January 2007 Entries
From the minute I walked in the door, I could tell this was no developer tool launch. Or at least that is what Microsoft wanted us to think. The MS Expressions Launch in NYC was like no other that I had been to. There was Feng Shui, ambient music, artsy furniture, studio lighting at the top of 7 World Trade in a giant 52 floor studio. Actually some debated if it was just a completely unfinished floor or if it was suppose to be an art studio. Well no matter the atmosphere when it came to the business...
It is interesting in the blog-o-sphere, when somebody speaks their mind and shares their true feelings about something how it can generate such buz. I think that is when you know something is really important. Robert May hit one of those topics this week with his post Response to Vista? That's it? I haven't seen blog banter like this since the good old VB vs. C#, Oracle vs. SQL Server, IE vs. Firefox wars... Robert got himself stuck between 2 zealots... Mr. Windows.... how dare you insult the greatest...
So I'm a Win Form designer.... or at least I thought I was. I finally had an opportunity to "play" with Expressions Blend Beta 1 today. WOW! I have to say this is very very cool. Don't mistake this tool for anything less than an industry power house User Experience creation tool. In fact I am in favor of changing the term UI to UE as it is more than an interface it is truly an Experience! I was actually giddy when I figured out how to make animation and opacity work. I was just fooling around with...
Man, I've done a lot of stressful odd things in my career, but a data center move must be among the worst. One of my clients has contracted with a large 3rd party to maintain their infrastructure. As a part of that there is an effort to consolidate data centers. Of course my distributed system is one of the affected systems. I'm hoping we will all sigh with relief Monday when we pull the trigger and go live. I'd also like to get back to my regular responsibilities of architecting and developing solutions...