The Microsoft event for freeloading students called “Mix On Campus” happened yesterday in Melbourne and I went along because I very well fit the description. It has also been a few weeks after finishing my university exams so it’s a good chance to reunite with a couple of friends, fresh air and sunlight. The event was organized by the Microsoft Australia Academic‘s Nick Ellery who put in a lot of generous time and effort to give students a free ticket to live some (and I’m sure it’s barely a scrape) of the real MIX experience in Vegas or ReMIX in Melbourne a few months ago.

For students, it was an invaluable opportunity to take a first-hand look at some of the new Microsoft web and design applications and services as well as network with industry professionals.

As expected, everyone showed up 5 minutes before the event (including myself). It might look empty now, but it easily reached a hundred people once the big hand struck 10.

Handy Microsoft Student Partners were on-site to help.

Unfortunately the person who hooked up the XBOX was what people in the industry call a “noob”.
See if you can spot the mistake.

Nick Hodge had a better idea for the high-definition cable.

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As you all know, this blog is only a cover-up for a very large Chinese piracy operation which is why it is the latest target of the Microsoft A-Team. Because this website has such wide reach and implications, it is an obvious target compared to the more amateurish activities such as factory-based software counterfeiting operations in South East Asia.

Today, I received a cease and desist letter from Seed IP Law Group PLLC acting on behalf of the Microsoft Corporation in regards to one of Microsoft®’s most cherished intellectual properties, Zegoe®. Filled “LOLs”, “OMGs” and smiley faces (they copy & pasted all the user comments), the document demanded the “immediate cease and desist of advertising, promoting, and assisting the unauthorized distribution of Microsoft®’s ZEGOE® font software”. If I fail to comply I risk becoming “accountable for additional damages to Microsoft®”. Since I don’t really want to risk national security if Zegoe® falls into the hands of terrorist – who knows what destructive yet beautifully readable weapons of mass destruction® they could create, I had no choice than to comply, thus I have removed all the links.

However as a precaution for future legal implications, I ask everyone including myself to obfuscate any references to legally sensitive material in LOLCat speak. For example if you need to express the need for a particular ZIP file, instead of “please send file to [email protected]”, you would say “DO WANT. Plez send bucket to [email protected] kthxbai”. Besides making court hearings (if it should arise) entirely hilarious – “I plead I R not cheezburglar”, it also acts as a deterrent for any cat-hating lawyers.

Finally, I have consulted with my lawyer, albeit imaginary but well practiced, and we intend to sue Microsoft back for murder to the second degree of my hyperlinks. We suspect the murder may be racially motivated.

Microsoft, Windows, Zune, Zegoe, A-Team and the Zune logo are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or pretty much anywhere where people exists really. Weapons of mass destruction is a trademark of the United States Government in the United States, duh.

Even if you don’t own a Dell computer, there’s a lot to thank them for how they have changed the concept of buying and selling factory-built computers. Besides being extremely competitive, they’ve also made computers customizable inside-out for all segments of the market both in the home and business. Which is why when Dell (finally) announced their Tablet PC offering, every tablet enthusiast scribbled with joy, including moi. Many believe and hope Dell could set the Tablet PC industry right, even if price is all they’ve got.

But according to internal documentation (above), Dell’s first Tablet PC, Latitude XT, was intended to ship in most regions outside America last Friday. Unfortunately it seems to have suffered a delay since it has not appeared on any Dell’s regional websites. The delay might be related to the recent LCD shortage.

On the bright side, I do have some official technical specification information for the Latitude XT, more or less confirming the leaked specifications from a month ago.

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Apple PR bullying journalists and bloggers is nothing new, but as far as I know this is the first time it’s happened when the cameras are still rolling and someone is smart enough to share it with everyone to see. Valleywag has posted a video of a British journalist interviewing Apple Vice President Philip Schiller when PR abruptly ends the interview because the interviewer mentioned the word “monopoly”. The video really speaks for itself.

First and foremost, iTunes is entirely relevant to the iPhone because it’s the only way to activate the device when you first buy it. And after that, it’s still the only software to manage the content on the device. Suggesting they are not is just shows how little they care about the actual interview and how little faith they have in Apple’s vice president to answer the question himself.

I know it’s lame to always contrast Apple and Microsoft, but Microsoft too has a brigade of public relations people in many different firms who’s jobs are not all that different – to better the public image of the company and its products, but they are nothing like this. In fact, some of the people at Waggener Edstrom (who manage Windows plus much more) are some of the nicest people I’ve ever worked with, especially as I have atypical questions and requests. Of course, there are still times where they have to say no, and that’s okay because we can work out alternatives to compromise.

In a way, I have a lot of respect for Apple bloggers like Apple Insider who does exceptional work under the circumstances.

Whilst the previous Zune software was something like a Windows Media Player experiment turned Frankenstein, the new Zune software is something worthy of exploring.

Whether or not you agree with Tim Gideon from PC Magazine, “Microsoft’s answer to iTunes….is quite attractive and makes iTunes seem like a big, boring spreadsheet”, you must admit it is probably the only worthy contender to-date.

Whilst there’s a lot to like beyond just the looks – although I still reckon there needs to be more borders/separators – there’s an interesting bit of magic behind how the Zune software is designed and displayed.

The whole application, top-to-bottom and inside-out, is powered by a Microsoft framework no one has ever heard of before. It has several names, simply “UIX” or the “Microsoft Iris UI Framework”.

How do I know this? The most obvious clues are the framework library files in your Zune directory. They are UIX.dll, UIXrender.dll and UIXsup.dll – Microsoft Iris UI Framework, Rendering engine and UIX Debugging Support respectively. On the same note, the product name of all of these files is “Microsoft Zune-MediaCenter Platform” which helps a little later.

Looking a little deeper, all of the presentation markup files are actually embedded in a resource file called ZuneShellResources.dll (also the same file the images are in). In here we find each component of the UI defined in a separate .UIX file. There are literally hundreds of these. For example there is a “AboutDialog.UIX”, “Button.UIX”, “GalleryView.UIX” and “Tooltip.UIX”.

The UIX markup language is distinctively XML-based. Here is a snippet from “AboutDialog.UIX”.

After a little more researching together with the reference to Media Center before, it appears UIX is an extension to Media Center Markup Language (MCML), the presentation markup language used in Windows Media Center to third-party developers. In particular they share a lot of the same namespaces, for example “UI” and “DockLayout”. However they are not identical besides UIX being a 2007 schema whilst MCML is 2006.

The biggest difference in UIX is the inclusion of scripting logic. For example here is a snippet from “Scrollbar.UIX”.

Here they are defining some of the very simple logic behind a scrollbar. This also gives the impression UIX is a very low-level framework as simple controls like buttons, checkboxes and scrollbars are all user-defined and not built-in to the framework itself. The advantage being they can really fine-tune exactly how controls function as they intend it to. Explains why the buttons in the Zune software looks so good. Together, they can pretty much mimic most if not all of the common user interface available in Windows with UIX.

Rendering wise, I don’t have a lot of understanding on how UIX renders its outputs, but in the rendering engine DLL it makes references to DirectX9 functions which makes me want to believe this is 3D-accelerated renderer, which might explain why the animations and transitions run so smooth.

Whilst all of this is all well and interesting, the thing that really captures my attention is why they would invest so much time into developing this framework and implementing it just for his software when they have plenty of alternatives like Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) to work with. I can’t stop wondering if this is going to become a new framework offering by Microsoft for all developers to use. Or maybe the foundations for the next version of Windows Media Center! In any case, now if anyone ever asks “gee, I wonder what the Zune software is designed with”, they’re not left out in the cold.

If the Zune ever makes it on to a TV commercial, this definitely has to be the ad. This promotional video for the 2nd-generation Zune is one of the preloaded videos that comes with the new 4/8GB or 80GB Zunes, which explains why it is in portrait aspect ratio. Simply said, it is a very cool stylized animation that not only looks cool but also shows off all of the Zune’s features in an artistic manner.