Nigel Parker's Outside Line

My Pakari Tree Photo on Flickr is Getting Some Lovin

2009-11-29T08:05:48Z

I took this photo at Pakari some years ago…

I offered it up to the Textures for Layers group on Flickr to give it some lovin. They came up with some stunning results:

PDC Day 2 – Silverlight 4

2009-11-20T21:14:30Z

If Windows Azure was the big topic on day 1 of the PDC conference in LA. For me Silverlight 4 was certainly the big topic of day 2.

Scott Guthrie introduced Silverlight 4 during the keynote and showed some of the enhancements that are being introduced to the new version of the platform.

Tim Heuer has done a great job blogging Silverlight 4 Beta – A complete guide to the new features this blog post includes all the tools you need to download to build on Silverlight 4 so I recommend you start there.

In addition to this a number of other resources have been made available as well during PDC:

Channel 9 Launched a Silverlight 4 Training Course

The Silverlight 4 Training Course includes hands-on-labs, a video and a whitepaper designed to help you learn about the new features in Silverlight 4 focusing on three major areas: Enabling Business Application Development, Empowering Richer Experiences and Moving Beyond the Browser.

Also Channel 9 has published a video Rundown of Silverlight 4 Beta

Key Tweets from @follesoe:

I think today will go down in history as the date Silverlight goes mainstream for majority of .NET devs holding off. #pdc09 - 10:03 AM Nov 18th

Share assemblies without separate compile step between SL4 and .NET 4. Great for Silverlight 4 #TDD and #MVVM. #pdc09 - 9:48 AM Nov 18th

Another key area of interest for me is the enhancements in IIS Media streaming technology. During the keynote Scott (attempted) to preview a sneak peak of publishing smooth streaming video content from IIS to an iphone leveraging the HTML 5 <video/> tag.

If you have an iphone you can try for yourself by visiting http://iis.net/iphone there is more detail about the advancements in the IIS media services in Vishal Sood’s PDC session Building Live Media Viewing Experiences Using Internet Information Services (IIS) Smooth Streaming and the Smooth Streaming Player SDK.

Also Karen Corby did a great job presenting an Overview of Silverlight 4 session at PDC (video).

There are lots of Silverlight related session available for download now. Some highlights include:

CL06
Networking and Web Services in Silverlight
Yavor Georgiev
WMV
WMVHigh
Slides

CL07
Mastering Microsoft .NET RIA Services
Dinesh Kulkarni
WMV
WMVHigh
Slides

CL35
Custom Behaviors for Advanced Microsoft Silverlight UI Effects
Peter Blois
WMV
WMVHigh
Slides

CL19
NEW: Building Line of Business Applications with Microsoft Silverlight 4
David Poll
WMV
WMVHigh

CL20
NEW: Improving and Extending the Sandbox with Microsoft Silverlight 4
Joe Stegman
WMV
WMVHigh

CL21
Building Amazing Business Applications with Microsoft Silverlight and Microsoft .NET RIA Services
Brad Abrams
WMV
WMVHigh
Slides

CL24
XAML Futures in Microsoft .NET Framework, Microsoft Silverlight and Tools
Michael Shim, Rob Relyea
WMV
WMVHigh
Slides

CL01
NEW TITLE: Microsoft Silverlight 4 Overview
Karen Corby
WMV
WMVHigh
MP4
Slides

CL30
Microsoft Expression Blend 3 for Developers: Tips, Tricks and Best Practices
DoRon Motter
WMV
WMVHigh
Slides

CL34
Media Foundation: Supporting Hardware Codecs and Cameras
Stan Pennington
WMV
WMVHigh
Slides

CL36
Deep Dive on Bing Maps Silverlight Control
Keith Kinnan
WMV
WMVHigh
Slides

Lots of content to consume and now that Silverlight is installed on around 45% of internet using computers around the world it is a great time to start considering using it for your next project.

PDC Day 1 – Windows Azure

2009-11-20T02:57:00Z

Windows Azure was the big topic on day 1 of the PDC conference in LA. Ray Ozzie opened the conference with a keynote position Windows Azure and Microsoft’s “three screens and a cloud” vision.

I particularly liked the introduction of SQL Azure Data Sync to connect on-premises data to SQL Azure and Windows Azure storage.

I also like the ability to map custom domains and the Windows Azure CDN. I ran a little experiment of this myself setting up two links:

http://letme.workit.co.nz – US Server
http://seeyou.workit.co.nz – CDN enabled

Test both links and after a few of you hit it the second one should begin to load faster off the Australian edge cache.

A big surprise was the announcement of Microsoft “Dallas”

Microsoft code-name “Dallas” is a Windows Azure- and Microsoft SQL Azure Database-powered information service that brings together data and imagery from leading commercial content providers and authoritative public data sources, under a unified provisioning and billing framework.

Developers can sign up for the free invitation-only Microsoft code-name “Dallas” CTP, which will be commercially available in 2010.

With the Azure platform set to start commercial operation in New Zealand on the first of Feb next year now is the time to start looking at this technology.

Beginning January 2010, new customers will be able to sign up for an offer to access services on the Windows Azure platform. Usage during the month of January will be at no charge, so you can see your exact usage while still enjoying free service.

On February 1, 2010, we will begin charging customers for using the Windows Azure platform.

If you want access to the platform sooner I recommend that you come along to the Azure unplugged event in December where Mike & Ryan will be distributing CTP tokens to developers.

Below are just some of the resources that have been updated at the PDC.

Learn how to build applications that utilize Windows Azure + SQL Azure in this self-paced course.

Windows Azure Platform Training Kit

Windows Azure Getting Started Guide

Windows Azure Case Studies

Windows Azure @ PDC

Windows Azure platform PDC Fact Sheet

At the time of writing a number of Azure sessions are also available to download:

SVC01
Lap Around the Windows Azure Platform
Manuvir Das
WMV
WMVHigh
Slides

SVC13
Windows Azure Present and Future
Manuvir Das
WMV
WMVHigh
Slides

SVC14
Storing and Manipulating Blobs and Files with Windows Azure Storage
Brad Calder
WMVHigh
Slides

SVC16
Developing Advanced Applications with Windows Azure
Steve Marx
WMVHigh

SVC17
Enabling Single Sign-On to Windows Azure Applications
Hervey Wilson
WMVHigh
Slides

SVC20
Bridging the Gap from On-Premises to the Cloud
Yousef Khalidi
WMV
WMVHigh
Slides

SVC30
Lessons Learned: Migrating Applications to the Windows Azure Platform
Wade Wegner
WMV
WMVHigh
Slides

SVC32
Lessons Learned: Building Scalable Applications with the Windows Azure Platform
Simon Davies
WMVHigh
Slides

SVC37
Introduction to Building Applications with Windows Azure
David Lemphers
WMV
WMVHigh

SVC50
Building Java Applications with Windows Azure
Steve Marx
WMV
WMVHigh

SVC51
Developing PHP and MySQL Applications with Windows Azure
Mohit Srivastava, Tushar Shanbhag
WMV
WMVHigh
Slides

SVC52
SQL Azure Database: Present and Future
Dave Campbell, Tony Petrossian
WMV
WMVHigh
Slides

SVC54
The Business of Windows Azure: What you should know about Windows Azure Platform pricing and SLAs
Dianne O'Brien
WMVHigh
Slides

Silverlight & Te Papa

2009-11-18T05:44:00Z

It was 6 months ago to the day that I first wrote about a workshop that we ran in Wellington getting a group of likeminded designers & developers together to get hands on with Windows 7, Silverlight 3, WPF & Expression 3 preceding the launch of these technologies. At the time I specifically called out Tim Tait & the work that he was doing at Te Papa. A couple of months later we released Silverlight 3 and I created a video of some awesome projects from NZ & Abroad using Silverlight + Expression.

I don’t know what it is about museums and their thirst to adopt the latest technology but I previously blogged about Click Suite building an interactive kiosk for Auckland Museum using Windows 7 & WPF. This time it is Te Papa’s turn!

This week while I was down in Wellington I checked in with Tim to see Te Papa’s latest exhibition & his latest work.

Kura Pounamu is a rich and exciting exhibition showcasing examples of this exceptionally beautiful stone, its origins, and stories of the special relationship people have with pounamu.

Explore this website to find out what can be seen and
experienced in the exhibition.

The exhibition is on display now in the museum. If you are in Wellington I recommend you call in and take a look… it’s free!

The exhibition showcases in great detail hundreds of stone carvings from Te Papa's collection. The installation consists of a single touch screen and an attached LCD monitor giving you the ability to quickly explore the collection with no more than your finger. The technology at play behind the display is a web browser running Silverlight 3 hardware accelerated in full screen mode.

I was impressed with now responsive & fluid the interface is to use. The computer on the museum floor is switched off nightly to save power and Tim was telling me that it hasn't crashed once (touch wood) in the the weeks it has been live. Also during Tim's testing he ran it for a week continuously without any increase in memory or performance degradation!

The best part is that since this exhibition is built on Silverlight it is also possible to make the experience available via the Te Papa website. ~~I have been given a sneak peak of this and Tim tells me that it will be launching publicly in the coming days so I will make sure to link it up when it does.~~

It's LIVE! - http://sites.tepapa.govt.nz/tepapawall/

The future?

I have already seen a sneak peak of Te Papa’s next exhibition that will feature Silverlight and is due early next year and all I can say is that it is just as stunning.

This coupled with today's announcements at the PDC conference in LA that we have shipped a beta of Silverlight 4 I truly believe that the potential of this technology moving forward is unmatched by anything else in the market.

Stop: It’s Hammer Time!

2009-11-13T04:11:00Z

Microsoft New Zealand & Xbox 360 is pleased to welcome MC Hammer to New Zealand on November 12, 2009.

MC Hammer is visiting Auckland to launch the new Xbox exclusive karaoke title Lips: Number One Hits, which features his chart topping smash hit U Cant Touch This.
Hammer will also demonstrate the new Xbox Twitter feature and perform at a private Xbox events in Auckland.

Hammer, who is recognised as the fourteenth most influential musician on Twitter, with more than 1.6 million Twitter followers.

Today MC Hammer took some time out of his busy schedule to visit the Microsoft Auckland office and launch the new Microsoft LifeCam Cinema and coordinate a Dance Off of Microsoft employees and partners!

Last night he performed U Can’t Touch This at Sale Street in Auckland.

Microsoft UNPLUGGED Update - December 2009

2009-11-10T04:14:21Z

Join us in December 2009 for the latest Microsoft UNPLUGGED Update. Come to TechNet morning for IT Pros and/or afternoon MSDN sessions for Developers.
TechNet Sessions for IT Pros: 9am – 12.30pm

• Migrating Windows XP to Windows 7: Get it done with Microsoft Deployment Tools
• Microsoft Infrastructure Update

Nathan Mercer, Microsoft New Zealand IT Pro Evangelist will take IT Pros through the process of migrating Windows XP to Windows 7, and provide a Microsoft Infrastructure Update showcasing the latest Microsoft technologies for IT Pros. Level 300.

Wellington: 1 Dec - Register
Christchurch: 2 Dec - Register
Dunedin: 3 Dec - Register
Tauranga: 8 Dec - Register
Auckland: 9 Dec - Register

MSDN Sessions for Developers : 1.30pm – 5pm

• Windows Azure – All You Need To Know To Get Started!
• Get ready for Visual Studio 2010

Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud platform will be launching at PDC 2009 this month. Mike Zeff and Ryan Tarak from Microsoft will take you through how Developers can start using and benefiting from Windows Azure. Also, Visual Studio 2010 will be the latest release of Microsoft Developer tools. Come for an overview presented by John-Daniel Trask from Mindscape. Level 300.

Wellington: 1 Dec - Register
Christchurch: 2 Dec - Register
Dunedin: 3 Dec - Register
Tauranga: 8 Dec - Register
Auckland: 9 Dec - Register
Level 300 events for IT Pros and Developers. Free to register. More information...

The Great New Zealand Internet Slow-Down

2009-11-03T19:32:49Z

I have been having problems recently with my international Internet connection slowing down during peak times in the evening.

Do you remember the bad old days when you got home from school/work and the modem couldn’t dial up your ISP because the line was overloaded?

Well it appears we have similar congestion back for a lot of people on heavily contested networks.

I personally have a few factors playing against me.

1) I live right at the edge of the Mount Eden exchange – my line attenuation is 32.6 dB (downstream) / 16 dB (upstream)

2) I’m not in Telecom’s plans to upgrade in the next two years - http://telecomwholesale.co.nz/maps

All that said I get a pretty good connection

Downstream rate: 6183 kbps
Upstream rate: 995 kbps

This leads me to the troubling trend that I have been noticing:

My international connection is slowing down to a crawl every evening between 6-8pm!

In a “grass is greener moment” I moved my Internet from Snap to Orcon a process that completed yesterday.

Unfortunately it didn’t improve my slow evening broadband problem.

So during the worst time last night I thought I’d conduct a twitter survey to see what sort of speeds others were getting.

Unfortunately as you see from the results below there appears to be no rhyme or reason as to the results.

Orcon

My connection to Washington @ 8pm last night

@themorgan around the same time with the same ISP

@nzben around the same time with the same ISP

@nakedgeek about an hour later on the same ISP

Snap

@nzadhall around the same time with SNAP

Telecom

@venzann on Telecom about an hour later

@dean_m from Telecom an hour and a half later

Telstra Clear

@chakkaradeep from Telstra Clear in Wellington about an hour later

@nathanm from Telstra Clear

Vodafone

@DylanReeve two and a half hours later

On the face of it the data above points to a congestion problem that seems to affect some isp’s/ exchanges more than others during peak times. What it doesn’t explain is why @themorgan’s Internet was rocking while others on the same ISP couldn’t get any sort of decent throughput at all.

Incidentally I did run another speed test on orcon from home at 6:30am this morning and my connection is back to normal.

I see more rants about this stuff over on the geekzone forums.

My question now is am I going to be better of with another ISP? Is it worth moving again after only one day with Orcon? If so who should I go with?

The ONYAs Closing Soon

2009-11-03T02:51:00Z

I’m very happy to announce that we (Microsoft NZ) has chosen to sponsor Webstock again in 2010.

Once again there is a fantastic group of speakers set to visit our shores.

This year the format is changing a little bit closing on the Friday night with “The ONYAs” awards that celebrate New Zealand’s web industry.

We wanted to create some awards that meant something to the industry, that were credible and relevant. We wanted some awards that focused on the web and didn't relegate that to a category amongst broader design awards. And we wanted the awards to be judged by the best people we could find.

Along with our conference sponsorship I have choden to sponsor the "best accessibility" category of the awards.

The awards feature world class judges including Alex Wright (Director of User Experience and Product Research at The New York Times) and will reward some of the best Web projects that NZ has to offer.

The nomination for the awards are closing next Monday 9th November so if you have been working on a web project that you believe stands out above the rest I strongly suggest that you enter it in the ONYAs.

Some of the great new .NET projects that I can think of off the top of my head include

If you are the creative force behind projects like these what are you waiting for?

FTW IE6, IE7, IE8, Chrome and Firefox running together on Windows 7 in Windows XP Mode

2009-10-13T04:56:00Z

When you buy Windows 7 (pro or ultimate) you get Windows XP "virtualized" for free.

What this means that if you are web developer you can finally have IE6, IE7, IE8 all running alongside each other as hardware supported virtual applications.

Take a trip to the Virtual PC site to read the hardware requirements and install Virtual XP Mode.

Check out the quick screen cast that I made to show how all the bits work together.

Donavon West has also done a good blog post on how to get this setup.

To aid with XP Mode we have recently launched http://protectmypc.co.nz a new website that provides more details of our new security offerings including the new free Microsoft Security Essentials that guards you against viruses, spyware and other malicious software on your virtual image.

Use this along with the free version of Expression SuperPreview or fork out the small upgrade price to Expression Web 3 and you get the the full version of SuperPreview, Expression Encoder 3, Screen Capture and Expression Design 3 thrown in as well.

Remember also to check out Giorgio’s MSDN Unplugged video on IE8 developer tools, it has already had an amazing 25,000 views!

Air New Zealand Fashion Week Finale!

2009-09-25T08:27:00Z

I convinced Michael Ng (the official photographer) for Air New Zealand Fashion week to attempt a photosynth at last nights Stolen Girlfriends show. I think he did a great job! Showing the models and the who’s who celebs in the front row.

Add this with some super high resolution beauty shots

in the MSN “wall of fashion” and the kooky Pamela Anderson (warning semi nudity on the link) below

With that we round out Air New Zealand Fashion Week with a photo wall that contains 593 photos, 156,680 files, 2.68GB.

I previously released the source code and talked about how I built the viewer.

Giorgio Sardo's NZ IE8 Road Trip + Web Application Toolkits

2009-09-25T02:29:48Z

I really enjoyed hosting Giorgio in New Zealand during Tech.Ed and for a couple of days after the event.

There have been a few interesting updates overnight and as part of the Microsoft WebsiteSpark launch, we have released 7 Web Application Toolkits, together with an introduction to the Web Application Toolkits video on Channel9. The scenarios were selected based on feedback from community developers and include:

Giorgio introduced the release of a Web Application Toolkit for Internet Explorer 8 that makes it easy to leverage the new features in Internet Explorer 8 (Web Slices, Accelerators and Visual Search Providers) through a set of ASP.NET controls. The sample in the toolkit is based around an auction site scenario.

There is a 10 minute video overview of the IE8 toolkit on Channel 9

All in all Giorgio presented 11 times during the three days that he was in New Zealand!

I have also uploaded Giorgio’s Microsoft Unplugged presentation from Wellington last week to Channel 9

A highlight of the week was the Web Meetup in which more than 200 web developers attended. I organised the meetup with Giorgio and the guys from Mozilla as it had been a while since we all got together so I thought it was timely to re-enter the discussion about standards HTML5 and future browser developments.

It was a fun night and I particularly liked the discussion during the panel that I had with Chris Double on the H.264 video standard.

I see Darko shared similar opinions to me on the issues.

Also Phil’s post helped put things in perspective for me.

While I went in as a sceptical developer expecting to hear the usual rhetoric around some misguided enthusiasm about a new feature set that other browsers have been doing for years, I came out highly surprised and impressed with some of the tools that are bundled as part of the embattled browser.

Anselm also did a good job of summarizing the session.

I have a little bit more video to share from Giorgio’s roadtrip and will post it here once it is edited in the coming couple of week.

In the meantime if you were at Tech.Ed NZ take a look at the videos posted from the event - one of Giorgio’s sessions has been posted for attendees to view.

Announcing Microsoft WebsiteSpark

2009-09-24T16:37:00Z

WebsiteSpark is designed for independent web developers and web development companies that build web applications and web sites on behalf of others. It enables you to get software, support and business resources from Microsoft at no cost for three years, and enables you to expand your business and build great web solutions using ASP.NET, Silverlight, SharePoint and PHP, and the open source applications built on top of them.

Scott Guthrie today at the PICNIC conference in Amsterdam

The WebsiteSpark Program is available to web design and development companies with up to 10 members (employees & owners).

Check out Scott’s blog post and the WebsiteSpark website for more details and if you fit the bill Sign Up Today!

Building the MSN Silverlight "Wall of Fashion" for Air New Zealand Fashion Week

2009-09-24T01:37:00Z

Anyone that has been reading my blog for a while will know that I have been working with DeepZoom for some time now.

I have been very keen to get Silverlight onto MSN.co.nz for a while. An opportunity presented itself for me to build a DeepZoom viewer and purchase 700 photos from Michael Ng (the official event photographer for Air New Zealand Fashion Week). MSN came to the party by featuring the “Wall of Fashion” and promoting it from their homepage and Fashion Week mini site.

The challenge that I faced was two-fold.

1) I needed to bypass the MSN CMS system due to the share number of files required to publish a large DeepZoom.

2) I needed a system that could handle large demand and be updated in a timely fashion throughout the week.

What I came up with is not completely automated like DeepZoomPix but does leverage a number of open source projects and stores the tiles on Windows Azure.

Given that Windows Azure is becoming commercially available at PDC (17-19 Nov) in 21 countries including New Zealand I thought I’d run the stats to see what a project like this would actually cost (the service is free until launch).

We are half way through the event and I have already published 380 photos, 98,922 files (1.67 GB) into the Windows Azure Blog Storage.

Take the stats from the first day before the official launch 582 people spent on average 1:09 mins on the gallery. This served ~34MB per person or about 19GB of content downloaded.

On current preliminary Windows Azure pricing this first day of activity would have cost.

Storage – 1.67 GB @ $0.15USD / GB / month - 0.25 USD

Bandwidth in - 1.67 GB @ $0.10USD / GB - 0.167 USD

Bandwidth out – ~19GB @ $0.15USD / GB - 2.85 USD

Storage Transactions – ~1,455,000 @ $0.01 / 10K – 1.46 USD

Total ~ 4.73 USD or <1c per user.

What I Built:

First of all I looked at the eventr project on Codeplex, built by Jordan from Readify who was over for Tech.Ed NZ last week to deliver some killer Silverlight sessions.

Eventr is a Silverlight deep zoom reference application. The interesting bits are implemented in the SuperDeepZoom control, which may be either dropped straight in to your project (turnkey) or you can open it up and see what makes it tick.

I did end up using the DeepZoom Collection Creator from eventr to slice new images as they arrive on our FTP server but I didn’t leverage the rest of the code base.

Although it was excellently written an leverages an MVC pattern, eventr just wasn’t suitable for static blob hosting on Windows Azure. To host eventr on Windows Azure both Services and Compute would be required thus increasing the overall cost of hosting the solution.

Secondly I looked at the SpaceBlock project on Codeplex this is what Michael used for the Sydney Mardi Gras project.

Also check out this great post on Hosting Silverlight Applications in Azure Blob Storage.

In the end I actually chose to extend a project that I had created previously in Nov 2008 that was based on Wilfred Pinto’s previous work.

The source code is wrapped up and available (minus the images) at http://kiwi.blob.core.windows.net/code/FashionWeek.zip

Also I can’t forget the legal bit (This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. )

I have added a rudimentary Silverlight Tag Cloud for the filter on the right based on Mark Monster’s work. Again there is a much better Silverlight Tag Cloud project on codeplex but it uses WCF services and therefore couldn’t live in Azure Blob Storage alone.

I first presented the player during the Tech.Ed NZ Keynote last week on stage with Chris Liddell.

And published it on the Tech.Ed NZ website to take it for a test run before fashion week.

During this test I realised that it is not easy to publish additional images after the fact if they are not named in descending order.

To achieve this I wrote a c# app some time ago that renames photos based on timedate info in the EXIF tags. You can grab this from http://kiwi.blob.core.windows.net/code/PhotoSorta.zip

Also I can’t forget the legal bit (This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights. )

Running this before slicing the images meant that ordering in the metadata remained chronological

I have also been asked why there is a slight leather texture behind the images. This is an agreement I made with the photographer. The photos that we are posting from Air New Zealand Fashion Week are highest quality available. The way DeepZoom works is that each image is sliced into thousands of small jpgs at a range of different zoom levels and is reconstructed on the fly making it impossible for people to access high resolution images from their browser cache. That it this doesn’t stop people zooming and taking screen captures to copy images. This is where the subtle texture comes in so that we (and the photographer) can tell if an image is posted elsewhere that has been taken from our site.

All in all to round things off I wanted to add some enhancements to the player.

The first is a feature of Silverlight 3 that enables the user to launch the player “Out of Browser” either right click and install or click the select designer tab and the download icon in the bottom left.

This then enables you to launch the viewer from the start menu on your PC or Mac.

Also in the same location I have added the option for IE8 users to add the viewer as a Web Slice, this way as new photos are added each day users can be notified and access the slide show directly from their favourites bar without leaving their current web page. Giorgio has a detailed post on building a webslice for the Imagine Cup. Incidentally 4.5% of the traffic (16% of IE users) to the site is now coming via the WebSlice and the average time spent in the viewer is 3:22 mins (almost triple that on the viewers that hit the site directly!).

I had fun putting this all together and I hope by sharing the code and the opportunity with Windows Azure you may consider doing something similar for the next large event you are asked to cover.

FYI there are a number approaches to get analytics working for tracking Silverlight applications

I didn’t get time to implement this fully but it does give you some data as long as your users aren't using IE8 InPrivate Filtering to block the prying Googley eyes :)

Tech.Ed New Zealand T-2 Weeks

2009-08-31T03:44:00Z

We are now only two weeks away from Tech.Ed New Zealand!

If you haven’t purchased your ticket yet to the event there is still time to register.

Now as you may be aware Tech.Ed Australia “SOLD OUT” this year with a deal to give each delegate a netbook running Windows 7. We got a bit of feedback for not doing the same thing but I feel we have an offer available that is just as compelling. If you are attending Tech.Ed NZ you still have four days to purchase your HP Mini 5101 Notebook with Windows 7 Ultimate for an estimated saving of $500 NZD (if you compare the ticket price to Tech.Ed Australia and then convert to NZD’s the difference is approximately the cost of the netbook).

One of the things I’m working on presently is the Keynote and as you may have read in the last MSDN Flash newsletter that this years keynote is being delivered by Chris Liddell. Chris is the Chief Financial Officer of Microsoft Corporation meaning that he holds the key to the proposed 9.5 billion USD that Microsoft plans to spend on R&D this financial year. Also Chris is a New Zealander which will help give his presentation a local perspective. I have the daunting task of writing and delivering a five minute demo during Chris’ presentation so I a bit nervous and excited about stepping up to the plate.

Mike has done a great job ensuring that we have quality content at this years event and we have now published the most up-to-date information on 14 Tracks, 128 Breakout Sessions, around 100 Hands-on Labs. Please note that adding a session to your personal schedule does not guarantee a seat in the session; sessions are filled on a first-come, first-seated basis but I do recommend you take a trip to start planning your sessions to help us with room planning so that we don’t experience too much overflow during the event.

As we do every year we are running some Ancillary Events around Tech.Ed.

The first being the community run Auckland Code Camp, that is free for all to attend (not just Tech.Ed delegates) on Sunday 13th September.

Kirk Jackson has blogged about the event. Register your place for Code Camp at http://www.codecamp.net.nz

The other opportunity is the Tech Girls Dinner on Monday 14th September, 8.00pm

Tech Girls Dinner is complimentary for delegates to attend and costs $99 for others seeking individual tickets to this dinner. If you are interested in attending register now.

I have also organised for Giorgio Sardo to deliver an intense two day tour of Auckland and Wellington off the back of Tech.Ed

Giorgio Sardo is a Technical Evangelist in Microsoft Corporation working in the Internet Explorer team. Moving from Italy to the United States, he studied at Polytechnic of Turin and successfully obtained a Master of Computer Engineering with distinction. Before joining Microsoft, Giorgio leaded a national university community forum in Italy and won the Imagine Cup worldwide championship. He started his experience in Microsoft UK as User Experience Consultant, delivering stunning solutions based on Silverlight, WPF and Mobile and presenting several sessions at Microsoft conferences. In 2008 he has been nominated Best Consultant of the Year from the British Computer Society. Early 2009 Giorgio moved to Redmond, where he currently focuses on Web Client technologies, such as Internet Explorer and ASP.Net AJAX. His blog is blogs.msdn.com/Giorgio.

Giorgio, is set to present at the HTML5 Is Alive! session at the Auckland Web Meetup at 6pm on Thursday the 17th September in Auckland alongside our resident Mozilla hacker Robert O'Callahan.

At the time of writing this there are 39 spots left so Sign Up if you are interested in attending.

For those of you in Wellington we are running a similar session with Giorgio at 10:30am on Friday the 18th September as an MSDN Unplugged event. Spaces are limited for this session as well so please register now if you would like to come along.

See You At Tech.Ed!

Silverlight 3 + Expression 3 Launch

2009-07-23T08:49:00Z

I previously blogged about the release of Silverlight 3. Today I want to expand on this and talk about the Release To Manufacturing of Expression Studio 3 and DeepZoom Composer.

Having used these products and technologies for a little while now I racked my brain to figure out the best way to communicate the capabilities of each of these technologies to you.

All too often with the nature of blogging, tweeting and instant feedback the best projects/ ideas and implementations get referenced but lost as quickly as they are found. IMO it is important to step back, take a breath and look at what is still impressing you days or weeks later. By grouping these things together into a single cohesive piece of work you can then tell a story that marks a moment in time and is compelling to a broader group of people.

So that is what I did… I chose to use the latest version of the tools and platforms to showcase what I think is the most awesome work that is being done here in New Zealand and around the world. I apologise now if I missed your project out but feel free to drop a link in the comments so others can experience it.

The experience that I built leverages IIS Smooth Streaming and I have removed all the standard video player UI that I hope is not required to watch this showcase (buffer UI, scrub bar, timer, volume control etc). That said the video chunks are coming from a US media server (unfortunately) so I have found that they do tend to play out below their maximum quality to most people in New Zealand. For this reason I have added a download option for those wanting to download and experience the video in full HD.

If you like what you see remember to click the Twitter icon and feed the social media juggernaut!