Remix was only a few weeks ago now, and for those that missed out on the experience we have uploaded all the sessions and recordings for the event to the Remix site.

Highlights for me:

• Anything by Bill Buxton!
• How we built the wall by AllofUs
• Becoming human; smiling like you mean it, and learning to say hello by Denise Wilton from Moo
• XNA Game Studio by Paul Foster

Remix UK 2008 Videos online

aka the world of the web professional. Built on Deepzoom :)

Am going to see if I can blag a bunch of posters to give away at UK events (since the ones listed are all US). Will update if I succeed in getting any printed over here.

A website named desire

Wanted to try out Silverlight? But a Macromedia/Adobe kind of guy/girl? Didn't know where to go?

Fear not, Project Rosetta is the site for you:

Project Rosetta is a site dedicated to helping designers and developers build applications in Silverlight while taking advantage of skills they already know. Learn more about Project Rosetta

Great article to start off with:

Read the 9 lessons on how to use your Flash skills in Silverlight 

And WPF content on there too (the lesser named but more powerful desktop sibling of Silverlight):

The New Iteration

(Hat tip to Andy who has recently joined the ranks of MS UK bloggers)

Remix is shaping up to be a great event and I'm excited about going down and hanging out with the designers and web developers attending. There is lots of great sessions planned from ScottGu and Bill Buxton keynoting to the various breakouts.

But, there are lots more reasons to go that happen around the main sessions. Here are just 3:

1. You get a subscription to Expression Studio. Kit yourself out with all the Expression products. Got a Mac? No problem. It comes with Parallels and a copy of Vista to make it easy to run. Phil has the details

2. The community guys have some fun stuff planned. I've seen cartoonist doodles for quizes, crates of 'swag' for competitions during the breaks and more. It's a fun way of meeting like-minded dev and design geeks. Join the backnetwork

3. I will be running a Rockband competition. That is either your idea of F-U-N or a complete nightmare. Get up on stage, sing, strum or thrash the drums. Don't fancy taking part - stand and watch your fellow attendees as they rock Brighton 

And if you are still teetering on going/not going (how could you with over £600 of Expression on offer) then how about £50 off the ticket - use the following code when signing up at www.microsoft.com/uk/remix08 - qis6sgv

Would be great to meet up with you if you are going - Add me on Twitter and DM/@ me

A preview of Silverlight was shown at IBC last week which supported the H.264 and AAC. Cool stuff, if you are into your video...which lots of people are.

“At IBC 2008 we will be demonstrating a technology preview of H.264 video and Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) audio playback support in Silverlight, and H.264 authoring using Microsoft Expression Encoder and Windows Server 2008 for delivery. Until now, Silverlight has supported the SMPTE VC-1 and Windows Media formats, as well as MP3 for audio, enabling customers to take advantage of broad support across the Windows Media ecosystem, including third-party tools, service providers and content delivery networks.

We’ve always wanted Silverlight to support a variety of formats, so today we’re announcing that H.264 and AAC support will be available in a future version of Silverlight, which will offer content owners greater flexibility and choice to deliver video and audio.”

Read the Q&A with ScottGu

Team blogger and twitterer  and all things web 2.0 guru presented at the Vista Squad meeting a week or so ago. He explained it really well (didn't use a Fish + Chip anology like Mr Clayton) and hinted at the massive potential the platform has...

Check out Paolo's post for the link

Are you a Computer Science, Engineering, Design or a student with a passion for technology? Then we have the event of the new academic year for you!

On Wednesday 1 October 2008, join Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer and other industry leaders as they discuss the next generation of computer science innovation with students and lecturers from across the UK.

During the day we'll cover a range of subjects, from new computing concepts like Microsoft Surface, to our speakers' experiences of designing, developing and delivering Internet-scale products, and turning ideas into commercial successes.

Highlights for me:

• Steve Ballmer keynote. He is *the* man and will inspire you to think BIG with software and what can be achieved as we move into the S+S era of computing
• Andy McLoughlin from Huddle.net. A fantastic start-up and top chap, talking about the lessons from starting a (successful) software company
• Our very own Paolo talking about Microsoft Surface development
• Product group and Microsoft Research presentations on the CS behind Live Search and games like Halo 3/Xbox Live.

Spaces are extremely limited, if you are a student or academic, please register immediately - Student Technology Day

Whenever Microsoft release a site with Flash on it these days, there is a lot of stick both internally and on the blogosphere about why the marketing team didn't mandate the agency build it using Silverlight. 

It's amazing to see that the Vista marketing folks have released an updated version of the site built on Silverlight. Even better that it uses Deepzoom to power the user experience!

Check it out - www.mojaveexperiment.com

It seems like a lifetime ago that we held the Imagine Cup UK finals in London and over 150 students, partners and press came together to see what the competition was all about and how students were helping to fight climate change.

Ben and Dominic won the Software Design competition, and after competing at the worldwide finals in Paris, and their prize was to travel to Redmond (Microsoft HQ) in Seattle to shadow the Popfly team and work on a project. They took a video camera with them to document their experiences and what an experience it was!

• Popfly Experience Part One
• Popfly Experience Part Two
• Popfly Experience Part Three
• Popfly Experience Part Four

Game and Embedded winners also are working at Rare Game Studios and MPC Data locally in the UK for their prize. Hopefully they will blog their experiences as well.

Load of great videos on how to use Expression Blend, Design and their siblings in Expression Studio are up on the Microsoft.com Videos site (currently in Beta).

Expression Studio tutorials

I'm going to be at Remix in Brighton on 18-19 September.

It is going to be great. Tonnes of great content. Great speakers. Great location. It should be the Great British Remix :)

I'll be there in my new role as Expression Product Manager, rather than my other role with academics/students. If you are a designer then I want to meet you and talk about Expression and Microsoft's relevant offerings for designers from WPF, Silverlight through to stuff like Surface. Ping me on twitter or email me

Oh, and I have discount codes if you want £50 off the price. Just email me at markjo@microsoft.com

One of the most exciting parts of the Imagine Cup worldwide finals each year (I've done 3 now) is the showing of the Short Film category. The teams have a simple brief, make a kick arse short film during the WW finals using the surrounding city as your set. The results are astonishing and remind of the type of stuff done on a BBC documentary earlier this year.

Watch them all on Channel 8

I saw this internally and again on Tim Heuer's blog. Kelley Blue Book looks similar to an AutoTrader or Autoebid in the UK and it's Perfect Car Finder service built using Deepzoom and Silverlight allows users to filter on their preferences and see the cars available to them visually before zooming in to see a high res photo.

Now, what I want to see is a Deepzoom implementation of a top end car brand like Audi (hint hint to an agency we use who also work with Audi ;-)) with super high resolution images! Drool!

Perfect Car Finder

I stumbled across this blog post from Angus Logan about drowning in email and managing that using a system called PIFEM. I've read Getting Things Done and thought it was interesting - unfortunately I was bored on a 7 hour bus journey from Alice Springs to Uluru while travelling around Australia, so I didn't really take that much of it in...oops!

The system works because of three great features in Outlook 2007 really:

• Search Folders
• Rules
• Categories

My email was getting crazy as I was doing new fiscal year planning, running a large event, preparing for some customer travel and working on personal projects outside of work (getting married, managing a property, etc). So on the way back from a trip I worked my through the OneNote PIFEM guide and implemented it. In for a penny, in for a pound (use appropriate local currency)!

One month on... and my action items are down to 6 items and I have a complete grasp of my Inbox/overall tasks (implementing an offline GTD like tasks system).

Big THANKS to Angus and Ian for creating this and sharing it!

Go download the PIFEM OneNote package here

I love this experiment by Windows to see what ordinary consumers think of Windows Vista when they actually think it is the next big OS from Microsoft codenamed "Mojave".

It is like an old-fashioned Product X v Product Y blind taste test brought up to date for technology!

Worth a look - The "Mojave" Experiment