In San Francisco on Thursday 22^nd of September, the F8 Facebook conference will get underway, with the aim to bring together the developers, entrepreneurs and innovators who are building a more social web.

It will be closely watched by more than just the hundreds of millions of people that engage with the social network supremo's though, my bet is that Google will be wondering just what will the response be to the Google+ service (launched in June this year) that appears to also be making waves in the space.

This is not to say that Facebook would be worried about anyone mowing their lawn just yet, but recently they appear to be "borrowing" features from not only Google+ such as smart friends, but also subscriber mechanisms similar to twitter and other additional features that have popped up on various media sites that are quickly adding social sharing hubs.

What might we see?

Hopefully more will be shown around a Spotify service as well as some rumours point to social movie rentals taking hold. It's tough negotiations working with studios in both music and film though with their over protective measures and I am not quite sure how that will make Facebook any stickier in terms of keeping users within the sites space for any longer than is already being achieved.

Instagram is also having an effect [pun] with photo filtering becoming a craze of sorts and the news is that Facebook may just launch its own stand-alone application that provides similar functionality.

Facebook on iPad is still a mystery but it may just make that appearance this week. It's hard to believe that it's still not done anything until now, leaving users high and dry and relying on 3^rd party solutions to help keep the addiction alive while on the move with the tablet. Though the last thought around this is in connection with Project "Spartan" which involved Facebook reportedly attempting to recreate the entire solution in HTML5 - that would fit with not building a specific device application, but one that would run free in the wild for the foreseeable future.

It is what it is.

Speculation is always a mugs game when so many choices are logically possible. Facebook is no different to the other major tech companies in wanting the guessing game to continue as long as possible, in order to build conversation and hype.

In the end, we will see what comes on Thursday and then see how we and our clients can use it.

The Microsoft BUILD Conference kicked off last week (13^th of September) in Anaheim California with some very specific goals to be delivered from Microsoft.

The last few months have seen a lot of speculation, a lot of anger and a lot of hope all wrapped into one cosmos of conflicting geek point of view. Not only were the development communities involved in such speculation, but also commercial folks who felt kind of shaky with what has been an unprecedented era of secrecy from the not so secret big blue ship.

What did and didn't make the cut for the next release of Windows - Windows 8? What would the OS do for consumers and enterprise customers - separately and jointly? How would it run on a slate or tablet type device? Can the tile metaphor work on scale?

So many questions had to be answered, and for the most part I think they were, or at the very least a direction was given that allowed people to understand how some questions should be answered.

And the curtains were raised.

The initial keynote session was meant to set the scene for the rest of the week - the announcement and large scale display of Windows 8 for the first time in the wild, along with the frameworks that have been developed to support it, but in truth, the keynote was probably only marginally successful; it was far from a polished display. It was almost as if they (MSFT) knew that they had to get the answers out fast, and at times the presenters stumbled in their eagerness to push as much information out as possible. Steven Sinofsky was quite smooth in his delivery, but was let down badly by Julie Larson-Green who at times forgot she had a microphone on. Amateur hour to be sure.

Steven Sinofsky showed his metal though and kept the engagement alive, enough for me to believe that he will eventually take the place of Steve Balmer as Microsoft CEO.

Jensen Harris – Mr Windows 8.

It wasn't until Jensen Harris took to the stage after lunch for the first of the "Big Picture" keynotes that the nerves settled and the hustle and bustle, almost erratic pace to get the message out by the morning keynote, was replaced by a considered, well thought out and extremely well-rehearsed display. What was particularly pleasing was to see this first open conversation was more about the design requirements of the new platform and Metro Style extensions rather than some obscure deep dive into a code first world that has no user experience considerations and in Jensen's own words - yields nothing but "crap".

Sure some of Jensen's demos failed, but he recovered with seasoned grace and professionalism, comedic a lot of the time - there was no doubt that he "owns" Windows 8.

The Samsung Windows 8 tablet.

The excitement of the day was truly felt by all the attendees, not least due to the fact that Steven Sinofsky had mentioned earlier in the day that everyone would be getting a Samsung Tablet with a developer preview build of Windows 8 on it - including all the tools to get on with learning how to deliver for it as well. That ensured a lot of people's attention span was going to be longer than a gold fish, well for at the very least on the Tuesday.

One of the conference buzz-words (and there were many) was "re-imagination". I have to say that the level of demonstrations shown (the ones that worked) were a fantastic level of entry to do just that - allow people to re-imagine what they could do with Windows, working with the Metro platform.

In terms of the Tablet, Samsung as you would expect, has delivered a really sweet bit of kit. I've not had it long enough to know if I would pay for it myself, but the early stages look pretty amazing to be honest.

I come from the old school of device usage, where a desktop is what feels the most natural to me and I have struggled for a very long time to get used to working with a Laptop, a mobile device and all the connections in between that. It's not that I don't use these all on a day to day basis, but I am clarifying that I am not at my most comfortable when trying to respond to long emails or indeed try and compose a blog post like this.

I am writing this post on the new Tablet, and what better way to understand if something is going to work for me, then by putting myself in a position where I have no choice in what I am going to use. I am traveling at the moment between LA and San Francisco, and so I have decided to make the Tablet my only device for the next few weeks to really get a feel for Windows 8 and to know if it is going to work for me.

Is Windows 8 working for me?

So far – so good. Well better than that to be honest, this little thing is rocking my world in the geeky sense.

I have the Bluetooth keyboard connected and I am typing away like I am on fire and when I am taking that break, I just grab the tablet and go and sit and use the device in a very natural setting. Maybe this is the time that I will now change how I am working, because the device, the polymorphic usages that have been designed into it and the OS, are really making me feel like technology is starting to work the way that I want it to.

I guess the other penny I am waiting to drop is for the OS to start crashing badly, all the time. It just hasn't happened yet which is probably leading me into a false sense of security. Experience tells me that at just the most inopportune time, this will surely kill off all my work and not let me do anything about it. I can't complain can I - there is that giant caveat in place - developer preview.

So all good things to report so far - most impressive is the start up times and even at this stage, the smooth as butter transitions and ease of use to navigate around the operating system and supplied applications.

WinRT and all the secret sauce parts.

I've been through a number of platform changes and historic Microsoft deviations in my time. That experience tells me that I still have no real view as to what jiggery-pokery has been embedded to make all the magic work.

WinRT as a concept is a very sound one and by its implementation, it ensures that all language adaptions created for use with Windows in future will yield the same performance runtime on the OS. To clarify what that means, you need to understand that there is no .Net layer to WinRT, so theoretically, regardless of how you create the applications (in terms of language) the results will be the same in performance and experience. I've heard that before as well, so let's just wait and see.

The direction change.

This week was more than just about the OS and the tools, it was about the directional change that Microsoft has needed to make in order to start challenging the likes of iOS and Android on devices and tablets.

Microsoft have done very well to create a unique and impressive solution that copies from no other, something they were constantly accused of doing in the past. Metro will be a success which is different than saying that Windows 8 will be a success to be sure, but with over 500,000 downloads in the first 24 hours, some people in Redmond must be rubbing their hands together and patting themselves on the back at the moment.

For me it means a new iteration of the Expression Blend book to show how to use the new tooling features and a few other projects can also now be exposed and tested.

All in all, I am happy with what has come out, and I think given a good look, most others will be also.

On September 13^th in Anaheim California, Microsoft is set to unveil the tooling ecosystem for designers and developers wanting to work with the new "Windows8" touch-centric user experience and I believe there could be a possible naming of Metro as a new development platform - not just a UI/UX design paradigm.

The event certainly has some hype surrounding it and oddly enough, Microsoft appear to have been able to keep some pretty good secrets this year surrounding what will and won't be shown.

So what will be shown?

For the most part, the show will be about HTML5 and JavaScript and how IE10 has access to the power of the PC - not just in hardware acceleration terms. You can expect to also see a lot of touch based experiences from the web, which traditionally hasn't been there. Sure you had some touch experiences on devices that interacted with web sites, but I think you will see an all-out push from Microsoft to get people to design touch experiences specifically from the web and in order to do that, they need to sell everyone the framework to enable it as well as an amazing tooling experience to execute the designs with.

Expression Web - all growed [sic] up!

Expression Web will also be a big part of the event (tying in the IE on Desktop + Tab - maybe phone?.. maybe not), and I would expect to see a consolidated JavaScript story woven into the tool in terms of libraries as well. It would be wrong to call Expression Web the bastard of the Expression family (I think Expression Design has that as a working title?) but the attention hasn't been on the tool for quite some time and now it would appear to be ready to shine, given the current trajectories of the HTML5 family of technologies.

Yes the geek comes out in me here just a little. I used Dreamweaver CS5.5 over the weekend on a HTML5 project I am working on, and to be honest, it was sort of like the first time you attend church naked - slightly uncomfortable and you feel a little dirty? it touches you in all the wrong places.

It will be interesting to see if Microsoft can get it right and deliver a tool that finally gets some broad market penetration, though it will need some pretty tight Visual Studio integration I think in order to achieve that.

Tablet Metro UI

I also think the silent surprise will be the showing off of the Metro UI running on Tablet. It should be a similar experience to that of the desktop as you would expect, but consider a combination between the desktop and the tablet and how visual signposting will play a huge role in the effectiveness of the tile systems that Metro employs across all devices.

I am also not sure if a file system will be exposed on the Tablet. It has made sense in a large part on the phone (not to show it), and the thinking I have been doing points to an effective use of a storage solution without file management really needed. The Metro platform appears to enable the user to select images and files with a completely new navigation experience so this could be interesting and certainly the basis of what would allow broad application sharing - think pushing an image from anywhere straight into a social network feed etc.

Almost everyone who has touched some development on a tablet to date (excluding iPad) will agree that the performance has been utterly shyte. At the end of the day, I hold my breath for this part of the story - after all, it doesn't matter how pretty the UI, how nice a swipe feels, if the solution runs like Molly the three legged pony, on the device, it simply will be rejected outright (even though Molly wasn't - see below).

Considering the Tablet will most likely become the corner stone of the device focus for Microsoft in the consumer space (x-box withstanding) they really need the manufactures to pull out all the good bits for this launch.

What if it tanks?

Well? wouldn't be the first time Microsoft have taken what would in hindsight be viewed as a "monumental failure in direction" and in all honesty I don't think this will be. I think this will be a big sweeping change and maturity to some very long ago considered concepts that in reality were never executed correctly.

The Agenda is written here:

Clearly not put together by a Polymath? but keeps in line with the "no details" policy.

I hope to see some of you folks there!