- Posted by christhi on July 10, 2009
No use rehashing what the silverlight team and blog have already kind provided for us but if you haven't heard Silverlight 3 and Expression 3 with Sketchflow have been release as of 12:30am CST today! To get started go to
http://silverlight.net/getstarted/ from here you can download an evaluation of Expression 3 and even get Sketchflow. For those since Mix who have been dying to see play with Sketchflow here is your chance. Enjoy.
- Posted by christhi on July 7, 2009
Today, July 7th, at 12PM CT, 1PM ET – We are broadcasting the Michael Jackson memorial, live in HD from the Staples Center in Los Angeles using IIS Smooth Streaming and Silverlight to the world. This is the same technology (IIS Smooth Streaming and Silverlight) that was used to bring you the Olympics.
http://inmusic.ca/news_and_features/Michael_Jackson is the link to the page where the embedded player experience and is the URL you should share and use.
- Posted by christhi on June 3, 2009
One of the best quotes we got during Internet Week while hosting the Microsoft Experience in New York City and our reception party was "you can tell this is a party thrown by a new yorker and doesn't seem like a Microsoft party" which we took as a serious compliment. We didn't want to throw a run of the mill corporate party but wanted it to truly seem like a art exhibit deliving digital art with a mix of technology such as surface, touchsmarts, etc. The party was a hit in fact the quote I just mentioned came from Mark Cuban himself. Yes he graced his presence at our party, seemed to enjoy himself, and was really a great guy (very friendly and unpretentious).
Here is to a great week of demos and New York vibe.
- Posted by christhi on June 1, 2009
Today Microsoft opens The Microsoft Gallery for Internet Week New York 2009 in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District to showcase digital and digital inspired art alongside Microsoft and Microsoft partner technologies such as multi-touch computing and rich internet experiences.
Where: 414 W. 14thStreet – New York, NY
When: June 2-8, 2009; 12PM –8PM each day
You are invited to attend The Microsoft Gallery during Internet Week New York 2009 in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. Microsoft will temporarily inhabit the retail space of 414 West 14thStreet, between 9thAvenue and Washington Street, and be open to the public daily for the duration of Internet Week New York 2009; June 1 – 8 at 12:00 Noon. The Microsoft Gallery will celebrate art and technology by showcasing digital and digital inspired art alongside Microsoft and Microsoft partner technologies such as multi-touch computing and rich internet experiences to demonstrate emerging technologies, innovation, as well as, inspire the local technology industry of New York City.
To help bring art and technology to life, The Microsoft Gallery will display innovative Microsoft and Microsoft partner technologies such as Microsoft Silverlight and Expression Studio for designing and delivering rich internet experiences, Microsoft Surface for multi-touch social computing, HP TouchSmart for intuitive multi-touch personal computing, and XBOX 360 gaming consoles for high fidelity gaming and entertainment. As well, the work of digital artists Jonathan Zimmerman and Yorgo Alexopoulos will be showcased with multiple high-resolution projectors and LCD displays. There will also be a number of other digital or digital inspired works presented as video, sculpture, and mix media.
Come Join Us! Bring your family, your customers & your friends to see what it is all about and be a part of Internet Week in NYC.
The Microsoft Gallery will host a number of daily presentations and panel discussions from industry thought leaders at digital agencies such as Schematic, Cynergy Systems,and Vectorform. Microsoft will host startup focused sessions that introduce the Microsoft BizSpark program that provides free access to Microsoft tools and servers products to technology entrepreneurs.
- Posted by christhi on May 28, 2009
Are you a blogger, press, or simply interested in seeing some of Microsoft’s latest technologies such as Windows 7, IE8, Silverlight 3, Surface, and much more. Come visit me at 414 W 14th Street in New York City starting June 1st. I can help arrange discussions with top local agencies, hardware partners, and of course Microsoft evangelists to review these technologies with you in a open forum.
If you are a local startup in New York come get signed up for the BizSpark program (www.microsoft.com/bizspark) on the spot from one of our evangelists. BizSpark will provide qualified startups with free software, support, and visibility for 3 years.
As a venue for thought leadership, the Microsoft Experience space can host at least one presentation, speaking panel, or activity per day of Internet Week. Sample topics and activities are:
· Designing Multi-Touch Experiences for the Web and Desktop
· How Technology Enables Art and How Art Influences Technology – Artist and Partner Panel
· Coming of Digital Age: What is Your Agency’s Mix of Traditional vs Digital? – Partner Panel
· In-Game Advertising Presented by Massive and Microsoft Advertising
· Silverlight 3: Ready for Prime Time
· Surface is a Big Table with Big Experiences - Partner Pane
· Opening Night Reception
· Weekend Evening Reception and XBOX 360 Rock Band or Gaming Competition
· Webby Awards Pre-Event Reception
- Posted by christhi on May 11, 2009
with pixel shaders in silverlight 3 effects such as blurs and drop shadows are literally one line of xaml markup – no code required. More advanced effects can also be applied by writing your own pixel shader or leveraging the already converted WPF Pixel shade library for SL which can be found at http://wpffx.codeplex.com/
<Page
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml">
<Grid>
<Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<ColumnDefinition Width="300"/>
<ColumnDefinition Width="*"/>
</Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
<StackPanel Margin="8" Grid.Column="0">
<TextBlock Text="This text should be blurry" FontSize="20">
<TextBlock.Effect>
<BlurEffect />
</TextBlock.Effect>
</TextBlock>
<TextBlock Text="Shadow on Text" FontSize="20">
<TextBlock.Effect>
<DropShadowEffect ShadowDepth="5" />
</TextBlock.Effect>
</TextBlock>
</StackPanel>
<StackPanel Margin="8" Grid.Column="1" Orientation="Horizontal" VerticalAlignment="Top">
<Ellipse Height="100" Width="200" Fill="Blue" Margin="10 0 0 0">
<Ellipse.Effect>
<DropShadowEffect ShadowDepth="10" />
</Ellipse.Effect>
</Ellipse>
</StackPanel>
</Grid>
</Page>
- Posted by christhi on May 4, 2009
Check out my interview on the business maker radio show last weekend. We discuss the bizspark program and how it benefits startups through free software, support, and promotes visibility for their new company.
- Posted by christhi on April 16, 2009
For those who didn’t make it to Mix 2009 or those who want to get a short “elevator pitch” version of the what sketchflow is and does I put together this screencast for you. In it I review the top features in sketchflow as announced at Mix. Sketchflow is currently not part of the blend 3 preview so hopefully this will help provide a closer look at what you can expect from this really cool rapid prototyping tool. As you can see you can now produce prototypes that won’t require interpreting what the designer had intended nor wasting work as now you can move from thought to sketch to production level detail in one tool much without writing one line of code!
- Posted by christhi on April 9, 2009
Fully supported by Visual Studio and Expression Blend, highlights of new features and functionality of Silverlight 3 include: major media enhancements, out of browser support allowing Web applications to work on the desktop; significant graphics improvements including 3D graphics support, GPU acceleration and H.264 video support; and many features to improve RIA development productivity. Also, in order to fully integrate all the .NET developer tools, Visual Studio 2008, Visual Studio 2010 and Visual Web Developer Express will support a fully editable and interactive designer for Silverlight. New features in Silverlight 3 include:
· Support for Higher Quality Video & Audio. With support for native H.264/Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) Audio, live and on-demand IIS7 Smooth Streaming, full HD (720p+) playback, and an extensible decoder pipeline, Silverlight 3 brings rich, full-screen, stutter-free media experiences to the desktop. New and enhanced media features in Silverlight 3 include:
o Live and on-demand true HD (720p+) Smooth Streaming. IIS Media Services (formerly IIS Media Pack), an integrated HTTP media delivery platform, features Smooth Streaming which dynamically detects and seamlessly switches, in real time, the video quality of a media file delivered to Silverlight based on local bandwidth and CPU conditions.
o More format choice. In addition to native support for VC-1/WMA, Silverlight 3 now offers users native support for MPEG-4-based H.264/AAC Audio, enabling content distributors to deliver high-quality content to a wide variety of computers and devices.
o True HD playback in full-screen. Leveraging graphics processor unit (GPU) hardware acceleration, Silverlight experiences can now be delivered in true full-screen HD (720p+).
o Extensible media format support. With the new Raw AV pipeline, Silverlight can easily support a wide variety of third-party codecs. Audio and video can be decoded outside the runtime and rendered in Silverlight, extending format support beyond the native codecs.
o Industry leading content protection. Silverlight DRM, Powered by PlayReady Content Protection enables protected in-browser experiences using AES encryption or Windows Media DRM.
· Empowering Richer Experiences. Silverlight 3 contains new 3D graphics, animation features, hardware accelerated effects and text improvements that enable designers and developers to create next generation Web visuals. Additional features include:
o Perspective 3D Graphics. Silverlight 3 allows developers and designers to apply content to a 3D plane. Users can rotate or scale live content in space without writing any additional code. Other effects include creating a queue in 3D and transitions.
o Pixel Shader effects. These software based effects include blur and drop shadow. In addition, you can also write your own effect. Effects can be applied to any graphical content. An example would be to make a button appear depressed on rollover you could use a drop shadow effect on the pressed visual state.
o Bitmap Caching. Silverlight 3 dramatically improves the rendering performance of applications by allowing users to cache vector content, text and controls into bitmaps. This feature is useful for background content and for content which needs to scale without making changes to its internal appearance.
o New Bitmap API. With Silverlight 3, developers can now write pixels to a bitmap. Thus, they can build a photo editor to do red eye correction, perform edits on scanned documents or create specials effects for cached bitmaps from elements on the screen.
o Themed application support. Developers can now theme applications by applying styles to their Silverlight 3 applications and changing them at runtime. Additionally, developers can cascade styles by basing them on each other.
o Animation Effects. Silverlight 3 provides new effects such as spring and bounce. These make animation more natural. Developers can also now develop their own mathematical functions to describe an animation
o Enhanced control skinning. Silverlight 3 provides easier skinning capabilities by keeping a common set of controls external from an application. This allows the sharing of styles and control skins between different applications.
o Improved text rendering & font support. Silverlight 3 allows far more efficient rendering and rapid animation of text. Applications also load faster by enabling the use of local fonts.
· Improving Rich Internet Application Productivity. New features include:
o 60+ controls with source code : Silverlight 3 is packed with over 60 high-quality, fully skinnable and customizable out-of-the-box controls such as charting and media, new layout containers such as dock and viewbox, and controls such as autocomplete, treeview and datagrid. The controls come with nine professional designed themes and the source code can be modified/recompiled or utilized as-is. Other additions include multiple selection in listbox controls, file save dialog making it easier to write files, and support for multiple page applications with navigation.
o Deep Linking. Silverlight 3 includes support for deep linking, which enables bookmarking a page within a RIA.
o Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Silverlight 3 enables users to solve the SEO-related challenges posed by RIAs. By utilizing business objects on the server, together with ASP.NET controls and site maps, users can automatically mirror database-driven RIA content into HTML that is easily indexed by the leading search engines.
o Enhanced Data Support Silverlight 3 delivers:
§ Element to Element binding : UI designers use binding between two UI properties to create compelling UI experiences. Silverlight now enables property binding to CLR objects and other UI components via XAML, for instance binding a slider value to the volume control of a media player.
§ Data Forms. The Data Form control provides support for layout of fields, validation, updating and paging through data.
§ New features for data validation which automatically catch incorrect input and warn the user with built-in validation controls.
§ Support for business objects on both client and server with n-Tier data support. Easily load, sort, filter and page data with added support for working with data. Includes a new built-in CollectionView to perform a set of complex operations against server side data. A new set of .NET RIA services supports these features on the server.
o Improved performance, through:
§ Application library caching, which reduces the size of applications by caching framework on the client in order to improve rendering performance.
§ Enhanced Deep Zoom, allows users to fluidly navigate through larger image collections by zooming.
§ Binary XML allows communication with the server to be compressed, greatly increasing the speed at which data can be exchanged.
§ Local Connection This feature allows communication between two Silverlight applications on the client-side without incurring a server roundtrip: for instance a chart in one control can communicate with a datagrid in another.
· Out of Browser Capabilities. Silverlight 3 offers a new set of features for building light-weight, sandboxed companion experiences for the Web that run on the desktop. Silverlight out of browser allows websites to build even closer, persistent relationships with customers. It enables the application to be placed in a restricted store on the user’s machine; and then provide a link directly to it from the user’s desktop, start menu or Windows 7 superbar (if the user chooses). This is all enabled within Silverlight 3 without any additional download of runtime or the need to write applications in a different way. An application can now be easily found on the user’s desktop or start menu, and launched with a single click. In addition, it can test if the network is connected, it can update itself, and can also have access to Isolated Storage. Taken together, these features represent a radical upgrade to the web experience:
o Desktop shortcuts and start menu support –place an application on the desktop and be one click away from your customer.
o Run outside of browser –no longer need the distraction of the browser chrome
o Safer, more secure, sandboxed – an application can be trusted without security warnings, keeping your customers safer.
o Consumer friendly non-administrator install – applications are held in a cache and do not require any privileges to run
o Built in auto-update – an application will check for new versions on the server and update on launch
o Connectivity detection (in browser, out of browser) – can detect a loss of connection and then chose to cache users work until the reconnect
o Windows integration – on Windows 7, support will be provided for superbar integration, multitouch, and location awareness services such as GPS support so that your application can react to the users location e.g. for mapping or location targeted information.
Enhanced Accessibility Features. Silverlight 3 is the first browser plug-in to provide access to all system colors, allowing partially-sighted people to make changes such as high contrast color schemes for ease of readability by using familiar operating system controls.
- Posted by christhi on April 8, 2009
It seems as though there have been several issues for MLB.TV in their video delivery since they’ve converted from silverlight to flash.
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/162805/mlb_in_social_media_stumble_with_mlbtv_blog.html?tk=loom_art
http://www.mlbsupport.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=32&sid=9918c1deb0497b6bb42cdba88be50c1c
maybe they should have stayed with silverlight.