What is mono?  Mono is the OpenSouce version of C# and the project by Novell / M$ is growing rapidly.  It is amazing to me to see the growth and speed of the Mono Project!  It is rapidly catching up to the current Silverlight version.  Check out Moonlight 2.0 if you haven’t yet and install it on your Linux box it runs most SilverLight content without any issues!  I am not a big fan of format lock-in and I am glad to see Microsoft finally sharing more with the opensouce community.  I like all technologies, I like to experiment with them and see what they can do!  C# is a language that is very similar to JAVA and ActionScript all are strongly typed OOP languages tied to a specific run-time environment.  I would also like to reiterate my stance on being Technologically Agnostic I am not here to point out what run-time is the best run-time because in different environments and situations call for different solutions.  As a developer I believe it is extremely important to be flexible learn new languages challenge yourself.  My impression of SilverLight is this it is extremely powerful because it allows you to utilize C# in the browser.  I also believe the people at Microsoft are really busting their tail in developing it.  It is an excellent product and I believe it will be around for a considerable time.  As for the Expressions Tooling these are my beliefs I think the interface of Blend could be more intuitive.  I guess my opinion of the Blend and Expressions is it’s ok but it certainly isn’t Photoshop or Flash.  I love flash and Photoshop.  I certainly don’t mind learning new applications and I do all the time.  I really like it though when I reach that level of comfort where I can just absolutely rip through a project and with Adobe products I am there completely.  I always keep my mind open though I also like to use FlashDevelop, VisualStudio, and Netbeans.  I also love the speed of the command prompt and ROR.  Long story short I think Microsoft interface for Blend is clunky. They need to hire some evangelists that have the cool factor working for them Adobe hires Artist their evangelists are quasi rock-stars.  I think Microsoft could benefit from sponsoring some generative artists.  The need to be able to communicate this to the crowd that tends to use their right frontal lobe more but hey what do I know it’s just my opinion. I think for it to be a competitor of flash they will have to get it in the mobile arena.  I think Microsoft will do this I would be willing to bet the next windows mobile will feature SilverLight and I tend to think they will tie an appstore together with the XNA network unifying it with the Zune and X-Box brands. This way Microsoft will finally have a valid appstore competitor.  I definitely see Microsoft transforming itself quickly they let the web slip away and windows is no longer the powerhouse it was.  If Microsoft is to survive the new and dawning age of the mobile revolution it will have to develop their web products and languages to compete and be on any device.  It is going be more and more important for them to be compatible with different operating systems.  People do not want to be tied to one specific device it is extremely important for new applications to be Interpolated into any device the web is the common ground they all share and the web formats are the most important formats period end of story. Well that’s cool so what have you been up too lately?  Work, migrating my sites onto MediaTemple slowly but surely.  MediaTemple’s setup is awesome can’t wait to be finished.  MediaTemple gives you full root privileges they have an iPhone application to help monitor issues.  They also alllow you to scale your services as you grow and install anything that rocks!  I have also been busy shopping and preparing for Christmas.  It is getting close.

Links of Interest: Silverlight Quake MoonLight Bookmark and Share More »Powered by Bookmarkify™

windowFeatures helper

Handy String tool for Truncation

Programatic Animations

Calling Javascript from C#.NET

c# to javascript, php, actionscript, open source