Live @Mix 07 Keynote

9:25am Pacific - I'm sitting in the keynote room at Mix this morning.  This is definitely a different type of conference for a Microsoft event.   They have a most interesting band playing on stage with an accordion and bass.

We're waiting for the keynote to begin and they have what I think is a pretty neat WPF application running on the screen.  It appears to be pulling messages off of Twitter that have been tagged as part of the Mix conversation.  People are sending these Twitter IMs from their machines and they're appearing up on the screen in almost real time.

9:34am - Lights out.  Artsy video up on the screen.  Up first... Ray Ozzie.

9:36am - You can watch Ray talking live on https://visitmix.com !!!

Ray is talking about how software will power the next generation whether it's desktop, web, or mobile device.  Developers need to be able to target many scenarios whether online, offline.  Technology choices are abundant.  User experience will help drive the choices that are made.

Whether you build something on a client or something that lives in the cloud, you use the technology appropriate for meeting the needs of the user experience.  Use the best of all of these.

9:46 - So what's the news today?  We announced Silverlight as a new platform that is for the web.  It can chance the game for video and media on the web, standards based, and universal to reach cross-browser and cross-platform.

Today, we'll show that the media stuff is just the first part of Silverlight.  Silverlight is a much deeper platform.  We're bringing .NET technology to Silverlight to run in the browser across platform.  Silverlight is going to give you more choices for building rich Internet applications.  Silverlight brings .NET to the universal web.

Video plays showing off some WPF and Silverlight demos.

9:52 - Ray says those demos were amazing.  PCs were driving by numbers, charts, businesses.  Now it's being fueled by media and media elements.  Applications are incorporating media in ways we never imagined before.

To meet the needs of these new style applications, we're delivering new tools make this possible. 

I'd like to announce that as of today, Expression Studio is now shipping!  (Everyone at the show gets a free commemorative copy!)

There's been a sea change going on in Microsoft.  A transformation to software as a service.  At Mix we're announcing even more services and APIs that build on the Windows Live platform. (Contacts, photos, Virtual Earth, Identity, etc.)  We're also announcing new terms of service for using these services.

9:56 - We also need an infrastructure to build these types of applications across all of these different device types and platforms. 

A third part of the Silverlight we're announcing today is Silverlight Streaming.  It's a companion service that lets developers post Silverlight applications and content to Microsoft's storage service in the cloud for you to serve on your website.

So, Silverlight is about media, .NET, and services.  We're looking forward to bringing this new technology to you, and having you participate in the process by giving us your feedback once you get your hands on the beta bits.

Ray is done.  Scott Guthrie is up next...