I rolled over to the Mandalay for breakfast. There I met a couple guys that were really excited about the new Windows 7 Phone. They, as I, are also hopeful that the phone really gets a big push and some penetration into the market. Not because we don’t like any other of the phones, but because this phone is so much better in many ways. From a developer's perspective creating applications in Windows 7 Mobile will be vastly superior in ease, capabilities, and other aspects. The architectural, existing code base, examples, and provisions to create things on the 7 Mobile Device are already existing as of RIGHT NOW. There is no reason, except for fickle market conditions, for this phone to not just explode onto the market. But alas, I won't hold my breath. Day three keynote had a whole new slew of things provided. It also seemed that things got a lot more technical on this second keynote. The oData was one of the very technical bits, yet it included almost no code. Starting with a Netflix example and all the way to the Codename "Dallas" effort the oData Services provide some expansive possibilities. A mash up going 4 ways was then shown for finding a movie, finding local places to have a viewing, and information about the movie and were to prospectively find and buy additional movie bits. The display was of course, in a Windows 7 Mobile device with literally a click to view each set of data. The backend and the front end of this was beautifully smooth. The Dallas Project has a lot of potential for analytics in dashboard and scorecard creation also. If there is a need or reason to provide data to a vast and wide range of clients, Dallas is a prime example of how to do that. Azure Clouds After the main keynote I checked out (while developing a working WPF & Silverlight Application for work) the session on deploying ASP.NET Applications, services, etc, into the cloud. The session was pretty good, but I'll admit I got a little unfocused from it a few times. It is after all hard to do two things at one time. I did take note that the cloud still is a multiple step process for deploying to. This is a good thing and a bad thing. There needs to be more checks and verifications when deploying something into the cloud just for technical reasons. However, I feel that there should be some streamlining to the process. Going back and forth between web and Visual Studio as the interface also seems kind of clunky. Deployment should be able to be completed from within Visual Studio in my perspective. Overall, the cloud is getting more and more impressive in function as well as theory. That's it from me so far on the third day of MIX. I'll be note taking and studying hard to have more good tidbits to provide. Thanks for reading, if you're curious about more of my writing, check out this original entry at my other blog Agilist Mercenary.
