Nigel Parker's Outside Line : events

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!

Wellington Code Camp Completed, SharePoint Conference Tomorrow

nparker — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 05:00:37 GMT

This week the MSDN Flash is all about spreading the word of three awesome community run events past and present.

The Wellington Code Camp. took place on the 13/14th June
The New Zealand Community SharePoint Conference is tomorrow in Wellington.
Barcamp Auckland 3 is coming up on the 11th July in Auckland.

Although I didn't attend Code Camp I hear that Ivan's dance moves were legendary. Code Camp was enthusiastically organised by Kirk, Ivan, JD, JB and Owen. Here are a few blog posts that I found summing up the event:

Building Solutions Using Microsoft Products - Andrew Tokeley
Code Camp learnings - Kirk Jackson
Maintainable Code: one step further - Bevan Arps
.NET 4.0 Code Contracts - James Newton King
The Microsoft Sync Framework - James Hippolite
LINQ, lambdas and extensions - Matthew Hintzen
Owen Evans promises to have videos of the sessions for you all shortly.

Off the back of the Code Camp, the new Wellington Silverlight User Group was formed. Their first meeting is tonight, so try to get along to it!

The buzz is really starting to build around the New Zealand SharePoint Conference that is set to kick off tomorrow. Word is that there are still a few tickets available so register now if you can make it along! If you can't get there follow NZ SharePoint to stay up to date. The New Zealand Community SharePoint Conference is the brainchild of three SharePoint MVPs Debbie, Mark and Chandima.

Not to be outdone by Wellington, Auckland is hosting BCA3 on Sat 11th July. BCA is focused on the cross-pollination of ideas and knowledge.

Finally on the topic of awesome events don't miss out on the NZ IT Industry's best technical training event. Tech-Ed NZ is taking place in Auckland on the 14/16th September. We have 14 simultaneous tracks of content and have sold more than half of our event tickets!

Register for Tech Ed before 31 July and you will automatically go into the draw to win one of seven Canon IXUS 100 IS digital cameras. Full details of the Tech Ed special offer are here.

UNPLUGGED – Building Line of Business Applications with Silverlight 3

nparker — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 01:25:00 GMT

I have previously written about the UNPLUGGED road trip that Mike, Nathan and I have been on.

I also mentioned that I would be making a screen cast and sharing the source code from the Silverlight 3 Line of Business demo that I delivered. The demo that I presented was based on Scott Morrison’s two sessions from Tech.Ed North America.

Watch a video of my session using Smooth Streaming.

Also on Channel 9…

The source code for these presentations is available below (includes activity control):

I also updated my presentation to cover the May release of RIA Services from http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/RiaServices (this site also includes tutorials and white papers).

I will do another post shortly on how I built the Tech.Ed Tweet Vote demo that I showed in the first part of my UNPLUGGED session.

Other Posts that are worth checking out:

Microsoft UNPLUGGED

nparker — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:24:12 GMT

Last week we kicked of the Microsoft UNPLUGGED Road show visiting locations around New Zealand including Palmerston North, Tauranga, Hamilton and Auckland presenting technical sessions for Developers and IT Pros on Windows 7 and Silverlight 3.

Check out this short video of the events so far and the photos on DeepZoomPix.

Today we’re presenting in Christchurch heading to Dunedin and Wellington over the next two days. There is still space if you’d like to attend the Dunedin or Wellington sessions.

For those that are not able to attend in person the sessions will be recorded and made available at microsoft.co.nz/unplugged some time next week.

Expression For Art’s Sake – 3 1/2 Day Silverlight 3 Camp – Wellington, NZ

nparker — Tue, 19 May 2009 05:29:00 GMT

There’s no better way to try a new technology than getting people together to learn, share and build on top of it. So, that’s what we’ve been doing with Silverlight and Expression Studio for the last couple of years: Inviting a board array of developers and designers (you) to come spend time with us.

The Aussies held their event last December, so now it was New Zealand’s turn!

Tim has already written about Expression For Art’s Sake that took place in Wellington from the 20th to 23rd of April last month and now it is my turn to provide some more detail.

At the highest level I organised this event to get developers and designers of all different experience levels working together to get hands on with Blend 3 and Silverlight 3.

For those of you with short attention spans I have created a “super fast” overview video highlighting the 30 hours of workshop in just seven minutes!

For every one else here is a one hour summary video of the first two and a half days (download).

The Group Dynamics

3 Master Trainers

Tim Heuer, Arturo Toledo, Zef

The Teams (17 companies, 33 people)

Click Suite – Cam, Pieter
Datacom – Ben, David, Ronald
Datacraft – Dom, Mark
Gen-i – Craig, Tim
ICE Interactive –Nigel, Melissa
Intergen – Raymond, Andrew
Marker Studio – Darren, Keith
NV Interactive – Brent, Nadia
Phosphor Essence – Aaron, Toby
Provoke – Callum, Isha
Pure Direction – Grant, Darko, Dave
Signify/MSO Design – Charles, Stacey
TePapa – Tim
Y&R/ Microsoft – Vikki, Aditia, Samuel, Kris
Xero - Jeff, Kirk

Challenge #1 – Build a “Hello World” in Silverlight and deploy it to a production web server.

This was a fun activity as introduced an element of “chaos” in securing the domain name for each team. I wanted to introduce teams to the WebPI and present a task that they may not carry out in their own organisations.

The servers that were “claimed”:

Click Suite – http://leacha.bility.co.nz
Datacom – http://ina.bility.co.nz
Datacraft – http://no.bility.co.nz
Gen-i – http://separa.bility.co.nz
ICE Interactive – http://dura.bility.co.nz
Intergen – http://opposa.bility.co.nz
Marker Studio – http://a.bility.co.nz
NV Interactive – http://surviva.bility.co.nz
Phosphor Essence – http://mova.bility.co.nz
Provoke – http://naviga.bility.co.nz
Pure Direction – http://capa.bility.co.nz
Signify/MSO Design – http://lika.bility.co.nz
TePapa – http://staina.bility.co.nz
Y&R/ Microsoft – http://via.bility.co.nz
Xero - http://lia.bility.co.nz

Getting To Know Each Other – WEREWOLF!

What is a few lynched villagers amongst friends?

Challenge #2 – Developing a Mobile Phone for a Kiwi

The challenge here was to start to think about the design process and work together under pressure to present a brief.

Here is a sample of the designs that the teams came up with:

Challenge #3 – Develop a Calculator with a User Control

What were the “New Features” of Silverlight 3 that the teams used most in the Projects?

Designers:

Developers

From here we moved onto projects that would lead to teams Final Presentations.

Some of the teams put their solutions online for you to try.

Silverlight 2 Projects available to try online:

Click Suite – http://leacha.bility.co.nz

There is no “go live” for Silverlight 3 yet so what I’m going to do next is for “informational/ testing purposes only”. If you are a developer and happen to have either the Silverlight 3 Beta - Windows Developer Runtime or the Silverlight 3 Beta - Mac Developer Runtime installed you can try the Silverlight 3 projects online as well.

Gen-i – http://separa.bility.co.nz
ICE Interactive – http://dura.bility.co.nz/#Recipes
Intergen – http://opposa.bility.co.nz
Marker Studio – http://a.bility.co.nz
Pure Direction – http://capa.bility.co.nz (Login test/ password)
TePapa – http://possi.bility.co.nz/timtate/
Y&R/ Microsoft – http://via.bility.co.nz/Bliss/
Xero - http://lia.bility.co.nz/MapTest1TestPage.aspx

Also available is the y&soft blingulator.

Final Presentations:

I have made a video that highlights the final presentations (download). All in all the teams did an awesome job going from zero to hero and surviving this very intense, compact training environment.

I have also combined both videos using Smooth Streaming as well.

Online Feedback from the attendees:

Tim wrote:

Before this week I had hardly touched Silverlight and now I don’t think I can live without it. Even though Silverlight is very different from Flash, I think having that Flash background let me pick it up fairly quickly.

Darko wrote:

All in all I think it was a very successful week. Everyone learned a lot and the mentoring from Tim and Arturo helped heaps. If I could improve anything, it would be to make it a day longer just so that there is a proper wind down. I’m really looking forward to working with Silverlight more.

GREAT WORK everybody!

NZsynth – How It Was Done

nparker — Fri, 15 May 2009 15:10:26 GMT

Previously I wrote and demoed the NZsynth application that was built for the WEB09 keynote. This post is detailing how it was made and introducing version two (Zoom all the way in using mouse wheel then double-click for popup image).

WATCH THE VIDEO that goes end-to-end on the development of the application (mainly building the mosaic and the extension that Tim Tate created to make the tiles clickable).

The video is also downloadable from Channel9

The Code

It goes without saying that this code is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights it is demo ware and should be treated as such.

Flickr Image Download Code

Mosaic WCF REST Service (Including Flickr Database File)

NZsynth

Demo at http://possi.bility.co.nz/ Hot keys in previous post

Tim’s Silverlight 3 Code and Demo

There is no “go live” for Silverlight 3 yet so what I’m going to do next is for “informational/ testing purposes only”. If you are a developer and happen to have either the Silverlight 3 Beta - Windows Developer Runtime or the Silverlight 3 Beta - Mac Developer Runtime installed pop over to http://possi.bility.co.nz/timtate/ to look at a running version of Tim’s solution.

NZsynth V2 Source (excluding image tiles)

Demo at http://possi.bility.co.nz/nzsynth (Zoom right in using mouse wheel then double-click for popup image)

Key tools

WEBPI to install Visual Studio Silverlight Development Tools & SQL Server 2008 Express
AndreaMosaic
HD Make
Deep Zoom Composer
WCF REST Starter Kit
FlickrNet

Other Resources/ Examples

Jellyfish Deep Zoom
Deep Zoom Image Generation with DeepZoomTools.DLL
My post DeepZoom-Tastic
http://tr.im/photosEFAS (DeepZoom Pix Photos from Expression for Art’s Sake)
Miss March and Other Distractions (Parental Advisory)
Deep Zoom++ : Build Dynamic Deep Zoom Applications with Open Source

All this got me thinking how this idea could be extended further?

National Geographic have been doing some interesting work with photosynth recently. Check out the Sphinx below.

This is why I was intrigued to see they too have developed a mosaic experience called Infinite Photograph. It is not as smooth or free flowing as the nzsynth mosaic demo but it has a great touch that it repeats on itself after a few layers giving you a “feeling” that you can zoom forever. Also double-clicking images brings up more details like in Tim and my examples.

I guess beyond this we then need to think about video and using dynamic frames in a form of “massive” stop motion animation. If you haven’t seen it yet the YouTube Mosaic Music Video may give you some insight into where my mind is heading.

NZsynth and WEB09

nparker — Tue, 12 May 2009 07:56:00 GMT

It started as a conversation I was having with Brett Roberts regarding options for promoting NZ online at a time when tourism was taking a hit from the current economic climate. From there we discussed the proposed National Cycleway and this lead to a conversation about “crowd sourcing” images that people have already tagged as New Zealand to construct a demo from our shipping Silverlight 2 technology.

This conversation tied in well with a looming keynote slot at WEB09 where I had a 5-10 minute demo slot. The biggest problem was that I only had three days to build the “demo-ware” prototype and present it to a room full of web influential's!

Needless to say after a nervous period fighting with the failing conference WiFi. I switched to the hotel wireless and pulled it off!

Watch a 6 1/2 minute video of the demo I showed at the conference (this time the video is hosted on a US based server so the experience won’t be as good for Kiwis as the demo further down this post).

I have also posted this video on Vimeo (download available).

The demo app is hosted on a development server at Swizzle in their Telstra Albany datacenter. The fact that server was only 1 hop away from the conference venue meant that I could stream video via wireless at 2.4 MBS over the hotel wifi using smooth streaming with NO CACHE! I would go as far as saying that this was the Best Quality Internet Video that people in the room had ever seen stream over the Internet and all this in an environment when no other presenter could get their “US” based video to play without buffering! Goes to show the importance of peering for local content!

As mentioned at the event the “Excellent" video was generously provided by Making Movies for use as stock footage in the demo.

If you are in New Zealand and have a direct connection to the Auckland Peering Exchange I recommend that you try the demo steps for yourself by navigating to http://possi.bility.co.nz.

WEB09 Demo V1

1) Use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out of the Mosaic and the slider to switch between Mosaics with more or less tiles.

Needless to say there was some smoke and mirrors in play during the demo…

Key combinations to try

SPACE bring up photo, mouse click on the image to hide again.
Q to show my photo collection (click on faded background then W to hide)
A to show a photosynth of museum S to hide
Z to show a photosynth of statue (P inside the photosynth to hide photos and show 3d model) S to hide
X to show a photosynth of blackout protest
V to show smooth stream video B to hide (needs to be done last)

In retrospect I didn’t like the way that the watermarked text that I applied to each individual photo tile looked after it was added to the mosaic. Also the tiles were being cut when they were being laid out in the Mosaic so in some cases (like below) the watermark attribution was being partly obscured or not visible at all!

For stage two I wanted to figure out a way to get rid of the watermark all together and work out a way to make individual photos in the Mosaic clickable.

I hadn’t been able to solve this problem in my demo so I used SPACE to bring up a single photo to show my thinking but not having it working.

Tim Tait came up to me after the keynote and we started discussing how I had built the demo and how he could look at productionizing the code for an upcoming exhibition at Te Papa museum in Wellington. Following our conversation I invited Tim to the Expression For Art’s Sake event in Wellington the following week and the rest as you say is history. Tim was able to solve the big problem I had above and this lead to me building a V2 of my demo which I will show you soon.

Tim wrote:

Before this week I had hardly touched Silverlight and now I don’t think I can live without it. Even though Silverlight is very different from Flash, I think having that Flash background let me pick it up fairly quickly.

I will post again shortly with a more detailed description of how I built the demo above including source code and a preview of Version 2 inspired by Tim’s work. But in the meantime it worth calling out the great piece of software Andrea Mosaic that I purchased to pull the base 3 Gigapixel tile sets.

Read Part Two about how it was done…

ROAD TRIP! MSDN Unplugged Coming to a Town Near You

nparker — Sun, 10 May 2009 23:21:36 GMT

Join us for the May - June 2009 UNPLUGGED Roadshow as we visit locations around New Zealand presenting technical sessions for Developers and IT Pros.

Choose from either the MSDN Stream for Developers or TechNet Stream for IT Pros. At the end, get the opportunity to install Windows 7 RC on your PCs too at the Installfest. We'll have Window 7 RC DVDs to giveaway too.

MSDN Stream: Developing for Windows 7 and Silverlight 3
Find out how to get started developing rich applications for Windows 7 and Silverlight 3. Two sessions, presented by Microsoft New Zealand Developer Advisors, Mike Zeff and Nigel Parker.

Session 1: Windows 7 for Developers

Windows 7 contains many new features for developers that allow you to create very rich applications for your users, including the ability to touch-enable your own applications. This session will cover how you can take advantage of new Windows 7 features using .NET 3.5 to build rich client applications and we’ll also take a look at what’s coming in .NET 4.0. Presented by ISV Developer Advisor, Mike Zeff.

Session 2: Taking your Web experience to the next level with Silverlight 3

Internet Explorer 8 has been released and Silverlight 3 was announced recently at MIX ‘09. This session will show you how you can take advantage of Visual Studio and Silverlight 3 (with a touch of Expression Blend 3) to create line of business web applications that can run both inside and outside the browser. We’ll also show you how to take advantage of exciting features in IE8 that make your web site more ‘sticky’ for your users. Presented by Web Developer Advisor, Nigel Parker.

Installfest (Optional)
At the end of the sessions, you will have an opportunity to install the Windows 7 Release Candidate on your own machine. You bring your computer - we bring the Windows 7 installation and a Microsoftee to help.

A test PC for the Windows 7 RC should meet these minimum hardware recommendations:
1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor
1 GB of system memory
16 GB of available disk space
Support for DirectX 9 graphics with 128 MB memory (in order to enable Aero theme)
DVD-R/W Drive or machine that supports booting from USB
Please bring a spare, non-production computer to install the software onto. We will help with loading Windows 7 onto your machines, and will have wired or wireless Internet connections available for drivers and updates. If for some reason, Windows 7 does not have the appropriate driver for your computer hardware, we will do our best to download drivers off the Internet and get them onto a USB key for you. We won’t be able to provide “support” afterwards, but we’ve created an online forum where you can ask questions.

If you didn’t get a chance to download your own copy of Windows 7 RC we will have a supply of Windows 7 DVDs.

What you need to know before installing the RC.

Optional Installfest 12.30pm - 1.30pm.

Level 300 for Developers, free to register.

Dates and Location
25 May: Palmerston North - register
26 May: Tauranga - register
27 May: Hamilton - register
28 May: Auckland - register
3 June: Christchurch - register
4 June: Dunedin - register
5 June: Wellington – register

TechNet Stream: Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2
If you're an IT Pro, join Microsoft IT Pro Advisor, Nathan Mercer as he presents these technical sessions demonstrating the essential features of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. More information and details.

ACP Media Development Leads To Pure Direction

nparker — Tue, 05 May 2009 04:32:00 GMT

I have been working with the team at ACP Media for a couple of years and finally at the Expression For Art’s Sake event at Wellington a couple of weeks ago I had a chance to catch up with Dave Harvey, Grant Archibald and Darko Zoroja to discuss their work with Silverlight, ASP.NET MVC and jQuery.

Check out the video that I shot on location at the Expression For Art’s Sake event in Wellington. In the video the guys talk about their first “Silverlight 1” development integrating video into the Auto Trader website.

Followed by a “New Car” area of the site built with ASP.NET MVC, jQuery and Silverlight 2 DeepZoom (Based on the JellyFish engine).

Try out both the premium Silverlight version:

And the comparative jQuery version:

The latest site that they guys launched just this week is AA Carfair. It is based on the Auto Trader back-end and is built completely from the ground up again using ASP.NET MVC, jQuery and Silverlight Video.

The guys have chosen to form a new company specialising in Silverlight development called Pure Direction which has just became a NZ BizSpark start-up, best of luck for your new venture and I look forward keeping up with your new developments.

WEB09 - ‘Wheel of Fortune’ Challenge

nparker — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 04:45:00 GMT

This is the first of a few posts that I am making on WEB09 in Auckland and the 'Expression For Art’s Sake’ event that we held in Wellington this month. I have over 30GB of raw video to process so it will take some time to get the stories out.

After previously mentioning that he didn’t like vendor conflict (along with throwing out a few opinions of his own) Andrew Hedges somewhat surprisingly suggested to John Ballinger that he should “pit” Adobe against Microsoft in a challenge. I must admit I’m kind of glad he did. There is nothing more challenging and rewarding than building something under pressure in the shortest of possible timeframes!

Two hours before the end of WEB09 John approached Ryan, Andrew and Paul from Adobe as well as Tim and Arturo from Microsoft to build an application from scratch to pick the winner for the WEB09 closing prize draw, below is a video I created documenting the challenge and presentations. The screen is a bit obscured so I will update the video when John releases the “official” WEB09 videos next month.

For those on a variable connection I have encoded the video for Silverlight using smooth streaming check it out at http://tr.im/smoothchallenge

You can also check it out below on Vimeo as a comparison.

The Great WEB09 'Wheel of Fortune' Challenge (download link bottom right of the page)

I got the guys to promise to release their code in the video and Arturo followed up and confirmed that it is OK for me to link to it in this blog post. It goes without saying that this code is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights it is demoware and should be treated as such. The application was built using the beta of Silverlight 3 and an early “buggy” beta of a circular control panel first shown at MIX09. That said there is nothing in this project that couldn’t have been done with Silverlight 2.

There is no “go live” for Silverlight 3 yet so what I’m going to do next is for “informational/ testing purposes only”. If you are a developer and happen to have either the Silverlight 3 Beta - Windows Developer Runtime or the Silverlight 3 Beta - Mac Developer Runtime installed pop over to http://mo.bility.co.nz/WEB09/ to look at a running version of the solution.

Click the host character to bring up a file open prompt
Select a Text File that has a different name on each line
Click ‘Pick a Winner’

Like I’ve said before a healthy amount of cross pollination helps spark innovation

I had a conversation over dinner about working for Microsoft and attending a conference like foo I likened it to playing a game of sport... We play hard against our competition and we play to win, while others in the crowd fight with each other about who has the better team. After the game we socialise with each other are in amid of each others top players and share a common interest which is the love for the game.

I love getting to know the Adobe guys at events like WEB09 and Web On The Piste over the last couple of years. Andrews’ WEB09 session on After Effects and Sound Booth made me really want to get my hands on a copy of CS4 Master Suite to use as part of my video production process!

Ryan and Tim at dinner in Wellington after WEB09.

Update - Tim has also blogged about his experiences and a minute by minute timeline of the challenge

Update 2 - Ben Waggoner has commented on the smooth streaming video

MSDN Flash - Web 09: It's about User Experience, and the tools to create it.

nparker — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 06:01:00 GMT

Software developer and entrepreneur John Ballinger has been running the Auckland Web Meetup for the last two years. During this time, the group has grown from about 20 to an incredible 550 members.

The group meets once a month at the Media Design School in central Auckland for an evening of presentations on web-related topics, with a break for beer and pizza halfway through. The response Ballinger got from the web community, and the huge interest he saw in joining the group, made him think there was demand for a bigger web event in Auckland.

"I wanted to create an event that would inspire web developers and designers, as well as online entrepreneurs, by bringing some of the rock stars of the web to Auckland." says Ballinger.

Web09 is now a reality, and despite the harsh economic climate Ballinger has managed to book a list of high-profile international speakers. I have worked with John to ensure that the best Microsoft has to offer are part of the billing.

Web09 will be held on 17-18 April, as part of the event, there is an exclusive one-day Microsoft pre-conference workshop, featuring for the first time in New Zealand Tim Heuer, Corrina Barber and Arturo Toledo. The workshop is happening on the 16th of April covering the essence of content presented at MIX09 in Las Vegas.

The good news is that I have negotiated hard to get an exclusive deal for MSDN Flash subscribers to attend the event.

By subscribing to the NZ MSDN Flash Newsletter (if you haven’t already) and entering the coupon code MSDNWEB09 in the signup page at http://www.web09.org/tickets.php you can receive a whopping 20% off the $745 conference price and a massive 50% off the $115 MIX essentials workshop valid until Friday the 13th March.
This offer won’t last... sign up now and be one of the first in New Zealand to get trained on Silverlight 3.

Thanks for reading! Until next time.

Nigel Parker
Web Development Advisor
Blog

Check out http://blackcaps.co.nz/. Microsoft gold partner NV Interactive has added mark-up to support for IE8 Web Slices to track the live cricket scores for the upcoming State Shield and Indian cricket tour of New Zealand starting this week.

Microsoft Expression Newsletter
Are you interested in creating rich desktop and Internet applications? Get into the act immediately, learn how to use the new stuff before everybody else does, sign up for the Microsoft Expression Newsletter.

Don’t forget the Internet Explorer 8 Competition
We’ve had lots of entries for the IE8 compatibility competition, everyone is very keen to win the “I’m a PC” skateboard obviously! Send a screenshot of your company’s homepage in IE8 to mailto:nzeditor@microsoft.com?subject=IE8%20Competition by 6 March (extended from 28 February)! More details here.

Live Services Jumpstart – Day 1 Morning Session

nparker — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 04:48:00 GMT

As mentioned previously I am over at the Live Services Jumpstart Training in Sydney this week along with a few other kiwis.

Day 0 for me was a chance to do a photo walk in Sydney.

It has been a while since I’ve been in Sydney and it was great to get reacquainted with an old friend.

Day 1 has kicked off with Dr Neil doing an all up technical overview of existing Live Services.

This is a bit of a refresher for me as I’m quite familiar with what services are available at http://dev.live.com but it is interesting to see these existing services beginning to migrate to the Azure Services Platform.

Tomorrow is all about the Live Framework (Mesh Services) and how we bring all these services together through a common SDK (the left box of the second tier of the picture below).

After Dr Neil’s session the morning was a dive into identity delivered by James McCutcheon my summary is below:

Identity - “LiveID is the submit button”

Web developers - Windows Live ID Web Authentication SDK 1.2 describes a platform-independent interface for implementing Windows Live ID sign-in on Web sites of all kinds. This release includes a sample application for each of seven different programming languages: ASP.NET (C# and VB), Java, Perl, PHP, Python, and Ruby.
Client application developers can use Windows Live ID for authentication as well - Windows Live ID Client 1.0 SDK
Visual Studio ASP.NET developers - Windows Live Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio November 2008 CTP
Delivering Data Portability – Delegated Authentication SDK v1.0

Important if you are trying this stuff you need to get your Application ID and secret for Web Authentication. Without it you will get an “Windows Live ApplicationID and Secret not provided” error.

During the setup here I chose “mydemo.com” for the domain and the return URL. Problem with this is that I don’t own this domain so I updated the mapping in my host file to get this to work. You may need to think about this when you are setting up your project.

Your application ID and secret should now be saved. To confirm that they are saved, open the web.config file and find the configuration section near the top of the file. This should contain an appSettings section. This section should look something like the following…

<appSettings>
   <add key="wll_appid" value="APPLICATION_ID"/>
   <add key="wll_secret" value="SECRET"/>
</appSettings>

There is also a community preview of using LiveID as an OpenID provider.
Microsoft Federation Gateway Service as a single sign-on provider for LiveID – check out the Identity: Live Identity Services Drilldown session from PDC.

Artist in Residence Melbourne Dec 1-5

nparker — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 06:43:39 GMT

Michael Kordahi and Shane Morris are holding an Artist in Resident (AiR) in Melbourne from Dec 1-5.

Michael wrote:

For those unfamiliar: AiR is a program whereby a developer and designer pair get together and build something in Silverlight from scratch.

It goes for 5 days where you start with some training (day 1), conceive an idea (day 2) and build (days 3 - 5) under the guidance of a qualified trainer.

It is a great way to get going on that Silverlight project that you’ve always wanted to do.

If you work as part of a dev/designer pair, have a project that you’re commencing (or want to commence) then AiR might be for you.

If you meet the criteria and are interested in crossing the ditch contact Michael or Shane to request a spot!

For NZ based designers wanting to get started with Expression there is a growing pool of resources that you can tap.

Live Platform Jumpstart 2009 in Sydney 8th-9th of December 2008

nparker — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 01:58:11 GMT

At PDC 2008 this week, we announced a new way to program Live Services, the Live Framework (in CTP). Check out the overview of Microsoft’s Live Platform Services.

Today we are making available the first preview release of the Azure Services Training Kit. The Azure Services Training Kit will include hands-on labs, presentations, and samples to help you understand how to build applications that utilize the Azure Services Platform. This PDC preview release of the training kit includes 11 hands-on labs that cover the broad set of services including Windows Azure, .NET Services, SQL Services, and Live Services. These are the same hands-on labs that have already been used by hundreds of customers at the PDC.

You can download the Azure Services Training Kit from the Microsoft Download Center here.

Over the next few weeks we will also be releasing several samples and scenario-based demos that can be used to both demonstrate the value proposition of these services and understand how to use the SDKs, Tools, and Services themselves.

Please note: The Windows Azure hands-on labs can be used locally with the Windows Azure developer fabric that is included with the Windows Azure SDK. However, the .NET Services, SQL Services, and Live Services labs require a registered service account. You can apply for a services account here.

PDC sessions on this topic so far:

A Lap Around Windows Azure

Windows Azure: Essential Cloud Storage Services

Live Services: Making your Application More Social

Live Services: A Lap around the Live Framework and Mesh Services

A Lap Around the Azure Services Platform

On the 8th/9th Dec in Sydney we are holding a 2 day Live Services Jumpstart provides in-depth technical training sessions (level 300-400) on Microsoft’s cutting edge consumer web platform technologies that help developers / partner organizations build rich web applications, sync and share them across devices and more importantly, build audience for the web applications.

The Jumpstart event contains several in-depth sessions, hands-on code labs and informal Q&A.

You can learn more about the event at http://lpjumpstart.com

The 2 day agenda is at http://bit.ly/agenda

Capacity is limited to maintain a setting that fosters dialogue among all participants. However, we’re eager to accommodate you if we can, so please register at http://bit.ly/Register and we will contact you shortly to let you know if your registration has been accepted.

If you are accepted into the training there will be no cost associated but T&E will be your responsibility.

Next Thursday in Sydney is also Liberation Day in Australia.

SteveB will be talking about our developer vision (especially around S+S) – this is not to be missed. Following Steve, we’re going to be joined by Gianpaolo Carraro and Tim Sneath.

Gianpaolo will go into more depth around the services component. He is an expert on the topic and will be hot off PDC announcements.

Tim is the windows client (WPF, Vista, Silverlight etc) evangelism lead at Microsoft. He’ll be going into more depth around the software component.

The event will be streamed live on Thursday 6th Nov 5:30pm NZ Time over at http://www.microsoft.com/australia/powertodevelopers/