PDC 2008: Part 1

I've not much to say, as for one, I'm not physically there, but I will sum up the summed up news, and, of course, give an embedded for the Keynote video Ray Ozzie did.

The embedded bit works much better now that Silverlight 2 is out mind you; for one it actually works with Firefox now (as opposed to the beta).

So here it is, and below that, my summery and comments.

Now about what I think about Azure:

• Windows Azure is interesting. Moreso because they got Dave Cutler of Windows NT fame to do work on it.
• Talking about the cloud before the client means a lot. This isn't just a method to build hype for Windows 7 or to put it in the middle of the week. Microsoft values software-as-a-service as a cash cow very much. Ray Ozzie could have talked about anything, but he choose Services.
• Live Mesh?
• Now that there is a Windows Blue edition, where is Windows Red?
• Scalable and .NET skills transfer... duh? I can see why it might be considered big, but it was a given for a cloud platform from Microsoft. Compiling code to run live was probably the most interesting thing with this; it isn't so buggy they were afraid to run it live. That was also kinda expected with an announcement though.

Overall the whole thing was neat, but felt like an announcement despite the live code. I plan on commenting on this more, but I might follow YouTube's new features with some commentary soon, as I think the direction Google is going is is somewhat interesting.