Synergist

Thrive for Developers

Michael S. Scherotter — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:17:00 GMT

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

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

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

Back from Vacation

Michael S. Scherotter — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:14:00 GMT

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

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

Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde National Park

Photosynths from Mesa Verde National Park

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

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

New York Times Silverlight Kit version 1.0.7 Released

Michael S. Scherotter — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 18:47:59 GMT

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

New Campaign Finance APIs Implemented in the kit:

CandidateDetails
CandidateSummaries
DonorInformation
StateZipTotals

Just passed 1,000 on StackOverflow

Michael S. Scherotter — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:18:26 GMT

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

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

Best Buy’s Keith Burtis Interviews Me

Michael S. Scherotter — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 22:46:42 GMT

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

The Interview
Artist Explorer Silverlight App
Best Buy Stores Silverlight App

Silverlight Kit Webinars

Michael S. Scherotter — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 22:41:34 GMT

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

The MySpace Silverlight Kit	View Recording	CodePlex project
The New York Times Silverlight Kit	View Recording	CodePlex project
Building Silverlight Kits for Web 2.0 APIs	View Recording	Whitepaper

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

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

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

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

Michael S. Scherotter — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 21:09:11 GMT

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

Logistics:

What	SFO Silverlight User Group
When	June 11, 2009 - 6:30-9:00 PM
Who	Anyone who wants to learn more about Microsoft Silverlight and see what cool sites are being created with it.
Where	Microsoft Corporation, 835 Market Street, 7th Floor, San Francisco, CA
Why	“Everything starts with a conversation.”
How	Take the Bart or Muni, get off at the Powell Street Station and look for the entrance below a Purple SFSU Banner.

Whitepaper on Measuring Browser Performance

Michael S. Scherotter — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 20:53:58 GMT

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

ARCHITECT COUNCIL | Pragmatic Patterns for Architects

Michael S. Scherotter — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:18:24 GMT

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

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

DAY 1 – June 9, 2009 at Noon PST

Patterns for Moving to the Cloud

Larry Clarkin & Wade Wegner

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

DAY 2 – June 10, 2009 at Noon PST

Building Silverlight & WPF Applications with Prism

David Hill

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

DAY 3 – June 11, 2009 at Noon PST

Patterns for Parallel Computing

David Chou

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

WEBCAST AGENDA

11:45 AM (PST)

Open for Dial-in

12:00 PM (PST)

Day’s Content

12:50 PM (PST)

Q&A

01:00 PM (PST)

Raffle and Close

REGISTER

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

Title

Event ID

Link to Register

Day 1 6/9/09

Patterns for Moving to the Cloud

1032416875

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032416875&EventCategory=2&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

Day 2 6/10/09

Building Silverlight & WPF Applications with Prism

1032416983

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032416983&EventCategory=2&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

Day 3 6/11/09

Patterns for Parallel Computing

1032416984

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?EventID=1032416984&EventCategory=2&culture=en-US&CountryCode=US

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

SPEAKER BIOS

Larry Clarkin - SR ARCHITECT EVANGELIST, Microsoft

Wade Wegner - SR ARCHITECT EVANGELIST, Microsoft

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

David Hill – PRINCIPAL ARCHITECT, Microsoft Patterns & Practices Team

David Chou – ARCHITECT, Microsoft

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

Virtual Event: Microsoft Silverlight Kits 6/9/2009

Michael S. Scherotter — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 04:26:47 GMT

On June 9, 2009, I will be presenting a series of free web meetings about Silverlight Kits that I have been working on:

9:00 AM PDT: The MySpace Silverlight Kit
11:00 AM PDT: The New York Times Silverlight Kit
1:00 PM PDT: Building a Silverlight Kit for your Web 2.0 API

All of the meetings will be roughly an hour long and they will recorded if you can’t make them at that time. Please come with your questions and your APIs, as Silverlight works great with REST, SOAP, and JavaScript-based APIs.

New York Times WPF Kit

Michael S. Scherotter — Mon, 18 May 2009 23:05:07 GMT

If you browse the source code for the New York Times Silverlight Kit, you’ll notice that there are two project that are not for Silverlight but for WPF applications. It turns out that most of the code that will work in Silverlight will work in WPF applications as well so it took me about 20 minutes to build the NYTimesWPFKit. the WPF Kit links to the source files for the Silverlight kit so the two kits are actually sharing code.

Here are the differences:

WPF doesn’t have a JSON parser so the Times Articles and TimesTags APIs will not work in WPF but since the New York Times has made most of their APIs available via XML as well as JSON APIs, all the rest of the APIs work fine in WPF.
Some APIs are different, like HtmlPage and BitmapImage, so there are a few places that the code looks like this in the NYTimes.Newswire class Logo property:

#if SILVERLIGHT
        image.SetSource(streamResource.Stream);
#else
        image.StreamSource = streamResource.Stream;
#endif

The significant aspect here is that the WPF and Silverlight kits share 99% of the same code (I didn’t do the exact calculation but if you look a the source code you’ll see what I mean).

Microsoft Product Roadmap

Michael S. Scherotter — Fri, 15 May 2009 23:58:46 GMT

My colleague Bruce Kyle, just posted a list of product releases planned over the next year, including Silverlight 3, Windows 7, and Office 2010:

http://blogs.msdn.com/usisvde/archive/2009/05/15/roadmaps-for-major-products-announced-at-teched.aspx

Very comprehensive – thanks, Bruce!

Need Help with my Chroma Key Pixel Shader Algorithm

Michael S. Scherotter — Fri, 15 May 2009 22:26:51 GMT

I’ve just uploaded a simple demo application that shows the Silverlight 3 Chroma Key Effect in action. If you don’t have the Silverlight 3 beta installed you will need to install it from here (the install link in the application will not work).

If you watch the demo, you’ll notice ghosting along the edges of the dancers – obviously I need help with my pixel shader algorithm:

float4 PS( VS_OUTPUT input ) : SV_Target
{
     float4 color = tex2D( ImageSampler, input.UV );
   
     if (abs(InputColor.r - color.r) <= Tolerance && 
         abs(InputColor.g - color.g) <= Tolerance &&
         abs(InputColor.b - color.b) <= Tolerance)
     {
      color.rgba = 0;
     }
  
   return color;
 }

If anyone has suggestions on how to make this algorithm better – or has a better algorithm, please share it with me.

Thanks in advance.

Created HTML Help Documentation with Sandcastle

Michael S. Scherotter — Thu, 14 May 2009 20:22:33 GMT

I just used Sandcastle and the HTML Help Workshop to build the documentation for the New York Times Silverlight Kit. It took a little hacking to get it working but it turned out some pretty cool docs. You can download the .CHM file here.

You will probably need to “unblock” the CHM file before using it:

Alpha Video with Silverlight 3 Pixel Shaders

Michael S. Scherotter — Thu, 14 May 2009 11:51:32 GMT

One of the requests that I hear quite often for Silverlight is support for Alpha Video where video has transparent regions to ease compositing. By adding GPU-Accelerated Pixel Shaders to Silverlight 3, that capability will now be possible.

One of the foundational new features in Silverlight 3 (to be released later this year) is the software-based ~~GPU-based~~ Pixel Shader support like WPF already has. You can use any pixel shaders created for WPF for Silverlight applications. The WPF Pixel Shader Library on CodePlex now has a Silverlight 3 library as part of the source code. One of the shaders in that library is a simple color key pixel shader. I started with that shader and adapted it by adding color and tolerance properties as well as design-time support for Expression Blend 3 and an installer that adds the shader to Expression Blend Asset panel).

You can download the shader installer and source code here.

5/15/2009 – Correction: pixel shaders in WPF are GPU accelerated, in Silverlight 3, they will be software-based.