Did you see the Ted video that Clare linked to a few weeks back of Microsoft Research’s WorldWide Telescope? If you didn’t, you should go check it out – it’s seriously impressive.
The WWT has been only available internally up until today, and now there is a public beta you can try yourself. Be sure you check the system requirements before trying to install it on your machine. I can also say from personal experience that it’s maybe not the smoothest app over a USB modem on my train to Belfast this morning. :-)
If you’re not at all familiar with the WorldWide Telescope, it’s an amazing piece of technology being built in Microsoft Research Labs to let your computer act as a virtual telescope to see guided tours of the sky. It is something you just have to see to understand, so go watch the Ted talk, and then go to the WorldWide Telescope site and download the application to being creating your own tours and see the universe as you never have before.
http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/
I have only had the brand new XNA Game Studio 3.0 CTP installed for a c
ouple of days, so I don’t have a whole lot to report on just yet about major differences and changes. It does make it a lot easier that this one works with Visual Studio 2008, but it doesn’t yet deploy to XBox360. So I can’t yet completely get rid of my VS 2005.
However I did see this great post on the Zune Forums about a quickstart to getting games up and running quickly on my Zune. The post is very straightforward. The only time-consuming part is uninstalling the old version of GS and upgrading your Zune software.
From there I simply downloaded a couple of sample games, opened them in VS 2008, added my Zune as a device to Visual Studio, and compiled & deployed to the Zune. Then voilà! I play Space Invaders Alien Aggressors on the Zune all the way in to work.
I think it’s only a matter of time before I’m ordering my gentle readers to download my shoot-the-lolcats XNA game for Zune.
If you thought you noticed some Internet superstars wandering around Dublin last week, you weren’t dreaming. XTech was in town and with it came folks from all over the world representing web development, open source, Web 2.0 and open standards organizations.
I was really lucky to get to go along on Thursday night to the Lightning Talks event. If you’re not familiar with the idea behind Lightning Talks, they’re very simple and very fun. The premise is that each speaker gets to present 20 slides maximum, and each slide for a maximum of 20 seconds. The idea is to have lots of short but very focused talks on a wide variety of topics.
It was a really entertaining night. Many of the speakers had their presentations timed – for those who didn’t, there was a bell dinging. Speakers sometimes get carried away and end up breathlessly trying to speed through more information than will fit in 20 seconds. We even had hecklers in the audience! One of my favourite talks was Brian Suda talking about 2D barcodes; it was really well-presented and very interesting. I also saw Anne van Kesteren talk about HTML5, Mark Birbeck on RDFa, Marcos Caceres talking about Widgets, Ian Forrester (who I think actually had 70+ slides and was hilarious), Natalia Stash on personalized museum visits with the CHIP project, and lots more.
My talk was called “Gaming and Mashups for Your Mom.” I had never done a lightning style talk before and was a bit apprehensive – I didn’t think I’d have enough time to get into really low-level technical detail. So I took a bit of a light-hearted approach to why we need interesting and fun online tools for a wide audience to allow people to express themselves and solve problems creatively. My mom and I are very different in our backgrounds: she has a degree in elementary education and I have a degree in computer science. She is incredibly creative at coming up with different games and designs and methods to teach children to learn. Having a tool like Popfly means that she and other educators can create online learning games for her students without having to worry about things like hardware acceleration and particle systems.
Ian Davis took some photos at the event and lo and behold, here are my mom and I on the big screen. Many thanks to Ian. For the record, that picture came from a cooking class we did one summer in Seattle. The dish was a salmon en papillote. We might have different education backgrounds, but we are both cooking fanatics and it’s one of our favourite things to do together.
Slides are shared here if you’re interested (I took out the video which has a license restriction – just imagine some really creative, swirly images for that one): http://www.slideshare.net/martharotter/gaming-and-mashups-for-your-mom/
I’m pleased to say that the first ever DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper event ever held in Ireland was not only a successful event, but also a ton of fun. If you’ve never heard of DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper, you should check out the intro video here: http://www.dddireland.com/. It does a nice job explaining the concept.
For our first DDD event, we got a ton of help from the Microsoft MVP community. UK MVPs Craig Murphy and Barry Dorrans organized the event from the speaker/agenda side and Mick Lohan (who runs the Galway Microsoft Technology Users Group) along with Damien Costello and Gary Allen, also from GAMTUG, did the coordinating locally.
The agenda was jam-packed with superstar speakers that you pay a fortune to see at big conferences, all here to speak to Irish developers for free. There were *six* tracks, including one dedicated to WCF, and they covered everything from Regular Expressions to Silverlight to Design Patterns to Agile Development to IronPython and a lot more. Not only that, but afterwards there was a fun game show called “Swaggily Fortunes” where teams competed for cool swag!
As most of the organization was taken care of by the user group and the speakers, I didn’t know an incredible amount about how the event is usually run. After attending the event and talking to the seasoned DDD participants, I got a great feeling for how an event like this is used to grow and strengthen user groups and communities. I was incredibly impressed and am already looking forward to the next one. Here’s how it works:
- No Microsoft employees are allowed to present – the only presenters are those “in the trenches” and working with the technology fulltime
- Anyone (well, besides us Microsofties) is allowed to submit a proposal for a talk
- The community votes on speakers based on proposed topics
- New members of the community and those who are interested in getting into speaking and presenting are encouraged
- Sponsors are recruited to help with speaker travel, venue and food costs – the event is completely free for attendees
- You leave with some pretty sweet swag
Sounds pretty great, doesn’t it? It was.
But Martha, what about the talks? Oh, right. I wanted to go see some speakers I hadn’t seen before and do some filming as well. The talks I saw were Michael Foord’s IronPython talk, Dave McMahon on XSLT Extreme, Michael Willers and Daniel Fisher talking about Distributed Applications with WCF, and Dave Sussman’s talk on Silverlight with ASP.Net. They were all excellent speakers, and if I had one regret it was only that there were too many tracks and I had a tough time choosing. I would have loved to see a lot more. During lunch, I also watched Kieran Stafford, a student at IT Sligo and part of the Irish team who won the Imagine Cup for 2008, present his team’s winning solution: ParkIT. And of course I had to see what this Swaggily Fortunes was all about after the talks.
Michael Foord – IronPython: Dynamic Languages on .NET and Silverlight
Michael has been a Python developer for around five years and is currently working on a book called IronPython in Action. He talked about why dynamic languages are cool, where IronPython and the DLR came from, and showed off how to work with .NET using IronPython. To illustrate a real life IronPython application, he showed off the very slick Resolver One. He also showed off the interactive interpreter tool for IronPython to illustrate some of the language’s features. He walked through information on Silverlight 2 with IronPython, highlighting his IronPython and Silverlight 2 Interactive Interpreter as well as his very cool IronPython Web IDE, which I have used several times & love. Lastly, Michael showed off some examples of embedding IronPython in .NET applications using the IronPython Evaluator. A great speaker and an incredibly nice individual, I definitely look forward to seeing more of Michael’s talks in the future.
Dave McMahon – XSLT Extreme
Dave used the word “Extreme” in his talk’s title because basically anything that is called Extreme is instantly cool. I fell for it anyway, so nice work, Dave. But it turns out that was great, because his session was excellent. I used XSLT & XPath a lot when I was working in Redmond, but haven’t much with it since I moved to Dublin. This session reminded me why I need to be using it more. Dave described various pros of XSLT and scenarios where and why to use it. He showed off some very nice demos including debugging XSLT in Visual Studio, extending capabilities and providing alternate output formats. The demos were excellent because they were enough to show realistically what the code might look like, but also streamlined enough so that I didn’t get lost in the application. The session was jam-packed with lots of solid information and practical scenarios, so it was really useful (and extreme!). Plus Dave is always entertaining, so even if you don’t know much about XSLT, you’ll have fun listening to him.
Michael Willers and Daniel Fisher – Distributed Applications with WCF: Design, Develop and Deploy – Part 1
Michael and Daniel conducted two sessions as part of the dedicated WCF track. This first session started by describing scenarios like the German train ticketing kiosks and eBay where usage is underestimated and can cause problems in the future. Their stories were both interesting and impactful. They then walked us through a system they worked on for the German government including the architecture & development. Using a combination of Visio diagrams, white boards, threat modelling and data diagrams, Michael and Daniel discussed the different discussions and scenarios that developers and architects need to think about in order to ensure they are building their applications the right way and the secure way. I learned a lot from their stories and the processes they discussed, and I heard great things from people who attended the second half of their session as well which went into more implementation depth. Definitely lots of solid and important content for developers here.
Dave Sussman – Integrating Silverlight into ASP.NET Applications
Dave’s session took a look at where the web is today (including how it’s currently broken) and gave an overview of where Silverlight fits. He discussed a lot of the new features in Silverlight 2 like controls, layout, the Base Class Library. He talked about areas where Silverlight is appropriate for websites today and the strengths it can bring to a web application by creating “islands of richness”. Dave showed off some really nice demonstrations using sweet controls and layout along with the HTML bridge. He described really well how Silverlight communicates with JavaScript, and I was really impressed by the depth of his sample apps. I also owe Dave an apology because my spare camera battery went missing during the day and so I missed a few minutes of his talk while I rearranged the camera. Great talk, and I hear through the grapevine that Dave will be back in Ireland later this month giving a .NET Masterclass, so I’ll be sure to post those details as soon as I have them all.
I can’t miss mentioning of course our Geek Walk and Talk to “Craggy Island”, or Inis Oírr. We had fabulous weather, and as I had never been to any of the Aran Islands, I was really excited to get the chance to wander around. A few of us were a bit disappointed that we never found the Internet cafe on the island, but we did find the Father Ted boat as well as some good food. One of the best benefits of an event like this is getting the chance to talk more with the attendees and speakers about their technology and projects, and the Geek Walk and Talk is a great example. We had a great group along for the day, and I think everyone enjoyed it a lot. I put some pictures here of the day if you’re interested – go on and take a look and be jealous of the gorgeous day we had: http://www.flickr.com/photos/martharotter/sets/72157604901586174/
Thanks so much to all the attendees, the sponsors, the speakers, the coordinators, and everyone else I’m forgetting. If you’d like to be involved in the next DeveloperDeveloperDeveloper Ireland, please feel free to e-mail me at martharo [at] microsoft.com and let me know. I’m interested especially in hearing from people who would like the chance to speak, but also from people with suggestions about topics and technical content. Thanks!
Via Laurent I came across this excellent site showing off a cool new application called the “Patient Journey Demonstrator.” It’s a healthcare application with end-to-end scenarios for patient data, medical professional interaction, and medical administration.
This is a wonderful answer to the question I’ve get asked a lot (still): I’ve seen the shiny video players, now where are the real world applications? This healthcare site shows off how well Silverlight works as a full-blown application platform. I am looking forward to more applications like this one coming out very shortly.
In the image below, for example, we have a schedule of client appointments and live ECG running. When I clicked on the Exercise test results, I had DeepZoom on the test result graphs, which was really incredible to see. Definitely go have a look at the applications here – they are very impressive.
To find out more about this application along with the Microsoft Health Common User Interface (which is available for you to download the source on codeplex.com), go check it out here: http://www.mscui.net/PatientJourneyDemonstrator/
Check it out – there is a cool new gadget with content from Channel 8, downloadable for your Vista machine. It flips through the latest content on channel8. When you click on an item that grabs your interest, you will get more information as well as have a pointer to the page for additional details. The pop-out might include images, videos, more content from a blog post, etc.
If you’re not familiar with http://channel8.msdn.com, it’s Microsoft’s community website for students. It has blog posts about new technology, videos, information on software programs like DreamSpark, and news about student-related events like the Imagine Cup. The content is quite varied and might go anywhere from new programming languages, updating Zune software, videos about using Live Mesh, interviews with developers, what’s going on with Microsoft Research, building a custom PC and more – there’s something there for all interests.
To get the Channel 8 gadget, you can install from the Windows Live Gallery here: http://gallery.live.com/LiveItemDetail.aspx?li=ae5fede5-e5ed-49af-85a5-d357580c1e2b. And of course, it’s free.
For the fourth episode of the Microsoft Ireland podcast, I respond to some user requests for information regarding all the noise being made about Live Mesh.
Thanks to t r y ^ d for the use of their music.
Resources for further information:
Live Mesh Team Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/livemesh/
Gillmor Gang Podcast with David Treadwell: http://gillmorgang.techcrunch.com/2008/04/25/gillmor-gang-042508/
Channel 9 Live Mesh Videos: http://channel9.msdn.com/tags/LiveMesh
Alan Crowley from DeCare Systems in Cork is in Dublin for the evening to talk with the Microsoft SQL Server User Group. The discussion is on “Visual Studio for Database Professionals”, and includes the following topics:
Introducing DB Pro as a part of Team System 
Overview of DDLC Microsoft Visual Studio for Database Professionals Refactoring your DB objects in DB PRO Data Generation Plans Unit Testing your DB scripts Schema & Data Comparisons Build & Deploy to target DB schema More information can be found at the SQL Server User Group website here: http://www.sql.mtug.ie/
If you, like me, were really bummed that you didn’t make it to Mix08 in Las Vegas this year, get excited! We are bringing Mix to you!
Mix Essentials is a one-day event being held in the National College of Ireland on Friday, May 23rd. It’s completely free and includes speakers from Microsoft Corp, Conchango in the UK, and all over. This event is for web designers and developers 
and includes some unique talks like “Virgins, Spaceships and Total Experience Design”, “Beauty and the Geek”, the new MVC framework, and more, not to mention keynote speaker Lou Carbone on “Getting Clued in to Experience Management.”
I’m really thrilled to get to host this event right here in Dublin. Over the next couple of weeks we’ll be announcing some additional surprises for the event to help make it more unique and fun, including giveaways and on-site activities.
Go learn more about the event, check out the agenda and register here: http://www.microsoft.com/ireland/mix08/default.html. Register soon, as we have a strict capacity in the venue. Please let me know if you have any questions. See you at Mix Essentials!
In our third episode of our weekly podcast, Tom Nugent discusses SharePoint Server and how it's being used in Ireland today.
Thanks to t r y ^ d for the use of their music.
Resources for further information:
Technet SharePoint Server 2007 Website: http://technet.microsoft.com/office/sharepointserver
Microsoft SharePoint Briefing - Dublin: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=8600132
Microsoft SharePoint Briefing - Belfast: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032375948&Culture=en-IE
I was really lucky to get to go to the Ireland Imagine Cup Championships last week here in Sandyford. There were some great projects shown off, all with the idea of improving the environment.
Microsoft Student Partner Alan Spillane did a great job of not only filming the various projects, he also interviewed teams and edited all the footage for us to enjoy. See a copy of that video below!
Nice work Alan - thanks very much for that!
OpenCoffee Club Dublin has been a bit quiet lately. Too quiet.
It's time to shake it up again.
At the very fun & first ever Monthly Open Wine Tasting last night (many thanks to Lar Veale!), a lot of people were talking about how much they had missed OpenCoffee in the past month. So tomorrow's OpenCoffee Club Dublin should be expecting a lot of attendees, both new and old.
It would be cool if people go to the OpenCoffee Club Dublin website & leave a comment if they're attending, just so people know who will be there. Unless of course, you're me, in which case it generally is better if I leave a comment that I *won't* be there, so that more people turn up. Just kidding.
See you tomorrow!
I know I'll be in Galway for the Developer Developer Developer event! Thanks a million to Ben Sykes for his amazing work in creating the gorgeous above flyer for the event. Check out http://dddireland.com for more information - see you in Galway!
In our second episode of our weekly podcast, Jorge Leitão talks to us about User Account Control feature in Windows Vista.
Thanks to t r y ^ d for the use of their music.
Resources for further information:
Microsoft Ireland Consulting Services Blog: http://blogs.technet.com/mcs-ireland-infrastructure/
Microsoft TechNet overview of User Account Control: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsvista/aa905113.aspx
Windows Vista Application Compatibility – for ITPros and developers: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsvista/aa905078.aspx
Applications that have earned the "Certified for Windows Vista" logo or the "Works with Windows Vista" logo: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/933305
Philip Bromwell of RTÉ Six One News was kind enough to send me a DVD of the clip he filmed and produced for their news show. He was wonderful to work with and did an amazing job putting this small, two-minute video together for the general public to get a feel for what we are doing.
Thanks Philip!
