I’ve heard that Yahoo and others have started using Titanium as an alternative to AIR and WPF for desktop apps. With Titanium, you’ve got also got an easier port to Mobile too. It’s build on top of Webkit and Google Gears. Similar to AIR, you can develop using standard web technologies: HTML, CSS, JS, Ruby, Python. I’m just starting to check it out for a possible new project. So far, it’s looking pretty darn sick. 

Wow, just got back from almost a full week of hardcore Silverlight training and “geeking out” up at Microsoft. It was a tremendously valuable experience and I really appreciate Microsoft for inviting me up. I learned so much, not sure where to start. The C#/Visual Studio environment is absolutely phenomenal; working in it is a joy and saves so much time. The debugging control, the ability to hook up unit tests, quick connections to server side data (data binding, etc) are all powerful for development.

I struggled a little with Blend when I wanted to jump into the graphics and visual side. This may be because I am so used to the Flash IDE. I like the XAML bridge and the workflow and ease of editing that it provides, but I’m concerned about the enormous amount of mark up code it produces. Maybe it’s just me and I need to get used to it, but it seems as though even the smallest animation produces a significant amount of XAML mark up. It is genius to be able to get access to this code within the XAML layer, however, the amount of code can get a little overwhelming. I’m sure as I continue to work with the platform, I will lean how to best manage my workflow and optimize my outputs.

Really looking forward to putting this to use on a new project (which we have coming up for Xbox very soon!)

What an adventure. 3 days in Vegas at at MIX and then 4 days in Austin for SXSW.  Although my plane was late and I missed the opening keynote for MIX, where they demoed the Hard Rock Cafe site that Jason W designed (I’m so pissed I missed that), I was lucky to arrive in time to see Nathan Buggia’s session on SEO. This was fortunate in that I would be giving a similar talk at SXSW in two days! This weekend, I will post more on my SEO, SEM and overall “findability” thoughts, including the ideas (and code) that I presented at SXSW.

I also enjoyed the Steve Ballmer and Guy Kawasaki Keynote. Steve B was so funny and down-to-earth, that I not only fell out of my seat laughing, I also really liked the guy! I thought that Guy did a great job. Not sure how informative it was; although I did get to hear how a typical day in the life of Steve goes, and I also found out more about the Microsoft product roadmap.  The Deep Zoom stuff (used in Hard Rock Cafe site) is pretty amazing. I also attended a demo on how to implement it. I wonder how it compares with the old Zoomify for Flash?

More on this to come….

We won! Cameron and Ian brought home the prize for AKQA (actually, they’re the ones who get the Xboxs!). Cameron (Interaction Designer) and Ian (Creative Developer on my team) had never used any of the new Microsoft Expression tools. They were trained in one day, and then given a project which they had to complete by the end of the week using the Expression tools; in our case using Blend to create a Silverlight experience. There was a party at 111 Mina in SF where each team presented their solution. You can read the whole story on Microsoft’s Will Tschumy’s blog.