Adventures In Digital Marketing

As I mentioned in my posts about the FOWA conference, a few companies were there discussing the benefits of the new-ish Microsoft Windows Presentation Framework, or WPF (and it’s web-based cousin WPF/E).  Microsoft themselves, and also the NYTimes.

ReadWriteWeb is reporting today that on top of the NYTimes’ adoption of WPF for their standalone newsreader platform, several other papers have joined in releasing their own, strangely similar looking, WPF based newsreaders as well - namely, The Daily Mail (Oh joy! What a read that is! Can I just add this is in no way an endorsement of the daily mail, it does not enter my household, and literally sends linda into a fit of anger if she reads it’s content for more than 6 seconds), Forbes.com and Seattle Post-Intelligencer (wow!)

So, WPF!  Now, i’ve not really got into this much so far, so I am a bit uninformed, but after a chat with people at FOWA, and reading a bit about it, my first impression is…

…it’s a flash alternative with 3D acceleration.

hmmm..  i don’t get it.  I really don’t.  I know the arguments for saying it’s not a flash killer:
- it runs with direct-X so has 3D support when run as an app
- it’s built from the ground up and runs from native XML based code, rather than a precompiled SWF
- fonts render nicely due to native windows font smoothing (admitedly nice for newspapers)

but aside from that, really, i don’t see much benefit outside of flash.

and, if these apps were built in apollo, rather than WPF, for a start they’d run on MacOS (not to mention linux) as well as windows XP/Vista.  And i know most people out there are running windows, but come on!  if you’re going to build a new internet platform, wouldn’t it make sense to do it for everyone?

ok - so i don’t get it.  but what I do think, is that I BET you the NYTimes and these others got this gig on the cheap with help from MS in the development area somwhere down the line.  I see no other reason why they would use this tech as opposed to flash based stuff.

Please, I invite someone who knows more about this than I do to get involved, because right now I really don’t see why you would go down this route.  Even after chatting with microsoft directly I still don’t get it.

Anyone help?

Howard
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