DonXML Blog

I finally got .Text up and running as my CMS on my home page and that's where the majority of my posts will be from now on.  I'm not totally leaving weblogs.asp.net , but I will only post  pure .Net stuff here.  Stuff  like SVG, XML, Longhorn, PDC, and various non-tech topics will only be found on my home page.  The idea is to try to help reduce the noise from weblogs.asp.net, and have the freedom to post “offtopic” stuff as I wish.  Only the front page is skinned to me new style (and that isn't even totally complete yet).  The individual category pages still use the default .Text styles.

Sam Gentile found a great resource to help fix some bugs and get Longhorn to run faster.

The Bloggers Bof Session has already been heavily covered, but what I think what is missing is all the cool sub-topics that happened beneath the RSS versus Atom discussion.  Jason Nadal documented the discussion on the need for standarization of meta-data so that aggregation can get smarter, and is a bit of a complex discussion, where one can get lost.  But what we are really talking about is building a Tivo-like system for Blogging.  That will require 2 major updates to the blogging world, a standard metadata for describing the categorization of blog content, and smart clients that can use the metadata.  Tivo has an advantage over blogging because they already have an industry that categorizes their data.  But I think with a little help we can get this done it a reasonable timeframe.

I just want to say that there is a real sense of community among the bloggers at the PDC.  It is somewhere between a community and a family.  I've talked with so many bloggers and readers of blogs, and feel like these are people I graduated high school with, and haven't seen for 10 years.  There are great conversations going on, and because we know where a lot of us are coming from, the ramp up time to a productive conversation is seconds instead of hours.  A lot of us are suffering from info overload, not due to the sessions, but from the discussions between the sessions.  If you are missing out on this, or are really digging it at the PDC, I'd highly recommend hitting the next Sells-a-thon (aka XMLDevCon).

Anyone that has not learned declarative programming definitely need to learn this stuff soon. It is not an easy jump to make from the procedural programming. XSLT is a great language to learn to help move to declarative programming, but so are things like LISP and SMIL. Longhorn uses declarative programming all over the platform. But don’t worry you can still use procedural programming. And the cool thing, either way you code, it renders down to the same bits.

Adobe had a really cool demo in the General Session on how to produce XAML with an After Effects plugin. Why is this cool. Because a graphics artist can develop using their tools, and the coder can code the event handlers. Division of labor, and easy to put the pieces back together. Very Very cool. I’ve been working on stuff like this with SVG for a couple years, but it was a tuff hack at best. This is so much cleaner. I’ve been working with the guys from Adobe on Illustrator and SVG, and have been pushing those teams of this stuff, but never knew there were others within Adobe that were doing the same.

Saturday night was a blast.  Got to hang with ScottW, Jason Nadal, Jason Beres, Jeff Julian and others.  Got to meet a ton of people.  The Wilshire is the place to hang afterhours.  Sunday is being spent hooking up with others at Commnet.  BOF sessions tonight.  I'll fill you in as I can.

For those of you that have been asking, yes the Monday night blogger outing is still on.  There is no official backing or sponsors, so it is up to us for transportation to and from the Viper Room.  What I’m suggesting is that people meet at their hotel lobbies at 10:00PM and grab a cab to the Viper Room.  This way you will know who to share a cab with on the return trip.  If you are staying at a non-PDC hotel, or just want to travel in a bigger group, you can meet up with those of us staying at the Wilshire Grand at 10:00PM.