UK Academic Team Blog : Silverlight

Silverlight Insight event for UK Academics

ukacademia — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:16:05 GMT

As Paolo blogged we (the Microsoft Academic Team in the UK) are arranging an event targeted to Academics in Universities and Design Schools in the UK.

Silverlight Insight is a one-day event designed to give attendees a solid understanding of the Silverlight 2 platform and of the Microsoft Expression Studio toolset. It is relevant to both developers and designers alike, and comprises tutor-led sessions and hands-on exercises.

Participants will also receive a copy of the Silverlight 2 curriculum which can be customised and adapted to individual teaching needs, as well as a copy of Silverlight 2 Bible by Brad Dayley.

The three days are:

Monday, March 23rd 2009
Central Saint Martins, College of Art & Design, University of the Arts
London
Thursday, March 26th 2009
Bristol City College
Bristol
Tuesday, March 31st 2009
University of Birmingham
Birmingham

If you want to join one of the three dates, please get in touch with Paolo directly via email: pbarone [at] microsoft.com

PS: We are trying to arrange an additional date in Scotland, probably in May… while this is not confirmed yet, if you are interested in this, please let us know as well!!

Silverlight News

ukacademia — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 13:23:56 GMT

Hello Everyone,

As usual, go away for a week and you come back to lots of interesting news. So, here in the first of several blogs, I thought I’d share some of this news with you.

Silverlight Controls Source Code

The source code for the Silverlight 2 controls has now been released enabling you to download the code and modify the controls as you wish. Click here to access the download page.

Silverlight and Windows Live Essentials

Silverlight is now included in the installation package for Windows Live Essentials. Here is the list of software included:

MSN Messenger
Writer
Photo Gallery
Mail (desktop email client for those who don’t have Outlook)
Toolbar
Family Safety
Movie Maker (still in beta)

Silverlight and Linux

Work is progressing on the Moonlight project (the porting of Silverlight for the Linux platform). Since Moonlight 1 was released in Beta, Tim Heuer has published a screencast detailing his experiences of installing it.

MIX 09

The next MIX conference will happen in Las Vegas on March 18-20 and several sessions have already been announced, including quite a few around Silverlight 3.

Scott Guthrie has already announced several of the enhancements the team is working on and you can obtain further information from his blog.

Finally, the first beta version of Windows 7 has been released and while this is not strictly a Silverlight event, Silverlight runs great on it.

Well, that’s my Silverlight news, but as always, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to raise them with me on ukacinfo@microsoft.com.

Best wishes for the new year,

Allison

Microsoft Tech-Ed 2007 Conference DVD sets to give away

ukacademia — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 10:29:00 GMT

Good morning,

I thought I’d start the week with a give-away of the ten Tech-Ed Conference DVD sets sitting on my desk.

So, if you live in the UK and would like me to pop one in the post to you, email me your address details and the first ten to reply will get the goodies.

Have a good week.

Allison

remix UK – a 48 hour conversation

ukacademia — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:51:25 GMT

Hi Everyone

If you have been wondering 'where next for the web?' this event might just be for you and there is an early bird saving for the first three hundred people to book. Click here to reserve a place.

And if you have any ideas for a topic you would like to see presented at remix UK and have a good idea of just who you’d like to present it, there is a chance you can get it added to the mash up.

Best for the weekend,

Allison

New Silverlight Videos

ukacademia — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 17:05:00 GMT

Hi,

For those of you with an interest in Silverlight I thought you might like to take a look at a series of 'how to' videos available from the Silverlight team. You'll find everything from the basics through to best practices and even a series of tips and techniques.

For example, Todd Miranda shows how to dynamically add markers to a video at runtime and Peter Bahaa shows how to handle the back and forward buttons, all in Silverlight 1.0.

To browse the library of videos click here.

All the best,

Allison

Mix it up!

ukacademia — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 23:29:00 GMT

Hi! I'm Alfred Biehler, working with Microsoft UK alongside Claire in Microsoft's Developer platform group. My focus is on all our UK developers, and I've been given the opportunity to attend the MIX conference at Las Vegas. My expectations of the event was high, and I'm not disappointed!

For starters: You can join in this amazing event by going to http://www.visitmix.com. You can see the sessions on http://sessions.visitmix.com, and/or you can even attend a UK re-run later this year in the UK... more details to come.

Let me briefly share with you the biggest wow moments for me during the first keynote, that just finished:

IE 8 beta is available for download now. (This beta is intended for developers). Amongst the new capabilities shown in IE8, was the ability for web apps to detect and act on losing a network connection, and a back button that really goes back - even on AJAX pages!
SQL Server as a service has been announced. This is huge! I've been talking about this since the end of 1999, and it's fantastic to see this now becoming available. This would allow developers to build applications that draw data from "the cloud", without the need to manage and run the database yourself.
Silverlight 2 beta 1 has been announced, with awesome demos, including how we'll experience the Olympics in a few weeks, how HardRock Cafe has a memorabilia site utilizing DeepZoom (seeing a 2bn pixel photo, zooming into any area very quickly), Aston Martin's virtual showroom experience and more.
I really enjoyed seeing also some of Microsoft's partners (that also competes with us) on stage, e.g. AOL email using Silverlight, and DoubleClick (Google) for building Silverlight Adverts.
And lastly - we saw demos of how Silverlight apps just worked on Nokia phones after the agreement that has been reached yesterday with Nokia to support Silverlight on their phones.

One statistic that blew me away, was that we're getting about 1.5 million downloads and installs of Silverlight per day.

If you do have a moment - go and have a look at the sessions @ Mix online!

Alfred

Joining instructions for the Bletchley Park SIlverlight Academic Day

ukacademia — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 14:54:24 GMT

Last week we announced that we are accepting registrations for our Silverlight Academic Day at Bletchley Park on March 12th. This event is aimed at both designers and developers and we are pleased to say that we are almost sold out of developer seats. If you have already pre-registered by emailing me then we have reserved your seat but you now need to obtain your joining instructions by calling:

0870 166 6630

If you would like to reserve one of the remaining seats then please also call the number.

Any questions, please let me know

Claire

Inspiration Tour Update

ukacademia — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 18:12:52 GMT

With 17 dates behind them and another 37 yet to come, Ed and Ben are having a great impact on the students that they present to as part of the Inspiration Tour. We love to get feedback, both good and bad but our favourite so far is:

The talk you gave today was absolutely awesome, as were the demos. Loved every minute of it from the front row. You even had me crying when you were talking about the opportunities - everything I dreamed about. Thanks to both of you.

All dates are now booked but if your university has missed out then please get in touch and we will see if we can fit you into an additional slot.

Claire

New Silverlight Teaching Program Launching

ukacademia — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 18:21:00 GMT

As avid readers of our Academic blog I thought I’d give you a heads up about our latest teaching program which is due to launch soon.

Having already covered XNA and Embedded technologies I’m pleased to announce that our third program for the year will be around Silverlight .

For those of you who haven’t already heard the buzz Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications (RIAs) for the Web. It really is impressive stuff.

so If you're an Academic and would like to register your interest about joining this exciting teaching program please email us at Ukacinfo@microsoft.com and we will forward on details of this program.

I'll look forward from hearing from you!

Kate

Tales from the Inspiration Tour

ukacademia — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 17:52:00 GMT

The Inspiration Tour is underway and our presenters Ed Dunhill and Ben Coley have so far presented at Manchester Metropolitan University and Staffordshire University. Check out their blogs to read comments from the students and to access links to some great accompanying resources.

Next they are off to Bradford, Hull, Essex and Aberystwyth, oh and stopping by Nottingham to help with GameCity. Those of you who have already booked a date should now have an email from me with the electronic version of the flyer and in the next few days you should receive a poster tube with some hard copies too.

Don't forget to let me know how many students will be at your session so that I can send you enough t-shirts and other items to give out. One smart university set up a simple registration system so that they would know when the event was sold out and conversely, if more marketing needed to be done.

If you have any questions about the tour or still haven't booked your slot yet then please email me i-claipe@microsoft.com. You can check date availability here

Claire

Technorati Tags: Inspiration Tour, Students

The Microsoft Inspiration Tour

ukacademia — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 18:38:00 GMT

Last week we announced that we are sending our team on the road from October to March to talk to your students. The response has been excellent and sadly I have to report that ALL of the Wednesday slots before Christmas have now been taken. There are still a few Tuesday and Thursday slots available this term but I urge you to get in touch with a selection of dates as soon as you can.

Claire

Technorati Tags: Students, Teaching

Inspiration Tour

ukacademia — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 16:28:00 GMT

We’re very excited in the Academic team, we’re just about to launch the “Inspiration Tour” and we can’t wait to go out and meet you all.

Ed Dunhill

Ed and Ben will be out on the road during the next six months, so why not take a look at our Inspiration Tour web page to find out more and beat the rush to reserve your tour date now!

Ben Coley

The aim of the inspiration tour is to bring technology to you and your students, everything from the . NET platform to some of the really cool stuff that’s around at the moment like Silverlight, XNA and Microsoft Embedded technologies.

Spaces will fill up fast so please email us if you are interested in securing a date.