More information will be available at http://www.sfslug.org

Hope you’ll come out to hear more about Silverlight.

Best,

J.

I have come back to see that Silverlight 4 which I mentioned in my last post is trickling out into the wild. The most recent and most fun example of that I have had the chance to play with is the new out of browser Facebook client available here. It shows you how to install Silverlight 4 plugin for your machine both PC and Intel based MAC OS. It’s a nice interface and takes advantage of some of the new feature in Silverlight 4 like webcam integration.

My friend Victor Gaudioso has been really playing around with that webcam support in SL4 so I recommend you check out his blog for some of his insight into how that has been going.

Tim Heuer has an excellent write up on the Facebook app on his blog I highly recommend you check that out.

More to come but for now happy new year and welcome to 2010.

J.

Some points about SL4

With Silverlight 4 beta, released on November 18, Microsoft continues to empower developers to create rich, compelling user experiences both on and off the Web.

New out-of-browser capabilities extend beyond the browser, enabling new experiences that reach deeper into the desktop without additional code or runtimes required.

Webcam and microphone with local recording capability opens new possibilities for innovative interactive media experiences.

Native multicast support enables efficient enterprise-wide training and internal communications behind the firewall.
Silverlight 4 is delivering a full suite of powerful capabilities to enterprise application developers.

Full support for Silverlight in Visual Studio 2010 gives enterprise developers a tried and trusted development environment and languages that scales for mission-critical enterprise scenarios.

Integration with Microsoft Office and Microsoft SharePoint bring the benefits of Silverlight interactivity to a broad enterprise install base.

Enhanced printing, networking, databinding, reporting and charting capabilities satisfy common business needs.

Silverlight has a growing library of more than 60 customizable controls with everything you need to create rich, interactive applications to rapidly build attractive, functional business applications.

Starting November 18, developers can begin testing the capabilities of Silverlight 4 beta and plan for the great applications they can create tomorrow.

The developer community is our lifeblood, and we continue to support developers needs with Silverlight 4.

9 out of the top 10 most commonly requested features were incorporated into Silverlight 4.

The Silverlight platform continues to experience meteoric growth since hitting the market in 2007.

View here

It is a great example of what some sharp minds and talented developers can do when you stop fighting about which tech to use and just use everything at what it is best at. I’m excited to see it and I hope to see more.

The game is afoot!

Well recently that project launched and is available here http://www.vsallaccess.com/ . It’s a great experience as usual but what you may find more interesting being that you are probably interested in Silverlight development is the write up that Big Spaceship posted on their blog about their experience available here http://www.bigspaceship.com/blog/labs/thoughts-on-silverlight/ this is a great article to read for many reasons but I was really happy to see that aside from some considered feedback they found the overall process enjoyable.

To see an agency that I have known for years take up the challenge to develop in Silverlight and come out on the other end excited to do it again well I am thrilled. Great work guys, and I look forward to seeing more in the future.

J.

NBC continues it adoption of Silveright as it launches an amazing video player with DVR type controls that it will be using to deliver all of it’s NFL game coverage online.

A big win for Silverlight and evidence of it’s growth as a top notch solution for HD video on the net.

From the Vertigo * press release…
* The awesome team who built the player.

I’m proud to announce the launch of NBC Sport’s Sunday Night Football Extra live HD video experience, designed and built by our team here at Vertigo!  Tune in tonight at 5:30 PT to watch the Pittsburgh Steelers take on the Tennessee Titans on NFL opening day.  Our team has spent the last couple of months bringing this compelling, immersive video experience to life using Microsoft’s Smooth Streaming technology.  We’ll post additional details soon, but I wanted to highlight some key features:

Stunning HD Quality video
Moving to full-screen mode allows you to access 3.45 Mbps High Definition video feed.  Try hooking up your laptop to your TV and watching in full-screen mode!

Adaptive streaming using Microsoft’s Smooth Streaming technology
Your Sunday Night Football viewing experience will be automatically adjusted to best match your internet bandwidth and your computer’s performance.  If you have a fast internet connection, you’ll automatically see the best quality video.  If 4 people in your house suddenly decide to start playing World of Warcraft and your connection suddenly gets worse, you won’t suffer the frustration and interruption of a “Buffering…” screen.  Instead, the player will detect the lower bandwidth, and smoothly switch over to a lower quality video feed, giving you an uninterrupted live stream.

Live Alternate cameras: Action from any angle
While you watch the action in the main feed, you can keep an eye on 4 alternate camera angles, showing you the action from the sidelines, the endzone, the center-field cable, or to focus on the stars of the game.  You can switch these camera views into the main video window at any time to focus on the details.

DVR controls give you the power to direct your own experience
With DVR controls such as slow-motion, rewind, fast-forward, and instant replay, you can create your very own Sunday Night Football experience!  Want to see an instant replay of that great tackle Bob Sanders made?  Want to see Adam Vinatieri split the uprights again in slow motion?  The power is in your hands!

Ground-Breaking Interactive Timeline and Key Plays Menu
That timeline at the bottom of the video is smarter than your average video scrubber bar!  The diamonds above and below the timeline in each team’s color show an interactive visual readout of all the key plays throughout the game, allowing you to quickly browse and navigate to all the key plays in the game!  This data populates live, and each play’s description appears as soon as the action happens in your video.  Open up the menu to get more details about each play.

Interactive Q&A with NBC’s Mike Florio
Wondering if Peyton Manning will miss Marvin Harrison this year?  Chat with NBC’s Mike Florio during the game, and have your questions get answered by the experts!

Stats
Real-time stats data come in live with the game to give you all the info you need.

Highlight clips
Highlights of the big plays come in soon after the plays happen so you can review all the best moments of the game.

Best,

J.

*UPDATE*

Awesome results for CBS March Madness Streaming!

We also held the national finals for Phizzpop, I was amazed, as always, at the quality of the entries by each of the five teams given the time constraints. It was a difficult challenge to be sure, to develop a comprehensive plan to move an entire city closer to the green column. Each team had compelling response that covered several aspects of daily life and crossed technologies and devices. In the end Zeus Jones, winners of the Minneapolis Phizzpop, walked away with the national win as well.

I enjoyed SXSW but the hardest part about being there this trip was not being able to talk about all the great things that were coming the week after at MIX09 in Vegas, another first for me, not Vegas but MIX. A Microsoft conference that brings designers and developers from across the US to learn about current MS technology and what is coming over the horizon and I picked an exciting one for my first MIX. Bill Buxton opened the event with a keynote about design that nicely alluded to one of the new features of Silverlight 3, SketchFlow.

SketchFlow

SketchFlow is a tool for application prototyping that is built into Blend 3, it allows for the quick layout of application screens and interaction flow. The app includes a set of functioning controls designed as though they were sketched, allowing you to layout a working application prototype data and all quickly and without concern that your interface will be mistaken for a final design.

Map out your application, define reusable elements across screens, add behaviors to make a functioning demo you can share with your client and team cross browser cross platform. If that isn’t enough you can output a word doc fully formatted with screen shots.

For more information visit the MIX09 website and view the video of the Sketchflow session.