Andrew Nimick Point Concept twitter.com/andrewnim

First off, my apologies for not writing for most of a month. It has been a busy time at work and at home. There have been too many wonderful evenings to sit and just watch the sun go down.

I seem to have plenty of things I want to write about, but never enough time.

Last Friday I joined the Tauranga Dot Net user group (Thanks Darren for organising) to watch the Microsoft PDC keynote at C3 over at the docks (thanks to C3 for hosting). This was a live streaming worldwide event designed to inspire and involve developers working with Microsoft technologies and platforms. All the attendees in Seattle got a new Windows Mobile 7 phone and we got a bacon sandwich. I will let you decide who got the best deal.

There were three major topics of interest in the keynote and each could roll out into a lengthy post. They where: Internet Explorer 9, Azure cloud and Windows Mobile 7.

Internet Explorer 9 is a huge departure for Microsoft, which has for years been attacked for keeping the web hamstrung. I have written before that the sooner we kill of IE6 the better. Well they have. In fact they are using IE9 to push HTML5 as a standard and as the future. IE9 will not work on windows XP and makes use of the PC hardware in ways never before seen in a browser. The web is really about to change as Firefox and others do the same thing.

There was a discussion between myself and one of the of C3 guys on the future of Silverlight. This is a cross platform multimedia system which was developed by Microsoft when the web seemed to be going all Flash and Air, both from Adobe

My opinion was and is that Silverlight was never really in it. I know few people who have it on their systems, including me. And with the advent of HTML5 it along with Flash would loose some of their advantage. IE9 seems to prove that.

Azure cloud could well be a great boon for developers allowing them to concentrate on app creation and not the infrastructure which lies behind it. It really is too big to cover here.

Windows Phone 7, great ad and so far a second total departure for Microsoft. It does not look like windows, it looks like Xbox on a phone. I have a theory that Xbox is actually one of the best things Microsoft did – ever. This is because it gave them a whole new take on the design of interfaces. It has allowed them to develop better people (consumer) products like the awesome Home server.

Windows Phone was always a bit of a ‘ho hum' – its windows only smaller and less useful. They seem to have gone right back to the board and had a major rethink. I am eager to get my hands on one and play. It also has great office capabilities making it a great option for business. Will it beat the iPhone and Android? I am not sure about the iPhone but I believe that both the Android and Blackberry devices will see it eat into their market; especially if the prices for the handsets running it are right. And prices are dropping. A lot will depend on the apps which become available. Which is why Blackberry will suffer.

Notice I have not mentioned Nokia? Nokia has lost so much lead I don't think they even register as a smart phone maker anymore. Maybe they should get some WP7 phones out soon. Their OS of choice (Symbian) has not done so well for a good while now. Time to move on.

Microsoft is changing, it has had to with both Google and Apple attacking and even beating it in some of its old strongholds. Apple is worth more than Microsoft at present and starting to make inroads to the enterprise. While Google is pushing apps as an office replacement.

I will talk about the Microsoft respond in another post.

In closing, it seems I may have been wrong about Silverlight. It is used to run WP7. I can understand the logic of that, but wonder if that means it will become the new embedded windows rather than a cross platform solution. Consider that the Blackberry tablet runs on Adobe Air, will we see tablets running on Silverlight rather than windows 7? Makes a certain sense.

From Bob Muglia, the Microsoft President in charge of the company's server and tools business,

'Silverlight will continue to be a cross-platform solution, working on a variety of operating system/browser platforms, going forward,” he said.

'But HTML is the only true cross platform solution for everything, including (Apple's) iOS platform.”

I would say that means Silverlight has a limited scope and life span.