Check out Q - an add-in written using Media Center Markup Language for Windows Vista Media Center

I just noticed that Charlie Owen posted an item on his blog about the sample application named Q that will be demonstrated next week at Mix06 in Las Vegas. In Charlie's blog post, he provides a link for the functional specification for Q and also a link for a video that Charlie recorded demonstating the user interface and animations for Q on one of our developer's computers.

Q is a podcast / videoblog client for Media Center that allows users to discover, subscribe to and view content offered via RSS 2.0 feeds. It started out as a demo that was going to be used during Charlie's talk at Mix06 and has progressed so quickly that we are now planning to include it in the keynote at Mix06 and hopefully ship it as a sample application in the Media Center SDK for Windows Vista.

Q is written as a Media Center add-in using the new Windows Media Center Presentation Layer and Media Center Markup Language for Windows Vista (previously introduced by Charlie in this blog post).  Most of the coding and markup work for the Q application has been done by Stephen Toub (a friend of the Media Center team who has written some great articles on MSDN) and Mark Finocchio (the primary developer for the Windows Media Center Presentation Layer on our team).

It has been very exciting for me to see how quickly and easily add-ins can be created for Media Center using our new programming models available in Vista. I can't wait to see what other types of applications people are going to come up with now that the Media Center SDK is available with Windows Vista community tech previews (CTPs).....