Mark Brown's Web Platform Blog

Help Us Feed & Shelter Our Orphans in Peru Displaced by Devastating Floods

mjbrown — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 21:41:16 GMT

Hi everyone.

As most of you know my wife and I support an orphanage outside of Cusco, Peru from where we adopted our son.

Peru is currently in a state of crisis due to two weeks of heavy rains that have resulted in the Peruvian government declaring a state of emergency for the Cusco Region. Well known archeological sites such as Machu Picchu have been cut off stranding 3000 tourists who have to be evacuated by helicopter because of no other means of escape. All of the rivers in the region are many feet above flood stage. Towns in the region are cut off from Cusco and cut off from each other. If you want to see the extent of the devastation take a look here.

Our orphanage, Azul Wasi in the town of Oropesa, just east of Cusco, sits in a river valley and flood waters have forced the evacuation of all of the children and were forced to leave all of their farm and domestic animals behind. We are currently working to find shelter for our boys in Cusco and are also organizing the rescue of the animals.

We need your help. Below are links where you can donate money to help us feed and shelter our boys. If you are able to donate to our efforts we would be very grateful. We are still waiting on our 501C3 tax ID, but we have the support of a fiscal sponsor so you will receive a tax receipt for your donation this year.

If you are unable to donate please consider Tweeting or forwarding this to others that may be able to contribute and to help raise awareness.

To donate you can start at our foundation’s website www.connectingborders.org which will redirect you to our Azul Wasi website

Or just go there directly to use PayPal to donate on the Azul Wasi website at http://www.azulwasi.org/AzulWasi/Donations.html

You can also donate via our fiscal sponsor http://www.crookedtrails.com/donate.php

Thank you!

Microsoft and Drupal

mjbrown — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 19:39:12 GMT

Today has been a busy day as I woke up this morning and over my coffee while reading Twitter I came across a Tweet from Dries that Microsoft had run an advertisement that said, “Forget Drupal…” This caused a bit of a dust up among the Drupal Community today and I want to say a few things about it.

First, I want to offer my sincerest apology for this. I have contacted Google and we are working on having this ad pulled as soon as possible. In addition we are working internally to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

Second, I want the Drupal Community to know that Microsoft and the Drupal Community have been working together for some time now to make Drupal better on Windows. Making it easier to run Drupal on Windows is very important to us and Drupal was among the very first communities we reached out to when we launched our Web Application Gallery this year which now provides an easy means for downloading, installing and configuring Drupal on Windows.

Finally, we are indeed working to promote Drupal on Windows here at Microsoft and are running advertising in countries around the world to promote Drupal. If you are curious, I threw up a few copies of the adverts I created that we are running here in the US.

Again my sincere apologies for what happened over this other ad. We very much value our partnership with the Drupal Community and I hope you can forgive us.

UPDATE: Hi folks. I wanted to update the story to mention that I have confirmed the ad has been pulled from circulation.

Also a correction. While the original report of this came from a blogger in India, the ad actually originated from an advertising team in another country. Apologies to my Microsoft colleagues in India.

PDC 2009 – Web Platform Chalk Talks

mjbrown — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:55:10 GMT

Hey everybody. At the PDC this year the Web Platform Team at Microsoft has lots of great stuff in store for you all.

The Web Platform Pavilion in the Big Room at PDC is hosting a series of Chalk Talks during PDC with some really exciting sessions that you won’t see anywhere else. There are talks on What’s new in IIS, Demystifying SEO and the IIS SEO Toolkit. There’s also the new Bing Maps Silverlight Control which just released at Tech Ed in Berlin, and deep dives on SketchFlow, how to extend Expression Encoder and a not to be missed panel discussion with Scott Hanselman, Sara Ford, Bertrand LeRoy, Glenn Block, Clemens Vasters and Shaun Walker, on Open Source Software and ASP.NET. Plus a bunch more sessions you can take a look at below. These are special sessions you won’t find in the regular PDC schedule so make a note of the date and time. You can find the Web Platform Pavilion in the Big Room in the LA Convention Center. It’s right next to the Surface Lounge.

While you are in the Web Pavilion make sure to stop by and talk to the engineers who build your favorite web platform products and technologies at Microsoft including: Silverlight, Expression Studio, Internet Explorer, Bing Maps, IIS, ASP.NET and Visual Web Developer. Plus some very special booths for Windows Presentation Foundation, Live Labs and our new partner program for Web Agencies and Hosters, WebsiteSpark. And before you leave make sure to stop by the Information Booth in the Web Platform Lounge to get a “Make Web Not War” T-Shirt and sticker for your laptop. We’ve only got a limited quantity of these so stop by and get them early. –See you there.

Schedule	Title	Description	Speaker
11/17/09 11:00am	What's New in IIS and the Microsoft Web Platform	The Microsoft Web Platform is becoming an increasingly powerful set of technologies for building Web applications and services. In this session, you will learn how to use the new Web Platform Installer to more quickly develop, deploy, and host ASP.NET and PHP Web applications. You will also see how server administrators can use IIS 7.5 in Windows Server 2008 R2 - with built-in support for .NET on Server Core - and new IIS extensions to simplify Web server configuration and management.	Raúl Eduardo González
11/17/09 12:00pm	Extending Expression Encoder	An informal discussion about the experience of building apps with Expression Encoder’s SDK: Demos will include enhancing Expression Encoder with Powershell, distributed peer-to-peer encoding and publishing content to the Windows Azure CDN-enabled blob store.	James Clarke
11/17/09 1:00pm	Deep Dive on Bing Maps Silverlight Control	The Bing Maps Platform has grown immensely over the past year from our Bing Maps AJAX Map Control to our Bing Maps Web Services and now our Bing Maps Silverlight Control. Come and join us as we take you on a tour of all the features and dig deep into the code to show you how to build your own Bing Maps applications in Silverlight.	Keith Kinnan
11/18/09 11:00am	Deep Dive into WPF4 Multi-Touch APIs	We’ll look closely at WPF4’s multi-touch platform to build first class multi-touch user experiences. We will discuss the details of manipulation and inertia events, integrating multi-touch experience with existing controls, raw touch events and building on extensible touch devices.	Anson Tsao
11/18/09 12:00pm	SEO your Site with the IIS SEO Toolkit	The IIS SEO Toolkit, is a brand new tool from Microsoft that takes the guesswork out of SEO to build the best quality and easiest to find Web sites on the Internet. We'll show features for gaining site intelligence through built in reporting and error identification for broken/invalid links, duplicate content and tag validation. Best of all, you can customize it so you can plug in your own rules and customizations to make the IIS Search Engine Optimizer the complete answer to your SEO needs.	Mark Brown
11/18/09 1:00pm	Super Cool Microsoft Ajax Tricks & Tips	Learn some of the advanced tricks of the new Microsoft Ajax Library. In this talk, you learn how to take advantage of many of the advanced features of Microsoft Ajax such as recursive templates, dynamic templates, and dynamic placeholders	Stephen Walther
11/18/09 2:00pm	Panel Discussion: Open Source Software + ASP.NET	Join us in this panel discussion on open source and ASP.NET. Hosted by Scott Hanselman, Sara Ford, Bertrand LeRoy, Glenn Block, Clemens Vasters, and Shaun Walker will be there to answer your questions and ask you some too.	Panel
11/19/09 10:00am	Bing Maps APIs	Bing Maps is a cutting edge geographic-based data visualization platform with several interfaces for integrating maps into your own applications and web sites. Come learn about what’s new with the different Bing Maps APIs and gain a full overview of the platform from the penultimate Bing Maps blogger and mapping expert, Microsoft’s Chris Pendleton.	Chris Pendleton
11/19/09 11:00am	Prototyping with SketchFlow	Using and extending Expression Blend and its prototyping vocabulary	Christian Schormann
11/19/09 12:00pm	Expression Blend for Developers	See a walkthrough of how Expression Blend can be used to design rich user experiences for Silverlight and WPF.	DoRon Motter

See you at PDC.

Vote for my Session at SXSW

mjbrown — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 02:32:31 GMT

Hey everybody. I am up for Community Voting for the next SXSW Interactive Festival happening next March and I need your votes to get accepted. Here is the session I am presenting.

HD Video Streaming Server using PHP and Silverlight

A dash of PHP, a pinch of Silverlight and a smidge of IIS and you can easily make an HD video streaming server. Check out this session as we'll build a fully functional HD video streaming server and then give you the code so you can use it yourself. As a bonus we may even show on the fly encoding so you can make your very own HD version of YouTube with user generated content.

This promises to be an AWESOME session and I really want to show people how far the technology has come to not only stream video content over the internet easily but also to deliver HD quality video over the internet as well.

To get accepted for the SXSW event I need to get votes from the community that think this is a cool session and want to see it. So click on the session title above or the “Thumbs Up” graphic there up top, go register yourself if you haven’t (even if you’re not attending) and then click on this link above here to vote up my session.

Thanks !!!

Technorati Tags: SXSW,IIS,Microsoft,PHP

Drupal Camp LA and my life as a Food Critic

mjbrown — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:58:27 GMT

Well I’m back from my weekend sojourn to Southern California for this year’s Drupal Camp LA held at the University of California Irvine. It was a great trip and I had a wonderful time down there. Overall the attendees at the Drupal Camp LA were surprised that Microsoft would sponsor this event as well as want to present sessions. Many wondered indeed why we were there at all.

It’s simple really. There’s a growing number of people who are really passionate about Drupal and are creating websites for their customers and for themselves. At Microsoft we are passionate about the web and we want to help the Drupal and all the other communities have the best experience using Windows as a both development environment as well as a web server. We want your stuff to run great on Windows and to do that we have to get out there to show you what we’ve been up to and also get your feedback so we can go make things better. So that’s why we were at this event and it’s why you’ll see more of us at events like this in the future.

My talk on our IIS SEO Toolkit was very well received. There weren’t many people in the audience. Maybe 20 or so, but it was clear that they were impressed with this little piece of technology we created. It works on any website built with any framework running on any web server. Indeed, the heart of it is a web site crawler much like what you’d see Google or Bing use to crawl websites to rank your pages and your site itself. If you have not seen this tool in action then I’d encourage you to take a few minutes to read up on the IIS SEO Toolkit.

My Life as a Food Critic

So during my travels this past weekend I only made it to two of the four restaurants I wanted to check out. I actually went to one of them twice (two separate locations). So here for your culinary pleasure is my review of Wahoo’s Fish Tacos in Costa Mesa, CA and San Shi Go in Laguna Beach, CA. In this segment I will be channeling James Lipton and Anthony Bourdain simultaneously.

My rating system is as follows:

200 OK = Outstanding

302 Found = Very Good

404 Not Found = Somewhat Disappointing

500 Internal Server Error = Stay Away At All Costs

Wahoo’s Fish Tacos:

I wandered into the Wahoo’s Fish Tacos in Costa Mesa, CA on Sunday afternoon. This location is in fact their first store so it’s been around for a while and the place has lots of charm.

I ordered my regular, a #2, which is a two fish taco combo, char-broiled, with black beans, white rice and a Pepsi. Now a few things have changed in the past year since I’ve eaten there. A #2 used to be a two fish taco combo. They have since started serving chicken which boggles my mind since who the hell wants chicken at a fish taco restaurant? They’ve also started serving brown rice. WHY for God’s sake? Nobody wants brown rice as a Mexican food side. Besides their white rice is out of this world. If my taste buds aren’t deceiving me they cook it in a chicken broth and add either a tiny bit of oregano or maybe thyme and also some cilantro too. And they’ve also started serving white beans in addition to pinto which they’ve had forever and of course, black. the best bean there is.

Ok, so I admit. I am not one who embraces change quickly. I like the #2 combo just the way I get it. I’ve been eating it that way for a very long time so don’t get your new fangled white beans and brown rice and chicken thing all up in my face. Flat out I don’t care. It’s perfect just the way I order it.

Anyway, after ordering I get myself a Pepsi from the soda fountain and sit down in the middle of their spacious and uniquely decorated dining room seated amongst a few other casually dressed but always hip and beautiful Wahoo’s crowd. It was a little chilly in there but then it always seems to have been in past visits. I suspect that this extra chilliness comes as a blessing when this place gets packed during the weekdays during lunch. Generally at this location and every other one I have been to the line goes right out the front door. A little extra cooling feels good when the place is packed with people.

My order shows up in no time and I am face to face with a beautiful plate of food with the wonderful and tasty black beans on the left nestled gently against the rice which takes a commanding position in the middle with the two fish tacos riding side saddle off to the right. And of course a wedge of lime for your squeezing pleasure.

The tacos themselves are works of art. Char-broiled Wahoo fish with a small pinch of shredded cheddar cheese underneath some cool cabbage and topped with a dash of some wonderfully fresh salsa that compliments the fish, enhancing its flavor. All of this of course is lovingly double wrapped in two fresh white corn tortillas. Magnificent.

I start right in to the fish tacos savoring every bite. The fish, cabbage, cheese and salsa each in culinary harmony. A masticular delight to be sure. After I finished the fish tacos I then take the rice and beans and mix them together thoroughly into something akin to a casserole. Most people would say that I’m just mashing them together, but no. This is art and you have to ensure that the beans are completely mixed in together with the beans. You also have to use any of the salsa left on the plate and mix that in as well to create an unseemly looking but completely tasty mush.

After I finished my plate I refilled my drink with some more Pepsi. One of the Pepsi fountains was out of syrup so I dumped that out in the ice trap and refilled my cup with the other Pepsi dispenser. Marvelous.

Overall I give this Wahoo’s experience a 200 OK. Absolutely Magnificent.

San Shi Go:

My visit to San Shi Go was on a Saturday evening at about 8:30. I was lucky as I was expecting the place to be packed and might have to wait. Generally though over the years it is pretty easy to get in at the Sushi Bar as a single and this evening was no exception. As I walked in I see two of the sushi chefs that have been there forever. That’s Joe on the right and Yugi on the left. Both are incredible sushi chefs and artists.

As i sit down I am greeted by a friendly server who provided me with a hot towel and a choice of drink. Normally I enjoy sushi with a large Sapporo lager but this evening I was not in the mood for beer so I ordered a Coke instead. The sushi chef quickly gave me their traditional greeting appetizer, a small bowl of noodles swimming in a sweet soy broth. It’s very tasty and refreshing too and cleans your palate so that you may enjoy your fish a little better.

After my beverage arrives I made my first order. Toro Sushi. Now normally when a sushi place has Toro I order it sashimi style and when this place has Toro you better believe I do, but I was not very hungry so just a little is perfect for me this evening.

The Toro San Shi Go has is often Chutoro and very often Otoro grade. If they can’t get high grade they won’t buy it and to be honest nothing is more disappointing than ordering Toro and getting crap. Their Toro literally melts in your mouth. Tonight’s was no exception, Otoro this evening. Absolute perfection perched atop two perfectly formed pieces of sweet sushi rice with the perfect amount of wasabi between the two.

The next thing on the menu is their Spicy Scallop Roll. Now I know what you’re thinking. So what? It’s a stupid roll and you can get that anywhere. Well yes you can. However, you can’t get one made as good as these guys make one. Their recipe for the scallop, mayo and spicy sauce is excellent and when combined with their incredible sushi rice it really is an incredible dish. Besides, I can’t tell you how many times I have had terrible spicy scallop rolls. They either don’t make it spicy or flavorful enough, or they simply take some some scallops and squirt spicy sauce on it and smash it into a roll and serve it to you. It’s so spicy that I can’t feel my tongue!!! I swear to God. Sushi chefs should lose their sushi license for that.

My final order tonight and the one I have been waiting to have since the last time I was there and have been thinking about non-stop since I booked this trip is their Cajun Seared Tuna. A masterpiece. This is one of the most incredible sushi dishes you will ever have in your lifetime (if you’re Buddhist like me, your next lifetime too). First, they prepare the fish by first applying a seafood cajun rub over the top and bottom of the fish. If I remember the name of this rub I will let you know but you can find this on your specialty seafood store shelves. Next they sear the tuna on both sides as you would normally when making seared tuna for sushi. Once prepared, after you order it, they slice the fish as normal for sushi and then put a drop of spicy sauce on top of the sushi, a little big of Negi (thinly sliced scallions) and then drizzle it with some low sodium soy sauce and serve. It truly is a masterpiece is it not? On my scale of HTTP Response Codes again I am giving out my coveted 200 OK.

Well that’s it for my Drupal Camp and So Cal Restaurant Review. I hope you enjoyed it. If you are interested in having me come and speak at your local Drupal Camp about the Microsoft Web Platform and our SEO Toolkit and how you can use it to improve the SEO for your or your customer’s websites please do drop me a line. If my schedule permits I’d be happy to and I’d be happy to come and enjoy in some of the local restaurants in your area as well.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Drupal,IIS

Presenting at Drupal Camp LA This Weekend And I Become a Food Critic

mjbrown — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 08:33:44 GMT

I am really excited to be presenting at Drupal Camp LA this weekend. Actually it’s in Irvine which is down in Orange County but who cares. I’m getting a chance to go back to a place I called home for a long time before moving up to Seattle to work for Microsoft and is still a very special place to me where I have lots of friends and family that live there.

At this event I will be presenting a session on the IIS SEO Toolkit which is a FREE tool integrated with IIS7 and part of the Microsoft Web Platform which is a complete collection of Microsoft’s FREE web stack, and ships in our Web Platform Installer. I will also be helping our at our Install Fest to let the attendees at this event check out our web stack and see how easy it is to run Drupal on the Microsoft Web Platform.

I’m a food nut (and sometimes a food snob too) and since I haven’t back in So Cal for some time when I’m not busy at this conference I’ll be scrambling to enjoy all of the food I used to love when I lived there. Oh where do I start.

Well first there are those awesome chicken burritos at Alejandro’s in Costa Mesa. Their carne asada burrito is incredible too. They make what feels like a 2 lb burrito that is nothing but meat. It is awesome and spicy and they don’t speak a word of English and neither do any of their customers which is a good thing. If I walk into any Mexican restaurant and I see what looks like someone from this nation’s mid-west ordering a Chimich-A-A-A-A-nga or N-A-A-A-A-chos, I turn around and RUN. Yes, I may be a snob but growing up in Arizona and California and spending ALOT of time in Mexico growing up has made me a snob when it comes to Mexican food. Seriously, some of the best Mexican food I’ve had in Seattle has been from a Taco Truck parked at a gas station. It was cheap too. Some of the worst was the most expensive. Sad.

Next is Wahoo’s Fish Tacos. I absolutely love this place and wish I could open one of these up in Seattle. Lots of restaurants up in Seattle serve fish tacos but their idea of a fish taco is a piece of cod rolled in flour and dropped in a deep fat fryer. Losers. Wahoo’s makes THE BEST fish tacos. They are made from either Wahoo or Mahi-Mahi and are charbroiled or blackened, served in a double wrapped tortilla with a tiny bit of cabbage and cheese and salsa. THAT’S IT. No stupid smoked chipotle mango sauce, no other garbage to take away from the yumminess of the fish. btw, they have INCREDIBLE rice. I know that sounds stupid but it is great. I don’t know what they put in it. And their black beans are also AWESOME. Can you tell that I love this place? Oh yeah, almost forgot. It’s is HEALTHY. Try calling that fried piece of crap they call a fish taco in Seattle healthy.

So not everything I go eat is healthy. Certainly the chicken burrito I’m going for at Alejandro’s isn’t. This next one is pure heart attack but if I’m in So Cal I have to make a stop by In-N-Out Burger, just down the street from Alejandro’s in Costa Mesa. Now I’ve tried the 4x4 Animal Style a number of times and while it is pretty yummy I find it is too hard to eat and ends up on my lap or the floor. So I tone it down to just a double-double, fries, oh and of course a vanilla shake.

I know what you’re thinking. This guy calls himself a food snob but he’s eating total CRAP. Well even Anthony Bourdain partakes in fatty greasy food once in a while and since we don’t have In-N-Out up in Seattle, I’M GOING.

This next one is and has been been my one of my favorite restaurants if not THE FAVORITE for probably close to 15 years. Two good friends turned me on to this place back in 1995 and after eating there once I probably had at least one meal in this place every week for 5 years before moving to Seattle in 2000. For approximately a two year period I ate there 2-3 times a week and sometimes I ate lunch AND dinner there and would eat there up to 5-10 times in a week.

It is a sushi joint in Laguna Beach called San-Shi-Go. These guys are incredible, friendly and even though the place can get pretty packed they are great at turning tables and getting you in. They are without doubt the MASTER’s of the Cajun Seared Tuna. I fell in love with this dish so much that when I moved up to Seattle I tried for three years to get local chef’s to make it. They simply can’t or they get mad at you and insist it I am insulting the fish by even suggesting it. Also great is their spicy scallop rolls and the best thing of all is to just let them go all Chef’s Choice on you. They are artists as well as chefs and they create stuff that is simply beautiful as well as delicious.

Oh there are so many more. There’s no way I could list them all. FOOD, FOOD, FOOD. It’s a powerful mechanism for bringing back memories. I had great memories living in So Cal and there was great food all along the way. I can’t wait to get back and sink my teeth into it.

Sugar CRM Now Available in Windows Web App Gallery

mjbrown — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 17:36:13 GMT

We are happy to announce that Sugar CRM Community Edition is now in the Windows Web Application Gallery.

Sugar is the leading open source customer relationship management (CRM) solution. Sugar gives users a complete view of their customers through core sales, marketing and customer support features. The Sugar platform is highly extensible, and the application includes a built-in Module Builder tool to assist developers and users in creating and maintaining custom applications that extend the value of the core platform.

Sugar joins the long list of free and open source PHP and ASP.NET applications now available in the Windows Web Application Gallery all available for easy installation via our Web Platform Installer that installs our entire free web platform stack plus the community version of PHP.

Check it out.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Web PI,Sugar CRM

Watch LIVE HD broadcast of Michael Jackson Memorial

mjbrown — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 08:10:05 GMT

Tomorrow, July 7^th, 10AM PT, 1PM ET – We are broadcasting the Michael Jackson memorial, live in HD from the Staples Center in Los Angeles using IIS Smooth Streaming and Silverlight to the world. This broadcast is available to everyone World-Wide. Make sure to show up a few minutes early if you need to download the Silverlight player. Only takes a moment.

The link to the embedded player is here, http://inmusic.ca/news_and_features/Michael_Jackson

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Silverlight,IIS,Michael Jackson

Microsoft at the Country Music Association Festival

mjbrown — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 05:46:36 GMT

On June 11-14 2009, over 200,000 people will be attending the Country Music Association’s Music Festival in Nashville, Tennessee. For the first time in the history of the Music Festival, Microsoft is will have a significant presence at the event. The CMA is interested in aligning technology and country music cultures so the CMA and Microsoft have embarked on a number of initiatives designed to drive buzz and excitement around the digital lifestyle and country music and Microsoft will be showcasing technology such as Silverlight with Deep Zoom technology and Microsoft Tag.

Here’s a rundown on what you can find if you’re fixin’ to be at the CMA Festival next week:

“Be this Close” Silverlight Deep zoom online game

Interactive search, on CMA site and radio partner web sites (see list below)
Ex. “Find the picture of Blake Shelton kissing a fan with a orange hat at the 2007 CMA Music Fest”

“Where Am I” – Microsoft Tag

Microsoft Tag will be featured in a number of ways throughout the Music Festival experience. Attendees will be able to scan signs located throughout the venues to learn more about the physical environment and what’s happening around them. Their location will also be mapped via Windows Live Search Maps making the task of navigating the enormous number of venues easy and convenient for festival attendees. Tag will also be featured in an event wide contest called “Tag Hunter” which will be distributed event wide by a legion CMA “Fun Squad” members. To check out Tag for your phone, get it here, http://gettag.mobi/

Cell Journalists Online Photo Shared Experience” – Windows Mobile

Attendees can participate in the event by acting as cell journalists. Using Windows mobile or other cell phone cameras, pictures taken from the event are automatically uploaded to a shared server hosted by ASP.NET and displayed throughout the event – including the Jumbotron. Windows Mobile users will have a customized, high-end experience.

Microsoft Booth and E-Mail Kiosk Featuring Internet Explorer 8 and Microsoft Surface and Meet Some Stars!

Attendees will be able to test drive our latest and greatest browser to learn about the tremendous innovations Microsoft is delivering in making the web a safer and more productive environment. In addition to IE, attendees will be able to experience not one, but two, Microsoft Surface stations. Microsoft Partner Interknowlogy will be showcasing a Surface based Jukebox application featuring country music and visits by country music celebrities. Winchester ammunition will be showcase their award winning ballistic simulator built on Surface. Zune and Xbox will also be in the house showcasing. And if you want to rub elbows with a few Country Music Stars these ones will be hanging out at the Microsoft Booth (#334) here below:
Thursday 6/11/2009

9:00 AM James Otto
11:00 AM Love and Theft
1:30 PM Randy Rodgers Band
2:00 PM Bucky Covington

Friday 6/12/2009

9:00 AM Whitney Duncan
11:00 AM Point of Grace

Saturday 6/13/2009

11:00 AM Lee Brice

Sunday 6/14/2009

Jessica Harp

And if you’re not planning to be there because the Sheriff won’t let you leave your county or because your Maa said “no” then you can check it out online.

Main Site: http://cmafest.com/2009/
IE 8 Web slice : http://ieaddons.com/en/details/music/CMA_Music_Festival_2009/
“Be This Close” interactive Silverlight game - http://www.cmafest.com/2009/videophotos/games/bethisclose/
Microsoft page on CMA Site: http://www.cmafest.com/2009/microsoft

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Silverlight,Microsoft Tag,IE8,CMA

New Windows Web App Gallery Release - AmpliFeeder

mjbrown — Thu, 28 May 2009 00:52:53 GMT

It’s a busy day at the office as we have another new application up in the Windows Web Application Gallery today, AmpliFeeder. AmpliFeeder is a distributed social activity aggregator. In their own words…

You are no longer defined by your activity on just one website, message board or social network. Every photograph you upload, every page you bookmark or share, every tweet you twitter helps to define you just a little bit more. AmpliFeeder pulls all of your online activity into one place to display a new aggregated you, redefining ideas of what a blog or personal page should be.

Simple. Powerful. Flexible

Combine and archive your activity from lots of different services. Adding new services is a complete breeze. It's easy.

Easy to style and personalize

AmpliFeeder is built to make theming and personalisation as simple as possible with standard XHTML & CSS. Be unique

Pull yourself together

Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Google Shared Items, Tumblr, Digg, Reddit, LastFM, Stumbleupon, Delicious, Upcoming, Mixx & more

Open Source and AGPL Licensed

Runs on industry standard ASP.NET 3.5, SQL Server Express and IIS: A rock solid foundation for exceptional web applications

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Web PI,AmpliFeeder