This is the coolest thing I’ve seen! Michael Scherotter, Microsoft Evangelist in the SF Bay area paid a visit to UVNTV.com’s studios where the man himseld, Ice Cube gave us his POV on Silverlight. Ice Cube is a founder and owner of UNTV.com, an all 365/24/7 online TV service which offers a range of different channels. UNTV has migrated to Silverlight “due to the quality” according to Ice Cube himself.Ice Cube also introduced his development team, good folks who explained their use of Silverlight… You can now enjoy UNTV’s great content with great Silverlight video and audio quality…Michael, recorded this interview Channel 9 style and has kindly offered an iframe where you can watch the videos. He actually used Silverlight Streaming to post this video for free and share with us so go ahead… copy paste this iframe into your HTML and post in your own blog or site:

<iframe src=”http://silverlight.services.live.com/invoke/216/UVNTV/iframe.html” frameborder=”0″ scrolling=”no” style=”width:800px; height:600px”></iframe> 

As I mentioned in a previous post, we’ve partnered with Lynda.com to produce a full 5 hour series on Silverlight 1.0. The video series is now available! The presenter is Mike Harsh, Program Manager in the Silverlight team. Mike did a terrific job on this one covering the very basics of Silverlight and all the way to more intermediate and advanced topics. Mike has a development background so this series are great for developers however, he does a great job explaining concepts in a way that interactive designers who do some Javascript coding, will also find these videos useful. He even has some specific chapters focused on Designers.

Lynda.com has made this full series available in her website. You can even get the assets to follow along. In addition, Lynda.com had already made their Blend 1 and Design 1 series available for FREE. Expression Web is also available for subscribers… so susbcribe now! or if you want to keep the video series next to you all the time just get the DVD!

These are the general topics covered in the series:

1. Understanding Silverlight
2. Discovering Silverlight Experiences
3. Silverlight Tools: Expression and Visual Studio
4. Getting Started with XAML, JavaScript, and HTML
5. Advanced XAML
6. Advanced JavaScript Techniques for Silverlight
7. Asset Preparation for Designers
8. Working with Media in Silverlight
9. Creating a Media Player with Silverlight
10. Creating Programmatic Animations
11. Silverlight Deployment
12. Conclusion

From Lynda.com: Mike Harsh is the program manager on the Silverlight team at Microsoft. In Silverlight Essential Training, he gives viewers an insider’s look into this powerful application. Mike teaches each step in the process of building interactive web applications using Silverlight, including how to add video, animations, and interactive features such as drag-and-drop functionality. Exercise files accompany the tutorials.

Microsoft will be hosting the first PhizzPop Design Challenge, a fun one week event where designers and developers work together in teams to create cool Silverlight websites. The teams have been chosen but on Friday we’ll have a final show where teams will demonstrate their achievements and the PhizzPop team is inviting you to attend that day, watch final show and the some creative projects, meet fun people and enjoy some cocktails. To register visit the site http://designchallenge.phizzpop.com/. There are events at: NY, Chicago, LA, Austin and Boston.

[from the PhizzPop site] 

Welcome to the PhizzPop Design Challenge!
36 teams enter. 1 team leaves.

The PhizzPop Design Challenge pits top interactive, Web, and design agencies against one another to push the limits of technology and creativity in a battle royale. Think Mad Max for design.

The regional teams have been selected and will duke it out in New York, Boston, Chicago, Austin, and Los Angeles, with the regional winners competing against one another, and San Francisco winner AKQA, at the South by Southwest Interactive Conference in Austin, TX.

We invite you to register and watch the creativity unfold as you enjoy cocktails.

NOTE: An insider tip… don’t hesitate, sign up now! MIX06 and MIX07 filled up super fast. See you in Vegas! 

Vegas here we come!  Microsoft’s MIX conference is returning to the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas on March 5 – 7, 2008 and you’re invited to join us.

The Next Web Now
MIX08 is an intimate opportunity for cutting-edge technical, creative and business strategists to engage Microsoft in a conversation about the future of the web. Join Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer in exploring the latest wave of opportunities and help redefine the boundaries between content and commerce, PC and TV, Windows and the Web.

Register at  http://visitmix.com/2008 by January 15, 2008 and save $200.00 off the regular price of $1295.00 USD.  MIX sold out well in advance last year, sign up early to make sure you aren’t left out!

Don’t delay, sign up now for MIX08 and join the MIX RSS feed to start receiving goodies long before the show kicks off!

Some buddies and I  will be hosting an free public training day for Silverlight 1.0 here in Redmond. Everyone is welcome! Ernie and Adam work for DPE, which means they are evangelists of our technologies. They both work in Tim Sneath’s team so as you can imagine they have tons of experience with both WPF and Silverlight and their job is to hang out with customers and partners and help them be successful with our platform and tools. Laurence Moroney will also present that day. As you have probably heard he wrote and recently released the first Silverlight 1.0 book which is really fantastic. I’ll be showing the Expression tools, mainly Design and Blend (and a little of Visual Studio) to create a small Silverlight site.

Tomorrow we have the final presentation of this week’s MIR event (Microsoftie Artist in Residence).  This MIR was particularly fun and educational. I’ll post a summary of my findings but we learned a lot about Workflow between designers and developers. I’m also collecting a list of all things I’m finding some Designers find confussing when learning Silverlight. Most of these little challenges are because they have used Flash for years (like me) so our minds are wrapped around other concepts and paradigms. I’ve been experimenting in explaining concepts in different ways and this week I had plenty of breakthroughs in the way to explain these concepts… I’ll share this with you soon. I also put into action, for the first time, my personal Silverlight creation workflow process with the MIRs this week which includes a Naming Convention document close to the beginning of the process. I’ll also drill down deeper into this in the next few days.

Silverlight 1.0 Fire Starter
On November 29, 2007 Microsoft will be hosting Silverlight 1.0 Fire Starter on the Redmond, Washington campus. This daylong event is free to anyone who wants to learn about designing and developing with Microsoft Silverlight 1.0.

Microsoft Silverlight 1.0 is a cross platform browser plug-in that enables for easy development of media rich web sites.  For more information, visit http://silverlight.net.
November 29, 2007
Microsoft Redmond Campus
1 Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA
Building 33, Kodiak Room
** Please have a photo ID with you to register onsite and park

Check-in: 8:00 am
Event: 8:30 am – 5:00 pm
Register: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032359153&Culture=en-US
or by calling 1-877-673-8368 and referencing Event ID 1032359153

AGENDA
Introduction to Silverlight Mithun Dhar
Getting Started with Silverlight Laurence Moroney
Microsoft Expression Design Tools Arturo Toledo
XAML Essentials for Silverlight Laurence Moroney
Developer Tools for Silverlight Adam Kinney
Media, Markers and More Ernie Booth
Popfly and Silverlight – Writing a Silverlight ‘Social’ app Popfly Team
What will Silverlight look like in future versions? Ernie Booth
Post Event Evening event with XBOX, networking and refreshments