Out Of The Box

buzztap, sporting news aggregator, leverages IE8

jonbox — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 06:16:00 GMT

I recently mentioned buzztap (note the lowercase spelling) in my post on web slice discoverability, and said that I would talk in more detail. It’s time.

I describe buzztap as a sporting news aggregator. During these days, I don’t have time to watch a lot of TV or spend hours reading web sites about my favorite sports teams. Buzztap allows me to get different news sources focused on my favorite team, in a quick viewing experience. And with IE8, they make it extremely easy to track my teams. I can quickly glance at my team’s news, and if needed, go directly to the content.

buzztap tracks sporting news for MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, and D1 college teams.

Let’s take a look at the cool things that buzztap does with IE8.

Visual Search

I love to show this to customers. buzztap has a unique spin on how they leverage IE8 Visual Search.

First, using the search text box, you can quickly find your sports team including college teams. Typing in “chi” gets (see Figure 1 below), you get a list of Buzztap team sites for Chicago teams, Kansas City Chiefs, and even the Central Michigan Cougars. Clicking on one of these takes me to that team site, which is filtered news for that team.

Second, when highlighting text on a HTML-based page, most folks know that IE8 will provide an accelerator icon, and then a list of accelerators to pass the highlighted text to. In this case of having Buzztap’s search provider installed, you get the enhanced search experience – in other words, you get a list of articles that include the highlighted text, in a preview window, all without leaving/disrupting the browsing experience.

This combination of search experiences is unique, based on the search providers that I’ve seen.

From the Buzztap site:

buzztap search - This add-on allows you to search the latest on buzztap using the search provider bar in your IE8 browser [figure 1], or by highlighting text on a web page and clicking the accelerator icon [figure 2]. When using the accelerator option, you can preview the buzztap search results without leaving the current page by simply hovering your mouse over the buzztap search option.

Web Slices

In my opinion, the real value from consuming the news on buzztap is by utilizing IE8 web slices. I have web slices for the University of Memphis, St. Louis Cardinals, and Dallas Cowboys (these are links to the buzztap team site). When you go to your favorite team’s page, you’ll get the option to install that team’s web slice. (Refer to my other post on additional ideas on this topic.) When you install the web slice, you get a view similar to this picture of today’s Dallas Cowboys web slice.

buzztap also includes the “Featured Buzz” web slice on the home page. This is a list of the hot topics for the day.

From buzztap’s site: The buzztap team-based web slice add-ons allow you to keep up to date on the latest buzz for a given team without leaving your current browser page…

The Inventory of buzztap Add-On’s

To see the entire list of buzztap add-on’s (including 200+ web slices), check out the buzztap IE8 page at http://buzztap.com/ie8. It’s an impressive list of web slices, as well as a link to the search provider.

If you like sports and visit this site with IE8, you’ll be hooked too!

And if you’re a Twitter fan, you’ll like buzztap’s Twitter efforts.

Using WPF in a Truck

jonbox — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 03:09:38 GMT

U.S. Xpress is a Tennessee-based truckload carrier with a reputation for delivering excellent customer service and using innovative technology to do so. In the mid-2000s, the company deployed an in-cab solution that automates engine diagnostics and provides communication, navigation, and training-video presentation capabilities. The solution was so successful that U.S. Xpress decided to expand its effectiveness by redesigning the user interface using Windows® Presentation Foundation (WPF) and other rich-client technologies from Microsoft. Having deployed the new version of its solution to roughly half of its 4,600-truck fleet, the company anticipates that the enhancements will help it boost the productivity of key employees, retain skilled drivers in this high-turnover industry, enhance safety management, and significantly reduce IT costs.

Benefits

Boosts employee productivity
Enhances customer service
Helps retain skilled drivers
Reduces IT maintenance costs by 35 percent
Simplifies application targeting

Hardware

DriverTech DT4000 TruckPC devices

Software and Services

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Compact
Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server
Windows XP Embedded
Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1

Interesting quotes

“In this business, time is especially precious; so, for the company to work most effectively, [employees] need to be accessing the same information at the same time. Thanks to this solution, they are.” - Ken Crane, Systems Manager, Mobile Technology, U.S. Xpress

According to Davison, developers were unsure whether WPF would run successfully on the DriverTech DT4000 TruckPC hardware. “The device relied on an embedded video card with limited memory that wasn’t designed to support desktop-level graphics performance,” he reports. “So we decided to develop and deploy a quick WPF-based prototype—and it ran beautifully. This made the decision to use WPF an easy one.”…

Like Taliaferro, other solo drivers feel much the same way. As Crane explains, in up to a dozen different cases, a driver was so impressed after using the newer version of XPE Truck that he or she was unwilling to move to a new truck that did not have that version installed. “In every case, the driver liked the new vehicle, but didn’t like that the vehicle was installed with a hardware device running the older version of XPE Truck,” Crane reports. “So before agreeing to the move, the driver asked that the shop manager replace the older device with a newer one that was running the enhanced version of XPE Truck.”…

“With LINQ, we were able to build route-tracking capabilities into XPE Truck in two weeks, from conception to pilot,” Davison says. “Without LINQ, we would have spent four times that long just dealing with edge cases and state-machine management.”…

To manage data persistence in the original version of XPE Truck, for example, the company relied on XML files—historically, a “nightmare” to maintain, according to Davison. By using SQL Server Compact for data management in the enhanced XPE Truck, the company can manage data persistence with the help of a full relational data store. “As a result, we are anticipating IT maintenance savings of 35 percent,” he says…

Case Study

IE8 Web Slices and Discoverability

jonbox — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 06:34:00 GMT

As my teammates know, I’m a fan of web slices, a capability of Internet Explorer 8. For anyone with a web site, it’s hard to imagine how these don’t have value. But that story is well documented, so I’m not going to jump into the business value conversation. What I do want to mention is something that I learned this week from Giorgio Sardo on the topic of web slice “discoverability”.

What is Discoverability?

This is the notion of how a end-user will find a web slice. IE provides several ways which are discussed next.

Consider the example below, which is screenshot from www.sugarlandmusic.com. This shows the typical example, with two indicators of a web slice.

The Feed Discovery Button

First notice should be the Feed Discovery button at the top of IE, since this is the easiest to recognize. Also note that this button will show a list of the web slices on the page. In my opinion, users typically don’t recognize this at first, since the average user is not accustomed to checking this real estate. As more folks become aware of this button, the recognition will improve.

From MSDN’s Subscribing to Content with Web Slices: Each Web Slice that Internet Explorer detects is added as an entry to the Feed Discovery button , located on the Command bar. Although a Web page can include up to 100 Web Slices, only 20 entries can appear at one time on the Feed Discovery button. You can customize which Web Slice appears at the top of the list by setting the Default Web Slice.

In-document Discovery

The most typical discovery method is called in-document discovery. As illustrated above, when the web slice region has the mouse pointer over it, the recognized web slice shortcut button appears, in conjunction with a green frame around the web slice content area.

The coding for this is well documented, so I won’t go into the details of the HTML efforts for implementing. Just search for hslice, as a starting point.

Important note: this method also is the data input for the Feed Discovery button (discussed earlier); therefore, these two indicators usually go hand-in-hand.

In-document discovery can be disabled via a meta element, but I can’t think of a good reason to do this. In most cases, you want the web slice to be discoverable.

Atypical Scenario - AddToFavoritesBar

In some cases, a web page developer may not want to utilize in-document discovery and would prefer to show the web slice icon. There are various reasons to do this, usually to do with screen real estate issues. When using this method, the web slice icon shows all the time, is a clickable image, and has an action of calling window.external.AddToFavoritesBar which launches the web slice subscription interaction. (AddToFavoritesBar info on MSDN).

One of the best known examples of this for me is ESPN’s home page (screen shot below). Note the web slice icon next to Headlines. Click on the web slice icon, and you get a handy web slice for the sports aficionado.

Here’s the source from the ESPN site for how they implemented this pattern.

<a href="#" onclick="javascript:window.external.AddToFavoritesBar('http://espn.go.com/frontpage/webslices/headlines#headlinesslice', 'ESPN\: Headlines', 'slice'); anTrackLink (this,'espn','webslice_headlinesslice_add','ESPN\: Headlines');">       <img src="http://a.espncdn.com/webslices/icons/12x12.png" width="12" height="12" alt="IE8 Web Slice" border="0" class="sliceicon-img headlines-img" /></a>

Note: here’s the one little nugget that prompted me to write this post – it just took me some time to set up the point. When implementing this pattern (utilizing AddToFavoritesBar), the Feed Discovery button is not enabled. This is problematic, because my opinion is that you want your reader/customer to find these web slices. When talking to Giorgio about this issue, I received the following recommendation: create a hidden web slice on the screen, which will trigger my preferred extra visual assistance of the Feed Discovery button. And in investigating this, I found that ESPN is doing this exactly.

Here’s ESPN’s way of doing enabling the Feed Discovery button. Note the use of style="display: none;" in the fundamental web slice markup – thus the hidden web slice. This code exists just before the anchor element for the AddToFavoritesBar, in ESPN’s case.

<span id="headlinesslice" class="hslice" style="display: none;">       <span style="display: none;" class="entry-title">ESPN: Headlines</span>       <a rel="feedurl" href="http://espn.go.com/frontpage/webslices/headlines" style="display: none;"></a>       <span style="display: none;">             Updates every <span class="ttl">60</span> minute(s)       </span></span>

Hybrid Scenario

So, one of the sites that I show a lot now is Buzztap, a sporting news aggregator. Note my own personal usage of their web slices, specifically the St. Louis Cardinals Buzz and Dallas Cowboys Buzz. You can see their impressive list of slices here (over a 100), which cover NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB, and college sports. I’ll talk more about Buzztap in the future, but I wanted to point out their unique pattern of discoverability. They use in-document discovery which enables the Feed Discovery button, as well as the AddToFavoritesBar method. Now that is the ultimate in discovery!

Another Way of Discovery – the IE8 Gallery

This probably goes without saying, but just to make sure: registering your web slice in the gallery is another must-do activity for raising the discoverability score. Wanna get extra eye balls to your site for FREE? Register in the gallery. It’s that simple.

Related Topics

Web Slice Icon Guidelines

Web Slice Format Specification

Setting the Default Web Slice (when you want to dictate the first web slice in the Feed Discovery button)

<link     rel="default-slice"    type="application/x-hatom"     href="#webSliceIdOnYourPage" /> 

Disabling In-Document Discovery

<meta name="slice" scheme="IE" content="off"/> 

Windows 7 Launches Today

jonbox — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 05:14:36 GMT

Windows 7 Virtual Presskit
Remarks by Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, at the launch of Windows 7, New York, Oct. 22, 2009
Remarks by Steven Sinofsky, president, Windows and Windows Live Division, at the launch of Windows 7, Tokyo, Oct. 22 2009
Video Gallery
Image Gallery – pictures from launch events around the world
Review Roundup
Brandon’s Guide to Awesome New Windows 7 PCs

Windows 7 Launch Video, featuring Steve Ballmer

TAMI RELLER: (2:31) And this is a big day for our customers who now number one billion across the globe. Eight million of those customers helped us along the journey, helped us test Windows 7. Thank you to all of those customers and enthusiasts and volunteers who helped us with the product.

Well, now that the product is ready, over the next several weeks, over 800,000 customers will gather to see Windows 7 and show off Windows 7 to family and friends. And so we thought it was very fitting for us to have a launch party of our own here in New York.

Kylie (the girl in the Windows 7 commercial) starts the event and introduces Steve Ballmer. Steve gives her a new Windows 7 pink ultrathin computer.

(7:57) STEVE BALLMER: 3,000 world-class engineers at Microsoft, 50,000 partners with umpity-ump engineers there, and then the 8 million customers. And the 8 million customers were people from all around the world, 200 countries. You had teachers, small business owners, soccer moms. You had people stretching, if you will, from grandparents to gamers, people stretching from Australia to Iceland. Across the planet, feedback coming in from people in all walks of life really helping us think about and improve and make Windows 7 and Windows 7 PCs what our customers, I think, will really, really want.

(10:49) STEVE BALLMER: I want to give you a little bit broader characterization of Windows 7 overall. I think of Windows 7 in three major buckets: No. 1, it works the way you want to work. You want that computer to fire up quickly, boom. You want it to feel responsive, boom. You want longer battery life, boom. We needed to make those things work -- simpler, faster, more responsive, leaner, less busy. And I think we've accomplished that with Windows 7.

No. 2, the things that you do all the time need to be simpler. You want to manage the windows on your desktop, you want to find the documents you most frequently use. Let's make that stuff super, super simple.

And then No. 3, let's enable a world of new things, new possibilities for software developers and hardware developers and for end users. So you get a technology like multi-touch, which enables people to build new computers and new software. You get literally, I would say, from an end user perspective, dozens or hundreds of new features. And our experience throughout the beta test program is that everybody finds their own unique set of features to fall in love with.

(13:08) STEVE BALLMER: Windows 7 takes us a step closer to the vision that we articulate that focuses in around three different screen sizes – PC, phone, and TV – all connected and communicating across the cloud, the Internet backbone…

Demo’s – 14:50, Brad Brooks, VP, Windows Marketing Group

Camera Detection of Nikon
Picture Import into Windows Live Photo Gallery
Makes a movie with Windows Live Movie Maker
Multi-touch
Windows Media Center

Channel guide and touch
CBS Prime Time content – like NCIS and my favorite show currently, The Mentalist
Netflix, and streamed movies

Kendle Reader (more info here)
Homegroup

printer sharing, picture sharing
Remote Media Stream - streaming video from home

“Play To”

Devices consuming media from Windows 7
16 devices consuming media from PC

Windows 7 machine categories

Netbook
Ultrathin
Notebook
Desktop
All-In-One
Gaming

39:00, Walk through the home setup with Mike Angiulo

MIKE ANGIULO: (40:35) This is a less than $800 PC, complete with the monitor and the mouse. This one is an Acer Aspire. It's got a new solid state drive, a kind of a small case, two gigs of ram, but the thing that I want to show you here is that just booted up completely, 15 seconds. And this is a real image…

MIKE ANGIULO: (42:00) When this PC is plugged in there's a high-performance ATI graphics chip that's alive, that makes really great high-resolution graphics, and when you unplug it, it has embedded graphics which conserve battery. So, this PC, even though it's only 4 pounds, still gets seven hours of battery life. It's less than one inch thick. It's got a laser-etched aluminum case. It's really a cool machine. And it goes to sleep just even faster. If you push that button, boom, it's asleep. So that's performance of the new Win 7 machines…

MIKE ANGIULO: (44:00) And it's launching on this computer. That's because this computer doesn't dock with wires. It's using 60-gigahertz wireless docking technology. So, these machines are connecting totally cordless. And more than connecting, that's how it charges, too, with no wires, using purely induction. I set this on the stand, that machine is charging and docking without a single cord. Isn't that cool?

MIKE ANGIULO: (46:00) So, here I'm in Windows 7, and I'm going to come over to a video library, and I'm going to play a full-screen movie. You'll see the movie will start up quickly. It's going to be full screen. It's going to be high fidelity, and this TV is being powered by this Acer Aspire Revo, and this is an entire PC in this little container. This PC fits in your entertainment cabinets. You can hang this PC on the back of the TV.

STEVE BALLMER: You're saying the whole TV, PC is in this little box?

MIKE ANGIULO: That's right. It's running that same system, and these start for under $200. It's less than a TiVo, it's a whole computer.

MIKE ANGIULO: (Around the 49 minute mark) And, the unbelievable, we're not even there yet, is the new PCs that are coming are breaking records, like this new Dell Adamo XTS. This is going to be the thinnest computer in the world when it's shipping, 9.99 millimeters thin. It's got a capacitive latch that opens. It's got an aluminum keyboard. You see it responds in one or two seconds. It comes up from sleep. It's a high-performance, really cool engineering machine that's coming out and that's some of the innovation that's available in the Windows 7 PCs.

Video Review of Windows 7 PC’s (51 minute mark until end, 54:02)

The Ultimate Offer

jonbox — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:16:17 GMT

Here’s the deal

The Visual Studio product line-up is evolving in 2010. During this transition time, you have an opportunity to activate a MSDN Premium subscription, which will convert to a more advanced edition of Visual Studio 2010 with MSDN.

In other words, buy Visual Studio 2008 Team System with MSDN Premium now, and step-up to Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN when it ships for no extra cost. It’s a huge costs saving over time plus you get Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN as soon as Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN ships.

Video Explanation

Sweeping Changes in Visual Studio 2010 and MSDN?

jonbox — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:42:55 GMT

Sweeping Changes in Visual Studio 2010 and MSDN?

60 Minute Webcast Series

Visual Studio 2010 and MSDN are BIG – and they are getting bigger! In this session, we’ll explore all the changes to the Visual Studio family of products, including Team Foundation Server as well as recent upgrades and changes to our MSDN line-up. Please join us for a 60 minute “CAN’T MISS” – high level overview, where we will discuss the many changes to our offerings which will likely impact current customers and future customers. We promise you won’t be disappointed!

Speaker: Tim Adams, Tony Jimenez and Randy Pagels, Microsoft Corporation

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Tuesday, 10/27	9:00 AM- 10:30 AM (CST)	Join the meeting	1-888-320-3585 [English]	438667128
Thursday, 10/29	2:00 PM- 3:30 PM (CST)	Join the meeting	1-888-320-3585 [English]	438667128
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Thursday, 11/5	2:00 PM- 3:30 PM (CST)	Join the meeting	1-888-320-3585 [English]	438667128

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What a week!

jonbox — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 05:11:48 GMT

Lots of stuff happening this week…

Visual Studio 2010

Beta 2 was announced. There are multiple announcements inside this effort:
New lineup of SKU’s
Go Live license
New logo / new look
Beta 2 of .NET 4

Windows 7

Windows 7 launches this week.

PowerPivot for Excel 2010 (formerly known as "Gemini")

is a data analysis tool that delivers unmatched computational power directly within the application users already know and love—Microsoft Excel. It provides users with the ability to analyze mass quantities of data and IT departments with the capability to monitor and manage how users collaborate by integrating seamlessly with Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2.
You can give your users the power to gain deeper insight into any business aspect and compress decision cycles. You can enable your users to share their findings with others effortlessly and securely. You can increase the efficiency of your IT department through the PowerPivot Management Dashboard.

Better keep your eyes on PDC. Better yet, just better attend.

Interknowlogy’s Multi-Touch Remote Object Manipulation

jonbox — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:58:11 GMT

Tim (IK’s CEO) shows a .NET 4 WPF app running on Windows 7 and Microsoft Surface, and shows a Healthcare / Life Sciences Version. The machines are using WCF for intercommunication.

New Photosynth based on Morgan Cox and a Visit to Neyland Stadium

jonbox — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 04:41:13 GMT

This past weekend, my wife and I took our son Taylor on a visit to the University of Tennessee and Mississippi State University. On Saturday, we were blessed to attend a UT game with some friends of ours, whose son is the long snapper in Knoxville. Morgan Cox is the kind of college story that you love to hear about (classy young man, a product of a quality family), but that’s another post. Nevertheless, my family was given the opportunity to see parts of the UT game day that the college fan would drool over thanks to Morgan and his parents, as UT defeated Georgia. My friends on Facebook can get a better glimpse of the day. Now, to the purpose of this blog post.

The visit to UT and their football mega-facility (Neyland Stadium) gave me plenty of photographic opportunities. Once we got to our seats and I started looking around at a place that seats 100K+ folks, I thought it would be good to upload to the Photosynth site and see how synthy that my pictures would be. Turns out that my 65 photo’s got a 97% synthy rating.

Since I last created a photosynth, several features have been added: an overhead view, geotagging, an improved viewer, and search enhancements. Let’s use the picture below for visual assistance.

The site search function has been improved. I would have thought that I was the only guy to do this with Neyland Stadium; however, there are 4 synth’s of Neyland Stadium.
The new improved viewer is based on Silverlight 3, as well as some coding enhancements for smarter interaction and smoother viewing. (Yes, Wright, this will run on your Mac.)
In the bottom right of the picture, you’ll see where the photosynth is integrated with Bing Maps. This also includes the ability to overlay some of the highlight pictures – called “geoalignment”.
The overhead view is COOL. You not only can quickly get a idea of how the various pictures are connected together, this viewing style also serves as a navigational aid. (see picture below). Press the T to toggle between overhead view and normal view.
More details about these and other enhancements are here on the Photosynth blog.

Now back to supporting my son and his college selection process…

More Press on Windows 7, and a related cool Wikipedia page

jonbox — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 01:15:27 GMT

From the Great Lakes IT Report, a couple of Detroit office folks were interviewed about Windows 7 in Matt Checks Out Windows 7; He’s Converting Soon. Here are some impressive quotes:

I got a good long look at Windows 7 Monday morning, and it looks like a nice improvement over Windows Vista.

Perhaps most importantly, according to Brendan Newell, senior product technology specialist for Microsoft's Central Region, "this is the first time we've released a new operating system where hardware requirements went down."

He says he's been running Windows 7 just fine on his basic home machine, used for e-mail and Web surfing -- a five-year-old computer with only one gigabit of RAM and an Intel Celeron chip.

Newell said Microsoft retained the basic kernel from Vista, preserving its admirable security, while completely rebuilding its process control system to provide faster performance, including a faster boot time.

The article also includes a couple of links:

Our Windows 7 Features page
Wikipedia page: Features new to Windows 7. This is a very interesting page to read.

Windows Phones, and Windows Mobile 6.5

jonbox — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:27:00 GMT

This is an interesting day for Windows Mobile fans. Microsoft has this new branding, Windows Phones. We have a new O/S, Windows Mobile 6.5. Phone companies around the world have announced new Windows phones. Why all of the excitement? It’s just a minor release – from 6.1 to 6.5. Right?

It is just a minor release, but I wouldn’t call it a “minor” release. The O/S has a variety of enhancements that show the direction we’re moving to.

Here’s my take:

Yes, we all know that there is serious competition in the mobile phone space, and we are not in the top position. This 6.5 release addresses some of the issues, as you’ll see in several following points. It’s a set of improvements, while we wait for the larger engineering effort that’s hopefully going on in Redmond for the next big Windows Mobile release.
Improved device UI/UX, especially on newer phones. Working towards that “no stylus” touch experience. Yes, still works for Windows Mobile Standard devices too. (see pictures below, as well as the image gallery link below)
Improved browser (touch-enabled, zoom, reacts appropriately to orientation, works on large sites or small sites)
Addition of widgets. Maybe not exciting to most folks, but I think there is a real opportunity for a new audience to develop for the phone. I’ll have more posts on this in the future. A widget can also participate in the next point (new app store) as well as will have a story in the next big Windows Mobile release.
A new app store - Windows Marketplace for Mobile, built into Windows Mobile 6.5 devices. Being extended for other operating systems.
My Phone, an innovative service that helps mobile users in several ways (backup, photo sharing, lost phone, etc.). Will be supported on other Windows Mobile 6.X releases.
Several of our exec’s said today that there will be 30 new devices launching between today and end of the year, giving consumers plenty of choice. See the image gallery for pictures of several of these.
We get it. We focused on the enterprise, and missed the consumer focus. Now, we’ll be working on both, so your phone will be great at work, at play, and at life.

Hopefully, this gets you a better view of what today’s announcements are about. We see big things ahead for Windows Phones, and this is another step in that journey. Here’s more information to assist in your learning quest.

Robbie Bach’s Surprise Party

Robbie Bach is President, Entertainment & Devices Division, at Microsoft. He’s got a entertaining video that shows several of the highlights for new devices. The video is here on YouTube. The outline below are the promoted capabilities:

Microsoft My Phone

Back up your phone for free
Manage your contacts, photos and more online
Find and protect a lost phone

Ring the phone remotely, even if in SILENT mode
Wipe remotely

New Internet Explorer Mobile Browser

Use the Web with full page view
Easy zoom in and out
Browse with your finger
Jump to your favorites from the Today Screen

Start Menu

All of your stuff in one place
Quickly dive into your task at hand
Dedicated Hardware Button (The Start Button, just like the desktop)

Windows Marketplace for Mobile

Easily download apps to personalize your phone
Returns apps for a full refund
Re-download purchased apps onto a new phone up to 5 times

Personalization

Your phone is now an accessory
Top fashion designer themes
New Theme Creator

Other references:

Steve Ballmer announces Windows Phone (YouTube)
Press Release: Microsoft Unveil New Windows Phones Worldwide
Lots of interesting screenshots on the Windows Phone Presspass Image gallery
Windows Phone Blog: New Windows Phones are Here!
New Twitter account: @windowsphone
Windows Phone Newsroom - Video Gallery
Microsoft PressPass – Windows Phone Newsroom
Girls From Mars video – cool music, a look at the Microsoft digital lifestyle

Jon’s Related Blog Posts

Windows Marketplace for Mobile has launched!

jonbox — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 03:15:33 GMT

Are you a developer, wanting to get an app into the store? Click here. Wanting to win a Surface table? Click here.

Are you wanting to purchase and/or download an application?

On your Windows Mobile 6.5 device, click on MarketPlace icon (under the Start menu).
On your PC, click here. Your Live ID is what controls the experience on the device and on the PC. Be sure to setup your payment method on the web site.

FIRESTARTER – on-demand and live events

jonbox — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:21:22 GMT

Free events to ignite your skills

Heat up your skills with the all-new Firestarter event series. Each day tackles a single Microsoft technology, including free sessions presented live by Microsoft developer and IT pro evangelists and technology specialists - with special appearances from community luminaries. Attend in person, via live meeting or download the webcast at your convenience.

Windows 7 Firestarter

(recorded on SEPT 18, 2009)

Windows® 7 and Windows 2008 R2 introduce fantastic new technologies to streamline your business, enhance security and save you money. This Windows Firestarter event will introduce you to these features and then dive deep into how they work. See how DirectAccess provides the remote user with virtually the same experience they would have if they were in the office. Learn how Group Policy and PowerShell can simplify the administration of your network, regardless of how large or small it is. Experience a simpler yet more rich Web surfing experience with new Internet Explorer® 8 features. See new BitLocker™, AppLocker and User Account Control Features that are designed to protect your data no matter where it is. We will also dive into how easy it is to deploy Windows 7 the way you want it deployed - your image, your way - even if you are migrating from Windows XP. Join us for this demo heavy session on all of this and more at Windows Firestarter.

*Session*	*Speakers*	*Link*
Introducing Window 7 - What's New	Stephen Rose	View Now >>
Windows 7 - Diving Deeper - Direct Access and RAS Features	Joe Davies	View Now >>
IE8 - Browse the Web in Style!	David Tesar	View Now >>
Migrating Windows XP to Windows 7: Get it done	Jeremy Chapman	View Now >>
Windows 2008 R2 - Diving In!	Chris Avis	View Now >>

Silverlight Firestarter

NOW AVAILABLE ON-DEMAND, recorded Thursday, Sept 17, 2009

The FREE Silverlight™ 3 Firestarter sessions burned up Redmond, WA on Thursday September 17th and we had a stellar line-up of Microsoft speakers, including a keynote from Scott Guthrie and presentations from Tim Heuer, Brad Abrams, Karl Shifflett and other 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. Don't miss this sizzling opportunity to go deep into Silverlight 3 with Microsoft's best and brightest.

*Session*	*Speakers*	*Link*
Event Kick Off	Mithun Dhar	View Now >>
Keynote	Scott Guthrie	View Now >>
Key Silverlight Scenarios	Tim Heuer	View Now >>
Expression 3 Overview	Adam Kinney	View Now >>
Sketch Flow	Janete Perez	View Now >>
Toolkit & Controls	Justin Angel Shawn Oster	View Now >>
RIA Services	Brad Abrams	View Now >>
Building Silverlight UIs with XAML Power toys	Karl Shifflett	View Now >>
Q&A Panel	All Speakers	View Now >>

Other Events

Be sure to check out the Firestarter site for more events on the way, like ASP.NET MVC.

A Thin Windows 6.5 Widget

jonbox — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 09:15:29 GMT

To prepare for a talk on widgets, my learning process started with:

an MSDN article, Developing Widgets for Windows Mobile 6.5
looking at the Live Search widget included in the emulators
building a thin / lite widget, i.e not a lot of code or UI

Why widgets?

Good question. Their easy. No tools required. No runtime. Easy to deploy from the Windows Marketplace for Mobile. And just enough support inside IE Mobile to make things interesting. Other nice features include: supports localization, persistence, secure, extensible, etc. Also, Microsoft is following the W3C widgets effort.

How to make a widget?

First, this is not a typical widget. As a matter of fact, this one doesn’t have a lot of value. But it should give you an idea of some fundamentals. For me personally, I want to find out more about the widget object and the SystemState events, but that’s another day – like when we document better.

The structure of a widget is straightforward. You need a a HTML file, and a icon of some sort (the type does matter, based on targeted O/S), and a config file. Even though you can use any text editing tool (like Notepad or Expression Web), I’m using Visual Studio (web project / file system). Here’s my Solution Explorer:

Widgets require a manifest, and that is what config.xml is. There are additional fields that should be included, but here’s the bare minimum. Basically, this provides enough information to get the widget installed, and the starting HTML page.

     <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> 

    <widget version="1.0" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/ns/widgets" id=""> 

      <name>Jon's Widget</name> 

      <content src="JonWidget.htm" type="text/html" /> 

      <icon src="JonBox.jpg"/> 

      <description>This is an extremely cheap widget</description> 

    </widget>

The HTML is basic. In real life, I’d have a set of Script element pointing to JavaScript files, CSS resources, and hopefully some interaction.

<html><head>    <title>Jon&apos;s First Widget</title></head><body>    <strong>Hello World</strong></body></html> 

Installation

The developer will leverage “sideload deployment”, but the regular end-user will download from the new online store.

To get this installed via sideload deployment, there are several steps:

Install Windows Mobile 6.5 emulators.
Launch emulator (via Connect in the Device Emulation Manager). Since I’m using a JPEG, make sure to select a Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional emulator.
For most widgets, you’ll need to get the emulator a internet connection – so you’ll click on Cradle too. You’ll have to tell Windows Mobile Device Center what kind of device partnership that you want.
Take the folder of files, compress, and rename the ZIP to have a .widget extension.
Copy the widget file to the device. I usually copy to device “\My Documents” via Windows Explorer, and then in the emulator click on the file – which launches the widget installer.

Here is the installer prompting me. Note the data from the config file being used: widget name, description, and icon.

Here is the widget running.

Also note that the widget shows up in the list of applications. To remove, the user has to go to “Remove Programs”.

So, take a deeper look at this technology. With Windows Mobile 6.5 launch approaching, this is a good time to consider getting in the early wave. More details on a better app coming in the future. Hope to see you in the Windows Marketplace for Mobile. And if you like a nice little reward for your widget efforts, check out http://www.mobilethisdeveloper.com.

Free real-time anti-virus software, Microsoft Security Essentials

jonbox — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 07:39:37 GMT

I’ve got several friends that will run no anti-virus software, or a non-name brand. They sometimes have loaded one of the bad ones, that just load more bad stuff. And I keep telling folks, a solution is on the way. Finally, the time is here.

Microsoft Security Essentials provides real-time protection for your home PC that guards against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software.

Microsoft Security Essentials is a free* download from Microsoft that is simple to install, easy to use, and always kept up to date so you can be assured your PC is protected by the latest technology. It’s easy to tell if your PC is secure — when you’re green, you’re good. It’s that simple.

Microsoft Security Essentials runs quietly and efficiently in the background so that you are free to use your Windows-based PC the way you want—without interruptions or long computer wait times…

And from the Microsoft Malware Protection Center blog:

The Microsoft Malware Protection Center (MMPC) would like to introduce you to Microsoft’s new security program - Microsoft Security Essentials. The MMPC is very excited about this release, which should help us to protect more customers around the world at no cost.

Here’s a note from the Microsoft Security Essentials team:

Microsoft Security Essentials (formerly codenamed “Morro”) is the newest security product from Microsoft that helps protect consumers against viruses, spyware and other malicious software. The program, using the same technology as the Forefront product family, is designed to protect and take the guess work out of you wondering if you are protected or not.

If you’re green, you’re good.

Red or yellow means there is something that needs to be done to keep your PC secure. A single click and the PC is back to the green protected state…