This is what the sun looks like right now.
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/eit_171/1024/latest.html
Friday, May 15, 2009
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
.NET Chart, Data Visualization, Digital Dashboards, .NET Gauge, KPI's, SQL Reporting Services
Dundas has released a new version of their Charts component (v7) for .NET and Silverlight.
Some of the nifty features:
1. Chart your golf game with an image of the hole you are golfing on.
2. Tree map/Heatmap
3. Scorecarding
The OLAP Extensions are still in v6.2. Wonder what the plan is for these?
.NET Chart, Data Visualization, Digital Dashboards, .NET Gauge, KPI's, SQL Reporting Services
Friday, November 28, 2008
Performance Map (Treemap) of the NHL
One of my favourite data visualization tools is the heatmap, or treemap.
There’s a new one out there for Silverlight.
More info here.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
First Look: SecondLight | Larry Larsen | Channel 10
Secondlight, turning anything into an interface.
So what does this mean? It means a doctor can use a sheet of paper to dynamically 'cut through' a 3D MRI, or you could even scoop up windows on a surface computer and then interact with them on this lightweight display without altering the original Surface image.
Friday, October 24, 2008
85turns presents Siverlight mad Simple
Accessing external data feeds with Silverlight 2.0
Along with this difference is the ability to access data. ASP.NET applications can use the HttpWebRequest or call a web service not located on the same server. Since Silverlight runs on the client, it is a potential security risk to access data from a server where the XAP did not originate. SO, the introduction (it’s a standard practice for Flash) of the client access policy. Briefly, create a file named clientaccesspolicy.xml with the xml content below, and your service/data is ready to be consumed by Silverlight.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Josh Smith : Introducing a new XamDataGrid Behavior: DisplayAdorningEditors
Master-Details datagrid with a twist.
Introduction
In my previous post on this blog, I showed how to display an extra field of data in the adorner layer, instead of putting it into a XamDataGrid cell. Since writing that post, I have spent the entire weekend blissfully working on and expanding that core concept. I managed to extract all of the plumbing code that hosts an editor in the adorner layer into a reusable class. I also vastly enhanced and thoroughly tested this functionality. In this blog post, I am proud to present the fruit of my labor: a new behavior for XamDataGrid called ‘DisplayAdorningEditors’.
Josh Smith : Introducing a new XamDataGrid Behavior: DisplayAdorningEditors
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Mark Mann's Blog : Silverlight 2 RTW Released!
Silverlight 2 RTW (release to web) has been made public! Well done to Microsoft!
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Balsamiq Mockups Home | Balsamiq
Doing mockups or wireframes? Great napkin-style idea tool in Balsamiq.
Balsamiq Mockups
Improve your Usability
Explore Different Designs in Minutes
Get to Agreement Early
with a tool everyone can use
Cut down spec-writing time
Spend your time coding, not churning
Use it with your clients
Let them help you bring their vision to life
Integrated in the way you work
Web, Desktop or Web Office
XAML Power Toys « Karl On WPF - .Net
I am a firm believer that code generation tools will one day make most software development projects obsolete, or at least force developers to start developing code generation tools. :)
Here’s a Silverlight/WPF code generation tool.
XAML Power Toys is a Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Multi-AppDomain Add-In that empowers WPF & Silverlight developers while working in the XAML editor. Its Line of Business form generation tools, Grid tools, DataGrid and ListView generation really shorten the XAML page layout time.
It’s accessed through commands in the XAML editor context menu and the Solution Explorer item context menu.
XAML Power Toys generates .NET 3.5 SP1 WPF compliant XAML and Silverlight RC0 compliant XAML.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Mike Taulty's Blog : Silverlight and WPF - Sharing Library Projects
Silverlight and WPF - Sharing Library Projects
One thing that I got asked a couple of times down at REMIX UK was the question of;
How come I can't reference a regular .NET library from a Silverlight project?
Mike Taulty's Blog : Silverlight and WPF - Sharing Library Projects
Monday, September 22, 2008
Monday, September 15, 2008
Jason Morales' Microsoft BI Update : The Business Intelligence Update - September 2008
The Business Intelligence Update - September 2008
HOT TOPICS
Register NOW for the 2nd Annual Microsoft BI Conference - click here!
25% Discount Promotion - Microsoft Office SharePoint ECAL / PerformancePoint Server CAL
*** extended through September 30, 2008
Assessment Tool for Business Intelligence
- compare your infrastructure against industry best practices and the latest IT research
Online Demo: Geospatial Business Intelligence
- by integrating Virtual Earth and PerformancePoint
- Blog: More on Virtual Earth & PPS
Business intelligence basics: case studies and job advice
Five keys to hiring (good) business intelligence professionals
Leveraging business and marketing skills for a business intelligence (BI) career
UPCOMING EVENTS
How does it all stack up?
6 part Seminar Series, sponsored by Inetium & Microsoft
Sept 18
Omaha, NE
Click here to register
Dashboard in a Day - sponsored by Quilogy
Sept 16 - Omaha, NE
Sept 18 - Chicago, IL
Click here to learn more and register
The Next Generation of Business Intelligence
Executive Roundtable Breakfast Series, sponsored by Neudesic & Microsoft
Sept 18 - Denver, CO
Sept 30 - Las Vegas, NV
Microsoft BI Conference
Oct 6-8 - Seattle, WA
Managing Performance with PerformancePoint
Planning, Financial Reporting, Monitoring and Analytics for Dynamics GP 10
Oct 8 - Mountain View, CA
Click here to register
PASS Community Summit 2008
Nov 18-21 - Seattle, WA
Click here to learn more
UPCOMING WEBCASTS
* all times listed below are for Pacific time zone
Microsoft Business Intelligence for Retail - sponsored by Solver
Sept 11, 11am
Click here to register
Using Your SharePoint Portal to Communicate Business Intelligence presented by Quilogy
Sept 11, 1 pm
Click here to register
Achieving Business Intelligence Across the Enterprise presented by Thorogood
Sept 18, 9am - Realize Fast & Effective Planning, Budgeting & Forecasting
Click here to register
NEWS LINKS & PRESS RELEASES
SQL Server 2008: First Impressions
BIScorecard Rates Eight Leading Products
An Effective Business Intelligence Strategy is the Key to Business Success
Next-generation BI at Hand, Forrester Reports
Gartner lists Microsoft India as leading vendor of BI
The Business Intelligence Model of Conflicting Interests
Is Excel a Complete BI Solution?
Pervasive business intelligence: Are organizations really ready?
Seven Steps to Successful BI Competency Centers
Business Intelligence: Distilling Raw Data into Useful Information
The Business Intelligence Education Problem
Full Circle: Decision Intelligence (DSS 2.0)
Contact Me if you'd like to receive monthly emails of Jason Morales' Microsoft BI Update
Jason Morales' Microsoft BI Update : The Business Intelligence Update - September 2008
Syntax Over Sanity : Syncing audio with storyboard animations in Silverlight 2 Beta 2
Syncing audio with storyboard animations in Silverlight 2 Beta 2
You've seen complex animations created with Flash... e-cards, cartoons, et al. Bear in mind we're not talking about video but animations, where vector-based objects are manipulated using timelines and keyframes. I haven't worked in Flash since the MX days but I remember having the ability to associate sounds with specific keyframes.
I asked a Silverlight Discussion group how this could be achieved in Silverlight 2 Beta 2. It seems there's no built-in mechanism to support it at this time, but all hope is not lost. Eric Stollnitz posited the idea, "What if you set up a DependencyProperty and animated that in your storyboard?" Hmmm... it sounded just crazy enough to work.
Syntax Over Sanity : Syncing audio with storyboard animations in Silverlight 2 Beta 2
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Mike Swanson's Blog : Update on My Illustrator Plug-In and Flash to XAML Conversion Tool
Update on My Illustrator Plug-In and Flash to XAML Conversion Tool
Just over three years ago, in July, 2005, I released the first version of my Adobe Illustrator to Avalon/XAML Export Plug-In. The plug-in started off as a weekend project, and it’s since become quite popular. The plug-in is included in most WPF and Silverlight books, and it’s fun to see it referenced when I’m thumbing through new releases at Borders or Barnes & Noble. I hadn’t been watching the download stats, so I checked tonight and was surprised to see that it’s been downloaded over 75,000 times (actually a bit more, but the stats aren’t complete). Even if I only counted the most recent release, that would make it a top download on CodePlex. That’s pretty cool.
Mike Swanson's Blog : Update on My Illustrator Plug-In and Flash to XAML Conversion Tool
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Tech Daily Dose
The Dems are in the MS camp with Silverlight for their video feeds.
Plus, in a first for a political convention, Silverlight, Microsoft's platform for interactive Web applications and HD video, in conjunction with the Level 3 Communications network, will bring live, gavel-to-gavel convention video coverage of the highest quality to a worldwide audience via the DNCC's Web site at DemConvention.com.
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Brahma - Calculations within the GPU
I have the test library setup now for Brahama, the GPU wrapper for Microsoft Accelerator. It looks fast. Really fast. And the ability to mix GPU & CPU execution is a killer feature. Match this up with an Nvidia Tesla and you have one kickass computer.
But does it play Flight Simulator?
Sorted 4096 Vector4s on the GPU in 0.1739 seconds, average time for each iteration was 0.0000
Validating sort results: Error
Array was set up in 0.0004 seconds
Sorted 4096 Vector4s on the CPU in 1.1536 seconds, average time for each iteration was 0.0003
I hope the focus stays on Brahma, the GPU-executing class wrapper. Do I want to get rid of WPF and keep XAML? No, I just want to see some more examples of Brahma with real-world Cuda-like samples.
How about some Silverlight integration too?
XAML without WPF = XOML
For a long time, I’ve been writing about how messed up Xaml is because of WPF-interdependency, and how Microsoft should have decoupled the Xaml bits from WPF, etc (Some of these rants were on my old blog). Well, I finally decided to do something about it, and I’m writing a XAML-like library that loads, and writes markup using its own XomlLoader and XomlWriter. At this point I’m calling the markup eXtensible Object Markup Language (I know that the Workflow Foundations’ designer files have that extension…) because that’s what its meant to be. It is also aimed to run on the .NET Framework, Mono and the .NET CF.
Using Xoml, you will be able to data-bind, forward reference, resource reference, write markup-extensions and more. I will be putting this project up for download shortly, look out for more news on it.
C$ Programming Language - Home
C$ (CBucks). Another CPU to GPU calculation engine.
This about sums it up.
C$ language, while concentrating on solving computationally intensive problems, also aims at solving system problems and easing integration of high-performance code into user-friendly applications, which becomes crucial as parallelism becomes widely available even on commodity PCs. In order to solve system problems, one needs object-oriented programming support in the language. For high-performance programming, however, one needs some means of parallelization. As the language is supposed to be highly portable, no assumptions can be made about the underlying architecture (GPU, SMP etc.). Therefore, some kind of array programming seems a good choice here.
C$ Project Home Page
The aim of this project is creating a unified language and system for seamless parallel programming on modern GPU's and CPU's. In future, it is planned to be extended to other processors.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Infragistics - Investing in Microsoft Silverlight Controls
FaceOut - Rich Internet Sales Dashboard
Infragistics' faceOut is an interactive demonstration of our NetAdvantage for Silverlight preview controls. Using our chart, gauge, and enhanced scroll panel, we've created a salesperson dashboard to illustrate how you can build a richer experience on the Web for a real, line-of-business scenario. We've taken this concept a step farther by creating an enterprise mashup using representative enterprise sales data along with Windows Live Maps and the Live Contacts schema to show how you can integrate your corporate data with services provided on the internet to bring you a business-driven mashup experience.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Lightstreamer :: Live Web Content Delivery
This would be useful for queuing systems and quote-tracking systems, among other things. Not sure if it supports Silverlight, but definitely .NET.
Based on the AJAX-Comet paradigm, it streams real-time data to any Web browser, without installing anything on the client. Both HTML and Flex applications can receive live data from Lightstreamer, as well as traditional thick clients. See below for a quick example.
SilverPart (Beta 1.0) - Home - Silverlight Web Part
Project Description
This project includes a Silverlight wrapper Web Part that can be used in SharePoint 2007 (MOSS) or WSS 3.0 to expose Silverlight content.
The goal of this project is to create a generic web part that has custom properties that provide flexibility for embedding different Silverlight applications in SharePoint sites.
The SilverPart Web Part was created with the intention of allowing the integration of Silverlight and SharePoint technologies in order to create full RIA applications.
Unit Testing with Silverlight 2 - Jeff Wilcox
Test support for Silverlight
At MIX we released source code to the controls, unit tests, and we including a unit test framework that runs in the web browser using Silverlight on the Mac and PC. The Microsoft.Silverlight.Testing framework is simple, easy-to-use, and will give developers yet another way to increase their productivity and application quality.
In today’s post we’ll take our working chat interface from Scott’s last tutorial, improve its testability, and add some simple tests. At the end we’ll have a set of cross-platform, cross-browser tests that can run everywhere
NetFXHarmonics DevServer Released
One example of WPF databinding.
When announce any major project I always provide an "as a training tool" section to explain how the project can be used for personal training. NetFXHarmonics DevServer is built using .NET 3.5 and relies heavily on LINQ and WCF with a WPF interface. In terms of LINQ, you can find many examples of how to use both query expression syntax and extension method syntax. When people first learn LINQ, they think that LINQ is an O/R mapper. Well, it's not (and probably shouldn't be usef for that in enterprise applications! there is only one enterprise class O/R mapper: LLBLGen Pro). LINQ allows Language INtegrated Query in both C# and VB. So, in DevServer, you will see heavy reliable on LINQ to search List<> objects and transform LINQ database entities to WCF DTOs.
Silverlight 2 DIGG Sample Part I
Silverlight mashup with Digg.
Scott Guthrie has a great eight part series titled First Look at Silverlight 2 where he walks you through building a Silverlight 2 sample app from scratch. The walkthrough highlights almost all of the key features of Silverlight 2 Beta 1. The walkthrough is so comprehensive that I have been using a slightly modified version of it for my Silverlight 2 presentations. Since I am a big fan of seeing vs. reading, I asked Scott if it would be ok if I turned his written walkthrough into a video walkthrough delivered as a Channel 9 screencast.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Opening Adobe Illustrator (AI) files when you don't have Adobe Illustrator - Jon Galloway
Online Conversion from PDF or AI to SVG With FreeSVG
Before Inkscape added PDF and AI import, I used to use the FreeSVG service at freesvg.texterity.com. It's really simple - upload a PDF, get e-mailed an SVG file
Opening Adobe Illustrator (AI) files when you don't have Adobe Illustrator - Jon Galloway
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Mick's Breeze Blogs - Biztalk/Sharepoint/... - Cool BizTalk Poster - in Silverlight!!!!
Check this out - http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/capabilities/reader/ interactive and all. Scroll/Zoom + click on a section where the help and various MSDN articles come up - fantastic....shame my blog isn't silverlight capable....yet :)
Mick's Breeze Blogs - Biztalk/Sharepoint/... - Cool BizTalk Poster - in Silverlight!!!!
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Calling a JavaScript function from Silverlight 2 - Laurent Duveau
Calling a JavaScript function from Silverlight 2
Wow, this is far better now with SL2! no more tips and tricks.
JavaScript:
<script type="text/javascript">
function DisplayMessage()
{
alert("call me from Silverlight 2");
}
</script>Silverlight:
using System.Web.Browser;
HtmlPage.Window.CreateInstance("DisplayMessage");
Calling a JavaScript function from Silverlight 2 - Laurent Duveau
Scott Morrison : Using The Silverlight DataGrid
I was about a year too early the first time. Here's crack #2 at getting a working datagrid in Silverlight. Still disconnected though... it uses a web service and no direct SQL client.
At MIX 2008 we shipped the first preview of the Silverlight DataGrid and a preview of it in WPF was also shown. Now that it is out there people want to know how to use it. If you are one of those people, then you have come to the right place. Here's a quick guide on how to get up and running with a Silverlight DataGrid.
Scott Morrison : Using The Silverlight DataGrid
And more from the comments about getting connections to SQL and Silverlight.
Last month, we built an internal demo which pulled Key Performance Indicators into a Messenger-style Vista gadget from Analysis Services, using web services and ADOMD. Silverlight 1.1 displayed the "bling" with bouncing graphs and spinning video cubes.
A datagrid will be even more helpful for data geeks like me, though it is probably a better idea to leave Silverlight to its unstructured, creative self.
Mix University | MIX Online
A little bit of everything here.
MIX University
Visualize.Contextualize.Experience
The next-generation Web experience is here. On this site, we’ll help you to visualize the possibilities that new technologies bring to your business, understand how incorporating these technologies will improve your customers’ experience, and to immerse yourself in the enabling technologies. Want to see how the use of ASP.NET AJAX can take a site from a functional one to a destination? Interested in walking through the construction of a Gadget? It’s all available for you on this page. Take what you need, or dive in to it all. Oh, and be sure to visit again – more is always on the way.
ux.artu.tv
158MB of goodness.
XAML-Ready Design Agency with Expression Blend - MIX08 Session
March 8th, 2008Hello!
We had such a blast at MIX08! I hope you had a great time too. I had a session on Friday called XAML-Ready Design Agency with Expression Blend. I feel very happy for meeting all the folks that were able to join us during the session. I have published all the assets for my session including the DeepZoom “slide deck” we used during the session (I decided I wouldn’t use PowerPoint anymore, just DeepZoom
). I’m also including my source Expression Design file to my slides. Feel free to re-use, just add a note mentioning the source
- Arturo Toledo | ux.artu.tv
I was reviewing the www.visitmix.com site yesterday night and I discovered all the videos for entire event are already published there! All these videos represent an amazing source of training and information. I personally learned Silverlight 1 by watching the MIX07 sessions. Now with the MIX08 you literally have days of recorded video with amazing content, technical, creative and even on Design theory with the UX track.
Inkscape
More goodies for XAML artists.
"
A Linux, Windows & OSX vector graphics editor (SVG format) featuring transparency, gradients, node editing, pattern fills, PNG export, and more. Aiming for capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, Visio, etc.
Greg's Cool [Insert Clever Name] of the Day - Deep Zoom & Silverlight 2
Microsoft Downloads - Deep Zoom Composer
"...
We are pleased to present a technology preview of Deep Zoom Composer, a tool to allow the preparation of images for use with the Deep Zoom feature currently being previewed in Silverlight 2 Beta 1. The new Deep Zoom technology in Silverlight allows users to see images on the Web like they never have before. The smooth in-place zooming and panning that Deep Zoom allows is a true advancement and raises the bar on what image viewing should be. High resolution images need to be prepared for use with Deep Zoom and this tool allows the user to create Deep Zoom composition files that control the zooming experience and then export all the necessary files for deployment with Silverlight 2.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Silverlight BluePrint - Patrick Tisseghem's Blog [MVP SharePoint]
Plus a howto on the article below for configuring Sharepoint & Silverlight.
How to configure your SharePoint extended IIS Web App for working with Silverlight 2 applications
There were a number of questions on the blog or per email regarding the configuration of the web.config in a SharePoint IIS Web app in order for the Silverlight BluePrint samples to work. Not that much though and that is of course a good sign. As I understand from it, many people are up-and-running with the samples.
Silverlight BluePrint - Patrick Tisseghem's Blog [MVP SharePoint]
Silverlight for SharePoint Blueprint
What's the deal with Silverlight and Sharepoint integration?
Find out here...
Friday, February 29, 2008
What makes me laugh.
That the video hosted on Microsoft Research's World Wide Telescope site is hosted with a Flash media player.
Can't somebody on the Silverlight team help them out a bit?
The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a rich visualization environment that functions as a virtual telescope, bringing together imagery from the best ground and space telescopes in the world for a seamless, guided exploration of the universe.
Sounds impressive though... can't wait to see it.
The best part about it. The dedication.
Q. What will WorldWide Telescope cost?
A. Microsoft Research is dedicating WorldWide Telescope to the memory of Jim Gray and is releasing WWT as a free resource to the astronomy and education communities with the hope that it will inspire and empower people to explore and understand the universe as never before.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Even a chimp can write code : Ashish Shetty's weblog
Pageturn v2.0?
The British Library's Turning The Pages project is currently featuring 5 treasures from across the United Kingdom. In addition to the Windows Vista version (specifically a WPF browser app a.k.a. XBAP) of the app, there's now a new Silverlight version for broader browser and platform reach.
Sharepoint & Silverlight Web Part
A SharePoint Silverlight Web Part which displays SharePoint Documents and Pictures in a rich Silverlight flow control.
See SharePoint Silverlight Browser in action Silverlight Browser Video or read more on Ian's BlogFeatures
Silverlight Flow Control- Rich Silverlight user interface
- Change background colour etc.
- Silverlight 1.1 Alpha(September Refresh)
Custom SharePoint Query Filter- Customise which Documents and Images are displayed
- Filter by Current Site
- Filter by Sub-Sites
- Filter by Site Collection
- Filter by Content Type
- Filter by File Extension
- Filter by individual SharePoint listsSystem Requirements
Server: Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS 3.0)
Client: Microsoft Silverlight 1.1 Alpha September Refresh.
Download WebPart
SharePoint Silverlight Browser supports both Microsoft SharePoint Services 3.0 (WSS 3.0) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007).
Triplewood.Silverlight.Browser.Beta1.zip
Triplewood - Sharepoint Portal Server Software and Consulting
Crash Course in Next-Gen RIA: AIR, Silverlight, and JavaFX
Good intro to 3 technologies vying for attention.
Crash Course in Next-Gen RIA: AIR, Silverlight, and JavaFX
Get a hands-on introduction to the newest RIA technologies from Adobe, Microsoft, and Sun by building demo applications using AIR (Flex), Silverlight (CLR), and JavaFX.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
VectorMagic | Precision Bitmap to Vector Conversion Online
If you want to convert your images into vector graphics for use in Silverlight, here is step 1.
Uca Blog - A Second Attempt at Exporting XAML from Visio 2007
Another Visio to XAML converter...
Some times ago, I developped a svg to xaml converter based on SharpVector library. I mainly use this tool for working on silverlight projects. It reads svg input convert it to xaml and can manipulate xaml objects. (Replace rectangle geometries with Rectangle, set canvas as a bounding box of inner elements, remove default values,...).
After reading this post, I've just plug my convert library and here are the results :
Uca Blog - A Second Attempt at Exporting XAML from Visio 2007
Visio to XAML Conversion
I'm currently studying for the Visio exam 70-545. It will be interesting to see where this "Visio to Silverlight" conversion tool leads us.
This opens up a whole new world for Silverlight and WPF developers.
Think of the possibilities of converting network diagrams/flow charts/etc to add to Silverlight and WPF apps.
It'll be nice to avoid the old “convert to EPS, load in Illustrator, then export to XAML“ workflow.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Make Your .NET Data More Useful with Treemap Visualization
Someday someone will port this to Silverlight...
The Microsoft Treemap control requires your XML to be formatted in a particular way in order to successfully parse and render the data. An example of this XML is seen in the following code:
<Nodes EmptySizeMetric="0">
<Node Text="Americas" SizeMetric="50" ColorMetric="-40.1" ToolTip="Americas">
<Nodes EmptySizeMetric="0">
<Node Text="USA" SizeMetric="100" ColorMetric="0" ToolTip="USA">
<Nodes EmptySizeMetric="0">
<Node Text="Texas" SizeMetric="20" ColorMetric="40" ToolTip="Texas">
<Nodes EmptySizeMetric="0"/>
</Node>
<Node Text="California" SizeMetric="60" ColorMetric="0" ToolTip="California">
<Nodes EmptySizeMetric="0"/>
</Node>
</Nodes>
</Node>
<Node Text="Canada" SizeMetric="20" ColorMetric="200" ToolTip="Canada">
<Nodes EmptySizeMetric="0"/>
</Node>
</Nodes>
</Node>
<Node Text="Europe" SizeMetric="25" ColorMetric="100" ToolTip="Europe">
<Nodes EmptySizeMetric="0"/>
</Node>
</Nodes>
Source: Make Your .NET Data More Useful with Treemap Visualization
Monday, February 11, 2008
Microsoft has no sense for fashion?
Interesting story on Silverlight & the future of the web.
This all happened before in the land before the web
This story is a story about Silverlight, and how what you are about to see with Silverlight, happened already.
Software Development in the Real World: The Silverlight Strategy, this will be a great movie
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Julie Lerman Blog - Silverlight
Saving ink in silverlight 1.0
In the TabletPC SDKs and in WPF it's very easy to take an ink image and save it to an image format - BMP, JPG, etc.
Then came Silverlight and the InkPresenter and naturally I wanted to do the same. But it wasn't so easy.
Silverlight itself isn't bogged down with that functionality. So you first need to get the XAML representation of the Ink and send it to a service where either the TabletPC SDK or the WPF APIs are available. Even then you are not home free because the Silverlight ink is not quite the same as either of the other two. So you then need to extract data from the XAML representation of the Silverlight ink and create a new object for whichever API you choose.
This was all done in Silverlight 1.0. I haven't pulled this into Silverlight 1.1/2.0 yet, but it should all be the same and you still have to do the conversion on the server side. THe only difference of course, is the javascript needs to be converted to .NET code on the client side.
Magnet/Scribbler - Windows Sideshow
Ok so where can I get one of these for under $50?
The MK140 FM Magnet/Scribbler is a portable device that functions like an electronic note pad with Windows SideShow capability. It combines the convenience of sticky notes with wireless access to Windows Vista. It can be easily attached to a refrigerator or wherever it is needed for maximum convenience.
They also have a Sideshow e-Reader and a Blackberry-style wireless chatting tool under development
Monday, February 4, 2008
IR / Infrared LED keychain flashlights - Specialty IR / Infrared LED flashlights & IR illuminators
You'll need this for a wiimote whiteboard.
World's smallest, brightest Infrared Keychain Flashlights & IR Illuminators! Used by members of the Secret Service, these special-purpose Photons produce a powerful infrared beam invisible to the naked eye. Ideal for use with infrared night vision equipment and IR-sensitive video cameras.
IR / Infrared LED keychain flashlights - Specialty IR / Infrared LED flashlights & IR illuminators
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Silverlight-Speed Loop
Creating a High-speed Loop
John Bower steps up a gear, produces a Lamborghini, and examines the process of using a high-speed function loop to create a fast-paced Silverlight application.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
theADOguy - Code - Data Driven Astoria Silverlight
This code is probably kinda stale (it's from last Oct) but sounds like what I was looking for awhile back.
Here's an example building a data driven site using Silverlight, AJAX and Astoria (Astoria uses the Entity Framework so that's there too).
Added 10/15/2007 Download
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Life and Death with wiimote
One application of a 3D mouse or a wiimote is in the healthcare industry, by simulating interactions with different tools, like a hammer.
The Wii Tools
Two tools, a reflex hammer and an ophthalmoscope were developed to interact with the virtual patient. Interaction with these devices is very intuitive using the wiimote.
To strike with the hammer, simply swing as though striking. You must swing hard enough that it would result in an actual strike, otherwise, it will just touch. The wiimote vibrates when a strike occurs.
Virtual Environments Projects - Brent Rossen - Spring 07
I wonder if this will work with Life and Death, the game? Time to get the scalpel out, and remember to turn the gas on.
Friday, January 11, 2008
WiiLi.org GlovePIE Wii-Mote Scripts
So I just picked up a bluetooth adapter to test out the wiimote on the PC. A bit awkward but it really does work!
Next... get it going with some FPS games... and flight simulator... and touchscreen-enable my laptop.
There are 42 pages of scripts & counting. The Google Earth one is worth checking out.
Alright, I recently got my wiimote up and working with my PC (Windows only.. no linux yet)
the main reason I wanted it was to play point blank in mame with friends.. much to my dismay, there was no half decent script to do that!
WiiLi.org GlovePIE Wii-Mote Scripts
Time to hit Active Surplus to get some IR LEDs... or maybe I'll just cough up the $20 for the sensor bar.
Monday, January 7, 2008
Microsoft Live Labs Volta Team Blog - Ignoring the architecture team
Volta is a way to ajax-ify an application with a few clicks & some minor code changes. It converts compiled MSIL .NET languages to Javascript, among other things. It has some limitations, mainly around VB. It should allow clients to change their minds about tier scaling & requirements with just a little work to change.
But what is Volta? It is probably a path from Silverlight 1.1 to Silverlight 2.0, since a core focus is not converting to Javascript, but converting from Javascript to .NET, ultimately a more powerful transition and a key driver to .NET adoption.
My question, was it named after Alessandro Volta, the guy who electrified frogs legs?
The final question that is frequently asked is how Volta relates to Silverlight. Is Volta meant to replace Silverlight? Are we trying to make JavaScript work for the same scenarios as Silverlight? Simply put, no. As others have observed, Volta is compatible with and is built to be complementary to Silverlight. The Microsft PressPass Q&A about Volta further explains that Volta is an MSIL to MSIL toolkit aimed at making writing distributed applications easier. Silverlight is an implementation of the .NET platform that therefore will automatically benefit from the advantages of the Volta toolkit. The technologies complement each other well, and we believe that amplifies and validates the importance of the complete .NET platform, including Silverlight.
All the benefits of the Volta toolkit, such as declarative tier-splitting and asynchronous programming or declarative import of JavaScript libraries into .NET, will apply to programs deployed to the Silverlight platform. In fact, we are in the process of replacing the browser helper objects used to facilitate debugging in this preview, which host the regular desktop CLR in IE and Firefox, and are replacing them instead with the Silverlight 2.0 runtime.
Cobol.NET to ... javascript?
Volta sounds interesting. Tier-targeting without reprogramming your apps.
"The freaking great and interesting part is that they've written a translator that converts MS IL to JavaScript! So then JavaScript is sent to the client side and executes in the browser," Mandalapa adds.
Mark Johnston's Blog : Silverlight training videos
Adam Kinney and co held a training day at Microsoft's campus in Redmond to help people get started and answer some fundamental questions about what the technology could do. The great news from us that don't live in the Pacific Northwest is they recorded all of the audio and video for the day and put it online.
It includes the following:
- An Introduction to Silverlight - Mithun Dhar
- Getting Started Programming Silverlight - Jesse Liberty
- Workflow of Silverlight with Expression and Visual Studio - Arturo Toledo
- Silverlight XAML - Laurence Moroney
- A Development Story - Adam Kinney
- Media, Markers and More - Ernie Booth
- Popfly and Silverlight - Adam Nathan
- Silverlight in the Future - Ernie Booth
POKE 53280,0: Pete Brown's Blog : Why I stopped my Silverlight 1.1 Work
Since there is no go-live license planned for 1.1 code, it's DOA for anyone not using it for academic purposes. Looks like we will be waiting a few more months for 2.0 to go beta.
If you want to learn Silverlight today but don't plan to deploy until 2.0 is out, what would I recommend? I recommend a two-pronged approach of learning 1.0 with JavaScript and learning how to write basic WPF XBAPs using features that Scott and others have announced will be in Silverlight. IMHO, this is the best way to prepare yourself for 2.0. Learning 1.0 will get you familiar with how the browser-based Silverlight applications work, and how they fit into larger web pages. Most importantly, you'll be able to write real production-ready code, even if it is just proof of concept. Learning the basics of WPF will prepare you for some of the things that may end up in Silverlight 2.0, as mentioned by Scott and others and will also teach you another valuable RIA platform in the process. It's win-win.
POKE 53280,0: Pete Brown's Blog : Why I stopped my Silverlight 1.1 Work
Friday, January 4, 2008
WiiMote Horse Riders Page
Need a bit more than a wrist strap for this one...
WiiMote Horse Riders Page
A Wiimote,
A Spring Horse,
Need 4 Speed,
an idea,
15 minutes of time,
our 15 minutes of fame
Build a light show
Yes this has nothing to do with Silverlight. But who wouldn't want to put a lightshow timed to music in their living room?
I finished this a bit later than I wanted to, but a brand new version of my Light Sequencer application and article is now available at Coding4Fun. You may recall my previous article on creating a musical light show for the holidays. If not, here's the video showing the output:
WiiLi.org Wiimote Laser Tag?
This stuff is just getting started...
Instructions:
Each player puts on their wireless "sensor bar" and switches it on, and they pick up their connected wiimote. Then they press "Run" on the script. Then it will warn you that you have 10 seconds before the game will start. So run and get into position.
After the 5 seconds your weapon will start to charge up. When your weapon is charging it will beep five times then make a sound and vibrate which indicates that it is ready. Also the LEDs will come on one at a time while it is charging.
The lights on your weapon will be on when your weapon is charged and ready to fire. You can also check whether you are player 1 or player 2 by holding the A button. Or you can check player 1's score by holding the 1 button, or you can check player 2's score by holding the 2 button. It stops counting once it gets to 10.
You can shoot with the B button. The default maximum firing rate is five rounds per second, but you can change that at the top of the script. It will make a sound and vibrate when you shoot. If you hit the opponent then their remote will make a loud noise and power down for 7 seconds. Their weapon will beep very quietly while it charges up again. They can't shoot during that time, and they can't be shot again either.
The score will also be shown in the debug box on the screen, if you don't want to check it with the 1 or 2 button.
Kit3D: 3D Graphics Engine for Microsoft Silverlight
Not sure if I already posted this... but it's worth a look for combining with the Nintendo wii controller for VR applications.
Kit3D is a 3D graphics engine for creating 3D content in Microsoft silverlight.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Wii-enable your living room
This is great. Imagine being able to touchscreen-enable any surface. You could touch your fridge & order more beer. Touch your couch arm & change a channel. Read and order from a menu projected on your table, with multiple people being able to order at the same time.
This is similar to the technology used in Microsoft Surface, the new tabletop computer. The difference? This one will cost you around $75 in wiiremotes and IR LEDs.
By pointing a wiimote at a projection screen or LCD display, you can create very low-cost interactive whiteboards or tablet displays
Adding bling to MS Downloads
Silverlight is coming to a Microsoft Downloads site near you.
We’re using Microsoft Silverlight technology to improve the Download Center experience and make it easier to discover and download Microsoft
Things just got interesting... Johnny does it again.
This is incredible. Basically it moves the image on the screen in tandem with your head, giving you a sense of 3D perspective. This would be crazy with flight simulators and first-person shooters.
Imagine looking to your left a bit and you are looking out the side window of the plane. Look down and you see the console. Look up and you see sky.
I gotta get a wiiremote and try this one out.
Using the infrared camera in the Wii remote and a head mounted sensor bar (two IR LEDs), you can accurately track the location of your head and render view dependent images on the screen. This effectively transforms your display into a portal to a virtual environment. The display properly reacts to head and body movement as if it were a real window creating a realistic illusion of depth and space
Friday, December 21, 2007
Nintendo Wii and Silverlight: Tracking Your Fingers - Michael's Blog
Now we're getting somewhere... the future is here and it's hacked out of a wiiremote and some reflective tape.
While writing my Silverlight wish list I found a very nice project. Johnny Ching Lee is using the controller (Wiimote) of the Nintendo Wii to track fingers. The controller does not need the Nintendo Wii console, simple the controller and a bluetooth connection is enough. Combining this project with WPF or Silverlight would be the answer of one of my wishes. (Well, I know what I will try during the holidays.)
Nintendo Wii and Silverlight: Tracking Your Fingers - Michael's Blog
Monday, December 10, 2007
Bill Gates on Flash and Silverlight (Conversation Part IV) » BIT-101 Blog
Bill talks about about where Silverlight is headed (cash investment in cool technology = results?) and what the model is (designers + results = cash influx?)
So, the choice is much more at the designer level, and I don’t know whether we’ll — we’re just investing in it, we think it’s a really great thing. Scott knows a hundred times more about it than I do.
But what is the model? Is it just going to be better than Flash, and take share away at the designer level? Is it going to be better at certain things like when you want programming logic related to it because we’re very good at that? Will it be better just in the Windows environment and about the same everywhere else, because we’re good at doing that integration? It’s hard to say.
Bill Gates on Flash and Silverlight (Conversation Part IV) » BIT-101 Blog
Just replace "It's hard to say" with "yes" and "we're just investing in it" with "we're planning on taking market share from Adobe, or at least giving them a headache."
All of a sudden Adobe needs to start focusing less on core features and more on a defensive or offensive strategy against an incumbent technology.
One way Adobe is investing to fight back? People capital. People who are working on cutting edge technology like Bilateral Filtering and 3D TV.
People capital is something Microsoft has plenty of too, and with Scott knowing a hundred times more than Bill Gates they could be a force to be reckoned with... or maybe just a thorn in Adobe's side.
Anyway, Silverlight has Ice Cube's attention. NWA, MLB and now the NBA too. So it's not just People Capital that's important, it's Market Share, and Adobe seems to be sharing more of that market with Microsoft lately.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Free Silverlight and WPF Training - Baekdal.com
Here is your chance to really learn about Silverlight and WPF. Lynda.com has published 4.5 hours of Silverlight training videos to get you started - presented by Mike Harsh from Microsoft's Silverlight team.
You can also find several hours of training video at the official Silverlight learning site, and you can see 20 hours WPF training video over at MIX University.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Street Cred? Ice Cube's UVNTV.com Goes Live with Silverlight
Two weeks ago, I went down to Hollywood to meet with a very exciting team who is creating a TV experience on the web using Silverlight. Musician/Actor Ice Cube and his team talk about the web site in a short video that I recorded at Ice Cube's CubeVision Production Company office. If you watch the video, you'll see my boss Carlos McKinley there wearing the white shirt. Here's the video clip that I uploaded to video.msn.com.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Android - java-based Open Handset apps
Google is taking the Facebook approach with a $10 million developer challenge. Waiting for Mono + C# instead of this java stuff...
In the Android Developer Challenge I, the 50 most promising entries received by March 3 will each receive a $25,000 award to fund further development. Those selected will then be eligible for even greater recognition via ten $275,000 awards and ten $100,000 awards.
The Android Developer Challenge will award $10 million to developers who build great apps for Android. Learn more!
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Monkey See, Monkey Build - The mumblings of Clint Rutkas
Three questions to ask when building any app...
To recap
- Can my mom use it?
- Listen but you don't have to do everything someone asks
- If you need to have a complex object / interface, make an simple wrapper for it too
4 steps to ink blogging
I gotta get a tablet pc...
To summarize the steps:
1) Create a note in Windows Journal
2) Convert note to Silverlight app
3) Upload to Silverlight Streaming service
4) Insert IFrame into blog
Stefan Wick's Weblog : Ink blogging - using Windows Journal and Silverlight Streaming!
One university is going to start using Silverlight for their lectures
Question Two:
I hear they are going to start using Silverlight for their Lectures?
Ken Arbogast-Wilson: The college turned 100 in 2006, and we had a year or high-profile events that necessitated web video, both on-demand and live streaming for several lectures and a three-day conference. In spite of settling on using windows media multiple bit rate streaming for these events, we also created quicktime versions for audience members with Macs. Lets just say we spent a lot of time encoding last year. I started dabbling in Silverlight video just recently, and by using Expression Encoder, I was able to create a cross-platform video with its own player that would execute right in the web page.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
silverlight streaming for media apps made simpler
use expression encoder for creating silverlight media applications? want to put them on silveright streaming? frustrated perhaps that you have to create a zip file with manifests and such? look no further!
james clarke writes about a feature just added to expression encoder (via a download) where you can now add 'publish to silverlight streaming' after your encoding job is completed. w00t!
you'll need to get the encoder plugin (assuming you have encoder first) and just install that. the post on james' site walks you through the steps, but it is a no brainer. i'd previously written about customizing your own encoder templates as well and making them a part of the encoder selection options for output. good thing is that those custom templates are just like any other and they are supported for this plugin as well. in fact, one of my last posts that used silverlight streaming was uploaded by this tool, using a custom template as well. very cool, very fast to get up and running using someone else's bandwidth (and for free) :-).
Pumpkin Card - Silverlight demo with code | Adam Kinney, Silverlight Surfer
Pumpkin Card - Silverlight demo with code
- tagged animation, demo, Silverlight
After enjoying the China Moon Festival Card, I wanted to try my hand at creating a holiday card with Silverlight. I've also been looking for the opportunity to dive into vertex animation which is a big part of this demo. I also wanted to add sound but the animation took a bit more time than I had planned for. Enjoy and have a great Halloween!
Pumpkin Card - Silverlight demo with code | Adam Kinney, Silverlight Surfer
Public Sector Developer Weblog : SCREENCAST: Adding Closed Captioning to video using Silverlight, ASP.NET AJAX, WCF and an external data source
In my previous Silverlight Closed Captioning screencast here, I showed you how to use Expression Encoder to import Closed Captioning information to produce a solution without writing a line of code. What if you store your Closed Captioning information in an external data source (database, SAMI file, XML file, etc.) and want to keep it there? Do you have to reprocess all of your videos using Expression Encoder? Of course not, but you do have to write some code:). In this screencast, I show you how to use Silverlight, ASP.NET AJAX, and the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) to solve this problem.
You can view the screencast here.
Friday, November 2, 2007
Introducing WebUI codename “Sirius” « Intersoft Solutions Corporate Blog
You’ve probably heard about “Sirius” recently and wondering what it is. Yes, we recently announced in our October 2007 newsletter about our forthcoming WebUI project, codenamed “Sirius”. In fact we have mentioned about this codename earlier in our 2008 R1 Product Roadmap. So what’s all “Sirius” about?
Source: Introducing WebUI codename “Sirius” « Intersoft Solutions Corporate Blog
Thursday, November 1, 2007
The Secret Diary of Bruce Chizen
Fake Bruce Chizen blasts Fake Steve Jobs.
I mean, come on! Try doing some research before you go and blast Adobe. I don't care how much you like Silverlight. I just can't see it passing Flash in terms of market penetration, which is over 99.1%. Yeah, 99.1% of Internet connected computers on Windows, Mac, Linux and others have Flash. And the only holdouts are people like you and Microsoft fanboys. Oh, and people who still have DOS or Windows 3.11 (but they shouldn't count).
Source: The Secret Diary of Bruce Chizen
Tim Sneath
The Silverlight Enterprise Deployment Guide is available for download now. We gave the white paper a trial run ourselves when Microsoft IT used SMS to deploy Silverlight internally. Download it and send it to your systems administrator today - it's worth their time to read.
Source: Tim Sneath
Easy Way To Upload Silverlight Apps To Windows Live - LiveSide - Developer Blog
Easy Way To Upload Silverlight Apps To Windows Live
Back when I wrote about adding a Silverlight Streaming app to your blog, I showed you how to add the Silverlight app to your SLS account at http://silverlight.live.com/. Well, now there is an addon for Expression Encoder (thanks Angus) that will allow you to upload your app straight to your account from within Encoder itself.
Simply download the addon from Microsoft Downloads and install it. Go through the steps as stated before but this time, you will see an extra section in Encoder:
Easy Way To Upload Silverlight Apps To Windows Live - LiveSide - Developer Blog
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Peter deHaan: Flex Camp Toronto, Flex Cookbook, Free Flex Builder
Flex Camp Toronto 75% Sold Out (now 86%, according to the TorontoFlex! user group page) -- If you're anywhere near Toronto, and remotely interested in Flex, definitely check this out. I had the opportunity to check out the Flex Camp in San Francisco. Go hang out with Adobe's own Mike Potter and others and enjoy some food and free stuff. If you've attended a previous Flex Boot Camp, Matt Chotin is/was soliciting your feedback.
Peter deHaan: Flex Camp Toronto, Flex Cookbook, Free Flex Builder
MediaPost Publications - LiveStation Gets $16 Million Infusion -
Competition for Joost & Slingbox?
LIVESTATION, THE PEER-TO-PEER WEB TV service being readied by Microsoft and Skinkers, a British software developer, has received a boost in the form of a $16 million investment.
MediaPost Publications - LiveStation Gets $16 Million Infusion - 10/30/2007
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Download details: Silverlight Installation Experience Guide
Monday, October 29, 2007
theADOguy - Rant: Silverlight + Entity Framework + Astoria == Crazy?
Silverlight + Entity Framework + Astoria == Crazy?
URL: http://www.silverlightdata.com
I've been digging into the Entity Framework and Astoria and decided to create a quick little mashup of Silverlight and those two technologies. The result is this little product viewer using the Northwind database:
theADOguy - Rant: Silverlight + Entity Framework + Astoria == Crazy?
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Dr. Dobb's Portal: Silverlight™ Tutorial
Dr. Dobb's Flipbook with source code demonstrates a rich media solution with audio, video, and text in a page-turning Silverlight demo.
My only complaint is the load bar on each page, and the fact that I don't have a handheld version of this.
Friday, October 19, 2007
svg.startpagina.nl
A ton of SVG resources.
and the SVG To Silverlight Workbench.
http://intertwingly.net/blog/2007/05/06/SVG-to-Silverlight-Workbench
Have fun!
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
PowerPoint-like Demo
A Powerpoint-Like demo in Silverlight with GOA Winforms Pro, written over the summer by a junior developer at GOA.
Office Live anyone?
Sunday, October 14, 2007
250+ Tools and Resources For Coding the Web
A whack of javascript, ajax, css, etc. tools and downloads here.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Microsoft User Research - Participant Recruiting : Microsoft Usability Is Looking For Software/Web Developers
Microsoft Usability Is Looking For Software/Web Developers
Microsoft's User Research Group is looking for independent consultants and developers working in a team setting who do either software or website development at least some as a part of their job responsibilities to participate in an upcoming Usability Study.
To qualify you must either be a(n):
* Individual consultant who does custom development for businesses of up to 250 people.
* Developer in a team, workgroup, department or company of up to 250 people who develop alone or with a very small number of other internal developers (could work with external developers).
You must also:
* Be willing to have a team of researchers come to your place of business and observe you work with your current development software.
* Not use Visual Studio as your primary development tool.
In return for each individual's feedback, participants will receive their choice of one gratuity item from a list of Microsoft's most popular titles such as Office Professional 2007, Vista, Visio Professional 2007, Expression Blend, and keyboards.
Please email us at uccood@microsoft.com if you are interested or would like more information.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Eric Griffin's Blog : New 3D Engine for Silverlight on Codeplex
Plus 2D gaming with XNA Game Studio & Silverlight here.
Kit3D is a 3D graphics engine written to work with Microsoft Silverlight. The library is currently written in JavaScript and supports 3D perspective projection and texture mapping. This library allows anyone to easily create 3D content for your Silverlight application.
Source: Eric Griffin's Blog : New 3D Engine for Silverlight on Codeplex
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Fb:silverlight - Facebook Developers Wiki
Facebook supports Silverlight with it's own tag. Any Facebook Silverlight apps out there?
<fb:silverlight silverlightsrc="http://www.somesite.com/silverlight" />
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Judge allows class action against Target website - Yahoo! News
I wonder how this will impact companies that choose to build shopping carts using only Images, Flash or Silverlight without any text that is audible? Target's site is interesting in that the entire homepage is just a big sliced up image. Plus try and view source - you can't.
When I was building web sites in 1993 we outsourced some of our work to a print shop, that sent us back a 4MB 300 DPI image and told us it was their home page.
Here's what their home page looked like.
<html>
<img src="bighomepageimagemain.tiff">
</html>
Save as - HTML - in Photoshop just doesn't cut it anymore...
"This is a tremendous step forward for blind people throughout the country who for too long have been denied equal access to the Internet economy," Marc Maurer, president of the National Federation for the Blind, said in a statement.
"All e-commerce businesses should take note of this decision and immediately take steps to open their doors to the blind," Maurer said.
Source: Judge allows class action against Target website - Yahoo! News
Monday, October 1, 2007
Mai-lan's Visio Blog : Dev Luv: Visio --> SVG --> XAML
A blurb on XAML in Visio 2003. This is 2 years old, so there's probably better content out there...
Dev Luv: Visio --> SVG --> XAML
I’ve gotten some questions about Visio’s ability to import or export XAML-based graphics files. Visio can’t do this today but you can use Visio 2003’s SVG functionality to achieve the same goal. You can save a Visio diagram out as SVG and then use a SVG to XAML converter to convert the Visio-generated SVG to XAML. I haven’t tried any of the converters myself and the XAML guys would probably be the ones to check to see which are the best. If the converters don’t work out, you can also write an XSLT for SVG to XAML yourself (although I'd be surprised if some enterprising developer hasn't already done it first).
Source: Mai-lan's Visio Blog : Dev Luv: Visio --> SVG --> XAML
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Silverlight Enterprise Deployment Guide
Installing Silverlight?
This guide helps you to plan and carry out a corporate deployment of Silverlight. The guide describes the system requirements and deployment methods, as well as the techniques to maintain and support Silverlight after deployment.
Silverlight Enterprise Deployment Guide
Author : David Tesar
Direct download link.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Feng-GUI - Feng Shui for Graphic User Interfaces
Interesting (and not Silverlight-related) heatmap showing which parts someone may glance at on your web site.
Microsoft Fires Volley At Google in Ad Battle - WSJ.com
Facebook recently announced $10M in grants for startups dedicated to building Facebook apps... MS should publicize their partner marketing like this. Why not give registered developers an opportunity to apply for an MSDN subscription grant? How about giving away Orcas & the Expression suite of tools along with $25k in grant funding and some small biz loans for hardware and software to qualified startups?
I guess there's always Microsoft Financing... $781.00/mo will get you $24,000 in hardware and software currently at a competitive rate of 4.6% interest. Plus you can do the $50/month deal with SmartPay.
I wonder if they do sub-prime?
Microsoft in recent weeks approached Facebook with proposals to invest in the startup that could value the fast-growing site at $10 billion or higher, said people familiar with the matter. If those talks bear fruit, Microsoft could purchase a stake of up to 5% in the closely held startup, at a cost in the range of $300 million to $500 million, the people said.
Source: Microsoft Fires Volley At Google in Ad Battle - WSJ.com
iLike Team Blog
I'm on a Facebook thread here... Silverlight posts will return after this commercial for iLike, an app that has more users than the 17 populations of the smallest countries in the world combined.
iLike now has 10,000,000 registered users! :-)
The big news today: iLike now has over 10,000,000 registered users. Thank you everybody to your feedback, support, and help in reaching this incredible milestone. We're just a few weeks shy of our 10-month birthday, it's pretty incredible to be at this size already, thank you!
Source: iLike Team Blog
Details about the fbFund at FaceReviews.com : Facebook Application Reviews, Facebook Widgets, Facebook News
More info on the Facebook fund, and here's a link to a Web 2.0 Biz Plan Generator.
How does an individual or company apply?
Initially, you can mail your business plan to platform@facebook.com. In coming weeks, we will set up an online submission process. Submissions are being accepted immediately.
What will be the criteria for selection?
We want to see the most innovative and ambitious proposals for building a business on Facebook Platform.How long will it take to hear back from the fund?
The goal is to get a response to the applicant within 30 days of receipt.
My Facebook Biz Plan Idea? A Facebook app that reviews biz plan terminology and selects the best biz plans based on a set of buzzwords in the media. Written with Silverlight.
"My business plan will allow the Halo 3 beta community to watch jerry falwell and melinda doolittle as they discuss kim kardashian and her preakness towards shrek the third. :) "
Speaking of which, Silverlight doesn't seem to solve the issue that Flash has around optimizing content for Google and other search engines, though you could write keywords to an html wrapper outside of a Silverlight app with a bit of work.
Silverlight for screencasters « Jon Udell
One disadvantage I see for adoption of Silverlight is the jumble of javascript, xaml, manifest, etc. dependent files that need to be deployed with an application. FLA or SWF seem to take the advantage over ZIP here.
John Udell has more comments and comparisons with various media formats.
In terms of viewing convenience, the Silverlight example exhibits a nice property that I wasn’t expecting. When you resize the window containing the player, the player scales to fit. I’m pretty sure the embeddable Quicktime and Windows Media players can’t do that. Flash-based media players are more customizable, and can respond to container resize events, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the technique applied to a screencast. It’s a nice idea. A screencast at 1:1 resolution is guaranteed to be legible, but will also consume a lot of screen real estate. So it’s tempting to shrink its width and height in production. But by how much? Any fixed resolution will work well for some people and not others. Resizable screencasts would be great for accessibility.
Nikhil Kothari's Weblog : Starter Kit for Facebook.NET
Hurry up and get to work opening up the $10M in grant opportunities that are available.
Steve Trefethen has created a starter kit for developing Facebook applications using Facebook.NET per a suggestion I had for him some time back. The Facebook.NET release includes a couple of sample hello-world style app, but this starter kit might help if you want to start with an empty application.
Source: Nikhil Kothari's Weblog : Starter Kit for Facebook.NET
Friday, September 21, 2007
ScaryNoises: Silverlight and Expression Resources
Silverlight and Expression Resources
Here's a veritable cornucopia of resources online related to Silverlight and Expression. Thanks to the India DPE team for pulling this list together.
I'd add one late-breaking item: The Expression Blend 2 September Preview. Cool stuff there!
Webcasts
- https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/Register.aspx?culture=en-IN&EventID=1032339986&CountryCode=IN&IsRedirect=false
- https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/Register.aspx?culture=en-IN&EventID=1032339984&CountryCode=IN&IsRedirect=false
- https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/Register.aspx?culture=en-IN&EventID=1032339982&CountryCode=IN&IsRedirect=false
Websites
- Silverlight on Microsoft.com: www.microsoft.com/silverlight
- Silverlight Community Site: www.silverlight.net
- Silverlight MSDN Developer Center: http://msdn.microsoft.com/silverlight
- Microsoft Expression: http://www.microsoft.com/expression
Silverlight Tutorials
- http://silverlightrocks.com/community/blogs/silverlight_games_101/default.aspx
- http://www.nibblestutorials.net
- http://adoguy.com/silverlight/
- http://weblogs.asp.net/mschwarz/archive/2007/06/06/silverlight-tutorials.aspx
- http://www.wynapse.com/Silverlight_Tutorials.aspx
- http://aspalliance.com/articles/LearnSilverlight.aspx
Silverlight and Blend Videos
- http://silverlight.net/learn/learnvideos.aspx
- http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=38&TagID=209
- http://channel9.msdn.com/tags/Expression
- http://channel9.msdn.com/tags/Silverlight
Blogs
- Silverlight.net Aggregated Blog: http://silverlight.net/blogs/microsoft/rss.aspx
- Silverlight News: http://silverlight.net/blogs/microsoft/rss.aspx
- Scott Guthrie – http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu
- Mike Harsh – http://blogs.msdn.com/mharsh
- Tim Sneath – http://blogs.msdn.com/tims
- Nick Kramer – http://blogs.msdn.com/nickkramer
- Ashish Shetty – http://nerddawg.blogspot.com
- Vivek Dalvi – http://vivekdalvi.wordpress.com
- Joe Stegman – http://blogs.msdn.com/jstegman
- Janakiram MSV – http://www.janakiramm.net/blog
- Pandurang Nayak – http://www.thinkingMS.com/pandurang
Newsgroups and Forums
- Silverlight.net Forums
www.silverlight.net/forums- Silverlight MSDN Forums
http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/default.aspx?ForumGroupID=318&SiteID=1- Learn Expression Forums
http://forums.learnexpression.com/- Expression Newsgroup http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.expression.discussion&cat=&lang=en&cr=US
- Expression Blend Newsgroup http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.expression.interactivedesigner&cat=en_US_5247A136-A420-80AA-EB1D-D7109FC029B4&lang=en&cr=US
- Expression Design Newsgroup http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.expression.graphicdesigner&cat=&lang=en&cr=US
- Expression Media Newsgroup http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.expression.media&cat=&lang=en&cr=US
- Expression Encoder Newsgroup http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.expression.mediaencoder&cat=&lang=en&cr=US
- Expression Web Newsgroup http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.expression.webdesigner&cat=&lang=en&cr=US
Posted by bradbecker at September 18, 2007 09:44 AM
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
theADOguy - Presenations and Training
Here are some of the courses I have taught and the presentation materials that go with them. If you are interested in training, please visit Wildermuth Consulting Services' website.
- Windows Presentation Framework: The Next GDI? (full day)
- A Day of ADO.NET (full day)
- ADO.NET 2.0: Revolution or Evolution (two hour)
- SQL Server 2005: The XML DataType (two hour)
- SQL Server 2005: Introducing the CLR (two hour)
- Introducing Avalon (two hour)
- Data Access with the Compact Framework (two hour)
- SQL Server 2005: A Developer's Introduction (two hour)
- Why ADO.NET (two hour)
- ADO.NET in Action (two hour)
- DataSets Explained (two hour)
- Windows Forms Data Binding (two hour)
- ADO.NET Tips and Tricks (two hour)
- ADO.NET Best Practices (two hour)
10 Things You Should Know About Microsoft's Silverlight - CIO.com - Business Technology Leadership
10 Things You Should Know About Microsoft's Silverlight
Software developers are busy kicking the tires on Silverlight, Microsoft's answer to Adobe's Flash. This summary of not-necessarily-technical information will help IT managers identify what's important about the new technology.
10 Things You Should Know About Microsoft's Silverlight - CIO.com - Business Technology Leadership
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