If you’re a designer looking for XAML design tools, and you’re a designer type (you know — beret, turtle neck, a wardrobe that extends beyond jeans and t-shirts), you’ve got two choices from Microsoft. You can use Expression Design [1] for static XAML graphics or Expression Blend (aka Sparkle) for dynamic XAML interfaces. Both are available in pre-release form (CTP for Design and Beta 1 for Blend), so give them a try.

[1] “Expression Design” is not to be confused with “Expression Designer”, which is the old name for Sparkle (Blend).

P.S. Can someone give Scoble a hug? He’s obviously a little worked up if he’s recommending physical violence for disagreements about web site design. : )

I expected eventually to get a WPF/E (Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere) download or two, but these guys went crazy; they just released an entire WPF/E DevCenter this morning. Here’re just a few highlights:

• WPF/E CTP for Windows and the Mac
• WPF/E online reference, samples and downloadable SDK
• Microsoft Expression Design CTP
• SWF to XAML Converter
• Adobe Illustrator to WPF/XAML Export Plug-In

Enjoy!

P.S. Regardless of whether humans caused global warming or whether it’s part of a natural cycle, it’s happening and we’re going to have to deal with it.

I tried the Xbox Video Marketplace on my 360 today. For 160 points ($2), I was able to purchase the season 2 premiere of Venture Bros (which is hilarious, btw) and 17% into the download, I was able to start watching it commercial free. Quality was high and I’m downloading Star Trek: The Enemy Within (a transporter accident creates an evil Kirk) for another $2 as I write this. The next experiment is a movie, but I’ll wait for the wife to come home before we decide which one to pick.

The experience was seamless. Recommended.

P.S. I think gays and lesbians have just as much right to get married and to be parents as heterosexuals.

Of course I have no credibility here (I’m part of the evil empire, after all), but I have to say, I’m really loving the Windows Vista Ultimate RTM. I know the Vista team takes a lot of crap for being late and for not being revolutionary enough, so I thought I’d let the Vista team know that I have yet to find something that isn’t just better in Vista than in XP. Here are a few things I really like:

• I no longer have to do Ctrl+Esc, R before I can type something to run (I’m a huge keyboard guy); I just have to type Ctrl+Esc and start typing. This savings alone has ruined me for XP. (And before you point out that I can just use Win+R, I don’t like the Windows key: it’s not on all keyboards and it’s not always in the same place.)
• If I want to search for a program in my voluminous start menu, I just do Ctrl+Esc and start typing. When the list of results contains my target, I press the down arrow to pick the one I want and press Enter when I get there.
• If I want to search for content on my computer, I just do Ctrl+Esc and start typing (once search is set to index my entire computer — I wish that were the default). If I want to be specific that I just want to search content or file name, I can use the “content:” and “name:” designators, e.g. “content:foo name:foo.cs”.
• If I want to find a setting in a particular control panel app, I open the control panel and start typing — the results point me at the specific control panel applet and page with that setting.
• If I want to find something on the internet, I press Ctrl+Esc and start typing, then press the up arrow (to get to the “Search the Internet” option) and press Enter, which brings up the results in my IE7 favorite search engine.
• If I want to find something in my large list of installed programs, I open the Programs and Features control panel and start typing (I found the renamed “Add and Remove Programs” control panel by searching for “uninstall”).
• Before you narrow my list of likes about Vista to “pervasive search” (which, obviously, I love), I also really like the sidebar. It’s amazing how often I glance over there to get some quick piece of info that’s always being updated for me rather than start some app, interrupting what I’m doing (e.g. lately I’ve been waiting with bated breath for MSFT to hit 30). I’m anxious for lots more sidebar gadgets.
• I love that the desktop is in the Alt+Tab list.
• I love the 3D Win+Tab list.
• The games, both new and old, are uniformly gorgeous.
• I really love the new look ‘n’ feel, including the animations and the new start menu, both of which I turned off in XP.
• I love that it just works on my 2-year old Dell laptop w/o any muss or fuss. I only have a Windows Experience Index of 2.0 because of my graphics card, but using Vista is still a very pleasant experience (and I have Aero glass around the edges of my windows and everything).
• I really love Windows Meeting Space. I’m a big user of Live Meeting because of my remote employee status and Windows MS is a simpler, cleaner, peer-to-peer version of the only parts of LiveMeeting I every actually used, i.e. sharing apps and sharing files. To have it included for free is huge.
• I love having Media Center included, too.
• I love that I can do picture slide shows from zip files as well as from folders.
• I like the new Sync Center, one-stop shopping for my offline folders (which I love) as well as managing my smartphone’s files.
• I really like the real-time thumbnail of apps when I hang the mouse over icons in the taskbar and in the Alt+Tab/Win+Tab list.
• I love that .NET 3.0 is included out of the box.
• I love that every app I’ve tried, including an app I originally wrote for Windows 95, just works.
• I love that I find new features all the time.
• As I’ve mentioned, I like the clearification.com site. In fact, I liked it so much, Mel and I want to see Demetri Martin live in Portland. Very funny.

Seriously, given the experience with recent pre-release versions of Vista, I thought I was going to just stick with XP. I’m so glad I didn’t. Vista rocks.

P.S. I’ll continue to desensitize/scare away readers with political/religious/social messages in future posts. Until then, Happy Thanksgiving!

There are a very few games I could call “great.” Doom (of course). Half-Life 2. Burnout Revenge. Mario Kart. And last week, I added another game: Gears of War. Wow. I’m almost exclusively a first-person-shooter person (although I never liked the Halo series), but GoW has converted me to 3rd person. It rocks.

The one flaw in GoW is that it’s too damn short! I’ve already finished the entire game on “casual,” so now it’s time to start over again on “hardcore” and begin the n-year wait for GoW 2.

P.S. I believe in God, but am not a member of any religion. I was confirmed Catholic, but am no longer one.

After a scant 6 months of service, my Xbox 360 yielded up the dreaded “to play this disc, put it in an Xbox 360 console” error (where do you think I was putting it?!?), which indicated a problem w/ the DVD drive. Ironically, this only became an issue after playing Gears of War for an hour or so (OMG is that a great game), even though it was happening consistently across my entire game library.

Calling 360 technical support yielded an offer of a repair, if I was willing to pay $140 (+ shipping) and wait 10 days for transit time. Having invested more than $1000 into my 360 and taken it into my home as a family member (ranking just below the kids but well above the dogs in the pecking order), I couldn’t abandon it. This part of my experience yielded a very important lesson:

Lesson #1: Modern-day consoles should be treated like PCs, not VCRs, and warranteed appropriately.

I’m so used to refusing the warranty when I purchase a piece of consumer electronics (and normally it is just a scam), that I didn’t even think to get the warranty on this one. On the other hand, I warranty ever Dell laptop I buy w/o a thought (and it has paid off many times). The XBox 360 (and I imagine the Play Station 3) are useful enough, that it’s worth the warranty fee when things go wrong and complicated enough that things are much more likely to do so, like your average laptop.

Luckily, my clever wife remembered that she’d purchased the 360 at Costco (she’s the one that brought it home — how cool a wife do I have?!?), which has a very liberal return policy. So, Costco took back my broken 360 and in return gave me:

• a brand new XBox 360 (which plays Gears of War consistently wonderfully)
• one extra controller
• one extra game (Xbox Live Arcade Unplugged Volume 1)
• my old HD w/ our saved games (instead of the new one)
• a $15 credit

You read that right — not only did they give me a new Xbox with more stuff in the bundle, but because the bundle was now cheaper, they refunded me the difference. I’m now hoping my 360 breaks every 6 months ’til they’re paying me to take the new one home w/ me… All of this leads us to lesson #2:

Lesson #2: Costco rocks.

In fact, Costco is such a great store, that I can ignore lesson #1, because I know that they’ll replace my Xbox again in 6-12 months if it breaks again.

P.S. I’m in favor of legalizing marijuana (although I’ve never smoked any myself)

P.S.S. I put in that postscript because I don’t want readers to think that I was scared off (or wised up, depending on your POV) from the response to my last post. : )

It all started with a bet that my new marketing guy could meet his promised numbers by a certain date. Figure 1 shows me reading his results report at VSLive 2003. Figure 2 shows the audience deciding if that was good enough. Figure 3 shows him taking a pie in the face as revenge by engineers for the missed promises of marketing guys everywhere.

Figure 1: Reading the marketing results report to the audience

Figure 2: The audience deciding whether the marketing guy had lived up to his promises

Figure 3: The marketing guy and his just desserts

VSLive 2003
Feb 13th, 4:30pm

Since at least 2001 we’ve been stuck in a quagmire of missteps, indecision, corruption and the eroding of our freedoms. Some of us feared it would never end.

But the US House and Senate are now officially out of the hands of the Republicans, and that’s cause for much rejoicing. Let the balloons drop and the dancing begin! It’s a new age.

P.S. apologies to Mr. Petzold for ripping off his blog post, but when I saw it in my RSS reader, I thought that the above would be the subject of his latest essay and that we would finally have something on which to agree. It’ll be my luck that he’s a staunch Republican and I’ll hear about my misguideness tomorrow… : )