I'm in vegas!, and together with some colleagues I had the incredible experience of seeing Prince perform last night at the Rio Casino's 3121 club.  Prince has definitely still got "it"--incredible presence, virtuouso guitar, and time perfected master showman skills that make everyone have a great time when he is in da house.  As I was contemplating at the end of the show, gazing at the spinning "symbol" that he famously changed his name to, I was reminded of my excitement at our "WPF/E"'s technology's soon to be new identity.

Yes, the "technology formerly known as" WPF/E can now be known as Microsoft Silverlight. 

Ok, so the heckling can end (which was well deserved for the WPFE loveliness), as Silverlight is a great brand for this technology--it suggests the attributes of better, richer, more compelling, more productive and satisfying web experiences.  We had a lot of fun testing the name (and the runner ups, none of which were called "Microsoft Media Player", by the way...) and hearing from end user consumers, as well as designers and developers.  What struck me over and over and over again, and has for three years now since my arrival at msft, is how engaged and eager the community is to learn of Microsoft's entry into this part of the market... it's going to be a lot easier to have a conversation about Silverlight then it was for "wa-pu-fee" (as we often annunciated the former name).

We are going from a crappy code name to a great product name... but as with the 1980s auteur from Minnesotta, the name is not the real issue.  Silverlight will be measured by how it tranforms the experiences of consumers and businesses in the years ahead, and by the creative and technical capabilities that it puts in the hands of designers and developers.

I'll be blogging a lot more about Silverlight, this week about Silverlight and it's very cool features for cost-effective, high quality deliver of media... and in the weeks ahead leading up to our Mix event April 30th and beyond about the broader development story, tooling, and more