Interesting posts for week of 6/4 to 6/10 ...

I traveled most of the week so did not blog ... from the blogs, I read here are some of my 'faves' for the week..

• Glenn Plock shares details on the future or Smart Client Software factory and migration to Acropolis
• Jon galloway shares his thoughts on SVG and XAML ...  
  Only addition to his thoughts/concerns  would be that it is very doable to use Illustrator to get to XAML ...Illustrator has a free 30 day trial.. Once in illustrator, not only try the plug-in to export... you can also try opening the ai file with Expression Design... and exporting the xaml from there...  I have great results lately with Design's capability to read AI and export as xaml.
  {note: expression design also has a 30 day trial, this whole thing is still free}
• Free designer training ( Blend and Design ) from lynda.com ... Tim has the details..
• Dwayne blogged about HostVisual and creating non-interactive WPF UI in background threads ...  good stuff, I subscribed to his blog in hopes he continues to post..
• Microsoft User eXperience Evangelist (UXEs)  are aggregating their blog at http://design-for-innovation.com/ ...  These are sharp designers who know a lot about user experience; though the aggregation is still in the works , it might be worth keeping an eye on it ..
• Peggi wrote the most complete article in writing a WIC enabled codec. I worked with an ISV that wrote a WIC Codec for their Vista version of their software; they were quite happy with the 'benefits' ... which Peggi summarizes much better than I ever would:
  "Building your CODEC on the Windows Imaging Component platform makes it possible for all applications built on WIC to get the same platform support for your image format as they get for the common image formats shipped with the platform. It also enables the Windows Vista Photo Gallery, Explorer, and Photo Viewer to display thumbnails and previews of images in your format using the decoder that you provide. For Raw formats, it enables more sophisticated imaging applications to take advantage of your decoder's Raw processing capabilities. Depending on the encoder options you support, you can also expose unique capabilities of your encoder to enable applications to take full advantage of the advanced features of your image format" ...  
• [FYI, WPF is built on WIC, so once you have the codec you will be able to open your custom image format with an <Image Source=".. " /> tag  ...]

Cool stuff I heard about :

• BBC is using Photosynth 3D to create a  show ..  has good links to photosynth stuff..
  Darren David (ex-Fluid, Northface kiosk extraordinaire) talks about a very impressive WPF app he worked on .. 
  He mentions the challenge of  Multi-input UI ...  which  the Surface team have solved for their platform ...  I wonder if Microsoft will ever expose the implementation for use outside of Surface??

[Movies]

• I watched Hannibal rising on the plane from NY to seattle ( my hands cramp if I type on plane) ...   fell asleep..  the first 15 mins were interesting cause it explained the 'why?' ... the rest was gory fill-time..
• I went to theater for "Ocean's 13" ... I was a fan of Ocean's 11 so I had to go see this one..  Though I laughed a few times, quite a bit of the movie was a little too far fetched for me ...   I wish I had waited for video instead of theater..