly is now onstage. They are going to have a Q&A.
Talking about web as a platform and mashups. Why mashups need to be easy as well as provide depth.
O’Reilly: Will Microsoft own and control the web API? (my summation of his question)? Bill Gates said no, that Microsoft will do its best to provide a good choice.
O’Reilly: Will Microsoft make technology limited to Microsoft platforms? Gates: Microsoft will work on providing open standards so that they can be used on a variety of platforms and in a variety of ways. We need microcontent standards. Standards will be market driven. If it’s too hard to use, people won’t.
O’Reilly: When people use, tag, etc content for Google, they are helping Google. Do you see this social phenomena spreading into other areas? Gates: Numbers of users has always been important, going back to Office, for instanec. Network effects have been around. O’Reilly interrupts that that is Network Effects 1.0. Argues that Microsoft didn’t change Office formats because of users. Gates is saying that there are components and the like.
O’Reilly is now talking about leveraging reputations as being important. Gates: Agrees, reputation in a website, ActiveX control, etc. The pattern spans many areas. Gates agrees that the Internet collectively gets smarter as feedback integrated. Gates mentions how navigation systems could be enhanced by leveraging GPS info from all the users–to see if there are new roads or where the best path is.
O’Reilly is challenging Gates on whether Microsoft will kill off competitors in Web 2.0. I missed some of the exchange. Gates states that there were cases where the “other guys” knocked themselves out. Agreed. Gates is saying that Microsoft has missed things. Such as advertising model. Or Apple’s success with the iPod.
Bill Gates is saying that we need to keep thinking through what it means to use all these new devices. He’s getting quite passionate about how easy it should be to use a new cell phone–so you don’t have to configure. Or if you use someone else’s phone and authenticate, you should be able to just use your contacts…..this conversation is good. Gates is talking about the value of competition in the telcos, cable, software market, etc. to “solve” market issues. O’Reilly is concerned that telcos will want to charge for premium services.
O’Reilly: The speed of development. How are things changing/adapting in Microsoft. Gates: It depends on the type of software. SQL server, for instance, needs to be “incredibly stable” so will always be a couple years at each iteration. IE will probably be more agile–maybe 6 months or 9 months.
O’Reilly: What about the business model though? Such as Office Live? Gates says: Office Live is about revolutionizing the server.
Audience questions. Marc Canter: Would you tell MySpace to open up MySpace and open up contaacts in Outlook as well as other systems. Gates: Says that open APIs will come in time. Contacts can be shared across apps in Vista–as part of a shared system.
Next question: Enterprises don’t want to have lots of fast refreshes of browser because they use it as a platform. It has to be very, very stable. They also need administrative policies to allow multiple IEs running side by side. Gates: Agrees it’s important.
Mindjet is asking a question. He’s holding an IBM Tablet. :-)…asking about left handers, screen sizes, and the different user experiences on different platforms. Gates: Dynamic layout needs to be improved.
Question from SixApart: What is Microsoft doing to work with others? Gates: Microsoft will provde tools. Some works will compete though. If you can do better, more power to you. We think we can present ads better than Google. Giving the people the opportunity to specialize is important and Microsoft focuses on the horizontal platform.
One question about licensing. Gates says key is about making technology economically accessible.