Mark Brown's Web Platform Blog : Silverlight

Vote for my Session at SXSW

mjbrown — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 02:32:31 GMT

Hey everybody. I am up for Community Voting for the next SXSW Interactive Festival happening next March and I need your votes to get accepted. Here is the session I am presenting.

HD Video Streaming Server using PHP and Silverlight

A dash of PHP, a pinch of Silverlight and a smidge of IIS and you can easily make an HD video streaming server. Check out this session as we'll build a fully functional HD video streaming server and then give you the code so you can use it yourself. As a bonus we may even show on the fly encoding so you can make your very own HD version of YouTube with user generated content.

This promises to be an AWESOME session and I really want to show people how far the technology has come to not only stream video content over the internet easily but also to deliver HD quality video over the internet as well.

To get accepted for the SXSW event I need to get votes from the community that think this is a cool session and want to see it. So click on the session title above or the “Thumbs Up” graphic there up top, go register yourself if you haven’t (even if you’re not attending) and then click on this link above here to vote up my session.

Thanks !!!

Technorati Tags: SXSW,IIS,Microsoft,PHP

Watch LIVE HD broadcast of Michael Jackson Memorial

mjbrown — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 08:10:05 GMT

Tomorrow, July 7^th, 10AM PT, 1PM ET – We are broadcasting the Michael Jackson memorial, live in HD from the Staples Center in Los Angeles using IIS Smooth Streaming and Silverlight to the world. This broadcast is available to everyone World-Wide. Make sure to show up a few minutes early if you need to download the Silverlight player. Only takes a moment.

The link to the embedded player is here, http://inmusic.ca/news_and_features/Michael_Jackson

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Silverlight,IIS,Michael Jackson

Microsoft at the Country Music Association Festival

mjbrown — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 05:46:36 GMT

On June 11-14 2009, over 200,000 people will be attending the Country Music Association’s Music Festival in Nashville, Tennessee. For the first time in the history of the Music Festival, Microsoft is will have a significant presence at the event. The CMA is interested in aligning technology and country music cultures so the CMA and Microsoft have embarked on a number of initiatives designed to drive buzz and excitement around the digital lifestyle and country music and Microsoft will be showcasing technology such as Silverlight with Deep Zoom technology and Microsoft Tag.

Here’s a rundown on what you can find if you’re fixin’ to be at the CMA Festival next week:

“Be this Close” Silverlight Deep zoom online game

Interactive search, on CMA site and radio partner web sites (see list below)
Ex. “Find the picture of Blake Shelton kissing a fan with a orange hat at the 2007 CMA Music Fest”

“Where Am I” – Microsoft Tag

Microsoft Tag will be featured in a number of ways throughout the Music Festival experience. 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 Windows Live Search Maps making the task of navigating the enormous number of venues easy and convenient for festival attendees. Tag will also be featured in an event wide contest called “Tag Hunter” which will be distributed event wide by a legion CMA “Fun Squad” members. To check out Tag for your phone, get it here, http://gettag.mobi/

Cell Journalists Online Photo Shared Experience” – 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.

Microsoft Booth and E-Mail Kiosk Featuring Internet Explorer 8 and Microsoft Surface and Meet Some Stars!

Attendees will be able to test drive our latest and greatest browser to learn about the tremendous innovations Microsoft is delivering in making the web a safer and more productive environment. In addition to IE, attendees will be able to experience not one, but two, Microsoft Surface stations. Microsoft Partner Interknowlogy will be showcasing a Surface based Jukebox application featuring country music and visits by country music celebrities. Winchester ammunition will be showcase their award winning ballistic simulator built on Surface. Zune and Xbox will also be in the house showcasing. And if you want to rub elbows with a few Country Music Stars these ones will be hanging out at the Microsoft Booth (#334) here below:
Thursday 6/11/2009

9:00 AM James Otto
11:00 AM Love and Theft
1:30 PM Randy Rodgers Band
2:00 PM Bucky Covington

Friday 6/12/2009

9:00 AM Whitney Duncan
11:00 AM Point of Grace

Saturday 6/13/2009

11:00 AM Lee Brice

Sunday 6/14/2009

Jessica Harp

And if you’re not planning to be there because the Sheriff won’t let you leave your county or because your Maa said “no” then you can check it out online.

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

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Silverlight,Microsoft Tag,IE8,CMA

Announcing PHP SDK for Windows Azure!

mjbrown — Thu, 14 May 2009 20:35:52 GMT

Hey busy day blogging today about the Microsoft Web Platform today!!!

Check this out, a new SDK for PHP developers to build applications using PHP on Azure. They have 4 sample projects that you can download from CodePlex for you to peruse.

Of course I’m a bit partial to the Virtual Earth PHP Kit but these others with Silverlight and SQL Server are great as well.

Interoperability @ Microsoft : Announcing PHP SDK for Windows Azure… and much more!

And don’t forget, the easiest way to get set up doing PHP on Windows and IIS is to use our Web Platform Installer :)

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Web PI,Azure,PHP,Virtual Earth,SQL Server,SilverLight

Tech Ed Interview with Carl Franklin

mjbrown — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:15:46 GMT

Hey everyone. Sorry I haven’t blogged in a while. Been a little crazy for me lately getting everything ramped up for our upcoming release of Virtual Earth which is due here very very soon.

When we were all at Tech Ed North America in Orlando, FL this past June I sat down with Angus Logan, Dr. Neil and Carl Franklin of .NET Rocks! fame for a little interview. We covered a bunch of stuff including our upcoming Virtual Earth release which will feature v1 of our Virtual Earth Web Services. Our recent CTP release of the Virtual Earth ASP.NET control, our UltraCam, 3D models as well as a bunch of other Windows Live Platform services including Messenger, Silverlight Streaming, etc.

We also go into excruciating detail into the definition, exploration and proper usage of the word, “Chuffed”.

Enjoy !!!

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Virtual Earth,Windows Live,TechEd,UltraCam

Announcing: Virtual Earth ASP.NET Control (CTP Release)

mjbrown — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 09:14:00 GMT

At long last it is FINALLY HERE. I’ve been talking about this control for a long time. We’ll we finally have the CTP release of the new Virtual Earth ASP.NET control. ASP.NET developers can now integrate Microsoft Virtual Earth Maps simply by dragging and dropping an ASP.NET Server Control in Visual Studio and Visual Web Developer.

Integrating interactive, immersive maps no longer requires JavaScript, it can be done by ASP.NET developers simply. For smooth interactions this control can be combined with ASP.NET AJAX capabilities to provide the power of ASP.NET Serverside processing without the development overhead of coding JavaScript. I’ll provide all the relevant links here at the top but you should check at the bottom to make sure you have all the prerequisites.

Key Links

To download: http://dev.live.com/tools and download the Windows Live Tools July CTP release.
For a Developer Evaluation account (to access Traffic): https://mappoint-css.live.com/mwssignup/ (requires Live ID)
Channel 9 Screencast: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Mark+Brown/Virtual-Earth-ASPNET-Control-CTP-Release/
To give feedback: https://connect.microsoft.com/feedback/default.aspx?SiteID=505

Feature Overview

· Visual Studio toolbox - Map control is available right in your toolbox of Visual Studio

· Drag and drop control onto your web page - You can drag and drop the control from toolbox onto your web page and set some properties and you are ready to go.

· Server side events - Server side events for panning/zooming, find/directions are available in addition to client side events for the map control.

· Display and control the map - You can control how map displays on your web page with standard functionality like MapMode (2D/3D), MapStyle(Road/Aerial), displaying dashboard and setting its size, setting the zoom levels, zooming in/out, panning etc.

· Adding shapes to the map - You can add shapes to map from ASP.NET Server Side using provided methods. You can query different shapes/layers in the Map and delete them as well.

· Using directions - You can get the directions between multiple points using methods GetDirections. You can specify different routing options like distance unit, color etc. Once the direction information is received, Map control raises event OnServerDirections where you can process/render the returned information in way that suites your scenario.

· Using local search and mapping results - Map control provides with find method where you can search for local businesses in a specified location.

· Working with bird's eyes - Map control has support for bird's eye view similar to JavaScript control.

· Getting Traffic information - You can get traffic information and display on your web page. For this, you need to have an account with Virtual Earth Platform. You first need to get a client token:

Important: To get a Developer Evaluation account for Virtual Earth go to this link here and request one, https://mappoint-css.live.com/mwssignup/

· You can then use this client token to display the traffic of the location you are interested in:

Development stage

The suite of tools is currently a community technology preview, which means we would love feedback, but strongly discourage any web site from going live using these controls.

Requirements for Using Windows Live Tools

This CTP release only targets English (United States).

Operating System

Microsoft Windows XP SP 2 or
Microsoft Windows Vista

Development Tools

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 or
Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition
Microsoft ASP.NET 3.5 (already installed if you have Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 or .NET 3.5 Framework installed)
Silverlight Tools Beta 2 for Visual Studio 2008

Key Links

To download: http://dev.live.com/tools and download the Windows Live Tools July CTP release.
Channel 9 Screencast: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Mark+Brown/Virtual-Earth-ASPNET-Control-CTP-Release/
For a Developer Evaluation account (to access Traffic): https://mappoint-css.live.com/mwssignup/ (Requires Live ID)
To give feedback: https://connect.microsoft.com/feedback/default.aspx?SiteID=505

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Virtual Earth

New Silverlight Wrapper for Virtual Earth

mjbrown — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:11:57 GMT

A couple of guys from Microsoft, Jared Bienz from US-DPE ISV Team and Adam Eversole from Microsoft Research have created a new managed wrapper around the Virtual Earth AJAX control and released it onto Code Plex. From the projects description:

The Virtual Earth Wrapper for Silverlight (VIEWS) is a wrapper around the JavaScript Virtual Earth control that allows a developer to write a complex Virtual Earth Mashup using a managed language for all client-side scripting. This is accomplished by using the CLR (Common Language Runtime) support in Silverlight 2.0 (or later), and allows coding in C#, VB, Python, or other languages. Many developers already are using a managed language in ASP.NET for server-side tasks, now the same managed language can be used on the client-side as well, leveraging existing knowledge, and providing more continuity and consistency to the end-to-end solution.

They’ve also posted a screen cast showing this new control in action out on Channel 9. Check it out.

Virtual Earth Mapping in Silverlight with VIEWS

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Virtual Earth,Silverlight

Virtual Earth & Silverlight Together on Windows Mobile

mjbrown — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 23:49:21 GMT

My friend Sam Chenaur over in the Developer and Platform Evangelism Team (DPE) here at Microsoft posted a blog entry the other day about an interview he did on Channel 10 with the CEO of John L. Scott Realty. If you didn’t know. John L. Scott is an existing user of Virtual Earth and did an amazing job integrating Virtual Earth onto their site. Check out the Neighborhood Wizard using Virtual Earth. It’s not surprising that John L Scott is doing so well given the way they use technology.

With the help of a few folks they’ve now taken that a step further and have created a proof-of-concept application that brings Virtual Earth down to the mobile device using Silverlight technology. This POC allows you to search for homes straight from your phone providing you details on the house, a video that showcases the house, more pictures and even allows you to call the real estate agent directly from the application. You can also use the application in GPS mode so you can drive around various communities and use the application to see what homes are for sale in that area without having to touch the device at all. Totally cool!

Silverlight Mobile with John L Scott Real Estate

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Virtual Earth,Silverlight,Windows Mobile

Cool Silverlight Deep Zoom – Virtual Earth Demo

mjbrown — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 03:20:42 GMT

Our friends from Australia, Soul Solutions, headed up by two of our most creative Virtual Earth MVP’s have built a totally cool Virtual Earth application using Silverlight complete with extensive blog entry and extending the MultiScaleTileSource class originally referenced in a ScottGu blog recently.

Follow the links to check it out. Here’s a screen shot. Incredible stuff. Enjoy.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Virtual Earth,Silverlight,DeepZoom