Architecture + Strategy : Silverlight

Architect Cafe | November 2009 Series | Online Webcasts

dachou — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 07:08:39 GMT

November 24, 2009 at 11:00am – 12:30pm PST
An Architect’s perspective on Silverlight 3
Tim Heuer
Many .NET developers are becoming more and more interested in the Rich Internet Application development space, and in particular Silverlight. In this session we will step back from a detailed implementation technology and take a higher level look at Silverlight from the architect’s perspective. We will discuss the types of applications where Silverlight makes sense and some scenarios where Silverlight may not be the appropriate technology. We will also delve into some of the architectural decisions that the architect must consider when writing applications for this platform and where some of the tradeoffs may lie.

Link to Register: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032432980&Culture=en-US

November 25, 2009, 11:00am – 12:30pm PST
Cloud-computing architecture – designing multi-tenant applications on Windows Azure
Joseph Hofstader
Cloud computing is one of the hottest topics in information technology today. With all the confusion surrounding acronyms ending in ‘aas’ like Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS) it can be intimidating for even seasoned IT professionals. This presentation will briefly discuss the different types of cloud platforms and then address one of the key business scenarios for the cloud: Software as a Service.
Software as a Service is a business model for making applications available over the Internet. One of the key tenets of SaaS is multi-tenancy, or software designed to be used by multiple parties. Designing SaaS applications touches on many of the technologies that comprise the Azure platform: Processing, Storage, Workflow, Database and most importantly security. This presentation will discuss how each of technologies can be utilized to define a flexible architecture for multi-tenant solutions.

Link to Register: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032432981&Culture=en-US

For session recordings and content from the November 2009 series, please visit http://blogs.msdn.com/sac/pages/cafe-2009-11.aspx.

For information on other events part of the Architect Cafe series, please visit http://blogs.msdn.com/sac/pages/architect-cafe.aspx.

Silverlight 3 FireStarter | Thursday 2009.09.17 | Redmond, WA or Online

dachou — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 08:39:17 GMT

The FREE Silverlight 3 Firestarter sessions in Redmond, WA and available as online webcasts on Thursday September 17th include a keynote from Scott Guthrie and presentations from Tim Heuer, Brad Abrams, Karl Shifflett and other Microsoft community leaders. You'll learn what's new and noteworthy in the latest releases of Silverlight and Expression 3. We'll also give you a rundown on .NET RIA services, toolkit, and more.

AGENDA:

TIME	SESSION	SPEAKERS
8:45am – 9:00am	Event Kick Off	Mithun Dhar
9:00am – 10:00am	Keynote	Scott Guthrie
10:00am – 11:00am	Key Silverlight Scenarios	Tim Heuer
11:00am – 11:15am	Break
11:15am – 12:15pm	Expression 3 Overview (Includes Behaviors)	Janete Perez
12:15pm – 1:00pm	Lunch Break
1:00pm – 1:30pm	Sketch Flow	Shawn Oster
1:30pm – 2:30pm	Toolkit & Controls	Justin Angel, Shawn Oster
2:30pm – 3:30pm	RIA Services	Brad Abrams
3:30pm – 3:45pm	Break
3:45pm – 4:30pm	Building Silverlight UIs with XAML Power Toys	Karl Shifflett
4:30pm – 5:00pm	Q & A Panel	All Speakers

LIVE EVENT (Redmond, WA) | REGISTER >>
LIVE WEBCAST | REGISTER >>

For more information or to register, visit:www.msdnevents.com/firestarter
OR CALL 1-877-MSEVENT

Silverlight and Photosynth at Stargate Universe

dachou — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 11:56:00 GMT

MGM and Microsoft partnered to build an application intended to give old and new fans of Stargate a first look at the main location of the new Stargate Universe show, an ancient starship called the Destiny. The sets for the Destiny are amongst the most sophisticated ever built for a TV show, accurately capturing the spirit of a spaceship that has been abandoned for millennia.

MGM wanted to give fans an accurate experience of what it would be like to walk around and explore the Destiny, and using Microsoft Silverlight and Photosynth were able to deliver an immersive 3-D experience.

UPDATE 2009.09.04 – a Microsoft Case Study and video has been published for this project. You can view the Case Study at http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?casestudyid=4000005102, and the video at http://www.microsoft.com/video/en/us/details/c0387435-dd01-4c5a-87c9-6e87cedeee15.

Solution

Over the space of two days, several hundred photographs were taken of some of the locations of the Destiny starship. These include the fan-favorite Gate Room, from where the crew embarks on their adventures through the Stargate as well as locations such as the ship’s control center, observation deck, and main shuttle.

These photographs were used to create a number of 3D scenes using Microsoft Photosynth technology. This technology analyzes pictures and creates a virtual 3D space using the different viewpoints from different pictures. Because the pictures were shot in high resolution, fans can zoom in and see the sets in great detail.

See the Stargate Universe Photosynth set at http://stargate.mgm.com/photosynth/index.html

Application Scenario

Now Photosynth does not require any programming effort. All we need to do, is to take pictures. Lots of pictures. Then all we need to do is upload the pictures to Photosynth.net, and Photosynth will do the rest, by interpreting textures in each photo and correlate the photos by matching similar textures, and figuring out spatially where each photo is located. Then finally, all of the photos in one set are stitched into a 3D environment for visitors to navigate through.

Compare Photosynth to traditional approaches of trying to deliver 360 degree view of items, rooms, etc., which requires carefully planned photo shoots, then writing or obtaining specialized software to render them and allow viewers to interact with them. The time and effort required to create a “synth” can literally be minutes. Then just a few HTML-level changes to embed the Silverlight viewer for Photosynth into a web page, and anyone visiting that page can now interact with the synth.

A screen shot of the gallery view is shown below.

Kind of like a photo gallery on steroids. However, Photosynth is not just a slideshow. It allows viewers to traverse through the set of pictures in a non-linear manner, and to see the spatial perspectives between pictures (where each photo was taken relative to other photos).

At the same time, specific considerations should be taken when taking photos for Photosynth. Basically, cover lots of angles and have lots of overlaps for overview shots, then lots of close-ups for detailed shots. Here’s a short tutorial on how to shoot for Photosynth.

For the Stargate Universe synth, extra attention was paid to the physical architecture of the Destinty set. And the series of shots were taken so that the resulting synth would provide viewers an experience of walking through the set.

Thus Photosynth can be leveraged in many scenarios, especially when a project has physical content that can be shared online. These can be anything, such as product showcases, exterior environments, interior walk-throughs, etc. Another simple and elegant way to enhance user acquisition and retention on websites.

Silverlight and Live Messenger at Photobucket

dachou — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 09:24:52 GMT

Photobucket has collaborated with Microsoft to build Photobucket Visual Search (http://photobucket.com/visualsearch), making use of Silverlight, Windows Live Services and Photobucket's Open API platform. Photobucket Visual Search uses Silverlight to provide a rich and entertaining search experience, by displaying photos and videos in an easy-to-browse interface. The experience shows up search results, as well as related terms, helping users to find images they might not have in the past.

Recognizing that photos are about sharing a social experience, Photobucket decided to use Microsoft's new Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit to socially enable this Visual Search experience. Windows Live Messenger has over 320 Million active users, with over 32 billion social relationships between them. Sharing an image with friends on Windows Live is as easy as a click of a button with Photobucket Visual Search.

Situation

Photobucket is a very popular site on the Internet for uploading, sharing, linking and finding photos, videos and graphics. Photobucket is usually used for personal photographic albums, remote storage of avatars displayed on internet forums, and storage of videos. Photobucket's image hosting is often used for eBay, MySpace (now a corporate cousin), Bebo, Neopets and Facebook accounts, LiveJournals or other blogs, and message boards. Users may keep their albums private, allow password-protected guest access, or open them to the public.

Below are some statistics (circa 2007) regarding the Photobucket.com website.

30+ million searches processed / day
25 million unique site visitors/month in the US, and over 46 Million unique site visitors/month worldwide
Over 7 billion images uploaded
#31 in Top 50 Sites in the US
#41 top 100 Global Sites
18th Largest Ad supported site in the US
41.4% share of U.S. visits to photography web sites
56% of users are under 35, and 52% are female

This project is intended to enhance Photobucket’s user experience while mapping specific objectives to the following core business goals:

Leverage rich software to create a fun and engaging experience
Social communication features that provide increased web traffic
Encourage users to add their own tags and collect metadata in the process
Improve user acquisition and retention to the Photobucket website

Richer visualization and interaction, plus social networking capabilities, were chosen as the means to achieve the goals of improving user acquisition and retention. Consequently, Silverlight and Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit were chosen as the components from the Microsoft platform that can be leveraged for the Photobucket Visual Search project. Photobucket’s existing open API’s (HTTP/REST-based) are used directly to support the search client application.

Architecture

The project architecture consists of Photobucket’s existing server infrastructure, which provides the open REST-based API’s, images, albums, thumbnails, groups (featured, most active, most recent, most contributions, contests, etc.), static content, etc. The Photobucket.com website itself is a user interaction/presentation layer on top of the thousands of servers deployed as part of the content infrastructure. The Photobucket.com website manages all the metadata associated with the massive amount of content, such as tags, descriptions, comments, image ownerships and relationships, user memberships, etc. Searches done on the Photobucket website is performed on the metadata and indexes; and the search results point to actual locations of content and assets across the massively parallel content infrastructure.

The content infrastructure consists of multiple farms of thousands of servers, each manages different types of content, with user data partitioned horizontally across servers in each group. The content servers can be accessed directly using sub-domains on photobucket.com, such as i98.photobucket.com for one of the image clusters, t104.photobucket.com for one of the thumbnail clusters.

Application requests are managed by the photobucket.com website, and the open API’s are managed via api.photobucket.com servers. Search queries retrieve an XML response, which represent search hits, with associated metadata, and actual image locations potentially pointing to hundreds of different servers where they physically reside.

The Silverlight search client implementation is designed to fully leverage the search service as part of Photobucket.com’s open API’s. It captures the search queries from the user, then sends it to api.photobucket.com for processing, then interprets the returned XML, renders the result, and downloads individual thumbnails from actual server locations in the thumbnails server farm.

The Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit implementation is mostly client-side. Photobucket hosts some of the files such as static images for branding the messenger interface, but most of the files are retrieved directly from the messenger service in the Live Services platform. Integration with the Silverlight Visual Search application is done through the JavaScript bridge.

A diagram representing the logical architecture is shown below.

The overall end-to-end architecture consists of these components

Client – Silverlight 2, Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc.
Server (Photobucket) – Linux, Apache 2.2.4 (EL4), PHP 5.2.6, MySql
Server (Live Services) – IIS 6, ASP.NET 2.0.50727
Tools – Visual Studio 2008, Expression Studio

Silverlight Visual Search Development

The default target dimensions for the application are 1024 X 768. However, the application supports browser resizing and will adjust accordingly when the user changes browser window size dynamically.

The application has two primary states:

Main View (Search & Explore) – This is the state the user will be in initially and for a majority of the search and explore functionality. The main view displays thumbnails of the image results. It also allows users to modify their searches, or explore further using alternative searches.
Zoom View – The secondary state of the application brings the user into a view where the focus is on the viewing aspect of the large image and the image options, including sharing with Live Services.

The project team went through many data visualization designs for the search results. In the end, a simplistic one that represented a similar model to the rest of the Photobucket site was chosen.

Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit Integration

While in Zoom View, a user can share the photo via IM using Live Messenger. Doing so will prompt the user to sign in or register to sign up for Live Messenger. If the user is already signed in, this will trigger the user's Windows Live contact list to pop up.

Delegated Authentication

Signing in will link a user’s Windows Live ID with the Photobucket.com website, granting an authentication consent (as a site-wide stored consent token) to Photobucket so that web pages generated from Photobucket can reuse this session with Live Messenger, and not have to require the user to sign-in on each page.

The project team decided to leverage Live Messenger’s Delegated Authentication method because it provides the most unobtrusive method to the existing Photobucket’s membership system, as well as simplicity in implementation as the identity federation approach would be significantly more complex.

Messenger Web Bar

The Messenger Web Bar is a single UI Control that contains a full Windows Live Messenger experience. The Messenger Web Bar has the following functionality:

Contact list—The contact list enables the user to manage contacts and interact with them.
Conversation list—The conversation list contains all active conversations.
User area—The user area shows the user's presence and enables the user to update this information
Cross-page navigation—Cross-page navigation enables the user to stay signed in to Live Messenger while navigating from page to page within your application Web site.

This functionality is encapsulated within a small bar at the bottom of the page. Because the Live Messenger Web Bar works across pages, conversations that start on a page on the application Web site can continue on another page of the application Web site. This functionality enables an application Web site to use the Live Messenger Web Bar as a platform to deeply integrate Live Messenger functionality and data into the site. Making an application Web site more social with the Messenger Web Bar and UI Controls can significantly increase user engagement.

Shown below is a picture of the Messenger Web Bar used as part of the Visual Search experience.

Once the user is logged into the Windows Live Messenger service, the user can view and interact with the list of contacts managed in the Windows Live service. The user can see also see presence information in terms of who among the contacts is online or offline at the moment. An IM conversation can then be initiated just by selecting a contact. If the user initiates an IM conversation while in Zoom View, Visual Search will automatically insert a link that says “Check this photo” with a URL to the actual image.

Application Scenario

This project demonstrated how Silverlight can be leveraged to add value to a website completely built on the LAMP stack. It also showed how Live Services can be leveraged, without any significant custom development effort, to add social computing capabilities to any website. The combination of rich clients, and composition of multiple cloud-based services on the Web, represents a Software Plus Services implementation approach, and how it enhances existing Web browsing models and improves user acquisition and retention.

Related Resources

Embedded Database Engine for Silverlight Applications

dachou — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 11:44:21 GMT

So far, rich Internet applications (RIA) don’t have to be concerned with data management on the client side, as most connected implementations are designed to be simply a visualization and interaction layer to data and services on the server side. In these cases, data is retrieved from the server as JSON or XML data types (or serialized binary objects for some platforms), then cached in-memory as objects and collections, part of the application, and eventually discarded as part of the application lifecycle.

But for relatively more complex applications that require larger and more distributed data sets, lower application latency, reduced chattiness, data relationships (even basic ones), the implementation starts to get a little complicated, and becomes more difficult with procedural languages like JavaScript. In that case, a simple and light-weight in-memory embedded database may become quite useful.

Perst for .NET

McObject’s Perst is an open source, object-oriented embedded database system. Perst has been available in Java (SE, ME, and EE) and in .NET and .NET Compact Framework, and Mono. But recently McObjects ported Perst to Silverlight as well. Its small library size (~1MB including support for generics; ~5,000 lines of code) and small in-memory footprint is packed with a very sophisticated set of features, such as:

Support for direct and transparent object persistence
Full text search with indexing support
Full-ACID transactions support
SQL-based interface
XML import/export

Perst inherited much of its heritage from McObject’s eXtremeDB embedded database product, which has been used in devices such as MP3 players, WiMAX base stations, digital TV set top boxes, military and aerospace applications, etc. Yes, even embedded applications and firmware can use databases.

Interestingly, the C# code tree was initially produced from the Java version using the Java-to-C# converted in Visual Studio, then some additional changes to enable specific C# features. While not all Java applications can be converted this easily, this shows that some can. And this also means how similar C# and Java are.

As an embedded database engine, Perst presents a very viable in-memory data management solution to Silverlight applications. It can be instantiated and used directly as part of the application, instead of something that runs in a separate process and memory space, or over the network on the back-end server for most RIA’s. Perst can also use Silverlight’s isolated storage to manage additional data that can be cached in a persistent manner. This enables many more complex scenarios than simply storing JSON, XML, CSV, or plain text data in isolated storage.

Silverlight 3 Out-Of-Browser

One can argue that the “connected client” design (as described above) works best for RIA’s, as they’re rich Web applications intended to enhance the user experience when connected to the cloud, to begin with. Or essentially, everyone can assume ubiquitous connectivity anytime and everywhere, so applications only need to live in the cloud, then all we need is a browser.

But we’re also starting to see very valid scenarios emerge to access the cloud outside of the browser. And applications in these scenarios are often more refined/specialized than their HTML-based counterparts. For example, iPhone apps, iTunes, Wii, Adobe AIR, Google Gears, Google Desktop, Apple Dashboard Widgets, Yahoo! Gadgets, Windows Gadgets, FireFox extensions and plug-ins, Internet Explorer 8 WebSlices, SideBars, and ToolBars, etc. These out-of-browser application models are very valid because it has been observed that users tend to spend more time with them, than the websites behind those clients.

There are many potential reasons for this observation, with some more prevalent in some scenarios. For example, local content is more visible to users and easier to access, without having to open a browser and then finding the website (sometimes needing to re-authenticate) and downloading the content. And of course, content and data can be stored locally for off-line access.

Now that Silverlight 3 also supports installation of applications locally on the desktop, we can add the option of caching some data locally, in addition to being a locally installed visualization and interaction layer to cloud-based services, or a rich disconnected gadget. And McObject’s Perst embedded database would again be a really compelling solution to help with managing the data.

This is especially important for out-of-browser and locally installed applications, as one of their primary benefits is to support off-line usage. Having a database management solution such as Perst can help increase the overall robustness of the user experience, by ensuring work continuity regardless of connection state.

About McObject

Founded by embedded database and real-time systems experts, McObject offers proven data management technology that makes applications and devices smarter, more reliable and more cost-effective to develop and maintain. McObject counts among its customers industry leaders such as Chrysler, Maximizer Software, Siemens, Phillips, EADS, JVC, Tyco Thermal Controls, F5 Networks, DIRECTV, CA, Motorola and Boeing.

www.mcobject.com

Silverlight 3 Released!

dachou — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 21:43:42 GMT

Silverlight 3 is officially released into production today!

Silverlight has come a long way in the short time since its V1 launch in September 2007 and V2 release in October 2008. Each version brought very significant enhancements to the platform. My earlier post on the Silverlight 3 Beta has details on new features, adoption statistics to date, and a small list of interesting Silverlight applications.

To summarize though, some significant changes in this release are:

Out-of-Browser

Silverlight 3 offers a new set of features for building safe, secure, sandboxed companion experiences for the Web through a single coherent platform, that run on user desktops. Out-of-browser support allows Silverlight applications to run on Windows or Mac desktops and deliver online, offline, or intermittently connected access to applications and content—without having to rebuild applications on another platform. Silverlight application can be easily found on the desktop or start menu, and launched with a single click—eliminating the requirement for privileges to run. In addition, it can test if the network is connected, update itself with newer versions, and have access to isolated storage.

This works very similar to Adobe AIR, but Silverlight does not need a separate platform/runtime download in order to install applications and run them. If an application is enabled to run from the desktop, all a user has to do is right-mouse click on the application directly on the web page, which will have an option to “Install to Desktop”.

Smooth Streaming

Smooth Streaming technology is the union of online player experiences delivered through Silverlight and the streaming capabilities provided through Windows Server + IIS, that enables adaptive streaming of media so users with high bandwidth connections can experience HD-quality streaming while others with lower bandwidth receive the appropriate stream for their connectivity.

This is the technology first used for the 2008 Beijing Olympics event by NBC to deliver live and on-demand programs over the Internet, then used at many other places such as Netflix, NCAA March Madness 2009 for CBS, the 2009 Presidential Inauguration, and most recently for the Michael Jackson’s memorial service.

What’s significant about Smooth Streaming is that to deliver long-form content, along with all types of advertising scenarios (pre/post-roll, interstitial, overlay, etc.), can be delivered from Microsoft’s Internet Information Server (IIS) over the ubiquitous HTTP protocol, without requiring use of traditional streaming servers. Short-form content can still leverage out-of-the-box progressive download feature as well. Furthermore, this means it is much simpler to scale out the back-end infrastructure to serve the content to any amount of online audience, as an operation can add IIS servers quickly, plus leveraging web caches from CDN’s to further improve the scale and reach of any content.

Prototyping with SketchFlow

SketchFlow, the dynamic prototyping feature in Expression Blend 3, demonstrates the flow, layout, and transitions of an application through interactive “sketches” to convey initial concepts. And concurrent workflows between design, user experience, and development ensure that the visuals, interaction model, and the underlying architecture of an application can be simultaneously evolved and delivered as a completed project.

SketchFlow ehances the speed and efficiency to prototype a vision for an application. Rapidly demonstrate and iterate on ideas, application flows, screen layout, and functionality of an application using a SketchFlow prototype.

Lastly, visit these resources for more information:

As well as a few of the projects my team and I worked on this year:

Kelley Blue Book Perfect Car Finder
Photobucket Visual Search
Stargate Universe Photosynth
NewEgg.com Digital Camera Promotions
Grubb & Ellis Spotlight
LA Fitness Find a Club and Club Tour
InXile Line Rider

Silverlight and Bing Maps at Grubb & Ellis

dachou — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:04:00 GMT

Today is a time in history where there are more economic factors disrupting the real estate market and operations than ever before. To mitigate this trend and ensure real estate and financial professionals have all the information necessary to make critical decisions, more and more data is being provided to help improve business intelligence. However, this resulted in creating mountains of charts, graphs and documents that need to be reviewed from multiple systems, in order to present a clear perspective of assets, locations, and their operations. This sheer volume of information adds significant overhead to the users and professionals that depend on them.

To address this issue, Grubb & Ellis Company worked with Microsoft and speakTECH, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, leveraging Microsoft Silverlight and Bing Maps for Enterprise, to create a new tool called Spotlight.

Spotlight is a real estate and research mapping tool which provides a rich data visualization and interaction environment for an array of property, location, operations and research information. The layering of a massive amount of data at Grubb & Ellis, over a rich interface, allows clients and professionals at Grubb & Ellis to search, review and collaborate regarding real estates across the globe, in a streamlined and easily accessible manner.

Examples of this type of intelligent data layering are:

Property Level Statistics and Analysis
Aerial Mapping Tool
Market / Sub-Market Analytics
Competitive / Market Analysis
Parcel and Other Associated Statistics
Demographic Statistics
Economic Development Zones

High definition video of transaction professionals and virtual building tours using Microsoft Photosynth, where available, are also accessible through a single click of the mouse, providing users with unparalleled insight into the information.

A few screen shots of the Spotlight application are shown here:

Main Search and Summary Screen

Property Detail and Business Intelligence Details

Broker Profiles and Property Tours in High Definition

The Spotlight application was completed in just 12 weeks, including significant work on the back-end to integrate data sources and providing them as services.

“The combination of Bing Maps and Sliverlight, has enabled speakTECH to merge the large volumes of structured data with rich interactive maps to create an entirely new generation of applications. These capabilities have enabled Grubb & Ellis to combine time consuming research and analysis tasks that used to spread across many applications, into an single user experience. Enabling rapid decision support, supports the accelerating needs of today’s sales and marketing teams” Aaron Sloman, CEO, speakTech.

Components from the Microsoft platform used in this project include:

Silverlight SDK
Photosynth Silverlight Control
Bing Maps (Virtual Earth) Silverlight Map Control
Bing Maps for Enterprise
Expression Studio
Visual Studio 2008
.NET Framework 3.5 SP1, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), ASP.NET
Internet Information Services 7.0 (IIS)
SQL Server 2005
Windows Server 2008

Application Scenario

This project is a nice case study of how multiple enterprise resources managed in an on-premise data center can be mashed up with cloud-based services on the Web, to deliver intuitive and easy-to-use services for end users, at a fraction of the cost of developing a new Web portal from the ground up. This project also exemplifies how RIA technologies, and in this case, Silverlight, can be used effectively to create a very sophisticated data visualization and interaction layer. The data layered on top of Bing Maps for Enterprise (Virtual Earth) are not just mere pushpins and polygons; they are really complicated and inter-related data sets managed in separate enterprise data stores. And the sophisticated controls made available users allow them to drill in on various details and create specific views to support various business needs.

Also note that this project took just 3 months to deliver into production. Comparatively, an implementation using HTML and AJAX alone would've taken at least twice as long, by the team's assessment.

About Grubb & Ellis

Grubb & Ellis Company (NYSE: GBE) is one of the largest and most respected commercial real estate services and investment companies in the world. Over 6,000 professionals in more than 130 company-owned and affiliate offices draw from a unique platform of real estate services, practice groups and investment products to deliver comprehensive, integrated solutions to real estate owners, tenants and investors. The firm’s transaction, management, consulting and investment services are supported by highly regarded proprietary market research and extensive local expertise.

http://www.grubb-ellis.com/

About speakTECH

speakTECH is an interactive design and solution integration firm delivering innovative solutions in the areas of Web-Based, Enterprise wide collaboration and Social Computing. We specialize in uniting technology, riveting design and interactive experience into powerful, world-class business solutions. Established in 2005, speakTECH has grown to become a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, National Systems Integrator, and has been honored with numerous design awards.

http://www.speaktech.com/

Michael Jackson’s Memorial Service Available Via Silverlight and IIS Smooth Streaming

dachou — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 09:13:26 GMT

On July 7th, 10AM PT/1PM ET, Microsoft will be broadcasting the Michael Jackson memorial, live in HD from the Staples Center in Los Angeles using Silverlight and IIS Smooth Streaming (the technologies used for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, 2009 NCAA March Madness, Netflix, etc.). And this event will be available worldwide to anyone who has an internet connection.

Memorial Service Live Streaming

Visit the Sympatico / MSN inMusic website, at http://inmusic.ca/news_and_features/Michael_Jackson, for up-to-date content, and special tributes to the King of Pop. The Silverlight player providing the live streaming service will become available at the time of the event (2009.07.07 10AM Pacific Time / 1PM Eastern Time).

MSN Special Coverage

Also visit MSN for additional information and special coverage on Michael Jackson, at http://entertainment.uk.msn.com/music/michael-jackson.aspx. And visit a DeepZoom (also in Silverlight) collage of hundreds of Michael Jackson’s pictures, at http://www.msn.michaeljackson.shoothill.com/.

Microsoft at the 2009 CMA Music Festival

dachou — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 10:59:04 GMT

Microsoft and the Country Music Association are partnering on bridging the cultural divide between the country music world and the world of technology, this week at the 2009 Country Music Association (CMA) Music Festival. Microsoft will be showcasing cutting edge technology few outside the tech industry have seen – including Silverlight with DeepZoom technology and Microsoft Tag.

This is one of the places where Microsoft Tag is being used in a large scale application of digitally “enhanced reality” where the physical world in tied to online assets in meaningful and significant ways. For more information on Tag, see my previous blog post - http://blogs.msdn.com/dachou/archive/2009/01/08/microsoft-tag-interactive-mobile-bar-codes.aspx.

At the festival in Nashville:

“Cell Journalists” using 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
“Where am I” using Microsoft Tag and Virtual Earth - 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 Virtual Earth (Bing Maps) making the task of navigating the enormous number of venues easy and convenient for festival attendees
“Tag Hunter” using Microsoft Tag - an event wide contest which will be distributed event wide by a legion CMA “Fun Squad” members. Attendees can scan these Tag Hunter cards and find out immediately if have a winning tag!
“Technology Booths” showcasing Microsoft Surface, Xbox 360, and IE8 – Attendees can drop by Microsoft booths available onsite at the festival, to check email, browse the web, and to check the festival schedule and venue information, etc. In addition, to test drive two Surface tables with a jukebox application, and in-person visits by performing artists. And of course, play the Xbox 360 RockBand Country Track Pack from MTV!

And online:

“Be This Close” using Silverlight DeepZoom - interactive search game (available on 6/11)
“Cell Journalists” ASP.NET photo sharing website

Links:

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

Tags and Metadata:

Twitter Tag: #MSCMA09
Twitter: @MsftAtCMA
Blog Tags: CMA Music Fest 2009, Microsoft at CMA 2009

Architect Council | Pragmatic Patterns for Architects

dachou — Wed, 27 May 2009 06:03:43 GMT

“Cloud computing will supersede traditional IT”, “SOA will enable business agility”, “my way or the highway”, etc. We’ve all heard this type of proclamations before, as many look to the “next big things” in technology to exact sweeping changes and solve many issues; truth is, technologies and tools aren’t as instrumental in influencing progress, as the design and discipline in applying them to specific issues. When used appropriately, technologies and tools can be powerful enablers that bring about change.

To address this, and trying to be a bit more green, our team is hosting a series of live webcasts at noon PST on June 9th – 11th, 2009, which will focus on guidance and patterns for some of today’s hottest topics. Just another excuse to have lunch at your desk (if your time zone is nearby)! :)

Patterns for Moving to the Cloud – June 9
Larry Clarkin & Wade Wegner

Building Silverlight & WPF Applications with Prism – June 10
David Hill

Patterns for Parallel Computing – June 11
David Chou

For more details and registration, please visit http://blogs.msdn.com/sac/pages/council-2009q2.aspx

Silverlight 3 Beta

dachou — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 03:40:00 GMT

You may have already heard about the many announcements made at Microsoft’s MIX09 conference this week in Las Vegas. One of the major announcements is the Beta availability of Silverlight 3 (and it does look like three’s the charm).

Customer adoption to date

Scott Guthrie during his keynote at MIX09 shared some encouraging statistics:

Silverlight launched 18 months ago, shipped Silverlight 2 six months ago
350+ million installations globally
300,000+ designers and developers
200+ partners in 30 countries contributing to the ecosystem
10,000+ applications globally
Microsoft has 200+ of its own websites built using Silverlight

A few major customer adoption announcements were also made:

Netflix standardizing on Silverlight to deliver its online on-demand video instant watch service across PCs, Macs, and devices; leveraging PlayReady DRM and smooth/adaptive streaming capabilities
2010 Winter Olympics at Vancouver – NBC announced that the event will again be delivered online using Silverlight, similar to the 2008 Beijing Olympics event
NCAA “March Madness” Men’s Basketball Championship – CBS Sports Online coverage of all tournament games delivered using Silverlight at mmod.ncaa.com
2008 Presidential Inauguration – the Presidential Inauguration Committee selected Silverlight to enable online video streaming of President Obama’s official swear-in and Whistle Stop Tour events
Bondi Publishing (who owns the Playboy Archives above) – working to deliver their set of magazines including the New Yorker, Rolling Stones, and Playboy online using Silverlight. Playboy Archives is now live with with search, navigation, and DeepZoom at playboy.covertocover.com (best to visit at home)
KEXP – a Seattle-based radio station showed off an out-of-browser version (that works when off-line) of their content browser and player
Kelley Blue Book – Perfect Car Finder application using Silverlight at www.kbb.com/kbb/PerfectCarFinder/PhotoEdition.aspx
SAP – working to deliver Silverlight controls to be used in Netweaver and Web DynPro
Microsoft Worldwide Telescope – now Silverlight enabled at www.worldwidetelescope.org/webclient
Microsoft Virtual Earth – Silverlight Map Control for any website to use for enhanced visualization of geo-location and mapping capabilities CTP now available
Other mentions including Yahoo! Japan, CareerBuilder, 10 Cent QQ, BSkyB, ITV, Intuit, etc.

Interesting Silverlight applications to see

Some of the most compelling Silverlight applications I have seen (many are registered on Silverlight Showcase) are listed below.

General Info:

Media sites/demos:

Rich application sites/demos:

Casual Games:

Line Rider
Server Quest II
Terralever Zero Gravity
Mahjong Solitaire
Diver, Tire Storm, We are Bugs!, Water Demo (Farseer)
Bridge Basher
Zombomatic
Tunnel Trouble
Klotski
Dr. Popper
Shidonni
Fragmenti
Shock
Sprawl
Vector Space: ZERO

Reusable Controls Libraries (for enterprise applications):

Now these are just some of my favorites. But with the pace of developers building cool Silverlight applications, this list may need to be updated very frequently (last updated 3/20/09).

What’s new in Silverlight 3?

Fully supported by Visual Studio and Expression Blend, highlights of new features and functionality of Silverlight 3 include: major media enhancements, out of browser support allowing Web applications to work on the desktop; significant graphics improvements including 3D graphics support, GPU acceleration and H.264 video support; and many features to improve RIA development productivity.

Enhanced media support

Live and on-demand true HD (720p+) Smooth Streaming. IIS Media Services (formerly IIS Media Pack), an integrated HTTP media delivery platform, features Smooth Streaming which dynamically detects and seamlessly switches, in real time, the video quality of a media file delivered to Silverlight based on local bandwidth and CPU conditions.
Hardware accelerated HD playback. Leveraging graphics processor unit (GPU) hardware acceleration, Silverlight experiences can now be delivered in true full-screen HD (720p, 1080p, etc.).
Extensible media format support. In addition to VC-1/WMA, Silverlight 3 now supports MPEG-4-based H.264/AAC Audio. Also with the new extensible Raw AV pipeline, audio and video can be decoded outside the runtime and rendered in Silverlight, extending format support beyond the native codecs.
Digital rights management. Full and built-in support for DRM, powered by PlayReady Content Protection enables protected in-browser experiences using AES encryption or Windows Media DRM.

Enhanced graphics support

Perspective 3D Graphics. Content can now be applied to a 3D plane without writing any code. Live content can be rotated or scaled live content in space.
Pixel Shader effects. Image manipulation effects such as blur and drop shadow, using software-based rendering. Custom effects can also be created, and applied to any graphical content.
Bitmap Caching. Vector content, text, and controls can now be cached as bitmaps. This improves the rendering performance of applications and is useful for background content and for content which needs to scale without making changes to its internal appearance.
New Bitmap API. Support for writing pixels to bitmaps directly.
Themed application support. Runtime support for application theme updates driven by templates, and cascading style sheets.
Animation Effects. New effects such as spring and bounce. Developers can also now develop their own mathematical functions to describe an animation
Enhanced control skinning. Simplified skinning capabilities by keeping a common set of controls external from an application. This allows the sharing of styles and control skins between different applications.
Improved text rendering & font support. Enhanced rendering and rapid animation of text. Applications also load faster by enabling the use of local fonts.

Enhanced rich internet application (RIA) support

Out-of-Browser capabilities

Run outside of browser. Light-weight, sandboxed companion experiences for the Web that run on the desktop. Enabled without any additional download of runtime or the need to write applications in a different way.
Consumer friendly non-administrator install. Applications are hosted in a cache and do not require any privileges to run.
Safer, more secure, sandboxed. An application can be trusted without security warnings. All assets are stored in an isolated storage.
Built in auto-update. An application will check for new versions on the server and update on launch.
Connectivity detection (on-line/off-line). Can detect a loss of connection (or react to event notifications), then choose to cache data locally until a network connection is restored.
Desktop integration. On Windows and Macs, applications can be saved as short-cuts on the desktop and be one click away from your customer. On Windows 7, support will be provided for superbar integration, multi-touch, and location awareness services such as GPS support so that your application can react to the users location.

Deep Linking. Support for deep linking, which enables bookmarking a page within a RIA.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO). By utilizing business objects on the server, together with ASP.NET controls and site maps, users can automatically mirror database-driven RIA content into HTML that is easily indexed by the leading search engines.
60+ default controls with source code. Over 60 fully skinnable and customizable out-of-the-box controls such as charting and media, new layout containers such as dock and viewbox, and controls such as autocomplete, treeview and datagrid. The controls come with nine professional designed themes and the source code can be modified/recompiled or utilized as-is. Other additions include multiple selection in listbox controls, file save dialog, and support for multiple page applications with navigation.
Enhanced data support

Element-to-element binding. Enables property binding to CLR objects and other UI components via XAML, for instance binding a slider value to the volume control of a media player.
Data forms. Provides support for layout of fields, validation, updating and paging through data.
Data validation. Automatically catch incorrect input and warn the user with built-in validation controls.
Support for business objects on both client and server with n-Tier data support. Easily load, sort, filter and page data with added support for working with data. Includes a new built-in CollectionView to perform a set of complex operations against server side data. A new set of .NET RIA services supports these features on the server.

Improved performance

Application library caching. Reduced the size of applications by caching framework on the client which helps improve rendering performance.
Enhanced DeepZoom. Allows users to fluidly navigate through larger image collections by zooming.
Binary XML. Allows communication with the server to be compressed, greatly increasing the speed at which data can be exchanged.
Local Connection. This feature allows communication between multiple Silverlight applications on the client-side without incurring a server roundtrip.

Enhanced Accessibility Features. Provides access to all system colors, allowing partially-sighted people to make changes such as high contrast color schemes for ease of readability by re-using familiar operating system controls.

Event – Silverlight 2.0 Hands on Labs in Irvine, CA on Jan. 15

dachou — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 00:06:10 GMT

Join us for a new type of developer event - MSDN Unleashed is coming to SoCal!

This special installment consists of hands on labs, with a preconfigured computer set up for use for each attendee. The topic for this session is Silverlight 2.0. These labs were written by experts from our Silverlight product group in Redmond. The event will consist of three labs:
·         Silverlight Fundamentals
·         Silverlight and Connected Applications
·         Silverlight and Browser Integration

At this event you can expect to work with Silverlight 2.0. We will provide support for your work via proctors who are either Microsoft Certified Trainers or working Silverlight 2.0 developers (or both). Attendees will also be able to get copies of all of the labs to take home with them (bring a USB key if you want to take home the labs).

Thursday, January 15, 2009
Location: QuickStart
16815 Von Karman Avenue, Suite 100
Irvine, CA 92606
Time: 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm

Admission is free, but seating is limited, please register ASAP.

Event – XamlFest on January 14 & 15, 2009 at Irvine, California

dachou — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:04:29 GMT

Are you interested about WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) but concerned about the learning curve? Have you seen Silverlight but don’t know where to get started? Or are you curious about how tools like Visual Studio and Expression Blend help designers and developers work together to deliver great user experiences? If so, join us at XamlFest!

XamlFest is a two day interactive event where you’ll learn about the platforms the tools and processes used to deliver differentiated user experiences. It’s a chance for you to mingle with UX minded Microsoft folks as well as industry leading design integrators. It’s also an opportunity to pick up a free copy of Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Studio 2 for you attendance.

More details are available at http://blogs.msdn.com/usisvde/archive/2009/01/05/you-re-invited-to-xamlfest-socal-january-14-15.aspx

Olympics on Silverlight

dachou — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 12:23:19 GMT

08.08.08 - after 7 years of preparation and anticipation, the XXIX Olympiad has finally opened in Beijing. What a spectacular opening ceremony it was. And such breathtaking architectures of the "Bird's Nest" National Stadium and "Water Cube" Aquatics Center. It's hard even just to imagine the amount of thought and hard work that went into creating these phenomenal achievements.

Side Note on Physical Structures

Just want to take the opportunity to talk a little about these two eye-popping buildings.

The "Bird's Nest", completed just in March 2008, at one point had more than 7,000 workers toiling around the clock. Its most significant feature is the seemingly random lattice of interwoven steel used for the stadium exterior, which resembles the structure of a bird's nest. The unconventional design also brought a set of new issues to address during its construction. For example, the activities of welding sections of the steel structures together had to take place during specific times of the day, such that the structure is put together at a temperature that can accommodate the wide range of expansions and contractions of the steel structures caused by temperature changes throughout the year in Beijing.

The "Water Cube", completed at the end of 2007, is very interesting from the perspective of its "green" design, with the use of ETFE (Ethylene Tetrafluoroethylene) air cushions for its enclosure (instead of concrete/steel and/or huge glass panels. ETFE is essentially a form of plastic but doesn't burn due to the existence of fluoride in the material which chemically shields oxygen molecules.

The "bubble" design was reportedly inspired by the natural geometric shapes formed by soap bubbles. It provides natural lighting, insulation, and requires less steel structure to support than glass panels. The insulation is achieved by a sophisticated air pump system that maintains the pressure in the ETFE bubbles, resulting in major savings in heating costs during snowy winters in Beijing. During the summer, a ventilation system is used.

In addition, the "Water Cube" was designed with water-saving and environmental protection efforts. According to statistics, the outer surface and roof facade can "collect" 10,000 tons of rain water, 70,000 tons of clean water and 60,000 tons of swimming pool water annually. And the venue can also save 140,000 tons of recycled water a year.

The Online Experience

In the online world, we also have the much publicized partnership between NBC and Microsoft to bring the Olympics event coverage on to the Internet. It is reported that NBC will be streaming more than 3,500 hours of video content, including live coverage of every minute of competition from 25 sports. The sheer scale and magnitude of this project makes it the largest media event on the Web, so far.

The NBC Olympics video site lives exclusively on the MSN network, and is designed to handle more than 2.3 terabytes/second of traffic. Silverlight 2 is the core technology behind the Olympics video player and provides the high-quality, interactive experience.

But that's not all. Here are all the ways you can experience the 2008 Summer Olympics from Microsoft and NBC:

Online Video - Click http://www.nbcolympics.com/video to jump right in and experience high-quality, interactive video using Silverlight. Get HD quality video on the web that’s optimized using Silverlight’s adaptive streaming capability, watch up to four live streams simultaneously in the same player, and get expert commentary, etc.
MSN.com - MSN homepage will feature an Olympics module which will enable people to see results (or hide them if you don’t want any spoilers), get the latest news and see exclusive video coverage. Also implemented using Silverlight
MSN Toolbar - Install the new MSN Toolbar that gives you one click access to the medal tally and many other highlights. Also implemented using Silverlight
Live Search - Get the latest medal counts by sport or by country, or find out about all 10,000 of the athletes competing in the 2008 Summer Games
Zune - Starting on 8/9, Zune Marketplace will kick off a series of daily 2008 Olympic Games videos from NBC Sports, giving viewers special on-the-go access to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games
XBOX - XBOX users will be able to purchase and download a daily wrap-up of the day’s events from NBC Sports, with a complete wrap-up at the end of the Games
Windows Media Center - NBC Olympics On The Go provides downloads for 200+ hours of catch-up TV programming, with coverage of approximately 24 sports, the full opening ceremony, and a closing ceremony montage

Some screenshots of the Silverlight-based enhanced video player on nbcolympics.com.

Below is the enhanced player streaming the live men's cycling event, a separate concurrent video stream in picture-in-picture (PIP) mode, and live commentary on the lower right hand corner.

And the "Control Room" section (toggled by the top button on the left panel) which allows concurrent streaming of 4 separate live streams. I only have a 3MB pipe at home but they were all playing smoothly. Silverlight's adaptive streaming capability really helped in this case.

And look - DRM (Digital Rights Management)! ;)

LineRider with Silverlight 2 and Windows Live Services

dachou — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 23:54:00 GMT

Last week InXile Entertainment launched a new version of the Line Rider game, built using Silverlight 2, and integrated Windows Live services (ID and Messenger). This is one of the projects me and my Microsoft team were directly involved with, by partnering with InXile Entertainment and Cynergy Systems. And we are quite excited with the results.

The original version of Line Rider, launched September 2006, is a Flash-based game that has been cited by a number of publications (i.e., New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time, CNET, GameZone, etc.), and was one of Yahoo’s top 10 search words in late 2006. Existing momentum includes over 36,000 videos posted on Youtube (with more than 5 million views), ~10 million page views per month with ~1.7 million unique visitors.

With this release, we ported the Flash-based version to Silverlight.

We used Expression Blend to create the game layout and controls, used Visual Studio 2008 and C# for the game logic and physics engine implementation, and built on top of the Silverlight 2 beta 2 SDK.

So what's the big deal? Take a look at this video of one of the sample games.

Video: Jagged Peak Adventure by Unconed

Loved the snappy Cowboy Bebop music theme they used in this video. More amazing video clips available at http://linerider.com/en/movies and on Youtube.

Basically, users draw lines that make up the tracks, and little Line Rider bobsleds through the tracks as driven by gravity (while holding on for dear life). Very simple game mechanics, but quite an addictive cycle drainer if you get into it. :) There is already a large volume of video content showing all kinds of complex and intricate designs created by the existing community.

Flash to Silverlight

So why did we convert from Flash to Silverlight? Undoubtedly the change introduced inconveniences for existing users, plus the perceptions brought along by Microsoft's reputation (good and bad).

Now I have a tremendous amount of respect for Flash and the community it has generated. There are some pretty impressive applications built on Flash today, and the rich ecosystem consisting both proprietary and open-source tools and solutions. And based on my understanding, most things done on either Silverlight or Flash, can also be accomplished on the other platform today.

Of course, we tend to think that leveraging the .NET development platform provides a level of productivity improvement and sophistication, but it really wasn't about the technical merits of either Silverlight or Flash platforms. We were just there at the right place and the right time, and provided an effective partnership to help ensure project success.

At the time, InXile Entertainment was looking for ways to enhance the existing experience and bring it up a level. Specifically, to be able to share more effectively, integrate social aspects, and to be able to create a community around Line Rider. The previous Flash-based version provided excellent single-player experiences. But to share the tracks (i.e., to show others the masterpieces one has created), users resorted to their own means such as using their own video-capture software, media editing software, video hosting service, and had to find online storage or email Flash-based SOL binary files directly to each other, etc.

Thus we worked to tackle these needs for the Silverlight-based version. A couple of major things we did that added value to the project:

Saving tracks in XML format instead of the Flash-based binary SOL format. This allows for simpler cloud-based storage and sharing, plus eventual cross-platform porting of tracks (with the upcoming console-based versions)
Integrating Live Messenger and Live ID as part of the authoring and playback environment, which is intended to add a level of social interaction between users
Associating tracks with music playback to provide an experience similar to video capture/playback when shared

Basically, the intention is to make it easier for users to share and build a more integrated community.

Again, these can be done on Flash too, but we added the partnership to make sure that the resulting product met InXile's expectations. Plus from a long-term planning perspective, we felt that investing on the Microsoft platform has value beyond just the Web-based RIA platform aspect. The .NET skillsets can be reused to build and integrate cloud-based services, expand the community and social aspects, as well as reaching connected device platforms, for next-generation experiences.

What's Next?

InXile is working on console-based versions of the game (Xbox 360, Wii, PS3, Nintendo DS, Windows Mobile), called "Line Rider 2 Unbound", which at the moment looks just amazing. Take a look at these videos (part 1, part 2, part 3) for a quick preview of the enhancements they're making to the game.

Looking forward to, at some point, work with these guys again to port the Web-based Silverlight version to include the new Line Rider 2 features.

About InXile Entertainment

Located in Newport Beach, California, inXile entertainment is a game development company that focuses on both licensed and original intellectual properties. Formed in late 2002, inXile entertainment develops for personal computers and the major console platforms including the Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, Playstation 3, and Xbox 360. Their products include The Bard's Tale and Line Rider.

Read InXile Entertainment's press release regarding this project.

About Cynergy Systems

Cynergy is a leader in the design and development of Rich Internet Applications (RIA) specializing in Microsoft Silverlight and WPF as well as Adobe Flex and AIR.
Cynergy is privately held and headquartered in Washington, D.C.; the Company's U.S. field operations include Rochester, N.Y., Grand Rapids, Mich., and San Diego, Calif. Cynergy's European operation is based in London, United Kingdom and Copenhagen, Denmark and its Asia Pacific operations are located in Taipei, Taiwan and Sydney, Australia.

Read Cynergy's press release regarding this project.