Life around the RIA space and beyond

I know I've been out of public word for a bit of time lately - at least in the most extent use of the word (me blog) and have moved my frequency into the tiny world of 140 characters with my twitter voice as Samiq.

There are, though, a lot of great voices out there who have kept us informed and misinformed about what's been going on in the RIA world and surroundings in the time being - hence the necessity no to write and just go express my point of view in the comment spaces or around beers, whenever possible and whatever comes first.

Yet as direct results of these conversations, some people has asked me to come back to my blog and revive it a little bit - or revive it in it's full - bring that same voice I have had whenever there are beers, geeks and some good topic to convey, and make it public.

So here I'm bringing my word to the broad end of the world of bits with my Bits and adding a little flavor to the semantics of web - yes I know, a little cheesy but I have grown my opinion about it... so let's make it worth.

Summarizing a little bit and to create context to what's to come here is a couple of things that have happened in the past that will impact the way I behave in the future:

September 7th, 2007	Silverlight 1.0 gets released to web and with it a couple of applications I worked on made it to the official press release.
September 29th, 2007	Participate of Silverlight DevCamp Chicago with a session about Creating MVC-driven Applications using the Silverlight 1.0 bits.
October 1st-3rd, 2007	Max 07 happened and here I meet a lot of really cool guys from the Adobe community, although what made the trip worth was getting to know the Microsoft's UX Evangelists, lead by Chris Bernard.
November 2007 - January 2008	I work with a great team, on probably one of the most complex Silverlight 1.0 applications up today - yet it has not seen the ray of public light as of this writing.
February 18-20th, 2008	Along with my peers from LA, NY, Atlanta and Costa Rica, participate on a private Silverlight 1.0 & 2.0 training prepared by ourselves. Now call it knowledge sharing!
March 5-7th, 2008	Mix 08 happened and here I meet a lot of really cool people and had great conversations around the world of RIE - some of them I recorded in the form of video, yet to be published as a documentary. Got to see Ka, amazing show! Silverlight 2.0 Beta 1 is released to web.
April 11th, 2008	I get a call
April 14th, 2008	I attend a meeting and get introduced to a cool project
April 15th, 2008	I go to dinner with probably 1 of the most brilliant minds in Costa Rica
April 18th, 2008	I quit Schematic as Software Architect and join Artinsoft as Technology Evangelist to its Research Division.
May 9th, 2008	I finish my work at Schematic, and with it I finish my pass with one of the greatest interactive agencies around the world.
May 19th, 2008	I start part time with Artinsoft and focus on the marketing strategy for Aggiorno Beta 2 with the team.
May 30th, 2008	Go on vacations
June 3rd, 2008	Aggiorno goes into Beta 2. New interim web site goes live.
June 9th, 2008	I start full time with Artinsoft and it's Aggiorno team.
June 12th, 2008	I fly to Seattle to join BarCamp Seattle and attend meetings in Redmond.
June 13th, 2008	Attend Thingamajiggr with Carlos, head of Artinsoft Research.
June 14th, 2008	Participate of BarCamp Seattle with two sessions: one on The Reality of SEO and Web Accesibility along with Chris Wilson from the IE8 team and Jermiah Andrick from the Live Search team; and the second one on a RIA Panel with Scott Barnes from the Silverlight team and Kurt Brockett, from Identity Mine.
June 16-20th, 2008	Tour Redmond Campus from building to building showing Aggiorno to different teams and getting lots of feedback and support.
June 18th, 2008	Visited Scott on his office and end up co-writing the first preview of a MVC framework for Silverlight 2.0. - those kind of things that happen just because, so don't ask.
June 23th, 2008	I fly back to Costa Rica and miss the first Costa Rican twitter get-together.
June 22nd, 2008	I start writing this while exploring ASP.NET MVC Preview 3 stuff for a freelance gig.

Ok, so now that you know where I've been during this time (at least the portions that are public), it's time to keep the fingers warm and shoot and connect directly to me head to start getting some word out of my thoughts, and make them happen!

So here it is guys! I am back baby!!

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Technorati Tags: Nexus,C#,Silverlight,Samiq,Ideas,ASP.NET,MVC,RIE,RIA,MAX,MIX,SilverlightDevCamp,BarCampSeattle,Schematic,Artinsoft,Aggiorno

Welcome to the Singularity

So it is public now, and hence I am allow to blog about it.

Singularity is here!

Singularity is the first large-scale online web conference in the world, and you can be part of it.

This year, over 100 of the most influent minds on the web will be discussing and modeling what the future of the web will be like... of course after this year's MIX and MAX.

This conference is planned to take place in the cloud between October 24th and the 25th - so you won't have to go thru all the pains of booking flights, hotels, nor submitting expense reports, which makes it not only great, but greener.

The conference is being organized by multitasking Aral Balkan, which most of you people will know him for his work in the Flash Community, and his talking bunny.

The world as we know it is more interconnected now than ever before, twitter has become essential part of it and we even feel lonely when its service is down - well not everyone, but yes! there are people; and having a web conference on the web, and by the people from the web, will really set the roots for the kind of world we are all working to make reality.

Aral is still picking up on presenters, although there is already a list of really compelling people making in the elite. If you think you have what it gets to get people talking about the future or a service that can revolutionize the way we convey our life in the matrix, go ahead and mail them your idea - who knows you might end up being one of the stars on one of this year's best conference.

More info here.

Later.

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Technorati Tags: Conferences,MIX,MAX,Singularity,Web,Web2.0,Aral,Design,Development,RIA,RIE,Events

Microsoft Volta as a Declarative Web Distributed Computing Toolset

Today Microsoft Live Labs announced Microsoft Volta. Volta technology preview is a developer toolset built on top of .NET to further excel the development of software+services applications enabling you to build multi-tier web applications by applying familiar techniques and patterns.

Supporting the lines of the Live 2.0 roadmap, Volta is presented as an experiment for the community to work around and provide feedback on how this declarative architecture enable Architects to tune, alas Grid-computing, the way its application behave and distributes their processing load across several tiers.

It is no surprise that more and more our every day applications are becoming all interconnected. Most of our collaboration tools live somehow in the cloud and it's their connectivity and ability to mash up what makes them valuable, but just as this connectivity grows it makes the process of architect decisions a complex and almost imperfect task, getting us to continue tune its distribution to match the execution availability sometimes stretching the boundaries of quality and availability in or to pair up the ever-changing business needs.

With Volta you architect and build your application as a .NET client application, assigning the portions of the application that run on the server tier and client tier late in the development process. You can target either web browsers or the CLR as clients and Volta handles the complexities of tier-splitting. The compiler creates cross-browser JavaScript for the client tier, web services for the server tier, and all communication, serialization, synchronization, security, and other boilerplate code to tie the tiers together.

Given that this technology is in an experimental mode you can foresee changes in the way of how the toolset will evolved, but for us architect-geeks it is a great way to starting trying new models of architecture applications and get tips towards how we build our future business models.

If you want to learn more about this new model, go on a check out their technology site here.

Cheers!

G.

Update: Here is an amazing post from Erik Meijer who is part of the team, talking a bit more of what Volta is and how it came to be.

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Technorati Tags: Volta,Microsoft,Microsoft Live,Live Labs,.NET,Distributed Computing,Architecture,Experiments,Software+Services,Web,Ajax,WinFx

Silverlight 1.1 is now Silverlight 2.0 and more to come...

Today will be moved to history as the day Silverlight 2.0 feature set was made public along with the road map of what Microsoft feels like is the future of ASP.NET 3.5.

Just a week after Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 were released to manufacturing, ScottGu's team keeps working fearlessly in the next round of features that will mark ASP.NET and Silverlight as big contesters for the future of both the Web and the RIA world.

Silverlight 1.1 moves to be Silverlight 2.0 and will go into Beta on Q1'08; such release will ship with a GoLive license allowing companies to build upon it and move applications to production.

ASP.NET will see itself upgraded with an Extension Release that will sport a set of Framework Extension excelling manageability in the way we build applications and improvements to current technologies like AJAX, Silverlight integration, and Dynamic Data consumption.

Last but not least important, IIS 7.0 will present a new deployment strategy for applications residing both in single or over web farms that will allow version, deployment and roll back of features both from the command prompt or thru the management shell; all of this as part of the release of Windows Server 2008.

A lot of traction has gone into twitter during the last half an hour and I guess this are great news that we all welcome. Let's keep our eyes open to the future and how it all behaves.

Microsoft, and specifically the Visual Studio team has been doing a great job during this decade, sometimes even pushing the boundaries of the technology itself towards the developer community and the digital world itself. Keep up the good work!

For more info I encourage you go check ScottGu's blog post here.

Cheers!

G.

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Technorati Tags: Silverlight,.NET,Microsoft Expression,RIA,RIE,Microsoft,Visual Studio,Orcas,WPF,ASP.NET,XAML,IIS,Windows Server 2008

Silverlight Tools for Visual Studio 2008 RTM is Out

I've been out during the last couple of months working heads down on the second phase of a great Silverlight video player that will be released early next year... but in the mean time I need to keep up with the news.

Last night the Visual Studio Team released its newly refreshed Silverlight 1.1 Tools Alpha matching the Visual Studio 2008 RTM bits, this way those of you who were waiting for it in order to upgrade to the latest version of the IDE, have no excuse as to move on.

Features match those of the previous version and were only upgraded to work with the final bits of Visual Studio. More features are yet to come as part of the next preview of the Silverlight 1.1 runtime, later this year.

So now, go ahead get the RTM bits installed and get the tools from here.

Enjoy!

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Technorati Tags: Silverlight,.NET,Microsoft Expression,RIA,RIE,Microsoft,Visual Studio,Orcas,WPF

Where have I been? Part II

Funny enough not that so many post ago I started out a blog named similarly... and yet it's been a while longer since I haven't got to write, at least for this blog; which to me had become my singular place to be online... with my rants and all.

Along this time, lots of interested stuff has happened around the world and in my world itself, and so I am taking some time here to introduce to you guys what's going on...

Twitter

First off, I want to start by saying that during this past weeks twitter has become kind of my confident and life tracker: Who needs time tracker when you have twitter on hand? - sometimes I whish I could do a mix of both, maybe I should...

Silverlight

Twitter also brought me the news of Silverlight 1.0 being released, this news came from somebody from within Microsoft who twittered it from Australia; but then, I also realized by this same character that one of the projects I've been secretly working on was published to an early buggy build just hours before we had planned to publish the final version - that for sure put some pressing in our shoulders to wrap up QA and get the latest version online before the rest of world would wake up...

Happy though, as a direct result to this, I can also report that one of our first "commercial" Silverlight teasers was published as probably one of the coolest strategic partnerships Microsoft got together with the media industry - got to say that Microsoft has done a terrific job as getting so many early adopters to put up to their technology.

Past, Present & Future

But then, what is a teaser without a big, real thing following their steps? Well, that's where I am sitting now with my team, we are all working on phase 2, which will become a really cool thing once out, so watch out for what is coming, in the world of media entertainment.

RIA & The Game Ahead

An interesting thing to note though is that during this past month or so, we have got a variety of new breed of applications, architectures and ecosystems approaching prime time, and the development and design communities are rapidly waking up to this great phenomenon by joining discussions and better yet creating the next generation of Rich Interactive Experiences... I just can't handle more all that RIA-wording-war that I like my own better - sorry guys!

And as the base of all these we have Microsoft and Adobe who are putting their best at work by creating great tools that will enable, all of us in the commercial world, to create greater opportunities than ever since the dot Com era.

Coming up next...

Now, even though it is our work to live the day ahead as the rest of our coworkers, we cannot be blind to reality and the today of most of our businesses; that's why next week Adobe will be embracing over 4000 enthusiasts from all over the world in its Max Conference in Chicago, to show us both sides of this dreamed worlds: what can we get our hands on today and what can we expect for future experiences... all this will be up to us.

And for the today: there are a series of conferences happening all across the world in technologies such as Silverlight, one of which I will be getting the chance to talk at, this is the SilverlightDevCamp Chicago, just the day before we get together to celebrate Adobe's best of the best... so if you happen to get to town earlier just drop by, here is more info about it.

Ok, so it's getting late now, and if you are still reading this, then thank you! Great things are coming to this shores and let's mark this as my revamp to blogging again!

Cheers and hope to see you all in Chicago next week!

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Technorati Tags: Adobe, Events, Flash, Flex, MAX, Microsoft Expression, RIA, RIE, Rich Interactive Experiences, Silverlight

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.

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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

Samiq Bits en Español: The new kid on the block

With the publishing of my first Webcast in Spanish today, Samiq Bits en Español is born to provide with access to the Latin American people to the greatest of tomorrows technology.

The mission of this new blog is to share with Spanish speaking audiences the future of Rich Internet Applications, the best of the User Experience and provide reviews to new Products and Services as they are released around the world.

As part of my service to the Latin America society, I will be translating key articles previously published by me or my fellow bloggers regarding the above subjects, providing people who don't speak or in this particular case, read English with access to knowledge only available in that language.

I hope this effort will grow into others and help the development of such an amazing group of people.

Cheers!

I'll be hosting Ask the Expert for Microsoft eXpert Zone Latin America

Hi guys, just wanted to write really quick to let all know I'll be hosting a couple of sessions for Ask the Expert on the Microsoft eXpert Zone event for Latin America on going this week...

The first session was held this afternoon and I answered questions regarding WPF and best practices for data binding, the designer and developer role and a bit on WCF integration with WPF.

The second session will be next Thursday @ 11am CST, if you would like to join that session  please follow this link.

Apart from this 2 interactive sessions, on Thursday my Webcast on Rich Internet Applications will be available for on demand viewing here. I think Microsoft will roll this Webcast later on for anytime watching, but for now it will be available only on Thursday as part of this event.

Cheers!

Real Player Revamped!

Since earlier today Real Networks made available its new player for a public beta, and you can go on and download it here.

During the past few weeks this new revamped media player has brought lots of attention back to Real as in brings the Internet Video experience closer to its users, allowing for download of clips from several online services including the recording of streams being fed on the web... plus it will let you burn those videos so you can watch them on your living room in the peace your HDTV... as per the lack of an Apple TV or Media Center box.

Scoble has a good post here where he interviews Jeff Chasen, VP of Real Networks as part of his ScobleShow @ PODTech... go check it out for a preview of most of its features and its new look and feel.

Go get the beta here.

Enjoy!

Open XML SDKs for both .NET and Java worlds

With the advent of Open Document formats during the last couple of years, the fact of having a standard way to manage such document types and been able to access its content in a programmatically way is quite of importance and a key feature towards its adoption, enabling better and creative ways of interactive with them from our own implementations.

Open XML is Microsoft's document format used in their latest Office 2007 System. Open XML is a file format specification for the storage of electronic documents based on a ZIP container for packaging XML and other data files, similar to its generalized sibling definition XPS.

Today I saw posted on the MSDN Blogs a little post referring to the newly release of the Microsoft's SDK for interacting with such formats from .NET; and digging a bit more I found this post from Brian Jones where he shares the project OpenXML4J which is an Open Source Java implementation API born to lead the interaction with such formats from the Java world.

It's great to see how such implementations are setting the base in the development world as to drive the next generation of document driven applications supporting Open Document formats, in this case Open XML, and enabling a mirage of uses on the ever growing world of Rich Interactive Experiences.

Microsoft Educational Resources for the Future

So I've been with not that much to do during the last couple of days and so I started to reach around the different Educational Resources I've seen lately around the web for Microsoft Technologies, specifically WinFx and Silverlight related stuff.

Update: I will try to maintain this bit as updated as possible.

First in the list is the Lynda.com set of tutorials available free for Blend and Design. The Blend set was taught by Lee Brimelow from thewpfblog.com and the Design one was done by Ted LoCascio. Between these two you guys you will find over 10 hours of video tutorials.

Next, Tim Sneath posted today about this Hands On Lab that will guide you on creating an Outlook-look-alike application based on WPF. With this lab you will go thru a bit more than 90 pages and by the end of this tutorial you will have a resemble of Outlook plus a vast experience in putting together a fairly complex application yourself using this new presentation framework.

- BTW Files needed will be found here.

Moving towards books, a few weeks ago I saw Chris Anderson published a new book on WPF called Essential Windows Presentation Foundation. From that book SearchVB.com is hosting Chapter 1 which I think serves as a really good introduction to this new way of building user experiences, I think this will go handy before the Hands-on 90-page-thing.

Anyway, I went also yesterday thru the Quickstart for Silverlight 1.0 (currently in Beta), I found it really nice and easy and holding a good structure as to guide you thru what the possibilities are with this first approach to building Rich Interactive Experiences on the web, with all its limitations and bugs, moreover I think it serves as a good ground base moving forward to the more powerful Silverlight 1.1 Quickstart (currently in public Alpha), which will be the more natural approach to all of us C# coders.

Celso Gomes, an interactive designer @ Microsoft, has also made available his website nibbles, which on his own words, it is a series of snack tutorials for hungry designers. Here you will find a good set of tutorials for creating both WPF and Silverlight applications using Expression Blend.

I also found this post from Tim Sneath on a series of training for Microsoft technologies going over this summer across the states, so if you happen to live near by any of this stops (they are quite a lot) then you might have the opportunity to attend one or more of those.

So here you have, a good set of resources to entertain yourself for a few days and get some new stuff in your Microsoft box of knowledge,

Cheers!

Apollo is a new AIR

Just as I reported back on Saturday, Adobe had some new releases under its sleeve and today it came out playing drums for what it is a big set of announcements in the Rich Media world, first one to get it was Adobe's Ryan Stewart here.

AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) is the official name for what we have come to know as Apollo. A new beta release has been made public today along with integration plug-ins for both Adobe's Dreamweaver and the Aptana IDE, for those of you who want to start kicking the HTML on AIR approach.

Following along with this release another beta made its debut today, as providing greater support for AIR, Flex3 is becoming the first iteration release since Flex was made Open Source earlier this year.

To end this morning of great news a refresh was announced for the Flash 9 Runtime providing hardware acceleration to video playing when in full screen, boosting the capabilities of the client... as to date this is the first time Adobe adds any kind of support for Hardware acceleration to one of its Flash based product... so great things are up to expect out this new approach.

Following links will provide you with the meat of this great morning:

• Adobe AIR SDK and Runtime
• Adobe Flex3 Builder Beta
• Adobe AIR Extension for Dreamweaver
• Developing AIR with Flex3 and Flash

Apollo or else

It seems that "Apollo" will cease to exists as a technology name and a new naming term for Adobe's desktop everywhere application framework will make its debuts in the coming days.

After some blurred screen shots posted by Adobe's Ted Patrick on his blog pointing out some new additions that "Apollo" will be introducing to Flex 3, the name on the captioning for the wizard's windowing and body has been distorted as to not reveal its new name... calling for a wait and see.

New name and new release coming this following weeks embracing this great technology, we will see how this new features will help boosting force to the ecology of Rich Interactive Experiences in our life... this are amazing times!

Recording Webcast @ Microsoft

Hi guys, just wanted to add a quick update... I've been asked to record a Webcast for Microsoft Caribbean and Central America for their next eXpert Zone event to be held later this month here in Costa Rica.

For this Webcast I will be talking about Rich Internet Applications and the .NET technologies around this approach: WPF & Silverlight 

I'll be posting the slides both in English as in Spanish, given that this blog is mostly written in the first one, and the Webcast will be in the second one...

Later!

Updates are coming from the live box!

I was just going thru me blogs and came along with a Scoble post noticing the new updates from Microsoft to several of its Live branded applications including Writer, Messenger and Mail, formerly known as Live Mail Desktop... 

I've been using Writer since their Alpha days and I can assure it is one hell of application there... I do pretty much all of my posts from there and can't imagine going back to web based editing - other than those moments when on the road without my PC or while on my mac, *sighs*.

With several new features under the hood, one that called my attention is the addition of Categories, which automatically got populated with my Blogger predefined tags and syncs back to it, so I don't have to go to add them manually on the web admin site anymore.

Online spell checking and a new UI more Vista-like are also a nice add, plus more WYSIWYG controls to manage tables and basic HTML block elements... anyway you go try it here and judge by yourself!

All three applications share the same look and feel and provides hints on where things are moving... some even talk about a Live Studio... anybody thinking Google Live Pack?!

Links to all 3 updated services are as follow:

• Live Writer Beta 2 Refresh here
• Live Messenger 8.5 Beta here
• Live Mail Beta here

Microsoft Surface made its first public appareance

Microsoft Surface made its debut to the public tonight as Microsoft made available its new website accompanied with a great interview from one of its Marketing guys @ On10.net.

Surface, also known internally as Project Milan, has been in the works for over 5 years, following the initial works by Andy Wilson, from Microsoft Research, and Stevie Bathiche, from Microsoft Hardware Divisions, as they envision the mix of both virtual and physical worlds to provide rich, interactive experiences.

Haven gone thru more than 85 earlier prototypes Surface comes as a 30-inch diagonal display table that is easy for use by individual or small groups collaboratively... thru the use of their hands.

Real-world-like applications are been shown thru the demos both in the website as on the interview, with the first retail applications being planned to ship this winter as they make it thru the first partners, including the Sheraton chain of hotels, for which Schematic is working with.

Having this kind of interaction in the wild puts virtual worlds in contrast, and even when the technology is not as affordable as for me to have it at home right now, I can't wait to get access to it as day by day artifacts will define our life at a whole different level... this really is the future today!

Update: I found out that Popular Mechanics got some first hand preview back in March and have put a cool video here.

Update: Scoble will be talking to the guys from the Surface team in the morning so head here with questions on what you would like to know.

HTWWO: Rich Interactive Experiences

These past days the world has witnessed a mirage of applications and services targeted to the development of Rich Internet Applications and Alternative Media. 

Some how these new comers have put me to think why we haven't evolved from using plain old html pages rather than using cool, nice looking, desktop applications... should it be because of the easy of access and navigation, or, might it be just the fact that pretty much everybody can create them easily and anywhere... which defines that by offer everything lives on the web today! 

The browser, as we know it, has allow for information to be at the reach of everybody's fingers since day 1; no need to install, configure or waiting for applications to load - sometimes slowing and even crashing the entire system: the browser has been good... it's been good until today! Today it gets revamp and becomes in way cooler place to be!

Let's go backwards a bit, with Mix07 Microsoft unveiled Silverlight 1.1, successor to what was previously known as WPF/E or version 1.0 of Silverlight.

Silverlight comes as a direct response to Adobe's Flash - with one small difference, Silverlight has a built-in CLR that is cross platform (Mac OS X and Windows) and lives in a 2MB install in the cloud; which means: cross-platform support for .NET is in the house!- I know this sounds corny, but it is quite amazing...

During the same keynote, the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) also made its debut as the base for all dynamic languages to build from, shipping with IronPython, Dynamic VB, JS, and Ruby; DLR is open for anyone who wants to create its own dynamic language with .NET support. The codebase is available on Microsoft Codeplex with full modification rights...

Now on the other side of the road is Adobe, who had released Apollo a few weeks prior to that, introducing a light weight platform to run Flex and Html based applications on the desktop, providing access to OS level functionality previously not available on web-based app's. - I wonder if we will get to support embedded Silverlight some day!?

Anyway, with Flash 9 Adobe has set the rule as the platform for deployment of Rich Internet Applications on the browser, with support for video and a good sandbox for both designers and developers, Adobe lays the ground for today's next generation of applications running on the cloud... but now, this time we have got here with roommates! Now set ur ideas run free!!

I've got to say that Adobe and Microsoft have done a terrific job putting together their Creative and Development suites to work as one, empowering the whole modern UX workflow to rise and take off from the oblique normal websites of yesterday; those that we all have come to love with some boring pain - at least I have.

New times are yet to come, and as a colleague of mine put it the other day, we have set the base for incredible things, now we just have to make them happen!! - I am exited to live it myself!

Cheers!

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Technorati tags: HTWWO, WPF/E, Silverlight, Microsoft, Adobe, Flash, Flex, User Experience, RIA, RIE, Rich Interactive Experiences, Web2.0, Products, CS3, Orcas, Apollo, .NET, DLR, CLR

HTWWO: Microsoft Silverlight

On Sunday at the NAB2007, Microsoft made public the release of Silverlight (formerly known as WPF/E) a new cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of media experiences and rich interactive applications (RIA's) for the Web.

Silverlight is a lightweight subset of XAML, made to build rich media experiences on the web. It supports playback of WMV natively in Windows and Mac, supporting up to 720p on full screen and with options of interactivity during playback.

Another cool feature is that Silverlight introduces a new video brush, allowing you to use video as a texture for any 2D object.

The release have been widely covered across the web, and I have gathered some interesting ones following, so bare with me and enjoy!

• Microsoft Silverlight Official Site here.
• Tina Wood has a video on Channel 10 hosting a demo from the NAB, showing up HD Video delivery both in Mac and PC, go check it out here.
• Tim Sneath has got a post where he goes around his top ten reasons on why you should use Silverlight, I encourage you to go read it here.
• Microsoft's Official Press Pass here. and official press material here.

Looking forward to the weeks to come, during MIX07 there will be wide coverage of Silverlight and some other surprises Microsoft have under its sleeve: Expression Media will be enhanced with Expression Media Encoder later this year, and Tim Sneath recently posted an entry on his blog about it, here; also there will be announcements of a new breed of applications that will be shown across the event's week in May. Lucky you, Mixers!.

Cheers!

P.S. One more thing, bullet # 8 from Tim Sneath's post states: Silverlight is both client- and server-agnostic. There's no difference between the Macintosh and PC runtimes; you don't need any Microsoft software on the server if you don't want to - you can deliver a great Silverlight experience from an Apache / Linux server to a Mac OS 10.4 client. Kind of cool, eh?

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Technorati tags: HTWWO, WPF/E, Silverlight, HD, Microsoft, Products, Web2.0, User Experience, RIA, RIE, Rich Interactive Experiences, WPF

How the World was One!

Over the past few months the Digital World have seen a revamp of a really complex suite of applications and technology models.

The world of media services is no longer what it used to be, and plain HTML, or its Dynamic sibling, no longer fits the bill for RIA. Even more we need to coined some new term that is even more wider and encompasses the real phenomenon we are living, and is what I think to be the rise of Rich Interactive Experiences (RIE).

Software for the desktop or a rich experience on the web should not be that hard to write nor to deliver and we should enforce the way the user interacts with it. User Experiences have gained lots of spaces with this saying and the iPod / iPhone fever has proved it.

People around the world is starting to see how this is the right way to go... give people the power... empower your people... maximize people's productivity... do not make them feel stupid!

A few years ago while in college, it came to my hands a book written by Arthur C. Clark called How the world was one; the book tells the history of modern communication, starting from the invention of the Telegraph, in 1858, to the years when Satellites were put in orbit during the World War II... he tells how during that time, 1957, he saw a world that was solely interconnected. Anywhere. Anyhow and... sighs, One.

Years have passed ever since, and nowadays the world is living a similar revolution. The world is being reconquered, the difference is that today you and I are part of the equation, and not only the military is not running the show, but r