Build 2015 Day 2 focused on media content. Yesterday, during Microsoft’s opening keynote for Build, the company focused on their ‘bridging’ strategy for developers. There was talk about new app environments, developer friendly approaches, and much more.
With that out of the way, it looks like presenters on day two focused on how developers can take advantage of media tools to produce high-quality content in the new Microsoft ecosystem. The talking points have been laid out by Day 2 keynote opening presenters:
- Media and Entertainment
- Commercial Apps
- Building for Windows 10
- Cross platform
- Data and the intelligent cloud
- Gaming
Starting with Media and Entertainment, Corporate Vice President of Developer Experience Evangelism, Steve Guggenheimer and John Shewchuk introduced partner Muzik to the stage. Muzik is a music developer who worked on creating low-latency Bluetooth air drumsticks. These new drumsticks essentially enable drummers to air drum with the spatial awareness of a full drum kit, without one ever being in the room. Parents of young drummers, a future where a pair of Bluetooth-enabled headphones and these magic air drumsticks still encourage children to follow their dreams while maintaining a quiet household is quickly becoming a reality. Another music related demo followed the Muzik drumsticks from a company called Propellerhead. Propellerhead shared their cross-platform experience developing collaborative music apps for Windows, iOS, and Android.
Next, there was attention paid to the commercial app developers. Developers on enterprise platforms like Autodesk, Siemens, and Acumatica, took to the stage to demonstrate their upcoming solutions regarding 3D printing, immersive collaborations tools for the Surface Hub, and dynamic reporting using Power BI.
Eventually, the presentation rolled onto the products and services building process for Windows 10. Presenters walked through the building process of Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps. This demo included talk of developers gaining the ability to user their existing code to build new Windows 10, whatever they may be. Thanks to the hard work of Microsoft and Windows engineers, developers can take advantage of the Web, Win32, C++, NET and Objective- Code.
During the day two presentation, a compelling argument was presented for the functionality of web apps serving more native functions. The momentum of Windows 10 and the idea of web apps were further supported on stage today, by top brands like FitBit, Shazam, and Rdio. These hardware dependent apps were used to show the flexibility universal apps as well the potential for web apps in the future.
Xamarin and Unity development were also talking points today, as Microsoft looked to pander to new developers. The idea of starting with Windows first and leveraging tools to deploy in multiple OS environments was the idea behind a new technology called ManifoldUS. The new technology is an open source JavaScript library for creating hosted apps on Android, Windows, and iOS. Long time rival SalesForce was brought to the stage to demonstrate their new found love for the technology. SalesForce now has a solution that brings together the best parts of the Windows and the web. Another new technology announced today was Vorlon.js. Vorlon is a new remote debugging and testing tool for none other than JavaScript. The idea is that developers can remotely load inspect, debug and test JavaScript code on any device while accessing the tool from a web browser.
As part of the continued interest in open source, Microsoft and GitHub also announced the availability of something titled GitHub Enterprise on Azure. The new collaboration allows companies to build enterprise-grade software while accessing a collaborative code platform used by millions of developers. Developers who are interested in working with or connecting to others GitHub projects can do so by using a new GitHub extension for Visual Studio 2015.
About an hour and a half in, the audience was hit with big data talk. The topics of Analysis and real-time reporting belabored on for almost an hour. A crowd favorite app called How Old Do I Look help demonstrate the power of intelligent face analysis API in the Azure Marketplace. This demo also showcased the potential of PowerBI and Azure Stream Analytics. Another cool demonstration involved genome mapping and Azure analysis power to help understand risk profiles for diseases. Project Oxford was yet another new introduction from Microsoft. The project uses the beta versions of REST APIs and SDKs that use machine learning to service solutions that help understand multimedia like audio, text, image and video. Somewhere in, there was a long talk about cow tracking and machine learning that will help reinvent the industry of power management.
After almost two and a half hours, Guggs and Microsoft got around to discussing gaming. A project titled Witch from Square Enix showcased the photorealistic real-time rendering of DirectX 12 on PCs. Beyond Windows 10, Microsoft announced some new open source project that enabled modding of one their largest titles in Minecraft. Aidan Brady, who is a Minecraft modding celeb, was brought out to help show off how simple Microsoft is making modding in Java.
And just like that, the Build 2015 day two keynote came to an abrupt end. You can relive the keynote below (you can manually rewind the video).
