The UxMagic Expression Blend, WPF and Silverlight Blog

More Testing

2010-03-29T14:37:00.001-04:00

My blog entry test

via Ping.fm

Posted via web from UXMagic Blog

More Testing

2010-03-29T14:36:00.001-04:00

My blog entry test

Untitled

2010-03-28T17:55:00.007-04:00

testing my micro blog accounts

via Ping.fm

Posted via web from UXMagic Blog

2010-03-28T17:55:00.005-04:00

testing my micro blog accounts

Welcome to my networked blog

2010-03-28T17:55:00.003-04:00

This is a test entry of my network blog to test if I can post to all of my blogs at one time. Let me know if you received it..

via Ping.fm

Posted via web from UXMagic Blog

Welcome to my networked blog

2010-03-28T17:55:00.001-04:00

This is a test entry of my network blog to test if I can post to all of my blogs at one time. Let me know if you received it..

via Ping.fm

Posted via web from UXMagic Blog

Welcome to my networked blog

2010-03-28T17:54:00.001-04:00

This is a test entry of my network blog to test if I can post to all of my blogs at one time. Let me know if you received it..

Untitled

2010-03-28T17:48:00.003-04:00

Do you have status?

via Ping.fm

Posted via web from UXMagic Blog

2010-03-28T17:48:00.001-04:00

Do you have status?

Untitled

2010-03-28T17:44:00.001-04:00

testing seesmic's ping.fm

via Ping.fm

Posted via web from UXMagic Blog

2010-03-28T17:43:00.001-04:00

testing seesmic's ping.fm

Welcome to the new UXMagic Blog..

2009-11-07T10:42:00.001-05:00

I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome you to the new UXMagic Blog. It is all about user experience design, and social media technologies. It is a great time to be in this industry. I hope this new blog will give you some insight into new happenings and trends that will grow the industry.

Welcome and don't forget to join our conversation here..

Posted via web from UXMagic Blog

blog

2009-11-07T08:14:00.001-05:00

Blog

Posted via email from UXMagic Blog

Blog Has Moved

2008-05-05T23:25:00.001-04:00

This Blog has moved, you should be automatically redirected to http://blog.donburnett.com or http://www.donburnett.com/NewBlog

Expression Studio 2 Ships and How to do SEO with Silverlight Pages

2008-05-02T14:19:00.001-04:00

by Don Burnett

Well it's been a bit since I posted I had been working really hard and somehow I ended up getting pneumonia. So I have been taking a break, but several exciting things happened that I figure I should tell you about. Expression Studio Version 2 has shipped. If you are interested in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) I recommend you check out Michael S. Scherotter's blog where he has two great articles on doing SEO in Silverlight with ASP.NET as a server..

http://blogs.msdn.com/synergist/archive/2007/10/03/simple-silverlight-seo-with-asp-net-and-xslt.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/synergist/archive/2007/10/03/other-silverlight-seo-techniques.aspx

Expression Studio Version 2 has shipped

Some folks have suggested that "Expression Studio was released about a year and a half ago as a partial answer to Adobe’s Creative Suite". I wouldn't characterize this quite this way, I think that's basically calling it a ME too product. I don't see it that way, Expression Studio is squarely framed at supporting Microsoft's web based initiatives. It reinvents much of the designer developer work flow that frankly the "Creative Suite" hasn't addressed for developers centered on Microsoft developer solutions.

If you are are an ASP.NET designer or developer a product like Dream Weaver never really totally addressed ASP.NET version 2.0, when it came to things like data binding they used a few of their own custom ASP.NET controls, a couple used the same name as the Microsoft versions, but were not completely compatible. It only supported ASP.NET 1.0 correctly. Expression Web 1.0 and now 2.0 goes way beyond that, not to mention Visual Studio and Visual Web Developer Express. When Visual Web Developer shipped a few years ago it was the end of my love affair with DreamWeaver as a tool.

When I started moving from bitmap to vector art, Illustrator and Photoshop never totally provided the complete integrated solution because each supported different markets and capabilities. We needed a tool that did both. One third party tool did both, that was Fractal Design Painter and later Creature House Expression 3. Microsoft updated and transformed this into Expression Design. Considering that bitmaps are really only used in photography today, but most people need their vector/structured graphics today, that are nicely up-sizable to different resolutions, aspect, and color modes, that are used by most GUI systems today. Photoshop doesn't really do that. The XAML integration with Expression Blend and other Expression Studio products and Visual Studio make great end-to-end work possible, whether you are making a Desktop, Web, or Mobile application.

Expression Media is great if you have to catalog multimedia assets for your project or handle version control with that as well..

I have heard Adobe's been working on something called "Thermo" which I hear tries to do this with Photoshop type files. If it is indeed working with bitmaps I will be kind of disappointed, because bitmaps aren't really a mainstay of UI graphics under Windows (even if supplies them). Expression Design doesn't try to be a professional photograph tool. It leaves cataloging and fixing up photos and bitmaps to Expression Media. Both products are focused on what they do best..Photoshop is a tool used by many more markets, and has to try to be all things to all people. For this reason saying it's a "partial answer" doesn't work for me because there are many different market differentiations between "the Suite " and "The Studio". You can't get one to do the work of the other. I believe that makes room for both of them and they are less competition for each other than you might expect.

All of the Expression Studio products were very much winners in their own markets before Microsoft put them together as Expression Studio. To me it's like coming home to an old friend who just got a new lease on life..

Finally Some More Proof on Vista Speed..

2008-04-29T00:49:00.001-04:00

by Don Burnett

Over at Adrian-Kingsley Hughes' ZDNET blog, he's been benchmarking some OS speeds, which again shows some folks still running XP and some SYSADMINs have the wrong idea about Vista..

Check out this graph over on Adrian's ZDNET BLOG..

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/images/xpsp3_vs_vistasp1.jpg

I don't believe in benchmarks always, but this does underscore some of the purported information being incorrect about Vista performance. I'd love to see him include benchmarks that use WCF and WPF on both systems..

Also from the great articles on how to do section..

Webcam's to WPF...

http://blogs.msdn.com/uberdemo/archive/2008/03/27/capturing-a-webcam-stream-to-a-wmv-file-from-within-a-wpf-application.aspx

More Cable Industry Alleged Collusion- (Keeping the content under their control)

2008-04-17T21:28:00.001-04:00

by Don Burnett

Note this is an opinion piece, but be ready to be totally pissed off when you read it..

According to an article on Gizmodo, and Gary Merson (The HD Guru), Cable customers who use the current CableCard to access protected HD content, that's Windows Media Center and TiVo to you and me, will soon start losing HD channels. Why you ask? Well, cable carriers are moving from a direct stream of video to "switched digital video," which use two-way digital cable boxes to see what customers need then send it to them. CableCards are only one-way devices. Supposedly CableLabs has a USB "dongle" device that enabled 2-way connections via the CableCard.

Time-Warner cable has already started eliminating channels from the one way only cable card service (the tier known as VOOM HD- which is about 15 channels if memory serves me correctly). So CableCard customers are losing channels there, and no dongle in-sight for those folks yet. The big problem with the dongle is that some devices including TVs that use CableCard don't have USB ports and never will.

I think this is totally lame and just more attempts to control content, over the reality of going to new hardware that will conserve bandwidth, which is the excuse being used. This further adds to the Media Center issues with HD content. I think we should be lobbying the cable industry to support existing products like one-way cable cards and being more consumer focused. To me this is an internal save money decision that was made to go to a "switched" system, that is in the interest of the cable company but not the consumers.

Breaking changes are never good for any industry, and it just shows the power of the cable companies to make an arbitrary change of service like this. The FCC needs to step in and do something about this kind of thing, as it's not consumer friendly..

Cable Labs responded to these allegations on Gizmodo. quoting their excerpts:

"Content available on cable networks is changing all the time. New services are added, some are redesigned and others are removed."

• "SDV technology is designed to expand the range of services offered by cable operators, not reduce them."

• "Many CE companies chose to implement receivers that lack the necessary circuitry to provide a full two-way cable experience with the CableCard."

• "No product was ever originally designed to work with this new Tuning Adaptor including the existing Tivo UDPC products...Since consumer products don't use Microsoft Windows, they don't have plug-in drivers. Instead a new firmware update is needed to include the necessary driver controls to interact with this new external device. Makers of any existing UDCPs that already have a USB port (there are many) are just as able to provide new firmware as Tivo, if they chose to do so."

• "Consumers should look for products identified as tru2way to ensure they will be able to get all the new and advanced services their digital cable systems can deliver."

The last item doesn't exist right now as far as I know.. Either way,I believe this is yet another anti-consumer arbitrary decision to EOL (End-of-Life) One way CableCard technology, before many of us ever get to see or use it (my humble opinion), but the word needs to get out.. Please write the FCC and Congress and lets get some examination of this issue going.

All Hands on Deck! Surface, Surface! at the AT&T Store

2008-04-17T17:09:00.001-04:00

by Don Burnett

Over at Gizmodo, they have information on Microsoft's Surface (Table PC) which is now reportedly available at five AT&T stores (more locations coming soon..). They have some great video over on Gizmodo of the Surface device.. Looks like things are happening with this technology earlier than expected. If you don't know about surface check out the Microsoft original demos..

Check out the video and more information over at the Gizmodo site..

Technorati Tags: Gizmodo,Surface,AT&T store,WPF,Table

Several Things of Note..

2008-04-16T10:09:00.001-04:00

By Don Burnett

Mono on the iPhone, compiling C# can Moonlight 1.0 or 2.0 be that far behind or even Silverlight for that matter (no Microsoft hasn't announced anything).. This is speculation.. But this rocks, .NET apps on the iPhone..

courtesy of Miguel De Icaza's Blog and Luke Howard from PADL Software Ltd

Videos on YouTube of this..

More.

This is cool, I really hope Microsoft enters the iPhone game with this too.. My battle cry, ".NET EVERYWHERE"... WHOOO!

...and this one falls into the category MORE SPECULATION

Quoting JD's Blog:

"Realworld HD H.264 support

Realworld HD H.264 support: In March, 4500 consumers were tested for viewing different types of media files. 2780 of them had already installed Adobe Flash Player 9.0.115. That's 62% of today's computers, supporting no-hassle high definition playback of H.264 video. Considering this browser plugin was released in December, and the audit was conducted in March, then it's an easy choice for realworld use today..."

I guess I am one of those people, but when I tried to watch "Brothers and Sisters" on ABC.com and it was far from no hassle in high def and my machine is a supported configuration.. It didn't work properly on their high def content, and I have great connectivity.

INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW

My other question to JD is: How can 62% of 4500 people actually a representative sample.. Personally I am just a little (well OKAY A LOT) confused about what he's saying here.. Care to clarify for us? Am I reading this wrong? More than one person I know read this and is asking the same question.. You said this is "Realworld" so I am asking. JD by the way has a great blog and normally publishes great information..

I know JD reads my blog, so maybe he'll get more specific and reply here..

Technorati Tags: Flash HD,Mono on iPhone,Silverlight

Microsoft Announces New Content Deals

2008-04-15T06:56:00.001-04:00

by Don Burnett

Here's the Announcement as a whole:

"For Release 6 a.m. PDT

April 14, 2008

Microsoft Announces New Support for Silverlight by Content Companies Worldwide

New content protection capabilities unveiled, coming in Silverlight 2.

LAS VEGAS — April 14, 2008 — Today at the NAB Show 2008, Microsoft Corp. announced significant momentum for Microsoft Silverlight resulting from new customers adopting Silverlight to deliver richer, more interactive media experiences on the Web. Building on recent support from major content providers such as AOL and NBC Olympics.com on MSN, Microsoft announced new adoption of Silverlight by media and content companies worldwide, including Madison Square Garden (MSG) Interactive, Tencent, Abertis Telecom, Terra Networks Operations, SBSi, MNet and Yahoo! JAPAN.

“It’s exciting to see broad industry recognition and rapid adoption of Silverlight across the world,” said Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the .NET Developer Division at Microsoft. “Silverlight offers customers and partners the highest quality creation and delivery of media, protected content, advertising and rich Internet applications, and we are committed to making it easy for partners to integrate and extend Silverlight capabilities.”

Media Companies Worldwide Choose Silverlight to Power Connected Rich Internet and Media Web Experiences

With an average of 1.5 million daily downloads of the Silverlight plug-in, and growing, adoption of Silverlight around the world continues to accelerate momentum for compelling online media experiences for consumers. Media companies in particular — with an increasing emphasis on utilizing the Internet as a channel for content and new revenue streams — are taking the lead in delivering innovative new Web experiences. Among those media companies announcing Silverlight-based projects are the following:

· MSG Interactive is using Silverlight as a platform to deliver live on-demand digital content to its huge community of sports and entertainment fans.

· Tencent, China’s largest Internet portal, with more than 300 million unique viewers, today announced it is developing a series of Silverlight-based next-generation Internet services and media experiences.

· Abertis Telecom will use Silverlight as the platform for a new video content delivery channel going live this spring, which will provide end users with convenient access to dozens of channels of Spanish-language TV content within a single Web-based application.

· Terra Networks is using Silverlight as the platform for the new HD channel on Terra TV, its online video and TV platform with service in 18 countries in Latin America and United States reaching millions of subscribers around the world.

· Announced last week, Yahoo! JAPAN, the most trafficked Web site in Japan, plans to roll out video distribution and Internet services that use Silverlight as the application platform.

“Our implementation of content services enabled by Microsoft Silverlight has significance for both Yahoo! JAPAN and Microsoft,” said Masahiro Inoue, CEO of Yahoo! JAPAN. “We strive to respond promptly and appropriately to the constantly evolving Internet environment and customer needs, and I have high expectations that our use of Silverlight will enable us to provide better services to our customers.”

Recently, at MIX08, Microsoft outlined new capabilities of its end-to-end media platform — including Silverlight 2, Expression Studio 2 and Windows Server 2008 — which offers

industry-leading streaming and progressive download capability with Windows Server 2008. In addition, Microsoft presented support for new Silverlight advertising scenarios, and companies such as Microsoft Atlas, DoubleClick Inc., Eyeblaster Inc. and Panache were already showing how Silverlight enables next-generation in-stream advertising to better monetize the assets of content owners. At MIX08, Microsoft also announced a strategic alliance with Move Networks, a leading provider of advanced video delivery services. At NAB 2008, Move Networks Inc. is demonstrating a technology preview of Silverlight-based unique branding and navigation elements within, around and on top of Move Networks’ video technology.

New Microsoft Content Protection Support in Silverlight Increases Opportunities for Vibrant Content Marketplace

Silverlight-based content delivery can be protected using a variety of techniques, including Web and streaming playlists, authentication, authorization, stream encryption and digital rights management (DRM). Today Microsoft unveiled details of Silverlight DRM, Powered by PlayReady, the content protection support coming later this year in Silverlight. Silverlight DRM builds on Microsoft’s extensive expertise and experience in content protection and support for hundreds of millions of media players and devices worldwide.

In addition to being compatible with the broadly deployed base of Windows Media DRM 10 content, Silverlight DRM will support live streaming, on-demand streaming and progressive downloads for connected experiences. With the extensibility and openness of Silverlight, third-party solution providers will also be able to build and offer content owners additional choices for their media protection needs.

A number of content owners, aggregators and service providers including BUYDRM, Daum Communications Corp., iMBC Co. Ltd., Limelight Networks, M-Net Media, Netflix Inc., Paramount Pictures, SK Communications, SBSI, a subsidiary of SBS Media Group, and Technicolor have announced their support for the content protection solution to be provided in Silverlight, due to the technology’s proven foundation and support.

“As the dynamics of content distribution continue to accelerate toward the Internet, we need a flexible technology platform that allows us to explore a broad scope of business models and rich user experiences for digital distribution of Paramount Pictures’ wide array of content,” said Dr. Alan Bell, executive vice president and chief technology officer of Paramount Pictures. “With Silverlight DRM, Powered by PlayReady, Microsoft is bringing nearly a decade of heritage in DRM and content access to the table to deliver a solution with a strong technology foundation — allowing us to provide legal alternatives to our audiences enabling them to consume our content in whatever browser or platform they prefer.”

Microsoft will be demonstrating a technology preview of Silverlight DRM at the NAB Show in booth SL5520, and has introduced a preview program for customers to learn more about Silverlight DRM. Additional information, including licensing terms for Silverlight DRM, is available at http://microsoft.com/silverlight.

Many content owners, aggregators and solution providers have announced their support and interest in Silverlight DRM including the following:

“The deployment of Silverlight DRM via the KeyOS Pay Media Platform will offer customers a flexible, robust business-centered rights management solution that will broaden the consumer marketplace for pay media,” said Christopher Levy, CEO of BuyDRM and Microsoft MVP for Digital Media. “We have been working closely with Microsoft to develop one of the industry’s first Silverlight DRM-enabled services offering that is flexible, easy to deploy and provides powerful rights management solutions for a variety of industries.”

“Limelight Networks is a long-time content delivery partner of Microsoft, and was one of the first to support the initial Silverlight experience. We’re pleased today to announce our support for Silverlight DRM, Powered by PlayReady, so that content producers leveraging our high-performance CDN can enable highly secure, profitable streaming experiences through Silverlight 2 technologies,” said Adam Wray, vice president, strategic alliances, Limelight Networks Inc.

“Netflix has used Windows Media DRM 10 to protect the 7,000 choices of movies and TV episodes that our 7.5 million members can watch instantly on the PC,” said Neil Hunt, chief product officer for Netflix. “We look forward to expanding platform coverage using Silverlight with PlayReady, which is expected to satisfy industry requirements for content protection and simplify and improve the end-user experience.”

“The announcement of Microsoft PlayReady and its availability on our platforms will reinforce the position of S60 on Symbian OS as the leading mobile platform for Internet innovation,” said Lee Williams, senior vice president, Nokia Devices Software. “In March we announced that we would bring Silverlight to S60, as well as our Series 40 and maemo platforms. We have also been working with Microsoft for some time on digital rights management. The combination of Silverlight and PlayReady further extends business and monetization opportunities for the industry and raises the bar for rich, interactive consumer experiences.”

“DRM is an integral part of the Technicolor Electronic Distribution Services offer, with Windows Media DRM playing a key role in our technology,” said Mark Langford, vice president, marketing & product management, Thomson Technicolor Electronic Distribution Services. “More recently we’ve expanded our proficiency to include Silverlight, a tool that is exceptionally designed to offer a very compelling user interface for media on the Web. The new support for PlayReady will help us complete the offering of our next generation Live Streaming platform that is based on Silverlight and targeted at tier-one media and entertainment companies.”

“Telstra BigPond, as Australia’s leading provider of audio and video, has been using Windows Media DRM for years and with Silverlight’s support for PlayReady — the latest generation of Microsoft’s media DRM,” said Craig Middleton, group manager, Corporate Relations, Telstra BigPond. “BigPond is looking forward to working with these latest technologies to further enhance its innovative and world-class video and audio content offering to the Australian market place.”

More information on Microsoft’s presence at the NAB Show 2008 can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/media/nab2008.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

#########

For more information, press only:

Rose Tucker, Weber Shandwick, (425) 452-5463, rtucker@webershandwick.com"

Silverlight 2 DRM Support FAQ with New Info from the National Association of Broadcasters Show

2008-04-14T23:36:00.001-04:00

By Don Burnett

As some of you know Microsoft announced new DRM functionality for Silverlight 2 and qualified more of the functionality today... I end up talking to quite a few customers who are into streaming video (some of them still use Windows Media Server and Windows Media Services).. Here's some questions I have been asked and here are some of the best answers that I could come up with.. While some of this comes across like I have been talking to a marketing person (which), the depths of these answers pretty much layout the how's and the why's.. I apologize again if it comes across as the "Microsoft Answer" but it does spell things out..

Will Microsoft update Silverlight Streaming and improve format transcoding?

Silverlight™ Streaming by Windows Live is the companion service to Silverlight. We are increasing the free hosting and storage limit to 10 GB and can now stream HD content at 1400Kbps (see a sample here). During the alpha of the service, most scenarios were video/audio. Now Microsoft is making it easier for content producers to get their media in front of their users, They have now introduced a video management scenario which allows media to be uploaded in many formats (Flash, DIVX, MPEG-4, QuickTime, H.264, H.263, WMV1, WMV2, MPEG-1, MPEG-2) and be transcoded into a Silverlight™ compatible WMV/VC-1 format. For developers, there is a new WebDAV API for Silverlight Streaming which allows for file by file management and Web Folders support.

What Browsers are currently supported by Silverlight 2

For browsers, Silverlight will support all current versions of IE, FireFox, Safari, (and others if you lobby Microsoft).

Will Silverlight run on any web server? What are the benefits to using a Windows server?

Silverlight works with any web server. Video and audio content can also be progressively downloaded and played back from any Web server platform. The benefits of Windows server-based distribution in the final 2.0 release of Silverlight will include Windows Media Services with Fast Stream (instant playback) and Fast reconnect technologies, lower distribution costs (streaming users only download what they watch), and will fully take advantage of the entire Windows server ecosystem of platform components and partner solutions.

In terms of localization, which languages does Silverlight provide?

In Beta 1, the installation and control runtime are available in English. Developers may provide an in-page "Get Microsoft Silverlight" experience for their customers in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Korean, Japanese, Russian and Brazilian Portuguese. Support for additional languages is planned for future releases. End-to-End application localization is supported and will be introduced in the Beta 2 release. There is full support of East Asian languages via TextBlock element. TextBlock supports and uses the East Asian fonts installed on the user's machine. In addition TextBlock supports surrogate content as well as handling proper line breaking for East Asian text. For beta 1 text entry is provided via an IME..

Is Bi-directional scripting support available with Silverlight 2 beta 1?

Silverlight does not, yet ,support bi-directionality, shaping or justification support required by complex script languages. A developer, however, may utilize the rendering of the browser (DHTML) or text-graphics as alternative approaches.

What is ADO.NET Data Services?

ADO.NET Data Services are REST-based HTTP end-points enabling robust interoperation between ADO.NET Data Services and other technologies and Silverlight support is enabled via a client library. This includes third-party HTTP stacks. As ADO.NET Data Services progresses Microsoft will continue to refresh the client library as appropriate to enable compelling data experiences between Silverlight and ADO.NET Data Services.

What exactly is the DRM Microsoft is announcing?

Silverlight 2 will provide digital rights management support powered by Microsoft PlayReady™ content access technology, on Windows and Mac. The beta 2 release of Silverlight 2 will have support for Silverlight DRM. Both WMDRM-protected content and PlayReady-protected content can be played back via the Silverlight 2 plug-in for Windows and Mac, using Silverlight DRM Powered by Microsoft PlayReady. Also, content providers with existing content protected using WMDRM 10 can use the PlayReady Server SDK to deliver that content to Silverlight 2 plug-ins for Windows and Mac.

How will PlayReady Servers be Licensed? I already have WMDRM 10 content,I just want to deliver the content I already have..

Silverlight DRM, Powered by PlayReady, will be completely contained in the Silverlight 2 plug-in that users will download. To maximize performance – both over the network, and in terms of minimizing the size and of the plug-in, Silverlight DRM has support for only processing the new PlayReady license format which is even more compact than old WMDRM license format. Because of this, a PlayReady license server is needed to deliver all licenses to the Silverlight 2 plug-in.

What about licensing fees?

Silverlight DRM is powered by PlayReady and will be available for licensing in coordination with the launch of the Silverlight 2 plug-in. The PlayReady Server SDK runs on Windows® Server 2003 (which is licensed separately) and will be offered to Silverlight customers at a reported cost of USD$30,000 per CPU, with no limits on the number of cores. Microsoft will offer a 120-day evaluation license to qualified customers. Note this is quite different from licensing for PlayReady for Mobile, specifically... Silverlight DRM supports a subset of the full PlayReady features that are most applicable for Silverlight scenarios (online content streaming and progressive download). Microsoft isn't really different than other industry solutions where a per-CPU royalty is commonly applied to server technologies that best meets customer needs for these specific scenarios.

Will the new DRM enable protection of live A/V content?

YES! TOTALLY

What formats will PlayReady for Silverlight Support?

Audio and Video codecs that are in ASF, that are supported by Silverlight will be able to be protected in Silverlight 2. The first release will include protection for content streamed (or progressively downloaded) via web and video on demand.

What about disconnected offline playback?

Microsoft is investigating the support of disconnected scenarios for a future version of Silverlight. That's all Microsoft will say at this time.

What will Microsoft do if there is a breach in DRM?

Silverlight DRM also benefits from an already established Microsoft DRM breach response process including dedicated monitoring. Microsoft provides guaranteed response times to breaches and improved renewability. If a DRM plug-in is breached, Microsoft will update the plug-in to ensure content protection remains effective.

Content licenses are not normally persisted on the client machine for enhanced security, and since Silverlight is a web delivery solution it requires a new license for each playback. ~~You can use isolated storage to cache these licenses to enhance playback experience for the user.~~ CORRECTION: (Thanks goes to Mark Ramberg of Microsoft for clarification on this item..)

Isolated storage can be used to cache the encrypted content, but the licenses cannot be cached there currently. Licenses only exist in memory and have a lifespan of the browser session.

Do I have to use your DRM Technology

There many ways to protect content, Silverlight is an open platform. Third-parties can plug-in their DRM systems and protect premium content using other technologies. One example is Widevine, which is announcing their DRM solution for Silverlight. Content decryption at playback should be a seamless, and end-users shouldn’t be able to detect which system is protecting content behind the curtain.

Does Silverlight 2 really provide HD Quality?

Yes, but performance is dependent upon CPU capabilities of individual machines/configurations. A modern CPU is recommended.

We all know VC-1 is a Standard, but isn't H2.64 ahead in terms of adoption?

Don't confuse industry adoption with industry standards. There are numerous third parties that have already announced support for VC-1, such as those delivering HD formats such as BluRay. From set-top-box makers to software and hardware-based encoders. Also content owners and aggregators are getting in the game too. Microsoft has announced that they have over 85 partners building experiences on WVM/VC-1 and Silverlight today.

Does Move Networks use VC-1? Adobe says that they use flash video or On2’s video codec?

Move Networks uses On2 VP7 codecs, which is different from the VP6 technology in Flash. Move Networks has committed to using the WMV/VC-1 codec for playback in Silverlight.

Will Windows Media still continue development?

YES!!

Will Silverlight support On2?

Silverlight already supports major mainstream codecs. Current plans don’t include including other codecs, like On2’s VP7 or On2 VP6 used in Flash.

What is Adobe Media Player?

Adobe Media Player is based on AIR, and is a 12MB download, and has 0% adoption versus Flash's reported 98% adoption, so their customers will have to download AIR to get this experience. And because it's based on AIR, it has full access to your entire file system and tells users about this up front, making it a target for security concerns. Based on my own experience, I imagine this will not help them get adoption quickly.

How does Microsoft's Experience differ from the Adobe one?

Microsoft offers a dramatically different approach to content creation and delivering experiences that are focused on Microsoft's own customers’ development and deployment needs. They are building a development platform, not just a player or a browser. From Windows to the Web, and the media/living room, as well as mobile devices.

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) provides the richest client experiences the client hardware can offer offering both online/offline scenarios. WPF is based on Microsoft operating systems, making it possible to deliver applications that support 3D hardware acceleration, access to devices and ports, and Microsoft Software Application Integration. Microsoft also offers a full range of offline storage capabilities. Microsoft's new Sync Framework enables offline and collaboration capabilities for any device, application, service or rich internet application.
Silverlight applications offer improved security over other vendor's technologies. Applications run within the browser security sandbox and are authored as "open" code that is just part of the HTML page and can thus be viewed in the browser easily unlike other browser-based RIA technologies.
Silverlight 2 includes .NET, Microsoft’s cross-platform, cross-browser implementation of the .NET Framework that enables the building the next generation of interactive applications across the Web, Windows, and devices.
Microsoft is tackling “development complexity”, bridging the gap between creative designers and development teams, enabling rich user experiences at reduced cost which in turn optimizes business opportunity.

Why is Microsoft Supporting VC-1?

Silverlight provides superior Web streaming experiences over H.264.

Facts important to Web Playback..

WMV/VC-1 offers advanced decode efficiency (up to 2x as efficient) to H.264, enabling better quality playback experiences on less-capable PCs.
Windows Media Services offers proven server reliability and scalability for WMV/VC-1 streaming, as well as lower TCO.
VC-1 with Silverlight provide more compelling Web streaming experience.
WMV/VC-1 is compatible with millions of hours of Windows Media, from HD to mobile.
Support from the Windows Media ecosystem, including third-party tools, service providers and content delivery networks.
H.264 is more suitable for playback on dedicated consumer hardware, and for lower bit-rate web download situations.
VC-1 is better today for streaming Web scenarios, especially for HD, where HD can be decoded without any PC hardware acceleration.
Windows Media Services offers proven reliability and scalability and a lower TCO.
Adobe has announced H.264 streaming with Flash Media Server (FMS). Adobe charges a premium for Flash Media Server, and indications are that Adobe will stream MPEG-4/ H.264 files using a proprietary streaming protocol. This will likely not be compatible with existing MPEG4-based streaming servers and content. (Can anyone from Adobe comment on this? I know I have a few readers if you know the scoop please respond)..

Why is Microsoft reaching out to designers, really?

Microsoft recognizes the importance of design in today’s application lifecycle. Microsoft understands the central role that designers play in delivering engaging and usable experiences. Microsoft wants to show what is possible with software experiences. To reach furthers this, they are committed to bringing designers tools to realize the potential of Windows and Windows Server. Okay, that was a mouthful, but hey it's corporate philosophy and vision!

Technorati Tags: Silverlight 2,DRM,PlayREADY,VC-1,Design Tools

Grava to Bring Simplified Authoring of Educational Software

2008-04-11T22:42:00.001-04:00

by Don Burnett

I was expecting to see this mentioned at Mix08, but so far nothing, until eSchoolNews broke the story about this exciting new product in their most recent online article. So what is Grava ? It's a rocking new educational software authoring tool that makes it easy. It has all the good looks of a WPF based application, but offers educators and courseware authors the ability to create very exciting applications easily with great visualization capabilities.

Grava is a very forward thinking product from Microsoft's Education division. It's probably one of the first products to really deliver on the promise of WPF in applications developed for it.

According to eSchoolNews:

"The Grava development tools, which Microsoft previewed at the British Education and Training Technology Conference in mid-January, are meant to stand alone as separate applications. A Grava SDK (Software Developer Kit) tool is designed for publishers and developers of educational software, while a different authoring tool will give those with less programming experience--such as many educators--the ability to create their own media-rich content to be viewed with the Grava player, Microsoft says.

By introducing these new tools, Microsoft hopes to reduce the time and money spent creating educational software for schools. Because developers won't need high-level programming expertise to create Grava-based programs, the tools could eliminate the common software development cycle in which a subject-matter expert creates content, then hands it off to a programming team to write code, which then returns it for more changes, and so on.

Using Grava, "developers can create very rich [educational materials] ... to make learning much more fun and engaging," says Ravi Soin, product unit manager for Microsoft's Education Products Group. "

This is a very exciting development for schools and this new program from Microsoft could be a revolutionary product for courseware and content development because it will not require a programming team to develop usable courseware content.

There have been other "authoring systems" in the past, but none that take advantage of this rich feature set found in Windows/WPF and can allow rich content development without high level programming and scripting skills.

I am really excited about Grava and what it means to the educational community and it's something you should be on the lookout for. This is another great example of Microsoft leading, and not following the market.

Technorati Tags: Grava,eSchoolNews,Microsoft Education

What the Flash folks Aren't getting about Silverlight (are they too focused on Flash?)

2008-04-11T21:10:00.001-04:00

by Don Burnett

Flash Magazine has a very interesting perspective about Silverlight this week, one that I don't share.. Let me start by saying I have used "Flash" for years, even when it was called FutureSplash animator and could barely render and animate vector graphics, so I have some perspective on this too.. First before going into this let me say all of my comments will be relating to client-side technology, stuff that runs in the browser as a plug-in. That means at most we are talking about it versus two other technology pools, Java and Flash.

Flash people are usually designers with some development knowledge usually great with scripting.. If you go further you are really focused on ActionScript development..

In the article the author makes the quote "I'm not dismissing Silverlight by any means, but what was revealed last week was no revolution and certainly not a threat to Flash." I whole heartedly agree.. If you look at Silverlight's positioning it's a very different plug-in with a great graphics system. What does it do for you however? Well in my mind it has a lot more in common with Java.. Why? Well, underneath Silverlight is a very compact version of the .NET framework.. In fact, it's a full application development framework embedded in a browser plug-in. That fact alone makes it more like Java. Silverlight applications can be self-contained on the client and don't require things like "browser postbacks" to server technology. That means full fledged applications like you see and develop on Windows are actually possible. Is this as advanced as Flash's own runtime, in my humble opinion YES.. What effect does this have on the Flash designer community, probably not a lot except for the fact that in Windows based web development circles unless these folks become proficient with Silverlight, they won't be as needed anymore. The .Net programming community can step in and do all of their design and UI work in .Net natively on Silverlight. So the .Net framework will be more ubiquitous and people will start doing all sides of applications including web versions completely in .Net..

The .Net Programming Community is now your competition..

Don't count those guys out, with the features of the framework and bringing .Net to the browser window, where most people feel all desktop applications are headed, this is a serious juggernaut headed the way of the Adobe Flash community. When they get good and their designs start looking great due to their new XAML based workflow which speeds up the design developer workflow model significantly, this could start impacting heavily on everyone else's web application technology. My concern is more with how .Net will be a competitor to Java than it actually is the Flash community. Everything in Silverlight is very different right down to the routed event model.

Silverlight is also moving to non-Windows mobile platforms like Nokia as well, so that means there will be "Silverlight Applications" everywhere.. This is of significant importance and value as the web interface shrinks to support Mobile functionality. In this regard they may find up against Google's mobile platform. Since Flash/AIR hasn't shown up on the iPhone yet, I will reserve comment on that possible competition.

It will be interesting to watch the .Net Framework under Silverlight grow and see how applications based on Java stack up to .Net.. I am not worried so much about comparing them to Flash at this point. I think Java applications (non web server based) offer a sophistication not found in Flash/Flex/Air, because of what their framework can do. That's why I am more interested to see Java and .Net go head-to-head with Silverlight..Why? Let me launch into my next point..

Quoting Flash Magazine..

"Flash has become a standard. Users will be disappointed if their browser can't run Flash. As Flash has become more powerful, it has started doing things online that formerly were not possible. Flash is the number one choice for online video, animation and small web games. But Flash can do so much more: advanced Rich Internet Applications (RIA), text processing, slide shows, image editing, video mixing, audio tools, , executive dashboards and great looking report generators - Flash has become a real threat to Microsoft and Silverlight is their answer."

I hardly see Flash as the holy grail of web video or a threat, the previous winner was Microsoft's Windows Media Services (and the ubiquitous WMV format). Why? simply put Windows Media Server's capabilities, including live streaming, pay-per-view and many TCP based protocols for efficient bandwidth delivery and above all lower costs and a better ROI. Windows Media Player invented this industry almost completely. Flash Video is newer to the scene, and yes it does have H.264 support and it's the standard file format used in You Tube. Question for you: Do you really enjoy the fuzzy video and bad frame rates on encoded material in YouTube anymore? It also plays on about 98 percent of the machine due to it's installed browser based.. But on the server side of things there is serious indication that it's still not beating Windows Media Server for installs.

As far as the other stuff mentioned in Flash's favor. Did we see most of this happening before Silverlight 1.0 came out and gave Adobe and Sun Java something to think about? Probably not.

.Net Everywhere! is the word of the day! (It's not really Silverlight Everywhere! but what sounds better, I ask you?)

I don't really see Flash as the target but maybe a close bystander, as Microsoft realizes that applications have to happen in the browser, and it's a browser centric world, not a "desktop" one anymore.. This makes Microsoft extremely competitive on the desktop and the browser and on devices, the same XAML design code and applications technology can be used everywhere including non-Microsoft led platforms.. Microsoft has been doing desktop applications for years and now that they have made web development as close to this model as they can possibly go, I think we'll see some things others have said were impossible.

Flash Magazine Rules!

Other than these subtle points I am making, I was impressed with the fair/balanced and overall review Flash Magazine gave of Silverlight 2 and the Expression Studio 2.0 package.. They seem to be pretty on with everything they had to say..

-Don

Technorati Tags: Flash,Silverlight,.NET,Java,.NET EVERYWHERE!,Expression Studio 2.0

Media Center and HD Content Challenges

2008-04-11T10:06:00.001-04:00

by Don Burnett

I normally don't talk a lot about Media Center here or the challenges of bringing HD content to it, on DVD, but there are some very interesting posts to Chris Lanier's Blog about the fallout of HD-DVD going away, and what it would mean to bring Blu-Ray to both the PC and X-box 360 natively. I myself was a very big fan of HD-DVD and my player of choice was the X-box 360. I have a big collection of Red Discs that have now "disappeared" from store shelves. The local Best Buy acts like they never had this format or sold it. It's a shame because I know more than a few people who preferred the format over the blue discs, for it's interactive features, Picture-in-Picture, and over all quality. It had a lot of features missing from the initial Blu-Ray player release. Also Blu-Ray is based on Sun's Java technology. So why did it win? Both technologies use the same blue laser and just a bit different disc formats. Anyone who tells you the picture was better is just talking marketing hype, 1080p is 1080p. Nearly the same video codecs were available in both platforms.

So why did it win? Simply it was a content war and content is king.. Disney focused on Blu-Ray and they own a lot of the DVD market. People make decisions based on what content they can buy. Sure there were companies that did content for both, like Warner Brothers but adoption was slow. The other piece of hardware that put the number of Blu-Ray players out there was the Sony Play Station 3 or PS3. Interestingly enough the PS3 still isn't winning the console wars with the X-Box 360 or the Nintendo WII which is doing extremely well and neither of those machines have a Blu-Ray player built-in. Do all PS3 folks do is watch movies on their shiny new game machine? Sales don't indicate much else.

If I sound bitter it's because I don't really like Sony all of that much due to the number of the rampant anti-consumer scandals of the past few years. The last big Sony product I bought was a Playstation Portable, only to have UMD for it become a flop, as I watched the number of video titles for it shrink, and major studios stop producing titles for it. That was just a couple of years ago, so I didn't expect much from Blu-Ray. What a fickle market we live in here in the USA. One other reason I don't like Sony products is Sony's attempt to put RootKits on their CDs a few years back.

HD on Media Center

So back to Windows Media Center, and the HD content question.. Natively Microsoft didn't end up supporting HD-DVD or Blu-Ray in Media Center. So how do you get content, like from your cable TV? Well, since the content is protected (meaning you can't copy it or move it to other devices), Media Center has to build in support for that content protection. They do this through the use of a Digital Cable tuner. ATI makes a tuner that accepts a "CableCard" tuner. However CableLabs (the cable companies tech arm) has been very paranoid about making these available and you can only buy these from a vendor with a system like Dell or HP. To me that really sucks, I don't want to go buy a product from one of these vendors. CableLabs and the cable companies really don't understand the PC or the Home Theater PC (HTPC) market very much.

The HTPC market This has developed over the years mostly from do-it-yourself PC buyers. Most of these folks buy their own components and assemble their own systems based on high-spec components that most vendors like Dell and HP charge premium costs for. What does this mean to you as a consumer? Well you can't go out to Best Buy and purchase a CableCard Tuner (unless you buy it with a Dell 420 box), The stand-alone tuners that are sold separately don't support HD protected content over cable, you just use them with over-the-air free HD. So if you want this capability you are forced now to buy a premium system that maybe back ordered. I think this really sucks and it's just an attempt by the cable industry to exert monopolistic controls over the market. You should be free to go out and buy one of these tuners for your home brew machine. I my opinion with the current situation, this is just someone maximizing profit and taking advantage of the situation (follow the money). If they are so worried about someone subverting their technology (which seems like what they are saying), they should stay out of it entirely. Media Center does let you burn content onto DVD that you recorded and stored, but probably not the HD protected content from the cable company. Temporary storage and DVR playback doesn't mean archival storage to your burnable DVDs.

Cable Monopoly Issues

On top of all of that once you get it, you may be waiting on the cable company to install it forever. Last time a technician from my local cable company was out I asked them if I bought a CableCard based device how long it would take to get installed. I was told that they only had one installer for the entire area that did these, and they only did installs one day a week and that they already had a huge backlog of installs. The cable companies really don't want to support CableCard, they want you to buy their DVR instead.

My experience (at least with the local company's DVR (a Motorola product) was bad.. I had four of them to die. The problem with them, is they were regular HD boxes with an optional hard drive plugged in. But the problem with them off the top was HEAT. The box had no FAN and heat dissipation was a serious problem for them. I finally went to a non-HD non-DVR box because of all the problems. The technician admitted to me at the time that I wasn't the only one having these issues and he admitted having "seen small fires with them as a result." Either way I don't want one of these in my home. They have kept the problem quiet because of the small percentage rate of these problems with these overall.

If you have a Motorola box I definitely recommend you watch the heat situation. I just got tired of having a new box every three months and losing the programming I had stored on the previous box..

Is it all worth it?

So is it all worth it just to record delayed viewing of that program you missed while at your friend's house on HBO, the one you probably could go out and buy six months ago on standard DVD or on high-def DVD ? The answer to most people is probably not.. HD content on DVD also might have it's issues getting to your PC for playback.. Let's look at what mess the HD-DVD departure has left.. Over at Chris Lanier's Blog, there is some great discussion about bringing Blu-Ray to Windows and Media Center. Native Blu-Ray support doesn't exist currently. You have to launch an application from a third party company so really when the media plays back you are not inside Media Center. This means the controls and the great UI you are used to isn't necessarily available to you. Plus since it's a third party it might not always work as expected and you can't look to Microsoft to fix the bugs in it. Another not so cool thing is the playback won't probably work across your own home network to stream playback to other devices in other rooms (Media Center Extenders, like the Linksys Extender or the X-box 360).

Also you just can't add an HD DVD/Blu-Ray player to every PC anyway... It must be at least a 2.4 Giga-hertz processor, with a graphics card that supports HDCP , well actually the whole system has to be supportive of HDCP protection. Personally if you bought your system within the last 3 years, most likely it doesn't support at least one of these specifications.

So will we see a Blu-Ray player for the X-Box 360 anytime soon? The answer is probably not, and the best explanation as to "why" comes again from an entry in Chris Lanier's Blog..

"Another issue is building such a player to spec, something Microsoft will have a hard, or rather near impossible time doing. Unlike HD DVD’s hardware specs (PL1), Blu-ray requires that all players support multichannel PCM out. The Xbox 360 can’t do this with current hardware (no software update fixes that), nor does it have HDMI 1.3 to directly output the bitstream of advanced codec’s like TrueHD. Would the BDA let Microsoft make a player that is not built to spec just because they are Microsoft"

Frankly even if Microsoft designs their own non-Java device drivers and playback libraries there is a lot of things standing in the way of that happening..

Does this all really Matter?

Why does the X-box 360 continue to sell in great numbers as an HD content playback system, without Blu-Ray and now without HD-DVD? Simply, it still has an HD content system in it. It's called X-Box Live... Like Apple's iTunes, you can buy TV shows, Music, and HD movies and download them to your X-Box 360 hard drive with X-Box Live. Up until this year the X-Box 360 has only had a 20 gig drive in it, but with the 360 Elite and Microsoft now selling a bigger 120 gig replacement hard drive, it's possible to download and playback HD content right to the device over a standard broadband connection at reasonable speeds. Can you get the content off this unit and store it? No more than you can the cable company's DVR or the new CableCard tuner systems from Dell, and others. But hey it works great and the picture looks great and may be a cost effective alternative to high cable and content you can't burn to a DVD or record and save anyway.

Bottom line, with the current situation, cable companies and movie houses don't want you burning HD content to DVDs or long term storage and playback. They have worked with the politicians to enact laws that really trample all over your right to "fair use" anyway. Fair use today doesn't include HD content, just poorer non-HD versions. Some of the movie companies though see that media is now a portable thing and you might like a digital copy to view on your laptop or some other device and are including coupons to download a digital copy of the movie (still copy protected to a device like your home PC).. That's at least some movement on their part towards fair use.

So will PC's get Blu-Ray players and recorders? Will Media Center work with them natively? Will the cable company monopoly ever accept "fair use"? Will the 360 really ever get any HD playback device that lets you keep a copy of the movie?

I think consumers here need to be starting to write their lawmakers and require these companies to stop the protectionist practices. Before HD and DVD copying existed and even today with non-HD copying still a possibility (not a legal one really), the studios are still making money, people still go to the movies. Their profits aren't going down the drain. We are honestly loosing freedom of choice here.. This is just my opinion, but I don't want to pay every time I see a movie. I like the idea of buying it once. For that reason I think regular DVDs will be with us for some time to come. Also due to PC requirements and the lack of consumer understanding of them, I don't think we'll see Blu-Ray recorders and PC players zooming on and off the shelf for sometime.

More opinion: The promise of HD has been subverted, by the movie industry, by the cable industry, and by our law makers who really aren't seeing what's going on here.. As for Media Center and native support and a new Blu-Ray add-on for the 360, survey says "Not anytime soon.." and that's really a bad situation. It just proves Microsoft is not immune to "industry" and market forces..

Could it be the real monopolies are the movie companies and the cable television industry that's holding us back because they won't get their premium cut? Maybe folks now should start worrying about them, over a company like Microsoft. Should they be investigated for their practices by Congress? In my opinion the survey says "yes they should".. Will they? Probably not, you can ask politicians like Congressman John Conyers, who is historically has voted in the media companies favor. Or that Alaskan Senator, who doesn't understand technology and things like DRM. Something we could do to improve the situation with congress is requiring them to be educated about the facts and consequences of all of this, and I am not talking about a hearing with a bunch of CEOs of media companies in the room.

What's Next?

What do I think is next? Well I think media companies will start offering their own Media Players, and their own content branded playback device (like DVRs) that only work with their content. I think after plain DVDs there won't be media, except for maybe memory cards and USB drives with content on it.. Branded and only working with their playback devices.. Right now it sounds risky because the Media companies are worried about the same things they are with DVDs, unauthorized use. But I think this is a trend and one that will continue thanks to companies like Adobe that announced their own "media player" release. We'll soon see the movie companies with their own "branded" media players and more separation of media.. These players can be physical boxes or computer programs..

Technorati Tags: HD Mess,Blu-Ray,HD-DVD,Windows Media Center,CableCard,Cable TV Tuners,Smoke,Fire,Monopolistic Practices

Drag and Drop Data Layer?? Here comes Visual LINQ Query Builder to the Rescue

2008-04-10T18:08:00.001-04:00

by Don Burnett

The news of the week is this great new add-on for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, called Visual LINQ Query Builder, and it's almost the greatest thing since Sliced Bread (no lie)..

This tool lets you open a LINQ to SQL datacontext (LINQtoSQL file) and create your queries from the database in LINQ by simply dragging and dropping files and tables (really whatever you need) on the designer as it constructs the query for you..

Even a designer will be happy with this tool.. Check it out for yourself with more info at Mitsu's Blog.. It makes life go a lot faster when creating a data layer..

Technorati Tags: Visual LINQ Query Builder,Visual Studio 2008,LINQtoSQL,LINQ,Drag-n-Drop

Date Change? Day of Dot Net Western Michigan

2008-04-10T17:37:00.001-04:00

by Don Burnett

Apparently the graphic on my blog had the wrong date for Western Michigan Day of Dot Net.. It's May 10th..

Day of Dot Net

Event Date:Saturday, May 10, 2008
8:30 AM - 5:30 PM

Welcome Time:7:30:00 AM Eastern Time

Location:

Davenport University
6191 Kraft Avenue S.E.
Grand Rapids, MI 49512
USA
Location Website

The Swiss MSDN Team Does It again

2008-04-04T09:57:00.001-04:00

By Don Burnett

Ronnie Saurenmann and the Swiss Team has put together another great video that talks about working with SQL databases from Silverlight. This one shows you how to do Inserts, Updates, and Deletes with optimistic locking. One of the difficult things about this approach is that LINQ to SQL does not offer client side change tracking out of the box so you need to implement your own. While watching the video remember that it's just one one approach to change tracking in multi tier architecture with LINQ to SQL. This example only works with tables with Primary Key as single column and works with timestamps or original values.

Technorati Tags: More LINQ to SQL,Silverlight,Example Videos,Swiss MSDN Team

Flash Takes Down Vista in the PWN2OWN Contest

2008-03-31T18:25:00.001-04:00

By Don Burnett

Well, well, Flash just keeps making news.. According to ZDNET the offending Application that brought down the Vista Machine in the big hacking contest was none other than Adobe's own Flash product. To be fair it could have been some other product just as easily as Flash, but this isn't the first ZDNET story about problems with the Flash plug-in. I blogged earlier about another ZDNET blogger having trouble with Flash...

It's scary when you hear about these 0 day exploits, especially on a plug-in like Flash which supposedly is installed on 98 % of the browsers out there.. It's a very naked and vulnerable feeling when someone can take over a machine, and in this case many more due to the ubiquity of the plug-in. I have said it before Adobe and Microsoft should work closer to eliminate these kinds of problems.

Interesting Tidbits from Jeffrey Jones Windows Vista One Year Vulnerability Report

2008-03-30T15:38:00.001-04:00

By Don Burnett

I seem to have ruffled the feathers of a lot of Mac folks, with some statistics and suggestions that Vista was a lot more secure than Mac OS X (10.4) and Windows XP.. People are offended apparently at the number of days it took to hack a MacBook Air (two days)..

Here are some statistics from Jeffrey Jones Report. I suggest you sit down and read the entire report. You will see that this isn't political, but a fair and honest assessment. It's just tracking of the numbers of patches/vulnerabilities and what actually happened. You can download it right HERE...

HIGHLIGHTS

Note: This is all from Mr. Jones report and I am quoting it all here...

... "

I suggest you read the entire report for yourself.. Numbers are reality, and all the Mac Fanatics in the world can't change the reality of these numbers, or any amount of spin from the "Steve Meister"... This is what happened with each of these systems/platforms.. You can't argue with numbers. Take that.. Mac-vs-PC television ads..

Technorati Tags: Vista Security,Mac OS X,Windows XP,Vista Superiority

Nova Light Brings 3D Animation to Silverlight

2008-03-30T14:00:00.001-04:00

by Don Burnett

Well last time I saw someone trying to do 3D in Silverlight, it was in wire frame, and didn't look so great, so you can imagine my surprise when I checked Kosh Land (catuhe.com) and saw a 3D viewer running non-hardware accelerated 3D with animating and moving in real time around the viewer world and getting over 20 frames per second on my Core 2 Duo 64-bit laptop. It looks really cool and worth the trip over there to take a look..

Technorati Tags: Kosh,Nova Light,3D Silverlight

Vista or Mac or XP is one less secure than the other?

2008-03-29T08:16:00.001-04:00

by Don Burnett

It's been an interesting week... For months I have heard from Mac owners that the Mac OSX was more secure than Vista and you don't even need virus or malware protection... Now I have known this is not true, but those "anti-PC" Apple ads keep touting OS X and trashing Vista's security enhancements and the PC in general. I guess the news this week pretty much proved that wrong..

Evidence One: LinuxWorld/IDG News Service

http://www.linuxworld.com/news/2008/032708-gone-in-2-minutes-mac.html

Quote: " It may be the quickest $10,000 Charlie Miller ever earned. He took the first of three laptop computers -- and a $10,000 cash prize -- Thursday after breaking into a MacBook Air at the CanSecWest Applied Security conference's PWN 2 OWN hacking contest."

Evidence Two: ComputerWorld

http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=spam__malware_and_vulnerabilities&articleId=9072498&taxonomyId=85

Quote: " March 27, 2008 (IDG News Service) Apple's teasing commercials that imply its software is safer than Microsoft's may not quite match the facts, according to new research revealed at the Black Hat conference on Thursday. Researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology looked at how many times over the past six years the two vendors were able to have a patch available on the day a vulnerability became publicly known, which they call the 0day (zero-day) patch rate. They analyzed 658 vulnerabilities affecting Microsoft products and 738 affecting Apple. They looked at only high- and medium-risk bugs, according to the classification used by the National Vulnerability Database, said Stefan Frei, one of the researchers involved in the study."

Evidence Three: CSO Security and Risk Blog: Jeff Jones (Security by the Numbers)

http://blogs.csoonline.com/windows_vista_one_year_vulnerability_report

Quote: " The results of the analysis show that Windows Vista continues to show a trend of fewer vulnerabilities at the one year mark compared to its predecessor product Windows XP (which did not benefit from the SDL). If you are interested in how it did compared with Red Hat, Ubuntu and Apple Mac OS X, you'll need to download the full report. If you share the opinion that Windows and applications ported to Windows get a higher level of researcher scrutiny than other OSes, then the 6-month results are even more positive. If you don't share that opinion, then they still stand on their own ..."

According to his report, Vista was more Secure than OS X (10.4) or Windows XP.. These are great reads for those who are still on XP or have "switched" to Apple OS X machines..

Evidence Four: computerworld: Julia King

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=312300

Quote: " Mac switch revisited: An enterprise PC shop's move to Apple isn't as easy as expected...Auto Warehousing Co.'s switch from PCs to Macs is proving more painful than expected."

Even though this company has been committed to moving to be a Mac based enterprise, the story really details differences and extra costs...

Summary: My read on all of this: no one operating system is really secure at best the OS can do things to minimize these things.. As I understand it, there are over 200 vulnerabilities still un-patched on OSX.. I look forward to seeing these numbers go down over the years to come. It looks like some of these companies are finally "getting it" with regards to the importance of secure systems..

Flash Reliability- ZDNET Exposes Problems that are less than anomylous..

2008-03-26T14:00:00.002-04:00

by Don Burnett

EDIT: Please note some people will see this as me attacking Flash, if you read through it with an open mind you will notice that I am not. I use Flash myself and like the plug-in. I just want to know if there really is truly a reliability issue here and trying prompt to see if Adobe will talk about their process for feedback and how they work to address issues with customers.

Don't think of this as an "Attack" believe me, if I were I'd have more juicy things to say.

-Don

Original Posting:

Over at ZDNET, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes has a great story that exposes some issues with Flash Player. Before a ton of Adobe Evangelists jump my blog here, let me say I am not attacking Flash here, I want Adobe to address these reliability issues. With a product as important as Flash Player is and the number of machines out there running it (some say it's about 98%) this could be an important issue and if Flash is crashing as much as we think it might be, that could account for a lot of problems people don't really see or know about.

Adrian does a blog for ZDNET, and his most recent discourse is about looking at 3 months worth of reliability data gathered by Vista x64's Reliability monitor. One of the problems it exposed was Flash kept crashing his machine or at least his browser. I have to say this wasn't a shock with me, I have Flash installed myself because it has happened with me to on a regular basis. This is not the only community that I keep up with. I own a Mac Mini computer, and the other day I was reading on another ZDNET blog, one of the Mac ones that the OSX version of Flash has the same sort of problems. This was something that I noted during a posting on whether Flash should come to the iPhone or not. The Blog writer and readers started tag-teaming against Adobe because they felt Flash crashed to much. The reader reply (an IT guy) stated that he wasn't recommending Flash be installed on the OSX machines that he administrated because of reliability issues and crashes.

I admit I don't do a lot with Flash these days except view content, but considering the fact that I am hearing so much in the way of community backlash about this, it would seem like Adobe with all it's great resources, should be working harder to identify these problems. Someone was talking with me the other day about this at a Mac user group and of course he was exaggerating, but he asked the question that "boy wouldn't it be funny if we found out 1/3 to a half of all the computer crashes over the Internet were from Faulty Flash Player installs ? ".

I really hope that's not the case but I wonder if Adobe has a reporting customer feedback mechanism in the Flash player that identifies this stuff and brings it back to them. I also wonder if they are doing anything about it.. When CS3 came out Adobe was very anti x64 Windows support, but I hear this happens on other OSes and 32-bit Windows (including XP). I am really wondering what kind of things they do to fix errors and find out about them, etc.

Maybe, someone from Adobe will be nice enough to comment on these issues and the crashing issues (or at least acknowledge it). At least with Microsoft stuff (and other vendors) most now have a "customer improvement program" that tracks reliability and crashing and logs and reports errors back. I'd like to see Flash have this too.. It also could be poorly written Flash content out on the Internet causing this as well (something well beyond Adobe's control).

Of course most people see IE 7 crashed and they don't look further than to blame Microsoft.. It's nice that you can at least with Vista find out these things.. Any insight into this Adobe? Of course you will probably minimize the crashing thing being a problem, but I am keeping a list of these issues when I see someone on the Internet writing about these kinds of problems, so I can revisit this with you folks..

Technorati Tags: Flash,Crashes Multiple OSes,OSX,Windows Vista,x64,Reliability Monitor

Microsoft Releases Expression Professional Subscription

2008-03-24T11:09:00.001-04:00

by Don Burnett

Microsoft has released the Expression Professional Subscription program. The package gives you the following products..

Expression Studio
Visual Studio Standard Edition
Office Standard Edition
Office Visio Professional
Windows XP
Windows Vista Business Edition
Virtual PC
Pre-configured virtualized server environments..

COST: The Expression Professional Subscription will be available for purchase in the first half of 2008 for US$999 ERP.

REVIEW: There are a few "gotchas" here that you need to know about, but this is a great value proposition for your designers..

Okay let's talk about the what you gets and the why's...

Expression Studio- (Does this include updates to 2.0 and later if they are released in your subscription year? I'd expect so but don't quote me on that.)

Visual Studio Standard- Because you probably need to get into it even if you don't code in it so you can share projects.. (Looks like no version control with this package, that question is still up in the air?).

Office Visio Professional- This is a great tool for diagramming things including work flows and processes.. I believe there is a 3rd party XAML exporter for it already. This is a great tool that most interaction designers use already.

Windows XP- No doubt for backward compatibility testing. Remember WPF and Silverlight applications run on XP, it just doesn't have any hardware acceleration for XP's graphics.

Windows Vista Business Edition- Now this is a little confusing to me as to why they included the Business SKU of Vista. There are several things missing from it as a designer that you'll want, including MPEG-2 dvd playback. There is no MEDIA CENTER functions built into this version and it doesn't playback all compressed data types like Mpeg-2..

With this edition you'll have to buy this separately from 3rd party vendors. Vista Business is not the best solution because it limits the playable/encode capable datatypes without buying more encoding software.

Also if you are developing a XAML based Media Center application here you are out of luck because it comes with NO built-in Media Center. You'll have to upgrade to ultimate anyway.

Virtual PC- Again some people use this but I hear it has some issues with WPF 3D. I know some agency folks who have Macs who run a virtual Windows PC, but this is not what this is. It's virtual PC for the PC. Which lets you create "separate" virtual environments to work from and test with. They are supposed to include pre-made images to get you working and testing. It's very obvious that one of the developer guys decided on this addition to the subscription. I am not sure if developers really understand how designers test things including designs, even at Microsoft.

Last time I had heard however that Virtual PC doesn't implement the latest DirectX, so if you use this to develop applications you probably won't be getting full speed or hardware accelerated graphics to develop your WPF graphics on. I am not sure WPF 3D works either in this configuration completely either.. Survey says "great idea", not ideal implementation.

Creating a separate testing and design environment is a good idea, but if you have actually tried to develop with this there are certain "gotchas" there..

Whoever put this subscription idea together, it's a good one, I just think there wasn't enough review of the technical specifications behind it and decisions about what it should include. Of course no one asks me about this kind of thing.. Virtual PC is not something you'll be wanting to test your 2D and 3D animation design on. You won't be able to check accurate Frames Per Second rates and be sure that the screen is updating properly. For a designer that's very important, for a developer *NOT SO MUCH* so please don't test install and use Blend in Virtual PC it's a bad idea for designers.

But if you know all of these things it sounds like a great idea and gives a designer a whole stable of software to work from. Now if they'd just take my suggestion and add Office Live Workspaces to this subscription I'd think they'd have a real winner on their hands.

You can use this free online tool to collaborate with your clients, do art approvals, project tracking all in one free online location. Don't take my word for it though, sign up for it today for free.. That's one thing no one else has or is giving as part of their services free collaboration and project management for your clients. Play on par with your clients as if you were a bigger organization.

Overall Impressions:

All in all it's a great value for a business wanting to equip their designers.. I would like to see them expand this kit with discount coupons for third party products like Techsmith's Morae Usability testing software. Which would be a great value add to this kit..

Technorati Tags: Expression Studio 2.0,Subscription

Good Advice for People Upgrading/Updating

2008-03-24T10:15:00.001-04:00

By Don Burnett

ALL OSes HAVE PROBLEMS

I don't care which OS you have, OSX recently had a huge security update (security holes in MacOS my, oh my!) that wreaked havoc on users machines who did the software update. Linux has had driver problems including unavailable drivers for sometime. The last time I installed linux and added an nVidia hardware accelerated 3d driver, when the driver compiled and installed it crashed the kernal and I had to reinstall with no ideas to why this was happening even though I supposedly was on the right release and the package manager had downloaded for me..

So please fanboys of Linux and Apple stop trying to claim that you are better. I own machines with both OSes installed and frankly you just aren't any better at all. This is something we all have to deal with. Don't give up get some help, when you run into stuff like this. "Switching" just gets you a different set of problems..

Vista Upgrade Path

As for Windows Vista, people with a sygmatel audio chip are complaining because their motherboard and chip doesn't work (that's some non-recent Dell machines)? Well if you think how many machines are out there with different motherboards and chips? If you actually look at the numbers, it would be amazing if Microsoft could test every single board and resource on the planet. It's really not their responsibility though they have safeguards in place.

So you bought from a company that used a cheap audio or model chip and the chip maker either went out or put it in the hands of the hardware seller to support. Frankly this isn't Microsoft's fault, it's the folks at Dell or HP or anywhere else to support specific features of their hardware models. I can hardly feel that Microsoft should be held responsible for a part of the OS they don't package.

If the drivers come on a separate disc from the manufacturer of the hardware blame them, and remember the next time you buy hardware the problem you went through so you don't have it again.. Microsoft will do all they can and they do, but if the hardware maker goes up the river then what do you do? I have been stung by this in more than one Windows update cycle myself. I know Mac owners who had to throw out full systems because their computers weren't compatible with the OS X version of the OS a few years ago. Hardware that wasn't fast but perfectly useable with the old OS..

Is there a Solution?

How do I get around that, I make sure that I have a standard "supported" chipset in any machine I buy. It's simply not good enough to say I bought a "Lenovo, a Dell, or an HP"... Learn to read the hardware specs and ask questions. If they won't tell you who makes it don't buy it. I feel safe with ATI/AMD and Nvidia nforce chipsets. Hold the CPU maker responsible make them update you to something that is supportable and sustainable. A good thing to do is check the hardware specs with the list of drivers in Microsoft documentation. If all the main drivers come on the Vista installer from Microsoft then you are good.

Also don't expect your 4-5 year old machine to be completely compatible with the next version of "Windows".. It's called LEGACY hardware.. You buy a system with drivers and software certified for that machine at time of release. The manufacturer usually only supports what they have released or bundled.

Missing Drivers? Microsoft is not to blame..

Microsoft has given driver manufacturers uprecedented early access to Vista and offered help with driver development to them. More than one company (third party) didn't even start their driver development before Vista shipped. Microsoft warned these folks, if they didn't start updating I'd consider it the 3rd party company's problem, like a certain big sound card maker that started sound with the PC industry.

It's best to be an educated user, back up your machine before you update anything, and be sure you have the right drivers and updates for your hardware.. It will make your life a whole lot easier.. Demand more from whoever you buy your hardware from as a consumer as well. Don't let them sell it as a "throw away" in a couple years type of sale. Above all keep your machine secure with anti-virus and malware protection.

For those looking to go back to XP? Why? you can in about 5 minutes turn off User Account Control, go back to the old look and feel (change your preference setttings) and you'll still have a much more secure OS and probably just as useable. There are several websites that are out there that will show you how to do this. In five years, I don't think you'll be looking back at this anyway. It's nice to see that XP is a great user experience that has so many people that like it though. With Vista you get a completely re-written OS with security as a first thought, not as a re-write. Sure that security might be a tad slower (I haven't noticed myself) to work with but when your cursing your machine because you have to reformat or re-install or take that into your dealer for them to work on it, you might be glad you had a bit "slower" OS.. I don't actually believe though it's any bit slower.. Plus you get WCF,WPF, and other goodness in Vista, stuff you don't see but will make way cooler graphical applications possible that isn't on XP.. Also support for bigger memory sizes is there..

Mix 08 Reflections- Keeping it Honest..

2008-03-23T19:29:00.001-04:00

by Don Burnett

Reading Adobe designers and developers reads on Mix 08 has been interesting. Most people I have talked to think the products are getting closer to feature parity with each other. However, the Flash designers are not worried they are going to be out of a job anytime soon. Most of the keynote "cool demos" were cool for Microsoft developers but made a lot of the design folks (Adobe community) yawn.. What does Microsoft need to do to capture more in the next year? Well I have a couple of suggestions I am going to put out to the community and see what travels upstream..

1) Move Mix 09 to coexist with SXSW, don't even announce it at the Venetian. Microsoft should make the Mix conference part of the South by Southwest festival. The fact of the matter is the South By Southwest (SXSW) conference attracts the entire Web 2.0 community. The spill over of attendees would be great for Microsoft. This year Microsoft spaced Mix 08 a week before SXSW. This is just incredibly bad timing. Were there people at both? Yeah probably a lot, which one was over the top? Well SXSW.. At least have both conferences in the same general area and not so far apart. While I am sure SXSW probably wants to stay independent of Microsoft, a conference within a conference is a great idea. I know people who went to both and were exhausted and completely sick after that second week.

Microsoft would attract more community, if they were either just at SXSW or changed the timeframe of next year's Mix event. The general consensus from everyone that went to both is "never again". They probably will go to SXSW if they have to choose. This isn't to say Mix content isn't good, just SXSW appeals to those things in Interactive that brings people together as a community and Mix is more a Microsoft developer tech fest. Microsoft would have made huge strides with Mix, if the Web 2.0 folks that were there at SXSW spilled over into Mix making it a real mix and a real composite of the entire community.

2) Give us more designer goodness at Mix. Yes the UX track was very nifty to see them add, but the vast majority of people twittering (which I watched in Realtime, while sitting with my leg up in the air from the accident) said this was a Mix aimed at developer guys, not the Flash/Flex/Adobe community or interactive media folks. Most designers who went to Mix and SXSW were more interested in the web 2.0 stuff going on there (and I don't mean the "Zuck" Interview and the bazillion parties). Most of the 2.0 Silverlight stuff was aimed towards developers, and I think emphasis on Expression Studio could have been a lot greater with the content. It deserves a track onto itself not just user experience. Come on guys didn't you get enough UX training in school and in your job daily ? Guess not..

3) This one, I label , "What happens in Redmond stays in Redmond..". The demos at the keynote were cool, but I have seen much of these things already on other platforms over the years, while DeepZoom is nice, let's face it, you can't build an entire application around just it.. It amazes me that Microsoft spent all this money on technical reference samples like Slide.show, Video.Show, World Wide Telescope, and others and yet the only real sell going on in that keynote was really the Atlas Ad Manager stuff, and they really didn't show us anything new with WPF.

Well, they did announce (to show the progress Windows applications were making) to say that they were coming out sometime with a service pack around summer time (oh yeah aston-martin, memorable..). There is only so much time in a keynote, but it's obvious that the folks were just not totally in touch with the cool stuff like the fact that the smart client experiences starter kit could be a "market onto itself" should have had at least a session for those interested in creating publications with it. There is so much cool content that wasn't used at Mix 08 going on in the community they could have another conference just around that.. I won't do the laundry list here but you get the idea..Get these people out to community show them cool stuff that's being done and worked on. Don't make all this stuff internal "Microsoft folks" or just partner organizations.

4) Are you tired of going to a Microsoft design thing and it be all Microsoft employed folks talking? The whole thing lacks design community credibility. If you go to other vendors conferences you'll know right away and see people from outside the company talking and giving presentations for the company. It's time to let the community in, and this will build even bigger community for you.

The community is there now (you guys have done a nice job growing it), just give them the opportunity. I have to say my local group of folks have been treated great by Microsoft. We get to know things before they happen almost all the time, they give us nice goodies and encourage us to move forward with the support of the product. Two of the coolest demonstrations I have seen at a Microsoft conference in the past few years, was a presentation by the "Godfather of CSS", and the developer who did the Yahoo Messenger for WPF application. This drove attendance to events like mad.

I think more community participation (even directed participation) is a great thing. Microsoft got smart about it's Windows Server, Visual Studio, SQL Server 2008 launch and included the community in the entire launch. The event was even entitled "Heroes Happen Here".. It really shows some great planning on their part and I hope we see more planning like this from all of Microsoft presentations in the future. This totally rocked and is what everything should get modeled after.

(NUMBER 5- MY RANT OF THE DAY..)

5) All Cell Phones and Tweets should be banned from presentations (or used as part of the presentation).. Real-time twittering from the audience should be banned during presentations unless the speaker gets to see the feed from everyone present at the same time he is talking. I think twitter is a great way to have a running back-channel commentary, but sometimes it's harmful to speakers. SXSW is a good example of where backlash from such things going on while the presenter was talking and being asked questions. Yes I am talking about the "Zuck" interview. I really felt the Newsweek lady was disrespected. They really should have made it a different type of presentation, a "TWITTER town hall meeting" format. The sad part of this is everyone there twittering seemed to think they were more important (or out to get their 15 minutes of fame) than the interviewer or "Zuck" himself.

To me this whole issue is about politeness and respect. If you are in the audience be part of the audience. Your comments at that point *ARE NOT* as important as the person speaking. There should be more and better rules we used to call stuff like this "Netiquette".. Unless the twittering can be viewed by the presenter and is allowed as part of the presentation.

Technorati Tags: Mix 09,SxSW,Heroes Happen Here Launch Event,TWITTER

Surface Demo Updated for Silverlight 2.0

2008-03-22T06:16:00.001-04:00

by Don Burnett

Over at Michael Schwarz's Blog, he has updated the Silverlight Surface 2.0 demo to include support for multi-scale images with Deep Zoom.. This is a real treat to check out, and with the new code updates this demo is getting to be cool enough that you need to show your friends if they liked the demo at http://www.microsoft.com/surface.

Sidenote: Someone asked me if the WPF surface code/SDK was available yet recently and the answer is beyond the Silverlight stuff here, I understand that Surface is a commercial product, you'd have to talk to Microsoft about using it. I suspect it goes beyond these demo capabilities with it's motion tracking alone. But this is a great idea and you can figure out how to implement these features from the code here for your applications..

Oh and as for this demo, keep an eye out for the source code at the author's site he doesn't seem to have actually posted the new demo in anything but live format. The original code is still downloadable. He might just be packaging up the new stuff. The wow factor with deep zoom is way cool here..

Technorati Tags: Surface,Silverlight 2.0,Update

Realtime Advertising With Silverlight

2008-03-21T21:37:00.001-04:00

by Don Burnett

One of the great examples that everyone talks about is the famous Home Shopping Network interactive TV demonstration. I have no idea of the project's current status, but it was one of the coolest things over the last year, and I thought everyone should get a look at it again, before we loose it from our current memory. This really was one of the first very cool demonstrations of Silverlight. Now we are seeing so much more daily in terms of interactive advertising and video technology.

Technorati Tags: HSNTV,Silverlight 2.0,Interactive Television

Flash for iPhone? Huh? No Not Really, well maybe, huh? WTF?

2008-03-20T22:38:00.001-04:00

by Don Burnett

Flash for the Apple iPhone has become a very hot topic since the release of the iPhone/iPod Touch SDK. The latest official news is it may not be happening.. According to an ArsTechnica article : "Jobs asserted that Flash ran too slowly on the iPhone—which is another way of saying the iPhone isn't fast enough to run Flash—and suggested that something else was needed. "There's this missing product in the middle," Jobs said. "It just doesn't exist. We enjoy a good relationship with Adobe."

"Look up in the sky it's a Bird, it's a Plane,.. This is a job for..GNASH ??"

I have a suggestion with this impasse, a third party step in and port their "Flash" plug-in.. I think this job for GNASH.. We could easily see this ported to the SDK and then released.. Then it would side-step wrangling by whoever is really holding out on this happening. That way...

Neither Apple or Adobe are responsible for it's performance or purported "Lack of Performance".
You can't blame Adobe or Apple for Battery Life issues
Security is out the window from Adobe or Apple so it's use at your own risk.
The community that uses it and develops it takes responsibility for it and it's improvements features are dictated by the community that uses it (how it works etc.)

I really hope this happens just as I'd like to see Silverlight everywhere too. Seems to me Silverlight Mobile (being on Nokia Internet Devices that use Linux is a really big deal).. And Silverlight seems to be feeling the mobile love over Flash..

Flash Support through QuickTime?

Over at that ArsTechnica article the vast majority of commenters didn't care if they got Flash for iPhone or not. It seems from the comments that I am seeing, is they see Flash as being a competing platform for Apple (they did do QuickTime for gosh sake with Flash Tracks). If QuickTime can/could play older Flash player files or imported and converted to QuickTime at least , why couldn't they also expand QuickTime to playback current SWF File).. Something isn't making sense here, especially the performance questions..

Security concerns could be worked around by whoever does the implementation..

I find this all politics and not good for end users.. My vote is for GNASH.. Get both Steve and Adobe out of the equation.

Technorati Tags: Flash,iPhone,iPod Touch,SDK,Apple,GNASH

Some Silverlight Mobile Videos On the Web..

2008-03-20T12:30:00.001-04:00

By Don Burnett

Here are some newer Silverlight Mobile samples I have found on the web obviously from Mix 08. Nothing really sticks out here as a great example of a mobile UI application but they are interesting viewing.. There is a Mix session viewer), and it is interesting..

Silverlight Mobile Demo - MIX

Here's one from last year's Mix Conference, the famous MLB.COM demo including video. Not sure where video was with these other demos this year..

Technorati Tags: Silverlight,Mix 08,Silverlight Mobile

Semicolons not accepted in Silverlight 2.0 Web Services for beta 1

2008-03-19T10:33:00.001-04:00

by Don Burnett

It always helps to read up on blogs if you want to know the latest problems people are finding out there. Over at IanG's Blog, he has documented a bug in Silverlight 2.0b1, apparently if the service you wish to access has a semicolon in its URI, Silverlight won’t allow your client-side code to access it, no matter what the clientaccesspolicy.xml file says, however you can work around this problem using crossdomain.xml instead.

If you want to go into detail about the workaround for this problem please check out IanG's blog for more details..

Technorati Tags: Semicolon,Silverlight2.0,ClientAccessPolicy,web services issues,crossdomain.xml,work around

So Many Great Silverlight How-To's, It's difficult to keep up.

2008-03-18T12:19:00.002-04:00

by Don Burnett

Sockets in Silverlight 2.0

Over at Marc Holmes Blog, there is a great example of using sockets with Silverlight. This enables real-time push data communications from within the Silverlight Plug-in. Into the browser. The code is also available for download.

ListBox and DataGrids in Silverlight 2.0

Over at the UX Musings Blog there is a great tutorial on how to start wiring up ListBox and DataGrid controls to data in Silverlight 2.0.. Corrina Barber did a great job with this tutorial and she actually gives you many great screen captures and gives you the example in both C# and VB.NET...

Check it out...

Technorati Tags: DataGrid,ListBox,Sockets,Silverlight 2.0

Silverlight 2 Developer Poster

2008-03-16T22:27:00.001-04:00

by Don Burnett

Brad Abrams has a link up on his blog to the Silverlight 2.0 developer poster including JPG, PNG, and TIF versions along with the (not so useful for me) deep zoom version.

It looks something like this thumbnail from Brad's Blog.. I found this immensely useful in version 1 and I am sure I will in Version 2.0 as well..

Check out Brad's Blog for the Download Links..

Technorati Tags: Silverlight 2.0,Developer Reference Poster,Brad Abrams

ACM in Entertainment

2008-03-16T11:29:00.001-04:00

By Don Burnett

In case you haven't heard about it or don't know about it, the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) has a great Publication called "ACM Computers In Entertainment". Being that we focus here on advertising and Rich Internet Applications I thought you might find this quite the cool publication.. My old Media Station friend Newton Lee who lives out in California these days, is heavily involved in this organization and their work.

Here is the banner from the most recent publication below. If you aren't a subscriber, you probably should be..

-Don

ACM Computers in Entertainment, Volume 5, Issue 4

We are pleased to announce that the nonprofit ACM Computers in Entertainment magazine, Volume 5, Issue 4 has been published. In this issue, we feature 7 original papers on the technology, history, and branding of computer games, as well as the video interviews of our distinguished advisory board member Michelle Hinn and the president of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Joseph Olin.

In the upcoming 2008 issue, we will present a brand new section of ACM CIE, "Analysis: New Media and New Technology," a section that focuses on the business side of computers in entertainment, looking at the applications and impact of various technologies and trends on the entertainment industry. Thank you for your continuing support!

Technorati Tags: RIA,ACM,ACM in Entertainment,Most recent publication

Styling Controls in Silverlight 2.0

2008-03-16T10:53:00.001-04:00

by Don Burnett

Styling your controls so they fit within the confines of the page is important to keeping your overall design's integrity. It's very easy to do this in WPF, and now it's just as easy to do this in Silverlight 2.0 with Blend 2.5.. Let's look at how we can manage all of this.

The easiest way is to create a "GLOBAL STYLE" for a user control.. Let's look at this really quickly..

First I'll create a Silverlight 2 project..

My project is a simple one, now I'll drag a button and a radio button control onto the design surface..

Now I'll open my app.xaml file, It will look something like this...

The purpose of this tutorial is not to do a complete style change, but to show you how and where to do it, so for this demo I am just going to change a few setter properties..

Here I have created a button style that I have named "MyButtonStyle" and set the font wrapping and fontsize in the button. I could have easily defined color animation, any number of things including a full template..

Now I save my project.. Then returning to our page.xaml file I select the button to which I am applying this global style to..

I select my button that I have made then go to the buttons properties and click under miscellaneous on the "style" property tick

Then from the pop-up style context menu that appears

I select MyButtonStyle which I have defined.. And I am done, I have defined a global property for this button user control and it immediately changes the values in my project. Of course you can define more than one style, set the style according to a data set that you have databound. This makes creating applications with user personalization settings very easy.

Anyway, that's how you can do a simple global style change and apply it to a custom control.

Technorati Tags: Silverlight 2.0,Global Style,Blend 2.5,User Controls

Microsoft's Worldwide Telescope

2008-03-15T17:21:00.001-04:00

by Don Burnett

Anthony Handley has some great content over at his blog, and from there I learned about something called the "worldwide telescope" being developed by Microsoft Research as a free download at http://worldwidetelescope.org sometime this summer. This stitches together a 3d view in an all around the earth view of stitched together pictures from the worlds best telescopes in a completely immersive environment.

If you can't wait you can check out the video of the "worldwide telescope" in a video preview at (Standard Def) and (high def) download. I highly recommend Anthony's blog UXConfidential, he is an excellent UX Designer/Developer as well..

PS Oh and yes, some of these videos are done in Flash, just in case anyone was wondering..

Technorati Tags: worldwide telescope,microsoft research,UxConfidential,Anthony Handley

Expression Encoder 2 Brings Cool Special Effects and Advertising to Silverlight Video

2008-03-15T14:45:00.001-04:00

By Don Burnett

Expression Encoder 2 offers some significant advantages over the first version. The new functionality of the "Overlay" feature is pretty spectacular.. You can import many different video formats, and some new ones for overlay that were not expected..

The exciting thing is you can now import .xaml files into your media which can include full screen animation overlays and more. So for instance you could take a logo you did in Expression Design and animated in Blend and add that into your video. You can tell Expression Encoder how long that it will be onscreen from the timeline and it can span over an entire project with multiple clips if you like as well.. Here's an example I did of the XAML version of the Designing for Dot Net logo, imported into Expression Encoder 2, note you can set placement, sizing and cropping of the overlay at will with the green design rectangle handles.

This means you can add a lot of really great special effects to your encoded videos.. You can also make an overlay do picture-in-picture video..

Here are two videos back-to-back from the encoder preview..

Anyway that's just some of the new features, you can easily attach leaders, trailers, and the post-production support for tweaking and editing is really wonderful..

XAML support gives you great abilities to do some very cool things with masking and alpha channel that haven't been available before.

Technorati Tags: Expression Media Encoder,Version 2,XAML,Video,WPF,Silverlight 2.0

A Look Back at Mix '08 (a Top 10 list)

2008-03-13T15:29:00.001-04:00

by Don Burnett

Well it's only been a little while since the doors to Mix 08 closed, but let's look back at some of the cool things that were announced at Mix..

Silverlight 2.0 beta 1 released - aimed at developers mostly includes .NET framework and DRM for Video, more custom controls built in, adaptive streaming support. Server distribution of Silverlight content, DRM for video, DeepZoom, Advertising models and tools to create ads quickly and easily. Controls (UI and Layout) and more. Nokia will be including Silverlight Mobile on their phones (note that Silverlight will *not* be restricted to run only on Windows Mobiles devices). This is very exciting for Silverlight's cross-platform future.
NBC Olympics Silverlight Experience - For the first time ever in history when you’ll be able to watch over 2000 hours of live coverage, or after the event replays. The cool new interface was demonstrated at the keynote. The experience is built totally in Silverlight. This should drive adoption of Silverlight, with millions of installs of Silverlight.
At the keynote the Hard Rock Cafe shown a new feature of their site that lets you peruse their memorabilia collection, using a new Silverlight Feature called Deep Zoom. Microsoft also released a new application for creating Deep Zoom collages. It doesn't seem to use HD photo support as first anticipated, but the Zoom/multi image feature really rocks and it's something not done by other web "plug-ins". There is a great example of the control out at vertigo.com.
Silverlight 1.0 has achieved great momentum, with 1.5 million installs a day..
WPF is going to see a service pack this summer with improved performance including new "Shader" FX capabilities.
Aston-Martin has a cool customization site for buying your own vehicle from them using Silverlight and later WPF at the dealership..
A Beta of Expression 2 was released. Each product has seen some major functionality upgrades, from Design's new Slicing, to Web's new PHP support and Layered .PSD import, to Blend supporting Silverlight, and Media's incredible cataloging features. Even Encoder saw a huge update with support for Overlays of video and XAML animations. It's more poised for work with live sources and creating track-able video ads for websites.
Expression Blend 2.5 for Silverlight 2.0
Internet Explorer 8, with Super Standards Mode, as a default. Also new features like activities and web slices all based on CSS standards and Acid 2 test passes.. The performance is way above IE 7 for rendering.. It's definitely something to look at. I am using the beta with no real gotchas or problems. If have an issue with a site I just re-open it with IE 7 emulation turned on and it works great..
aQuantive's Atlas Ad Manager- for digital publishers, delivering a new-to-industry automated ad network control panel to publishers to increase revenue from under-utilized impressions. This is expected to be the first in a series of innovations resulting from integrating the best-in-breed resources of Atlas and Accipiter. AdManager, delivers billions of ads monthly across all rich media types to hundreds of leading publishers around the world.

Technorati Tags: DeepZoom,Mix 08,Silverlight 2.0,Top 10,WPF,Aston Martin,Hard Rock

Why I like Slicing in Expression Design 2.0

2008-03-13T00:19:00.001-04:00

By Don Burnett

This is so cool it's some of the easiest slicing I have ever worked with, whether it's for web bitmap formats or XAML.. Select an element on the screen, select "Create Slice from Selection"..

Set your editing parameters for the slice..

You can even specify the layers that are getting sliced as part of the slice contents..

Slice Layers appear on the Layers menu for manipulation..

Many formats are supported including HD Photo format, PSD and PDF..

And that's it, simple easy to work with, cool and quick to use..

Technorati Tags: Expression Design 2.0,Expression Studio 2.0,Easy Image Slicing

Lurking in the Background it's ShadowExplorer, a Utility you'll think of as a better Time Machine

2008-03-12T13:35:00.001-04:00

by Don Burnett

Some people know that Vista comes with a feature called Volume Shadow Copy. Few people know what that is outside of server administrators. But nonetheless, Vista comes with the ability to load up and revert to older versions of files that you have saved on your hard drive. Accessing this feature has been a one file at a time kind of thing until now.. Here comes ShadowExplorer.

While this utility might not be as "glitzy" as Apple's OS X time machine feature, ShadowExplorer certainly is quite quick and easy to use to go back in time and revive old file versions that have been overwritten..

Technorati Tags: Time Machine,Vista,Shadow Explorer

You can download this goodie at GHACKS..

Deep Zoom Image Composer for Silverlight Releases to Preview

2008-03-11T21:41:00.001-04:00

by Don Burnett

Over at the Expression Blend blog, Microsoft released a tool for Silverlight 2.0 to preview release called the Deep Zoom Composer. The user guide has also been released.

So what does this do for you? Well if you are developing HD photo applications for Silverlight 2.0 that uses the Multi-Scale Image control, it lets you compose an image or a collection of images.

As you notice, it offers layered views, positioning of images with a great deal of control. It's very easy to work with and I seriously recommend that you check it out.

You can download it for free right now right here.. If you just want to see the cool things you can do with it, you might check out the Hard Rock Memorabilia Collection web site that was completely built with the multi-scale image control.

Technorati Tags: Deep Zoom Composer,Silverlight 2.0,Hard Rock,Memorabilia,Mix 08

Congratulations to Cynergy Systems! The Phizzpop Design Challenge Winner!

2008-03-11T20:56:00.001-04:00

by Don Burnett

PhizzPop Design Challenge Finale Winner

From Phizzpop.com:

"Microsoft is proud to announce that Cynergy Systems (www.cynergysystems.com) has taken the title at the Finale at South by Southwest Interactive Conference in Austin, Texas on Monday, March 10th. Presenting to a crowd of over 500, Cynergy presented 'Ben', a series of connected cross-platform applications that leveraged the power of Silverlight, Live Services, and VOIP. At one point, the team called Barack Obama from a Silverlight Facebook application using VOIP technology. Asking for some crowd participation, Cynergy had the whole room shout 'Hello from SXSW' to the Obama campaign's answering machine. Congratulations to Cynergy for the win! "

Congratulations to Cynergy Systems for coming up with this really rocking application. The original problem was quite a nebulous concept, but as many times before Cynergy navigated the waters and came up with a super solution, a modern example of social networking that gives us a great example of democracy in action.. SXSW sounds very over the top from all accounts, wish I could have been there. I am still working on healing from the auto accident.

However, if you missed out like I did, check out this VERY COOL website, with great content from the South by SouthWest (SxSW) conference.. It's done with Silverlight and will give you a great idea about the level of great content provided at the conference..

Technorati Tags: Cynergy Systems,Democracy and Social Networking,SXSW,Phizzpop Design Challenge Winner

Microsoft Bring Collaboration to Creative Business With Office Live Workspace

2008-03-09T06:20:00.002-04:00

by Don Burnett

As a smaller design firm sometimes you spend more time dealing with client business issue than you actually do the creative design side of things. Well Microsoft has a new web based service that can help you save time with clients and handle things like project tracking and collaboration with clients with the efficiency of a much larger agency.

Most web-based creative businesses have their own websites to track client projects. If you are a smaller company, working with larger sized businesses it's always a challenge because they expect up-to-the minute updates on projects their progress and status information about work in progress. While this is something I didn't hear them talking about at Mix, I believe though it's something that smaller firms wrestle with every day.

Now there is a great solution for this, it's called Microsoft Office Live Workspace. Let's look at this and how it can organize your company and creative business.

Here is the Office Live workspace screen. Microsoft also offers an add-in for Office 2007 that lets you directly open workspace files from the FILE menu in your Microsoft Office applications. Even though this is very useable today, it would be nice to see this functionality included in Expression Studio, so you could upload files for client approval and collaboration right away...

It's also important to be able to control who gets access to your documents.. So you can set up who can edit and who can view project files.. You can also leave comments to viewers and editors on files in the workspace themselves, which is great for art approvals.

Now if you have ever worked on a project you know that version control is essential to keeping documents up-to-date and assets as well. Version control is not forgotten.. It's automatic in Office Live Workspace

Online file access for most Office file formats is also possible. It supports file formats such as PDF and Microsoft XPS formats. Even during File editing you have access to a lot of files. Right now XAML file types, and Expression Studio files have to be saved and opened in Expression Studio products directly, but can be directly from the workspace.. To support Expression Studio file formats all that will be required in the future is someone writing a preview module, much like people do for outlook file previewers today.

To-do list files directly integrate with Outlook's to-do function as well..

And that's the tour. If you don't have this connectivity with your customers through a company intranet/extranet or would just like a service that's accessible by clients anywhere, this is a great way to organize and get productive with your creative business..

Microsoft also offers Office Live's small business services that are companions to Office Live Workspaces offers the following services as well.

Create an online presence, including free Web hosting, easy-to-use site design tools, site traffic reports, and more (please note this while great for small business may not handle advanced web site needs, but is great for the typical small business).
Custom Domain and email.A custom domain and up to 100 business e-mail accounts—free for the first year .
Contact Manager- Manage sales opportunities, contact information, and track every interaction with customers.
Document Mangers- Store and share company documents in one central place for easy access and version control.
Collaborate and share information with customers, partners, or employees with password-protected online workspaces.
Project Planning- Plan projects, assign tasks, and monitor your progress.

Best of all it's FREE.. You can sign up right now.. Positives on this product for me the direct Office program integration (including all the new file formats) I don't have to leave Microsoft Office to post something and I use Microsoft Office products so I don't worry about incompatibilities, also we may see compatibility with Expression Studio format files in the future w. Microsoft is really pushing this for college campuses and students as well. I know there are other products out there, like GoogleDocs, and others but honestly I prefer to stay with the company that makes the Office products I use in the first place in this case. Also if they end up supporting Expression Studio file viewers my art approvals can go much faster.

Technorati Tags: Office Live Workspaces,Creative Business

Summer Heralds Improvements to WPF (YEAH FINALLY!)

2008-03-08T09:07:00.001-05:00

By Don Burnett

New Setup.exe Brings Improved .NET Setup for Applications

Later this year, Microsoft is going to ship a new setup framework for .NET that makes it easier to build optimized setup programs for windows applications. This setup framework can be integrated with existing installation products (like InstallShield) and others. Offering a better setup user experience., and enables a smaller and faster end-user setup experience of the .NET Framework.

Windows Forms and WPF client applications will be able to use this new setup to cleanly “bootstrap” getting the .NET Framework installed onto machines. Improvements will also be made to "cold start" times for applications

WPF Performance Improvements

Later this year, Microsoft is planning to release an update to WPF that includes a number of performance optimizations that improve its text, graphics, media and databinding support. These include:

- Acclerated Graphics Support. Moving the DropShadow and Blur bitmap effects, to be hardware accelerated (making them many times faster). The APIs for these effects will stay the same, no recompile necessary.

- Faster text rendering, especially when used in Visual and DrawingBrush. The APIs for these will also stay the same. No recoding or recompiling.

- Media and video performance will be much faster again no coding changes.

- A new WriteableBitmap API will be introduced, that enables real-time bitmap updates from a software surface, and a new effects API.

- Microsoft will introduce new data scalability improvements for data editing. These include data virtualization support and container recycling, making it easier to build rich visualization controls.

WPF Control Improvements

With this update, Microsoft is planning to release a number of new controls for WPF. Included in the list we are working on are DataGrid, Ribbon, and Calendar/DatePicker controls. Bringing more parity with Silverlight 2.0 and requested improvements for speed to existing controls.

VS 2008 WPF Designer Improvements

Microsoft is planning a service release of VS 2008 that includes a number of feature additions to its WPF designer support. These include event tab support within the property grid for control events, toolbox support within source mode, and a variety of other common asks and improvements.

The improvements should make it easier to build great wpf apps. In most cases these will not require any code changes.

Technorati Tags: WPF,.NET 3.5,Service Pack,Summer,No Code Changes for Optimization

Mix Sessions 08

2008-03-07T16:27:00.004-05:00

by Don Burnett

Well, as some of you might know I was planning to go to Mix 08. My knee had other plans though. About three weeks ago I was involved in an auto accident. In the accident my knee was pretty tore up and damaged by the impact. I ended up being lucky to be here, with the car totaled. Well, my knee swelled up like a huge grape fruit and I couldn't walk on it. So instead of going to Mix I ended up in the E.R. and later having a procedure done to drain my knee of the blood and fluid that was collecting in there with no place to go..

Today (Friday) is the first day I have been out.. I have been attempting to catch up, so I watched the first two days of Mix sessions, and maybe it's just me but I haven't been as impressed with the content as I was the year before. Not to say it's not great content and Microsoft has a lot of impressive partnerships and "wins" to show off this year. There are a few things I have been hoping for and haven't seen as of yet..

If you want to see the sessions from the past few days check out the VisitMix.com blog. They are available for viewing over Media Player, your iPod, or Zune. So far there have been only about five or six sessions (out of over 20 something) that have interest me or told me something I didn't already know. So did I miss out by not making it to Mix? I am not really sure I did. Sure the parties and the people are fun, but if I had to compare the content to last year or even the Adobe Max conference I am not really sure that the topics really interested me on a personal or professional level overall.

Quite a few of the subjects have already been covered elsewhere in a more thorough way other places.

So did I miss out? I won't be at SxSW.com which looks like a more interesting show for designers. Considering the new technologies like Silverlight 2.0 (which seems like it's in the Phantom Zone still trying to get out and be a real product not in beta) and Silverlight Mobile. There should have been a few "silver bullet/red phone" moments, but those opportunities seem to pass by with not much happening. Mix 07 might have set my yearly expectations a little too high.

Some of my favorite sessions that I have viewed at Visitmix.com (editorial comment: yeah they could be better but they are great!)

Understanding Microsoft Partner Programs, for Designers, Developers and Agencies (BCT03)Encoding Video

for Microsoft Silverlight Delivery Scenarioes (BCT07)

Welcome to Internet Explorer 8.0 (BCT08)

Advanced SEO for Web Developers (BT03) (where's the Silverlight Analytics)

Building RIAs Using Microsoft Silverlight PT 1 (CT01)

Building RIAs Using Microsoft Silverlight PT 2 (CT02)

Adding Instant Messaging to any site (T03)

RESTful data services with the ADO.NET Data Services Framework (T07)

Developing Data Driven Web Applications using ASP.NET Dynamic Data (T24)

Great Presentation, but not what I was expecting..

Being a "Recovering Flash Developer/Designer" (to quote the presenter) I would say that while the "From Flash to Silverlight: A Rosetta Stone" was a good presentation on "beginning Silverlight", it did not capture what you need to know if you are a Flash designer/developer who is trying to translate their skills from Flash over to Silverlight.. Concepts in Flash itself that developers work with daily wasn't paralleled in the presentation and I really was disappointed because the presenter did a really great job on the content he had, it just didn't address what I was expecting to see.

I was really hoping for a more "conceptual" Rosetta Stone. One that talked about clips and symbols, and movies and how differently this works than multiple timelines and the bubbled event model in Silverlight. I expected some talk about browser/DOM integration and a Silverlight app can have multiple story boards and timelines based on events and the differences in Timelines conceptually and see both products on the screen and see the author doing work in both and showing where it all applies.

You could also tell the guy was more of a developer and ActionScript guy, than a designer because he immediately went into Visual Studio to do Silverlight, this I think is a big no-no if you are trying to convince a Flash guy on Silverlight's greatness, I think I could see from the video the designers in the audience's eyes glassing over at that very moment. Not how I would have started off to talk to people about transitioning to Silverlight from Flash. Flash is a GUI product and he should have been in Blend immediately. Visual Studio is a developers tool and a good turn off to a designer even with Cider..

Overall Impressions from Content Presentation at Mix 08

This Mix more looks like it was aimed at developers and the Microsoft developer community than it does the Designer community, and that's okay because we need everyone right? I believe after seeing this Mix and what Microsoft decided was "important" to talk about, that there is room for another Microsoft "Designer" event (maybe not even by hosted or sponsored by Microsoft) during the year..

Sure there were some great things here, the Astin-Martin, Hard Rock demos, the Olympics, Move Networks partnering with Microsoft, and of course the Atlas Ad Manager with Silverlight integration. It looks like the opportunity to capture some of the design folks that are heavily invested in other technologies were missed by mostly developer presentations.

Having said that if you are a developer it's a wonderful year for Mix. Managed code is finally cross platform with full data/entity connectivity from within Silverlight. There were great examples of how to get into all of those areas and there is a lot of depth to cover there.. This will bring the whole developer application world of Windows developers and web developers closer together with similar capabilities and Silverlight RIAs will start looking like their big-brother Windows applications. Certainly the UI capabilities, network services and data bound capabilities are way way better this year.

Questions I had (because I didn't get to attend!)

I expected to see at least something on Silveright analytics and there wasn’t anything about measurement or diagnostics.. Anyone see specific functionality for this while at Mix? Metrics and reporting are essential to Silverlight's success in the web community and it's a blocker to better adoption over other RIA technologies..

How much did you hear about the WPF service pack that is supposed to come out this summer??..

Was there a CTP of this with the improved WPF controls and improved performance it's suppose to offer? I assume it includes equivalents of the Silverlight Datagrid and Calendaring controls?

Is there and evaluation/ SDK/CTP out there available for the Atlas Ad Manager?

Is there more details on the "Expression Studio Professionals Program"?? (Please don't put us on a subscription model, unless you are really going to make QUARTERLY improvements and commit to them). I really disliked the Macromedia model for all of this, think DIFFERENT on this one please Microsoft..

Favorite Things: Expression Studio 2 Beta Features

2008-03-05T15:37:00.001-05:00

by Don Burnett

Wow what a keynote at Mix08, Silverlight 2.0, Silverlight Mobile (on non Windows Mobile platforms), IE 8, not to mention the cool memorabilia collection from Hard Rock, now immortalized as a Silverlight application using HD photo technology..

Here are some highlights of my favorite features in the new Expression Studio 2 in pictures.. which you can DOWNLOAD NOW

Expression Web 2.0

The return of Hyperlinks (from Front Page)

PHP Support (YEAH FINALLY)

Layered PSD Import (hello easy buttons and slices)

Silverlight 1.0 Import (it's smart and interrogates your JavaScript)

Broad Media format support

Expression Blend 2.5 preview (download link)

Expression Media Encoder 2

Technorati tags: Expression Studio 2, Favorite Things, Expression Studio 2 in Pictures

Nokia + Microsoft= Silverlight for Mobile Devices

2008-03-05T11:50:00.001-05:00

Technorati tags: Silverlight Mobile Plugin, Nokia S60, Microsoft demonstrate platform openness, Microsoft turns corner

by Don Burnett

The CAT is out of the Bag on Silverlight Mobile

Well as with most all Mix announcements that "cat is out of the bag" quite early. Yesterday this long announcement appeared on Nokia's Website.. It suprised me a bit because I expected to see this on Windows Mobile devices (those with a portable IE implementation first).. Though I am very happy to see this if I am reading this correctly this means in the Mobile space that Silverlight will be a full "applications platform" across many devices. As we already know "Moonlight" the Linux implementation of Silverlight can run Silverlight stand-alone outside of a web browser (or at least could with test versions). Nokia's Silverlight support will probably include support for Nokia Internet Tablets. Aren't those based on Linux? (wink)! Wow it's a new day and an open world.

I think this announcement underscores a huge change of thinking towards openness from Microsoft and signals that Silverlight will indeed be a very open multi-vendor supported product. This is very very exciting to hear... That along with IE 8 defaulting to "super-standards" mode, really underscores Microsoft's willingness to be open and compete on a level playing field with the many other vendors our there..

This represents a huge win for consumers choice, and a huge turning the corner for Microsoft. You can't not love the fact that they are working closely with others and forging very unexpected alliances..

-Don

PS Here's the announcement below..

Nokia to bring Microsoft Silverlight powered experiences to millions of mobile users
March 04, 2008

Extends choice for developers on the world's leading mobile platforms

Espoo, Finland - Nokia today announced plans to make Microsoft Silverlight available for S60 on Symbian OS, the world's leading smartphone software(1), as well as for Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets. Adding support for Silverlight will extend opportunities for developers to create rich, interactive applications that run on multiple platforms in a consistent and reliable way.

"Today's consumers are very clear in what they want: easy access to tightly integrated services and data on any device," said Lee Williams, Senior Vice President in Nokia's Devices software organization. "Nokia's software strategy is based on cross-platform development environments, enabling the creation of rich applications across the Nokia device range. Nokia aims to support market leading and content rich internet application environments and to embrace and encourage open innovation. By working with Microsoft, we are creating terrific opportunities and additional choices for the development community, S60 licensees and the industry as a whole."

Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering next-generation media experiences and rich interactive applications. Silverlight is already powering thousands of applications around the world and organizations including Entertainment Tonight, the NBA and NBC Universal to deliver superior Web-based experiences to their customers. The arrangement with Nokia will substantially extend the reach of Silverlight by making the platform available for hundreds of millions of devices, including S60 on Symbian smartphones from a range of manufacturers, as well as Nokia Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets.

Microsoft will demonstrate Silverlight on S60 during the opening keyote at Microsoft's MIX08 conference on March 5 in Las Vegas. Silverlight is intended to be available to S60 developers later this year with initial service delivery anticipated shortly thereafter for all S60 licensees. This will allow S60 application developers to use an even wider range of development environments for S60 on Symbian OS than today. Today S60 developers can use: C++ (using native Symbian OS APIs and Open C providing subset of standard POSIX libraries), S60 Web Run-time (supporting standards-based web technologies such as Ajax, JavaScript, CSS and HTML), the Java(TM) language, Flash Lite from Adobe, and Python.

Microsoft Silverlight availability for Nokia Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets will be confirmed later.

(1) S60 has already shipped on more smartphones than any other platform, enabling users to access and enjoy the Internet and Internet services. S60 covers the broadest product portfolio, with devices for a variety of segments and needs from different audiences. S60 is the clear leader in converged device software with over 53% market share globally in Q4 2007 according to the latest Canalys report (January 2008).

About S60

S60 software built on Symbian OS is the world's leading smartphone software, and is licensed by some of the industry's foremost mobile device manufacturers. More than 150 million S60 devices had been shipped by all licensees by January 2008. The flexibility of the S60 software allows for various hardware designs and software configurations, as evidenced by the multitude of S60 devices already available on the market. Through its award-winning user interface, extensive support for new mobile services and the innovation potential for partner solutions, the S60 provides an open and scalable business opportunity for mobile operators and 3rd party developers. For further information and news about the S60 and the S60 community, please visit www.s60.com.

About Nokia

Nokia is the world leader in mobility, driving the transformation and growth of the converging Internet and communications industries. Nokia makes a wide range of mobile devices and provides people with experiences in music, navigation, video, television, imaging, games and business mobility through these devices. Nokia also provides equipment, solutions and services for communications networks. "

Contacting me during Mix 08

2008-03-02T20:13:00.001-05:00

By Don Burnett

If you are an individual and want to meet me, or you are someone looking to get an announcement up on this blog, or on Phizzpop.com or the Mercury site..

Here's the best way to reach me:

email me at don@donburnett.com, I have direct email on my phone and it's the best way to contact me quickly..

You can also attempt to IM me..

don@donburnett.com

Scott Shows off Expression Blend 2.5 and Silverlight 2.0

2008-03-01T02:46:00.001-05:00

by Don Burnett

Scott is at it again, man this guy is amazing (he creates such cool tutorials) I think the word is "prolific" that I keep hearing when people describe him. He's got the scoop on Blend 2.5 and not only that he's got a great HOW-TO article on using it to create your own personalized Instant Messaging client.. It includes codes and classes in visual studio for the messaging and how to setup data binding with them in Blend itself.. Go read it for yourself... Note this is the Blend "2.5" preview not the Blend 2.0 release which apparently will only support Silverlight 1.0 release and currently released products..

Some pictures from his article:

Blend with the IM Client UI

Silverlight 2.0 controls for drag and drop

I can't wait to play with the release of this. I know I am going to love it..

Technorati tags: Silverlight 2.0, Expression Blend 2.5, new content controls, multimedia

Next Week I'll be Mixing it up!

2008-02-28T00:46:00.002-05:00

by Don Burnett

Well Mix 08 is upon us... There are a number of things that I expect to be announced that Microsoft employees have already blogged about and let the cat out of the bag about so to speak... I figured it would be fun to collapse all of those announcements here (those that are public right now anyway), so for those not going because it's sold out, and for those that are going to know what the cool things we already know about that we can examine more in-depth.

Internet Explorer 8

Over at Josh Allen's Mix Blog, we learn that Dean Hachamovitch will be keynoting the event and introducing us to Internet Explorer 8.0. Sounds like from reading the IE blog also this one has a super-standards rendering mode that kicks!

Expression Studio

A new version which supports all current released products. You don't have to be a mind reader on this one, because Microsoft has been sending out Expression Blend 2 preview releases for sometime now. After reading Scott Guthrie's blog, I am sure we can expect one to support Silverlight 2.0 as well. If there is a new version expect an "IMMEDIATE" review from me of it all.

PHP Support

Besides IIS 7 support FASTCGI, the web server now supports PHP and it looks like corporately Microsoft is going to support PHP corporately in addition to asp.net as an alternative development environment. It's nice to see Microsoft embracing open standards like PHP officially now, for both authoring and delivery.

Silverlight 2

The big announcements are already at Scott Guthrie's blog blog, but it sounds like we can expect a fully featured 2.0 this time (not the under developed 1.1), with things like data binding and an SDK full of controls including things like a datagrid. It's kind of exciting to see this but it sounds maybe more feature filled that WPF, so there may be something WPF has to actually catch up with some of the features that are present with Silverlight. Microsoft is a big support of the 3rd party controls market for Visual Studio, so I expect they left a few out on WPF expecting the third parties to fill that gap. It's nice to see they might not be taking that approach with Silverlight.

In case you haven't seen what any of this stuff looks like the following images have been posted to other folks blogs:

From Shawn Burke's MSDN Blog (Visual Studio 2008, support Silverlight):

And the Silverlight 2.0 Controls Toolbox from the Danny Douglass Blog (note all the cool new content controls):

The real reason to come to Mix 08: Community

These are all cool reasons to come to Vegas this year, but it's not the only reason. In the past year we have had a lot of exciting things happen. We have seen the entire Mix community grow from infancy to a serious marketplace. It's really exciting to see where this has came in a year.. I have made many new friends along the way.. I will be blogging and hopefully giving you a "ground level" view of what's going on this year at the conference and hopefully some interviews with folks making a difference in the community.. Each year I have been so far has given me insight, access to a lot of new ideas and great new technology that brings folks together.

If anyone wants to get with me, during Mix I love meeting people for coffee, food, oxygen (SMILE)... you can email me don@donburnett.com and I'll send you my cellular phone # so you can TEXT me to get in touch with me during the conference. I love meeting folks, networking and having fun..

Technorati tags: Mix 08, Internet Explorer 8, Expression Studio, PHP Support, Silverlight 2

Silverlight 2.0 Set to Arrive Soon (Can't wait for Mix 08)

2008-02-23T05:38:00.001-05:00

by Don Burnett

Over at Scott Gutherie's Blog, he has released a series of first articles (and code samples) on Silverlight 2.0.. Since this information is released publicly I thought it would be nice to talk a little bit about it here and the important things for our community to know about it.

What is Silverlight 2.0??

Quoting Scott on his blog "Silverlight 2 includes a cross-platform, cross-browser version of the .NET Framework, and enables a rich .NET development platform that runs in the browser. Developers can write Silverlight applications using any .NET language (including VB, C#, JavaScript, IronPython and IronRuby). We will ship Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Studio tool support that enables great developer / designer workflow and integration when building Silverlight solutions."

What features have been added that improve on Silverlight 1.0's functionality?

Again quoting Scott's Blog:

WPF UI Framework: Silverlight 2 includes a rich WPF-based UI framework that makes building rich Web applications much easier. In includes a powerful graphics and animation engine, as well as rich support for higher-level UI capabilities like controls, layout management, data-binding, styles, and template skinning. The WPF UI Framework in Silverlight is a compatible subset of the WPF UI Framework features in the full .NET Framework, and enables developers to re-use skills, controls, code and content to build both rich cross browser web applications, as well as rich desktop Windows applications.

Rich Controls: Silverlight 2 includes a rich set of built-in controls that developers and designers can use to quickly build applications. This upcoming Beta1 release includes core form controls (TextBox, CheckBox, RadioButton, etc), built-in layout management panels (StackPanel, Grid, Panel, etc), common functionality controls (Slider, ScrollViewer, Calendar, DatePicker, etc), and data manipulation controls (DataGrid, ListBox, etc). The built-in controls support a rich control templating model, which enables developers and designers to collaborate together to build highly polished solutions.

Rich Networking Support: Silverlight 2 includes rich networking support. It includes out of the box support for calling REST, WS*/SOAP, POX, RSS, and standard HTTP services. It supports cross domain network access (enabling Silverlight clients to directly access resources and data from resources on the web). Beta1 also includes built-in sockets networking support.

Rich Base Class Library: Silverlight 2 includes a rich .NET base class library of functionality (collections, IO, generics, threading, globalization, XML, local storage, etc). It includes rich APIs that enable HTML DOM/JavaScript integration with .NET code. It also includes LINQ and LINQ to XML library support (enabling easy transformation and querying of data), as well as local data caching and storage support. The .NET APIs in Silverlight are a compatible subset of the full .NET Framework.

Wow he said it, databound controls, i.e., DataGrids, Listbox, etc.. This will change the face of Silverlight applications almost immediately. Networking support including all major web service protocols, cross-domain access and "socket" support.. This rocks. Especially considering this is all CROSS-Platform.. He also mentions things like threading, generics, collections, storage and LINQ support..

If you have never heard of LINQ it stands for Language INtegrated Query and lets you code things you'd normally have to use stored procedures for and gives you very secure ways to access data from XML and other sources..

He also goes further to do a great six part tutorial on how to create a sample "Digg" application in Silverlight, then in parallel with a platform-dependent version using WPF to show the parallels of creating an application..

I would say if you are familiar with Silverlight 1.0 the important reads are

Part2: Using Layout Management

Part 3: Using Networking to Retrieve Data and Populate a DataGrid

Part 6: Using User Controls to Implement Master/Detail Scenarios

Part 7: Using Control Templates to Customize a Controls Look and Feel

All of these are very NEW topics to Silverlight Designers and Developers and Scott walks through them very thoroughly and it's a very easy read. The functionality added with Silverlight 2.0 really underscores the commitment made to the Silverlight platform itself. With the new controls, databinding and cross-platform functionality. It's a new day for Silverlight where real Rich Interactive Applications are possible from inside a web browser with services that the built-in framework provides the plug-in that haven't been available to web applications developers before. Web applications will now have most of the power of desktop applications. Also, due to the cross-platform nature of Silverlight 2.0, your customers will not worry about what OS you are running..

Technorati tags: Silverlight 2.0, databinding, webservices, styling, user controls, control templating, layout management

DreamSpark gives away free software for College Students

2008-02-19T23:29:00.003-05:00

by Don Burnett

As you know I have been writing about Microsoft's Live@EDU initiatives, well they announced a new one today in conjunction with Channel 8 called DreamSpark..

What is DreamSpark?

DreamSpark is simple, it's all about giving students Microsoft professional-level developer and design tools at no charge so you can chase your dreams and create the next big breakthrough in technology - or just get a head start on your career. If you make money on these however you will be asked to purchase professional licensing for the products..

Who can get this right now?

Microsoft is kicking this off in 11 countries/regions, giving DreamSpark to millions of students in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, China, Germany, France, Finland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Belgium. If you are not residing in one of the countries listed keep checking back, they will be adding more countries throughout the year.

Does that mean that I might not get in?

Possibly, if you are not residing in one of the countries listed, not attending an accredited university or not a member of one of the student organizations that we're connected with. But keep checking back, as they are working on adding more ways to verify your student status all the time.

What do you have to do to get this software? Not much really, just select a product and follow the steps below.

Sign In with your Windows Live ID. If you don't have one, go get one here. Pretty basic stuff.
Get verified as a student. The system is linked to schools and organizations around the world that can confirm student status. Simply choose your country and school, enter your info and hit submit.
Download your products. Now remember these are professional tools. This means they are pretty big files so make sure you have the bandwidth and space to bring them to your machine. Microsoft supports the latest versions of both Internet Explorer and Firefox for your download.

What can you get? These and MORE..

Technorati tags: Visual Studio 2008 Professional, DreamSpark, Educational Program, XNA Game Studio, Expression Studio, Windows Server, FREE

What I love about Expression Studio (yes I am an Expression GEEK)

2008-02-16T11:44:00.001-05:00

By Don Burnett

Someone asked me the other day why I am so jazzed about Expression Studio and why my own focus has went away from using products like Adobe's Creative Suite.. Well, it's not that I don't like Adobe products, but I think the collaboration/integration effect of Expression Studio's products has won me over for UI development and here's why..

Expression Design

Everyone in the world remembers Fractal Design Painter which became Creature House’s Expression 3 late in the game. It was the first program that was vector based to do everything people wanted with bitmaps and in my humble opinion it competed very well with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator for people doing vector based design. Expression Design still does that extremely well today. Somewhere along the path to Expression Design 1.0 it seemed to lose its identity because of the interface makeover to be in-line with other Expression products, but when I ask people out in the field, if they remember Fractal Design Painter, all of the sudden customer acceptance goes up 1000 % with designers. I think Microsoft should make that lineage of the product more “known” to customers. Because at first glance, customers don’t think much of the product. When they find out it goes back to Painter and all the cool texturing and natural drawing things that it can do, then folks get really excited very fast. Those I have taken that point with really embrace and like the product and do things with it. The old product had a really “steadfast” community around it. It would be nice to get some of these folks back talking about it.

Check out this review (it’s glowing) http://www.unleash.com/kurt/expression3/index.asp ... The highlight of that review is the sentence “In a nutshell, Expression 3, like its predecessors, is a natural media vector-based drawing tool. Unlike most paint programs that use bitmap images, Expression uses vector graphics to create effects that seem impossible using programs like Adobe Illustrator or Macromedia Freehand.” I believe that is very true even today with Expression Design. I have high hopes that Microsoft will be promoting that fact in marketing..

Expression Media

Yet another product bought into the fold. Formerly I-View Media Pro.. One of my first jobs was with a company called Media Station. We did Disney’s Animated Storybook series for Windows and Mac (Lion King, Pocahontas, Winnie the Pooh), and others for Universal, Mattel and others. I worked for both the art and engineering departments and one of my duties was asset cataloging, version control, and making sure the right graphics and animation made it onto the CDs… I so wanted a program back then like I-View Media Pro, because back then we did this with terabyte hard drives and the old version of MS-Access. There was no XML or programs that would do this. I believe this is a really great program, and whether you are a professional developer, a pro photographer, or just someone who has a collection of media, this program is very “right sized”. Mac folks love this because they have been already familiar with and using I-View for years.. It fills in between iPhoto and upper range products like Light Room and Aperture. But not just on the Mac, there is nothing else like this on Windows..

Expression Web

I have been a Macromedia Dreamweaver user for years, since 1.0. I got tired of paying for updates (or having my company do it) which really didn’t add extra features and just re-scrambled the interface into something that didn’t work better than the previous version and fixed bugs. My development experience has been that I gravitated towards the benefits of ASP.NET and Dreamweaver only partially supports ASP.NET functionality (not fully 2.0 or later compliant). Plus there was a lot of very “legacy” stuff in Dreamweaver that I had to get around to support the latest standards based web functionality.

Expression Web is a great product, mainly because it’s standards based and supports today’s standard web pages and the rendering is beautiful on IE and supports Firefox and Safari wonderfully. The only thing I kind of miss is the user driven EXTENSIONS architecture that Dreamweaver, but it seems like that might be changing with 2.0 and above.. Having a completely standards based program means extensions aren’t as necessary anyway. I think this product really lives up to its advertising.. I reworked my portfolio site completely using it. I have had people compliment me on it. It’s a dynamic site with full JavaScript and XML support. If I add a new project to my portfolio, all I have to do is make a new entry to an XML configuration file and insert the metadata in for the project description and point at the paths for the screenshots. Expression Web made that all easy, and the CSS functionality is great..

Expression Blend

The product team doing this powerhouse really pays attention to what people are doing with it and I love it. The interface makes things incredibly easy and the product just rocks. I would love to see Microsoft market the “extensibility factor” and adding custom controls with this and do some partner marketing with folks like Identity Mine who are doing custom control add-on's for Blend. Visual Studio built a huge “custom controls” vendor market around its product. This is very possible with Blend and something I’d like to see more happening with this. It’s looks like we are at the beginnings of this, I'd like to see more from the Visual Studio 3rd party control vendors.

Expression Encoder

Another great tool, it does just what we need. I don’t want it see it change.. I would love to see more people do live stuff with it, and I am looking forward to seeing case studies about how it was used with MSNBC for the Olympic games..

Expression Studio is no longer a new product, and I am seeing people get really excited about it and doing some really cool things with it. A lot of the situation is just getting people using it and liking it, I believe adoption is spreading significantly. I think it’s a powerhouse set of products that in many ways do things better than Adobe’s CS3 and have many specific features that Adobe doesn’t and it can really enhance designer and developer workflow.

That's my take on things...

Technorati tags: Collaboration, Integration, Adobe, Microsoft, Expression Studio

Microsoft is "LIVE" in Higher Education..

2008-02-14T08:25:00.001-05:00

By Don Burnett

In case you haven't noticed it in all the Microsoft Yahoo news online, Microsoft's Live services has been making some serious in-roads into education.. They now have a website that brings this together.. it's called My Live@EDU. Besides being a great example of a website UI done completely in Silverlight, the site details a plethora of services Microsoft offers both individuals and schools in higher education.

Without paraphrasing the site, Microsoft is offering students, staff, and faculty things like

1 Gigabyte of online storage for free (that's like over 1000 free files of online storage), using web accessed SkyDrive that works on Mac, Linux, and Windows.
Office Live online collaboration, for both faculty, staff, and student projects requiring group collaboration (again completely cross platform). I can't say how exciting this really is because you can also preview just about any document online in the browser, including Word, Excel, etc. and share it with others and collaborate right there online.
5 gigabyte Hotmail accounts (including university domain branding), with special functionality for Staffing, students, and even Alumni.
Free PC to PC calling services with Windows Live Messenger
Mobile access to Live Services on your cellular phone.
Live Spaces (create your own home page and blog)
Live Photo Gallery for photos and video storage import and catalog (along with some cool photo manipulation including creating panoramic shots).
Live Writer for writing blog entries

Is anybody really using these? Wow they are! Even close to home!

Well check this out, there are colleges and universities out there already using these services campus-wide and Microsoft has profiled some of these great institutions on the site, folks like Ball State, and Indiana University.. Wow this is pretty cool, check it out..

Away at College and Need Extra Cash? Microsoft is putting money back in students pockets with contests and affiliate deals and Student Film Contest..

Beyond this Microsoft is offering a couple of really cool contests to promote these new capabilities. One of these is the Microsoft Mashup contest.. Create a great web based mashup application and you could win CASH or an XBOX, both things people want on campus. I have never heard of a poor college student turning down MONEY, or a great game console like the XBOX 360. All the tools required are a free download including web hosting..

Microsoft's Online Campus Film Festival

Not a web developer guy? More into performance arts? Microsoft is offering a very cool contest for the budding film student in all of us, put your own short film online and win up to $12,500.. Now, that's a bit more than a semester of lunch and dinner money at the student center..

Now if all of that doesn't really get you excited, you should check the deal through on Microsoft Office that they have for students through April 30th, get Office Ultimate (yes that's every single Office Application out there (not just the home and teacher edition) for just $59.95. That's like over 90% off the purchase price. Also if you sign up for their affiliate program and you sell your friends on buying Office at that deal you can make money back off of it yourself. Now that's some dough at the end of semester when money is tight.

Say it with a SMILE! and put some dough back in other needy pockets!

Microsoft also is promoting "Operation Smile" a charity program that donates money for every picture with a smile you send them. Microsoft has received over 613,000 smiling photos to date.. go to the page and put your smiling picture up and help someone out today..

Windows Live Smile Page and if you like to use instant messaging, then

IM it and support your charity with Windows Live Messenger.. Each instant message is a donation to a charity that you choose..

TOO BAD SO SAD! They'll never do it on My Campus..

So you say to yourself this all cool but my school won't go for it? Never say never, Start your own campaign at the LIVE@EDU site today.. Get you and your friends to send email to your IT Administrator and start a campaign to get this, that will convince them that you want this all available on campus. Including on your cellular phone.

Technorati tags: Windows Live, On Campus

Boy, for some Mix '08 is going to be a real "TRIP"

2008-02-12T22:11:00.001-05:00

by Don Burnett

Well in the spirit of the movie "RV", the Microsoft folks are going to be making Mix 08 the start of a real "trip"..

Picture this, Microsoft employees out on a road trip in an RV?? Uhtoh!! Well I bet they are going to be off showing off some cool things. Too bad it seems to be isolated to areas near the west coast, but if you happen to be at one of their stops (Iike Mix 08) you can see the bus and experience the entourage..

The Cast of Characters:

Check out their site, you'll wanna keep an eye on these characters.. Twittering is probably the best.. (And yes! They are twits and you can tweet with them at http://twitter.com/codetrip)

http://thecodetrip.com

Or if you are one of the millions of facebook denizens..

Technorati tags: Mix 08, CodeTrip, Twitter, Facebook

Another Big Win for Microsoft , Caligari is now part of Microsoft

2008-02-07T19:23:00.001-05:00

by Don Burnett

Well I can't say that this news hasn't got me excited ever since I found out. Microsoft has purchased Caligari, makers of TrueSpace 3D modeling software. Why is this so exciting for me? The first real time 3D modeler I ever touched was Caligari 3D on the Amiga platform years ago (1985-86). At the time it was just a real-time 3D wireframe modeler, but I could see the advantages of creating 3D models in a real 3d environment, not a tri-view.. Now we have full real time and rendered output and a super modeling environment all in real time 3D.

TrueSpace (the current product) has grown an industry around it. I have had the pleasure of meeting Roman Ormandy, in the past, and know what a dynamic developer he is. He is a man of great vision for products now in the 3D space. TrueSpace is used in industries ranging from broadcast animation to product design.

TrueSpace and their great 3d Technology will become a product in the Virtual Earth stable of Windows Live. This also should mean some great advances for Web 3D. I could see it integrating well with WPF 3D and Expression Blend as well.

Congratulations to Roman and company, this is also another great win for Microsoft and brings an incredible infusion of talent to Windows Live and the Virtual Earth Community.

Besides Virtual Earth I (for one) would like to see TrueSpace become Microsoft Expression 3D.. Who knows, love to see that announced at Mix 08 (no I haven't heard anything officially). It does fit in well with WPF 3D though.. We can only hope

Technorati tags: Caligari, TrueSpace, Microsoft, wholely owned subsidiary

Panning for Gold (or maybe Silver) on CodePlex

2008-02-06T03:58:00.001-05:00

By Don Burnett

CodePlex is a great place to find great tools and open source if you are looking for components and nifty cool tools and programming projects to inspire you and move your own projects forward. I took sometime tonight to look at some of the latest projects that are in the works and found some gems that you might not actually realize was out there..

Trolling Codeplex

While panning for gold (or maybe just some Silverlight) I found a great project that brings EXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) protocol to WPF Windows applications. It's a whole WPF client to support this called BinaryDialog (aka BI Log IM). Besides being originally in French but easily translated using Babelfish. Keep a watch on this project as it should bring an open source messaging capability to your WPF applications.

Another gem was ZipStudio 2008. Yeah it's a utility/Visual Studio Add-in but it makes quick work of zipping up entire projects, especially if you have to make a copy of the project to a remote worker or customer for review directly in Visual Studio.

Sifting through the silt I also found the start of IronLogo, a currently very simple implementation of the LOGO language that uses IronRuby and runs from the DLR. This will be great for Silverlight in education as it's still a very popular first language for kids..

GemBlaster a very familiar looking game, which I still have a lot of fun with. It's done in Silverlight 1.1 by Keith J Rome and the source code is also present at codeplex so you can take a peek at how the game was created.

I know we all know how to play this game, but this version sure is a lot of fun and it's pretty quick.. Take a look, it's worth the browse..

PolyGraph3D is a basic 3D scene graph engine that provides the essential mechanics of displaying 3- dimensional objects in a 2-dimensional viewport using Silverlight 1.0 (3D objects are drawn into any existing Canvas element). This project is 100% cross-browser JavaScript.

PolyGraph3D has many basic features of a typical 3D engine, including polyhedral hierarchies, positioning/scaling/rotation, movable camera, and multiple brushes.

SVNConverter to the Rescue!

Starting with Team Foundation Server now, but have to migrate your source from Subversion? There is a handy dandy Subversion converter tool on CodePlex to make your life easy.. It transfers files, folders, version history, branches, and user information from a SVN database to Team Foundation source control.

Got LINQ? (Language Integrated Query)

And of course for builders there are now a ton of LINQ providers on CodePlex so you can connect to any and all sorts of data. These are very important to WPF developers and will see a lot of interest by developers when they start building with Silverlight 2.0. If you don't know what LINQ is; it's new to the .NET Framework 3.5 that allows more SQL-like querying of any kind of data. In the case of LINQ to JavaScript, it provides the ability to query against Arrays.

Here's a sampling of LINQ providers on CODEPLEX

LINQ to JavaScript

LINQ to JavaScript (JSLINQ for short) is an implementation of LINQ to Objects implemented in JavaScript. It is built using a set of extension methods built on top of the JavaScript Array object. If you are using an Array, you can use JSLINQ.

LINQ To SimpleDB

A LINQ provider for Amazon SimpleDB

LINQ Alias Generator

LINQ Alias Generator will automatically create "friendly" alias names for database column names commonly used in Linq2SQL.

PHPLINQ - LINQ for PHP - Language Integrated Query

A set of PHP classes mimicing C#3.0's LINQ (Language Integrated Query) extension methods.

Continuous LINQ

Continous LINQ is a .NET Framework 3.5 extension that builds on the LINQ query syntax to create continuous, self-updating result sets.

LINQ to Google

Linq to Google allows developers to easily query Google's Data Sources using a strongly typed syntax. Linq to Google shows an example of implementing IQueryable and IQueryProvider.

LINQExtender

LinqExtender is a query provider library that can be used to create custom LINQ providers without knowing anything of how expression is parsed or processed.

LINQ to Active Directory

LINQ to Active Directory implements a custom LINQ query provider that allows querying objects in Active Directory.

LINQ.Flickr

Easy to use LINQ priovder for Flickr, the api gives the power of query language right to the doorsteps of Flickr.

LINQ to Lucene

Providing a custom LINQ solution for the Lucene Information Retrieval System, commonly referred to as a search-engine.

InterLINQ

InterLINQ is an IQueryable Provider implementation. LINQ stands for Language Integrated Query and is one of the most important and powerful features of the new .NET 3.5 Technology

NLINQ

NLinq is a framework focusing on reimplementing the Linq functionnalities in Visual Studio .Net 2003 and Visual Studio 2005 (C# & VB .Net) by providing a Linq grammar parser and a "Linq To Objects"...

LINQ to metaweb(freebase)

Implement linq for metaweb api.

System Search to LinQ

The main goal of this project is create a LinQ extension to interact with the new functionality of desktop search using de advantages of the elegant and efficient programming model introduced by C#.

LINQ over C# project

This project is an extension to LINQ to provide query functions over C# language elements. The query parses the project files and works over the C# source code.

LinqToGeo - Language Integrated Query for Geospatial Data

LinqToGeo provides language-integrated query to geospatial data.

SLINQ - Streaming LINQ

An implementation of LINQ focused on streaming data.

MetaLinq - LINQ to Expressions

Class library that allows developers to use LINQ to search through and edit expressions in place, without having to manually recreate the expressions.

Cs2GenLinqToXml - Linq To Xml code generator

the utility allows: - To open a Xml file: the XLinq code is then generated in the richtextbox (and the structure of the Xml document posted in a treeview) - You can also copy in the clipboard of...

LINQ Expression Builder

A SQL to LINQ translator that will help the development community to adopt the new expression language using a user friendly integrated tool for Visual Studio 2008.

LINQ to SharePoint

LINQ to SharePoint is a custom LINQ query provider implementation for SharePoint that translates LINQ queries to CAML in order to query SharePoint lists.

i4o - Indexed LINQ

i4o (index for objects) is the first class library that extends LINQ to allow you to put indexes on your objects.

RLINQ

A port of Rainbow open source portal on .NET 2.0 using LINQ technology.

A custom implementation of the .NET Standard Query Operators from LINQ

This project provides a custom implementation of the .NET Standard Query Operators from LINQ, including unit tests for all operators.

Technorati tags: CodePlex, WPF, Silverlight, LINQ, SVN Conversion, Team Foundation Server

Zune: A year later (WOW! You have to take it seriously now.. It's very cool)

2008-01-27T22:42:00.001-05:00

by Don Burnett

Well I am now the owner of a new 80 gig Zune player.. I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for this media player who helped me to get it, it's truly a cut above the original models and the user experience with the Zune software and Zune Store is worth me blogging about. It's UI looks like it might be WPF based (rock on). I admit I own an iPod Touch and I am very familiar with iTunes and syncing. While I like the iPod Touch, I find myself gravitating to the new Zune and the software it uses.. I find the user experience in the Zune software actually a better design and user experience. The pictures below include everything except personal information which I have edited out as to better display the UI elements.. I am using a skinned background called "Everglades". This is also the 64-bit compatible version that I am profiling as well. I am beginning to really love this unit. I have carried it around for a week and not missed the iPod Touch. I usually have a laptop with me anyway, so browsing the web is probably the only thing I miss but not really.

Zune 2.x Features..

This is the music collection screen.. To sync an album to your Zune you just right click on the file or Album Art and select "sync to Zune" from the pop-up menu. The screens are all resizable and refills with more content as it's available..

In the Zune world Podcasts aren't "secondary citizens" and it supports both video and audio podcasts..

Besides the beautiful smooth scrolling and organic UI, the Music store is full of exciting current artists not lacking in content..

The WiFi Sharing peer-to-peer capabilities of the Zune are very cool. I can also stream (over WiFi) play songs that are on my Zune's hard drive on my X-box 360.

How would I compare this ? If I were to compare this to an IPod Classic, the User Experience and WiFi capabilities totally rock. The video and audio and over all workmanship and size (it's less than half the thickness of the original Zune Players from last year) is great and very functional (not a brick).

How does it compare to my IPod Touch?? The iPod Touch attempts to be a PDA more than the Zune which simply focuses on being a kick ass media player and it scores big time on doing so. The WiFi and media sharing concepts and ability to integrate with programs I have recorded from my Windows Media Center. Apple seems to leave me resigned to programs I buy off of iTunes. Of course there are third party programs and extras that will do this for the iPod but it's at extra cost. File conversion of video is automatic and looks beautiful on the Zune (not so using iTunes (for video).

When I use the iPod Touch I always feel like I am being "charged" for something. "Nickel and Diming" me doesn't really cause me invest my loyalty in a company. The recent January software upgrade I bought to bring the iPod Touch up to application "parity" that was "ONLY $20" was pretty lame. These applications are more like desktop widgets with limited function. I'd expect more for a machine that's supposed to have OS X as a mobile operating system. I haven't found anything I could do with them really that I couldn't do from the safari web browser already there. My old Apple Newton was more functional as PDA than the iPod Touch is, Apple needs to work on this.

A few blog entries ago I was very critical of Windows Mobile's user experience and I said I didn't think the Media Center interface could be done well in a 3" display or less. That maybe true with the Windows Mobile prototype I saw last year in a YouTube video, but with the Zune 80's screen size and UI it does it admirably.

So which media player will I use more the iPod Touch or the Zune 80. Well I already love the Zune, and it's natural organically easy to use system. The iPod Touch (as I said) tries to be a PDA. The Web Browser in the iPod Touch is a feature that is not present in the Zune. Like the X-Box 360, it's Internet enabled but not "web enabled". If I was more looking for a mail client, web browser, and portable YouTube terminal and PDA I'd choose the iPod Touch. If you want content that you just have to buy or rent, then maybe iTunes is your way to go.

Below, Apple's iTunes and it's busy display.. The sync seems harder on iTunes, on the Zune software it's one right click to sync a file..

Why I'd choose to buy a Zune..

If I was looking for just a kick-ass media player with a huge hard drive and great wireless media connectivity with my other Microsoft connected devices, the Zune is the way to go, especially if I want to download videos I recorded myself on Windows Media Center or work with mp3s, wma's, or wmv's I previously recorded at home on my own software or have if you have bought a big collection of mp3s from some other player system.. Sometimes people are looking for a pure personal entertainment device and not be tethered to email or work stuff on the web. The Zune is perfect for those people, especially if you have a big CD collection already. The WiFi syncing with devices to your PC is also flawless and quick.

The Zune has really functionally caught up to the iPod as a media player. It's music store has much in the way of "branded" music (you wouldn't be disappointed), and has a lot of new music genres not found or available on iTunes. It's really cutting edge stuff and after I took a listen to it I was surprised and incredibly impressed. It really brought me back to the edgy days when the "Seattle Sound" ruled the airwaves, but it's also new content and cutting edge too, not the typical record company "GENERATED" buzz. The Seattle scene always has known great music, and this is really carried over into the Zune's store.. The FM tuner is nice too, probably never a feature to be seen on an iPod product as anything but an add on too.

It may not ever get the press the iPod does, but the Zune is a great option and very open to file formats and the syncing is much less of a hassle. I really like the Zune Generation 2 and it's software. The Zune is a less expensive better alternative for many people, still feeling homey and keeps me in control. I feel more like it's a media player and less of a "BUY ME NOW" music service terminal.. The Zune succeeds at being social and organically seems to work and feel better as a music/video/podcast player and they really studied how people use devices the round touch circle makes it really easy to adjust volume without looking at the screen too.

Game, Set, Match!..

Windows Mobile needs User Experience Improvement

2008-01-22T16:57:00.001-05:00

by Donald Burnett

I have had a number of Windows Mobile Smartphones, and PDAs. My first Windows CE PDA was a Casio, with a grey scale lcd screen no color.. It worked great for Windows CE 1.0.

My next was a Casio E-125, and later an HP IPaq

Then I bought a couple of Windows Mobile phones and my latest phone is a Moto-Q 9m.. It's a great phone and email messaging device, it lacks some things, which I will get into with you shortly that I think need to change about WIndows Mobile.

Recently I looked at the Apple iPhone and really loved it, but didn't really like the provider so I ended up buying an Apple iPod Touch and a new Moto-Q for phone functionality, which far and away has the features I have always wanted in Windows Mobile but haven't gotten based on phone handset makers design decisions.. This month Apple updated the iPod Touch to feature many of the applets it was missing from the iPhone and the update supports third party installable applications (provided Apple deems them secure). For email (including access to an exchange server), the device is fantastic though I do miss having a REAL keyboard. The web browser with it's Zooming capability makes quick work out of most pages and is fully featured (except no RSS built-in, but Google's online reader takes care of that problem).

What's missing from the Moto Q9m that I totally think should be there? Well let's talk about it. Internet Explorer Mobile really is missing some features, simply put the web browser on the iPhone and the iPod Touch is better. Screen rendering is much better and it's a much easier way to browse the web than Mobile IE, this is a hands down fact. This is not to say IE Mobile isn't very useable, it is, but it's scope is rather narrow in terms of functionality and it's got a less natural UI feel to browsing..

A Better Web Browsing Solution

Now some folks have heard Microsoft is working on improving this with their DEEPFISH product. Unfortunately they showed this for Windows Mobile 5 devices, and I just bought a Mobile 6 device and it's not present in it. They have added Windows Update to Mobile 6, but there have been no updates there to speak of yet. Microsoft would be smart to re-issue the beta preview of this from Live Labs right away, even if it's a work in progress. It would make Windows Mobile owners believe some progress is being made.

I really hope this isn't a Windows Mobile 7 type update, because another fact of the market is there isn't a good upgrade path with a lot of Windows Mobile devices. If there is a new version of the software you can't always update you have to buy a new device.. This is unfortunate, because I believe this is what needs to change about the Windows Mobile Market place across device makers and service providers. The Apple devices have an advantage because so far you can just update the hardware you just bought.

Office Mobile Needs Improvement

My other beef about Windows Mobile is not all applications work on all devices. I recently decided to buy the Office Mobile update, for the Moto Q 9m so I could do document editing. I was really upset and disappointed to learn just before purchase (at the Handango Store, not at the Windows Mobile site) that I could not purchase this because my new device wasn't compatible with Office Mobile. That fact alone really made me steamed. I had got out the credit card ready for purchase and boom no deal..

After this experience, I decided to check out features of Office Mobile.. I was shocked and disappointed after seeing SoftMaker Office 2006 for Windows Mobile Pocket PCs a few years ago and learning that Windows Office Mobile just isn't as functional...

On my old WindowsMobile CE/ PDA (which wasn't nearly as endowed with ram, processor speed, functionality) I could have an almost total Clone of the full-blown Microsoft Word and Excel, with much much more functionality than Office Mobile.. Why doesn't Microsoft just buy this company's product and replace Office Mobile with it? If someone hasn't suggested it to Microsoft they should. I really wish someone was paying attention to the third party market more carefully.

Simply put it seems we are loosing functionality on Windows Mobile to design considerations which are different among different handset makers.. Even if the interface on the Softmaker Office looks cluttered, the experience and functionality totally wins out..

Here's a comparision..

Now let's do some comparison of Mail Clients. I am throwing in the Apple iPod Touch/iPhone in for comparison, because it does HTML email as well..

iPod Touch E-mail..

Windows Mobile 6 Email

There is not much difference here in functionality at all except for the cleaner font and navigation on the iPod. However both perform this very well..

As for mapping GPS, etc..

I am also very fond of Windows Live Search Mobile.. The Mapping, Directions, and database besides the fact that you can SPEAK to it and it will find something is very amazing. This functionality alone makes Windows Mobile a great buy! It's much more integrated and supports GPS, unlike Apple's current solution.. This is a KILLER application for Windows Mobile.

So for me it's a toss up, Microsoft wins it on real-world features that you want (like live search) but you just can't beat the iPod/iPhone on style and usability.. The feeling you get is you really love to look at the iPod Touch/iPhone, while Windows PDA's and SmartPhones don't seem to be in the same typographical and layout design world.

Windows Mobile 7 WishList..

A better web browser user experience with scaling and zooming like deepfish, and less UI compromises.
A revamped interface (A media center style browser doesn't sound better to me hint! hint! It works on a 10 ft away tv, not on a 3 inch screen)
Microsoft buys Softmaker Office and revamps Office Mobile with it
Better UI customization
More functionality in applications. I think if there aren't more they are going to get killed on this.
More speech support in everything (it's better than a touch pad when it works)

Technorati tags: Windows Mobile Makeover, iPod Touch, Apple iPhone, Microsoft, Moto Q9m

Apple Supports 64-bit Windows Vista in Boot Camp

2008-01-21T21:43:00.001-05:00

by Don Burnett

According to MacRumors Apple has starting quietly shipping 64-bit Windows Vista Drivers for Boot Camp with the latest Mac Pros.. It is hoped that this feature will start shipping with the 10.5.2 update. This is welcome news for designers who use Mac Pros with Windows Vista.

Technorati tags: Windows Vista x64, 64-bit Vista Support, Apple, Bootcamp, update

Chris Bernard Speaking Engagements

2008-01-21T21:05:00.001-05:00

by Don Burnett

If you haven't been following what Chris Bernard is up to with the Phizzpop Design Challenges, or his work inside the design community over the past few years, then you were probably have been outside of the country. Chris has been doing some amazing things to bring the design community together and encourage innovation and has inspired many as we move through this new century. Now there are a number of opportunities to hear Chris speak live coming up.

Speaking Engagements

Got Social Media (January)

IxDA Interaction 08 (March)

Mix 2008 Conference (March)

South By Southwest Conference (March)

Chris is a wonderful speaker, one of the best! You can learn much from him about design and just about any other subject you could query him on. I can't say enough good things about this man's work and outlook on design, and any opportunity to see him live is time well spent. If you haven't experienced Chris' dynamism for yourself, I wholeheartedly suggest you attend one of his upcoming speaking engagements...

Technorati tags: Design Thinking Digest, Chris Bernard, Speaking Engagements, Design

Cool Silverlight Site Spins Up in France...

2008-01-19T00:58:00.001-05:00

By Don Burnett

Over at Microsoft France to promote their TechDays event, they had Brainsonic a great Rich Media production specialty company to come up with a great Silverlight site to promote their TechDays event. This is a really neat site because it uses not just Silverlight video, but some of the functionality we have seen in video demos for Microsoft Surface..

You should check out the site as it's a very innovative user interface and is a pretty incredible site and very informative with a lot of organic UI appeal. Scalable pictures and documents.

Here is the great searchable schedule page...

Technorati tags: TechDays, Microsoft France, Surface, Silverlight

Michigan Interactive Designers Meeting gets BIGGER for January 24, 2008 Meeting

2008-01-17T04:01:00.001-05:00

by Don Burnett

Our January 24^th, 2008 meeting will be extended until 10:30pm so we can feature another very exciting technology that has just been released. You probably have seen the New York Times or Forbes WPF Readers. Well now the technology behind that, aka The Syndicated Client Experiences Starter Kit has been released. It’s a very cool RIA application that pulls in customized branded content via extended RSS feeds that you set up. It uses WPF client technology to display, search, print and more. This is such an important application and there is so much interest we had to include it this month..

This is one of the first really killer applications for WPF, and now you can create your own desktop publication with syndicated and updated content, including advertising.. Our plan is to walk through customizing your own application for that company newsletter, technical publication and stepping through the server and client delivery process.

The Syndicated Client Experiences Starter Kit

.Net 3.0 and WPF made it possible to build rich, smart client applications that utilized some of the best features of the web app model (URL deployment for example) while fully exploiting the power and resources of the Windows desktop. SQL Server Compact Edition enabled those desktop applications to be built and deployed with an in-process database to cache data locally and work on or offline seamlessly. Now the Syndicated Client Experiences Starter Kit (built with Microsoft’s new Sync Framework) further simplify the development of these applications and facilitate the creation of new types of rich, optimal content experiences for the desktop – applications where content and design are afforded premium treatment and usability is a key consideration.

These Syndicated Client Experiences applications exploit the push capabilities of RSS in a model where each application retains full control over the presentation of the content. The Sync Framework and sync service take care of syncing, caching, subscription management and the safe caching of authentication credentials. These services are designed to help publishers focus on what matters to them most: providing differentiated content experiences with very rich content, branding, skinning and custom user interface elements for an optimal end-to-end user experience. With the Sync Framework doing the heavy lifting for sync and caching, each SC app can be relatively small in size – around 1-2mb typically.

The Syndicated Client Experiences Reader

SCE applications are sophisticated .Net applications that are web deployed, occasionally connected, and fully exploitive of the desktop providing the optimal user experience for your content. The SC Reader application (the first application sample to be included with the Beta) is a feature rich application that utilizes WPF’s advanced text and layout capabilities to present the best possible reading experience on any screen:

Readability and Rich document presentation – Content is rendered with sophisticated text and layout capabilities including hardware-accelerated, sub-pixel clear type, typography and Open Type support for best possible legibility; dynamic hyphenation, adaptable columns and pages, reflow and zoom to adapt to the screen and window size of virtually any screen; figures and floaters, footers, support for ads and hosting of controls within the document.
Personalization and Accessibility - Sophisticated content display capabilities with text zoom and accessibility built in.
Intuitive and Effortless Navigation - The SC reader is designed for effortless and intuitive “Twitch Navigation” with many keyboard shortcuts and mouse gestures, DPad and touch support (for handheld devices and Tablet PCs, and a remote for 10-foot scenarios). Customizable contextual transitions minimize visual discontinuities during navigation.
Commenting and Sharing - Built-in commenting and book-marking functionality enable users to reference and share pages, articles as well as attach and share ink, text comments.
Mobility and Robustness – the Sync Framework-based sync service caches content from the content provider feed for performance and offline use. Content is synchronized and downloaded in the background and ready whenever a user wants to access it - offline or online.
Premier Desktop Positioning – A quick-access Subscription Center utility enables users to peruse subscriptions and content, available offline by way of a powerful SQL Server Compact Edition store.
High Fidelity Printing- A rich, adaptive model for printing content that fits intelligently on any paper selected.
Support for numerous languages including Indic and East Asian languages.

Meeting Agenda Revised..

Video.SHOW: Creating your own "Tube" style website. A look at how to create a website that features streaming video content, using Windows Live Streaming for Silverlight, Tags, and Expression Media Encoder on a server.

Using the Open Source Slide.Show Silverlight control in your own photography website.

7:00pm- Welcome
7:15pm- Group News and Q & A
7:30pm- Video.SHOW demo and how-to presentation
8:00pm- Slide.SHOW demo and programming example
9:00pm- Syndicated Client Experiences Demo and Walkthru
10:30pm- Adjourned

Bring your laptop, and get copies of the source and review it with us.

You will be taken step-by-step through creating this application in Blend and Visual Studio..

You must have the following items installed and ready-to-go to participate

Microsoft SharedView
Microsoft Expression Blend (Free Trial Available for download)
Microsoft Visual Studio Express or Visual Studio 2008

Our meeting will be held at University of Michigan School of Architecture….

Meeting Location:

The University of Michigan
Taubman College of Architecture
Thursday January 24th, 2007
Meeting Time: 7pm – 10:30pm
2000 Bonisteel Blvd. Room 2216
Ann Arbor, MI 48103

Technorati tags: WPF, Silverlight, Code-Walkthrus, Video.SHOW, YouTube, Slide.Show, photography slideshow, web, NYTimes Reader, Syndcated Client Experiences Starter Kit, RSS, Syndicated Magazine, Forbes, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, RIA, Newsletter Maker, self-updating newspaper client

New iTunes Supports Windows 64-bit and 64-bit Vista Systems

2008-01-16T14:35:00.001-05:00

By Don Burnett

MacWorld Suprises

A few suprises came out of thin air at MacWorld, one being a new version of iTunes that supports 64-bit Windows Vista releases.. Looks like Apple has learned how to program 64-bit Windows in the past few months. My first experience with this was downloading the Terminator:Sarah Conner Chronicles Episode 1 (free right now on iTunes). After downloading and playing the episode in full screen mode it seems Apple has most of the bugs out of iTunes, Quicktime and 64-bit systems. Though Quicktime did crash when I closed the file using the close gadget in full screen,the release seems pretty solid outside of that.. Also if you haven't been on the moon somewhere Apple announce an ultra thin portable MacBook, called "Air" with a solid state hard drive as an option, no optical drive built-in but wireless peripheral support and a host of other features.

One of the members of Expression Studio is shipping with the release of Office 2008:Mac (Media Edition) and that is the new Expression Media product. Digital asset management is a serious subject these days from everyone who does professional photography to interactive and RIA design.. Some more exciting news when paired with this is Gekko Images of Sydney Australia has came up with a series of how-to videos and podcasts that covers how to improve your designer workflow, version control of assets, file format conversion (including many RAW formats including Adobe DNG format) for both the Mac and PC versions of Expression Media. The format conversion is worth the cost of the product alone.

These videos rock, Gekko offers specialized training and workflow analysis, including professional audits of your company's workflow process, group training (up to 10 people), 2 day training, One-on-One Training. Also a standard phone support package for assistance off-site is offered.

The group training package is especially exciting as it brings together the following topics:

Introduction:

Principles of DAM workflow
Overview of the application
File importing
File Sorting
File Transfer
Archiving
Metadata / search
Project integration

Advanced:

Advanced tools overview
Advanced cataloging
Query Building and archiving
Worflow integration (batches, scripts, droplets)
Custom Scripts / Workflow automation
Web Galleries, FTP & PDF Maker
Collaborative Workflows (Notes, Reader, Catalog management)

Contact Gekko for further details...

Note if you are on a 64-bit Vista install and you go to the Apple download page to install the new iTunes, it will recognize that you are on 64-bit Vista and send you to the proper 64-bit setup download option.. The 32-bit installer will now suggest the 64-bit version if you somehow try to install the wrong version. pretty neat huh!

Can you say EEE PC?

Okay what costs $349, is ultramobile, has a solid state drive (droppable), a very portable display and can run XP (if installed), Expression Studio (including Blend and WPF) and did I say costs only $349 dollars right now?? It's Asus' EEE PC. I found out how great this would be as a simple ultra-mobile design on the spot product, thanks to Bill Steele's Blog and how much he really liked this for long airplane rides..

I am probably going to snap one of these up shortly. It will be end-of-year before this device ships with Windows. The hard drive while bigger than some iPods can fit XP on it, but misses some of the size requirements for Vista. But it's ULTRA cool for $350... And you can do .Net 3.5 and WPF with it.. Not to mention Expression Blend.

Technorati tags: Gekko, Training Videos, Digital Asset Management, Expression Media

Regional MSDN and T2 Events and Vista Security Wow!

2008-01-15T23:39:00.001-05:00

by Don Burnett

If you aren't taking advantage of Microsoft's quarterly events for Developers and Partners then shame on you... Today I went to our regional MSDN Quarterly event and it was really great it was all about IIS 7 and how it differs from IIS6. They are truly two very different beasts. The presenter was MSDN's famous William Steele, who always puts on a great event. You know someone is a great presenter when they just got the information for the presentation the night before the actual presentation and they still did an amazing job covering the subjects.

So what else did I learn about IIS7, the difference between modules and handlers. We also learned about how the IIS provider model works and how to write a new customized authentication system based on the built-in ASP.NET membership model. We also learned about how to take things like the ASP.NET authentication system and use it under other customer facing technologies, such as asp.net AJAX and Silverlight. The exciting thin about the provider model is that it allows you to use this internal functionality or even new functionality you write across client technologies..

Over at the T2 event (held at the same time) there was lots of discussion about Windows Server 2008 technologies, including Home Server and Small Business Server.

Okay so you all probably want to know what goodies we received..

The Windows Vista Security Guide in soft cover... WHOOO! This is like the Rosetta Stone of Windows Vista Security. If you have this book and you can't get your installation secure and locked down, then you have problems yourself..

If you missed the print edition and you are curious about what we received.. you can also DOWNLOAD it right here for free (in PDF)

How's that for a bonus for reading this BLOG...

Technorati tags: MSDN, IIS7, T2, Partner Events, Windows Vista Security

More great Vista Goodness with Windows Live Photo Gallery

2008-01-13T22:18:00.001-05:00

by Don Burnett

While others are concerned about UI frameworks to improve WPF that don't exist yet and Windows versions that are a few years away, and yet while others who consider themselves enterprise "bloggers" but tend to concentrate their comments on Vista's consumer sales. I prefer to look at the other side of the coin and things that are being done with WPF and Vista that really aren't being done anywhere. I really think there is such a negative flow in the press lately because when executed correctly Vista is such a threat to other platforms.

I also believe if people weren't buying Vista, Microsoft would actually be making more of an effort to actually advertising it more and more rushed to fix "problems". I see Microsoft as a very pro-active company, very customer centric, and the comments the press are making at this point don't really seem to be "getting" what's going on here.. As the Gates keynote tells us we are definitely entering the second "Digital Decade" and it's all about technology integration on many different devices. Windows Vista being the common platform uniting all of this integration

Microsoft has been showing of a new feature of Windows Live Photo Gallery, I think this alone underscores some value that you don't get elsewhere. If you haven't installed Windows Live on your computer, this is another great reason to do it...

This is an example of a group of photos stitched together into one panoramic format using Windows Live Photo Gallery (courtesy of Brandon Le Blanc and the Vista Blog).

Windows Live Photo Gallery (a for "free" product) does a great job even better than some commercial products that you have to pay for to get this feature..

Technorati tags: Windows Vista, Windows Live Gallery

Bringing Sexy to WPF Enterprise Applications..

2008-01-09T22:01:00.001-05:00

By Don Burnett

I love reading ZDNET and all of their blogging Pundits. One of my favorite blogs there is Mary Jo Foley's Blog... One of her recent columns was entitled "One Year Later: Where are the Killer Vista Apps". I was flabbergasted when I read the column because I knew that adoption was going well and going big time.. I am very close to the WPF community so I didn't want to respond and say "What are you thinking?". It is possible that she just really hasn't seen any, but I am here to tell you they are hitting big time, but it's not always the consumer sector where Vista is showing off it's power it's in the enterprise.. It's really a quiet revolution that's going on, and not seeable in the usual places..

A really great example is a new application designed and developed by Frog Design called "Lawson Smart Client". Lawson Software based in the US, is a global enterprise resource planning (ERP) software company that helps companies to more effectively manage their business through the application of their solutions. They worked with Frog Design to come up with a great interface to their software..

If you want to read about this application check out Long Zheng's Blog he has a great write-up of exactly what they worked on and a very nice overview of the design and process. I guess Long isn't as concerned about low WPF performance anymore from the write-up he has given as quoted in Mary's blog.

There is even more in-depth including a demo at Frog's Case Study Site..

Between this and the WPF Enterprise Application Contest going on, we should be seeing some really cool and very definitive Vista applications and some very convincing reasons why Vista makes a great enterprise desktop..

Technorati tags: Sexy, WPF, Enterprise Application, Lawson, Sales Tool, Frog Design

Reactrix Systems improves on the Wii's Motion Controllers

2008-01-08T18:10:00.001-05:00

by Don Burnett

Well some excitement is going on at CES, in Microsoft's X-Box 360 area a company named Reactrix is showing off some very exciting technology that could also become very important to RIAs as well. Neal Bangerter was on the show floor demonstrating this offering with Major Nelson (of X-Box Fame).

Reactrix has a device that sits on-top of a television and allows you without a handheld controller to manipulate things on-screen in 3D-Space, very reminiscent of the famous "Minority Report" interface. I hope we see this technology on WPF and Silverlight not just the X-Box 360.

The picture below shows someone dragging the word mobile into the TV with stars as feedback as he moves his hands to manipulate what's on screen..

No bulky controller to crack your 50 inch TV when you let go of it... Below, a popping balloons game.

Panda Punchout

The implications of this technology is rather nebulous and extremely exciting and is probably the first time this type of thing has been available on a consumer level.

If you want to view the entire video you can check it out here or at Xbox.com

If you are interested in knowing more about Reactrix Systems you can find more information about them over at Yahoo! Finance! Reactrix Systems Yahoo! Finance Information Entry

X-BOX 360 Television Service Picked up by BT

"For the first time consumers in the U.K. will be able to experience the advantages of an advanced TV service together with the benefits of next-generation gaming."

—Dan Marks, BT Vision

As noted by my earlier entry X-BOX 360 has a new IPTV service (Microsoft Mediaroom). Apparently the announcement was made at CES that BT (British Telecom) will be the first to offer this combined entertainment service. Instead of a cable box, BT service consumers will have the option of having an X-BOX 360 sitting where there box was. I can't wait to hear if AT&T or Verizon or one of the other IPTV service companies in the USA is going to offer the service.

Technorati tags: RIA, Microsoft Mediaroom, IPTV, Silverlight, WPF, Reactrix Systems, X-Box 360

Silverlight wins the Gold at the 2008 Olympic Games

2008-01-07T11:08:00.001-05:00

by Don Burnett

During his keynote at CES on Sunday, 6:30pm PT, Bill Gates announced that Microsoft has signed an agreement to a partner with NBC Universal to build a Silverlight 2.0 based web broadcast of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China. This was a joint deal with MSN where, in addition to the Silverlight win, MSN will be the official home of the 2008 Summer Olympics. This is a significant win for both MSN and Silverlight that will provide users with exclusive access to over 3000 hours of live and on-demand video content. Interactive features that are being developed for the coverage should turn Silverlight coverage on “NBCOlympics.com on MSN” into a ground breaking site and video experience that will redefine how users consume sports content online.

This is the largest, most important Silverlight deployment to date. NBC and the Olympics join several high profile customers and partners around the world have already adopted Silverlight for their next-generation RIAs.

· The Silverlight showcase, which invites customers to showcase their applications, now features more than 100 applications from 30+ countries/regions around the world.

· The Olympics and NBC joins such noteable examples as NBA.com, BMW (Germany), Baidu (China), Discovery Channel (Asia), AOL (US), Entertainment Tonight (owned by Paramount - US), World Wrestling Entertainment, Major League Baseball, CBS, FOX Movies (US), and more who use Silverlight today.

When asked why NBC went with Silverlight for their Olympic coverage, versus other formats like Flash Video (which is currently used on some of the NBC/MSNBC website) the answer was given:

Q: NBC talks about the quality related to Silverlight, what does this mean? Why did NBC choose Silverlight?

A: NBC is committed to providing their viewers the absolute best quality video experience available on the web and to that end they chose Silverlight and the associated Windows Media technologies to make that happen. Silverlight brings support for HD quality video playback through use of Microsoft’s VC-1 codec technology which provides the highest quality video at the lowest bitrates. VC-1 is a SMPTE standard video codec that is used by both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray high definition discs. Additionally, battle-proven Windows Media Services provides unmatched scalability and reliability for streaming video on the web. The combination of Windows Media Services for streaming, VC-1 codec for stream encoding, and Silverlight for playback provides the highest quality video available on the web.

Technorati tags: Silverlight, Olympics, Gold, Silverlight 2.0, Interactive Video Experience, MSN, 3000 Plus hours of Olympic Coverage..

IPTV comes to Xbox 360

2008-01-06T22:00:00.001-05:00

by Don Burnett

CES News

Tina Wood over at Channel 10 has some great news, IPTV has come to the Xbox 360... What the heck is IPTV? For many, it's freedom from a monopolistic (not pluralistic) cable provider. For most it means watching TV channels over the internet through your Xbox 360 (with dvr capabilities) instead of a DVR. I am excited about this because I dream of the day when I can choose the channels I watch and pay for (called a'la carte') which has been around since the 90s but because of Cable TV politics they have been unwilling to give us feature-wise. How different is this from AppleTV? Well it it's a full entertainment solution with games, TV, etc. all in one..

Also pair this with the announcement that Disney-ABC and MGM content is coming to X-Box Live with the announcement that Xbox Live has it's 10 millionth member, this sounds like a resounding success..

You heard it here first, IPTV on Xbox is real!

Also a new UI is being showed off that combines Microsoft's Sea Dragon Technology and Photosynth that is no less reminiscent of Minority Report..

Bill we will miss you...

Also, it's Bill Gates' last CES, he was nice enough to allow himself to be interviewed. Bill will be very missed, as we wish him well with his transition to Gates Foundation. Bill in his career has done work that has changed the world a number of times for the better. We look forward to his work at the Gates Foundation to help attack social issues that are necessary but difficult and will make this a better world for everyone. A big word of thanks to you Mr. Gates, just for being you and being a hero to many of us. You will be missed, but luckily for us not too far away.

http://on10.net/blogs/nic/Bill-Gates--CES-2008/Default.aspx

Technorati tags: Bill Gates, Last CES, IPTV, Xbox 360, Television on your Xbox 360

Why Silverlight Video in VC-1 versus H.264 ? What the heck is WMV HD?

2008-01-06T17:23:00.001-05:00

By Don Burnett

A lot of people really like Silverlight for video, but a lot of people ask me the question of why Microsoft supports VC-1 in Silverlight itself? The other question people ask is whatever happened to WMV HD.. So I thought I might look at some of the reasons behind this. Now this is obviously not the complete answer (you'd have to ask Microsoft yourself) but these are some of the things that come to mind..

Why Microsoft went with VC-1 support instead of H.264 in Silverlight in the wake of other companies adoptions of H.264 (Notably: Apple, Adobe, and MainConcept now owned by DIVX)..

The answer I have heard at a presentation when this question was asked:

"VC-1 wins on performance when H.264 targets quality; VC-1 wins on quality when H.264 targets performance"

In other words (my words) for web based video when decoding video in certain situations VC-1 gives better performance when you are using a profile where quality is targeted... Giving Silverlight some sort of advantage in decoding, which becomes extremely important with web playback where bandwidth dictates everything..

A lot of folks are looking at their strategies for video again this week due to Warner Bros defecting away from HD-DVD to Blu-Ray. Remember both players support VC-1 as well.

However if you are examining that issue again, just rememberthat choosing one codec standard over another doesn't automatically improve video quality of your output. The codec maybe accounts 10% of the quality difference at most, being that it's an end-to-end equipment issue more than the CODEC itself.

Will Silverlight ever add H.264 support? Time will tell, Microsoft isn't saying anything at the moment..

The other question asked..

If you have never heard of WMV HD, it was an initiative back in the way early days of Windows XP, before the dual core CPUs hit and gave 720p and 1080p video thru WMV format. Some DVD makers included the files with their dvd releases (some of the files distributed even lacked any DRM) and some DVD players would actually play back these files on DVD, giving people high definition access very early. Though at the time HDTV's were just coming into existence and most people only had 480p dvd players so they could only play these back on their computer through windows media player. The standard also worked for the web that far back as well. So if anyone tells you web HD video is "new" from this or that vendor, tell them they need to get their facts right and look back a few years to Microsoft's original efforts which pre-date even Apple's Quicktime HD..

Minimum Requirement during the XP Era to Playback HD Video

Minimum Configuration
(to play 720p video)

Windows XP

Windows Media Player 9 Series

2.4 GHz processor or equivalent (At the time $$$$$)

384 MB of RAM

64 MB video card

1024 x 768 screen resolution

16-bit sound card

Speakers

Optimum Configuration
(to play 1080p video with 5.1 surround sound)

Windows XP

Windows Media Player 10

DirectX 9.0

3.0 GHz processor or equivalent (At the time $$$$$$$$$)

512 MB of RAM

128 MB video card

1920 x 1440 screen resolution

24-bit 96 kHz multichannel sound card

5.1 surround sound speaker system

Technorati tags: VC-1, H.264, WMV, Silverlight

Tips of the Year for 2007 (Speeding up XP and Vista Both)

2007-12-31T17:25:00.001-05:00

by Don Burnett

Over the holidays, I went to quite a few stores looking at new hardware and software.. A lot of people at these retail stores by from salesman and give their feedback about product speed and performance to the people they bought their computers from, so I asked what the major complaint that most people were having.. Most of the complaints was that Windows Vista was "slow" in situations that were common..

The over all biggest concerns were file copies and Window refresh and redraw with layered windows.. It kind of surprised me to hear this, but I took what was being as fact. I keep an eye on Microsoft's HOTFIXES so when issues like this spring up I fix these right away. Apparently though a vast number of consumers who buy through the retail chain don't know about these and companies like HP and others don't always suggest people install these until Microsoft decides to issue a service pack. So, as an end of the year, suggestion if you haven't installed the following updates, RUN don't WALK! to install these. You may see some very serious performance boosts.. Some of these are still being tested, so I would just advise you that you might not see these on Windows Update right away..

For Windows XP and Server 2003:

Performance is poor in a WPF-based application in which you have enabled layered windows in Windows XP or in Windows Server 2003

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/937106

You may have to use this link to Request the Hotfix (Which Microsoft should just link to, not make people request it.)

Request the HotFix from Microsoft

For Windows Vista:

Performance for a WPF-based program that uses the layered windows feature may be less than expected in Windows Vista

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/938660

Request the HotFix from Microsoft for Vista

Other Fixes:

Video performance may suddenly be reduced when certain Windows elements overlap the video window in Windows Vista

File Copy Hotfixes

You experience slow performance on a Windows Vista-based computer after you establish a VPN connection

Multi-GPU Performance Enhancement (do have more than one graphics card?)

Graphics performance can be improved in certain multiple-GPU scenarios on a Windows Vista-based computer

3rd Party FTP Server File Copies

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555564/en-us

VPN file copy performance Issues

You experience slow performance on a Windows Vista-based computer after you establish a VPN connection

Technorati tags: Hotfixes, Layered Windows, WPF, performance, speedup, vista, XP

Phizzpop Design Challenge Chicago- Video Diary

2007-12-28T13:12:00.001-05:00

By Don Burnett

During the Chicago Design Challenge I had the pleasure to be asked to come out and help mentor the teams and take a look at the competition first hand. During this time I got some great footage of some of the teams going through their competition preparation. The folks at the time were really doing a lot of hard work.. I also got some footage of the actual event itself and some of the final product.

During the actual event I have footage in here too. Unfortunately during the event itself at the Underground, there was a lot of issues with audio and serious distortion due to the loudness in the actual venue. I unfortunately couldn't adjust very well for that. So my apologies for this up front, but the footage and the quality of the presentations (which I will be reviewing in a later posting) is worth taking a look at..

Double clicking anywhere in the video window below will bring the video full-screen.. Note I am not streaming this video, it's being downloaded via HTTP: buffering due to size constraints and my server availability..

Phizzpop Design Challenge Video Diary- Don Burnett

Attachment: DesignChallengeDiary_0001.wmv

Technorati tags: Phizzpop, Design Challenge, Chicago, Diary, Video

Seasons Greetings

2007-12-23T20:17:00.000-05:00

by Don Burnett

This is probably my last post of the year here, to which I would like to wish everyone a great holiday season and thank you for your readership over the last year. I am planning a great 2008. May your 2008 be the best year ever.. Some things coming up in January, the launch of our pod cast and video cast. We are taking time to make the production values as professional as possible, not just folks sitting around in a room. I have been taking extra time with this due to my video production background, as I want this to shine. We are working with the folks at Screencast.com (and Techsmith) to make this a success. Techsmith is a great Michigan based company focused completely on user experience oriented products and they make the best tools on the market for screen capture and usability testing. If you aren't familiar with Morae, UserVue, SnagIt, or Camtasia Studio then you should investigate their site right now..

Speaking of great blogs and WPF/Silverlight Stefan Wick has a great site for folks developing WPF and Silverlight applications for TabletPC and Ink.. He has a super article on how to render ink and image to a bitmap using WPF. He also made a great Silverlight Holiday Greeting that is so cool that I wanted to give it as my holiday card to you.. He also shows you how you can add it to your own site.

Technorati tags: Screencast.com, TechSmith, WPF, Silverlight, Stefan Wick, TabletPC, Ink, Seasons Greetings

"Did you ever dance with the Devil in the Pale Moonlight?"

2007-12-19T22:10:00.001-05:00

by Don Burnett

Okay so the quote doesn't really fit with what I am actually writing here, "but I just like the sound of it.."...

Sorry folks I could hardly resist that one after seeing the new Trailer for the Dark Knight. It looks way cool with a Joker done in a way that Nicholson or even Caesar Romero could have never brought out.. It was playing during the really great Will Smith movie "I am Legend".. Which is set in not so future New York.. It was neat seeing the fake billboards in the movie for the Superman/Batman Movie that had a release date of sometime in 2010... Anyone catch that stuff?? The logo looked cool. It had the batman/superman logo from the comic but with the new Superman logo..

"Why so Serious??"

Anyway the recurring theme of tonight's tidbits come from the Moonlight FAQ over at Novell..

Important answers that I am sure everyone want's to know about the Silverlight version for Linux.. This should fill in everyone about how video codecs, etc. will be available for Moonlight when it's released in 2008...

Quoted from their FAQ: "

..How will Moonlight be delivered?

Moonlight will be available as a single download from Novell which will include the browser plugin plus the Silverlight graphics engine and the Mono runtime. The codecs necessary to host Silverlight content on Linux will be available from Microsoft. The Moonlight installer will make obtaining the MSFT codecs a seamless step in the process.

I thought the codecs were Microsoft proprietary technology. How do I get those for Moonlight?

Microsoft will make these codecs freely available for Linux.

How much will Moonlight cost?

Similar to Silverlight on Windows, Moonlight will be freely available for all supported platforms.

When will Moonlight be available?

Moonlight version 1.0 will be available at the beginning of 2008.

Will Moonlight be feature compatible with Silverlight on Windows?

Yes.

Can I use Microsoft's Silverlight development tools to build Moonlight applications?

Yes

Will Moonlight be open source?

The Moonlight browser plug-in, the graphics engine and Mono runtime which will be available from Novell are open source components. The necessary audio and video codecs are proprietary components.

How are Microsoft and Novell collaborating to provide Moonlight?

This collaboration between Microsoft and Novell is a formal engineering development program. Novell is bringing the .NET-based Silverlight framework to Mono, an open source framework for running .NET applications on multiple platforms including Linux. Microsoft is providing a version of the necessary codecs for Linux.

Will Moonlight be available for Linux distributions other than Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop?

Yes, Moonlight will be designed to run on most Linux distributions, on any platform that Mono supports.

Why is Moonlight necessary when Flash already runs on Linux?

Moonlight provides users and developers of rich media another platform for delivering content. Moonlight provides users additional choice when creating content or viewing web-based rich media content.

Does this mean that Microsoft is officially endorsing Mono as an acceptable framework for running .NET applications on Linux?

We are focused on enabling developers and customers to run Silverlight applications on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux operating systems. Beyond this collaboration with Novell on the Moonlight project, Microsoft currently does not have plans to endorse Mono broadly...

Technorati tags: Silverlight, Moonlight Plug-in, Linux, Novell

Bah Humbug, Vista

2007-12-19T00:02:00.001-05:00

By Don Burnett

Well I was very curious to how well Vista is doing over the holidays. So I decided to stake out my local Best Buy and Circuit City Retailers in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I stood around for a while looking at hardware while a number of first time computer buyers. Everyone I saw there was impressed with the wide array of hardware from many companies.. However two out of five (unscientific numbers) had a question to ask.. I will walk you through what I heard..

Salesman: "Hi folks can I help you find anything today..."

Customer:" Well I would like to find a new computer, and I really like the hardware over here... But I do have one question can I get this without Vista but with XP. I hear from my friends it's slow and incompatible and has problems and I don't want it.."

Salesman:" Well the OS is new, it's less than six months old, it does have some problems but it is really nice. Even XP had problems when it came out three to four years ago, it's no worse than that was back then. So give it some time, but yes to answer your question THIS model's manufacturer has a downgrade program so you can get Windows XP still for it"..

Hearing this rather frequently in two stores was rather alarming.. Could this many people really have questions about the reliability of Vista. So when I talked to the sales folk and asked them, the general consensus is you can't easily fight perceptions about these kinds of issues very easily. You can "acknowledge perceived issues" and offset that. Some of them took the approach to say that Vista has problems with old hardware, but the new hardware we want to sell you is completely supported and it is not an issue at all with new machines because they are fast enough and "Designed for Vista"...

However, this perception issue is something that really needs to be turned around in people's minds. It is more widespread than I first thought it was. People hear things from others and word of mouth isn't working in Vista's favor this holiday season. However the same sales guys made a point to tell me that they had a bunch of first-time computer buyers to buy Vista and totally loved it. It was their first experience with computers and after buying it they had a very incredibly favorable response..