Mike Stopforth

My highlights from the morning’s keynote (Duncan’s live-blogging at TechCrunch also makes interesting reading):
Ray Ozzie’s opening remarks focussed on standards, transparency, ubiquity, interoperability, Microsoft’s intentional movement to the cloud and also towards offering competitive ad platforms for publishers as major principles / drivers of current growth and development. Signs of a new era for [...]

It’s a half hour to go before the opening keynote of MIX08 to be delivered by Ray Ozzie, Scott Guthrie and Dean Hachamovitch (heads up the Internet Explorer team). I’ll be live-tweeting the keynote and will upload a summary of my notes here afterwards.
I’m simply blown away by the sheer size of this event. [...]

Everybody wants to know more about Microsoft Surface, but Sarcastic Gamer took it upon themselves to do a parody of the hyped product. Brilliant…

Microsoft have consequently adopted sarcastic gamer as product evangelists… well done

I’ve finally gotten around to choosing my workshops / session plan for MIX08. Here are my selections…
Wednesday, March 5
1:30 PM - 2:45 PM
PNL07 What Is the face of the next Web? Delfino 4001A
3:00 PM - 4:15 PM
BT03 Advanced Search Engine Optimization: Generating More Site Traffic from Search [...]

After a very hearty breakfast and many cups of coffee, Hans Verbeeck (Developer Evangelist for Microsoft EMEA) welcomes us with some opening remarks.
MIX08 is about bringing influencers together to share announcements and get feedback. Together@MIX08 (today’s pre-conference event) is a value-added ‘package’ for international MIX08 delegates.
w00t - We’ve just been given very sexy Zunes [...]

If one could ever get used to 24+ hour trips in a plane, I’m starting to. Or at least accept them as a necessary evil.
In comparison to Virgin Atlantic, SAA had an inch or two extra legroom (which makes a world of difference to me), but crappier food and nowhere near the [...]

Logo Design Trends 2008
10 design trends worth familiarising yourself with, especially if you’re in the Web design space. No surprises here, other than the ’80’s one
(tags: design logo trends logos inspiration webdesign 2008 branding graphics brand)

A couple of weeks back I wrote a post expressing a desire to see more of South Africa’s (possibly) lesser known blogs and bloggers in the ‘limelight’. It’s high time we saw some new talent coming to the fore in the SA blogosphere - it certainly is out there.
I’ve had a few people write [...]

The highlight of Bloggerati Jo’burg (thanks to Matt and Vincent for hosting it) last night was meeting Andy Higgins, founder of BidorBuy - Africa’s largest online auction site.
For an entrepreneur as successful and well-established as Andy is, he was completely unassuming. In fact I wouldn’t have known who he was at all had [...]

It’s T-9 hours until I board a plane for Las Vegas and MIX08. Some last minute email-answering and news-grabbing led me to Techmeme, where Microsoft and what they might be planning to announce at MIX08 is currently dominating headlines in the blogosphere.

Nick Carr has inside information that leads him to believe that the software [...]