Nigel Parker's Outside Line

Microsoft UNPLUGGED Update - December 2009

nparker — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:14:21 GMT

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

nparker — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:32:49 GMT

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

nparker — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 02:51:00 GMT

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

nparker — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 04:56:00 GMT

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!

nparker — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:27:00 GMT

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

nparker — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 02:29:48 GMT

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

nparker — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:37:00 GMT

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

nparker — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 01:37:00 GMT

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

nparker — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 03:44:00 GMT

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

nparker — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 08:49:00 GMT

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!

Click Suite, Auckland Museum + the ‘Hybridiser’

nparker — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 07:54:00 GMT

Click Suite has a long history of awesome interactive new media projects. Their front end weapon of choice has almost exclusively been Flash.

Zef Fugaz has always been one for pushing the user experience to the edge and delivered a great session at the Microsoft Expression for Art’s Sake event on User Centred Design with Microsoft Expression.

As it turns out this event was a bit of a turning point for Click Suite and their adoption of the Microsoft Expression Studio for front end design.

Since the workshop, Click Suite have built and installed at the Auckland Museum the ‘Hybridiser’. An interactive, multi-touch 3D application that allows visitors at the museum to create an orchid hybrid flower by selecting 2 parent orchids and tweaking its different parts in terms of pattern/texture, shape & colour.

The ‘Hybridiser’ is built using WPF (.NET 3.5), Visual Studio 2008 & Expression Blend 2. The application runs on the Windows 7 release candidate & takes advantage of the Windows 7 gesture APIs.

If you are in Auckland I recommend that you visit Wonderland: The Mystery of the Orchid and try it out for yourself. My creation is below.

Aren’t incrementing ID’s a beautiful thing!? I can browse through others peoples creations (currently at 565 at time of writing)… I was just thinking it would be cool to make a dynamic interactive deep zoom (possibly using eventr) of peoples creations on the Auckland Museum’s website but I digress.

For everyone else not able to make it to Auckland to check out the exhibition in person I have made a little video of my interactions with the ‘Hybridiser’ below.

Incidentally this is the first time I have used the new Encoder 3/ Silverlight 3 player. Tip try clicking the cog in the top right to check out the perspective 3D chapters.

Here are some of the technical details behind the build.

Pieter Bosteels from click suite wrote:

To achieve the hybridisation effect we are morphing 3D shapes, patterns & colours individually. Each flower part is covered by different layers of greyscale textures which are colourised individually by a custom made HLSL pixelshader to allow the user to adjust texture/pattern vs. colour. Shape morphing is achieved by interpolation between individual mesh points.

Multitouch manipulation is achieved by attaching a single-touch move to a camera rotation, a dual-touch panning gesture to a camera translation & a dual-touch zoom gesture to a scale translation.

We’ve built all the 3D models in Cinema4D & then ported them to XAML using ZAM3D.

Everything is build using WPF (.NET 3.5), Visual Studio 2008 & Blend 2. The application runs on Windows 7 RC & uses the Windows 7 gesture APIs. We hooked into the gesture events using the Multitouch Sample .NET Interop Library for .NET 3.5 & Windows 7.

We thought about using the WPF 4.0 beta to have multitouch support built-in into WPF, but in the end we didn’t want to risk using beta software on a live environment.

This is a great showcase for WPF, especially in terms of productivity. It’s a good demonstration of how advanced graphics that are typically not available in rapid application development frameworks can be achieved relatively easily using WPF.

It is also a good showcase for WPF performance overall, with 3D rendering especially.

Without WPF, we could have never dreamed of getting the advanced stuff to work like it does now in the time we did it!

Zef Fugaz followed this with a comment:

For me as an observer the design and development team had a working prototype up and running in around a week. Pieter was in his element working with the visuals/interaction through code in close collaboration with the designers.

The hardened Flash developers who hasn't worked with the Expression Suite and WPF before seemed impressed with the capabilities of WPF and by the end of the project I heard them saying - "We never could have done this so quickly/easily using Flash".

This could make a great case study on design-dev team-work, rapid prototyping and a stunning visual design (+ multitouch to boot!)

Great work team!

As a side note when I visited the exhibition I chose to make a photosynth of the event.

Representatives from the Auckland Museum were quick to find my comments on Twitter and responded directly. Furthermore I was presently surprised to see them pimp the synth.

Making a photosynth of something I want to showcase is starting to become second nature to me. With a portable camera in you pocket it can be done in minutes and IMO shares the experience deeply with others.

TBWA, adidas, the ALL BLACKS and Photosynth

nparker — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 03:01:00 GMT

TBWA have teamed up with adidas to launch the 2009 All Black jersey with a new campaign.

This is how it works:

1) Buy the 2009 All Black jersey to go into the draw to photograph the All Blacks during the national anthem at one of the home test matches.

2) The photos are then loaded into photosynth and embedded on the adidas website.

3) At the end of the home matches the photos are going to be used to build a stylised 10th Anniversary adidas ALL BLACKS poster.

As a side note I have been working with TBWA/Shift and David Gedye (Group Manager for Photosynth & best known as the original founder of the SETI@home project) on the scoping phase of this project. If you look at the second synth of the All Blacks vs Italy you’ll see improvements to the approach over what is currently published on the adidas website.

Just like in Christchurch at the sell out first Bledisloe Cup match in Auckland 500 disposable cameras were given out to the public when they entered the ground. More than 160 of the cameras were returned and form part of the resulting synth that you can check out at http://tr.im/RichieMcCaw (also embedded on the adidas.com site). You can see the difference in quality of the pro shots and the “low fi” film shots taken by fans.

Incidentally before the match the competition was explained and the campaign video was played out on the big screen.

TBWA worked with Jonah Lomu (rugby legend) to explain photosynth and the latest crowd sourced All Blacks poster. I noticed that Andy Blood chose to embed a quicktime video in the page so I thought I’d use one of the new Expression Encoder 3 templates to play that same MP4 video using Silverlight below.

All the tweeting during the match was enough to get the term “All Blacks” as the #2 trending topic on twitter around the world!

I’m excited to see photosynth being adopted by large companies, events, magazines (caution link contains bikinis) and innovative execution. Done right this technology forms the basis of a very solid campaign.

Add geo-location and Bing Maps 3D and we are starting to get something really quite special!

As an alternative experience the amazing team at Soul Solutions in Australia have created a prototype that enables photosynth to work natively on Bing Maps using Silverlight. You can try it out for yourself at http://photosynth.soulsolutions.com.au.

At a time when new media agencies are trying to differentiate themselves and fight shrinking budgets, innovative solutions like Silverlight & photosynth can really play their part. I don’t know the cost of this campaign but I can only guess that it is substantially less than the ambitious $1.3 million campaign that Sanitarium took on to leverage their sponsorship of the 2009 All Blacks.

Silverlight 3 Released

nparker — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 23:16:00 GMT

Silverlight 3 was released to the web today along with it a new release candidate build of Expression Blend 3 that includes SketchFlow.

Check out the new C9 Video – with Scott Guthrie & Christian Schormann

Also there are new landing pages for

There are a couple of great Silverlight 3 Out of Browser Examples:

thirsteen23 – Silverlight 3 TED Video Player
sobees – social desktop aggregator (right click to go out of browser)

Also I recommend that you check out What’s new in Expression Encoder 3 in the way of OOB support.

In Encoder 3, if you choose to enable offline support when you publish a Silverlight video, the user will have the option of downloading and installing not only the media player code but also the video and audio files.
This feature also works in conjunction with IIS Smooth Streaming so you get the benefit of adaptive streaming when online and a downloaded, high quality version to watch when away from a network.

Check out the Top Silverlight Features especially the new extensible media format support with RAW AV rocks!

Tim Heuer has a great post on what is new and what has changed.

To install all the new bits take a trip over to http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/

For Deep Zoom there is a new version of Deep Zoom Composer which brings back source code and an updated version of RiaServices at http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/RiaServices - Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update: Part 2: Rich Data Query

Christian has posted SketchFlow Concepts: An Overview and there is are new Blend 3 and Web 3 overview videos available.

Check out http://seethelight.com which is the official launch site that has recently gone live.

Stay tuned to the Silverlight and Expression Studio Virtual Press Room and Twitter for more updates!

Windows 7 Media Center - Sky Digital + Freeview HD Setup.

nparker — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 04:21:00 GMT

I have been getting a lot of questions recently about my home media center setup since I told people that I have moved to the Windows 7 Release Candidate.

I thought the best way to address things is with a blog post.

You may or may not be aware that Windows 7 opens the door for watching Freeview HD natively without the need for any additional codec's to be installed inside of Media Center.

Prior to upgrading to Win7 RC I was running Vista 64 bit with a Hauppauge WinTV PVR500MCE card.

It was a good card (albeit a bit pricey) back in the day but all I can say now is DON’T BUY ONE!

This card is old and doesn’t have a 64 bit driver that supports >3GB of RAM so you need to limit your system RAM using msconfig if you want to make it work. Besides there are newer, cheaper and better options.

I replaced the card with a Hauppauge WinTV HVR2200 MC PCI-E $199 NZD which Windows 7 installs the drivers for automatically and eats as much RAM as you throw at it. This card gives you three tuners (1 S-Video that I use for digital Sky and 2 DVB-T tuners that I use for Freeview HD).

If you are planning on connecting digital sky in addition to Freeview HD you will need a couple more things.

1) A Microsoft MCE Remote Control with an Infrared Blaster (which unfortunately appear to have been discontinued so are very expensive at stores that still hold stock). That said you may be able to use the Hauppauge MCE Remote Control Kit instead, but I haven’t tried it.

2) Also you’ll need a S-Video & 3.5mm Audio plug to connect the sky digital to the HVR2200 card.

Once you have this setup the next challenge you face is getting your channels mapped with a working Electronic Program Guide (important for series linking and avoiding old VHS style manual recordings). Unfortunately there is currently no supported guide for MCE offered by Freeview or Sky in New Zealand.

That said if you have opted for a tuner that supports DVB-S you get a 7 day Freeview guide automatically via the satellite. Alternatively the DVB-T broadcast (Freeview HD) gives you a now/next guide automatically for the next few shows.

If you have access to a licensed EPG from a third party, Australian company mobilewares is offering a 3rd Party EPG Importer For Windows 7, signup to try the beta.

One of my favourite TV features of Win7 Media Center is the way that you can get captions on live and recorded TV when you press the mute button.

Also I love the audio pitch correction so that people don’t sound like chipmunks when you play back at 1.5x by pressing the >> button. This feature is great for watching news and long sporting events.

Another great thing about this setup is the extender story to get HD Freeview in other rooms of the house.

I own a Linksys Media Center extender that I brought a while back during a stock clearance sale. Again DON’T BUY ONE! Linksys, as far as I’m aware, are not updating their extenders to support the codecs needed to play TV in Win7. Mine now sits in the lounge on top of the MySky HDi box for playing music, photos and movies via HDMI from Win7 to my main TV.

A better extender solution is to buy an entry level XBOX 360 (currently under $300 NZD) and an HDMI LCD monitor with built in speakers for around $340 NZD.

Like any technology solution there have been a few teething issues. Namely when watching recorded HD TV on the XBOX extender audio sometimes gets a little out of sync. I find pressing pause and then play fixes this. Also for some crazy reason once you connect to XBOX live to download the hd codecs you appear to need to be connected to XBOX live from that point on when you launch media center! This isn’t a problem really except the other day when the login service for XBOX live was unavailable I couldn’t watch TV on my XBOX extender! I have raised this issue with the XBOX NZ team.

UPDATE:

arebee wrote: The Xbox 360 Live login requirement for the extender to work is Beta only and won't be required for release.
Tue, Jul 07 13:47:50

You will need plenty of hard drive space if you plan to archive programs after you view them.Win7 Media Center uses a new .wtv container which is about 3.5GB per hour for H.264 content.

Windows Live Movie Maker (currently available in early beta) is one of the few programs that I have found that can work with wtv files natively, also right clicking “convert to DVR-MS” works for content that is not HD.

All in all the solution I have is wife friendly (more so than MySky we’ve found) via a simple to use remote control and a very intuitive user interface.

Bing Photo Contest

nparker — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 00:46:00 GMT

I’m enjoying watching the social dynamics of the bing photo contest play out.

Some photos are bubbling up because they are generally good

Others beacuse people ask their friends to rate them high.

If you start Rating Photos Yourself you will realize how poor the quality is of most of the material that is being submitted.

I submitted a few photos of my own and it is clear that people are favoring the classic sunset/ landscape type photos to the more abstract themed ones.

That said if you are on facebook and like any of the images below please click on the image and vote me up.

Vote for the Nouméa beach

Vote for the Sydney bridge

I can’t understand why people rate my beer photo from Bruges so low (1.6 out of 5) it is one of my personal favourites.

Vote for Bruges

Thanks!