A lot of talk about Silverlight 4.0 and Windows Phone 7 Series.
Silverlight
Silverlight is really maturing into a rich development and design tool. With version 4 you can now develop not only for the web but the new Window’s based phone due out later this year. This was the best move Microsoft could have made to try and catch Apple. Silverlight is becoming a mature development / design environment and the natural choice for interactive app development.
Windows Phone 7 Series
I think Windows Phone 7 Series is the absolute worst name for a phone …. when you compare it with simple easy phone names like iPhone and Droid. While Microsoft is making great strides with the developer tools , it feels like they are say “yeah we can do that too!” instead of taking the phone experience to the next level. Microsoft’s position in the market is really sad due to the fact that they have been in this game for years. They used to compete with Palm and BlackBerry and now they have to more players to compete with Apple and Google. The buzz in the crowd was noticeable … but is that going to translate into sales? Will this become the Zune all over again …. a nice product that arrived a little too late to the party.