Eliot's Blog : downloads

ArtRage Beta Shows Windows 7 Multitouch Capabilities at PDC

Eliot — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:12:00 GMT

I sure wish I could have seen this in person. The fine folks at ArtRage were showing off a beta version of their upcoming release. ArtRage is a graphic artist software package that uses Tablet PC functionality to enable realistic creation of water colors, oil paintings, chalk drawings, and much, much more. This new version includes a lot of new functionality, including the use of the Windows 7 multitouch APIs. As you can see in the YouTube video, touch enables real "painting" with a brush, giving artists the feel and interaction of non-digital art.

If you're not familiar with ArtRage, take a look at their Starter Edition. It's got a limited set of functionality, but it still shows off the awesome selection of capabilities. The full version is absolutely worth the nominal fee that they charge.

Duke U Press Goes Online

Eliot — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 19:33:00 GMT

The e-Duke Books Scholarly Collection includes online access to at least 100 news scholarly books published by Duke Universty Press in the humanities and social sciences in a calendar year. With the purchase of the current year's titles in the e-Duke Books Scholarly Collection, libraries will also receive access to all of the Press's backlist books now available in electronic form.

http://www.dukeupress.edu/library/edukebooks/index.html

According to The Chronicle of Higher Education:

Duke publishes about 115 books a year in the social sciences and humanities, according to Michael McCullough, the press’s sales manager. Subscribers to e-Duke Books will have online access to all those and to all backlist titles available in electronic format — 900 and counting. Although many university presses have partnerships with ebrary, Mr. McCullough said he believed that Duke’s program is unique because it offers access to the press’s full list, not just to individual titles.

New Tablet PC App from Microsoft Research: InkSeine

Eliot — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:11:00 GMT

I was just talking to a very special person today about how nice it would be to walk along the banks of the Seine, holding hands, this time of year. This has nothing to do with that.

InkSeine is an innovate note-taking, organizing, annotation application that was designed and build with the idea that you'll be commanding, entering data, and manipulating content with a tablet pen and ink. Menus, actions, commands, and more are all optimizrd for the Tablet PC. Just look at some of these features:

You can blaze a super-fast trail by using radial menus for pen commands. Just hover over a menu to preview the commands. Touch down in the center of the menu and drag towards the command you want to activate.
You can select existing ink right on the page to initiate a search.
Create queries in the context of your notes to keep track of searches, reuse them, or return to them later.
Easily find emails, documents, ink notes, or web pages without leaving your notes.
Drag links to the documents and web pages you find right into your notebook or drag images into your notes, from search results or file folders.
Filter your desktop searches by file type or date with simple pen controls.
Use powerful gestures throughout the application.
Create automatic hyperlinks from your notes and screen captures.
View your notes page-by-page, like a real notebook.
Pages scale to fit the screen when you rotate your tablet.
Much, much more

Of course, Microsoft Research has tutorials, Help documentation, forums, videos, and a blog up and running, just in case the app is not totally and unequivocally user-firendly.

Ink-Enabled WinForms controls for applications

Eliot — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 21:58:00 GMT

Looking for Tablet PC controls to add to your application? Of course, the Mobile PC Developer Center has the InkListBox Control – English, InkShortcut Control Code Sample, InkNumber Sample, InkSecureSignature Sample, and the ScalableInkPicture Sample. Beyond that, the Microsoft Health Common User Interface (CUI) puts together a slew of pen-friendly controls to be used in end-to-end medical applications.

Microsoft has been working with the National Health Service (NHS) in England to improve patient safety by creating a common look and feel for NHS systems through the NHS Common User Interface (CUI) Program. This partnership initiative is in conjunction with the UK government agency called NHS Connecting for Health. Microsoft is now publishing the Design Guidance produced through this collaboration and providing the healthcare community with access to the associated Toolkit controls.

The Microsoft Health Common User Interface (CUI) provides Design Guidance and controls which allow a new generation of safer, more usable and compelling health applications to be quickly and easily created. Their site is aimed at user interface designers, application developers, and patient safety experts who want to find out more about the benefits of a standardized approach to user interface design.

With the Microsoft Health CUI you can:

Interactively browse and download the available Design Guidance documents
Interact with on-line implementations of the available controls and samples that implement the guidance
View the delivery roadmap for future areas of the Design Guidance and controls and learn about the delivery lifecycle that is used to create them
Download and install the controls for use in Microsoft Visual Studio
Provide feedback and suggestions through the Microsoft Health CUI community project on CodePlex

You can view the project on CodePlex: http://www.codeplex.com/mscui

In addition, the full website is available at http://www.mscui.net/Default.aspx

The available controls include:

AddressLabel
ContactLabel
DateInputBox
MonthCalendar
PatientBanner
TimeInputBox
TimeLabel

RTM of the Windows SDK for Windows Server 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5

Eliot — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 00:19:00 GMT

Wow, this is a mouthful, but if you want the latest and greatest Windows bits this is hot out of the oven:

The Windows SDK team is proud to announce that the RTM release of the Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows Server 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 is now live for customers to install! This SDK is a large product spanning both Windows and the .NET Framework.

Availability:

• The Windows SDK is available to install as either an:

• ISO, or

• Web Setup

Platforms:

This SDK release supports Windows Server 2008, .NET Framework 3.5, and Windows Vista SP1 and is compatible with Visual Studio 2008, and Visual Studio 2005 SP1; including Visual Studio Express Editions.

What’s New:

The following is a small sampling of what’s in this SDK, with a more complete list available in the Getting Started section in the Windows SDK documentation.

• Support for Windows Server 2008 (x86, x64, and Itanuim), .NET Framework 3.5, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista (including SP1), and Windows XP

• Visual Studio 2008 C++ command line compiler toolset (with /analyze support) and matching CRT

• The SDK headers, libs, and tools integrate with VS2008 when both the SDK and VS2008 are installed

• New tools such as XPerf, SqlMetal, xsltc, gc, topoedit, aspnet_merge, and wsdcodegen.

• Documentation and samples (2200+ sample projects) to explain usage of new Windows Server 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 features as well as previous platform features.

Learn More:

Stayed tuned to the Windows SDK blog as well as the Windows SDK MSDN Developer Center over the coming days and weeks for more information about the Windows SDK. As always, please look over the Release Notes for a description of known issues before you install the SDK.

As always, if you have comments or suggestions, use the MSDN Wiki or the built-in feedback mechanism in the SDK. Have questions, need help finding something? Post to the MSDN forums. There's a whole community there to help.

Happy coding!