Vista, Office 2007, InfoCard

This afternoon, I attended, together with SV, a so-called meeting held by Microsoft on topics related to Vista, Office 2007 and InfoCard.

Well, it was actually not a meeting for us. However, we did get something, a small foot-like clock (it is cute ;)) and some ideas about the corporation. Two out of three lecturer (so called) demonstrated on Vista and the other used XP.

First topic was Vista. What is Vista? What could Vista do? What to benifit from Vista. Most are demonstrations, few about technologies. One demo was 3D virtual Olympic arena. Another was clipping of anything, pictures, videos, vectors or bitmaps. They were somewhat interesting, though not equally useful.



Second, Office 2007. A good news is that it released an open file format for word and powerpoint. It is said "xaml" technologies were widely used and it is convenient to develop using "xaml". Xaml is not something totally new. Instead, it is something like html or xml. And learning new programming languages is not good news for programmers.

Third, security. Security is a sensitive topic that Microsoft did not deal well with in the past. They introduced infocard. Obviously, the purpose is to establish a standard (industrial standard?) for themselves. The idea, again, is not anything new. Infocards do what digital signature did.

Finally, it was more likely an advertisement than a "devday".

Some webistes:

msdn webcast

For more, please search "msdn".