Mark Johnston's Blog

Expression 3 available for pre-order

2009-07-26T21:25:10Z

My buddy Chris let me know that the Microsoft Store in the UK has the Expression 3 suite of designer products available for pre-order.

Mike Ormond has a great post about Expression 3 and a cool video on the new features in Expression Web 3

If you are interested in purchasing, check out MS Store

From about:blank to bing.com

2009-07-26T21:16:47Z

After an amazing week at the annual MGX conference for Microsoft’s sales and marketing ‘field’ – people like me who work in places like the UK rather than directly on products in Redmond – I made a subtle but important change to my browser – I flipped my default homepage to Bing:

I’ve never been a homepage person, as my workflow is open IE > Bing it through searchbox OR type in URL directly > View page. But with the new Bing experience I’ve started to appreciate the user experience that it provides with the aesthetically pleasing background images.

Check out Bing Image Archive to see more of the cool background images. There is even a Bing Photo Contest on Facebook to have users’ summer travel photos voted to be put on the Bing.com homepage

Bing It On

Microsoft Expression offer in UK 40% off

2009-05-11T23:28:31Z

If you are a designer or developer that works with Microsoft technology (ASP.NET, Silverlight, etc) then this is a cracking offer from the guys over in the Microsoft Store – 40% off which means you can bag Expression Web (upgrade) for just under £60 for instance.

Check it out – 40% off select Expression products

Flash v Silverlight Gallery

2009-03-02T14:36:36Z

Stumbled across this great site with a tonne of examples built for Flash and Silverlight. It’s from Terence Tsang, who has 6 years Flash experience and 1 year in Silverlight.

Examples include source code demonstrating effects, animation and 3D. If you are a Flash developer and trying to understand Silverlight then this might be a great starting point

Flash vs Silverlight Gallery

New Media what?

2009-02-27T17:45:27Z

I really enjoyed this video for 2 reasons:

I’ve been talking about this ‘stuff’ for a while now in marketing meetings, and I am guilty of many of the comments in the video.
My niece knows douchebag is a ‘naughty word’ and loves to tell people off when they use it (not bad for a 4 year old English kid :))

More designer/developer wallpaper – use it and win coffee

2009-02-09T22:49:55Z

Continuing on from my previous post celebrating the launch of the UK Expression Newsletter I have another set of wallpapers to share with you. This time from the very talented Albinal.com

A Meeting of the Minds

Available in all sorts of resolutions. Grab it now from Flickr

COMPETITION – Email me a link to markjo@microsoft.com of the photo of your laptop/desktop with the meeting of the minds wallpaper on it to enter a free prize draw for one of five £10 Starbucks cards.

Some legal stuff:

Expression Wallpaper Free Prize Draw Terms and Conditions:

1. ELIGIBILITY: This promotion is open to any person resident in the UK who is 18 years of age or older at the time of entry.

2. TO ENTER: Simply email the photograph of your desktop with the Meeting of the Minds image on it to Mark Johnston markjo@microsoft.com. Once you have emailed Mark, you will automatically be entered into a free prize draw to win one Starbucks £10 card.

3. TIMING: This promotion runs from 11:00.00 am Monday 9th February 2009.The closing date of this promotion is 19:00.00 pm Monday 23rd February.

4. SELECTION OF WINNERS: Microsoft will select five winners by a random prize draw in the presence of an independent adjudicator on Tuesday 24th February 2009. The winner will be notified by email by Monday 24^th December 2007. The winners may be required to participate in publicity or advertising.

5. PRIZE: The winner will receive a Starbucks card with £10 credit. Prizes as stated and are non transferable. No cash or other alternatives available. Microsoft reserve the right to substitute prizes of equal or greater value. The prize will be sent to the winner by 1st March 2009.

6. WINNERS LIST: The winner consents to their surname being made publicly available. The winners surname will be available for a period of 2 months after the closing date by 23rd April 2009.

7. OTHER: No correspondence will be entered into regarding either this promotion or these Terms and Conditions. In the unlikely event of a dispute, Microsoft’s decision shall be final. Microsoft reserve the right to amend, modify, cancel or withdraw this promotion at any time without notice.

Promoter: Microsoft Limited, Microsoft Campus, Thames Valley Park, Reading, RG6 1WG, England

A tidy desk

2009-02-09T22:25:30Z

This blog post is classified under OCD

I have a few pet hates in life, and one of them is how messy cables can look going from my PC to my monitor! So, during #uksnow 2009 I took it upon myself to fix this issue once and for all. And decided to document the process.

Before:

The tools I used to tidy the wires:

Three items did the trick:

Bluelounge CableBox – to house the powerstrip and plugs
Cable sock – to group the wires
Cable ties – to attach to desk and keep out of way
And not a JML product in sight!

After:

I can sleep easy again!

Dell Social Innovation competition

2009-02-02T18:24:25Z

Dell just announced a competition for students challenging them to come up with innovative ideas to solve global issues.

It’s very similar to Microsoft’s Imagine Cup with the difference being that the IC is focused more on applying the technology to the idea that the students come up with. I’ll be keeping an eye on this as I think that Dell are doing some really smart stuff like:

Digg style ranking
Completely transparent on the ideas submitted so teams will try to focus on unique ideas
Aimed at all students not just those on technology courses. The best teams I’ve met when I’ve been to IC world finals are those that have students from multiple disciplines

(Hat tip to Andy Sernovitz’s Damn, I wish I’d thought of that)

Microsoft Expression Webcasts

2009-01-27T18:21:59Z

My colleagues in the US created a tonne of great video training content for Microsoft Expression design tools. I think there are something like 28 videos in total.

A good starting point if you haven’t used Expression before is to try the fundamentals series:

Then there are load more and I thought I would list them all here for reference (excuse the long post!):

Expression Design Essentials:

Expression Blend Essentials:

Expression Web Essentials:

Expression Encoder Essentials:

Expression Media Essentials:

Microsoft Expression for Designers:

MSDN UK events – Silverlight and WPF

2009-01-11T21:55:02Z

The guys in the MSDN team are presenting a load of events on rich client technologies during February:

Event Description

Audience: Developers

In this half-day session we’ll do a refresh of the technologies that we can use to build rich, interactive clients with .NET in 2008. We’ll take a look at how we can be cross-platform, cross-browser with Silverlight 2 and yet get the full development experience of a .NET application and then we’ll explore how we can take that further with the Windows Presentation Foundation V3.5 Service Pack 1 which allows for the richest, most-productive development model for Windows applications. There’ll be lots of demos and code as we bring you bang-up-to-date with what’s happening in the world of Microsoft clients.

Agenda:

Silverlight 2: From Scratch

Haven’t seen or experimented with Silverlight 2? This session is for you. We’ll explain the platform’s capabilities for rich, internet applications and we’ll look at how you go about building applications using a combination of the XAML language and the .NET Framework. Along the way, we’ll look at the major stepping stones like how we can make use of the network, how we can make use of the filesystem, how we can re-use and make use of existing controls and we’ll look at the controls that come “in the box” along with the ones in the Silverlight Toolkit on CodePlex. We’ll also look at the tooling involved in building a Silverlight 2 application with Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 and Expression Blend 2 Service Pack 1.

Windows Presentation Foundation: From Scratch

New to WPF? Coming back to the world of “rich client” after building web applications? In this session we’ll do a refresh of what Windows Presentation Foundation is, what its core capabilities are and how we build applications using a combination of the XAML language and the .NET Framework. We’ll bring this bang up-to-date by having a look at what’s new for WPF since its original release in 2006 and we’ll look at some of the newer developments such as the WPF Toolkit with its DataGrid and Ribbon controls on CodePlex.

They will be presenting in the following cities:

London
Birmingham
Edinburgh
Manchester

You can find out more and sign up for the event by visiting the MSDN Events site here

Silverlight skills are hot!

2008-12-24T12:44:36Z

And my name ain’t Paris either.

Nick Langley over at Computer Weekly has a great piece on how important Silverlight is in the RIA space for those with .NET skills.

C# and ASP.Net web developers with Silverlight £28-40k

Not bad eh?

And if you fancy some formal training, check out Xpertise and this blog for more training providers in the new year.

Computer Weekly: Hot Skills - Silverlight

My festive geek gift list

2008-12-19T14:12:29Z

Everyone else does one of these, so I couldn’t resist throwing my gadget and geek desires onto HTML/RSS.

Flip Mino HD
This little beauty is an HD video recording device. It would be cool to start capturing more and more video moments both personally (family stuff to share with the folks back in NI) and professionally (events, demos) and upload them online.

Flip Mino HD

Gorilla Tripod
I’m going to Africa in 2009 and want to capture top notch snaps and need something to balance my SLR camera on. The gorilla pod provides that flexibility and won’t take up much of the15KG luggage weight limit for luggage on internal flights like a normal tripod.

Gorilla Tripod

Zune dock
The Zune software for me whips iTunes butt. When I work from home I have it running on my home PC in the study. What I really want is to have a Zune dock in the kitchen/bedroom hooked up to speakers and wirelessly sync content.

Zune Dock

HP MediaSmart Homeserver
My media collection is blossoming and with the NXE being my main channel for consuming digital content, I’m not so fussed on using MCE as my media interface. Having everything on a WHS gives me a scalable storage solution that can be stuck in a cupboard and serve the living room, study and personal machines. The BIG thing I’m excited about is having Live Mesh integration as discussed at PDC in October

HP MediaSmart Server

Sony Vaio TT with all the trimmings (SSD, WiMax, Bluray)
My next laptop has a couple of key requirements – smaller and lighter than my already small/light X61 Lenovo tablet, killer battery life and look good! I saw the new TT Vaio when I was going through Heathrow recently and it looks like it fits the bill.

Sony Vaio TT

CM’s Christmas card in Silverlight Deepzoom

2008-12-17T19:53:20Z

The nice people over at Content Master created their Christmas card with DeepZoom:

Check out Merry Christmas from all at CM Group

(HT to Kris)

Photosynth goes Silverlight

2008-12-15T12:54:34Z

Spotted this one on the DeepZoom blog

Kudos to Mark Dawson for this

Check it out - Experimental Silverlight Photosynth Viewer

Are designers and developers really that different?

2008-12-01T23:39:10Z

I’m still figuring out this space and caught this great article over on Think Vitamin posing 10 unanswered questions from the FOWD event in New York. The interesting part of the article is reading people’s responses in the comments section (46 at time of posting).

Some of my favourites:

Would I be a better designer to work with if I knew coding myself?
Yes.

Do developers appreciate knowledgeable designers?
Yes.

That was easy.

And

This could be huge, or very short. In short the above should meld away when designers and developers get the chance to go for a beer / go bowling / etc. chat briefly about what they are doing and realise that they are all on the same team to get the same project out.

I think the summary to those comments – we all play on the same team.

An interesting article written by a top chap at Conchango, Matt Bagwell, discusses the way he approaches designer/developer workflow and how it should be more akin to a movie studio (as a geek I quite like the idea of going to work in a place like Pixar!). It’s interesting reading and even more after you watch the PDC keynotes with Paul Dawson and Tesco on stage:

Code Geeks and Art Nerds in love (or at least in ‘like’)