Today I received a comment on a Poll I created which asked the question “Will Flash developers learn Silverlight”?  20% said there was no chance unless Microsoft bought Adobe.  Here is what the comment has to say.

“Nobody in their right mind will use SilverLight on the internet for a long time…..Until a user can just go to a page with SilverLight and use it, just like Flash, SilverLight won’t see the light of day on the Web….”

As one might imagine this response got me thinking, is making a user install a plugin a barrier to Silverlight adoption in the development community?  Now certainly as a Silverlight MVP I am a bit biased, but there is no way anyone can convince me that the preexistence of a 4.6MB plugin has anything to do with developer adoption.

In my day job I manage a team of developers, mostly .NET but a few experts in Flash and Flex.  Not to long ago I asked one of my senior Flash developers why he was so willing to learn Silverlight for a game project.  His response was “Why would I not want to learn another tool that makes me even more marketable”.

Bravo!  Silverlight isn’t about hunting down Flash in a global attempt to make it extinct. It’s not about one framework being better then the other.  Its about choices.  Choices push competition and competition pushed technology.   Sure Microsoft might have its own agenda, but Silverlight gives developers and interactive sites a choice. If I had the time and energy I would love to learn every programing language on every platform.  Boy would I have choices.

On 08-08-08 Silverlight 2.0 will be the technology used to broadcast over 2000 hours of the 2008 Summer Olympic games.  If the last Olympics can predict anything, then NBC should expect over 4 billion television viewers in August.  If even 10% watch some Olympics online,  you are looking at 400 million Silverlight installs.  I think it is fair to say that is a pretty nice jump on Silverlight market saturation.

Wednesday I had the great opportunity to participate in the second annual f8 developers conference in San Francisco.  Last year I attended on behalf of Terralever, one of only about 30 selected launch partners.   A few weeks before the first f8, Terralever was asked to develop two proof of concepts apps that demonstrated the power of Platform.  It was a crazy two weeks of development, but we pulled it off and were one of the first Agency to have proven Facebook platform experience.  Since then, we have built various applications, some for start ups looking to use Facebook as there platform, while other for big brands like BMW and Nike.

This f8 Terralever was selected by Red Bull as one of only a handful of launch partners that would have the opportunity to integrate Facebook Connect (announced  during the keynote) with some of their properties.  As you can imagine were were very excited about this opportunity, and more excited about what Connect will mean to all of our clients.

For those unfamiliar with the announcement, Facebook connect gives  external website the ability to integrate Facebook users  directly into there site.  This integration, allows a site to extend its user bases from those that already exist, to any of the over 100 million Facebook users.  With this integration a site instantly has access to customizing content based on that users profile, and even more important, that users entire social graph. Imagine the possibilities.

So what does this mean to Red Bull?   Below you we see a screen shot of a new and exciting interface that the team at Terralever has created for www.redbullusa.com. This interface leverages connect as a way to change the way in which users view content.

The team at Terralever did an amazing job at producing this example.  In just a few weeks we took four disparate sites (surfing, skating, skiing, and snowboarding), and aggregated each sites content and comments, into Red Bull USA.  The really cool part is that using Connect, we can now allow users the ability to read and comment on content they may never have stumbled upon.  Look for this to all go live some time this summer.

Recently I have been asking myself the question, what makes some companies so successful while other seem to have great ideas and amazing people, yet still struggle to find real meaning. I stumbled on this video from about two years ago where Guy Kawasaki is speaking about his take on what should motivate someone to start a company.

On July 2nd from 6pm-8pm there will be another open forum on Silverlight at Interface Technical Training in Phoenix.  Back in Nov Mike Palermo started the Arizona Silverlight User Group and I have heard great things about the topics being discussed.  I have never had the opportunity to attend, but I look forward to going to this next session.

Location: Interface Technical Training
3110 North Central Avenue, Suite 160
Phoenix, Arizona 85012

For those that might be interested, this year’s XNA Gamefest will be held at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in downtown Seattle on July 22-23 2008. In previous years the conference has included presentations in the following tracks.

• System Programming for Windows and Xbox 360
• Graphics
• Quality Assurance and Certification
• Producer and Business Development
• Audio
• LIVE
• XNA Game Studio
• Games for Everyone
• Visual Arts

I am not sure if all of these tracks will be presented in July, but I know for certain that they have decided to expand its focus and include a Casual Gaming track highlighting some of the cool new games done in Silverlight. When I know more information I will let everyone know.

This article is a few weeks old, but quite interesting.  It makes claims that Jobs is using Apple Software Update (specifically iTunes) to piggyback the Safari browser onto Windows machines.  Just last week I was prompted with an Apple update and questioned why Safari was trying to update on my boot camp partition.  I was sure I never had installed that browser.  Sneaky Mr. Jobs

Check out this article in the April 2008 issue of OMMA. Scott our Director of Strategy had the following to say about privacy expectations.

But the reality is that there’s a new generation of consumers who have little or no privacy expectations, and they’re going to prove a rich source of performance data, suggests Scott McAndrew, director of strategy for Tempe, Ariz.-based interactive marketing agency and Facebook APP developer Terralever.

Not only that, as marketers get used to the rich demographic and preference information social networking sites can provide, their expectations will rise ever higher, McAndrew notes. “When they look at Facebook and all of that data, they’ll be looking for it in other mediums,” he says.

Check out Scott’s Online Marketing Performance blog.

Over the holiday my wife was so kind as to use her hard earned Holiday bonus and buy me an iPhone. For the last two years I have had my trusty old Sprint Treo connected directly to my companies Exchange and personal POP3 server. Now that I have made the first step in switching to the dark side (I hear a MacBook Pro whispering in the distance), I have to accept that Mac’s don’t always play nicely with windows. iPhones do play nice with Google and specifically email services that offer IMAP support. Here are the steps I went through to get my iPhone to work with Gmail for Google Apps.

1. Enable IMAP support in “Settings” for Gmail
2. On the iPhone “Settings” -> “Mail” create a new “Other” account.
3. Enter the following settings
   • Incoming Mail Server
     • Host Name: imap.gmail.com
     • User Name: email@somewhere.com
     • Password: *****
   • Outgoing Mail Server
     • Host Name: smtp.gmail.com
     • User Name: email@somewhere.com
     • Password: *****
4. Click Save and go to the “Advanced” settings.
   • Mailbox Behavior
     • Change “Drafts Mailbox” to “Draft”
     • Change “Sent Mailbox” to “Sent Mail”
     • Change “Deleted Mailbox” to “Trash”
   • Incoming Settings
     • Use SSL: ON
     • Authentication : Password
     • IMAP Path Prefix: [Gmail]
     • Server Port: 993
   • OutgoingSettings
     • Use SSL: ON
     • Authentication : Password
     • Server Port: 587

(Note: Since I am using Google Apps my username will be at my own domain and not a username at gmail.com)