Believe me when I say you need to ditch your old version of Blend and install the latest here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=92e1db7a-5d36-449b-8c6b-d25f078f3609

Blend is amazing now!

Expect reviews from me soon.

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2009/07/10/silverlight-3-released.aspx

This is a great release… something MSFT should really be proud of and a real enabler for amazing experiences across multiple platforms.

I am just finishing up my first v1 of an SL3 project that we have been building on beta bits and the experience has been great. Its not so hard to be a WPF guy in Silverlight anymore.

Very exciting day for some really cool work that we have been doing at IM. Today we are announcing publically the IdentityMine Gesture Engine. Read the press release here:

http://cs.identitymine.com/blogs/im_news/archive/2009/03/19/identitymine-introduces-the-identitymine-gesture-engine-to-support-advanced-multi-touch-development.aspx

Quote from the website:

“In addition to multi-level gesture support the IdentityMine Gesture Engine also support for user recorded custom gestures. These gestures can be used to augment the set of gestures currently supported which include Rotate, Resize, Pan, Click/Touch, Slide, Flick, Touch and Hold, Drag, and 3D. ”

Its some really cool stuff and after having played with it a little bit it is very much a new playground for designers to start designing states and transitions for the complex world of intuitive NUI interfaces…

http://expression.microsoft.com/en-us/dd434644.aspx

Really cool photo viewer app is available here with source code:

http://windowsclient.net/appfeeds/SubscriptionCenter/Gallery/photosuru.aspx

This app demonstrates the kind of hardware accelerated performance with full screen animations that you should expect from a rich client app.

I especially like the film strip that has a motion blur on it as it slides back and forth.

“Creative work only seems like a magic trick to people who don’t understand that it’s ultimately still work.”

http://www.43folders.com/2009/01/02/feeling-creative

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/11/16/update-on-silverlight-2-and-a-glimpse-of-silverlight-3.aspx

Conveniently announced before Adobe MAX tomorrow

Walt and Josh blogged about it. It would be wrong of me not to.

Dinner with the disciples last night was great…

…a bit uncomfortable since most people were visibly awestruck by the doctor’s presence at our table.

I think its important to say that I feel like the doctor isn’t a bad guy. It just appears like he is the prototypical evil eccentric mastermind when we breaks into a loud “mooo hooo hooo ah a ahhhhh” (I did however hear that he is wanted in peru for kicking a llama and he conceived his first child at the age of six on a subway in a cloning experiment gone awry but I digress).

It was actually a night to remember. A life changing night. I will always remember the doctor’s powerful voice as he explained to us the importance of “oslo” and “m” and modeling saying, “From now on you will always measure life’s achievements as life before this asparagus and life after this asparagus.” It was truly life changing asparagus.

It was when the doctor told me I should be getting my Crack online and that “it was good quality stuff” that I realized that he really did care. His cold maniacal exterior was really just a visual style applied to his lookless control. Really he is a man of many dependency properties. His commands might have too many parameters but he is a great resource dictionary to hang out with at your next routed event.

Dr. WPF I look forward to having dinner with you at PDC 09

Other than Karim’s office show and tell every now and then I never got a chance to really look at this until now. http://dragonshed.wordpress.com/2008/09/22/attachedbindings-for-silverlight/

In honor of the PDC I wont be using non MS products… Other than my iphone… But where possible I will be using things like Windows Live Photo Gallery beta instead of using my default Aperture in OS X or when I need to look something up I will use maps.live.com

I mentioned yesterday that I am using Windows Live Skydrive and Mesh extensively lately. I will be reviewing some of my experiences this week with other great Windows user experiences/services.

First review is for Windows Live Photo Gallery beta… Honestly I am impressed… I didnt expect to be. But I give it high marks in speed and usability. Still low marks in emotional connection but that is a challenge because I havent quite bought into the baby blues of the current generation of Windows Live branding.

I snapped a few pics from my hotel and created a PDC set on flickr all through the app http://www.flickr.com/photos/photon8/sets/72157608391962882/ Very simple process and using things like Windows Live Writer and Photo Gallery its starting to become a consistent experience about how I share… The consistency is creating a social app experience that is integrated with my local client experience that I am really starting to like. Its better than blurring the lines…. Its hiding them all together.

Next up… instead of using iChat or Windows Live Messenger or Skype to video conference with my wife and kids… I am going to try out Windows Live Video Messages

http://videomessages.live.com/portal/welcome.aspx