Microsoft Mix 06 Looks At Mashups, Web 2.0

Microsoft’s Mix 06 event in March doesn’t have much on search now other than
letting Amazon pitch its
Alexa Web Search
Platform, but perhaps more will come later. The event really is focused on
Microsoft taking the entire Web 2.0 thing and trying to make it its own.
Seriously, they say that right
here on the
event blog:

Andy: Seems like everyone is desperate to take ownership of web 2.0
– and this conference looks like microsoft’s effort pack it in and be more
open to true collaboration and alternative considerations….!!

Ray: Hi Andy — in fact, that’s exactly our intention. We obviously
have our own take on the Web and where it’s going. I suspect that in some
places we agree with Tim O’Reilly and his particular “Web 2.0” crowd and in
some places we disagree. At MIX, though, we really do want to hear all the
alterative viewpoints and so we thought it was important to make sure that Tim
had a seat at the table.

That comment is a reference to Tim O’Reilly, who will be doing an unscripted
one-on-one talk with Microsoft chairman Bill Gates at the conference.

You’ll find the event home page here,
agenda here, blog
here. For details of sessions, head to
hard to find session details page
here. Here are the
two sessions involving search so far:

Build Your Own Search Engine
Speaker: Jeff Barr (Amazon)

Amazon subsidiary Alexa.com is leveling the search playing field. For the
first time, developers looking to build the next “big thing” in search or an
ultra custom search engine have access to the 300 terabytes of Alexa crawl
data, along with the utilities to search, process, and publish their own
custom subset of the data-all at a reasonable price. Developers no longer need
a million dollar budget or to reinvent the wheel designing search algorithms,
to be able to build their own search engines or create customized Web services
based on data from the Alexa crawl. As a full-service Web analysis and Web
service publication platform, the Alexa Web Search Platform should allow any
user with an Internet connection to access Web content on a large scale and
provide new services or applications to the online community. Jeff Barr
provides an overview of the Alexa API and shows developers and designers how
to get on the new, leveled search playing field.

Making Your Site Look Great in IE7
Speaker: Markus Mielke Focus

In this session, learn how to build and maintain standards-based sites that
work great in IE7. Learn how to take advantage of new capabilties such as
better HTML and CSS standards support, RSS and Search integration, and new
security features.