Nigel Parker's Outside Line

Ah it is that time to hit the road again and come see all of you! 

Now in its third year, MIX08 took place in Las Vegas from March 5-7 2008. MIX is an intimate opportunity for cutting-edge technical, creative and business strategists to engage Microsoft in a conversation about the future of the web.

Join me in a couple of weeks time in Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin and Tauranga as I showcase technical aspects of Microsoft's latest web technologies including Silverlight 2, .NET 3.5 and Live Services.

Register your place at http://www.microsoft.com/nz/events/unplugged/msdn-may08.mspx  

Join the facebook group at http://discuss.geek.nz to discuss and stay up to date on further events.

I've had a few people contact me asking questions about how I did that fancy Picture In Picture and Video Reflection stuff in my Vimeo and Facebook Videos linked off my my previous post.

Well the answer may not be what you expect.

I used Expression Encoder 2 (namely the new video overlay feature and marker meta data), Expression Blend 2.5, Visual Studio 2008 and Silverlight 2 Beta 1 to build an application.

The output from Expression Encoder 2 is a single video with two streams combined, and markers saying when the PIP was focused on me.

I then uploaded the video to Microsoft's streaming servers. You can view it in it's raw form using Windows Media Player. This technique vastly simplifies the sync issues that can get created when using two separate streams and would work for multiple cameras at live events as well.

I then used a single media element, clipping and two video brushes to produce the resulting application.

1 Video Stream + a 134kb XAP file is what produced the final effect.

Given the interest I thought I would post my source code and show you the Silverlight 2 (I could have used Silverlight 1) version of my application hosted online.

I used the free Silverlight Streaming service to host the application and you can view the finished product either online as a web page and as a Windows Application. I didn't put in any UI to show buffering so please be patient for the video to start. I also added code to pop to full screen triggered by the user clicking on the main video feed.

P.S. for the vimeo and facebook versions I used Hypercam Screen Capture software to record the screen while the Silverlight application was running!

Enjoy!

Great news the .NET 3.5 Enhancements Training kit has been released containing six hands-on labs, made up of the following technologies:

1. ADO.NET Data Services
2. ADO.NET Entity Framework
3. ASP.NET AJAX History
4. ASP.NET Dynamic Data
5. ASP.NET MVC
6. ASP.NET Silverlight controls

Also available is the Kigg Starter Kit (A Digg like application developed with ASP.NET MVC Framework, LINQ to SQL and ASP.NET AJAX)

Scott Hanselman's MIX session on MVC is also well worth a look if you are that way inclined. BTW if you want to see Scott at Tech.Ed join the Bring Scott Hanselman to Tech-Ed Australia group and make some noise.

I enjoyed the DNUG talk at Ellerslie last night on MIX08 a developers perspective especially building the DeepZoom SL2 project. Check out this video and http://photozoom.mslivelabs.com/ to learn more about deepzoom.

I was asked if you could bypass the DeepZoom Composer and create your composition using code. The Answer Yes, Included as part of the Deep Zoom are command line encoding tools that allow you to generate the output files needed without having to use the Deep Zoom Composer. Also if you would like to create collections that can randomise each image's location programatically "rather than one big image" you can do that to. Also Jamie has a primer on the deepzoom technology if you would like to go deep.

As I mentioned ScotGu has a great list of Silverlight 2 resources on his blog.

In fact after lifting the lid off SL2 yesterday I was inspired to "re-work" my video reflection demo from SL1 to SL2. The video is below, code is here (minus the video)

Download a better looking WMV version (14.5MB)

Also Silverlight Streaming now supports the free hosting of Silverlight 2 applications. Check this post on the Naked XAP upload enabled in Silverlight Streaming.

P.S. Those of you who aren't subscribed to the MSDN Flash the code from my recent VS2008/ ASP.NET presentation is on skydrive and you might also find this link useful.

If you want to see me present on the new stuff in person come along to one of my MSDN Unplugged events coming up in May.

I was invited to present a 20x20 session at The Auckland Web Meetup last night.

Photo Credit Peter

It was fun but I did feel a little under prepared... my Win PowerPoint 2008 presentation just worked on John's Mac (except for the missing font and the animated gif that didn't animate)... any who here is a screen cast of my session on Why New Zealand Can't Win The Cricket Social Networking.

Click through to the Vimeo version (with all the bells and whistles)

Or view the SlideShare version below (without the working animated GIF)

| View | Upload your own

Download a .pptx version of the slides

Download a pdf version of the slides

What are people saying right now?

We just need a way to sort this by reputation in real time and we'll be flying J

WARNING I'm going to break the first rule of fight club and link to tweets! Move along now if you are offended.

My involvement with the Webstock Festival started a couple of years ago. Back then the concept of bringing web celebes to en-zud was something we just had to be a part of. After a bit of arm twisting I convinced Tony to make the trip ;)

 My posts from Webstock06 Post 1 & 2

Two years on I like to think as an industry the "Web" has evolved a lot. Our stand presence IMO has also come along way...

Yes that iMac is running the Silverlight content DVD that I hacked together and threw into everyone's Webstock bag.

They say good things come in pairs and Webstock08 was no exception.

Both Verb and ourselves chose to create Photo Booths with our stands something that was not lost on the expressive attendees! The irony was we took the low tech approach with Playing Cards, a camera, a Vegas backdrop and a MIX08 Valentines theme. While Verb built and entire digital, flickr enable photo booth in .NET!

The results on the day complemented each other quite well.

Although I must say some employed interesting tactics to increase the views on their photos.

Other .NET champion sponsors Provoke and Intergen were also well represented at Webstock.

[Video]

I must say I'm very impressed by the way that the majority of the international webnorati mingled with the rest of us. Amanda made the most of the opportunity that was presented! Dan from Simple bits summed it up nicely.

It was fantastic meeting Molly Holzschlag and we had some great conversations about everything Microsoft. Of course Molly was on her best behaviour ;)

Some of my favourite moments from the event were as follows:

1. Chatting with Mr Flickr Cal Henderson - Hey I didn't know we hid the location info from displaying in the EXIF data by default... that's cool.

2. Having dinner with Michael Lopp ("Don't fall in love with products .. it creates ponies!") from apple... listening to him respond to questions about what he is working on with "now I can't talk about that ;)"

3. Tom Coates talking Hardware + Software + Services, Fire Eagle and Flickr stats 2264930075 anyone?

4. Tom Coates classic quote... "Twitter is a service that presents error messages on the Internet"

5. Scott Berkun showed that people who worked on Internet Explorer are not at all evil ;) - Plugs from Felicity, Nat and Deb.

6. Jason Santa Maria -  Brilliant - Design, Storytelling (later Matt formally declared his love)- great examples - http://noonebelongsheremorethanyou.com

7. A Kiwi winning the PowerPoint Karaoke Idol!

8. The candidness of the Trade Me story continues to entertain.

9. The Google Dinner followed by the late Friday night social event.

Of course Microsoft got the normal tongue in cheek bashing during the event (as did the new villain Google). Interesting though countless presenters and attendees mentioned Photosynth and Virtual Earth and although it is not representative of the Webstock audience you can't deny the IE stats!

Thanks to Tash, Mike and the others for once again putting on an untouchable event! I loved my 5 minutes of fame in the main theatre kicking off the 8x5's.

I'll send an update when the actual session videos go online.

Now my focus changes to MIX next week in Vegas where I'm happy to be once again joined by other webstockers Molly, Tash and Kelly. Does the circuit never end?

Remember if you are (like webstockers Verb, Intergen, Provoke, Signify, Xero and Trade Me) building a web based business on Microsoft technology in New Zealand and you want to get access to the tools of the trade check out our Web Partner program.

Also check out the Webstock - FriendFeed at http://friendfeed.com/webstock

Tags: webstock08, NZWC

I was just checking my calendar and realised I have 5 work days before I fly out to MIX08... We did a bit of a job pimping MIX at last week's Webstock conference in Wellington. Which was excellent btw and deserves its own post which I will do shortly.

MIX itself will include some great announcements targeting web developers, designers and agencies.

The day after I get back I'm flying to Christchurch to present the web Visual Studio 2008 content at...

LaunchWave08

From Darryl's blog...

We are going to be visiting Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch as follows:

• Christchurch - March 11
• Wellington - (two identical events) - March 18 & 19
• Auckland - March 26

We are running two events in Wellington - both the same - to cater for smaller venues and larger audiences - so if you are in Wellington, hopefully the event will be more comfortable for you.

If you haven't already and you can make it to ChCh, Wlg or Akl make sure you buy your ticket today!

P.S. It is certainly a busy time for presentations Darryl has been on the road for a couple of weeks with the community launch.

Last year I wrote an extensive post about the inaugural KiwiFoo Camp and having returned from kiwifoo08 last weekend here we go again!

Modelled on Tim O'Reilly's Foo Camp, Baa Camp is:

• By and for interesting technologists and scientists, and the business people who work with them,
• Limited in size,
• Scheduled over a weekend,
• A melting-pot of different technology, nationality, and sanity.
• Strictly invitation only,
• Free-form—talks are scheduled once everyone's on site.

Kiwifoo is organised by Nat Torkington and Russell Brown and they create the invite list which results in an interesting mix of 150 people.

Quote of the weekend:

"Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity."

This years attendees were noticeably more kiwi based with less international guests.

Nat opened foo on Friday evening with a comment that we didn't get last year which said and I'm paraphrasing "What goes in foo stays in foo... unless you contact the person you write about first". He went further than this stating the intention was to ensure people felt comfortable sharing things that were not NDA and remained open and honest... the intention here is to stop stone walling and spinning the company line all the time.

Mauricio picked up on this in his blog where he posted...

"The conversations around here are not NDA, but it's a matter of principle to only disclose things if you ask and receive a positive response."

That said there is plenty of stuff out there to comment on (see the list I compiled below) and I'm still going to do a post about the event.

John Ballinger hacked together a web schedule for the event using the iPhone css so I can safely assume that the session names of what was presented are at least public.

Also given the "political nature" of certain content I made sure I steered clear of certain sessions. What good could possibly have come from me attending B1?

Given this context the best way to experience kiwifoo08 is through pictures...

Glen Barnes also did a great video mash-up of the event.

All this said I do have responses, opinions and feedback that I would like to share...

Ross Howard (Shift Auckland's new creative director) nominated Robert O'Callahan and I to a WWF smackdown session on the IE8 meta tag. This session clashed with my JavaScript Silverlight free CDN session so I had to make a call whether to switch focus and do the browser session instead which I did. People were expecting blood but that isn't exactly what they got. The more I talk with Robert at events the more respect I have for the work that he does. Although we disagree on some points I find Robert's commitment to progression of the web to be applauded. All in all in this session we had numerous view points that aligned albeit coming from different sides of the fence.

I must say now that I don't have much inside knowledge beyond what has already been written online about IE8 so my goal with this session was to have an open conversation about the problems that exist for web developers and potentially provide feedback back to the IE team based on ideas coming out of it.

First of all take a look at the body language in the session... interesting...

Photo Credits Matt Buchanan

Photo Credit Chris Shiflett - Now that's what I call a freaky glance!

I noticed that Robert O'Callahan posted about the session (he arrived Sat so he missed Nat's new check first post rule) and I thought I'd first comment on a few points that Robert wrote about "what I said" .

Robert wrote - "Most of the Web developers were pretty upset about the idea, more so than me actually"

Disagree, after the session I talked to many who attended and they were all very positive about the discussion... Regan from throng even sought me out specifically to commend me on "fronting" and holding the conversation.

Robert wrote - "I asked whether IE8 has an IE6 mode; the answer was no"

What I referred to here was Chris Wilson's comment that “Standards mode” remains the same as IE7, and compatible with current content."

Robert wrote: I asked Nigel if IE8 will support any new CSS features. He said no, it's just CSS 2.1. That shocked me; I guess we'll have to wait and see.

We are not commenting on actual feature set of IE8 yet. Here I referenced a comment that Chris stated at MIX when this story broke. Chris said that the new IE8 rendering engine is focused primarily on ensuring IE8 is compliant with CSS 2.1 layout standards. I also said that there may be work going on within the team implementing some CSS3 features that I’m not aware of but we’ll just have to wait and see what comes out in the beta.

Through conversations afterwards one thing that became clear to many that I talked to is that Microsoft's view to support backwards compatibility for at least 10 years is vastly different to Mozilla's 6 month support policy once a new version is shipped. A question raised during the session... Will Mozilla remain this agile if broad enterprise adoption of FF occurs? Robert's answer absolutely! 

We heard from attendees that work with large web aps inside of the enterprise space where the browser (and OS) versions are locked for years and web aps must just work. There was a great example of someone embedding the Gecko engine as a plug-in inside IE6 because the IT department refused to update due to breaking changes in Enterprise web aps encounter by moving to IE7. I pitched in with a comment regarding dominant players like Siebel, Oracle and SAP that delivered web based systems and how we worked with them when we released new browser versions but didn't set the schedules on their update cycles. When breaking changes occur caused by fixing previous bugs regardless of the browser vendor work is still required for web sites to support (this was specifically amplified by our IE hiatus).

All in all a valuable session and food for thought... also as a side note I think Opera Mobile 9.5 shows us that "low-end" devices could be the conversation piece of 2008 and the legacy of tomorrow (something that I discussed with Robert after the session). With Flash Lite, Silverlight Mobile and Java FX attempting to surpass/ support the mobile browser is this the next standards vs proprietary software battlefield? 

As a closing point Molly lands in New Zealand next week to speak at Webstock and I'm hoping to organise a Q&A in Welly with her (details here soon if we pull it off) similar to what we threw together in Melbourne last night. Given Molly's recent comments (Parental Advisory Recommend) and the fact that we (Microsoft New Zealand) are supporting her trip to NZ it should be fun, remember to throw your comments her way if you have anything to say and you want your views aired at Webstock next week.

Another session I really enjoyed was Juha and Erica's session on talking to the press. We discussed "media training" from both sides of the fence "classic!" Juha even challenged me to a role play LOL.

I met Chris Shiflett (Not the guy from foo fighters :) last foo and this time round we had a number of great in-depth conversations (so much so that I hope to meet up in New York when I pass through in April). Chris' hosted a working session on UI confusion and implications of his friends SmugMug site which was very productive. Note to self getting lots of UX experts in a room ensures that everyone has an opinion!

Also Zef and Lulu's working UX session was interesting.

I had to laugh when John Ballinger's Mac wouldn't project for his AIR session and I had to lend him my Toshiba running Vista (oh how times have changed ;)

Miki's session was thought invoking and interactive, even if it did result in Rod Drury jumping in mid swing to plug in his laptop and show a Xero example (see him setting up below ;)

My favourite debate by far was Andre Pang's (great guy btw) session titled "First-class video on the web: the need for open standards, hyperlinked video and searchability. Plus juicy W3C/WHATWG gossip you don't know".  Put representatives from TVNZ in a room with myself, Robert O'Callahan and Adobe fanatic John Ballinger and you're bound to have fireworks... need I say more.

Best Web Community outcome was NZWC if you are posting on NZ web stuff tag it accordingly http://del.icio.us/tag/nzwc or http://technorati.com/tag/NZWC?authority=n

There was much side talk about Silverlight at kiwifoo with many people hearing about it for the first time. I did a number of impromptu demos and thought I'd share with you an email response that I got after the conference...

"Many thanks for the Silverlight demo. It's given me some ideas on a couple of UX challenges I was facing. Coupled with .Net, this is one powerful platform. In fact, the mind is buzzing with ideas now :)

Once I have some work done using it, I'd love to share it with you.

So, watch this space :)"

Links to other kiwifoo08 content...

Radio New Zealand Podcasts

• Nat Torkington and Ian Wright
• David ten Have - Ponoko
• Regan and Rachel - Throng
• Peter Gutmann

The KiwiFoo blog roll that I've spotted so far...

• Russell Brown
• Rod Drury
• Juha Saarienen
• Miki Szikszai
• Rowan Simpson
• Ludwig Wendzich
• Robert O'Callahan
• Mauricio Freitas
• Jayne Wallis 1 & 2
• Robin Sheat
• Grip Nostril
• Brenda L
• Jock Phillips
• Sandy Mamoli
• Mike Riversdale

P.S. Congrats to Lisa and Jeff for the computerworld article.

My leaving comment... good tequila don't leave home without it!

Tags: kiwifoo08, NZWC

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Four months ago I started a little project making a video out of a bunch of demos that I had been giving to different audiences over the second half of last year.

I finally finished the video over the holiday break and have today got it uploaded and live online.

I have updated my previous presentation link post...

Check out the facebook trailer (super fast)

Or watch the full video below:

1. Microsoft Research Group Shot
2. Sea Dragon (TED Video)
3. Photosynth
4. Microsoft Research HD View (Auckland, Wellington)
5. Virtual Earth (Live Labs on the Map)
6. Bill Buxton's Presentation from Expression around the Clock
7. Microsoft Surface
8. Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Surface Demonstration (Video Support)
9. French Silverlight 1.0 Application (Script#)
10. Tablet Features in WPF - Inking Over Video Sample, Ink Support Silverlight 1.0, Silverlight Ink SDK Sample
11. Silverlight 1.0 Inking Search Sample
12. Live Image Search (filters)
13. Tafiti Search Visualization
14. GPS location based interactive community (Where is Frank?)
15. Silverlight 1.1 Alpha Invaders - Code
16. Contoso Bicycle Club - Windows Live Quick Applications
17. Live Messenger Integration Demo - Details
18. http://backgroundmotion.com - Code/ Source Code
19. Microsoft Popfly
20. Windows Live Photo Gallery
21. Windows Home Server
22. LCI Intégrale
23. Livestation
24. WebGuide
25. hsn.tv
26. thirteen23 :: denounce
27. How About It?
28. the-hub.tv
29. Glenn Conner Interview - Amazon Demo Silverlight 1.1 Alpha
30. Building a 3D WPF Gesture Application - Code
31. Building a Video Player in 8 mins with Silverlight 1.0

I'm liking this application built by brainsonic using Script#

Also if you are looking for Silverlight Christmas cheer check out this and this.

Merry Christmas everybody!

Check this out on Darryl's blog

Watch this video read this post. At barcamp in Auckland last Saturday I got some "feedback" on the silence around IE8, hopefully this is the start of the IE team opening the door to what is being built in IE8.

As mentioned in the channel 9 video the part I like is that it will be up to the site creator to flag their site so that IE8 will render in "Standard Compliance Mode"... 19.48 in the video.

Minty, Deeps De Silva and Scott Barnes have the scoop

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/11/29/net-web-product-roadmap-asp-net-silverlight-iis7.aspx

scottgu has the inside word!

This will make my Christchurch session tomorrow on VS2008 for web that little bit more interesting :)