ColdFusion 8 Shipping!

Just got back from the beach and I found in my mailbox an email from Adobe Direct telling me the big news that the final bits of ColdFusion 8 had just been shipped!

Along with this great release from Adobe, Adobe's Ben Forta has came out with a great series of posts regarding resources associated to this big step in Adobe's Server Framework.

Go check it out!

ColdFusion is here - on the comments side there's been a good discussion between early adopter users and a full hand of Product Managers from Adobe.

ColdFusion 8 Performance Brief

ColdFusion 8 IDE Extensions - a source of resources to integrate CF8 with your favorite development environment.

ColdFusion Developer Articles

Technorati Tags: Adobe, ColdFusion, ColdFusion8, Scorpio, RIA, RIE

Silverlight 1.0 RC1 got released today!

Even though I promised myself not to blog during this weekend since I am on a 4 day vacation alone with my friends by the beach, I couldn't resist to let this one go.

Today Microsoft completed their release week with the launch of Silverlight 1.0 RC1, with this SL gets feature complete and with its API locked.

Earlier this week I posted about the release of VS2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 on its Beta 2 flavor and with a Go-Live license and now we complete the triad to be set for the future.

With this new release there is a new update to the Expression Blend application which goes by the name of August Preview. I will be covering this in more depth on Tuesday as I get back to my regular life, for now here is a post from Tim Sneath talking about today's releases with links to the new compilations and the actions you will have to take in order to update your current samples and applications as to make it work with the new bits.

Go SL! Enjoy!

---

Technorati Tags: .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, Silverlight, Microsoft, Microsoft Expression, Expression Blend, WinFX, Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2, Visual Studio. Orcas

Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 & .NET Framework 3.5 Beta 2 are out and with Go-Live License from Microsoft

Just today Microsoft made available its latest updates to its family of Platform Development with the refresh to the Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 they are getting the Beta 2 label.

As part of this update Microsoft has also grant its Go-Live license to such products, allowing people to do production development and releases based on this bits, which will be a great step further to see production ready web sites using Silverlight and LINQ technologies.

Note: Remember that the final launch for this products is expected for February 2008. So we are still some good 7 months away from that state.

Based on this new evolution on Microsoft Development Technologies the company is renewing its statements associated to the mission they see this products playing in our dev shops:

Visual Studio 2008 enables developers and development teams to rapidly create connected, secure and compelling applications on the latest platforms, including Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, the 2007 Office System and the Web.

As new community previews will raise along the year, we will see improved performance and better work flow with the ecology of tools like Expression Blend for creating compelling experiences that will allow the user to get immerse in usable worlds excelling its productivity... plus encouraging for the Software + Services worlds that Ballmer and Gates have been taking about during the last couple of weeks.

So, now lets go get the bits here.

Enjoy!

Update: ScottGu has a great post here, including some quick overview of this release and some post-installation notes as to make sure everything will work as expected.

Update2: Channel9 has a great video here with an interview with Soma and ScottGu talking about what's new and what is there to expect with this new release.

Update3: Here are my experiences getting this bits installed just as well as couple of tricks to get Beta 1 uninstalled.

---

Technorati Tags: .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, Ajax, Atlas, Microsoft, ASP.NET, C#, Development, Programming, Expression Blend, Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2, Visual Studio, WinFX, WPF, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, SQL, Silverlight

IronRuby is in the wild as a pre-alpha with its own source code freely available

It's been some busy and interesting days for me lately as I am on board learning a new wave of tools, languages and architectures.

One of this newly -for me at least- dynamic architectures surrounds is Python; and as I'm opening my mind to the "think dynamic" I found ScottGu cheering up for a different, yet quite impressive, dynamic language making it to the .NET family: IronRuby.

Just as there is a current heavy-duty wave of applications being surfaced in LAMP-like environments, powered by Python, Ruby and tens of RAD Frameworks being built in top of them, Microsoft has not stop playing and hence has brought its own flavors of dynamic seeds with one subtle difference, this seeds are supported by the strong power of the .NET CLR and its API.

As ScottGu states on his post

Today's IronRuby drop is still a very early version, and several language features and most libraries aren't implemented yet (that is why we are calling it a "pre-alpha" release). It does, though, have much of the core language support implemented, and can also now use standard .NET types and APIs.

...

The end result will be a compatible, fast, and flexible Ruby implementation on top of .NET that anyone can use for free.

Part of the samples being made available on the web with this release is a WPF hello world application written in IronRuby showing the strength of what would be enabled once it gets feature complete.

If you want to start playing along with this set of bits John Lam has a post showing you how to download and build your this preliminary release.

Also, if you are interested in what the world of ASP.NET dynamics looks like check out this video on ASP.NET Futures (May 2007) showing IronPython in action with Dynamic Data Controls.

Enjoy guys!

---

Technorati Tags: IronPython, IronRuby, ScottGu, ASP.NET, .NET3.0, .NET3.5, WPF, Microsoft, Visual Studio, Web2.0, WinFx, Ajax, Dynamic Languages, DLR, CLR

Channel 8: A new member to Microsoft Channel Family

A couple of days ago Microsoft launched to the public a new technology channel targeted to college students around the world. With this new channel, called Channel 8, Microsoft complements the technology-driven channel triad joining the already known Channel 9 and on10.

As part of the content that will fill up this new on-line channel, there will be information regarding the Imagine Cup, which is a world wide coding tournament targeted to College Students, swapping places around different cities across the globe every year, this year it is time for Seoul-Korea to host the event.

If you want to know more about this new channel and its future go on and watch this video where Joe Wilson introduces everybody to the new concept and what to expect from its different sections.

And to keep an eye on them here are the RSS feed and Video Podcast that you can easily add to your iTunes and sync your iPhone or iPod Video for offline watching.

Enjoy!

---

Technorati Tags: Channel 8, Channel 10, Channel 9, Microsoft, Channel, Video, Video Player, Education, Imagine Cup, College, Computer Science, Programming

Pownce is down

Update 10.56pm: Service is up again... that's good!

It seems that Pownce is down as of now! It shows in the header a /500 title and the following is what gets rendered.

Anyone with news? Since the client is down too!

---

Technorati Tags: Pownce, Outage, Failure, Error 500

Windows Home Server has gone RTM

Windows Home Server has gone RTM, as of last Friday the team went for a celebration after a couple of years of hard work... congrats boyz!

For more info Charlie Kindel, General Manager for this group, has a thoughtful post in the groups blog plus given some background information at the history of this product and his role through his life @ Microsoft since '99.

Check out the big announcement here.

---

Tags: Microsoft, Windows Server 2008, Windows Home Server, Quattro, HTWWO

The Adobe Interactive Wall and its usability problems...

Last Friday Adobe launched a new advertisement campaign @ the heart of New York City itself.

Located outside the Virgin Megastore in the 14th St and Union Square, Adobe setup an interactive wall that lets users handle a slider control located in the lower portion of the billboard, which in turn manages the animation being displayed in the wall.

I got to this news thru an internal email from a fellow Schematitian in NY, encouraging the guys from our NYC office, located just around the corner from the ad itself, to go check it out... I even twittered encouraging people passing by to go check it out themselves.

Some of our fellows from the UX department went in a corporate field trip, I love this kind of activities; and came back with their own opinions about it... but again given that I am thousands of miles away I just couldn't live with those statements and whish for a trip to NYC within this month to go check it out myself... but then: no need for a trip when you have Gizmodo to recorded - which Schematitians in it and all - for yourself entertainment and Stewart to let you know about it...

Now, as a geek as I am, lets do a simple analysis out Adobe's approach.

1. Check out the video, would you?

• Where did your attention went while looking at the wall? 
• Was it at the amazing graphics being shown in the billboard or in the little unicolor slider that people chased in the bottom of the screens?
• Was that the same element that caught people's attention in the video?

2. From looking at the people interacting with it:

• Do you get some idea of what the message behind this interaction is?
• Did you learn anything new about Adobe's Creative Suite or how easy it does your job as a Photographer, Designer, Programmer or Media Producer? - remember NYC is full of geniuses artist in all fields.
• Would you go buy a box of CS3 after being in front of such a billboard? - this last one was a real question that got ask to one of my mates while in the field trip by a camera guy.

3. Now lets show a different video, a video of a different interaction wall - bare in mind the technical's approaches are similar... here it is (choose one): Windows Media, Real Player or QuickTime.

• How different the approach is in the second video? - I'm not trying to point which one is better, I just want to make sure you see differences between the two models.

4. How different would you have designed the Adobe's wall? - if you want post your thoughts in the comments area, you never know what can we get out of think tank activities...

Mine?

Well, given that I have some sort of past experience with the people involved in the Accenture one, I would keep the slider so that it can gets people's attention as they passes by - having Schematic worked with Accenture designing the UX for this wall one gets to learn that some how this was one of the key things they found difficult after it went live: how to make people approach the wall in JFK and O'Hare and get them to interact with it.

So, after the slider hooks people off and gets them in front of the wall I would:

1. Lock the slider and bring in a CS3 showroom and let people interact with the different feature sets and videos of the products being used - like their current product navigators in their website.

2. Allow for multiple users to play along... given that the UX is build in Flash, pretty much anything visual rich and interactive is possible.

3. Make people love your products!

4. Make them have fun while learning!

5. Keep them hooked!

4. Ok, so they go that means that after some time of idleness I'd resume the playing demo and unlock the slider and go people-fishing again.

... now let's see what you guys think of it!

---

Technorati Tags: Adobe, Design, Findability, Interaction, Interaction Design, RIE, RIA, UX, Usability, User Experience, Interaction Wall, Advertisement

Silverlight 1.0 RC is almost out... but before it hits the road be prepared!

As the Silverlight team gets ready to the lunch of Silverlight 1.0 RC in a couple of weeks, Tim Sneath et team want to make sure that before it hits the road, and the masses, you will be prepared and will make the changes to your application so that it won't break once its out... why is that?

Well, as Microsoft's Joe Stegman points out in this post, there are a few changes in the Silverlight 1.0 RC API that might make your application break, although rest assure that moving forward this API is locked so you won't have to go thru this process again.

Even though there is no preview of the RC release as for you to go and test your applications as of now, this guys have put together a small zip file with some reference material and resources, based on Tim Sneath's post, this package includes:

• A new silverlight.js file that detects both the beta and the RC version;
• A breaking changes document that highlights differences between the beta and RC;
• An updated Visual Studio template that demonstrates the correct way to embed the new control;
• A EULA that governs legal usage of the above items.

Which pretty much will guide your way between the RC bits hits their way out the oven.

More info in Tim Sneath's post, here.

Enjoy!

Update: Fixed the zip file reference.

Technorati Tags: AsP.NET, Silverlight, Microsoft, Web, Web2.0, RIA, RIE, Microsoft Expression, Expression Blend, Visual Studio, Visual Studio 2008, Orcas

ColdFusion 8 GMC and a hint to a final release date

It was just a couple of days ago when I received an email from the Adobe Prerelease Team telling me about the Scorpio GMC release, and today Ben Forta writes about the Adobe User Group hosting an official event lunch for ColdFusion 8 on July 31st in Washington DC.

From the email, it actually looks like these guys are almost ready to lunch and are asking people to test their applications under this new release and log any issue as soon possible, being flag as a must for people running production-like applications on previous versions of Scorpio.

This prerelease version will allow to run full steam for an extra 30

days (or August 31st, what ever comes first), after which it will fall back to the Developer Edition limitations - by then I assume final release will be there for you to go pay the bucks... not July 31st though, as Ben Forta himself makes the disclaimer.

Anyway, if you happen to be in town you can RSVP here and be part of the first dudes go get access to the final bits... plus, if not enough, the opportunity to enter a raffling for an iPhone... pretty sweet, isn't it?

---

Technorati tags: Adobe, ColdFusion, ColdFusion8, Scorpio, RIA, RIE

No Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008 nor Windows Server 2008 this year

Today and as part of the Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference @ Denver, Microsoft unveiled the official dates for the joined lunch of Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008.

From the press release:

In anticipation for the most significant Microsoft enterprise event in the next year, Turner announced that Windows Server^® 2008, Visual Studio^® 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server™ 2008 will launch together at an event in Los Angeles on Feb. 27, 2008, kicking off hundreds of launch events around the world.

From this, Microsoft expects to grow its revenue base out of Windows Vista during the 2008 fiscal year, given the slow adoption from the corporate and public sector who still keeps ordering Windows XP computers.

So here you go guys... let's keep waiting and playing along with CTP's and Beta bits, anyone for a Beta 2 or even 3 of all of theses products? Or should we follow AS3/Flex3/AIR in the mean time?

Full press release here.

---

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Visual Studio 2008, Orcas, Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008, Windows Vista, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5

MAX 07 is just around the corner and getting better as we approach to it!

With more than 200 sessions already scheduled, Adobe MAX is getting ready to roll in Chicago later this year.

From September 30th to October 3rd people will get access to all new stuff Adobe has put and will be putting out for the development crowed, going from ColdFusion 8 and Dreameweaver to Flex 3 and AIR.

Accommodated with Inspirational talks from people like Jesse James Garret - also known for his Elements of User Experience book; and several startup companies that have relayed on Adobe's technology to deliver the best experience to its users; you will get access to people, ideas and knowledge that combined together might be the best thing that could happen to you this year.

With some new concepts being put in place for this year's event, Adobe strengths its position towards the community, adding to the great work that Mike Chambers and Ted Patrick have done as ambassadors of its technology providing access and buzz into AIR's and Flex bits than anyone I've seen before in similar grounds.

As time approaches to the D-day Adobe will keep announcing changes and great new stuff to the even, to keep updated put an eye their blog, here.

Cheers and hope I'll see you guys there!

---

Technorati tags: Adobe, AIR, Apollo, Flex, Fireworks, Macromedia, MAX, RIA, RIE, Web2.0

Creating an Outlook look-alike with WPF and C#

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post on Microsoft Educational Resources available on the web, this post in intended to recompile educational resources associated to Microsoft technologies, so that it will help jump start on some of its new stuff.

As part of this post I pointed to this hands-on lab, that Tim Sneath had previously posted, demonstrating how to create an outlook look-alike application using WPF and C#.

Since then I've seen people coming to this site looking for it and somehow Google have not done a perfect job indexing it, that's why I am giving it its own post now, so it will facilitate people getting here.

Link to the hands-on lab is here and files needed are here.

Enjoy!

---

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, .NET3.0, WPF, Outlook, Orcas, WinFx, C#, RIA, RIE

Visual Studio Orcas June CTP has bee out there for a bit more than a month... sleeping

As I am getting my home win-dev-machine back on track after a month or so of been asleep at a friend's house, I found out today that a refresh to the SDK that shipped with Visual Studio Orcas Beta 1 has been out for a bit more than a month and there was not that much said about it in blogs; I even went back to ScottGu's blog to see if I missed the news anywhere but somehow it wasn't that important of a preview given the lack of coverage.

As part of this new SDK release, an update to the .Net Framework 3.5 has been put out there as well as a refresh for the for ADO.NET Entity Framework, both sporting the June CTP postfix, even though their release mark is on July 2nd.

I'm getting the 3 of them installed right now; what has changed or improved in each of the installed base are as follow:

Orcas SDK June CTP:

The Visual Studio Code Name “Orcas” SDK June 2007 CTP targets Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" Beta 1. The Visual Studio Code Name “Orcas” SDK June 2007 CTP is intended to let customers work with “Orcas” Beta 1 extensibility features.

This CTP adds and updates the following features:

1. Run As Normal User (RANU) - when the Visual Studio SDK is already installed on a computer, a user with non-administrator permissions now can create a package by using the wizard, and then press F5 to open the new package in the experimental hive. 
2. Changes to DSL Tools include new path editing. In DSL Tools, paths are used in a DSL definition to specify diagram element maps and explorer behavior. This CTP adds richer path editing to the DSL Designer, in the form of a drop-down tree control. You can now either type the path syntax, or you can display a tree view of all the valid paths from the current starting point. 
3. Release month, for example 2007.04, is removed from the SDK folder structure and “Microsoft” was added to the VS SDK shortcut and root folder name.

.Net Framework 3.5 June CTP:

According to the release notes, the June CTP features several enhancements including:

1. Increased integration of Language Integrated Query (LINQ)
2. Improved ASP.NET AJAX support
3. New web protocol support for creating Windows Communication Foundation services (AJAX, JSON, REST, POX, RSS, ATOM, and other web service standards)
4. Full tooling support for the Windows Communication Foundation and the Windows Presentation Foundation
5. New base class library classes

ASP.NET Entity Framework June CTP:

This CTP contains updates to the ADO.NET Entity Framework since the Visual Studio Codename "Orcas" Beta 1 release, including changes in Object Services, Query, Entity Client, and the Entity Data Model Wizard in Visual Studio. Some of the new features include IPOCO, detaching from long-running ObjectContext instances, multiple entity sets per type, support for referential integrity constraints, span support, transactions, serialization, no more default constructors in code-generated classes, improvements to stored procedure support, access to the underlying store connection, directory macros in the entity connection string to support hosted scenarios, native SQL read-only views, UNICODE support in Entity SQL, query plan caching, and canonical functions in Entity SQL.

Now the links:

• ADO.NET Entity Framework June 2007 CTP, here
• Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" SDK June 2007 CTP, here
• Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 June 2007, here

Enjoy and happy upgrading!

---

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, WinFx, Silverlight, .NET, .NET 3.5, Orcas, Visual Studio, ASP.NET

Microsoft Robotics Studio Refreshed

On December 2006 Microsoft released the first drop of its Robotics Studio, last April the Robotics team started previewing what is now version 1.5 and today they have gone public with the final Refresh.

The Microsoft Robotics Studio is a Windows-based environment for academic, hobbyist and commercial developers to easily create robotics applications across a wide variety of hardware.

Among the new features sported in this release is the official introduction to support the .Net Compact Framework, making it possible to deploy applications to Windows Mobile and CE powered devices, along side with applications running in Windows XP and Vista.

As well, Microsoft is making the DSS protocol (DSSP) royalty-free under its Microsoft Open Software Promise which is expected to provide a programming model to support communication between a wide variety of hardware and software.

A dear friend of mine, Daniela Calderon, has been all hands down in this code base since last January, helping in the development of the Voice Recognition feature, which is an amazing new comer to this refresh; to her: Felicidades vieja!!

Cheers and follow the next links to learn more about this release:

• Microsoft Robotics Studio v1.5 download, here
• Robotics Team blog, here
• Robotics Release notes, here
• Robotics Community Page, here
  

---

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Robotics, Robotics Studio, Visual Studio

Adobe AIR Bus hit the road

In case you guys haven't heard, several geeks are on the run as of now driving on a Rock Star bus touring the states while presenting the all new AIR development platform and helping spread the word out on Adobe's revamp development goodies.

Being a geek myself, I'm quite jealous of the guys up there, among who you can find Ryan Stewart, Scoble, Mike Chambers and great designer Lee Brimelow from Frog Design.

Now if you happen to be like me and find yourself thousands of miles away from any of this cities or the country itself, you can always turn your sight and time to follow up the guys using the many ways our fellow social networks have created... this guys even took it further and came out with an API for the bus - how geek is that?! I'm amazed - so you can follow up the bus using a Yahoo! Maps mashup, a live video feed and for those with not that great of bandwidth using a photo feed... any way go ahead and let the AIR flow!

Some links to follow:

• onAIR official web, here
• onAIR official twitter, here
• onAIR official flickr, here
• onAIR official video stream, here
  
• Scoble's twitter, here
• Ryan's twitter, here

Cheers mates, and enjoy the ride!

---

Technorati Tags: Adobe, Apollo, AIR, RIA, RIE

My first public Silverlight-enabled site

Even though this site ain't new (it has been live for a couple of weeks now), I somehow forgot to blog about it here... so today is the day!

If you follow this link, you will find my first real world Silverlight-enabled site. It was brought together as a branded showroom and career page for Schematic as it was presented as Platinum Sponsor for the Microsoft's Expert Zone event for Latin America.

This site was made in about 2 days between me and a fellow designer / animator, using Expression Blend and Visual Studio... the hows will come in a separate post Monday, so I will update here once is up.

Just wanted to let you guys know about it... cheers!

---

Technorati Tags: Silverlight, Microsoft, Microsoft Expression, Expression Blend, Visual Studio

Regarding my previous post & why do you have to hate every single approach from Microsoft

I see lots of hate for Microsoft in everything this guys do as if by doing this people will look more intelligent or revolutionary - I ain't no microsoftie I just like things to work the way they should, and don't make me feel stupid.

People tend to talk about how crappy Microsoft's products are but I don't see much of talking about Firefox being such a crappy thing on a Mac as it is (well at least Scoble made it public), but sadly as it is Safari is even worst so we are sticked to it... or how pathetic the tab management is... Firefox is just a good browser as IE used to be, with IE7 Microsoft tried to get its act a bit together but there is still lots of room for improvement... as there is for Safari (sorry Steve, this ain't as good as you told us it was) and Firefox (with all its plug-ins and even Grease Monkey, which I have to say is quite good)

Regardless if the screen shots on my previous post are a Microsoft thing (I think we are sure they are not) we should be looking farer than our hand and look on what an oppotunity this might create for the community... this shots might have been the Learning Paint 101 project for some kid, but it also brings some good ideas into how raw the world of the browsers is.

Have you guys put into mind that the browser is just a regular window that renders somehow a bunch of text and images (yes and some rich stuff thanks to 3rd party plug-ins)... Rather than play word games like little kids we should be asking for more functionality, more interaction... we ain't in the 90's no more, and some how we haven't moved that far from the Netscape days...

IE 8 Fakes that might bring something innovative to the UX crowed and eventually the world

Just a few minutes ago I came a cross a Digg post referring to some blogger - link is in Spanish - who claimed have gained access to screen shots of the forthcoming Internet Explorer 8 Alpha version; so I went in for a sneak peak... and this is what I found:

Now, even though these are fakes shots they do bring some interesting ideas to the User Experience arena that, if looked from a partial view can take us back to the drawing surface and give us something to play with.

First of the things that comes to my mind when I these shots, is how cool would it be to have a context-based browsing experience; just as Office 2007 have provide us with access to several of their buried gems, a context-based browsing interaction can serve as framework for free applications and services, that are already available in the wild.

Imagine that you go to YouTube or any of the many video sites out there and have the browser intuitively allowed me to add the video to my iPod, iPhone or Zune; or why not to my iTunes, Winamp or Windows Media Player Library; be able to subscribe the RSS of a any interesting website to my preferred RSS Reader, or Podcast client, or just flag for a later read / listened (this one comes from one my work mates, Aaron, who always struggles to have a store point for Have-to-read-later-things)... this kind of approach ain't something that people will overlook at... we have Real already betting of this ground... plus hundreds of services out there serving the world.

I know currently there are several alternatives that can live up to this kind of requests, Grease Monkey is one of them for Firefox, Netscape and AOL have tried themselves too, but nobody has done one truly Rich Internet Application that is as intuitive as the iPod or Office 2007, and that allows for everyone to excel the productivity of the Web in their desktop in terms of experience.

Open the infrastructure, provide some usability guidelines and provide a gallery where anyone will be able place their service or widget and let the world built the next greatest contextual browser!

Anyone interested on getting in this wagon with me?

Update: as a replay to this post and some of the comments I've seen on the net I couldn't resist and write something that could state my feelings, so after this one read up here.

---

Technorati Tags: IE, Internet Explorer 8, Internet Explorer, Microsoft, Browsers, Web, Web2.0

Acropolis July CTP just got released

Today the Acropolis team @ Microsoft released a new build for Acropolis. This new and improved version of this promising smart client framework is available for download here.

Based on a post on the Acropolis Team blog, included in this build there are

• Transitions animations improvements
• Better design time support
• Better custom theming support, and
• Various bug fixes driven from community feedback.

For those of you who are new to Acropolis:

Acropolis is a set of components and tools intended to make it much easier to build modular, business focused clients applications on the .NET Framework.

Acropolis lets you divide your application into various functional pieces - components - that each encapsulates some specific pattern, strategy or piece of business or presentation logic. Acropolis then provides the ‘glue' to let you easily recombine these components to make a fully functional application.

This modular approach improves the chances that if you write a component that encapsulates some specific piece of functionality, you'll be able to re-use it in more than one application. Then, you can build your next application more quickly, by re-using your existing components, leaving you to focus on your new application's specific requirements.

The modular approach also improves the chances that if (or rather when!) you have to change your application, due to new requirements, additional functionality, new business process, new business opportunities, etc, you'll be able to do that more easily by adding or replacing components.

For more information related to this release follow this link.

Cheers!

---

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, RIE, RIA, Smart Clients, Acropolis, Products, Beta

So you want to suite your application for the iPhone

So you want to suite your web application or service for the iPhone?! Wonder no more, Apple has just posted a set of guidelines that will explain the basics of what you need to know to take advantage of the new interactive model they are bringing to the world with its famous gadget.

Between the bullet point that do you want to follow in order to provide the best experience in the iPhone you will:

• Understand the capabilities of iPhone.
• Follow established design practices for the web.
• Adopt iPhone-specific design principles.

One of the points that really calls my attention is the differentiation they do between multi touch interaction and the regular mouse-driven single point interaction built into the device.

Similar to this approach, people should take some of this guidelines and back port it to similar interaction approaches in mobile devices, even though it will probably not be 'til the end of the year that will see alternatives devices like this popping out in the wild, it can serve as a good design practice for current models using pens and ink as means of interaction.

Cheers!

---

Technorati Tags: Apple, IPhone, RIE, RIA, Web, Web2.0, Multi Touch, UX

85% Addicted to Blogging

I just went thru this survey to check out How much addicted to Blogging I am, and not surprisingly I am 85% addicted to it... got to say that this kind of match with the fact that if some one will approach to me and ask me if I would like to do this for living and be able to have access to cool technology and travel the world while talking about it probably will accept in so facto!

But anyway 'til that opportunity knocks on my door or I get my ideas off the ground check it out and learn how much addicted are you to it!

85%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

[Entrepreneurs] Getting your idea off the ground

During the past month I’ve been following on Guy Kawasaki’s blog How to Change the World, Guy is a former Apple Fellow who left Apple in 1997 for the second time in his career to start what he calls an “angel investor matchmaking service” called Garage.com, where he currently plays the role of Managing Director.

It’s been quite an amazing ride going thru his posts every week and yesterday was no exception.

I got to the office as usual and opened up Google Reader, and as I was checking my regular feeds I came across this post called No Plan, No Capital, No Model... No Problem. I went thru the post and started playing the video in it so I could listened to it as I go thru my email and stuff - there is also an MP3 version available there too, but I like to watch from time to time their faces.

I have to be honest that the idea of putting things together myself has never been that far away from my head and lately the little bug of myself entrepreneur has grow more... I have already my first startup on hold due to too much work from me and my associates, although I think it is time to get some things rolling, even more after watching this guys talking.

So here is what Guy has to say about it:

I’ve moderated many panels in my time, and if I had to choose one that entrepreneurs should watch, this is it. If you’re one guy/gal or two guys/gals in a garage, it will push all the right buttons, and you’ll love it.

There is a good disclaimer following to it though:

However, if your plan is to raise several million dollars from venture capitalists and then hire five engineers, one vp of biz dev, one CTO, two testers, and a vp of marketing to ship a product in a year, you probably shouldn’t spend your time watching it.

But anyway, post is here and Google Video here, and if you happen to go on or not here are a couple of notes I took from the Q & A session that goes after the first hour of video, hope you guys find this useful.

What should be the driving feeling for a biz?

• Do what you love to do and focus on it.
• People that comes to biz with the intention of doing millions and billions of dollars they never do and is the people who focus on something they love who often get successful.
• Businesses often don’t go according to the plan, but is the ability to catch opportunities as you get them and be able to execute with such will is what will make us successful.

What about competency?

• People will always be generating ideas and some of them will try to go for similar ones of things that have already worked in the arena or not, but when it comes to evaluating and put them to work, execution is key, it will define how ideas will evolve and how they will be targeted in different ways, at the end they all will become different products.
• You always have learn to observe and adapt.
• Learn your audience and focus your ideas on growing towards that, anyway this what you love to do. Don’t you?!

When do you get to pay your self?

• Do it as soon as possible, cause if you do not you will always find other ways to expend that money.
• Don’t pay your self exuberant amounts of money. Pay yourself enough as to not worry about not having money but don’t pay yourself enough as to feel comfortable and think like “Ok, this is all I need”, you still need to maintain some level of hunger to keep being successful.

Any last conclusion for entrepreneurs?

• Life is good right now... and now is the moment to do something!

---

Technorati Tags: Blogs, Entrepreneur, Ideas, Guy Kawasaki

Got Pownced - and some invites to give away!

A week after the service went public I got an invite for the so already famous Pownce social network. I've 3 invites to give away to readers of this Blog and 3 more for the readers of Samiq Bits en Español... so if you guys want one just drop a comment with your email I'll be glad to add you as a friend in my network.

Pownce comes to fill the blank space left by the already crowed social network services and allows its users to communicate thru a cross platform Rich Internet Application (implemented using Adobe AIR, formerly known as Apollo) that empowers people to post messages, links, events and files to their friends or in a privately manner to just a few... this is just like what everybody would have loved Twitter to be... at least this is how I feel about it.

On their own words

Pownce is a great way to send stuff to people you know. Add friends, then send them big files, invite them to upcoming events, share great links, and whip off a note to anyone, everyone, or just a few people.

News around the web have given plenty of coverage including Ryan Stewart, Tech Chrunch, Mashable, Center Networks (this guys even have put up a video of it) and of course even Mr. Scoble had something to say about it. So go check them out.