Posts Tagged ‘Silverlight’

If you’re wondering why I keep resorting to LinkedIn profiles, it’s due to the fact that great information can be found… but there are two sides to that coin, as I recently addressed, so from this point forward, all of my posts based on LinkedIn profiles will come standard with the caveat that you can’t be too sure about the information posted within them (though a little bit of common sense goes a long way). Oh, and an honorable mention goes out to, “they help provide content when none is coming in from any of my alternate avenues.”

With that said, my latest scouring through pages and pages of Windows Mobile 7-related profiles has landed us some interesting results! We have references to an RSS application Motorola is developing for WM7, WM7 Silverlight prototypes and applications, Internet Explorer 7 for WM7, and even a glimpse into which web technology Microsoft is looking to launch Windows Mobile 7 on (SharePoint)! Now, since these profiles typically end up either deleted or revised more times than not, I’m just going to take a screen shot of the sections of interest from the profiles. Apologies for the tagging as well. I know it’s not very pleasant to look at but digging through all this data takes time and work. Not to mention, there are some results here that won’t come from a simple search alone. Onward!

Windows Mobile 7 Motorola RSS Reader Application and New UI Controls

 

 

Windows Mobile 7 Labs and Add-on Projects

 

 

Windows Mobile 7 Mirage UK BSP

 

 

Windows Mobile 7 Launch SharePoint Web Site

 

 

Motorola Windows Mobile 7-based Smart Phone

 

 

Qualcomm DirectShow-based Components for Windows Mobile 7

 

 

Touch Gesture Support in Windows Mobile 7

 

 

Windows Mobile 7 Silverlight Applications

 

 

Internet Explorer Mobile 7 for Windows Mobile 7

 

 

Qualcomm Video Encoding on Windows Mobile 7

 

 

Windows Mobile 7 Modular Client for MTP Protocol

 

 

Motorola USB Stack on Windows Mobile 7

 

 

Windows Mobile 7 Browser Platform Team

 

 

Windows Mobile 7 Game UX

 

 

Windows Mobile 7 Prototypes for Soft Keyboard Input Methods

 

 

And that does it for the latest round of Windows Mobile 7 on LinkedIn! The aforementioned 15 profiles were cherry-picked out of 80+ profiles. Most of the other 65+, I’ve either mentioned previously or they contained vague/generic references to Windows Mobile 7 which served no purpose for reporting. Stay tuned for the next batch!

Source: LinkedIn

-Stephen
http://www.msftkitchen.com

This is more an observation than anything else, but I’m highly optimistic about the outlook for Microsoft where the web is concerned in 2010. Why? Follow along to find out.

Those of you who have been around since the early days of the web when competition really started getting heated between Microsoft and Netscape know how important online market share is to Microsoft. And these days, it’s all about advertising. Whoever has the most web real estate to run the most ads on with the most agencies/companies contains the midas touch and that’s all there is to it. This week at PDC, Microsoft took us on a journey through the beginnings and vision of Internet Explorer 9. They also unveiled Silverlight 4 in all of its majesty and I have to say… I’m extremely excited about it. Having time to digest all of the information from PDC 2009, I can’t help but run the following equation through my mind:

Internet Explorer 9 + Silverlight 4 + Bing = The Year of Microsoft on the Web in 2010

If (and that’s a huge, “if”) Microsoft can pull off their vision for IE9, I may very well make the jump back to the browser I used to know and love (IE7 is about the time I jumped ship to FireFox, then Opera). Now that Microsoft has spilled the beans about hardware rendering in their browser, I’m sure every other browser out there has now shifted their model to include the very same technology. It’s off to the races and while another company may beat Microsoft to the market, I think Microsoft has a couple of tricks up their sleeve. After all, their new philosophy is to say as little as possible and over-deliver when the time comes (the polar opposite of the Windows Longhorn mentality, basically). With that in mind, I don’t see Microsoft stepping up to the plate with IE9 so soon without having full confidence that – even *if* someone else beats them to the market with similar technology under the hood – they will do what they have set out to do and they will do it better than everyone else. One would hope, at least.

Let’s step away from Internet Explorer 9 for a moment and talk Bing.

Bing. As a brand, it’s starting to catch on. I couldn’t stand the name initially, but it has managed to grow on me. As a search engine, I’m not sure that it will ever fully replace Google for me, but I find myself using Bing more and more. It provides additional results for me that Google doesn’t (and for how I use Google, that’s huge) and for shopping and travel, I look no further. Where I’m concerned as a consumer, Bing has the shopping/travel market share 100%. Also, I’ve spotted Bing as being the catalyst for traffic to my site more and more. Sure, it’s a very low percentage compared to Google, but it has knocked Yahoo out of ranking. Slowly but surely, Bing keeps creeping up in market share. I hope that trend continues as Bing is truly worthy of being an accessory to Google (as I said, I doubt it will ever be a full-on replacement for Google, but you never know what can happen years down the road).

Now, this is the point in which I note the obvious combination of Google and Firefox. Although Firefox has increasingly become a sluggish product for me (even on my blazing new gaming rig), I still prefer it over IE8. Even in compatibility mode, I notice a number of the pages I frequent acting strangely in IE8. Now, what are the odds of someone actually using and enjoying a combination of Bing and IE9? Google has become a habit. It’s almost instinct to have Google as your main page, so to change that behavior, it would take quite a concious act – one which I may be willing to go through with when IE9 finally drops. Once again, I doubt the combination of Google/Firefox will ever drop below the combination of any other search engine/web browser, but it’s an interesting thought none-the-less.

Lastly, we have Silverlight 4. What an exciting time for developers and Microsoft alike. Silverlight 4 takes Silverlight well-outside the realm of being labeled an Adobe Flash clone and finally places it into a territory all its own (they have been pulling away from that comparison all along, but Silverlight 4 finally commands all the respect Silverlight deserves). If developers can jump on the Silverlight/WCF boat and really help the technology take off, it will be to the benefit of everyone! It almost seems foreign that a technology like Silverlight could come along this late in the game, best Adobe Flash, and become the new standard in interactive/high-def/streaming media, but I really hope it does. And with the rumors of Windows Mobile 7 containing Silverlight controls (at the very least, there’s Silverlight for Mobile), I do not see this technology going away anytime soon (and that’s a good thing).

There is so much more I have to learn about all of the technologies above, so I’m not trying to pretend to be some expert on it all. These are just my personal observations and a culmination of thoughts from the excitement generated by putting all of this together. It seems that if Microsoft was/is ever to finally gain/reclaim web browser and search engine market share, 2010 is going to be the time for it. Now, it may not happen all at once in 2010. It will take time, just as Bing has. Unfortunately, there’s a negative stigma out there about Microsoft’s products in regards to the web. It has almost become a fad to hate Internet Explorer and any type of search engine that Microsoft creates, but now is the time when people should step back and actually give this stuff a chance (or a second-chance, as the case may be for IE9). Yes, at the end of the day, Microsoft is a business. They want to make as much as they can, but then again, that’s no different from any other company. The trick is to put a product out there that will not only be useful, but possibly life-changing… and when I say, “life-changing,” that can be as simple as something someone can leverage in addition to what they already know and love.

I was sold the moment Bing provided results for an exclusive for me that Google failed to. As for how I use the web, that’s a product I’ll stick with. Best of luck to Microsoft in 2010. So many people love to hate them, but I, for one, am excited to see what they put out to enrich the lives of those who give their products the fair shot they deserve. Feel free to chime in with your comments and let me know what you think.

Oh, and for the first time ever, I’m compelled to attend a MIX conference. It’s shaping up to be fantastic next year!

-Stephen
http://www.msftkitchen.com

(Follow me on Twitter: msftkitchen)

Here is a glimpse at what Microsoft appears to have in mind for advertising on MSN in the future. The technology behind it is undoubtedly Silverlight, and by the looks of this video, I’d say clicking on and watching ad content just might end up being enjoyable! lol. Or annoying, depending on to what extent the ads autoplay to page loads and accidental hover-overs/clicks. Check out the video and see what you think. It weighs in at just over 10 minutes but the visuals are nice and they’re accompanied by some good music most of the time:

-Stephen

Amongst all of the excitement regarding Silverlight and Expression, do any of you remember those old Longhorn demos leveraging WPF? The ones I’m referring to were circa 2004/2005 and were up for download on MSDN (they have since been pulled from the site), so you may not recall them but they were really excellent examples of what all you could achieve with WPF; then code-named “Avalon”.

Since then, there have been a number of demos and proof-of-concepts created (such as The North Face In-Store Explorer Proof-of-Concept) and although some of the content is a little dated, this video runs through some great examples of what all has been created using WPF. That being said, I really hope Microsoft’s desktop in Windows 7 is mind-blowing. Vista looks nice, Longhorn looked better. I’m banking on Windows 7 being the fruition and evolution of what was to be Longhorn before the reset.

This video has been demonstrated in keynotes, training sessions, etc. but for those of you who have never been present in said places of demonstration:

And on that note, we wrap up the launch week of uxevangelist.net! The support from all of you has been incredible. ~6,000 page hits with ~3500 unique visitors in 3 days! Thank you for the great site launch and for all of your kind words and support. I hope to continue to bring you the hottest Microsoft content on the web. Please remember to help spread the word! =)

-Stephen Chapman

http://msftkitchen.com