Stuff we talk about on the show:

• Windows Phones haven’t sold very well.  Maybe 1.7 million have been sold.
• Folks like John Gruber are saying that Windows Phones deserve to sell better.
• Erik feels bad because he helped talk developers into being early on the Windows Phone platform.  Overwhelmingly they haven’t made real money (yet?..).
• Android people aren’t surfing the web nearly as much as iOS people.  Kelly points out that this is because it counts tablets.  Erik points out that just because Apple is winning at tablets doesn’t mean you shouldn’t count it.
• Will the Kindle Fire be a huge hit?
• Why would you use a Windows 8 slate over an iPad?  Kelly says maybe if you use office.  Erik counters with a ridiculous scenario involving a 10 hour stay in a coffee shop. And hipsters.
• Erik finds a ridiculous reason to send a text to Kelly using Siri.
• Erik talks about how it feels wrong to not say “thanks” to Siri.
• Erik talks about the new sponsors.
• Talking about Windows Phone success stories, there is Elbert Perez.  800k downloads and 20+k USD over ~4 months  (from GameFest).
• We haven’t heard of many (any?…) real Windows Phone success stories (think hundreds of thousands of dollars).
• Kelly talks about his Windows Phone game.

In this show we talk about Windows 8.  And related.  It’s a whirlwind tour through the land of upcoming Windows tablets.

Also, in the show I thought the comic came from XKCD, but that’s incorrect.  It comes from Bonkers World.

Recorded December 2, 2010

At the Silverlight 5 Firestarter, we were able to record a spectacular show with some Silverlight luminaries.  It’s a great peak into what’s coming in Silverlight.   The people we grabbed:

• Adam Kinney
• Brian Goldfarb
• Ward Bell

Here’s what we talk about:

• What’s striking about Silverlight 5?
• How do the 3D APIs balance against the more enterprise features?
• How did Out of the Browser come about in Silverlight 3?
• Some hints as to the direction of future Silverlight development.
• Kelly goes back in time to talk about the Kinect and make predictions about today.
• What will the impact of New User Interfaces be on the development process?
• Things to focus your career on.

Guest Hosts 

Brian Henderson is a Silverlight Designer/Architect and INETA Community Champion. A few of the activities Brian can be found participating are flying (pilot), kayaking, hiking, or just taking video/photos.  

Kelly White is an independent Silverlight Consultant. He previously lead the PDXUX.Net user group, and now runs the Portland Silverlight User Group with Erik Mork. Kelly has presented at user groups and code camps throughout the northwest on both Silverlight and WPF.  

Music kindly provided by YACHT.  

Microsoft VP Scott Guthrie Inverview at the Silverlight Firestarter

Recorded December 2, 2010

For this show, we were able to catch up with Scott Guthrie at the Silverlight Firestarter.  He was kind enough to give us an interview, and we asked all of our Silverlight 5 questions.  Including: 

• A lot of folks tuned into the keynote.  Scott gives a sense of how many people were watching from home.
• What is Scott’s favorite Silverlight 5 feature?
• Can you write a 3D accelerated first person shooterwith the new Silverlight 5 API?
• What is the best way to get up to speed with the Silverlight 5 3D API *right now*?
• Some surprising info: don’t thinking of the Silverlight 3D API as a 3D API…. think of it as a GPU API (insert posibilities here…).
• See the Silverlight 5 keynote here.

Guest Hosts 

Brian Henderson is a Silverlight Designer/Architect and INETA Community Champion. A few of the activities Brian can be found participating are flying (pilot), kayaking, hiking, or just taking video/photos.  

Kelly White is an independent Silverlight Consultant. He previously lead the PDXUX.Net user group, and now runs the Portland Silverlight User Group with Erik Mork. Kelly has presented at user groups and code camps throughout the northwest on both Silverlight and WPF.  

Music kindly provided by YACHT.  

• The crew talks about the Firestarter.  It’s coming up, and there we’re going to learn about Silverlight v.Next.
  • If you’re in Porland, you can catch a ride to the Firestarter on a wifi equipped bus.
• Novell was just purchased? What does this mean for Mono, MonoTouch and Monodroid?
  • Wallace McClure bet big on Monotouch.  He bet on it when the App Store story wasn’t clear (would Steve Jobs let those apps into the AppStore?…).  If this deal kills Monotouch, that would *hugely* suck (for him and everyone else). (btw, Wally would like to mention Chris Hardy, Craig Dunn, Bob Elliott and Jim Minatel for their help on the book).
• Kelly gives his thoughts on the LG phone and Windows Phone 7.
• iOS 4.2 released today!!
• Revenues from Windows Phone 7 won’t be known until next year.
  • Listen for Balmer to announce something about developer revenues at CES.  If he doesn’t…

Guest Hosts

Brian Henderson is a Silverlight Designer/Architect and INETA Community Champion. A few of the activities Brian can be found participating are flying (pilot), kayaking, hiking, or just taking video/photos. 

Kelly White is an independent Silverlight Consultant. He previously lead the PDXUX.Net user group, and now runs the Portland Silverlight User Group with Erik Mork. Kelly has presented at user groups and code camps throughout the northwest on both Silverlight and WPF. 

Music kindly provided by YACHT. 

Microsoft’s PDC Conference – Where New Technologies are (or are not) Announced 

• Erik thought it was weird that there weren’t any *big* announcements at the conference.  There were some Azure announcments, but they hardly seemed to justify the conference.  This is just bizarre.
• Microsoft didn’t talk about Silverlight on the desktop (they did talk a lot about Silverlight on the phone…), and the conclusion drawn was that Silverlight on the desktop is… ready for this? Dead. Or maybe not.
• Microsoft is changing strategy on Silverlight.  This is a good thing.  They used to recommend Silverlight for basically every web site.  See the MSDN site for an example.  Yikes.  The fact that Microsoft is now recommending Silverlight for applications on the web is a pretty great thing.  It’s like using a hammer for what it’s good for (hammering nails) rather than *everything under the sun*.  This is Silverlight Tour 101 by the way.
• According to Joe Stegman (head of Silverlight development), there are 250+ developers working on Silverlight.  wowza.
• Silverlight V.Next is in production: Bob Muglia is on record as saying, “We haven’t yet publically announced a launch date for the next release of Silverlight, but we’ll talk more about it in the coming months.”
• The problem is that Microsoft doesn’t say when a technology is dead (think Linq2SQL, etc.).  This makes people nervous.  And rightly so.
• Scott Barnes has made predictions that are really interesting
  • HTML5 will get desktop hooks (true!).  Just watch the PDC keynote.
  • Silverlight will suffer a Weekend-At-Bernies style death (perhaps unlikely.  see above).
• Erik andKelly think HTML5 is great.  It just isn’t up for writing the kind of apps we’re currently writing, but that doesn’t stop it from being great.
• Erik rants about a Western that may (but probably doesn’t) exist.

Shawn Wildermuth has a great take on the controversy. 

Jeremy Likeness has a great take as well. 

Guest Hosts 

Brian Henderson is a Silverlight Designer/Architect and INETA Community Champion. A few of the activities Brian can be found participating are flying (pilot), kayaking, hiking, or just taking video/photos. 

Kelly White is an independent Silverlight Consultant. He previously lead the PDXUX.Net user group, and now runs the Portland Silverlight User Group with Erik Mork. Kelly has presented at user groups and code camps throughout the northwest on both Silverlight and WPF. 

Music kindly provided by YACHT. 

Recorded October 22, 2010

This week we try something new.  Erik calls Kelly and does a speed round to figure out what’s the matter with Microsoft these days?  Why is Apple doing everything right?  All in 7 minutes.

Chatting with Kelly

• Apple’s boring events are turing out some cool stuff.  As an example, they just announced an app store for the desktop.
• Microsoft’s PDC conference.  Any chance they’ll release an app store?
• What else was great about Apple’s “boring” event?
• Windows Phone 7 is a bright spot.  Is it the only bright spot at Microsoft right now?
• The HP Slate 500.  It’s a turkey.  Everyone knows it.  Why does this keep happening?
• Will Windows Phone 7 work on tablet devices?
• How are Scott Barnes and Edward Tufte the same?

Guest Hosts

Brian Hendersonis a Silverlight Designer/Architect and INETA Community Champion. A few of the activities Brian can be found participating are flying (pilot), kayaking, hiking, or just taking video/photos.

Kelly White is an independent Silverlight Consultant. He previously lead the PDXUX.Net user group, and now runs the Portland Silverlight User Group with Erik Mork. Kelly has presented at user groups and code camps throughout the northwest on both Silverlight and WPF.

Music kindly provided by YACHT.

Scott Barnes Interview

• Silverlight was much more popular than expected.
• Silverlight isn’t going anywhere
• Enterprise adoption has been crazy good.
• Is the “WPF replaced by HTML5″ thought even a possibility?  It sounds like such a weird idea.
  • The core problem is that the ranks of .NET developers isn’t growing.
  • PHP is the 800 lb gorilla inside of Microsoft – what to do?
  • How can more developers be brought onto the Microsoft stack?
• Scott is extremely supportive of Silverlight.
• HTML5 great, but it’s a celebration of mediocrity.
• Plugins aren’t the best idea, but they’re better, faster and more mature than html5.
• Scott’s frustration: Microsoft gets locked into a path without outside input sometimes.
• How would the design story work in pure HTML5/Javascript?
• Scott’s thoughts on Windows Phone 7.  He doesn’t like Metro.
• Will Scott take us through the Windows Phone 7 development reset story?  No!!!
• Can you tell us about the secret stuff you were excited about when you left Microsoft?  Have they come to pass?  Are they still

Scott Barnes

Former Product Manager (Silverlight/WPF) Microsoft Corp, UX Specialist, Chief RIAologist of RIAGENIC.com, Code Poet and Deep Sleep Pixel Zen Master.

Guest Hosts

Brian Henderson is a Silverlight Designer/Architect and INETA Community Champion. A few of the activities Brian can be found participating are flying (pilot), kayaking, hiking, or just taking video/photos.

Kelly White is an independent Silverlight Consultant. He previously lead the PDXUX.Net user group, and now runs the Portland Silverlight User Group with Erik Mork. Kelly has presented at user groups and code camps throughout the northwest on both Silverlight and WPF.

Music kindly provided by YACHT.