Ribbit SPAWN Event – Nov 5, 2009 in San Francisco

Ribbit, a Microsoft Partner and division of British Telecom has been working with my team on some exciting technology integrations and is ready to show them off:

Please join us in San Francisco November 5, 2009 for an invitation only deep dive into Ribbit’s open telephony APIs — and a Sneak Peek at the unreleased Ribbit for Silverlight Controls.

Ribbit is excited to formally launch our RESTful API, and we’re looking for early adopters like you! 

Learn how you can enrich your applications with communications capabilities — and take productivity to a whole new level. 

Join us for a day of innovation and learning and an evening of coding and cocktails.

Ribbit + REST = Open Programmable Communications
Rebuilding the Ribbit Platform on top of a RESTful framework allows developers to interact with Ribbit at the server level, enabling new forms of application-to-person and application-to-application services.  REST treats users, devices, calls, messages, and other elements as resources with which developers can easily interact — and exposes Ribbit’s core communications services in a platform-agnostic format using simple and secure HTTP calls. 

Space is limited, Register by Oct. 23 - latest! http://developer.ribbit.com/blog/spawn/

Agenda

  8:00  –  9:00  Registration and continental breakfast
  9:00 – 10:00  Ribbit Platform Overview — New Features, Platform Roadmap & Pricing
10:00 – 11:00  Integrating Ribbit into Any Application, Workflow, Site or Online Campaign
11:00 – 11:30  New APIs and application showcase
11:30 – 12:00  Platform opportunities
12:00  -   1:00  Lunch

1:00 - 2:45 Afternoon Breakout Sessions

• Flash

• Java

• .NET

• PHP

3:00 – 4:45  Afternoon Breakout Sessions

• Building Client-and Server-Side Apps

• JavaScript

• Silverlight

• REST

5:00 - 9:00  Hands-On Coding with Ribbit’s API/Programming Language Experts

• Coding for Flash, Silverlight

• Coding for Java, JS, PHP, REST, .NET

We look forward to seeing you there!

If you cannot attend in person, please join us via webcast. Register at:  http://developer.ribbit.com/blog/spawn-webcast/

Ribbit is an open, cloud-based platform for communications innovation. By exposing our carrier-grade SmartSwitch™ though popular programming APIs, Ribbit enables the development of next generation “voiceware” applications, such as our white-labeled Ribbit for Salesforce® and Ribbit Mobile™ consumer offering.

MySpace Qizmt, a .NET MapReduce Framework

When I went to MySpace to interview Erik and Akash about their usage of the CCR, I was also able to interview Mikhael Berlyant and Daniel Rule talking about Qizmt, their new open source .NET MapReduce framework. 

Robots at MySpace!

Got your attention? Not exactly robots, but software architects at MySpace have figured out a very cleaver use for the Coordination and Concurrency Runtime (CCR) that was originally released as part of the Robotic Developer Studio.  Take a look at this interview that I just did with Erik Nelson and Akash Patel at MySpace to learn what they’ve done with the CCR.

Silverlight Track at Silicon Valley Code Camp Oct 3-4, 2009

So now you’re ready to learn Silverlight – you’ve seen the demos of Deep Zoom, Smooth Streaming, PhotoSynth and Business Applications, and have been awed by the dynamic prototyping capabilities of SketchFlow in Expression Blend.  There is a great opportunity to do just that at the Silicon Valley Code Camp from October 3-4 2009.  Here are the Silverlight Sessions:

• Building Business Applications with Silverlight 3
• Dependency Properties in WPF & Silverlight
• Partially Connected Silverlight Applications
• RIA Services: RAD for the Middle Tier
• Silverlight 3 Ins & Outs

Thanks to Peter Kellner for the link.

Silverlight and Web Analytics – the Next Generation

Ever since I wrote about Silverlight and Web Analytics (and PDF here) with Silverlight 1, I have been meaning to update the document and guidance for Silverlight 2 and now Silverlight 3.  There are some new features in Silverlight 3 and Expression Blend 3 that really make a compelling case for taking a fresh look at how to measure engagement with RIA and media-oriented applications, especially those created with Expression Blend and presented in Silverlight 3.  Over then next 7 months, I will be working on building a new extensible framework which looks at some of the new scenarios for Web Analytics that are now possible with Silverlight 3 and beyond:

1. How do you use web analytics with Out-of-Browser application in Silverlight 3?
2. How do you use web analytics with offline applications in Silverlight 3?
3. What information is valuable to track in adaptive streaming media scenarios?
4. How do you make it easy for designers using Expression Blend to configure their application to track events?
5. How do you use Expression Blend for designing A/B testing scenarios?
6. How do you use Expression Blend to visualize the results of web analytics data collecting?

As part of this investigation, I will be participating in the XChange conference on Web Analytics next month in San Francisco where I will be leading huddles (conversations) on Measuring RIA Applications and standardizing analytics protocols.

I have also proposed a panel at the South By Southwest (SxSW) conference in Austin next year, The Day the Page Tag Died (sung to the tune of Don McLean’s American Pie – my favorite song). If you think that this will be an interesting topic, please give it a thumbs-up (even if you’re not planning on attending) as the community feedback influences the panel selection at SxSW.

As I build this extensible framework, I will need help from the analytics vendors to insure that their services work with it.  The plan will be to release the source code via CodePlex, once we have something useable.  So, if you work for a web analytics company and want to participate in building this, please contact me.  This is going to be very cool!

Let’s Talk about Web Analytics in San Francisco!

Join me September 9-11, 2009 in San Francisco for the XChange Conference on Web Analytics!  At the conference being held at the St. Regis, I will be leading two discussions (see descriptions here):

• Measuring RIA Applications: What, How, and Why?
• Standardizing Protocols for Measuring Offline and Out-of-Browser Experiences

Much of my interest in Web Analytics has come from its application to scenarios with Silverlight – so this is a topic that I have developed a great interest in.  I hope to see you there!  If you can’t come, I’d love to hear your thoughts my discussion topics and if there are any questions or ideas that you think should be introduced into the conversation.

Register Here

Thrive for Developers

How do you Thrive as a Software Developer? Over the past year, I’ve received quite a few emails from people who have been hit hard by the economic downturn and were looking for new opportunities.  Many were people who I’ve worked with and some were people I’ve never met but have followed me online via my blog.  I have suggested to all of them to explore the jobs at Microsoft, as I feel very fortunate to work for such an amazing company.  I’ve also suggested that people might want to start by trying any of these ideas:

• learning new technologies – create something cool that you’d want a prospective employer see.
• creating or contributing to open source projects
• search for jobs on Guru.com
• build their references on LinkedIn.  Ask former colleagues, partners, or customers to write references for you.
• start answering questions on StackOverflow or other relevant community sites to build online credibility. 
• Use a technology like Silverlight to create an online resume. 

These are all things that I’ve done over the years to enhance my learning and network.  Well, I’m excited to say that Microsoft has a new site, Thrive for Developers, to help developers advance in their careers, enhance their skills, and connect with a developer community.

Back from Vacation

Yesterday I came back from a vacation (see Bing Map) to Taos, New Mexico and Durango, Colorado with stops in Albuquerque, Silverton Colorado, and Mesa Verde National Park.  I took my new Canon T1i digital SLR with me and loved using it – taking over 1,000 photographs and HD videos.  In addition to the photographs and video, I chronicled some of the days in my journal with sketches, watercolors, and collage. I I’ve already started making some panorama shots using Windows Live Photo Gallery and I plan to do some deep zoom compositions of the photographs (15 megapixels) and my journal pages.

 
A panorama of 7 photographs stitched together using Windows Live Photo Gallery

Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde National Park

Photosynths from Mesa Verde National Park

• Cliff Palace Photosynth 1 (above)
• Cliff Palace Photosynth 2
• Cliff Palace Photosynth 3
• Spruce Tree House Photosynth

Whenever I go on vacation, I like to list the significant world events that happened:

• Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009: see live video today (7/7/2009) of the memorial service live at 10:00 AM PT, 1:00 PM ET on the web using IIS Smooth Streaming and Silverlight
• Farrah Fawcett dies on June 25, 2009.
• Robert McNamera dies on July 6, 2009.

New York Times Silverlight Kit version 1.0.7 Released

We have just released a new version of the New York Times Silverlight Kit, adding better documentation to the help file and new CLR objects for accessing the Campaign Finance APIs.  We’ve also updated the WPF Kit as well. 

New Campaign Finance APIs Implemented in the kit:

• CandidateDetails
• CandidateSummaries
• DonorInformation
• StateZipTotals

Just passed 1,000 on StackOverflow

I love StackOverflow!  It’s a great programmer question and answer site built on ASP.net MVC.  I have been an active member of the site for 8 month and have had a great time asking and answering questions about topics that interest me like Silverlight, Expression Blend, and IE8.  What’s great about the site is way that you can grow your reputation on the site by effectively answering questions.  I have been watching for any questions about Blend, IE8, and Silverlight and answering them to the best of my ability.  When the questioner sees that my answer is the best, I get points, but other community members can also “mod up” my answers if they think that they are good.

Over the weekend, I passed the 1,000 point mark and I’m now the second-highest all-time answerer of Silverlight Questions.  If you are a software developer, I encourage you to participate in StackOverflow, either asking or answering questions.  If you can answer, my latest question, I will be very grateful.  Thanks in advance.

Best Buy’s Keith Burtis Interviews Me

Keith Burtis from Best Buy just posted an interview that I did with him last week.  We covered everything from evangelism, to Silverlight, to career advice in about 26 minutes.  Best Buy is doing some very exciting things with their Remix APIs and we’ve already started thinking of the possibilities…

• The Interview
• Artist Explorer Silverlight App
• Best Buy Stores Silverlight App

Silverlight Kit Webinars

Today went well.  I delivered three LiveMeeting presentation on Silverlight Kits, Silverlight libraries that facilitate data access to web services, with minimal technical difficulties.  If you missed the live presentations, then you can catch the recordings.  In addition, I have just completed a whitepaper on Creating Silverlight Kits for Web 2.0 APIs.

6/10/2009 – Updated: I forgot to mention that Clay Loveless from Mashery joined me for the Building Silverlight Kits webinar and explained how their company helps with the deployment and management of public-facing APIs.  Thanks, Clay!

Also, Keith from Best Buy asked about any Silverlight Plug-ins for WordPress and I said that I’d send a link to it (created by my colleague Tim Heuer). 

And lastly, as building composite sites with Silverlight and various web technologies like PHP and ASP.net is important, here is a link to the Microsoft Web Platform.

SFO Silverlight User Group Next Meeting on 6/11/2009

On Thursday, June 11, we will be hosting at the San Francisco Microsoft Office a second meeting of the San Francisco Silverlight User Group.  We are having a Silverlight Showcase where community members can show off their Silverlight applications.  In addition, I will be giving an overview of the upcoming Silverlight 3 and we will be going over what happened at Mix (a bit late). 

Logistics:

Whitepaper on Measuring Browser Performance

If you haven’t seen it yet – download and read Christian Stockwell’s excellent whitepaper of Measuring Browser Performance.  You’ll find it relevant no matter which web browsers you use.

ARCHITECT COUNCIL | Pragmatic Patterns for Architects

“Cloud computing will supersede traditional IT”, “SOA will enable business agility”, “my way or the highway”, etc.  We’ve all heard this type of proclamations before, as many look to the “next big things” in technology to exact sweeping changes and solve many issues; truth is, technologies and tools aren’t as instrumental in influencing progress, as the design and discipline in applying them to specific issues. When used appropriately, technologies and tools can be powerful enablers that bring about change.

One of the things we hear a lot working with the community is a desire for more guidance about how to use the technology instead of just talking about features and functions.  To address this, our team has put together a series of live webcasts on June 9^th – 11^th which will focus on guidance and patterns for some of today’s hottest topics. 

DAY 1 – June 9, 2009 at Noon PST

Patterns for Moving to the Cloud

Larry Clarkin & Wade Wegner

Everything that you read these days seems to suggest that you should be moving to the cloud. But where do you start? Which applications and services should be moving to the cloud? How do you build the bridge between on-premises and the cloud? And more importantly, what should you be looking out for along the way? In this session, learn architectural patterns and factors for moving to the cloud. Based on real-world projects, the session explores building block services, patterns for exposing applications, and challenges involving identity, data federation, and management. This session provides the tools and knowledge to determine whether cloud computing is right for you, and where to start.

DAY 2 – June 10, 2009 at Noon PST

Building Silverlight & WPF Applications with Prism

David Hill

Prism provides guidance, via design patterns, to help you build robust, flexible and modular Silverlight and WPF applications. These patterns support unit testing, separation of concerns, loose coupling and the ability to share application logic between Silverlight and WPF applications. Prism includes source code for the library itself, extensive documentation, and a sample application that shows how the patterns work together in a real-world application. It also includes a Visual Studio add-in to help you easily share code between WPF and Silverlight. This session provides an overview of Prism, and shows how you can use Prism to design and build composite Silverlight applications.

DAY 3 – June 11, 2009 at Noon PST

Patterns for Parallel Computing

David Chou

With recent advances in cloud computing, service-oriented architectures, distributed computing, server virtualization, multi-core processors; we are now seeing parallel computing techniques being implemented across the spectrum.  It’s moving towards mainstream applications such as internet-scale web applications, massive data processing, graphics rendering, but the myriad of choices also present a number of questions on when and how to utilize parallel computing. This session explores the architectural patterns and trade-offs between different forms of parallel computing including:  approaches for utilizing them to improve application performance, optimizing the use of existing infrastructure, and applying concurrency towards day-to-day enterprise information processing needs.

WEBCAST AGENDA

REGISTER

To register, please click on the link below for each day:

We will email you with the LIVEMEETING information and log-in detail a few days before the actual event.  We will use the email address you provide in the registration.  Thanks!

SPEAKER BIOS

Larry Clarkin - SR ARCHITECT EVANGELIST, Microsoft

Wade Wegner - SR ARCHITECT EVANGELIST, Microsoft

Architect in the Developer & Platform Evangelism division at Microsoft, tasked to collaborate with organizations in the advanced and emergent areas of enterprise architecture, SOA, Web 2.0, and cloud computing, as well as to support decision makers on defining technology adoption strategies.  You can reach Wade at his blog http://www.architectingwith.net/ or through twitter at http://twitter.com/wadewegner.

David Hill – PRINCIPAL ARCHITECT, Microsoft Patterns & Practices Team

David Chou – ARCHITECT, Microsoft

 Architect in the Developer & Platform Evangelism organization at Microsoft, focused on collaborating with enterprises and organizations in many areas such as cloud computing, SOA, Web, RIA, distributed systems, security, etc., and supporting decision makers on defining evolutionary strategies in architecture. Drawing on experiences from his previous jobs at Sun Microsystems and Accenture, David enjoys helping customers create value from using objective and pragmatic approaches to define IT strategies, roadmaps, and solution architectures.