Bing is Microsoft’s latest iteration of our search engine and if initial feedback from the media is anything to go by, it looks like we have caused a bit of a stir. I won’t bore you with quotes (you will see these for yourself) but thought i’d highlight a few cool things about Bing….
Here are three of the great features that customers are seeing in the UK from yesterday:
1. New Image Homepage – we’re using stunning high definition photography that differentiate us from the blank white page (and we will soon be displaying iconic British images)
2. Best Match – the feature presents results for popular searches intuitively and this saves you clicks and gets you to your answer quicker
3. Ciao! Shopping Integration – we’re offering you the opportunity to shop directly from Bing using Ciao! product comparisons and user reviews (Ciao! is the shopping network Microsoft acquired in October -- read more about Ciao! here)
You can find Bing at www.bing.com so set your default search engine to Bing * and give it a try!
You can also go to http://www.discoverbing.co.uk to see the best of Bing in the UK.
*Set your default search engine to Bing – (At the top right hand corner of your IE browser window, go to Find More Providers, choose Bing, and then set Bing as your default)
So, this isn’t breaking news but blogworthy none the less.
One thing that frustrates me about working for Microsoft is that in some situations people are very quick to criticise some of our choices when they match the very blinkered view they have of the business. The Mojave experiment could be one of those situations.
Can anyone remember the headlines and fuss that was made when Microsoft launched the Mojave experiment website? the site was built around an experiment to show how people were listening to hearsay and unjustified news stories on how negative the Windows Vista experience was. when presented with an opportunity to experience Vista for themselves (guised as a new operating system branded ‘Mojave’) their reaction was completely the opposite and they were amazed by all the new features. I blogged it here at the time. Unfortunately the only response that Microsoft got for this clever campaign was that it was built using Flash instead of Silverlight!!
well, guess what? the site has been re-skinned using Silverlight and it looks ten times better that the original. it uses a very clever combination of deepzoom and Silverlight streaming video to display videos in a ‘cloud’ – very cool! go take a look……Mojave experiment
perhaps this was just a clever plan to show how much more you can achieve with Silverlight opposed to Flash!!
We invited LBi into the Microsoft Campus recently. As a leading digital agency and strategic Microsoft partner, we wanted to offer a demonstration of our surface device.
In fact, it made such an impression it prompted Simon Gill (their creative group head) to post this article on LBiq.net really interesting reading….
Good spot from one of my colleagues, it seems that Silverlight has been chosen to stream U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's swearing-in ceremony live on the Presidential Inaugural Committee's Web site
Read the full article here… http://www.cio.com/article/476864/Silverlight_to_Stream_Obama_s_Inauguration?source=home_ln
So with this latest announcement, deepzoomobama and zunegate its clear that Obama is really a blue monster fan at heart….
Just spotted a great post over on Steve Clayton's Blog.
Deepzoom is a great feature of Silverlight and was originally codenamed seadragon. The boys in the white coats have managed to create a tool that allows you to embed deepzoom compositions directly into a web page....Seadragon Ajax.
http://blogs.msdn.com/stevecla01/archive/2008/11/19/why-everyone-online-store-should-have-seadragon-ajax.aspx
One of my UK partners in crime - Mark Johnston - has done a sterling job of arranging some screen edit sessions for designers. the first of which will be Manchester.
Mark has put these events together with the chaps from Tricky Business, Splendid and his 'northern pal' Phil Winstanley
Take a look at Marks blog post for more info or click here to register
On Tuesday the 11th November the Microsoft UK agency team held an event in London for the design community. This was the first UK Web Agency event of the FY, organised by Microsoft and hosted at the Adam Street members club just off the strand in London.
The event was a huge success with over 70 attendees from a range of agencies including some of the NMA top 10, full service digital agencies and highly influential boutique agencies. The UK team were fortunate enough to be supported throughout this event by the leadership team from Microsoft Corp in Redmond; who were over to meet with some of the more active agencies and gain some notes from the field.
Michael McClary from the UK team opened the session with some basic introductions before handing over to Darren McCormick who is the WW lead for User Experience Evangelism.
Darren spoke about the importance of User Experience and how Microsoft is making a shift to really embrace the whole Design channel and make it easy for digital agencies to work with the rest of Microsoft platform to deliver truly innovative solutions to their customers.
Darren went on to explain the Microsoft Proposition in this space, correcting the common misconception that its all about Silverlight and eroding some of adobe's stronghold on the Rich Internet Application Marketplace. There is a much bigger story here and Silverlight plays just a small part, with other announcements that Microsoft have made regarding the web platform (Azure, Mesh, Live Services, Photosynth, etc) there is a huge opportunity for digital agencies to create incredibly compelling experiences for users that drive brand advocacy and consumer reach that extends far beyond the browser.
There was a big focus on the role that digital agencies have to play as things progress over the coming months and we explained how we see the agency value proposition and how this might be articulated to clients. Microsoft help drive customer advocacy by providing the fundamental basics of the platform and tools combined with the talented based craft from the agency space.Michael McClary then showed some of the live platform products and specifically the opportunity for agencies being able to plug into this platform. There are some amazing developments such as Live mesh and some of the more traditional live services that not only open up amazing innovation opportunities but also allow you to open your solution up to the 460 million Live users.
This event also showcased some of the incredible work that UK agencies are doing on the Microsoft platform already. Bob Thompson from StormID showed us the Colaab application that he has written using Silverlight. This app allows you to collaborate in a rich environment; share content and change documents all in real time and from within a browser on any device! Tim Hustler from Creative jar showed off some cool Silverlight web parts that they recently built for a sharepoint project for Navteq.
Paul Dawson from full service design agency Conchango gave an insight into how agencies can effectively partner with Microsoft and also gave a sneak peak at a proof of concept that they have been working on for Tesco in conjunction with Microsoft. This was a look at how people may interact with the Tesco online stores through their daily routine and showed off new features of Windows 7, live Mesh and Silverlight this was also demo'd at PDC earlier this year. Creative agency AllofUs then stepped up and showed some of the amazing forward thinking projects they have been working on including DoodleEarth - an innovative collaboration and note taking tool that is over-layed on Virtual earth. Monochrome showed us an amazing tool that they have written to convert Flash media to Silverlight ready .wmv files. all on the fly! this means you can run your old flash videos through a slick Silverlight player without having to convert the library in advance.
Darren McCormick closed out the event with some additional insights into the web platform strategy and most of the attendees managed to stay for a few drinks and networking afterwards. We all know this is where the real magic happens!
earlier this month i was at the 4th instalment of the Silverlight Usergroup and the first one to be held at Microsoft's London office (Cardinal Place)
The recording of the event will be on the Conchango blog shortly. 
The event saw over 60 attendees with a good mix of designers, developers, newbies and SLUG regulars.
There were 2 main sessions delivered, the first being by Tricky of TrickyBusiness speaking about design.
Tricky gave some great insights into design using some real world references and emphasised how important brand awareness is. Not just the brand of your client and their perception from a consumers perspective but also the importance of the brand of your agency and you as an individual.
After beer and pizza (a tough gig to follow!!) was Mark McDonald of full-service digital agency Graphico. Mark spoke about some of the projects they have worked on which incorporated Silverlight and PhotoSynth and gave a great walkthrough of the Barcardi mobilise at festivals project that they recently completed.
I'm not going to go into too much more detail than that as you can get a great review over on Mark's blog.
keep checking for news of the next User Group in the new year and come along and see for yourself.
The guys at Infusion are pushing another first, this time it is training for designers using Expression. The course will allow attendees to get an introduction to the large new toolset offered by Expression Blend, gain hands-on experience with Expression Blend that will make you immediately productive, learn how to bring your UIs to the next level by taking advantage of Silverlight and WPF features and understand how Expression Blend ties into code components of a .NET 3.5 application.
A little more info......
Summary
This custom course is intended to provide application user interface designers with hands-on exposure to Microsoft Expression Blend 2.5, Microsoft’s newest tool for designing XAML-based UIs for Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation applications.
The course consists of both lecture and lab sessions so that application designers will have an opportunity to get hands-on experience with Blend and the processes involved in designing an application using this tool. In particular, this course will draw attention to the collaborative nature of Blend and the strategies that teams of both designers and developers can use when working together to build complex applications.
The materials in this course are intended for non-developers and the labs contain no coding exercises. However, a general understanding of application development processes is recommended.
Module Listing
Day 1:
1. Introduction
2. Design Environment
3. Graphics and Text
4. Layouts
Day 2:
5. Working with Controls
6. Styles and Templates
7. Animations
Day 3:
8. Working with Media
9. Working with Data
10. Testing and Integration
For more information or to book a place please contact Neil Ray...
nray@infusion.com m: +44 782 446 3810
The wait is over, the second instalment of 3rd eye is here!
Last week i was lucky enough to catch up with Adrian Munn from Monochrome and hear about how they have started to grow their relationship with Microsoft....
Scott Guthrie has just announced some new tools that have been released for Silverlight 2 at PDC. So go now and get the official RTW of Silverlight Tools.
you can view the keynote from PDC here....Keynote
Pleased to announce some subsidised training on Silverlight 2 from our friends at Xpertise
Xpertise do some great training on Silverlight 2.0 (with Expression Studio and Visual Studio). They have a course in December which has a special discount offer available for delegates. The course covers:
- Describe the key features of Silverlight 2.
- Describe the people, tools, and tool workflow associated with creating Silverlight experiences.
- Create and manipulate images by using Expression Design.
- Create Expression Blend projects.
- Assemble and build a rich user interface by using Expression Blend.
- Develop and customize media by using Expression Encoder.
- Hand off design projects and graphical assets to developers.
- Develop basic code in a Silverlight project.
- Enhance the user experience by using keyboard interactivity, text effects, and ink.
- Develop advanced animation effects.
- Develop advanced media effects.
- Publish a Silverlight application.
- Customize the built in controls
- Create custom User Controls
- Create DeepZoom Silverlight Experiences
THE OFFER:
“Microsoft Expression Tools and Techniques for designing User Interfaces with Microsoft Silverlight 2” Course RRP = £1,400 (4 days)
o 1st delegate @ 20% discount = £1,120 for the delegate course place
o 2nd delegate booked on the same course from the same partner/organisation @ 30% discount applied to both bookings = £980 per delegate course place
Please contact steve.brennan@xpertise.co.uk or dial 0845 757 3888 to make your course booking
So, PDC starts today in LA at 8:30 am Pacific time-zone
It's going to be great event, with some big announcements. i think we will see a lot of the different jigsaw pieces slot together to show an amazing array of opportunities for Microsoft Partners and a vast amount of choice for Customers and Consumers.
If you are lucky enough to be there make sure that you keep the rest of us up to speed by participating in the social scene (Communities that is - we don't want to know about the fun you'll be having in LA - we are jealous enough already!) and don't forget to download your copy of the full session list. Take a look at the 14-page document here.
For those of you who aren't living large in LA. Make sure you catch all the sessions online. Bookmark www.microsoftpdc.com and at the very least make sure you watch Ray Ozzie in the opening Keynote
In fact, watch all the keynotes!....
- Monday, October 27 8:30am - 10:30am Keynote – Ray Ozzie, Amitabh Srivastava, Bob Muglia and David Thompson
- Tuesday, October 28 8:30am - 10:30am Keynote - Ray Ozzie, Steven Sinofsky, Scott Guthrie and David Treadwell
- Tuesday, October 28 11:00am - 12:30pm Keynote - Chris Anderson and Don Box
- Wednesday, October 29 8:30am - 10:00am Keynote - Rick Rashid
And be sure to find all the sessions that you want to view from the session planner....https://sessions.microsoftpdc.com/public/timeline.aspx
Anyone in the UK?
follow this link at 3:30pm TODAY!
It seems like yesterday that i was sat in the lovely Venetian hotel in Las Vegas listening to some great banter between Guy Kawasaki and Steve Ballmer and being wowed by the possibilities of Silverlight 2. Now, hot on the heels of Silverlight 2 RTW we have announced that the registration process has opened for Mix 09!
Looks like it is going to be as awesome as ever!
for more info and to register click here
