Or at least this poster at the Los Angeles Convention Center led me to believe… 😛

Remember to get my full PDC coverage, please have a look at my Flickr and Twitter feed as well.

If you don’t live in this dry, smoggy and somewhat quiet city called Los Angeles, it doesn’t mean you don’t get to watch Ray Ozzie and Steven Sinofsky keynote. I’ve just noticed via Liveside the official URLs for the Microsoft webcast streams are now live. Tune in now for Microsoft’s classical hour.

If you’re good with maths, you’d notice there’s only streams for two keynotes when there are four scheduled at the event. For some strange reason, the other keynotes will only be available after 24 hours. Perhaps it has something to do with Ozzie since keynotes with him in it can be streamed live. He must hold the secret to live streaming.

In addition, even if you’re watching the live stream, feel free to tune into the “all-stars” liveblogging session for some fun, interesting and hopefully relevant commentary,

MIX Online wasn’t the only website getting a refresh this week as Microsoft.com’s own frontpage is experimenting with a little redecoration. “tfraser” from the Channel9 forums noticed he was randomly redirected to a new page at Microsoft.com where they’re testing a newer itteration of the homepage.

Currently there’s not that much different except the instant fly-out navigation tabs which makes diving down to sub-sites much easier compared to the current “live view” solution. Search and the recognizable green Live Search search button also receives more attention on the header. Other than that it’s still fairly uninteresting.

Hello all from the Los Angeles Convention Center. Just a reminder six other Microsoft bloggers – Ed Bott, Mary Jo Foley, Kip Kniskern, Rafael Rivera, Paul Thurrott, Tom Warren and I will be liveblogging all four keynotes. Join us for that on this site at Monday 27 October at 8:30am. If you’re more of an audiovisual person then check out microsoftpdc.com for livestream webcasts.

If you intend to develop applications for Windows 7, then take a good look at this. Otherwise if you’re in the niche of developing for Windows Me, you can safely ignore. Microsoft’s just published the “Technical Requirements for the Windows 7 Software Logo Program for Client Operating Systems” document for the Windows Logo Program for Windows 7.

The short but concise document of only 10 pages describing 5 steps, 3 policies and 10 requirements gives developers a clear guide on how their application can qualify certification for the pre-release version of Windows 7.

First of all, the applicator must

• Include business and technical owners for all submissions
• Opt in to receive communications from Microsoft about their products
• Include a copy and license of the software for compatibility testing purposes
• Along with Microsoft agree to a 30-90 day resolution policy for all issues identified in market with logo’d products
• Ensure the application adheres to all policies and passes all requirements in this document

The policies which the application should adhere to includes,

1. Comply with Anti-spyware Coalition Guidelines
2. Do not modify Windows Resource Protection (WRP) protected resources
3. Ensure ongoing quality – in short, fix crash reports over time

Finally the application must,

1. Install and uninstall cleanly
2. Install to the correct folders by default
3. Support x64 versions of Windows
4. Follow User Account Control (UAC) Guidelines
5. Do not load Services and Drivers in Safe Mode
6. Digitally Sign Files
7. Do not prevent an installation or application from launching because of OS version checking
8. Prevent unnecessary reboots
9. Support multiuser sessions
10. Minimize application failures

The document of course is still in preliminary stages and may be changed over time. Microsoft however does have a survey up which allows people to give feedback on. Remember, if don’t certify, the terrorists win.

The developer evangelist group at Microsoft – who’s behind the popular sites Channel9, On10 and events like PDC – is raising the bar for Microsoft websites from both design and technical perspectives. The new “MIX Online” site has been revamped from the grounds up to be a content portal for web designers and developers.

One of the projects they’re launching alongside the site is “Oomph“, a very cool Javascript toolkit for displaying microformats to the end-user. Check out a demo here (click the top left icon).

On the surface it’s a great looking site – very clean and fun – but what’s more interesting is what you can’t see. Under the hood the site was built using the new ASP.NET MVC framework. Up until now I’ve not paid much attention to ASP.NET but this new framework has caught my attention to build great functional sites at the same time not sacrificing the quality of markup. In fact what’s pretty amazing is that the “MIX Online” site is validated 100% XHTML 1.0 Strict compliant. That’s something worth noting for a Microsoft site.

Finally you can also check out the revamped sister site for the MIX09 event. A little more conservative but still pretty hip.

Update: For those who want to learn about ASP.NET MVC, there’s good news. The developers aims to make the “MIX Online” site source code freely available on CodePlex in the future. Keep watching the site for more info.