Marc: My Words

Silverlight 3 Resources

computerwhisperer.nospam@nospam.live.co.uk (marc) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 03:46:52 -0400

Friday saw the launch of Silverlight 3 - yay! Here is a few resources to get you started:

You can download SL3 (and the associated development tools) and also find a load of links to additional resources. Or you can use the Web Platform Installer.
You can pick Blend up from here, which now contains Sketchflow. There are great tutorials on Sketchflow here by Christian and here (this one being 100-page PDF)
If you're interested in controls, then this link has demos of all of the controls in the toolkit.
ScottGu and Tim Heuer have great blog posts summing up what's new in SL3
For an independent view, then this review of SL3 by Tim Anderson sticks out.
If you're thinking applications, then my favourite at the moment is certainly the Sobees Twitter client.
This blog post on what's upcoming in Expression Encoder 3 got me all excited - screen cap! AVCHD! And other stuff.

There are, of course, tons more links from each of those. Vroom vroom.

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Office 2010: The Movie

computerwhisperer.nospam@nospam.live.co.uk (marc) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:12:16 -0400

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Architect Council at Bletchley Park

computerwhisperer.nospam@nospam.live.co.uk (marc) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 06:32:16 -0400

In June, Matt hosted the Architect Council at Bletchley (a great venue for any technical discussion - I've been lucky enough to present there a couple of times). Matt's blog contains a wealth of videos and presentations from the session. As he says:

In June 2009 a group of senior IT Architects from across the industry assembled at Bletchley Park, the home of the World War II code breakers for two days to discuss the current state and requirements for interoperability, standards, security and service-orientation across the IT industry. Bletchley offered a more than fitting venue to discuss and debate these subjects given its history and the incredible achievements they made.

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Extreme Shepherding

computerwhisperer.nospam@nospam.live.co.uk (marc) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 02:52:51 -0400

Very good.

http://video.telegraph.co.uk/services/player/bcpid1137883380?bctid=17075685001

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I asked for it, I got it

computerwhisperer.nospam@nospam.live.co.uk (marc) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 06:59:52 -0400

Seth Godin has weighed in on the Free debate with the title "Malcolm is wrong" (so it's nice and clear!)

I'm 100% sure that Seth read my blog and thought "best get involved".

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Gladwell vs Anderson: FIGHT!

computerwhisperer.nospam@nospam.live.co.uk (marc) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:35:28 -0400

Wow - amazing review of Chris Anderson's book "Free" in the New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell.

Anderson then fires a response here.

I love the thinking that both of these guys provide us, so it's awesome that they're trading blows. It's a compelling attack. I wonder how much of the review is tempered by circumstances surrounding the economy? I remember reading the concepts behind Free well before "the crash" and it was positioned (IMHO) as an optimistic, world-of-opportunity sort of thing, but it's being discussed now with the survival of industries in mind.

I'll make up my mind once I've had chance to digest the book.

Hmm, I wonder if Seth Godin will weigh in? Go on, go on, go on...

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Gladwell vs Anderson: FIGHT!

computerwhisperer.nospam@nospam.live.co.uk (marc) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:32:35 -0400

Wow - amazing review of Chris Anderson's book "Free" in the New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell.

Anderson then fires a response here.

I'll make up my mind once I've had chance to digest the book.

Hmm, I wonder if Seth Godin will weigh in? Go on, go on, go on...

Posted via email from MarcMyWords

Shownar: TV Discovery from BBC

computerwhisperer.nospam@nospam.live.co.uk (marc) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:41:14 -0400

From the BBC Internet Blog:

Today sees the launch of Shownar; a new prototype from BBC Vision which aims to track online buzz around BBC TV and radio programmes and reflect it back in useful and interesting ways, aiding programme discovery and providing onward journeys to discussion about those programmes on the wider web.

Nice idea to leverage all of the existing buzz on a programme and expose it in this way. I suppose the challenges are the various mechanisms needed to effectively measure buzz (something I do a bit of myself) and probably how to avoid spam and other nonsense pervading the system.

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Magpie: Wireframe Magnets DIY Kit

computerwhisperer.nospam@nospam.live.co.uk (marc) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:29:07 -0400

via swiss-miss.com

Awesome! I want some.

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Impossible is Nothing. Try to remember.

computerwhisperer.nospam@nospam.live.co.uk (marc) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:19:36 -0400

"Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing."

Some words are loaded with connotation and emotion. "Impossible" is one of them. I must remember that it should never be said. So this is a reminder.

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Atom-Powered Media PCs

computerwhisperer.nospam@nospam.live.co.uk (marc) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:10:56 -0400

I've had a Media Center PC for a while now - since October last year - and have been pretty happy with it. It's running Win7 RC1 (Quad Intel, NVidia 9600GT, 4GB RAM) and I'm using Cyberlink PowerDVD 9 Ultra for BluRay playback which is now fully integrated into the Media Center shell, making that a great experience.

One slight niggle is the fan noise from the graphics card. I've taken care of the main processor with some sweet Zalman cooling but can't do much about the independent cooling on the cards (other than snipping some wires and installing fire blankets...).

It occurred to me that I'd maybe over-specced and I'm thinking that might be right after seeing Josh Twist construct this Atom-powered Media PC and seeing @DeepFat's views on a similar subject. Hmm.

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Calling King Canute

computerwhisperer.nospam@nospam.live.co.uk (marc) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 03:58:05 -0400

Sunday night is always catch-up night and this week was improved as Collateral was on Film4.

I was reading this TechCrunch piece on "how to save newspapers", or rather, "how not to" which appears to be a suggestion to legislate against linking to copyrighted material. Awesome idea there. Not quite the rethinking that Wesch suggested in that video.

It's interesting because the newspaper industry does have some prior material to work with: the success, or lack thereof, the music industry has driven through similar stances. They saw this sort of thing coming. Their choice was to defend vigorously (i.e. attack) and see off these new models on the basis of theft - the issue at hand - but sort of missed that there would be a need to respond to the overall concept at some point Real Soon Now.

Just as I was snorting at the futility of this, I heard Vincent saying:

Okay, look, here's the deal. Man, you were gonna drive me around tonight, never be the wiser, but El Gordo got in front of a window, did his high dive, we're into Plan B. Still breathing? Now we gotta make the best of it, improvise, adapt to the environment, Darwin, sh*t happens, I Ching, whatever man, we gotta roll with it.

Amen.

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Wordpress 2.8 and IIS 7

computerwhisperer.nospam@nospam.live.co.uk (marc) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 03:17:32 -0400

Nice to see that IIS 7.0 URL Rewrite Module support is upcoming in the 2.8 release of WordPress. Although I'm beginning to circle on Posterous as my main media channel, I need to make a note to try out WordPress on IIS via the WebPI at some point.

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Harry Potter and the iTunes MoneyFest

computerwhisperer.nospam@nospam.live.co.uk (marc) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:54:26 -0400

Just to balance out the positive Apple sentiment of the previous post, I had to install iTunes to upgrade my iPhone OS. I haven't used iTunes in ages - nor the iPod part of the iPhone - as Spotify has completely changed the way I think about music now (which leads me to a longer thought about the fragility of business models). But anyway, I thought "ooh, I might buy an audiobook for the car". Being a man of limited culture, I checked out Harry Potter.

50 quid? For one book. Flippin' heck. Gone, seemingly, are the days when audiobooks were all about accessibility.

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Complex Coffee Runs

computerwhisperer.nospam@nospam.live.co.uk (marc) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 09:53:54 -0400

If you're part of my particular "coffee" (that's American for "tea") run then you'll know that there's only one choice: NATO-standard tea (milk, 2 sugars, strong).

But if you're struggling under the demands of the "skinny orange frappucino" brigade then I quite liked this app:

Via Mashable

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