Taking 5 minutes from new baby time tonight to check in on Peter Moore's press event at E3 - apparently Disney is releasing movie starting tonight in HD on Xbox live. My wife approves a little more.  No word on title(s) yet.

A few of our friends at Jackson Fish Market just launched their first web app- a virtual florist service called, "They're Beautiful".  My wife and I both worked with founders of the company and were elated to receive virtual flowers from multiple friends this weekend from the service.  While I'd love to see a Silverlight version (we're still in beta), the Flash DHTML UI is very nicely done. Each flower was created from paper and was artfully scanned. There's also a tamagotchi-style feature where you can plant he flowers in your greenhouse and have to water them regularly. Thanks to everyone for the flowers and congratulations to Hillel, Jenny and the team at JFM and their sponsor Vosges Chocolatier. 

Introducing a new addition to the ADM family - Tristan Alexander, born July 6th 2007, a whopping 10lb 3oz.  He arrived a day early as mom went into labor instead of waiting for the planned 7.7.07 c-section. He's already asserting his independence. Both mom and baby are doing fine as is little brother.

Ready for my Closeup

Big Feet

A big brother moment

All pictures were taken with a Nikon D200. The surgery was filmed on a Canon HV20 1080i HD camera (ok, there's the gadget part).   Thanks to all for their well wishes via facebook and email (sean_alexander on that hotmail site) - I'm sharing with Mom.  We're likely to leave the hospital today -

This AM, the meme is buzzing about Skinkers and Silverlight.  Matteo Berlucci the CEO of Skinkers is one of the most impressive people I've met in a long time. Matteo gave an excellent presentation during my keynote at Streaming Media East and I'm encouraged to see the great coverage they are getting for LiveStation, which uses MSR P2P technology and Silverlight to enable stream-slinging.  No, they are not a competitor to Joost, and are more complementary than anything else in this emerging market.  Don Dodge has more over here.

Whoops gotta go- our son apparently wants to arrive a little early (c-section was scheduled for tomorrow and things are happening) so off to the Dr to check it out.

It seems everyone needs to post their thoughts on the iPhone.  I think I saw it in the license agreement actually.  So here are my thoughts, composed as haiku:

Activation pain;
Where is Exchange ActiveSync?
Best iPod ever.

Feel free to contribute your own.

My wife and I like to play Guitar Hero II as a family event.  Our son loves to rock out, dancing and jumping around while we do. It's the first Xbox 360 game where my wife is better than me.  Not by just a little bit- she's significantly better than me, chalking it up to her classical cello training.  Well I've marked down what I'm going to get her for Christmas already- Rock Band.  Adding wireless drums, a mic, and wireless guitar/bass to the mix and this could be the ultimate party game.  Check out this video. "Welcome to the Jungle" is a good start- now if they'd just license more music for both games, I'm ready to buy.

Last night about 10pm I picked up an iPhone at the Bellevue Apple Store. It was a great purchase experience until I got home.  I plugged it in, fired up the Mac and upgraded iTunes.  Then I registered and... nothing except a message:

"Your activation requires additional time to complete."

You will receive an email confirmation sent to [foo] once your activation is complete.

Nine hours later, still no activation.  Looks like I'm not the only one either. Whoops, I realized Apple let me use my expired .Mac email address for the account.  I have another email I wanted to switch to so I called AT&T and was on hold for 30 minutes with no end in sight.  When I gave up and called back, went into another queue and was told I'd have about 10 minutes to wait.  I was super-pleasant with the CSR but it was clear she wanted me out of her queue- talking over me to the point I had to ask her to stop and listen to what I was asking her to do (she wanted me to sign up again when all I wanted was my email address changed).  She seemed really annoyed when I asked how long they expected it would take.  Her response, "There are millions of people trying to activate this phone, we have no idea".

Wow... I wonder if I'll see anything today. Hopefully Jobs is working the AT&T exec lines this AM. 

(Fingers crossed)  The design is superb but I can't do anything other than make emergency calls until activated.  You can't even use the iPod functionality.  I just want to play with what I paid for. :)

Update: 9:00am - finally activated :)

 One of my favorite designers, Celso Gomes has just launched, "Nibbles: Snack tutorials for hungry designers". Eventually it will include WPF samples but for now, is focused on Silverlight!  Not a designer you say?  You should still check out his samples.  Celso is an incredibly gifted designer and inviting others to submit.  He has a blog set up too for feedback and updates.  Nibble away.

Breaking news: Yahoo stock is up on news that chairman and CEO of Yahoo! Inc. Terry Semel is stepping down.  Semel joined Yahoo in 2001 after 24 years at Warner Bros.  Jerry Yang, co-founder and former executive at Yahoo will be returning to active duty to replace Semel .  Let the "return of Steve Jobs' impact on Apple" prodigal son comparisons begin.  Personally, this is one of the most encouraging moves I've seen.  I wonder what Furrygoat will have to say about this.

Update: It looks like it took Valleywag all of 2 nanoseconds after the announcement to post the obligatory "Jerry Yang is no Steve Jobs" story.

A cool video I had to watch three times.  Starts off slow but you get to see all the details of who was where when the plane crashed.

CNet's Webware site is billed as "Cool apps for everyone".  So when we heard that Silverlight was nominated for a "Webware 100 Award" in the publishing category we were elated.  Today, the 100 best Web 2.0 products were announced, chosen by you.

So on the heels of the Popfly PC World announcement, you can imagine my surprise when I learned about two hours ago (under embargo) that Silverlight is a Webware 100 winner.  My favorite quote:

We're already starting to see some pretty good-looking Silverlight Web applications crop up, although the platform is both young and lacks some of the expert developers that Flash has under its belt. Given time though, this could be the next big thing.

And we're only in Beta. Congratulations to the Silverlight (and Popfly) teams!

It appears the guys at DivX have unveiled their rumored hardware, the new DivX GejBox -  a reference/test set-top entering an already questionable field.  No, I'm not adding that wink for giggles, it's really in the product name, which Engadget refuses to include on principle.  DivX has been trying for nearly a decade to build some street credibility as a video format, originally popularized by movie traders on the internets. You kind of have to hand it to them, they have staying power.  A few asian manufacturers support their offbeat MPEG-4 profiles (which have been beaten by XviD in every codec shootout since 2003). Let's forget the company was named the same as a failed (and despised) timebombed rental disc program Digital Video Express, but to build a box, and then name it after the hacker handle used by a co-founder doesn't smack of responsible marketing.  At least it has HDMI and wireless though I doubt many consumers will be picking this up over an Apple TV or Xbox 360 (for Extender).