This is what happens when my worlds collide.  Feel free to listen in on my chat with Ian Dixon of The Media Center Show about Silverlight.

This weekend, you can experience the Xbox Elite campaign in Silverlight on the Microsoft.com homepage.  Go check out the Xbxo 360 Elite in all its glory.  (Note: If you don't have the Silverlight Beta installed, you'll see a ribbon to see the site in Silverlight, note that Silverlight is in Beta).

This is only the beginning... Kudos to the Microsoft.com team on this pilot endeavor.  I'm off to NY tomorrow- spend Mother's Day with my mom (sorry honey) and then off to Streaming Media East.  It should be a fun time.

Last night, Scott Guthrie and a few of us on the Silverlight product team went to see Aerosmith in concert at the Mandalay Bay - something I've always wanted to do and it as worth every moment!

Tonight I finally met Dave Winer in person at a Blogger meetup.   Today was mostly partner meet & greets, keynote rehearsals (which look great) and a few other things. One of them was giving Jeff Sandquist a special edition Microsoft Silverlight skateboard- the same design seen in the intro video at http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight.  He love skateboarding as do I.  The difference is tha the can actually skateboard.

These are special giveaways for partners and customers.  I've had to carry a few around the Venetian and keep getting stopped by security guards wanting to look at it, attendees etc.  I have one extra and will probably send it spontaneously to the person who does the most impressive Silverlight-enabled app about 30 days from now.   Heck, you might see a few given away at MIX07 :)

Tomorrow blogging is going to be a bit sporadic as I have a pretty tight schedule but will try to post as soon as possible - lots to talk about, so much good but will be covered elsewhere.

If' you're at MIX and want to meet up and discuss Silverlight's media capabilities, feel free to text me at +1-425-442-5712 or leave vmail (sporadic notification) and we'll try and meet up Tuesday or Wednesday. 

My trusty ipod is sitting in its docking station and awakes on it's own.  I hear  buzz buzz buzzing in my stereo speakers.  My Cingular Blackjack is sitting right next to the iPod.  What happens next?

The Blackjack continues buzzing from its data connection, picking up steam while my ipod starts to freak out- as if someone is randomly cycling up and down in the main menu, it goes into a full-on seizure.  Then I realize the two are in cycle.

Holy cow... and they say these phones don't cause cancer?  Anyone else see this kind of behavior before before?

I  love my TiVo Series 3.  It has a great Spousal Acceptance Factor (SAF) and though the price was crazy high, it has run flawlessly in our family room for months on end and I can't seem to fill it up with content.  

If you're interested in a Series 3, TiVo has a great deal at $499.99 + free TiVo Wireless adapter here.

Now if they can just get that whole TiVo to TiVo sharing feature running again...

To quote Allen:

The demo of LiveStation, which showed a good-quality picture from the BBC in the midst of a bandwidth-hogging tech show, has another thing going for it - its ability to leverage Microsoft's new Silverlight platform to create "content experiences" based on LiveStation's streams. Has interactive TV finally found its way to the consumer?

It's a good question, and I look forward to Skinker's public beta.  I've been playing with Joost as well, both are fine examples of what can be done.  It did occur to me that the Joost UI could be done in Silverlight, making it accessible everywhere the Silverlight client resides.  But for me, content is more important than the medium.  And my Slingbox is safely tethered to my TiVo for PVR supports for now. :)

I've received so many inquiries and kudos about the Silverlight name, logo, and brand video internally and externally that I thought I'd post the real story of how it came together.

• Naming research was completed in Q3 2006.  We decided to hold it for a special event at a later date.  "WPF/E"- the codename of Silverlight was intentionally unappealing to keep mainstream consumers from installing it until we had good feedback from the developers/designers during the alpha (CTP) preview.
• Brand work was done by my team working with an outstanding design firm I'll mention here once I have clearance to do so (by them).  We kicked this off in October, and went through many iterations before landing on the animated logo and final frame lockup.  If you don't like the frame, you can blame me Long :)  The orb is a plasmic energy being held into shape by an unseen force, where it spins and flows, almost organically.
• The brand video was done by Phoenix Edit, a group of ex-Industrial Light & Magic wonks out of San Francisco.    The goal was to show many different Silverlight-enabled scenarios woven together – designer/developer collaboration, personalized e-commerce, devices, user-generated video, viral sharing, and the network effect on sales. We intentionally avoided excessive use of text or voiceover so the video will translate globally as we kick off events around the world. For the line, "Light up the Web" - you have me to blame.  It's more about illumination and blazing a trail vs. blazing anything else ;)
• The music in the brand video is by my friend and prominent UK DJ Andy Hunter. The song is “Go” off his album, “Exodus”.  Andy consulted on the project and the remix, and has considerable street cred touring with DJ Tiesto. His songs have been used in The Matrix games, and multiple movie/television show. Andy is now on Nettwerk records working on his next release.
• Customer and partner engagement was tightly synchronized.  During initial briefs, partners were shown a slide announcing the final name as "X-Plat Player Plug-in for Browsers" in Microsoft logotype, a self-deprecating way of noting that we knew the name had to be cool and were on the ball (ironically or sadly some thought that was the actual name!).  We'd show the logo without the name, and always used the name "WPF/E" in our discussions and external communications.
• For the press announce, named companies didn't even know the final name until a matter of hours before the release hit. We intentionally didn't publish any brand elements internally and had about a dozen people total that had access.  The product management team got really tired of hearing me talk about secrecy and except for a few small nits that went unnoticed, they really did us proud.

Some day I'll post the evolution timeline of the logo if others are interested.

Every year, the publishers of Videography, DV, Digital Cinematography, and Television Broadcast magazines get together at NAB and announce the "Best of Show" award winners in multiple categories.

The Best of Show Awards are given in recognition of outstanding achievement in the advancement of the art and science of video technology, include the Videography Vidy Awards, the longest running NAB awards program, the Television Broadcast Top Innovation Awards, the DV Black Diamond Awards, and the Digital Cinematography Premiere Awards.

"To receive an award, a technology is evaluated by our panel of editors and industry experts," says NewBay Media Video Group Vice President/Group Publishing Director Doug Krainman. "The winning technologies reflect innovation and engineering excellence.

I'm elated to note that Microsoft Silverlight was the recipient of a coveted DV Black Diamond Award, in such esteemed company as Apple Final Cut Studio 2.  Congrats to the entire team!

Dan is one of the top movers/shakers in the online media space.  A veteran of Web 1.0, EVP of StreamingMedia.com and and Chairman of the Streaming Media conferences,  he recently started a blog and people are taking notice.  I first met Dan back at Streaming Media West 2001, in-between Steve Ballmer heckling me on-stage for using my wedding video in an end to end demo :). 

Dan gets our strategy with Silverlight for the media space.  Customers want a solution with the quality/reliability of Windows Media, standards-support of VC-1, and the interactivity only available from another provider today:

While the higher cost of creating and delivering in Flash over Windows Media has not stopped too many in the past, it has stopped some content creators from wanting to spend two to three times more just to use the Flash streaming format... If Silverlight truly does allow content owners to create, encode and deliver content faster and cheaper while providing the same if not better user experience than Flash streaming, then Microsoft is going to have the advantage in the long run.

Almost every broadcaster I speak to is looking with whetted appetite to the moment they can deliver HD video on the Web in a reliable and effective manner.  While everyone talks about the rapidly dropping price of bandwidth on the Web, we seem to neglect the actual cost of retraining designers to be developers (or vice versa), the production costs associated with creation of more complex, experience-centric websites, and the plain fact that more bits flowing through the "tubes" of the internet = more congestion, particularly at HD rates.  This is why we're investing so heavily in Silverlight for media, and adding new features such as SSL (https://), the same technology used to protect your credit card information, will now be used for over-the wire encryption of progressive streams from Windows Server code name "Longhorn" to Silverlight.  A certain broadcaster said they needed it and were concerned about proprietary protocols of other solutions that were recently reverse engineered.

Dan Rayburn - Subscribed.

Hot on the heels of our annoucements at NAB and the overwhelming response, I'm happy to announce the Silverlight team is growing again.  If you want to be a part of the next wave of media experiences and help to build the business to create, deliver, and experience RIAs, new job opportunities exist for the following job roles:

• Sr. Product Management - Enterprise & Solutions Engagement
• Sr. Product Management - Server & Services Engagement
• Silverlight Business Development & Deployment

All jobs are located in Redmond, WA.  Qualified candidates should have minimum of 5 years in the industry, MBA preferable with experience in the enterprise streaming and/or content delivery space.  Excellent customer/partner references are a must.  Skiing and/or 'boarding experience is a plus.

If you're interested, feel free to contact me at LinkedIn or send me email at sean@seanalexander.com with "INQUIRY:" in the title and your resume/VC. Or come find me on LinkedIn if you prefer.

The positions are located in Redmond, WA and will require some travel, about 4 days a month. It's important to note these are senior positions, with large impact on the business working directly with partners, customers, and product team to  ensure we're meeting the needs of our customers in the years to come.  Mac+Windows enthusiasts appreciated. ;)

Hot on the heels of last night's Top 10 for Silverlight, the other product making major waves at NAB is Microsoft Expression Media Encoder - a template-based video publishing tool for Silverlight and more. Expression Media Encoder supports live and on-demand video encoding and is a feature of Expression Media (our upcoming Digital Asset Management tool based on the lauded iView Media Pro).  Tim Sneath has a great writeup on the encoder here. 

Top 10 Questions about Expression Media Encoder

1. What video formats can I import with MEME?
   A: QuickTime, AVI, WMV, and any other format with a well-formed DShow filter.  Yep, we did the extra work to support the QT API's and are showing it working on the show floor.  If you have QT installed, it will work.
2. What can MEME do with Silverlight?
   A: MEME can quickly add chapter points with thumbnails and publish out your video into WMV/SMPTE VC-1 - no coding required.  Then just add the Javascript and video to your site and away you go.  You can also do basic enhancements - add a transparent .PNG or .GIF as an overlay, add leader/trailers, crop and even do A|B compare.
3. Can I encode for devices?  Web sites?  Streaming servers?
   A: Yes!  We'll include device profiles for outputting just the video for now ;)  Silverlight works with any web server as well as the more efficient Windows Media streaming platform. Profiles are just .prx same as Windows Media Encoder. 
4. What about live support?
   A: Another big hit at the show is EME's ability to handle multi-angle, multi-source video.  You'll be able to do pre-roll from local disk, then output, even archive to disk.  Yes, I think some vloggers will find this handy for both live broadcasting and on-demand.
5. Tell me more about these templates?
   A: The beauty of Silverlight apps is that they can be written with Javascript + XML (XAML).  As a result, the chrome/skin/templates can be created in Expression Blend (or other tools, even notepad) and then swapped- much like blog site, website, or powerpoint templates. This feature is a huge hit at NAB.  We're showing how Blend can be used to create  template easily from scratch, then use the template in EME. 
6. Expression Media is available for Mac and Windows.  What about EME?
   A: EME is a Windows-only product and was actually built with Expression Studio- it's a WPF-based application. 
7. How fast is encoding with Expression Media Encoder?
   A: Very fast- about the same as WM Encoder but we know time is money in encoding, so we're working with Intel spin-off and Red Herring darling Tarari to add hardware acceleration!  Tarari's boards are used by major broadcasters and post houses to encode today.  With EME, Tarari is seeing up to 15x faster encoding times when compared to software only solutions. Just drop the board into a PCI slot and away you go
8. Can EME run on the server?
   A: Yes! EME is scriptable, automatable, and templatized (is that even a word?) so you can integrate it into your server workflow.  We think some user-generated content sites may find this interesting for example where long encoding times mean customers leave your site.
9. Will EME support output to other formats?
   A: We're considering it based on feedback. We know there's a demand for better, simpler transcoding tools, and EME is really optimized for Silverlight which uses VC-1 (as well as older.  Silverlight could add more formats, but when you consider the entire package is 1MB in size, just adding another video codec could increase that by 50%. Keep the code tight! 
10. What is the coolest feature of EME?
    A: For me, it's the A/B Encode Compare feature. Today most tools require you encode the entire file, then review the quality. Then tweak - a huge time sink.  EME will improve the quality of videos in general because you can encode a segment or snippet you define (such as a high action sequence) and then review.  You can even wipe back and forth in the frame, reviewing side by side the original and compressed, or even multiple encoder settings side by side to get the best quality possible. The metadata features are pretty cool too.
11. Does Expression Media Encoder replace Windows Media Encoder?
    No.  EME is a new product, optimized for fast and simple publishing of video on your website with Silverlight. WME continues to be made freely available at www.microsoft.com/windowsmedia EME will cost about $299.

Finally coming up for air now after 10 hours of press briefings for nearly three days, I can finally talk more here about Silverlight:

Top 10 Questions About Silverlight and Media

1. What media formats do you support?
   A: WMV7,8, 9/SMPTE VC-1, WMA, MP3
2. What is SMPTE VC-1?
   A: WMV9 - now an open standard recognzied by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) and shipping in all Blu-Ray and HD-DVD drives.
3. Will Silverlight work with my current Windows Media?
   A: Yes, it most definitely will work with your existing Windows Media
4. What do I have to do to add Silverlight to my site? For Mac and Windows playback?
   A: Once the beta ships in two weeks, all you'll have to do is drop a little .js and XML into your page and away you go. 
5. Can additional formats be added for playback?
   A: No, part of the appeal of Silverlight is the small package size- 1MB, includes everything it needs for video and audio, animation, graphics and AJAX-based programmability to boot!
6. What companies are supporting Silverlight?
   A: Major League Baseball, Brightcove, NetFlix, Frog Design, AvenueA/Razorfish, Akamai, and many others are among the names announced. 
7. How easy the install really going to be?
   A: How does 3 clicks sound for XP users?  Vista users have one more click by default due to the user account feature.  Web pages can be wired up to do in-line install and auto-refresh after you're done.
8. Can you really do 720p HD video?  What 3D video card do I need?
   A: Definitely.  About a 3ghz P4 class processor will work, regardless of video card. We've done some really neat processor optimizations. All the demos shown in the booth at NAB were run off a mid-range laptop.
9. Why does resizing/scaling of apps "snap" differently in Safari/FireFox/IE?
   A: It all depends upon the way the browser renders.  I won't make any qualitative comment as your mileage may vary.
10. Will Silverlight work with my existing web server?  What about live streaming?
    A: For on-demand, yes! Run it on Darwin, Apache, whatever you're running.  Of course, you'll get a few added benefits with Windows Media streaming- reduced bandwidth costs, faster seeking, etc.
11. Where can I learn more?
    A: Right now you can learn more at www.microsoft.com/silverlight.  The community site will go live at www.silverlight.net.  The Beta "Cruise" starts on April 30th.