Category: mix07

48 hours in Melbourne: AURemix07

Crown Promenade

The Crown Promenade is a good hotel. Above is a view of my hotel room late last week. You are a walk away from losing your cash playing poker in the casino; a little further away from Southbank eateries.  Oh, and Melbourne does the best coffee outside Venice, in my book.

Now imagine never seeing outside, and joining the glitterati of the Australian Web Design community at Australia’s first ReMIX. User Experience, Expression, Silverlight and keynotes from US personages.

To keep up with the fun and frolic, you can also join the Twitter: http://twitter.com/auremix07

Come join us!

John Lam and Jim Hugunin: DLR Presentation

Microsoft’s John Lam and Jim Hugunin go large with the DLR at MIX07. Here are my notes whilst listening and watching the presentation:

What to expect: a Mac, TextMate, Javascript, Python, Ruby, Safari and Silverlight.  TextMate equals text editing. Silverlight is not binary, its just XML and text. You can break it apart and look at the gooeyness inside. And some friendly Microsoft people bantering about Ruby vs Python.

And DLR is going Open Source, like IronPython.

What strikes me the most is that the language that people are comfortable with: Javascript, Python, Ruby, C# – you can code your client side in the same language as server side.

Also, having Ruby instantiate Javascript and call functions. Wow. With a C# object doing UI. Technorati via XML through Yahoo!Pipes to JSON to Silverlight on a Mac. Retrieving from the JSON object deserialised and queried via LINQ.

Let alone doing Basic, with REM and all.

In their only Powerpoint slide, Jim details the performance gains of IronPython on the CLR engine. I wonder if the perf gains are going to match to Ruby, too? Is the DLR/CLR going to be the saviour of the scaling bumps of Ruby?

Parts of the DLR (from Jim Hugunin at end of video):

  1. Dynamic type system, shared object system
  2. Shared hosting API; host one, get all of ’em. ruby bits are coming together now.
  3. Bunch of helpers for compiler writers, so dynamic language runs fast

Question: can use DLR inside console, ASP.NET?

Answer: yes, you can use DLR anywhere you are using .NET. More constrained in Silverlight, due to the sandbox.

Question: is it compiling an assembly, or executing script

Answer: Dynamic methods in .NET 2.0, for code generation lazily; and is a dynamic method. Only held whilst there is a live reference. ASP.NET scenarios with stress test not held onto. Not using method rental; System.Reflection.EmitDynamicMethod

Question: JScript.NET vs. new Dynamic Language Jscript?

Answer: Developer want language purity, not tight integration and following .NET. So follow the ECMA 3.0 spec. That’s Javascript. vs. Ruby “freelove” specification of Ruby is its implementation, not a specification document.

Microsoft has changed, big time. My head is spinning.

By the light of Dynamic Silverlight

Keeping secrets is tough. Hearing about the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) from John Lam in February this year was one of those secrets that kept well.

John Udell interviewed John Lam, and has a backgrounder here. Some in the Ruby community didn’t see this coming.

Jim Hugunin has a posting on the new DLR, open source nature of the DLR on his “Thinking Dynamically” blog.

In addition to the Silverlight release, we’ve also made the full source code for both IronPython and all of the new DLR platform code available on codeplex under the BSD-style Microsoft Permissive License. All of that code can be downloaded today as part of the IronPython project at codeplex.com/ironpython.

The reality of being able to debug Ruby in a client-side UI framework on Safari on a Mac using Microsoft Silverlight tickles me, and others, greatly.

Blog from the keynote today, with all the ups-and-downs. Good to see I am not the only one who craves demos and has subversive thoughts in the midst of formal sessions.

Ryan Stewart has comments, and further links. The DLR adds 400K (what the!) to the Silverlight download. Wow.

zdnet has a sort of transcript of the Q&A that occured with Mike Arrington, Ray Ozzie and Scottgu.

Does Microsoft get Web 2.0? Yes.

Doing more than Dumb Video

Dumb Video is hard. You spend all your time editing, fixing audio, encoding and uploading.

Smart Video is going to be easy with this Microsoft Silverlight stuff. URLs, chapters, and deeper sub-tagging. All these ideas are flowing through my mind from this conversation from Uncle Dave, the Life Kludger.

Imagine a canvas of videos and podcasts. Zoom into one, and see the “sub-tags” or links to other videos, or general searches. Sort of a doing what HTML does for text for other, non-textual content.

Time to learn some new stuff.

Las Vegas is booked out. So ReMIX in Australia

fun_elvis

Are you are losing sleep because:

  1. Elvis left the building some 30 years ago in August 1977?
  2. Myf Warhust thinks Elvis serves fish and chips somewhere in Bendigo, Victoria?
  3. Las Vegas MIX07 has been completely booked out?

Don’t lose another minute of sleep!

The MIX experience is being transported and ReMIX’d at the Crown Promenade on 25-26th June 2007.

Remix Australia will be the first of its kind from Microsoft bringing together Web Developers & Designers with our key sponsors. It’s a jam packed two day experience – a 48 hour conversation.

The event is only $140 per person, and all delegates will get, experience and generally, or whatever:

  • A Microsoft Expression Web
  • New networking friendships without Twitter.com
  • A choice of 20 sessions to check out from expert leaders & case studies
  • Hear from Australian Industry & overseas experts
  • Time out at the Sandbox, especially if you are not playing nice with the other kids
  • A sighting of Elvis
  • Action packed evening at Galactic Circus on Monday evening. (you’ll find me on the Defender game)
  • Participate in Meeting Point – pick the conversations you want to hear and be part of, or just read the blogs and drool over the Flickrs and wish you were there in person
  • Meet with Microsoft Partners to understand how they can facilitate Web 2.0
  • Discover: Internet Alley; the entertainment lounge web jams.
  • Go large and become world-famous with “The Geek Stories“

I’ll be there, maybe with a session or two of my own. I’m thinking about doing a demo of how I use Photoshop, Premiere and Vista with some other cool goodies.

More info as it comes to hand.

You will want to visit MIX07

Michael Arrington Will Mix it Up at MIX!
Michael Arrington, founder and editor of TechCrunch, will be joining Ray Ozzie, Scott Guthrie and many more web luminaries at this year’s MIX. Via TechCrunch, a weblog “dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies”, Michael is known for being one of those most likely to identify the next big thing. Fans of Michael and TechCrunch should not miss this opportunity to see him join the conversation and share his insights.  

I wish I could go. All the cool people are going.

Can I Frank?