Beyond | IT : silverlight

From concept to delivery in 2 weeks with Windows Azure and Silverlight

john.mullinax — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 00:55:53 GMT

Suppose you were asked to design and host an interactive map for the Taste of Chicago, which gets about 3 million visitors. No problem.

Now, suppose you only had 2 weeks to deliver the whole thing – from first phone call to finished product. What would you do?

If you were West Monroe Partners, you would turn to Silverlight so your designers and developers could work together more efficiently, and to Windows Azure so you didn’t have to worry about provisioning 25 servers on top of the design and development work.

And what would the end result look like? Something like this.

From concept to live site, and ready to handle all 3 million visitors if needed – in 2 weeks. Hats off to the folks at West Monroe Partners!

Technorati Tags: Windows Azure,Silverlight

Cool new spatial analysis for SharePoint users

john.mullinax — Tue, 05 May 2009 20:30:08 GMT

I’ve always been sort of a map nut. In fact, I love maps (there, I said it! :) ). Way back when I was Director of Elections for a county out in the State of Washington, I used to spend a lot of time with maps. In particular, we had a map of the county with transparent layers that folded down showing election precinct lines, school district lines, hospital district lines, and boundaries for all kinds of other districts. We even had a “Television Reception District” (really).

Working with the underlying maps and the transparent data sheets wasn’t always easy. Each transparency held data that was very precisely hand-drawn by a civil engineer (which meant we only had a couple map sets), and it was a challenge to get more than a few people gathered around the map and transparencies at any one time. Thinking back on this experience – only 15 years ago – it’s amazing how far we’ve come in our ability to make maps and spatial analysis accessible to people. And I’m happy to see that progress on this front continues!

The most recent advancement – IDV Solutions released Visual Fusion 4.0 today (thanks to Owen Allen for the tip). This solution integrates with SharePoint and uses Virtual Earth as the “base map” and plots data over the map onto transparent layers created with Silverlight. If you’ve spent much time on this blog, you already know I’m a fan of Silverlight and Virtual Earth, and Visual Fusion shows a great use of these technologies.

That said, what stands out to me is the SharePoint integration the solution offers. You can plot data from SharePoint lists – which makes it very easy for users to add their own ad hoc data. Also, you can plot data accessed via the Business Data Catalog – which makes it easy to add data from corporate data sources. And, you can even make Visual Fusion’s spatial analysis capability available to your SharePoint users as a web part! This should go a long way toward making spatial analysis available to a wider audience!

Here’s a a screenshot from IDV Solutions’ interactive demo that happens to show swine flu cases via an RSS feed. Click on the pic below for a larger version, or click here to play with demo yourself.

By the way, Visual Fusion 4.0 is a less common example of what Microsoft means by the term “Software-plus-services”. Software-plus-Services is about software from the cloud, on servers, and on devices all working together well… most examples tend to focus on either the cloud, or the device (phone, PC, etc) and cloud working together. In contrast, Visual Fusion shows software working together across server and cloud tiers, as well as composition of multiple services into a solution – a very useful solution profile!

Technorati Tags: Visual Fusion,IDV Solutions,Spatial Analysis,mapping,SharePoint,Silverlight,Virtual Earth,software-plus-services

Make a cool game, win fame and fortune

john.mullinax — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 04:14:00 GMT

Make a cool Silverlight game, and you could win $5000. Plus, get featured in ServerQuest II! More details here.

What is ServerQuest, you ask?

Technorati Tags: Silverlight,games

Making tool bars interesting again. No, really.

john.mullinax — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 10:04:00 GMT

Here's something interesting from InfoSpace... a tool bar! No, really. In fact, see for yourself over at Sam Chenaur's site. He's got a nice screen grab, too. This is not your "father's toolbar".

I tried to get my own screen grab from the Recipe toolbar I installed, but it's really quite hidden until you engage with it... so it's completely innocuous until you want to use it... and then it looks great. Other notes:

The requirements say IE7, but seems to work just fine for me on IE8 so far.
The UI is context sensitive, and uses some of the same conventions as the "ribbon" in Office UI.
I like this is as an non-traditional "software-plus-services" example to "get" what that's all about... (assuming for the moment you can have a "non-traditional example" for a term without too much of a tradition yet!) :-)

What I mean about "software-plus-services" is this: software that runs on a computer you control, plus services delivered over the internet from a computer you don't control, working together to enable cool new experiences that make both software and services better than either by themselves. There are certainly more complicated ways to describe software-plus-services (sometimes called "S+S" around Microsoft), and i'm frequently guilty :-) ... but that's the essence of it.

I'm guessing a bit about how this all goes together, but it appears that from a users' perspective, the software pieces include the tool bar itself, the XAML UI, and Silverlight to render the XAML. The services pieces come into play because the toolbar hosts a couple services (at least): recipes and pics from AllRecipes.com, and also a search product from InfoSpace called Nation that aggregates yahoo, google, ask, and live search as a meta search engine (that is, the search service itself is actually a simple composite of still more services).

You may be saying, "big deal -- none of these things are very interesting or unique by themselves." I fully agree. And yet together, they create something completely new in character as to be, literally, unique. And that's really the punch line in some ways with Software-plus-services -- thinking about how collections of software and services can go together and make each other better is a powerful way to create compelling new experiences!

So hop on over to Sam's site and check out his and pic and what he has to say about his hand in helping InfoSpace do this good work. Or, if you can't wait, jump straight to InfoSpace's toolbars here.

WSJ Business Technology Blog: "Are NetFlix Layoffs Microsoft's Fault?"

john.mullinax — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 22:05:00 GMT

Wall Street Journal's Business Technology blog raises this question in delivering the ultimate backhanded compliment by saying:

The video service launched a new player for instant-watch movies in October that is powered by Microsoft’s Silverlight, a rich-media technology that competes with Adobe’s widely used Flash player. The Silverlight-Netflix player added, among other features, streaming ability for Mac users and faster startup times.

The downside, wrote spokesman Steve Swasey, is that Netflix’s customer service group is now overstaffed, because there are fewer bugs to fix. “It’s sad to let go of good people, but we just don’t have the technical specialist work for them to do in customer service because of the improvements in our streaming player.”

Oh well -- it's happier when resources can be re-purposed vs. removed. At least it's due to a more productive and efficient NetFlix. And it's always nice to see the ROI and stability of Silverlight getting some appreciation from Wall Street Journal. :-) Judging by the article's favorable reader comments regarding the XBOX Live deal, NetFlix's partnership with Microsoft looks like a winner that may actually add subscribers (+ presumably customer service jobs to support them :-) )!

Get free training on Silverlight, WPF, and ASP.NET AJAX from PluralSight!

john.mullinax — Fri, 30 May 2008 19:04:00 GMT

UPDATE: Jon Box presented some slides at the beginning of the session today, and a request came from the audience to get a copy of the slides. I've added those slides as an attachment to this post.

How? Go here and sign up! The session is a 1-day overview seminar in Cincinnati, Ohio on June 12, 2008. PluralSight is truly among the best of the best at training folks in rich web and client technologies, so if you can make the time and place don't miss your opportunity!

Location

Microsoft Mason Office – (Cincinnati)
4605 Duke Drive, Suite 800
Mason OH 45040

More info...

Event Overview

In this seminar, you will take part in a technical exploration of the latest technologies Microsoft has to offer, and how you can take advantage of those technologies to provide a truly next-generation user experience in you Windows and web client applications. During the seminar, the instructor will guide you on a technical walkthrough of each technology, demonstrate the technologies' capabilities, and show the tools and techniques used to provide those capabilities.

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) -- WPF is Microsoft's next-generation presentation platform. WPF is built into Windows Vista and also runs on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. WPF allows rich client applications to take full advantage of the graphical capabilities of a modern PC. Its powerful and flexible programming model integrates support for flexible layout, high-quality text, resolution-independent graphics, animation, video and 3D. While it is designed to exploit the full capabilities of today's high-performance graphics cards, it offers high-level abstractions that offer great power to the developer for less development effort than ever before.

Points of interest will include:

   * WPF Framework Architecture and XAML

   * Controls and Layout

   * Data Binding

   * Styling and Templates

   * 2D and 3D Graphics

   * Animation

   * Building Custom Controls

   * Text, Typography, and Documents

   * Building Connected WPF Applications

   * Interoperability between WPF and Windows Forms

Microsoft Silverlight -- Silverlight is the Microsoft's latest technology for delivering rich, cross-platform, interactive experiences including video, audio, animation, and graphics for the Web and beyond. Utilizing a subset of XAML (eXtensible Application Markup Language)-based Windows Presentation Foundation technology, Silverlight enables the creation of content and applications that run within multiple browsers and across multiple operating systems (Windows and Macintosh) with a standard programming model. Consistent with Web architecture, the XAML markup is programmable using JavaScript (in version 1.0), or any .NET language (in version 2), and is able to work in tandem with ASP.NET Ajax.

   * Silverlight XAML

   * Input handling, scripting events

   * Graphics – shapes, text, images

   * Layout and Controls

   * Video and audio

   * Trigger-based Animation

   * Server communication – client-side HTTP networking, Web service calls

   * Data – caching data in the client

   * Browser integration

   * ASP.NET integration

   * Using Ajax and Silverlight together

   * Application deployment

ASP.NET -- ASP.NET has established itself as one of the most productive environments for building web applications and more developers are switching over every day. The 2.0 and 3.5 releases of ASP.NET builds on the same componentry of 1.1, improving productivity of developers even further by providing standard implementations of common Web application features like membership, persistent user profile, and Web parts, among others. With more than 50 new server-side controls and many new pieces of web infrastructure, ASP.NET brings more new features than any web development technology in recent memory.

   * Partial class code-behind model

   * Declarative data sources and the new data binding model

   * Security controls and the membership provider

   * Master pages and site templating

   * Themes and skins

   * Cross-page posting, caching, and form validation

   * Client-side scripting

   * Navigation controls and data sources

   * The new WebControls

   * New features of ASP.NET 3.5

   * Asynchronous pages and ASP.NET Ajax

Technorati Tags: Silverlight,WPF,AJAX,.NET

Ever wished for cross-platform Silverlight desktop apps? So has Miguel de Icaza...

john.mullinax — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 15:53:11 GMT

From Miguel's de Icaza's web log:

Now that controls are part of Silverlight 2.0 and that most of the high-level controls have been open sourced and that they are incredibly powerful and great to skin it makes sense to think again about native desktop applications using Silverlight.

He also talks about some very cool stuff the Moonlight project is doing around standalone Silverlight apps for linux clients, as well as offers a few thoughts on what's needed to make cross-platform Silverlight desktop apps a reality.

Thanks to Josh Holmes for the heads up.

Technorati Tags: Silverlight,Moonlight

The most ambitious web media project ever

john.mullinax — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 05:17:23 GMT

Adam Kinney has a great write-up and preview on the most ambitious web media project ever attempted: NBC's site for the 2008 Olympics. How big is this?

For the first time, the web will be the first class channel for experiencing the Olympics. And with almost twice the hours of coverage, access to broadcast content, interactive HD video, multiple simultaneous streams, social networking features, and more... the comparison is not even close. TV, please take a seat in coach. :-)

An excerpt from Adam's post:

PC World published a great article on the Olympics website last Friday which, before going into feature and technical details, begins with this:

How would you like to be handed this IT project: create a website that will present 2,200 hours of live, interactive video, plus integrated broadcast coverage. The site will have huge spikes of traffic, and operate under worldwide scrutiny, so it has to be designed for performance. It has to be done in the next 150 days; no schedule extensions are possible. And it must deliver a brilliant user experience.

Adam also has a link to demo video shown at MIX. See more here: NBC Olympics Silverlight - site preview review.

And thanks to Jon Box for a heads up on this post!

Technorati Tags: Silverlight,video,Olympics

Amazing Day 1 Keynote at MIX!

john.mullinax — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 23:28:29 GMT

Wow -- so much at MIX I can't possibly do it justice right now, but check out the summary here. Really, really amazing stuff and some super announcements. Just a teaser:

Silverlight for Mobile devices -- and not just windows mobile but Nokia Symbian, too. Use common skills for rich media apps everywhere.
IE8 -- and true standards compliant browsing. Especially check out Activities and Web Slices in the keynote
Preview of the NBC Olympics site, based on Silverlight -- the most ambitious web media project ever.
Silverlight AOL email client -- showing off personalization and huge performance benefits of Silverlight over AJAX (conservatively, 2-3x in this case)
Announcement of new WPF physics engine and controls coming soon
A fantastic automotive B2C web site for Aston Martin -- with tie-ins to a UMPC WPF smart client guided selling in the dealership

See the video stream here.

Technorati Tags: MIX,wpf,silverlight,silverlight mobile

paidContent.org - Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire on Web Media: We Made Multiple Bets, and The Platform Side Won

john.mullinax — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 09:09:00 GMT

For those interested in web video...

Here's a good interview with Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Brightcove and former CTO of Macromedia. Jeremy reviews a couple different business segments Brightcove has experimented with, and discusses how the company came to focus on the "platform" model.

Among other things, Jeremy mentions that Brightcove will support Silverlight video, but does not give a time table.

Time well spent....

Technorati tags: Silverlight, Brightcove

Surface, Popfly, Photosynth, Silverlight, Windows Live Platform, and consumer value stream links

john.mullinax — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 05:39:00 GMT

Was talking to some folks the other day about some of the cool stuff emerging from Microsoft, and after mentioning to folks they could learn more on this blog, I got request to consolidate some links together into a single post. Voila! :-)

Technorati tags: Surface, Popfly, Photosynth, Seadragon, Silverlight Streaming, Windows Live Platform, Consumer Value Stream

Go ahead -- Rip my blog! (And web IM me, too)

john.mullinax — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 09:26:54 GMT

That is, if you like my blog. I've added a couple new gadgets a little ways down the right hand column of the blog. The first is a Popfly gadget of my blog. Why a gadget of my blog on my blog? Sort of redundant, no? Well, yes. But, if you like the blog...(read more)

The democratization of media continues

john.mullinax — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 18:28:02 GMT

Wow! A new high for user generated content: 1 song, 5 parts, 1 guy -- all in streaming HD video! Jon Box pointed me to this amazing post from Carl Franklin where he videos himself doing a Steeley Dan tune ( Home at Last, 1977). It's all Carl...(read more)

PhizzPop Interview: Silverlight for cross platform video at University of Michigan

john.mullinax — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 17:15:34 GMT

Just saw this over at PhizzPop . What is PhizzPop you may ask? It's a fledgling community site for designers to learn from and showoff to their peers. The link above is to an interview with Ken Arbogast-Wilson, Manager of Media Development and Production...(read more)

How to put Silverlight video on your blog

john.mullinax — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 08:31:00 GMT

Ed has short, funny, and yes, helpful, post on how easy it is to put Silverlight video on your blog using Windows Live Writer and the Silverlight Streaming Services -- which by the way lets you host both video and Silverlight applications if you got 'em....(read more)