The MossyBlog Times.

Michael Bach and his Web Platform Installer Beta

scbarnes — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 03:04:00 GMT

I was roaming the hallways early today and Michael Bach (Product Manager for Web Platform) was grinning like a he was up to no good.

Given we're all working hard on the various efforts required for PDC, Silverlight RC0 etc I was wondering what he could possibly be happy about?

I asked him:

"wtf is up with you, do you need me to find work for you to do?"

With a smug response he retorts:

"..Nope, see unlike you my man, my product is out the door and it's getting some nice kudos already..."

I asked him what the hell he was on about and then he told me about this skunk works project he was part of. In that his team decided to package all the Web Platform bits into one action packed Installer.

To quote him:

The Microsoft Web Platform Installer Beta (Web PI) is a free tool that makes it simple to download and install the latest components of the Microsoft Web Platform. It let’s developers quickly get started with building web applications using Silverlight, ASP.NET and MVC. The application installs .NET Framework 3.5 SP1, IIS7 and Extensions, IIS FastCGI, Visual Web Developer 2008, SQL Server 2008 Express, SQL Server Management Studio, ASP.NET MVC and Silverlight Tools

ahh he's grown, he's already in full marketing speak mode... It was just yesterday he sat before me in the interview process, starry eyed and keen to save the world one technology byte at a time. Yet, here he is already, months into the role and already shipping! - Upstart!

He's now my biggest competitor on the floor and Michael, you're going down buddy...down i say!.

You can get more info about this cool initiative from

http://www.microsoft.com/web

Game on... punk, game on.

I get to ride the pony now (new toy).

scbarnes — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 04:42:04 GMT

Living in the US vs Australia has one standout plus, the cars over here are so damn cheap that it makes me angry to think I'm paying almost double to triple for the same models back home.

That being said, I decided my birthday is coming up in October, figured why not get myself a new toy.

I've always wanted a mustang back home and they are worth a mint - eg: Ford Mustang GT (USED) back home you're looking in the ball park of 94k AUD (77k USD).

Here in the US, it's what 15k-30k depending in mileage so far and age?

I also test-drove a few Porsche's and to be openly honest, I wasn't over the moon about them. In that, I set out this morning to buy one and it was only after I got in them and drove around I realize that they aren't that exciting? That and the dealers I spoke to for one of them, just annoyed me to no end (half of them were indifferent to you or the actual car was "in the shop" wtf?).

I guess I'm now the proud owner of one of the most popular selling cars in America, the Mustang.

P.S

I got the "you get to ride the pony" after Mike Harsh once said that to me before giving me a lift into town in his mustang. I still think it's a funny expression :)

Related Post:

New Car..

Introducing - MS Project Nexus

scbarnes — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 08:04:37 GMT

Introduction.

In today’s .NET ecosystem you the customer are basically digesting a lot of our new wave of products, and the on ramping can be at times a bumpy ride. As typically the products are isolated in various pockets on Microsoft.com or other areas of the Internet and at times we don’t interlace the story from end to end as well as we should or could.

The tagline for our Rich Platform story is essentially “learn once, apply anywhere” (yes Adobe now have one similar). Yet what does this mean? How does this really apply to the average developer out there in the .NET ethos?

It simply means that with your current .NET skills you can take your knowledge, code and tools and reuse them throughout our many offerings ranging from PowerShell in Windows 2008 through to Silverlight on the web.

That’s all well in good to say out loud, especially from a marketing message, but how realistic is this? How likely is this to be true?

Well, I’m going to answer this and I’m not going to do it via lip service either. I’m going to write a complete end to end solution from scratch, in that I’m going to write code that I will be able to use throughout our entire Rich Platform. It will be a complete ACME style solution that is a living breathing application as well.

I’m also going to call upon internal experts within the company (here at corporate head quarters) to help me throughout this adventure (think “MTV Real world meets Code”).

The Contract.

Just like in the old day’s pre-Microsoft, all projects would start with a contract/charter of some sort. This contract essentially outlines what both you and your customer expect a solution to look like. How much is going to be paid and when you’re expected to deliver.

Well, I’m going to draft up a contract now to the blogosphere, and in this contract I’m going to outline what this beast will look like and what it will touch upon. You the readers can decide how this looks as well as I want to keep it 100% interactive via my blog!.

The Technology.

The idea for this crazy and maybe career limiting idea was that I wanted to highlight the entire ecosystem surrounding WPF and Silverlight but in a way that interlaces a complete story. In order to do this, it had to be a complete solution from end to end, each highlighting a scenario that’s relevant to today’s .NET developer & designer. The idea has to go beyond “hello world” and into deeper insights on how to orchestrate our pieces within Microsoft together.

The pieces I’m going to cover are the following (no particular order either):

ASP.NET MVC + AJAX. I’m going to make full use of the new toys here, and I’m not going to apologize for it. The idea is to put the code I write here into place, and then look at ways to extend it outwards to desktop reach.
Silverlight. I want to also make full use of Silverlight mixed with ASP.NET AJAX and highlight points where both technologies can be used either together or where Silverlight can take over from AJAX but in a way that makes sense.
WPF. We’ve made a lot of effort to keep Silverlight and WPF as close to parity as possible, and so I’m keen to highlight how the same code base can be re-used through both and again, above and beyond “hello world”.
WinForms. This is one of the foundation successes we have here at Microsoft, and you the WinForms developer aren’t forgotten. I’m planning on making full use of WinForms as well, highlighting how one can go from a WinForms application to WPF, Silverlight or ASP.NET AJAX through relevant scenarios.
Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). This is a great solution and has quite a lot of power, and I’ll look to expose how great this solution is from end to end with the previously mentioned Client & Browser based solutions.
SQL Server 2008. Why not get into a bit of SQL Diagrams etc, as let’s face it an average developer out there may want to know a few things about how to architect their SQL Database that makes sense. It won’t be perfect, but let’s see where this ends up.

The Developer.

It will be me, sure I’ll ask others to help me throughout (internal or external) but the overall objective here is to take an average developer like myself, and put me through the paces to see where I get stuck and how to navigate around the hurdles before me. The code won’t be perfect, the architecture won’t be the holy bible of code, but overall it will have a degree of cleanliness though.

It’s about proving a point that the code can be re-used and done in a way that at the very least holds up to basic design patterns in today’s object orientated world.

I will however make mistakes, but that’s ok, as I’ll be calling upon experts within Microsoft to point them out and say things “Scott, this is why your code sucks, as you’re not doing xyz right”. Humility is a virtue that I’m going to keep strong throughout this upcoming adventure.

The Designer.

I’ve always been proud of the fact that I can do both design and code at the same time with equal skill. It freaks most people out when they see how it comes together and ego aside, it should as I’ve worked very hard to keep both disciplines up to speed with one another. That being said, I’m the designer and developer on this project. As I want to unearth how one can attack the design of an application in all of the above client & browser technologies via Microsoft.

I will also call upon some of our User Experience experts internally to give me points and tips on how one should attack design with applications, and again expose this to the entire Microsoft ethos for critic and begin new conversations around Art & Science.

The End Goal.

Knowledge. It’s simply this, I want to just take a timeout from the usual Microsoft ecosystem and invite anyone whom is willing to watch over my shoulder as I head down the path of building a complete end to end solution from scratch. I want you all to share my hurdles, pain points, frustrations and successes. I also want to invite you into Microsoft Corporate Headquarters where I can introduce you to folks whom simply amaze me daily with their intelligence and talent.

I’ll introduce you to friends on the Windows Team whom design the next operating systems UI, through to Architects and developers on the Tools teams whose job is to make our lives easier and give me tips on how to keep productive and ship at the same time.

This isn’t a 2 or 3 blog post, this is going to be a yearlong blog series and this is all I’ll work on for the next year (obviously my day to day duties put aside).

Enough talk, time to launch MS Project Nexus (msprojectnexus.com).

Playing with ASP.NET MVC.

scbarnes — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 05:38:46 GMT

I must say, ASP.NET has always been a love/hate relationship with me and it has nothing to do with the technology, more my mind trying to melt to the way ASP.NET works vs JSP/Coldfusion.

Hey, I spent 10 years doing the later, groking ASP.NET in terms of concepts has always tripped me up.

ASP.NET MVC however for me is very similar to Mach-II in Coldfusion. So much so, I wanted to look for a way to have a Controller sit in one spot, but bring in Views from another (ie not automated, but wanted to configure it myself).

I searched online as best I could and couldn't find it, and part of the blame for this is simply "how do I phrase the question".

I then went back to what i've jokingly called "MVC Bible" Stephen Walther's blog. I clicked on his Tips (as I was frustrated and decided to take my mind off the problem and see what's good in MVC via Stephen) and then I noticed this post on how to do it..

The magic answer is:

  1:     public class UserProfileController : Controller
  2:     {
  3:         public ActionResult Index()
  4:         {
  5:             ViewData["Title"] = "User Profiles";
  6:             ViewData["Message"] = "Welcome to ASP.NET MVC!";
  7:             return View(@"~\Views\Admin\Security\UserProfiles\ViewAllUsers.aspx");
  8: 
  9:         }
 10:     }

It's that simple.

Ok, with that, I went off and continued coding and it all now is singing together nicely. The point of this thread is that I love how Stephen's structured this approach, basically "Tips for MVC".

I'd love to see someone do this for WPF & Silverlight in such a structured fashion.

Anyone?

How to: Make Innerglows with Expression Blend.

scbarnes — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 19:25:04 GMT

I'm knee deep in a WPF project i'm writing for my team. I had the need today to have an innerglow, and noticed that we seem to have forgotten this little BitmapEffect of goodness (which I'll be promptly hassling Jon tomorrow for in the next revision).

That being said, as stubborn as I am I decided to try my hand at producing my own InnerGlow effect. It was actually very simple procedure to replicate inside Expression Blend.

Step 1.

Define your shape. In this case I went with a rounded Rectangle, but you can use any shape you see fit and firstly you need to figure out your base shape.

Note:
Now it's important here to note, that you need to think of this as being "Pancakes" in terms of the design composition.

Don't worry to much about pixel perfect precision inside Vector either. A illustrator friend of mine once gave me a basic rule to live with when it comes to Vector art:

You can hide a lot of imperfections, as given you can zoom endlessly you get to the point were the naked eye can't see it and move on..

Couldn't agree more.

Step 2.

Simply copy the shape (CTRL+C) and hit Paste keys (CTRL+V). It should paste exactly on top of the previous shape and retain the exact x/y co-ordinates.

Rename your layer to something suites you, I myself called it IcnInnerGlow

Step 3.

Selecting the layer you just copied, you now want to add a BitmapEffect called "Outerglow". This can be found via your Properties area, under the group called Appearance. You will need to click on the expander for this group in order to see the below.

You should see something like this:

Not really inspiring is it?

Step 4.

You now need to knockout the Fill and bump up the Border. So in this case, go to your Fill and click on the No Brush Tab.

You will also need to ensure the Border's Brush is set to a color or setting that you feel comfortable with. In this case, I chose a solid color and ensured the Opacity was 53%.

The results should now look like this.

Step 5

Now comes the real magic. You select your layer, and again hit CTRL+C and CTRL+V (duplicating your layer basically).

With this new layer (it should increase the glow effect, make a note of that!) you now want to make this a clipping path. In that everything inside this shape is what you only want to make visible. The rest is something we want to discard.

To do this, right-click on the newly duplicated layer, Choose Path, then Make Clipping Path.

A new Modal window will now appear, asking which path you want to attach this clipping path to (think masking in Flash). Choose your "InnerGlow" shape, and you should now have the following result:

Notice no bleeding beyond the shape's actual borders? Now you have a uniform InnerGlow that matches your shape. It's now up to you what you want to do from here on out, but overall this is a quick and fairly friction free way of achieving an InnerGlow using the basic BitmapEffects in place.

I personally, adjusted the color to white, added another BitmapEffect (Blur) and tweaked the settings in a way that I ended up with the following visual effect.

Doesn't look like much does it? well keep in mind I'm Zoomed In here, when I zoom back out to 100%, this is the visual look I pulled off.

Now to add some Gloss to the buttons..as we all know, there isn't enough "Gloss" online today :)

Summary.

Expression Blend isn't meant to be a Adobe Photoshop replacement, it's meant to essentially act as a bridge between the Designer Tools and Developer Tools. That being said, it has a fair amount of hidden power under the hood (when dealing with WPF). I've found that I can achieve a lot of the visual effects I've commonly used in Photoshop via Expression Blend (yes its weird I know). It requires more hand-crafting but overall visually once I've put it into place, I can re-use across a lot of controls throughout my WPF application.

I think at times the Vector UI's look absolutely crap and its dying of gradient brush overkill, so I'm hoping to show folks a few tricks here and there to produce visually appealing art.

Here's the best part of all. If you like the above, then cut and paste this XAML code into your application, and you're off to the races.

Yet another upside to using XAML, sharing art is as easy as pasting XML.

                        	<Rectangle Stroke="#87757575" StrokeDashCap="Square" StrokeEndLineCap="Flat" StrokeLineJoin="Miter" StrokeThickness="0.5" RadiusX="3" RadiusY="3" x:Name="icnBase" Margin="2,2,2,0" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" Width="32" Height="32" Grid.Column="0" Grid.ColumnSpan="1">
                        		<Rectangle.BitmapEffect>
                        			<DropShadowBitmapEffect Opacity="0.835" ShadowDepth="1" Softness="0.305"/>
                        		</Rectangle.BitmapEffect>
                        		<Rectangle.Fill>
                        			<LinearGradientBrush StartPoint="0.538462,0.98077" EndPoint="0.538462,-0.576924">
                        				<GradientStop Color="#FF232323" Offset="0"/>
                        				<GradientStop Color="#FF5D5B5B" Offset="1"/>
                        			</LinearGradientBrush>
                        		</Rectangle.Fill>
                        	</Rectangle>
                        	<Rectangle Stroke="#87757575" StrokeDashCap="Square" StrokeEndLineCap="Flat" StrokeLineJoin="Miter" StrokeThickness="0.5" RadiusX="3" RadiusY="3" x:Name="icnBase_Copy" Margin="2,2,2,0" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" Width="32" Height="32" Fill="{x:Null}" Clip="M0.25,3.25 C0.25,1.5931458 1.5931458,0.25 3.25,0.25 L28.75,0.25 C30.406854,0.25 31.75,1.5931458 31.75,3.25 L31.75,28.75 C31.75,30.406854 30.406854,31.75 28.75,31.75 L3.25,31.75 C1.5931458,31.75 0.25,30.406854 0.25,28.75 z" d:IsHidden="True">
                        		<Rectangle.BitmapEffect>
                        			<OuterGlowBitmapEffect GlowSize="2" GlowColor="#FFF9F9F9" Opacity="0.415"/>
                        		</Rectangle.BitmapEffect>
                        	</Rectangle>
                        	<Rectangle Stroke="#87757575" StrokeDashCap="Square" StrokeEndLineCap="Flat" StrokeLineJoin="Miter" StrokeThickness="0.5" RadiusX="3" RadiusY="3" x:Name="icnBase_Copy1" Margin="2,2,2,0" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" Width="32" Height="32" Fill="{x:Null}" Clip="M0.25,3.25 C0.25,1.5931458 1.5931458,0.25 3.25,0.25 L28.75,0.25 C30.406854,0.25 31.75,1.5931458 31.75,3.25 L31.75,28.75 C31.75,30.406854 30.406854,31.75 28.75,31.75 L3.25,31.75 C1.5931458,31.75 0.25,30.406854 0.25,28.75 z">
                        		<Rectangle.BitmapEffect>
                        			<BitmapEffectGroup>
                        				
										<OuterGlowBitmapEffect GlowSize="2" GlowColor="#FFF9F9F9" Opacity="0.5"/>
                        				
                        			</BitmapEffectGroup>
                        		</Rectangle.BitmapEffect>
                        	</Rectangle>

You know Microsoft won an Emmy for H.264 right?

scbarnes — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 17:44:23 GMT

Scott Guthrie is close to being back from his vacation (which for Scott maybe a case of 20,000 emails a day instead of 50,000 heh as he was still somewhat active internally). He was recently interviewed by Microsoft Press Pass around some new developments for Silverlight in the future.

Below is the a snippet of the press Q&A that I saw from Mr Silverlight Video himself, Ben Waggoner.

It basically outlines we're in the H.264 / AAC game and will continue to provide Silverlight as a platform of choice. One thing however, I'd really love to amplify more is that we, Microsoft, won an Emmy for our H.264 stewardship and leadership.

This is great news obviously and well done to the folks in question for all their effort over the years.

PressPass: Will you be showing or announcing anything new at the IBC conference this week?

Guthrie: Yes. At IBC 2008 we will be demonstrating a technology preview of H.264 video and Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) audio playback support in Silverlight, and H.264 authoring using Microsoft Expression Encoder and Windows Server 2008 for delivery. Until now, Silverlight has supported the SMPTE VC-1 and Windows Media formats, as well as MP3 for audio, enabling customers to take advantage of broad support across the Windows Media ecosystem, including third-party tools, service providers and content delivery networks.

We’ve always wanted Silverlight to support a variety of formats, so today we’re announcing that H.264 and AAC support will be available in a future version of Silverlight, which will offer content owners greater flexibility and choice to deliver video and audio.

PressPass: Historically, people have associated Microsoft with VC-1. Does this signal a change in direction?

Guthrie: No. Although we have been working with VC-1 for some time, it’s not widely recognized that Microsoft has also been an active participant in the standardization of H.264/MPEG AVC for many years, and we’ve included H.264 support in several Microsoft products. Microsoft’s Gary Sullivan was the chairman of the Joint Video Team (JVT), which developed the H.264 standard, and he recently accepted an Emmy Award on behalf of the JVT.

PressPass: Does this mean that Silverlight is moving away from Windows Media?

Guthrie: Not at all. This is about offering our customers more choice. Media producers and distributors around the world have enjoyed the high quality, flexibility and affordability of Windows Media formats for over a decade. As a testament to its pervasiveness, Windows Media can be found in almost every conceivable media scenario from desktop home video to feature films and TV broadcasts.

P.S

I'm yet to see any Adobe sites online using H.264 / AAC so if anyone knows where one may exist, please ping me as I'm curious to see how it compares in the wild to some of the experiences we've had success with?

How to Submit a Bug/Feature Request for Silverlight.

scbarnes — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 00:24:09 GMT

Stephen Price sent me a piece of email asking how the heck does one submit a bug to Silverlight Team?

I replied "connect.microsoft.com" thinking it was self-explanatory from there and off you go. I then actually clicked on it and I'm embarrassed to say that not only is it not visible as to how, but the way I found out was to Live.com Search it and got the answer from a blog.

The answer is to go to:

https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio

You'll see the following:

Now, please click on the "Browse Existing Product Feedback" and do a quick scan / check to see if your bug etc exists here.

Given that it doesn't appear to be obvious here for folks to find, I'm guessing there is not a lot there (in which case, get the word out for me while I work internally to get this amplified more, and you in turn can help turn the tide).

Once you're ready to submit a bug / feature, please click on either one. Now via this link you can submit a bug to either Visual Studio or Silverlight, Keep in mind you'll need a live.com ID to do so.

This is found under the Version pulldown:

Enter the various information and then keep track of your this issue and how we're tracking in terms of any work around's.

I'll be looking internally here on how we can go about adjusting this to being more simplified as I think we can do better with the above and I'm extremely keen to see your feedback (positive, neutral or negative) around our entire UX Platform + Tools and want to ensure there is minimal entry barrier here to getting it from you.

Please bare with us for a little while longer while we fix this and ensure it's simplified and amplified.

Thanks Stephen for pointing this out!

Do you know Silverlight has an inbuilt native RSS Reader?

scbarnes — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 06:28:21 GMT

Interesting, I keep asking this question a lot and the responses I get are something that un-nerves me. In that, in Silverlight there is a native RSS Reader built in, so the ability to consume an RSS Feed is so easy, it's almost cheating (Sharepoint readers, pay attention here).

The secret to this can be found in the namespace:

using System.ServiceModel.Syndication;

The class in question is the SyndicationFeed.

Code example of how to use this great API, can be found here:

http://silverlight.net/Quickstarts/Remote/ed86e719-0da0-49e1-a9e1-b31f483070d4.aspx

I personally have been using it with Sharepoint, in that I'm no Sharepoint 2007 guru at all, I've learnt Sharepoint through just goofing around and playing with it. Given that I'm a total newbie to the product, I decided to build out an intranet with Sharepoint, where I'd use Silverlight as the one-stop client, with it's own native forms built within and then simply leverage Sharepoint for the hard stuff (business logic, workflow, document collaboration etc).

The way I did this, was I'd use RSS Feeds (that well basically come free on every Custom List etc you spin up inside Sharepoint) that would help me with my data sets, and it would do in a way that was very automatic. In that, the READ part of my RIA solution is child's play with the above RSS Reader API.

Yet, comes the part on how to Create, Update and Delete. This requires forms right? RSS Reader need not apply here.

That's ok, as what I've done is used a basic iframe, hidden it via CSS and using Silverlight forms, I'd data bind the forms themselves to html forms within the iframe via the HtmlWindow Class (the natural JavaScript way of life in Silverlight, it's free!).

As you can hopefully imagine, I've got the full power of Sharepoint now at my disposal, and Silverlight has such a passive amount of control over it that again, it's almost considered cheating. To the end user, visually it just appears 100% Silverlight and at the same time, I can easily use a hybrid approach (point is, AJAX + Silverlight can be a really good bet here).

That's the reason I think Silverlight is such a powerful runtime that at times we get lost in the whole Flash vs Silverlight battle, and never really sit down and look at what's in front of us. A great Line of Business RIA solution which can have a passive impact to a solution such as Sharepoint.

Passive being the keyword, in that no need to learn a 3rd party language, keep it .NET, keep it inside Visual Studio, just ship.

You can do this passive approach with any solution as well.

Not convinced? that's ok, i'll blog about this in depth shortly but before I do, what's your thoughts on this approach?

Silverlight has a more natural support of JavaScript.

scbarnes — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 01:48:58 GMT

It was interesting to read this CNet.com article around Flash, HTML and AJAX.

It talked about the various ways in which the Adobe Flash is struggling to compete with AJAX in the RIA space. In fact, some of our early research showed that AJAX was associated with RIA, and not Flash, despite Adobe's best efforts to claim the ownership behind the acronym.

The article mentioned various pieces to the Silverlight discussion, which to me wasn't enough. In that with Silverlight enabling JavaScript interoperability is more seamless and natural than Flash has ever as been.

How?

Well you have to take a hard look at Flash. In order to merge both Flash and AJAX solutions together, there is a degree of compromise: if you wish to allow JavaScript to get deeper access to assets within the closed binary, you first have to write a method or two via the ExternalInterface API. This is like poking holes in the runtime for JavaScript to access.

Example, Ryan Stewart @ Adobe was quoted:

We need to bring Flash and HTML/Ajax closer together. You absolutely should be able to reach inside of the Flash Player as a JavaScript developer and pull out some of the good bits that make the Flash experience so great. We shouldn’t force the “1 pixel SWF” or a sand-boxed Flex application.

Inside Silverlight, we've empowered JavaScript folks to have a more natural amount of access to the content within (without any extra proxy code API's). This can be done via our HtmlWindow Class within Silverlight itself or if you're looking to access the content from JavaScript, it's simple a matter of using the below:

document.getElementById('yourcontrolId').Content

From the .Content onwards, you now have full access to the Silverlight solution as if you were accessing the content from within C#, IronJava, IronRuby etc.

This again, illustrates how committed we are to ensuring Silverlight is an open cross-platform, cross-browser and cross-device solution for your next bet. As opposed to a closed binary format which has restrictions implied such as the External Interface API.

We don't see AJAX as competition (in fact, Outlook Web Access was one of the first AJAX applications ever built), it's more of a complimentary extension (Silverlight v1 was released with JavaScript first, before C#) than a competitor and we've made a lot of efforts around our ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit to ensure that it's being proven. You don't need ASP.NET to use the Control Toolkit either, as the source code is freely available for other dynamic languages to make use of.

Further, if .NET isn't your cup of tea, that's fine you can add your own dynamic language support to Silverlight, via the DLR such as the OpenSource Project that is currently working on enabling Client-Side PHP to work ontop of the DLR.

Silverlight, Deep Zoom & LOLCats.

scbarnes — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 06:38:04 GMT

I can haz ur LOLCats in DeepZoom Thx bai.

Well, for those of you whom aren't up to speed with LOLCats then you really need spend some time studying this creation of gold nuggetness.

Rob has definitely put a lot of thought behind this and I was amazed at how he was able to piece this together.

The photomosaic was generated using AndreaMosaic, a utility for making fun images like this one.

The output of AndreaMosaic got processed by Deep Zoom Composer and turned into a Silverlight app.

Please tell me this isn't the US Presidents computer..

scbarnes — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 23:53:38 GMT

This one came into my inbox today, I had to just laugh. I mean I know Bill Gates said he wanted to put Windows on every desktop, I just hope he didn't mean the presidents as well in this particular case :) hehe.

Just goes to show, that Windows Vista has a lot of power to fix things as well, maybe even the UnitedStates hehe..

Silverlight Offline Storage with LINQ.

scbarnes — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 17:21:15 GMT

I get asked a lot about what the .NET folks can bring to RIA, and the first thing I proudly say is the fact is they bring a lot of engineering maturity and given Silverlight compliments a lot of their existing knowledge, it is our bet that this will carry over into the runtime. An example of this, is the work Sriram and Offline Storage.

Sriram Balaji has put together an example of how one is able to roll your own Offline Storage using Silverlight and LINQ.

Check out his post here:

In previous article I talked about Offline Web applications and how local database storage is central to make this happen. In this article I will show you how to build a simple local database in Silverlight using Isolated Storage and LINQ.

http://infosysblogs.com/microsoft/2008/08/silverlight_offline_database_s.html#more

Nice work Sriram!

You lost your $35 domain, but you can have it back for $5000 USD

scbarnes — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 20:36:13 GMT

I have this really bad habit of buying domains for projects I plan on working on for 1 year only. I recently accidentally lost BeyondTheBrowser.NET and SilverlightCoders.com due to not only moving between US to Australia (i.e. lost track of my inbox) but also due to being extremely busy.

Ok, that's life no problem. I decided to see if could buy back the SilverlightCoders and BeyondTheBrowser domains from the new owners.

SilverlightCoders response:

Am certainly open to selling, is this for corporate use? A very quick search of equivalent domains at sedo.com has bids ranging up to $5000. What terms were you thinking of?

Ok, I could go LCA route and pull an Adobe Trademark infringement / protection route, but really it's not worth the hassle or negative PR and in the end it's not that important to me fight that battle.

Yet, after speaking with the current owner, he was more friendly then the most domain squatters I've encountered:

Completely understandable - might also we willing to barter the domain for some Silverlight training. I'm currently a Flex programmer so you'd be converting me and potentially some collegues/coworkers in the process. Let me know if that is of interest.

I'll do that for free with or without the domain bartering, so some positive output came out of this.

I then move onto BeyondTheBrowser.NET and see if I can buy back this domain:

Thank you for your enquiry.
A search for "designers block" shows approximately over 119,000 results from Google.
Names such as designersblock.com are very much in demand especially as
there are more than 60 MILLION domain names currently registered.
If you consider that just recently Fish.com sold for $1,020,000,
MyPremierCard.com for $135,250, JMM.com for $55,000 and
HorseSupplies.com $52,500 etc there have been many other
5 figure sales - I'm sure that our asking price could be considered
an investment for a domain of this quality.
The price of this domain is £7,000 Great British Pounds or US$13,670
(close offers may be considered).
This is a one off payment for the rights to the domain, however you
will be responsible for paying the yearly registration (approx $30).

If you pay $5000.00 USD for any domain, especially of the above, you're a damn fool. Adjust your wording, re think your project strategy and don't encourage these folks to continue to hijack the Internet for silly potential "profit" margins.

Domain names are over-rated :) and Silverlight.NET vs Silverlight.COM are a prime examples of marketing true power vs random direct URL key entries.

I rate domain squatting for money up there with Viagra spamming. I must confess, I've had a few offers for Spidaweb.com a domain I own as well as Pvpers.com. I won't sell and I have plans for these post Microsoft, but the numbers have been quite interesting.

Should I ever decide to give them up, I will only do so if there is merit in the new owner having them, like they have an actual plan other than "..I want to create a bidding war.."

Any who, I've adjusted my project ideas, the branding and so on, now to move forward and not pay the extortion money above.

Deep Zoom Guru, Lutz goes online.

scbarnes — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 07:36:47 GMT

I've had the pleasure of meeting Lutz in our downtown Seattle Office and he's just announced his blog tonight is now online.

Hey everyone –

I started a deep zoom blog to answer some of the many questions I’ve been getting and to put some nice content and samples out there.

My first post is here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/lutzg/

Lutz is one of many interesting souls behind the Deep Zoom technology and some of the insights he has and will have are well worth the read.

On a side note, did you know that Photosynth was featured in a CSI:NY series and played a starring role?

Check out the YouTube video here:.

What do you mean all Silverlight.

scbarnes — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 07:25:52 GMT

There are times, when I see great things around Silverlight and this one site for me always seems to capture us at our best.

Great video, and from a great site..

http://www.microsoft.com/click/artandtechnology