This is one of the coolest videos I've seen...and this is a good indicator of the things to come in the future with Silverlight! See, we can be cool too...way too cool! :)

I love Silverlight!

-Mithun Dhar

Living in the Pacific Northwest is a blessing - as long as it's summer! The other days when it's a wee bit gloomy, we have Vancouver, BC which is a saving grace for Seattle, WA. I've been living in Seattle for almost 6 years now, Long enough to know that a beautiful day after two shitty days is called Monday.

Anyway, I stumbled upon the Economist's top 10 Best & Worst cities to live in article and interestingly it had Vancouver, BC as the #1 city to live in. I can totally see why this would be true:

• Beautiful City
• Beautiful People (Although, it's no Montreal or Paris)
• Wonderful People
• Peaceful coexistence of all religions, all castes, all creeds!
• Home to a lot of Rich people - Lot's of them are immigrants from HK (When HK became part of PRC)
• Great food
• Greater shopping
• Cannabis is almost legal. (It's Canada!)

The only thing which perplexes me is, this city is ridiculously expensive. Expensive, at least when compared to Seattle. But there's never been a single time that I've not had fun when in Vancouver. And, there's a huge Indian community with almost authentic Indian food!

I know where I am headed this weekend!! :) TGIF!

Here's the Economist's article:

With low crime, little threat from instability or terrorism and a highly developed transport and communications infrastructure, Canada and Australia are home to the most liveable destinations in the world. Four of the ten most liveable cities surveyed by the Economist Intelligence Unit are in Australia, and two of the top five are Canadian. Vancouver is the most attractive destination, with a liveability index of just 1.3% (see table).

Very Nice, aye!

-Mithun Dhar

PS:

Isn't it surprising that US has the highest Per Capita in the world but not a single city in the top 10 list. Coincidence? Perhaps not! :)

Well, Tafiti in Swahili means 'Do Research'! But at Microsoft, it's just another code name for the new Silverlight web search portal that is powered by Live Search! It's still an experimental web site and ties in two new trends: Specialization of Search & Richer User Experience.

I think it's pretty cool for a first shot, I like the fact that it can be used to store your search results on a dashboard and use the same search query to find all types of results in one query (eg, To see related blogs, or RSS feeds, or Pics, or News items etc you can just click on the categories)

It's mainly used for research projects etc...my best use: I am right now in the market for a Camera, and Tafiti is pretty cool...for it! Be sure to check out the podcast about Tafiti on Channel 9 and a video on on10.net

Get to know Tafiti following these simple steps:

·         Go to http://www.tafiti.com

·         Enter a search query

·         Drag interesting results to the shelf on the right.  Each box on the shelf can be used to save a related set of results.  Shelf contents can be saved and shared. 

·         Use the carousel at the bottom left to do different types of searches (image, blog, etc.)

·         Visualize your results using the Tafiti Tree View. (Very Coool!!)

While you are at it, add a Silverlight Streaming Video Player to your page in 3 easy steps (Tafiti Walkthrough Eg):

1) Add the following script references to the page header section

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://agappdom.net/h/silverlight.js"></script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="CreateSilverlight.js" mce_src="CreateSilverlight.js"></script>

2) Insert the following HTML where you want the application to appear in the body of the page

<div id="Wrapper_TafitiWalkthru" style="width:500px; height:400px; overflow:hidden;"></div>

<script type="text/javascript">

var Wrapper_TafitiWalkthru = document.getElementById("Wrapper_TafitiWalkthru");

CreateSilverlight();

</script>

Note: This will display the player at a size of 500x400. If you would like the video player to be larger size, change the width and height values, for example, to show the player at 1024x768

<div id="Wrapper_TafitiWalkthru" style="width:1024px; height:768px; overflow:hidden;"></div>

3. Save the following script in a new file named "CreateSilverlight.js" and place it in the same directory on the server as the page.

function CreateSilverlight(){

Silverlight.createHostedObjectEx({

source: "streaming:/23180/TafitiWalkthru",parentElement: Wrapper_TafitiWalkthru});

}

Happy Searching!

-Mithun Dhar

Some days, I love more than others! And today is one of those days…not just because it’s a Friday but also because I was humored by some real good surprises by my manager!

I got my review today and had a very strong FY07. It totally came out of the blue when my manager preponed his vacation to talk to me about my past year’s performance! Since we are an agile company, I had a couple managers do my review and boy oh boy, was I happy or what! I was grinning from ear to ear. This review has been my best review so far in my career here at Microsoft! The compensation was great, the package was sweet, the stocks were singing sweet tunes! All in all, it was nothing short of perfect! There was very little left to disagree…

Everything is going great for me today. On my way back from San Jose, CA – Alaska Airlines was delayed, again, of course! But I was in for a sweet surprise when I was called to the podium (without my name being bastardized!), a very sweet looking Indian girl told me that she upgraded me to First class! Ah!

The stars, I tell you – they are great when they are aligned the right way! J

I am Just happy to be alive and grinning….

Looking forward to a great FY08!

-Mithun Dhar

There comes a point when you just lose your cool! And this often doesn’t happen to me except when god fucking damn Alaska Airlines decide to reschedule the flight 3 times without giving a prior notice! Here’s the scoop…

For the last four times, Alaska Airlines has been cancelling/rescheduling their flights without prior notice. And the delays have always been 3 or more hours. Unfortunately for me, I live in Seattle where Alaska is the dominant airline as it’s their hub. They don’t tell you what the problem is and they just announce on the PA that the flight is delayed and the new boarding time is _ _:_ _! This just irks me! After a repeating this a couple of times, they then tell you they have a technical problem and the engineers are trying to fix it. The exact sequence of events was in play again last evening when I was trying to catch a flight to come to the Bay area.

The original flight was supposed to depart at 6:46PM and then they kept on rescheduling this until I could take it no longer and I had to kick a fuss! I am usually not like that and have a great deal of patience. I seldom cuss but everybody has their limits. I went to the counter and cried bullshit to the agent and told her I have to be compensated for this inconvenience. At which point she threatens to call security. It’s authority like this I fucking detest and makes my blood boil with rage! I’ve been waiting at the godforsaken airport for more than 3 hours now and she calmly tells us that the flight is delayed and the new boarding time is 8:45 PM which means the flight will depart at 9:15 PM. The past four times, I’ve had the same experience…everytime, its either the crew has not arrived (Ridiculous!) or the bathrooms are not working, or there are some technical problems. I mean come on! If your flights are not being maintained properly don’t fly them or make sure to repair them. Once is fine, twice is OK but if this becomes a habit you are really pissing a lot of people.

Adding insult to injury, she offered a $6 coupon that can be used only on the day of the flight and in the same airport. Let’s back up, $6 for a 3 hour delay? Ie., $2 an hour? For gig’s I called Alaska Air and asked them if I can reschedule my flight for another one which was leaving an hour 10 after…and they wanted $100 for putting me on that. I think justice needs to go both ways…if your time’s worth money – so is mine! If you are charging $100 to reschedule me to put me on a flight that flies after an hour and 10 mins I expect the same to be compensated to me – if my flight is delayed by more than an hour. When I bought that up with the agent she just told me, that it was company policy and there’s nothing I can do about it…

It’s helplessness like this that makes me mad! They can’t get away like this…I really wish I could recuperate my $94 somehow. In all that rage, I wished I had a permanent marker to leave some nice graffiti in their planes. I bet that would cost them more than $94 to clean up…aargh!! But of course, my conscience is a little more mightier than that...

But, someone has to bell the cat!

A very very annoyed,

Mithun Dhar

I was cleaning up my inbox earlier today and came across this awesome slide that highlights the key benefits and differences between Silverlight and Flash/Flex model. I just finished the Adobe 360 Flex conference in Seattle yesterday and this slide helps me understand both the platforms much better. A quick search on the web also points me to Michael Schawarz's blog which has a more detailed slide and a very active discussion. None the less, I thought this would serve as a good slide as I talk about Silverlight in my events this quarter.

I am usually not a big fan of marketing collateral but this Whirlything is really really awesome! We give out these thingies at our events but geeks being geeks, we also put in a soft version of it :)

Go ahead... Spin it. Flip it. Have some fun with it. We won't tell anyone :)

When you're done playing, why not check out some of the cool developer resources at your fingertips?
Flip it once, and you'll find all sorts of great resources for diving deep into your development passions... e-newsletters, documentation libraries, local live events, certification courses, downloads, the works. Flip it again, and you'll find pointers to all the information you could ever want about each of our key web technology products

Check it out here: http://www.whirlything.com/  Go ahead! Give it a spin or two...

-Mithun Dhar

Thank God, I wasn't alive to see these days...

-Mithun Dhar

Thanks for attending my event in Portland, OR. Posted below is a neatly compiled set of resources! (Thanks Lynn!). Please let me know if you require any more information.

LINQ

Webcast - Daniel Moth - language features on Channel9 - basics of how .NET language supports language-integrating query

ScottGu's Blog Series on ASP.NET and LINQ - multipart series on how to implement LINQ in ASP.NET, make sure to read the comments and Scott's answers

ScottGu's T-SQL visualizer - download and use it

101 LINQ Code Samples Here - comprehensive list of every LINQ expression

Performance comparisons - for different types of LINQ, i.e. XLINQ, DLINQ, etc..

Luca webcast - LINQ designer - hear the 'why' from the guy who led the design efforts for LINQ

Detailed explanation - including change tracking behavior, which features of databases are supported, type conversion chart, etc... - great, thorough MSDN article - READ THIS before you start coding in LINQ!

WCF

Books - and I do recommend that you pick up at least one book before you start coding in WCF

WCF Step-by-Step MSPress - by John Sharp -beginning

Learning WCF - O'Reilly - by Michele Leroux Bustamante - intermediate

Programming WCF Services - O'Reilly by Juval Lowy - advanced

Webcasts

MLB series - http://www.dasblonde.net/2007/06/24/WCFWebcastSeries.aspx

MLB on .NET Rocks - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1CD49558-EBD1-4964-BFAC-66615A51FDCE&displaylang=en

WCF 101 screencast - http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=316052#316052

Nishith series http://wcfarchitect.net/2007/03/08/webcast-on-windows-communication-foundation.aspx

Websites

Core reference http://wcf.netfx3.com/

Patterns - Service Factory - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480534.aspx

Dev Tools - http://wcf.netfx3.com/files/folders/development_tools/default.aspx

Codeplex - Service Factory - http://www.codeplex.com/servicefactory

Performance Comparison - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb310550.aspx

WCF host registration error fix - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms733768.aspx

Silverlight

MindMap for learning paths - http://www.bbits.co.uk/playground/silverlight/index.html

Videos (quick learning) http://silverlight.net/learn/learnvideos.aspx#cat1

Mix07 sessions & 'HowDoI' screencasts

http://silverlight.net/quickstarts/blend_quickstart/default.aspx

Main MS site on MSDN http://Msdn.microsoft.com/silverlight

Silverlight Architecture (includes deployment)

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb428859.aspx

Silverlight embeddable media http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb428858.aspx

Demo videos to use with Silverlight applications

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/musicandvideo/hdvideo/contentshowcase.aspx

Very cool! http://chris.pirillo.com/live/ 

-Mithun Dhar