Just finished with lunch and sitting on the first session.

The main opening session was interesting. I don’t feel like a learned a whole lot new, but they did show a lot of things I had heard rumors about. I don’t think the audience really felt the excitement that Microsoft needs.

Atlas – new framework for doing “AJAX” style development should be available for download today.

WFX/E – Windows Presentation Framework for embedded and non-Windows based machines. Similar to Flash I would guess, but it’s hard to know.

RSS – Far too much work being spent on the support of RSS. How 90s — polling for information rather than using an Indigo/Windows Communication Framework to push data changes.

Office 12 – Holy cow, completely different look and feel and behavior for Office applications. Completely different than anything I’ve seen in the past. They have it installed somewhere, so I hope to see more of it and play around. A lot more task focused than in the past. Supposedly there are over 1500 accessible commands in Office 2003.

Vista – nothing too new there. Since I have used the beta and worked with the Avalon pieces for quite a while, nothing in the way of real news. They didn’t announce any real innovation in UI besides an improved ALT-TAB which shows a nice preview. Disappointing overall. They spent time talking security, etc. Yawn. Sell me please!

Demos – some interesting cool demos, but too consumery so far — photos, a Netflix application, a UI for shopping for North Face. Nothing big or cool.