Monthly Archives: September 2008

Want to learn about Silverlight and Expression?

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Here are a list of useful links to start with:

Silverlight

·        To learn more about Silverlight visit the Silverlight Community site. This site includes tons of tutorials, videos, getting started information, samples and a showcase where you can see the latest sites created with Silverlight

·        One of the best online resources is the library of videos from the latest MIX event in Las Vegas. These are many dozens of hours of videos that talk about Silverlight and User Experience – http://sessions.visitmix.com/

·        The Silverlight Reference includes the nitty gritty of Silverlight. Covering both versions of Silverlight you will find detailed information on all functions, events, properties and objects as well as useful examples – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb404708.aspx

·        Microsoft Learning has also created some fun Silverlight Snacks that provide you with high level information on Silverlight

·        Mike and Mike’s Silverlight Webcast series is great (mainly aimed at developers but also useful for you as a designer) – http://www.miketaulty.com/SLVideos.html

·        Tim Sneath is one of the most popular bloggers in Microsoft. He is a developer but his posts will be very useful for you too: http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/

·        Lynda.com has produced a free Silverlight series. Please note this is Silverlight 1 but might still be useful for you in order to understand some basic concepts of Silverlight – http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modPage.asp?ID=473

·        Silverlight 1 and Silverlight 2 Feature Matrix. Learn more about the differences between Silverlight 1 and Silverlight 2 – http://silverlight.net/GetStarted/overview.aspx

 

Expression

·        Visit the Microsoft Expression site for more information about the Expression tools, video tours, feature lists, trials, preview versions and to purchase the products.

·        Visit the Expression Community site for more learning and technical resources for designers. Visit the forums, download the samples and check out the blogs from some Expression product team members.

·        The XAML-Ready agency session at MIX will help you speed up in understanding Silverlight and Expression concepts from a Flash designer point of view – http://sessions.visitmix.com/?selectedSearch=C01

·        To learn more about DeepZoom check out this post which talks about the latest version of DeepZoom Composer.

 

Microsoft UX and Design    

·        Microsoft Design site. Learn more about different designers who work for Microsoft in different areas.

 

Community

·        Kirupa is a Program Manager in the Blend team. You will enjoy his blog and will found lots of great tricks in there: http://blog.kirupa.com/?cat=13

·        Arturo is a Product Manager for Expression. You can also get news and announcements in his blog: http://ux.artu.tv

·        All the Expression product teams also own and post news and tips & tricks in their blogs:

o   Expression Blend and Expression Design

o   Expression Web

o   Expression Encoder

o   Expression Media

(src: http://ux.artu.tv/?page_id=70)

"Silverlight Shines at International Broadcasting Conference 2008 in Amsterdam"

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 I don't want to repeat a press release, but quite a lot of interesting things happened to Silverlight today:

  • H.264 support announced
  • AAC support announced
  • MP4 container support announced

As Scott Guthrie has written – this doesn't mean Microsoft is getting further from WMV. It just means – we give you the choice.

And a lot of interesting website starts SL based video delivery (sports fan are especially welcomed):

And a few words about our spons… sorry, about the NBC Olympics website, which in 17 days scored:

  • 1.3 billion page views
  • 50+ million unique visitors
  • 70 million streams
  • 10 million hours of video watched
  • 35 million mobile page views
  • Hundreds of highlights produced every day, which were delivered to every possible platform

Windows HPC Server 2008 is around the corner

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We are just a few weeks away from announcing the Windows HPC Server 2008. For developers and architects this will be an opportunity to think different – think in High Performance. Therefore I list here three webcasts that should enable you full power by the time you put your hands on the disks:

Windows HPC Server Development, the MPI Application Model

September 11, 2008, at 8:00am PDT and 7:00pm PDT

  

Windows HPC Server Development, the WCF Application Model 

October 2, 2008 at 8:00am PDT and 7:00pm PDT

 

Performance and Networking Gains with Windows HPC Server 2008

October 15, 2008, 8:00am PDT and October 16, 2008, 7:00pm PDT

  

Live Webcast:  Windows HPC Server Development, the MPI Application Model

What:

Live customer facing webcast with Wenming Ye, HPC Technologist

When:

September 11, 2008, 8:00am PDT (EMEA) & 7:00pm PDT (APAC)

Where:

Live Webcast – through Live Meeting  either via email or phone here:  . Register for September 11th Morning or Register for September 11 Evening webcast.

On-demand recording will be available for download and viewing after the live webcast.

Target Individuals:

Developers, Architects

Why:

Generate awareness and education on MPI model – features/benefits and Windows HPC Server 2008

Invite your customers & partners with this text.

Windows HPC Server Development, the MPI Application Model

September 11, 2008, at 8:00am PDT and 7:00pm PDT

Windows HPC Server 2008 introduces innovative features for traditional High Performance Computing solutions.    Significant improvements have been implemented across the entire HPC stack.  Learn about the new Network Direct RDMA technology and how it enables very fast, high-bandwidth, distributed shared memory computing.   MS MPI is now integrated with Event Tracing for Windows easing the task of profiling, analysis, and visualization of HPC solution performance.   A new Job Scheduler architecture delivers impressive performance while also enabling intelligent scheduling policies and resource management.   Traditional HPC solution developers will appreciate the elegance of Microsoft’s latest platform technologies while those new to the parallel computing problem domain will want to consider Windows HPC based solutions. Register for September 11th Morning or Register for September 11 Evening webcast. 

 

Live Webcast:  Windows HPC Server Development, the WCF Application Model 

What:

Live customer facing webcast with Phil Pennington, HPC Technologist

When:

October 2nd, 2008, 8:00am PDT (EMEA) & 7:00pm PDT (APAC)

Where:

Live Webcast – through Live Meeting  either via email or phone here:   Register for the October 2nd Morning or October 2nd Evening

On-demand recording will be available for download and viewing after the live webcast.

Target Individuals:

Developers, Architect

Why:

Generate awareness and education on WCF model – features/benefits and WCF + HPC Services model

Invite your customers & partners with this text.

Windows HPC Server Development, the WCF Application Model 

October 2, 2008 at 8:00am PDT and 7:00pm PDT

Windows HPC Server 2008 introduces a new interactive programming model for High Performance Computing solutions.   Learn how to host Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) components within a compute cluster and how to leverage the cluster in various service-oriented client application scenarios.  An innovative departure from traditional clustered computing, the HPC+WCF Services model enables ease of solution development, deployment, and management.   Early adopters include financial services enterprises with near real-time interactive compute requirements.  

Register for the October 2nd Morning or October 2nd Evening webcast. 

 

Live Webcast:  Performance and Networking Gains with Windows HPC Server 2008 

What:

Live customer facing webcast with Matt Blythe, HPC Product Manager

When:

October 15nd, 2008, 8:00am PDT (EMEA) & October 16th,  7:00pm PDT (APAC)

Where:

Live Webcast – register  either via email or phone here:   Register for October 15th or Register for October 16th webcast. 

On-demand recording will be available for download and viewing after the live webcast.

Target Individuals:

HPC Architects,  HPC End users, Cluster Administrators

Why:

Generate awareness and education on networking and performance enhancements with Windows HPC Server 2008

Invite your customers & partners with this text.

 Performance and Networking Gains with Windows HPC Server 2008

October 15, 2008, 8:00am PDT and October 16, 2008, 7:00pm PDT

The ability for engineers and researchers in all types of organizations to efficiently and reliably run parallel applications is mission critical. In answer to that, Bill Gates set a goal at Supercomputer 2005 to provide a platform which could make the power of high performance computing available to the masses. Three years later, Microsoft is introducing Windows HPC Server 2008, and new HPC platform that includes many performance and scalability improvements designed to reliably  handle some of the toughest parallel applications, while still providing ease of management. This webinar will discuss several of the new features and performance enhancements designed to make Windows HPC Server 2008 ideal for the most demanding research, scientific, and engineering environments.

Register for October 15th or Register for October 16th webcast.

Believing in Success and Innovation

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This is a bit (?) Hungarian specific thing. I believe in that a small country like Hungary will never able to compete in quantity with countries like India or China. I believe we have to compete on quality, and in the continious innovation that happens daily. Therefore I announce the '2008 Most Innovative Hungarian Partner Solution award'. Feel free to participate – it doesn't hurt that much 🙂