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From now through the end of the MIX09 conference in Las Vegas, Rob Burke will be providing his insights from the conference on a daily basis.
Robert Burke is a Toronto-based IT Consultant who's attending his fourth MIX event this year. By day he's knee-deep in Microsoft User Experience technologies, including Silverlight and the Windows Presentation Foundation, but his background includes stuff like artificial intelligence, interactive installations, graphics and biometrics. He attended the first two MIXes as a member of Microsoft's Developer and Platform Group, and the second two as Principal Consultant of Carrington Technologies. His website is at http://robburke.net and his shiny new Twitter account is @rob_burke.
What can we expect at this week's intersection of design and technology in Las Vegas?
Before a week for looking forward, a brief pause and a quick look back for context.
MIX06: "The Next Web Now."
3 years ago, Microsoft launched this hip series of conferences, inviting a cross-platform audience of business decision makers, developers and designers (…wait… designers?!).
The inaugural keynote explored the opportunities that would emerge as the internet "evolves… and 'web' and 'application' concepts merge."
It was the only MIX keynote to star Bill Gates as Microsoft's Chief Software Architect, and featured a fireside chat between Bill and Tim O'Reilly, and Bill's mea culpa about the state of IE6.
MIX07: "A 72-Hour Conversation"
The conference's sophomore year was billed as a "72-hour conversation" at a time when the rampant success of social networking was all the buzz.
Ray Ozzie took the helm, WPF/E got its new look and name, and so we saw .NET boldly go cross-browser, cross-platform - at least, in CTP form.
Loosely, the following year's theme was (loosely) connected things: their impact on the individual, their impact on the organization. "Small pieces, loosely joined" was I believe how Ray put it.
And then there were Rich Internet Applications. Silverlight 2.0, the highly anticipated enabler, went Beta. Designers (I thought) were finally somewhat understood, even if their Microsoft toolset was still fermenting.
There was an explicit expectation set by Ray, Steve and Company that MIX08 represented but one of several steps on the road to something big at the PDC coming in the autumn.
Then, months later, Silverlight 2.0 was unleashed on the wild, with 3.0 already on the horizon. But wait… were we even talking about the presentation layer any more, or, with Silverlight's eventual impact firmly impressed upon us, had we moved on to discuss awesome sky-plumbing instead?
We're talkin' Azure, Live Services too numerous to mention, data and enterprise service buses and meshes in the sky, a bookstore that got there first, Models and Domain-Specific Languages (see Don Box's characterization of this dreadfully wond'rous craic), and so much more, all available streamed online now for your viewing pleasure.
So we begin MIX09 with feet tentatively on the presentation layer, but eyes on this intriguing Cloud on the horizon.
The MIX09 Session List alone would suggest an emphasis (by session number) on:
Bill Gates at MIX06
Ray Ozzie and ScottGu at MIX07
SteveB and GuyK at MIX08
I mentioned previously that I visit MIX for the buzz. This week I'm there again to meet, to chat, and to think — and specifically, to ask what should we do with all this stuff? What could I do for my clients? For their organizations? For my own projects?
Even if you're not able to attend, the keynote will be streamed live, and you'll have a chance to ask ScottGu some questions online 30 minutes after it's over.
We're three years into this MIX journey to The Next Web. This week, we expect to gain insight into Microsoft's perspective on the road ahead. I'm going to try to write here daily, and figure out how to use this Twitter thing as well. Inspired by keynote speaker Bill Buxton, I may even try my hand at a little sketching, and change up my technology choices as an audience member for the keynote and sessions. (hint: thinking of leaving the laptop behind).
Right - that's enough context - I'm off to Vegas to Mix things up a little!
This blog post was originally posted at http://robburke.net/2009/03/16/a-brief-history-of-mix-feet-on-ground-eyes-on-cloud/.
By now, many of you have probably seen the news that carriers around the world will start pushing updates very soon and through the next couple of months. It's exciting because many that have seen and used the Mango update for Windows Phone in its beta format have seen it to be a very usable, interesting and viable platform that rivals any of the mobile platforms out there today.
Like you, I'm excited as well. I have been running the beta (build 7712) version of Mango on my own phone since around late July and it's made me much more productive on the go.
So, with all that said, when can you expect the Mango update to be released by the 3 major carriers supporting Windows Phone in Canada? The answer is "soon". I can't tell you the exact date because that is something that is managed not only by Microsoft but also by our carrier partners, so saying a date right now on this blog would make a commitment not only of Microsoft but of our carrier partners as well. I can tell you Canadian users waiting for Mango will get it in the publicized timeframe that Eric Hautala statedin his post (which I linked to above), however.
What can you expect in your Mango update? Well, here's a few of the features that I love:
So where can I check in on my update and scheduling by my carrier? As with previous updates, Microsoft will hold the latest information on the Where's My Update page on the Windows Phone portal. Right now (as of the publication time and date of this post), there's 3 updates listed, all showing "Delivering Update" status. As an FYI, none of these updates are Mango (7008 was the initial test update from January, 7390 was the NoDo update in March which introduced copy and past among other things and 7392 was a security update from April that fixed a certificate issue).
So stay tuned and rest assured that the Canadian carriers supporting Windows Phone will be pushing out your update in a timely fashion!
Joe Stagner, one of the people at Microsoft that I greatly admire wrote in his blog about this nice little gold nugget about the ASP.NET MVC Code Gallery being released.
If you are a fan of the MVC pattern and you're interested in using the ASP.NET MVC framework, this is a great place to start. The code is contributed by the community and the licensing for it Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license so have a look and feel free to use it to learn and build MVC-based applications in ASP.NET!
Technorati Tags: MVC
A common complaint that I hear from people who build web solutions is that when they try to start building web solutions on the Microsoft Platform, they hit a wall because of 2 things:
The fact of the matter is, the people I talk to are right! We literally have gigabytes of very useful and relevant information for anyone that wants to build great web solutions with our tools and platform technologies but there are so many places where you need to go to get that information it becomes frustrating and turns people away.
Well, we've heard these complaints and to help you get the resources you need, we have provided a Canadian-focused portal for building web solutions on the Microsoft platform. This portal is intended to provide a launch pad for finding the information you need about our web platform. This includes:
If you are building web solutions on the Microsoft platform or if you are thinking about it, I strongly encourage you to visit the site. If you have feedback on the site, please let me know by submitting a comment to this post!
Technorati Tags: Web Development Resource
MIX09 Swag Bag
This year's Swag Bag Contents:
MIX09 Mystery Sticker
For reference, here's what was in the MIX07 Swag.
MIX07 Welcome Swag
I'm most grateful for another copy of Buxton's insightful book!
I wonder if we'll have any software to play with tomorrow, or if we'll be downloading lab content ourselves. I always come armed with extra storage to events like these in case I need to truck home some VPCs.
Microsoft Canada has a great offer for any Canadian web solution provider that isn't already a Registered Microsoft Partner.
For a limited time, we are offering a free copy of Expression Web 2, our premier web design tool for building compelling web sites.
All you need to do is go to this site, register as Microsoft Partner on the site (which is completely free) and enter your Partner ID to get your free copy of Expression Web 2.
There are many other benefits with this offer as well. We are offering access to free training on Microsoft web platform technologies, great hosting offers and other benefits as well.
In addition to all that, by registering as a Microsoft Partner, you get other offers for training, deeply discounted software to help you start your business as well as support from Microsoft to help you grow your business.
If you haven't registered as a Microsoft Partner yet, this may be a great time to do it!
The original post by Rob can be found here.
Deborah Alder at MIX09 Keynote
Bill Buxton, the Spirit of MIX09 (who, incidentally, now has a typeface named after him), was very welcome back for this morning's keynote to introduce Deborah Adler, whose work as principal designer for Target's ClearRx medicine bottles provided the focus for our discussion about design and its impact on user experience.
ClearRx Case Study
Deborah's research identified and addressed many serious problems with traditional medicine bottles. Her prototype was refined by Target into the ClearRx products, and the resulting "return on experience" includes brand awareness for Target — and, much more importantly, the potential to change behavior and save human lives.
Her advice to us was twofold - to have a love affair with our customers, and to bring our design skills to bear both humanly and humanely.
There is more information about Deborah's work at the Target:Health site.
[Update: I just saw Robby Ingebretsen's post and agree with him - these two keynotes together (and particularly, Deborah and Bill's contributions) made for the best and most inspiring MIX keynotes yet.]
Clear Rx (link goes to Target ClearRx site)
IE8: In other keynote news, Dean Hachamovitch announced that Internet Explorer 8 was released today.
For more info: You can now watch streaming video of the keynotes (for both days) here, and Tim Sneath's thorough Play-by-Play is here and here.
The Cloud?
So I expected today's keynote was going to be about the Cloud. I was totally wrong. But it's all good.
My Mind Map, with Day 2 on the bottom, now makes more sense: the "Return on Experience" discussion provides the roots for everything we've discussed at MIX09 this week.
MIX09 Keynote Mind Map - Days 1 and 2 - with Return on Experience at the root
p.s. More Misc MIX notes on the rest of Day 2 in a future post — I am shattered tonight. Johnny Lee's HCI talk was particularly memorable (link goes to his killer TED talk).
Given the amount of time the platform has now been available, we're starting to see some incredible creativity and very focused, user-centric applications being built for Silverlight. I'm very excited about many of these applications and solutions for both business and consumer scenarios and I want to share some of these great experiences with you. This first post will be about business-oriented Silverlight applications and a subsequent post will highlight some consumer-oriented applications.
It used to be that most rich experiences on the web were focused on public-facing or consumer-based applications. It makes sense; we often see user-centric innovation outside the firewall before we see it inside due to the cost of re-vamping existing line of business applications as well as focusing investment on activities that directly impact customers positively. While that is certainly still true, we are seeing business from all sorts of industries adopting user-centric software platforms for internal applications as well as customer-facing business applications. Below are examples of how you could implement some business-oriented experiences in Silverlight:
These are just a few of the LOB-focused applications we are seeing built in Silverlight. If you have an LOB application built in Silverlight that you would like to share, please let me know by commenting!
In the hope they may also inspire you, here are four other sources of inspiration I found at MIX09,
1. Bill Buxton at MIX09 Third Place
1. Bill Buxton's visit to "The Third Place." He cites Henry Dreyfuss's "Designing for People" as the next must-read book after his (preferably 1st Ed.). Render in the correct fidelity. Don't rely on a "muse." Consider minimally five alternatives. Persona and "Place-ona." "Design is Choice."
2. Johnny Lee and HCI wonders
2. Johnny Lee's HCI talk. @shanselman a fanboi too. Know Johnny? Watch his MIX talk. Don't know him yet? Check his TED talk first, which was worthy of a standing ovation. Johnny on the future of HCI: Dive off today's local maxima. Want more HCI? Follow UIST, SigGraph, SigCHI, UBICOMP.
3. Joe Fletcher Surface Session - online!
3. Joseph Fletcher delivered a mightily polished Touch Computing presentation yesterday, and the session video is already online! Surface UX is "Hyper-real," and Surface is Social, Seamless, Spatial.
4. MmmmmUrl
4. Purdy & Sells delivered an energetic talk on their RESTful DSL MUrl. Interested in languages, human and machine? "Oslo" and "M" are sexy. Probably this a good place to start. Their MIX09 Session is here.
Bill Buxton during the second MIX09 keynote
To sum it up, there are four things I carried away from MIX09:
This reaction in our community is consistent with the global sense of a need for something new. Put simply, the status quo isn't good enough any more.
This message was embodied by Deborah Adler. There's a reason why Microsoft so boldly chose to focus half a keynote on Ms. Adler's contribution — it's time for us to stop thinking like techies, and start thinking about the people using our creations, and the contexts in which they'll be using them.
To get there, we were all encouraged to use unconventional tools, and reminded that big ideas can come from going back to basics: a sheet of paper and a decent pen.
I'm sure I'll see more techies at the local cafe, rubbing elbows with thinkers who have always used these basic methods to achieve greatness.
As I type, the sessions are coming online at the VisitMIX site. Through a fog of tweets and jetlag this morning in Toronto, I was struck hard that MIX has made me want to return to doing the stuff that brought me here in the first place, whatever that means for me in 2009.
I want to extend my thanks to the organizers of MIX for so much inspiration, and to the Microsoft Canada team for letting me share MIX09 with you.
MIX09 boldly declared that "The Next Web" is a place where design matters. We were taught to seek returns on user experiences, and think first about how our creations influence lives. This is a future I want to help invent.
Looking forward to continuing the discussion. You can always find me at robburke.net.
Today is a landmark launch day for anyone building Rich Internet Applications (also known as RIAs), particularly those that build compelling web-enabled experiences on the Microsoft platform.
We launched 2 new product versions today and it's something all of us at Microsoft are very excited about: Silverlight 3 and Expression Studio 3.
Silverlight 3 represents a big change in how you can build RIAs in .NET. In a nutshell, below are some of the enhancements and new features you can use with Silverlight:
You may have noticed I talked about developer tool support but I didn't spend any time on Designer tools. That's because I want to focus a bit on the design tools in the section below. Expression Studio 3 has been launched (although Expression Blend, the interactive design tool has been launched in RC form for now). There is several cool things we have added into the Expression suite of tools for Version 3 (including full support for Silverlight 3). I want to highlight the new features of two of the tools here, namely Expression Blend and Expression Web:
This is just a very quick summary of some of the things we have delivered in Silverlight 3 and Expression 3. For more detailed info on these items, I encourage you to take a look at the following resources:
Today's MIX09 Day 1 Keynote and Sessions put the 'Software' into Microsoft's 'Software plus Services' vision.
It was the "feet on [presentation layer] ground" bit, made memorable by the energetic call to action delivered by Bill Buxton to get things started. His job was to deliver the "what", and the Blend team is helping provide the "how."
Hotlinked Play-By-Play
Tim Sneath has a thorough and thoughtfully hotlinked play-by-play of the keynote in two parts - here and here. And fellow Canadian Jean-Luc David took over 500 keynote photos which I am sure he will filter before he uploads them here on Flickr, because apparently the man does not need sleep!
In the spirit of Bill's Sketching User Experiences, I drew a mindmap, even though I have all the artistic ability of a slug (see below).
Blend 3 and SketchFlow
The most important words on my entire mind map the morning were "THEY HAVE CHANNELLED BUXTON".
SketchFlow in Blend 3 looks superb. SketchFlow and its player will, unquestionably, change the way I flesh out user experiences to clients and get their feedback. It will be very interesting to see how this tool actually gets used in practice, and evolves as designers and developers embrace it. It's not SketchFlow's intent to replace all other forms of sketching, but rather to augment them with something innovative and useful. I hope it will also improve developer/designer communication, by providing a tool and talking point that both can use.
MIX09 Keynote: ScottGu sporting red
Silverlight 3
Although nothing surprised me per se during the Silverlight 3 announcements, that was a good thing. There are significant improvement in v3, and answers to some (but not all) hopes.
The very promising: Updates like offline capabilities, server data push (caching on client), VisualStateManager invalid states and validation, Merged ResourceDictionaries, etc., that will address important shortcomings and challenges for people building Silverlight line-of-business apps. Things like SaveFileDialog.
The important: Better text (desperately needed), library caching (for reducing download time - how many of my SL2 apps bundle whittled-down bits of the SL Toolkit?), sample data.
The cool: GPU support (opt-in @ plug-in and control levels). Multitouch support. Perspective 3D, which will be much more approachable than the 3D support in WPF, and address most of the scenarios where 3D adds UX value. Pixel Shader effects - which aren't hardware accelerated, but look good. Pixel and Bitmap APIs which open up new scenarios.
The awesome postscript.: Siverlight 3.0 runtime is actually 30k smaller than Silverlight 2! Madness!
The things I hoped for but didn't find in v3: Commanding, Printing (unless you count Nikhil's "make an ASP.NET page and print that" solution), FlowDocument.
The change in messaging that I didn't expect: I attended BradA and NikhilK's Silverlight presentations in the afternoon for more information about building business apps in Silverlight 3, and feel like I need a little more time for all of it to settle in. The core message seems to have shifted a bit: from "you can run Silverlight on any web server"" to "you can run Silverlight anywhere, but it's better together with ASP.NET, and you can use ASP.NET to obtain some things you're looking for in Silverlight, like SEO and Printing." I'm also a little foggy on how some of the this 'prescriptive framework' all fits into where my mind was going with Prism and MVVM for Silverlight, as proposed by the Patterns and Practices group.
IIS Media Services: As someone who's more Dev than IT Pro, I'm not best qualified to comment on this… but adaptive, on-demand and live streaming sounds and looks pretty amazing.
The New Microsoft-ism: It's the verb "to party," which I heard in contexts such as these:
"now we can party over this data we got back", and
"you can go ahead and party on this query now" or in summary
"I'm super-jazzed that we can go ahead and party over this data we've got back from the DataSource."
I expect tomorrow we will party over the cloud. (The cloud and Azure, although mentioned, were not today's focus by any stretch).
And that's why this MIX09 Keynote half-sketch is really upside down, isn't it? I should have left the top side of the page to deal with the part that's "in the clouds!"
MIX09 Day 1 Keynote Mindmap (would make a nice deep zoom)
Today marks a sea change in Microsoft's mobile device strategy and how we are going to market in the smartphone space. This change is fundamental rather than incremental; we have completely re-written the book on how a Windows Phone looks, behaves and interacts with a user. With the MIX10 opening keynote (you can watch the on-demand video here), we introduced the details on how designers and developers can create incredible and immersive solutions for Windows Phone 7 Series.
I don't think I can stress how different this new offering is to not only our previous smartphone offerings, but also how different Windows Phone 7 Series is compared to the most popular smartphone competitors on the market today. In making the user central to the experience, the Windows Phone 7 Series product team has created a product that is productive, focused and fun to use.
Some of the things we have announced are:
The fact that the application model leverages Silverlight and XNA is significant in that you can reuse your skillsets that you have acquired building regular Silverlight apps and XNA-enabled games. This means that if you have built Silverlight applications or XNA games in the past, you'll find the application creation process very familiar and will allow you to hit the ground running.
Below are some helpful resource links that you can use to learn more about Windows Phone 7 Series application development and actually start building your apps right now:
Happy Windows Phone 7 Series app building!
Being a mobile developer over the past 4 years has been an interesting experience. With the advent of modern smartphones with differentiate experiences, we found out that not only is there a viable market for great apps, but that market is booming and very competitive. We have seen mobile apps that have literally changed the way we interact, live our lives and found ways to fill the lulls in our day with experiences that are both fun and addictive. And along the way, we all seemed to figure out that finding a center of gravity for all the apps within a mobile platform was an effective way to make an app popular by consumers and monetize the efforts of the developer as a result.
During that time, the web has evolved a great deal as well. The debates over which plug-ins were best were fought and then along came HTML5 (or rather the promise of HTML5) that many believe will fundamentally change the way we see the web and how we interact with content on the internet. Even though HTML5 is in its infancy (it's not even a ratified set of standards from the W3C yet and likely won't be for a while yet!), already we are seeing some very interesting examples of what HTML5 can bring. Frankly, this is game changing stuff.
As HTML5 standardization marches on, becoming more popular for web developers/designers and as more and more people start building native mobile apps, it seems that a line in the sand is forming between the pro-HTML5 and pro-App groups. There is a polarity that is appearing between the two and we are starting to see a sentiment that the two camps are becoming mutually exclusive (adopt one or the other, but not both).
There is a decent argument being made by both camps. HTML5 enthusiasts are advocating that mobile experiences should turn into HTML5 websites that can be made to look and feel exactly like mobile apps native to the smartphone platform in question. They also advocate it as a way to centralize administration and maintenance of the experience (change once on the server and the new experience is delivered to anyone and everyone without the need to download an update). The fact that HTML5 is being created as a set of standards is very compelling as it allows developers and designers the ability to design their web-based experience without having to deal with the vagaries found in each browser. Given that most modern mobile platforms have a good HTML5 story around their browsers (either today or in future direction of their browsers), it's a strong argument. The other side of the coin is that the set of standards that are commonly referred to as HTML5 won't be ratified until 2014 at the earliest. There is also no guarantee that each of the major browsers will interpret the standard the same way which could negate the benefits of the "write once, display on any browser" vision of HTML5.
The pro-native app enthusiasts, on the other hand are make a great point in that the development platforms for their apps are rich, well-documented, support rapid dev cycles and a centralized store where smartphone users can easily find, install and socialize the apps they like. Apps that are native to the platform can take full advantage of the features that the platform vendor has exposed, leading to incredible innovation. Finally, apps found in a marketplace have the advantage of marketing support that comes out of the box. Data shows that being featured in a marketplace creates a huge spike in downloads and revenue that has the opportunity to be sustained over long periods of time. The negatives for native apps include the need to share revenue with the marketplace the app resides in as well as the app being subject to the terms and conditions of that marketplace with the risk of being pulled with only short notice.
So who is right? Well, you could say both are. They both have valid arguments and the positives for each are tangible while the negatives are equally relevant. I would also say that combining the two (a native smartphone app leveraging HTML5) is equally right and should receive more consideration than it currently is getting.
To make my case, let's consider the Windows Phone 7 Codename Mango platform (I use Mango instead of the original WP7 platform as Mango introduces IE9, an HTML5-ready browser, while the original WP7 platform used a browser that was a hybrid of IE7 and IE8 which are not HTML5-ready). For example, using the Qantas demo that was seen in Joe Belfiore's keynote at MIX11, re-imagine the implementation of the app Qantas built as a native Mango app that utilizes a browser control within the app to deliver a rich, web-hosted experience via an HTML5 canvas.
The power of HTML5 allows you to create a truly immersive experience that is hosted purely within the browser. If you are a registered WP7 developer on the App Hub and you have downloaded the Mango beta build you can check out its capabilities for HTML5 on a WP7 device (or you could just bring up the emulator that came with the Mango beta dev tools). With Mango, you can leverage the power of IE9 and HTML5 to create amazing apps that can be skinned to fit the look and feel of the Mango platform (i.e.: the metro design language). You can then use this same experience, if you wanted to, on normal desktop browsers or even in other mobile browsers.
Likewise, if you hosted that web experience within a browser control, you could still leverage the amazing features of the Mango platform to create a truly immersive experience that you simply couldn't by only using an HTML5 app in the mobile browser. By using a native app to host the browser control, you could still leverage new features in Mango such as Agents and Alerts, double-sided tiles, fast app switch and even deep app linking.
Even if you were looking to avoid revenue sharing for your paid app within the Marketplace (paid apps are split as a 70/30 with you retaining the 70% portion), you could make your app free in the Marketplace and implement your own in-app purchase mechanism within the HTML5 part of your app (assuming, of course, your app isn't a Mango game, as the Marketplace certification guidelines prohibit any in-app purchase within WP7 games as of the publish date of this post).
So I've made my case for hybrid native/HTML5 apps. I suspect some of you may have different ideas around this, so please let me know what you think!
In my previous post, I spoke of how Silverlight is bringing some great user experiences for viewing the Olympics on the web. While it's likely a large number of people reading this post have seen Silverlight even prior to the Olympics, you may be wondering how you can start learning Silverlight 2 and building compelling web solutions with it yourself.
As you might expect, there are a number of great primers on how to build Silverlight applications. If you're new to Silverlight development, the best place to start is by going to Silverlight.net to get examples of what is available as well as visiting the Get Started tab. It will tell you what you need to start building great Silverlight applications.
For those of you that have already gone through that material, you may also want to take a look at the list of training videos available for free online below. The list was compiled by my colleague Joe Stagner who has a great blog on building web solutions on the Microsoft platform. The list of videos can also be found below:
Happy Learning!
Technorati Tags: Silverlight, Silverlight Training
As a solution provider, the web presents an ever increasing opportunity to grow your business. As more and more customers (and potential customers!) look to the web as a way to broaden their message, increase their own revenue and lower their cost of doing business in general, you have the opportunity to make a real impact to those businesses with the skills you have in building web solutions.
It is for this reason that Microsoft Canada has created the Make Web, Not War Episode 2009 in-person event. We know that Microsoft technologies are only part of a larger ecosystem of web platform technologies out there. What many people may not realize is that Microsoft is playing an ever increasing role in reaching out to web solution providers that aren't traditionally building web software on Windows.
Make Web, Not War Episode 2009 is a 2-city tour reaching out to web solution enthusiasts, whether you build your solutions on Windows or not. The Vancouver stop is on Tuesday, June 2nd and the Toronto stop is on Wednesday, June 10. For details on the specific agenda items for each of these cities, please visit the website but in a nutshell, we have a number of speakers from both enterprise and open source communities speaking about how Windows is a great platform to build web solutions on. It will certainly not be the only platform you will likely build web solutions on, but you may very well find that expanding your skillsets to include providing Windows-based web solutions may well be worth your while.
Value Proposition:
Some of the topics we'll be covering between Vancouver and Toronto:
There is still limited seating available for both Vancouver and Toronto, so if you're interested please register online at Make Web, Not War Episode 2009!
Over the past two weeks, I have been travelling with my colleague Jamie Wakeam across Canada conducting a half-day presentation on how to build Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) on the Microsoft platform. I want to thank everyone who came to our briefings in Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto - the response to the event was overwhelming and we were very happy that it hit on the right topics for you as solution providers.
The topics for this briefing were:
For those of you who were unable to join us, not to worry! There are a few tricks up our sleeve to make sure you can get the information as well. Over the next little while, we will be recording screencasts of the content we presented so you can view the presentation online. Stay tuned for a future blog post with the links to these presentations. In addition to this, we will be conducting a webcast on the content we presented for the Internet Explorer 8 component of the talk on Thursday, October 23, 2008 at 2:00PM ET. You can register for this webcast here.
In addition to these resources that will be made available, you can also download the presentation and associated demo code we showed here.
Technorati Tags: Rich Internet Applications, Microsoft Platform, Silverlight, IE8, Internet Explorer 8, Windows Presentation Foundation, ASP.NET
Do you have a great business idea but don't know where to start? Do you have questions about the process of creating a start-up business but never knew who to ask/ Just curious what the big deal is with the start-up side of technology?? We are proud to introduce a free, new webcast series called Ignite Your Venture that aims to help you understand the in's and out's of the start-up process and give you a forum to ask people with expertise in the start-up ecosystem.
Hosted by Microsoft's very own Angie Lim, Channel Audience Manager for the Microsoft Canada Partner Network and featuring the experts at Intrepid Equity and others, the intent is to bring discuss topics that entrepreneurs often ask and to help provide insight into all things start-up.
The webcasts will run every Wednesday of April 2010 (see the list of webcasts below for details) and registration is free. We look forward to seeing you on these webcasts!
Webcast #1 – Wednesday, April 7th, 2010 from 2:00PM ET to 3:00PM ET: Bring Your Ideas to Life with a Venture Capitalist
Venture capital plays a key part in enabling entrepreneurs to help accelerate their businesses. At the same time, raising funds can be a laborious and intimidating task. In this session, you will gain insight into the capabilities and approaches that venture capitalists value the most. You will learn how to prepare a comprehensive growth plan, and how to approach and engage diverse sources of finance. You will hear a variety of views from key business leaders on how to best help you get the outcome you deserve – the funding you need and an ecosystem of support to help you make the most of it.
Featured Presenters:
Register for this Webcast Here
Webcast #2 – Wednesday, April 14th, 2010 from 2:00PM ET to 3:00PM ET: Finding the Right People to Make the Right Team with Randy Street
In business, you are who you hire. Randy Street, co-author of "Who: The A Method for Hiring", a New York Times, Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek best seller, offers a ground-breaking solution to your #1 business problem - hiring mistakes. In this webinar you will discover a simple 4-step method for hiring the right people that has helped its practitioners to achieve a 90% success rate, gain insights from exclusive interviews with more than 20 billionaires, 60 CEOs, numerous investors, and other thought leaders on the subject of hiring, and also learn the secrets of success for over 300 CEOs who participated in a University of Chicago study.
Featured Presenters:
Webcast #3 – Wednesday, April 21st, 2010 from 2:00PM ET to 3:00PM ET: Helping to Increase Profits with Focus on Channel Engagement & Helping to Accelerate Your Sales
Channel selection, deployment and execution represent a strategic minefield for many companies. This session will focus attention on the critical components of an effective channel engagement strategy. You will learn approaches that help you make the most of every dollar you spend in accessing and engaging customers. You will gain insight into effective methods for assessing which channels to use, and how best to use them. You will hear views from experienced entrepreneurs and channel builders about the most effective ways to drive deal velocity and scale – helping to contribute to the accelerated growth of your business.
Webcast #4 – Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 from 2:00PM ET to 3:00PM ET: Business Lead Generation that Really Delivers
Generating and effectively managing leads, especially when resources are scarce, can be a real business roadblock. In this session, you will learn how to establish a strategic lead generation and management process that accelerates performance and that utilizes resources effectively, particularly in an entrepreneurial environment. You will also discover how to measure the real effectiveness of your lead generation efforts – so that you can ensure every dollar you spend contributes to revenue creation.
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post referencing how you as a developer don't have to be torn between building mobile experiences in HTML5 or native phone apps. In fact, with the upcoming Mango release for Windows Phone, the "better together" story is a strong one that allows you to take advantage of great HTML5 goodness while harnessing that advantages that the native platform provides (like push notifications and live tiles) to create a full, rich experience for users and a manageable one for developers.
To that end, I was very excited to learn that Nitobi, a great Vancouver-based company with a strong history in building mobile development platforms, has announced the release a beta of its popular PhoneGap framework supporting Mango. This is a really big deal, not only for Microsoft, but for you as a mobile developer. PhoneGap is a framework that is already available on platforms such as iOS, Android and Blackberry that allows you to build apps using HTML5/CSS3, JavaScript and native phone resources to create amazing mobile experiences catered to the targeted phone platform.
In a very high-level nutshell, PhoneGap allows developers to create application experiences by building code in HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript and wrapping it in a native phone platform app. PhoneGap generally takes care of the "plumbing" for the web code to communicate with the actual app it is wrapped around. This allows you as a developer to leverage your web skills in creating the app's content and then take advantage of the great, native features that the phone platform itself provides. It is, as I like to call it, a win-win.
There are literally thousands of apps built leveraging PhoneGap across all of the phone platforms available today. This presents a great opportunity for developers with existing PhoneGap apps to port their solutions to Windows Phone Mango. With IE9 as the browser on Mango, the ability to leverage HTML5 and CSS3 capabilities on the phone while merging it with the great native features of Mango brings a new and fresh look for your apps that can reach net new users.
If you're new to PhoneGap but know HTML5 or web development in general, then chances are it's a great place to start if you're interested in building apps for Mango as you can leverage those web skills and then learn how to code in some of the great app offerings that Mango provides.
Oh, and if you know nothing about building Mango apps but you want to know how to start (or know how to code for Windows Phone 7 but want a primer on Mango), the Mango Jumpstart training course is now available on demand! I blogged about the Mango Jumpstart training course a couple of weeks ago. It was a two-day, deep-dive, online training course that was delivered live for free. We have recorded each of the 14 sessions in this two-day course and they are now available for you to watch whenever you want.
The sessions available in this course are as follows:
So, what do you need to do now? Here's a little list that is worth checking out:
If you develop/design public websites for your customers, you likely already know first-hand how important a good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy is to its success. Generating traffic to a website is hard and is downright impossible to do well without making it easy for internet search engines like Bing, Google or Yahoo! to find the content on your site and index it properly for search queries.
Anybody that has been following most of the events I have been presenting of late knows that I think the Microsoft Web Platform Installer (WPI) is kind of a big thing. If you've seen or played with the WPI, you know how useful it can be for laying the groundwork for you to build your web solution on top of. If you haven't seen it yet, it may interest you to watch my webcast on the WPI on-demand here. You may be wondering how the WPI and SEO are linked. Well, today, Microsoft announced a new feature added to the WPI called the IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit. You can download the SEO toolkit on its own from the link, but most web developers/designers building a site hosted on IIS will use the WPI to install it.
The initial announcement of this new feature of IIS came from the blog of Microsoft's corporate VP for the .NET Developer Platform and serious technical wizard, Scott Guthrie. He gives a very detailed tour of the IIS SEO Toolkit in that post so if you want to know the nitty gritty details, I would invite you to take a look at the post.
In a nutshell, the IIS7 SEO Toolkit can:
The IIS7 SEO Toolkit contains:
Below are important links for the IIS7 SEO Toolkit:
So if you're building public websites where traffic is an important consideration, you may want to check this tool out.
Even ten years ago, "experience" was not really something that was given much thought in building software. More often than not the primary goal of a piece of software was simply to display results, or data. How the data or results were displayed was more often a function of technical specifications than it was a matter of user-centric design. That is to say, while the user was often a part of the process of creating specifications for a software solution, the end result was often not differentiated on being tailored to the user, but rather the data. It can be argued that if you polled software publishers ten to fifteen years ago on what user-centric design was, the answer would largely be centered around presenting as much data to a user on a single screen as possible ("less clicks is more productivity"). The end result was focused on process rather than personalization and taking into account how the user works (which is not the same as process).
That line of thinking was certainly acceptable in the past, but things are much different today. As web platforms became richer and aesthetic design became more important to the digital consumer experience, users frankly demanded more of the software they used. Gone now are the days where "battleship grey" is acceptable. Software that is successful in today's market often makes effective use of user-centric principles including the determination of user personas, natural flow of information, content taxonomies, effective and intelligent use of colour, wireframing and storyboards among other things. Making the right experiential decisions in the software design stage has become just as important as making the effort to test the code prior to flipping the switch on a production instance. If that sounds bizarre, think of it this way: what use is the best, most robust software solution if your users hate the way it works for them? If the user doesn't buy into it, the software solution has ultimately failed in its objective.
The phone as a platform is no different, especially in mobile platforms that are truly modern and provide great amounts of feature capabilities out of the box (GPS, modern browser, multitasking, notification engines, etc.). The base experience that the platform provides enables software developers to create an even richer, more user-centric experience with the apps that they build on top of their chosen mobile platform. With Windows Phone, Microsoft has built a unique base experience (in Metro) that software publishers can leverage to create applications that truly raise the expectations bar for users and the apps they install on their Windows Phone device. The rest of this post focuses on the things that you as a developer/designer can do to create a truly amazing and user-centric experience within your Windows Phone apps.
Fresh and Simple
Windows Phone represents simplicity in design. When describing the principles of modern Windows Phone design, you may have seen phrases like "fierce reduction of unnecessary elements", "fast and responsive", "focus on primary tasks" and "content, not chrome". All of these phrases revolve around the idea of making it easy for users to find the information they need.
When wireframing your app, think of the following things:
App Navigation
Navigation in your Windows Phone app should respect the flow of the Windows Phone platform. Always use the hardware back button for going to the previous screen and never create a navigation structure that breaks the back button stack. Simply put, this will cause the app to fail certification. It's also the most common reason why apps fail the certification process in the first place.
Below are some of the more important considerations around Windows Phone app navigation:
Creating a User Journey
It's one thing to think you have a killer app idea. It's an entirely other thing whether that idea translates into a popular app. Your intent as an app developer or designer is to create an experience that is lasting and meaningful. Actually, that is the goal of not only mobile app creators but of any app creator in general. Aside from solutions that are considered "one-offs" or temporary solutions, what really drives us all is to create apps that frankly everyone wants. Your ultimate goal for success may differ from someone else (e.g.: "I want to become rich from the revenue from my app" vs. "I want to be popular because everyone downloads my app" vs. "I want to make a positive impact on someone's life because they use my app"), but the fundamental desire is the same: "I want people to download and use my app".
So when you are thinking of your app, there are three major questions you need to ask yourself before you hit Visual Studio and Blend:
If the answer to any of those questions is no and your intent is to make your app as popular and relevant as possible, then you probably need to think a little longer on the problem space your app is trying to solve for.
Keep in mind this general mobile app statistic: The average mobile application is opened by a user once. Only around 1% of all mobile apps are used regularly long term.
So how do you entice users to first download your app, then open your app more than once? There is no one right answer, of course, but there are three guiding principles that greatly enhance your chances of getting to that goal:
[Cross-posted from the Canadian Developer Blog which I also blog on]
[Cross-posted from the Canadian Developer Blog which I also blog on]
If you build software solutions for a living, manage professional development teams or lead a software development company, there are a number of things that you are probably thinking about consistently on a day to day basis.
Two of these items likely include:
If you build solutions that involve the end user making use of a web browser, you likely find both of the above items extremely challenging. THis is particularly true given the very competitive market for web browsers out there. There are a number of high-quality, high market share browsers out there today (including Internet Explorer and Firefox among others) that provide a great deal of functionality. In many cases your web solution must support the majority of those browsers, which increases the complexities in creating compelling web solutions. The good news is that with IE8 some of the pressure on productivity and innovation can be alleviated.
There are a number of new capabilities within IE8 that may surprise you in not only how they support you but enhance your business and work. If you have used the Beta 1 release of Internet Explorer 8 you likely saw a few of these items, while as others are found in the new Beta 2 release which you may not have seen.
Productivity Features
One of the most talked about features is web standards compliance. This is a big deal for a number of reasons. If you are web application developer/provider, you are likely acutely aware of the pain caused by targeting multiple browser platforms. While admittedly Microsoft's past experience with web standards on Internet Explorer has been spotty, IE8 changes the game in this respect. The development team for IE8 made standards-based browsing a priority when building this browser. Why is this important? Well, if you are able to target code to published standards, this eliminates the need for some of the special exception testing of your code under Internet Explorer. If you code to standards, it will work in IE8. Some of the standards supported in IE8 are found in the list below:
Figure 1: A view of the IE8 developer tools
Other productivity gains that Internet Explorer provides include:
Driving Innovation
There are a number of features in IE8 that allow you to take your web solution to the next level. One such feature is called Web Slices. A Web Slice is an extension of your web solution that sits on the Favourites bar on IE8. It allows you to push a dynamic "slice" of content to the browser without the user having to navigate to the site. This allows you to create "at your fingertips" miniature applications relevant to your application (such as product trackers and dashboard/KPI metrics) and provides users with a compelling reason to use your application.
Figure 2: An example of a Web Slice tracking products on eBay
Another example of how IE8 allows you to build very innovative and different solutions is the use of Accelerators on IE8. Accelerators are features on the browser that enhance the experience of your users by providing useful utilities that can be used with your application at the user's fingertips. A great example of this would be the ability to get a map of an address as a hover button with no extra coding required on your part. This allows you to create truly compelling mashups for your web solution without the need to dramatically increase the coding required on the part of your development team.
Figure 3: Using the Microsoft Live Maps Accelerator
Finally (although not the last new innovative feature of IE8), there is the InPrivate feature within IE8. This feature allows users to define which websites the browser should not keep information on (such as history, cookies and temporary files). This is a very compelling feature for applications that handle sensitive or private data. By using IE8, you can give your customers and users further assurances that the data stored by the browser for that session will be completely removed and not accessible once the user has finished using the application.
So as you can see, Internet Explorer 8 represents more than a "typical browser release". There's a lot under the covers in IE8 for not only your users but also for your development and business marketing teams. We truly believe that IE8 changes the game for web solutions providers such as yourselves and can help you grow your business by allowing you to harness the power of the various new features in IE8 today.
While other browsers such as Firefox are garnering a great deal of attention for being great browsers (and with good reason), IE8 has stepped up to this challenge and brought a world-class browser to the user.
Useful Resource Links for Developing Applications for IE8
Technorati Tags: IE8, Internet Explorer 8, Web Development
Late last week, Scott Guthrie announced the availability of the Silverlight 2 Release Candidate. This is pretty exciting news as it represents a significant milestone towards the go-live of Silverlight 2.
The RC release of Silverlight 2 represents a developer release with the intent of providing a glimpse of what the final Silverlight 2 product will look and behave like prior to its release. The reason this is being done in this particular case is that so that Silverlight solutions built with the Beta code can be tested with bits that are considered very close to the go-live release to fix anything that will break with the new version.
You can download the RC bits for Silverlight 2 here.
For specific information on the breaking changes the RC bits introduce, you should check here and here.
And before you ask when Silverlight 2 goes live, don't ask me because I'm not allowed to tell anyone. :)
A couple of weeks ago, Microsoft released Silverlight 2 as a Release to Web (RTW) product. For us at Microsoft, this was exciting news because it represented a major milestone in presenting to you as solution developers a platform for building rich, immersive experiences on the web.
I'm not going to go through each of the features in Silverlight 2 that you have probably heard already from various sources, but I did want to take some time to talk about a few of the things that you may have missed in all the hype and announcements or not realized was possible with Silverlight in general.
Tool Support
Visual Web Developer 2008 Express
Visual Web Developer 2008 Express
It used to be that you needed Visual Studio Standard or above to be able to create Silverlight applications with minimal configuration and the like. Sure, you could employ certain hacks to make Silverlight work in other tools but this was clunky and didn't lead to a great experience. With the release of Silverlight 2 RTW, you now have the ability to create Silverlight 2 applications not only with Visual Studio Standard and above, but now also with Visual Web Developer 2008 Express (which is entirely free, both to download and use without royalties).
If you use Eclipse as your development UI of choice, you now have the ability to build Silverlight 2 applications using the Eclipse Tools for Silverlight plug-in. This is the result of a partnership Microsoft created with Eclipse plug-in maker Soyatec and represents a significant step forward in Microsoft's commitment to interoperability.
Expression Blend 2 SP1
Many of you who build Silverlight 2 applications probably already know this but XAML, while extremely flexible and complete with respect to expressing user interfaces for Silverlight (and WPF for that matter) is not particularly easy to manipulate, the WPF Designer feature in Visual Studio 2008 notwithstanding. This is especially true if you plan on providing animation capabilities in your Silverlight application. For this reason, Microsoft created Expression Blend which is an interactive design tool for building great UI's for WPF and Silverlight. The problem with this tool is that you needed a special version of Expression Blend 2 in the past in order to build Silverlight applications with it. With the release of Silverlight 2, Microsoft has forgone this separate version of Blend 2 and create Expression Blend 2 SP1 which provides out-of-the-box Silverlight support. As the SP1 designation alludes to, this is a free update to anyone that has a license of Expression Blend 2. You can download SP1 for Blend 2 here.
Silverlight Toolkit
The Silverlight Toolkit is a collection of controls you can use within your Silverlight 2 application. While not yet complete (we expect to have around 100 controls within the toolkit when all is said and done), there are a large number of extremely important controls that are available in the toolkit now, including: TreeView, DockPanel, WrapPanel, ViewBox, Expander, NumericUpDown and Autocomplete. Some of the future controls that will be included in the toolkit are DataGrid, Radio Button, CheckBox and DatePickerCharting among others.
It used to be that you needed Visual Studio Standard or above to be able to create Silverlight applications with minimal configuration and the like. Sure, you could employ certain hacks to make Silverlight work in other tools but this was clunky and didn't lead to a great experience. With the release of Silverlight 2 RTW, you now have the ability to create Silverlight 2 applications not only with Visual Studio Standard and above, but now also with Visual Web Developer 2008 Express (which is entirely free, both to download and use without royalties).
If you use Eclipse as your development UI of choice, you now have the ability to build Silverlight 2 applications using the Eclipse Tools for Silverlight plug-in. This is the result of a partnership Microsoft created with Eclipse plug-in maker Soyatec and represents a significant step forward in Microsoft's commitment to interoperability.
Expression Blend 2 SP1
Many of you who build Silverlight 2 applications probably already know this but XAML, while extremely flexible and complete with respect to expressing user interfaces for Silverlight (and WPF for that matter) is not particularly easy to manipulate, the WPF Designer feature in Visual Studio 2008 notwithstanding. This is especially true if you plan on providing animation capabilities in your Silverlight application. For this reason, Microsoft created Expression Blend which is an interactive design tool for building great UI's for WPF and Silverlight. The problem with this tool is that you needed a special version of Expression Blend 2 in the past in order to build Silverlight applications with it. With the release of Silverlight 2, Microsoft has forgone this separate version of Blend 2 and create Expression Blend 2 SP1 which provides out-of-the-box Silverlight support. As the SP1 designation alludes to, this is a free update to anyone that has a license of Expression Blend 2. You can download SP1 for Blend 2 here.
Silverlight Toolkit
The Silverlight Toolkit is a collection of controls you can use within your Silverlight 2 application. While not yet complete (we expect to have around 100 controls within the toolkit when all is said and done), there are a large number of extremely important controls that are available in the toolkit now, including: TreeView, DockPanel, WrapPanel, ViewBox, Expander, NumericUpDown and Autocomplete. Some of the future controls that will be included in the toolkit are DataGrid, Radio Button, CheckBox and DatePickerCharting among others.
I mentioned XAML a little earlier in this post, but I wanted to mention something else about it. While it is true that XAML is extremely rich and capable in expressing user interfaces in XML format, that isn't the half of it's real power. What makes XAML truly special is that it is an equal citizen with .NET code in defining objects and properties for your Silverlight application. That means that any object, like a Button created in the XAML code can be manipulated through .NET code. Likewise, .NET code can create a Button object to be used in the presentation layer of your Silverlight application.
I mentioned XAML a little earlier in this post, but I wanted to mention something else about it. While it is true that XAML is extremely rich and capable in expressing user interfaces in XML format, that isn't the half of it's real power. What makes XAML truly special is that it is an equal citizen with .NET code in defining objects and properties for your Silverlight application. That means that any object, like a Button created in the XAML code can be manipulated through .NET code. Likewise, .NET code can create a Button object to be used in the presentation layer of your Silverlight application.
Alternative Communication Methods
While HTTP is a great, general protocol for most things available on the web, there are occasions where it doesn't make the best medium for transmitting information back and forth. If you have a Silverlight application that does a great deal of talking back and forth with the server, you have the opportunity to take advantage of the power of sockets in Silverlight in order to do that communication.
Another technology you can use in your Silverlight applications is Windows Communications Foundation (WCF). WCF allows you to build Silverlight applications that have robust communication capabilities back to the server. While you don't need WCF for a Silverlight application to communicate with a server, the technology provides a great deal of goodness (like secure message transfer, custom protocol creation and robust web services implementation) that you can use with your applications. There are some good tutorials on WCF on Silverlight starting here (it's a five-part series of screencasts showing you what you need to know) and there's a great blog on WCF/Web Services enabled Silverlight applications here.
.NET Language Support
Because the Silverlight 2 plug-in for the browser contains a factored subset of the .NET framework, you can build your Silverlight apps using the power of .NET (and with .NET skills you may already have if you build .NET-enabled solutions). Because the .NET framework is largely language-independent, this means you can code your Silverlight application in your language of choice. This includes C#, VB.NET, IronRuby, IronPython, JScript, etc. The choice is yours.
Alternative Communication Methods
While HTTP is a great, general protocol for most things available on the web, there are occasions where it doesn't make the best medium for transmitting information back and forth. If you have a Silverlight application that does a great deal of talking back and forth with the server, you have the opportunity to take advantage of the power of sockets in Silverlight in order to do that communication.
Another technology you can use in your Silverlight applications is Windows Communications Foundation (WCF). WCF allows you to build Silverlight applications that have robust communication capabilities back to the server. While you don't need WCF for a Silverlight application to communicate with a server, the technology provides a great deal of goodness (like secure message transfer, custom protocol creation and robust web services implementation) that you can use with your applications. There are some good tutorials on WCF on Silverlight starting here (it's a five-part series of screencasts showing you what you need to know) and there's a great blog on WCF/Web Services enabled Silverlight applications here.
.NET Language Support
Because the Silverlight 2 plug-in for the browser contains a factored subset of the .NET framework, you can build your Silverlight apps using the power of .NET (and with .NET skills you may already have if you build .NET-enabled solutions). Because the .NET framework is largely language-independent, this means you can code your Silverlight application in your language of choice. This includes C#, VB.NET, IronRuby, IronPython, JScript, etc. The choice is yours.
These are just some of the features of Silverlight 2 that I think are important but may not be getting as much airtime as other features. I hope you found some of these points interesting and enlightening.
Are you building a Silverlight 2 application? Let me know!
Technorati Tags: Rich Internet Applications, Silverlight
I don't think anyone on the planet would dispute that the Olympics are a huge event attracting many people from a number of different walks of life and for a variety of reasons. In a nutshell, the Olympics as an event is "big business". This is especially true with respect to media coverage. Every major news outlet on the globe converges on the host city to cover the biggest sporting spectacle in the world.
While "traditional" media outlets continue to carry the lion's share of audience coverage in the form of television and print media, we are seeing a larger share of Olympic coverage being carried on the internet and in various different forms. A lot of this has to do with providing the public with choice on how they consume the content. The internet is different than other media channels as it provides a great deal of flexibility for people to choose what content they wish to consume and how they will consume it. The immediacy of this choice is driving change in how people are watching the Beijing Olympics in particular.
Unlike traditional print media or television coverage, the user is able to view or read coverage of the Olympics with a few clicks of a mouse. While this in itself is not new, I think it's fair to say we're seeing a lot more people taking the internet more seriously with respect to being a premiere choice for keeping up to speed on the Olympics.
Take, for example, Canada and the United States. Television coverage of the Olympics in these countries is provided by the CBC (in Canada) and by NBC (in the U.S.). Both have exclusive broadcasting rights for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and they are providing a great deal of coverage on the internet in addition to their usual television broadcasting schedule. That, it seems, was a good bet because early results are showing incredible growth for the internet as a core media channel for these two broadcasting companies for the Olympics. There is a great article by William Houston on Canada's The Globe and Mail newspaper's website describing the increased traffic. Basically, the CBC in Canada has been averaging around double the amount of traffic on their site compared to the same time last year and NBC in the U.S. has enjoyed much more traffic on it's site in four days of Olympic coverage than the entire amount of internet traffic for the Athens Olympics.
So why is this? Well, the prevalence of the internet around the world continues to grow, therefore exposing a larger global population to the online coverage. Also, the element of choice is a truly powerful one. NBC, for example, is streaming live video of all events from the Olympics to anyone in the U.S. (restricted due to Olympic licensing issues) who wants to watch it through Microsoft's new Silverlight technology. They have built their streaming video capabilities to include other great features such as Picture-in-Picture and additional content (such as archived footage and Olympian bio's) available at a click of a mouse. The CBC is providing streaming video of their broadcast online via Flash and providing access to similar non-live content as NBC.
The true message through all of this, however, is fairly easy to see. The web has become a core platform for driving audiences to content and the barrier of entry for this platform (i.e.: availability of the internet has reached critical mass and continues to grow) is crumbling. The real challenge, however, will be to provide audiences with a compelling reason to want to go to their web properties ahead of other, more traditional media channels. As the NBC Olympics web portal demonstrates, a rich interface allowing users a choice in how they consume content is a sure way to drive your brand and message to a large and continually growing audience.
Technorati Tags: NBC Olympics, Silverlight
[Cross-posted from the Canadian Developer Blog, which I also contribute to]
I love Football Sunday. On a Sunday when I have nothing else more important to do there's nothing more enjoyable to me than sitting down and watching a great game of football. Some of you may be looking at this post already thinking I'm crazy; football is not exactly related to development and I've heard more than once from my friends that the sport is as slow as molasses and about as fun as watching paint dry. Well, the thing that I really love about football is figuring out the strategies being employed by each team in the field. Football is a game of strategy and it's often the team with the best strategy executing well on that strategy that wins the game.
It's the topic of strategy that is linking football to the work you do as a developer or as a software solutions provider that is the importance of this post. I'm sure most of you will agree that while your efforts in solving the business problem at hand is critical to the success of your software development project, if you pick the wrong technology platform to start off with, you have a tough hole to climb out of.
The art of software development is a truly pragmatic one. When you are faced with solving a business challenge with software, you need to be objective in choosing the technologies to implement your solution. As the saying goes, "the right tool for the right job". It's this precise moment in software delivery and development that I find the most interesting and when I talk to small business solution providers about their challenges, it's these conversations that I find the most fun to talk about.
Deciding on the right software development platform is never an easy one as every business challenge is different in either subtle or not-so-subtle ways. That's why I love to see the many success stories of solution providers picking the Microsoft platform to build their solutions and delivering a great software experience to their customer with our tools. It's rewarding to them and rewarding to me to see their success take flight.
I'd like to share with you two short examples of solution providers picking our platform. Both are different in their approach and goals, but both made a strategic choice to use Microsoft technologies to build their solutions are enjoying the success of their efforts as a result.
The first is MBC, a solutions provider and hoster based in Richmond Hill, Ontario. The were approached by Student Price Card, a business that offers discounts to a wide variety of stores and services for college and university students. They were in need of a robust e-commerce site that included an online portal and email distribution system for their members. MBC proposed a solution using ASP.NET 3.0, SQL Server 2005 and Exchange 2007, all built with Visual Studio 2008 and hosted on Windows Server 2008. The resulting online portal is here. The benefits the customer has derived from this has been dramatically increased uptime from the previous version of the portal, no IT staff to support it (as it is hosted), the ability to send over 1 million emails a month to their registered member list and a much better user experience for their users.
The second story I'd like to share with you is from Pink and Yellow Media, a design agency based out of Vancouver. This agency provides a number of design services for their customers, including the creation of dynamic e-commerce sites and skinning of blogs. Morten Rand-Hendriksen, co-CEO of the company, was introduced to Microsoft's Expression Web product at the launch of the first version and decided to give it a try. The result was iZufall.com, a website for a customer that built the game called Zufall. With the exception of the photographs used on the site (which he used Adobe Photoshop to edit), the entire site was built using Expression Web and Expression Design. Morten has documented his entire journey on his blog (starting with the very first post!), including the good and the ugly with the first version of the tool. Since then, he has used Expression Web and Expression Design to create a number of other sites for his customers, including Nature's Carpet (after the Flash intro page), a web store for all-natural carpeting and flooring, and several custom designs for blogs (mainly using WordPress as the back end engine). The truly interesting thing about this was Morten's work in documenting his experience with the Expression tools online got him noticed by the Expression product team in Redmond who have asked him to write a book on Expression Web as a result. The book, Teach Yourself Microsoft Expression Web 2 in 24 Hours, will be published soon.
The first is MBC, a solutions provider and hoster based in Richmond Hill, Ontario. The were approached by Student Price Card, a business that offers discounts to a wide variety of stores and services for college and university students. They were in need of a robust e-commerce site that included an online portal and email distribution system for their members. MBC proposed a solution using ASP.NET 3.0, SQL Server 2005 and Exchange 2007, all built with Visual Studio 2008 and hosted on Windows Server 2008. The resulting online portal is here. The benefits the customer has derived from this has been dramatically increased uptime from the previous version of the portal, no IT staff to support it (as it is hosted), the ability to send over 1 million emails a month to their registered member list and a much better user experience for their users.
The second story I'd like to share with you is from Pink and Yellow Media, a design agency based out of Vancouver. This agency provides a number of design services for their customers, including the creation of dynamic e-commerce sites and skinning of blogs. Morten Rand-Hendriksen, co-CEO of the company, was introduced to Microsoft's Expression Web product at the launch of the first version and decided to give it a try. The result was iZufall.com, a website for a customer that built the game called Zufall. With the exception of the photographs used on the site (which he used Adobe Photoshop to edit), the entire site was built using Expression Web and Expression Design. Morten has documented his entire journey on his blog (starting with the very first post!), including the good and the ugly with the first version of the tool. Since then, he has used Expression Web and Expression Design to create a number of other sites for his customers, including Nature's Carpet (after the Flash intro page), a web store for all-natural carpeting and flooring, and several custom designs for blogs (mainly using WordPress as the back end engine). The truly interesting thing about this was Morten's work in documenting his experience with the Expression tools online got him noticed by the Expression product team in Redmond who have asked him to write a book on Expression Web as a result. The book, Teach Yourself Microsoft Expression Web 2 in 24 Hours, will be published soon.
These are just two of the Canadian small business solution providers doing great things with our platform and tools. There are many others out there that are making strategic choices to build on our platform as well and I find it so rewarding as a Microsoft Canada employee to see so many Canadian small businesses choosing our platform and reaping the rewards in doing so.
As you can probably guess, we're on the verge of adding some new and very important platform technologies to our product lines that will help you as a solution provider to build amazing solutions for your customers and business. I can't wait to see what new and innovative solutions you come up with! If you feel like sharing your solution story with us, please let us know by emailing us or leaving a comment for this post!
Technorati Tags: Microsoft Platform


text: We have spent the past month in East Africa and now South Africa. Today, we finished the 4 day Oystercatcher Trail walk and drove to Jeffereys Bay. We purchased take away pizzas and salad. The latter was fresh and had plenty of variety. It was called a Greek salad but bore little resemblance to the real product. It was, however,... More

subset: commoncrawl


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July 13, 2014
When I first heard about Andy, I had no doubt that there would be no justice coming from the D.A.'s office; it will come from the people. Expecting the D.A. to provide justice in this case would be like asking Israel to stop shelling Palestine. The oppressors will never police themselves. But what did give me hope was seeing the people rising up in Santa Rosa demanding an end to state terror.
January 30, 2014
In what increasingly appears to be a concerted whitewash of the Oct. 22 shooting of 13-year old Andy Lopez by Deputy Sheriff Erick Gelhaus, DA Jill Ravitch and the Santa Rosa Police Department (SRPD) continued to maintain an impenetrable cloak of silence blanketing the "investigative report" into Deputy Gelhaus' murder of toy gun touting Andy Lopez.


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I was challenged by my boss to brew a beer using Salutti, an aloe drink popular with Hispanics (my boss is Puerto Rican).
Here's the ingredient list from the label:
Water, fructose, aloe vera gel, sugar, maltodextrin, calcium lactate, aloe flavor, citric acid, glycine, sodium citrate, kelcogel, L-ascorbic acid.
I'm planning to go simple for a 3 gallon batch: 4-5lbs of pilsner malt, just enough hops to bitter and a little for aroma. I plan on adding 1.5L of Salutti at flameout. American Ale 1056 yeast.
Anyone ever use this stuff to brew?
Is there anything in the ingredient list that will ruin a beer?
the following are definitely ok: Water, fructose, aloe vera gel, sugar, maltodextrin, aloe flavor, citric acid, ascorbic acid.
i don't know about the others. calcium lactate sounds harmless.
Dare i ask what you ended up using and how it came out? im looking into doing an Aloe Mead possibly.
Bright fruitless orchards
Brown sun catchers drift along
Sippin hard cider
Never got around to it. I kept that bottle for awhile too. I finally ended up drinking it.
Do you have a source of Aloe plants you can cut back? Well established aloe can get pretty big. If you have a nice expeller press juicer you could run the aloe into it and get fresh aloe juice. That's what I would do.
It must be an expeller press and not a centrifugal juicer. Good luck. Any plant nursery in your area should have some aloe.


text: Girl Scouts By Lynn Quale January 6, 2012 12:36 PM Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Category: Share on Facebook Share on Twitter More Leave a comment Send to a friend! Print this page Pin it! Reddit This! Share on Tumblr! More from 98 Country See Hunter Hayes Perform 'Tattoo' at Iconic Grand Ole Opry [Exclusive Premiere] Weekend Box Office Report: 'Guardians of the Galaxy' Trounces All Newcomers Kristian Bush Reveals Sugarland Songs Tell a Story Severe Thunderstorm Watch In Effect Until 2 AM Best of the Web


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Posts tagged auto-disc-changer
Ben Heck creates automatic Xbox 360 disc changer
Ben Heck is truly a master of manipulating manufactured goods, and nothing proves his mechanical prowess more than his latest creation: an Xbox 360 disc changer. Heck has taken the 360's DVD drive and placed it inside a heavily modified Sony CD changer. He then uses an Arduino microcontroller to...
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Horse racing at Lone Star Park
Lone Star Park has thorobred horse racing and it is located in the city of Grand Prarie not too far from Dallas. Watching and feeling the ground shake under my feet as I was at the finishing line for the Quarter horse races.
My fondest memory was losing my money, just like in Las Vegas. But, it is very much fun.


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Red Wings' Damien Brunner gets last laugh with redemptive winner
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Made my day! So sweet! :D
- Check out Corridor40 for the latest in Fashion & more. Tell 'em I sent you! ;)
Made my day! So sweet! :D
352 Followers Deep!
Thank you to each & every one of you. I appreciate the love & support. xo
I see Wiz & I got something in common.
(Source: transcend-forever, via ilikebeautifulthings)
I know right?! I died when I saw it & YES I totally agree! ;)
Salvation Army Thrift Store Haul - January 31, 2011
Hi lovelies! Yesterday after class, I decided to do some thrift shopping at my local Salvation Army. If you know me, you know that I absolutely LOVE thrift shopping & bargains. One of the main reasons I love the Salvation Army is that they have some really awesome sweaters & jackets. Every time I go there, I always seem to find something interesting. Yesterday was no different. I left with 2 printed sweaters & 1 lace & floral blazer. What's even more amazing is the price I got these 3 items for because there was a 50% off deal on clothes!
Check out the pieces below & how much I got them for. =]
(BELOW: Close Up)
Like I stated earlier in this post, I got these items for half off so the grand total was
Crazy, right? So happy with my purchases & even happier with the money I saved. Love it! ;)
Hey loves! I just created a Tumblr dedicated to all things HELLZ. Check it out & follow if you'd like. Spread the word! Thanks!
(Source: saucyfbaby)
Ayeeeee, that's me! haha. ^_^
(Source: styleisexpression)
OMGAH, Senso sent me a request on Facebook. AAAAHHHH!
They have AMAZING shoes! ♥♥♥♥♥
If you asked people what I thought about you, they'd tell you how much you mean to me & how much I care about you. EVERYBODY in my life knows. Matter of fact, they won't shut up about you.
"How's he doing?" "How come he doesn't call you anymore?" "What happened to you guys?"
It hurts. Why? Because it's a constant reminder that we're still not together.
Memories of inside jokes, talks we had, laughs we shared, & times when you held me as I laid on your chest, make it hard to forget you. No matter how hard I try, I just can't.
As much as it hurts me that we're not as close as we used to be, I know that if it's meant to be, it WILL be.
(Source: saucyfbaby)
Now, every time I feel like something's not right, I fall back.
I guess that's just my way of protecting myself now.
I used to always wanna keep trying & hope for the best.
Now, I expect the worst. Now, I run away to prevent
myself from getting hurt again. I used to always say,
"It's better to know that it would never work out than to not
know at all."
I can't believe that changed . . .
(Source: saucyfbaby)
(Source: saucyfbaby)
HUFFER "Earth Raiser" Jacket that I won from 722 Figueroa & Mondette.
I won it for my sister, Joanna & she loves it! It's so chic & creates a great silhouette with the cinched belt. The hood is detachable as well.
He had a stroke & isn't doing too well. It breaks my heart that my family & I can't be by his bedside in the Philippines. All we can do is pray & hope for the best. My family & I haven't seen him since we moved to the US in 1996. I lost my Grandma (from my Mama's side) two years ago. I don't want to lose my Grandfather (from my Dad's side) too. So please, pray for him. Thank you so much.
(Source: saucyfbaby)
Started off 2011 by lighting gold sparklers with my brother & sister.
I hope that 2011 will be just as bright! (Corny, much? Bahahaha!) Anyways, I'm excited to see what the new year has in store for me & my loved ones! :D
Happy New Year lovelies! xoxoxo