Kurt Brockett’s Digital Daydream
So this passes the test of “I’ve been asked this a few times”. It’s kind of hard to explain in terms of “pull it until it sounds like it broke”. Make sure the little latch on the back is set to “unlock”. The latch is at the stand connection area and a little hidden. Then it’s just a matter of pulling it out until it snaps.
I’m wondering if quoting install numbers is really worth it anymore. I know one of the benefits of Flash is that it is on virtually every machine. What is the threshold # that everyone is looking for? To me it should be around 50%. Once it’s on or around 50% of machines the bit should flip from 0 –> 1 and we just say, yes it’s ok to build something on Silverlight.
I completely understand for Silverlight 1 and event Silverlight 2 it was a bit tough to justify a Silverlight only experience. On www.identitymine.com we updated our sites to have Silverlight 2 elements on the homepage. Something we didn’t do for Silverlight 1.
I thought it was an odd comparison to compare it Firefox, Opera and Safari.
Just for fun I thought I would try a few other comparisons:
Silverlight has the same number of installs as:
The age of maybe the world’s oldest brain in a fish fossil
The name of a UK Creative Shop
A potential prize for creating a better car battery in $
$ spent by Al Gore to push Climate Protection
and another 57,700,000 other items.
This morning I logged into socialthing! to find the message above. My reaction is two fold. First, I think it’s great for the creators to have landed a sale of the business and continue to work on a proper business strategy at aol. In their blog this morning they announced where the direction is going. You can read all about it here. I say best of luck to them and the second reaction is now it’s time to find the alternative. The biggest advantage for me was being able to aggregate and x-post Twitter and Facebook updates together. These networks had slightly different audiences so it was necessary for me to keep both. Looks like it’s time to check out TweetDeck again and Seesmic Desktop.
Found on Autoblog
A small departure from my regular musings, but I had to give this some love as I think it’s awesome.
Wrapping up a few items this morning then heading over to SF for Web 2.0 expo. IdentityMine was invited to demo Microsoft Surface in the expo hall on Friday. Going to register and walk the hall today and grab some dinner with friends in the city tonight. If your around dm me on twitter: @kurtbrockett. Looking forward to catching up with everyone.
A few weeks ago IdentityMine was approached by our partners at EMC-Conchango about an upcoming UK focused Microsoft Surface press event. The idea was to give some of the press an opportunity to sit down and interact with Microsoft Surface while talking about the tech with some of the UK’s leading agencies.
As many of you may know IdentityMine recently hired Laurent Bugnion who resides in Zurich, Switzerland. We viewed this as a perfect opportunity to grow our EMEA based business and interact with some of the forward thinking businesses in the UK. The agenda called for food and drinks towards the end of the event so it was only natural to feature our Wine Guide Solution Starter as an integrated experience for that portion of the event. As you can tell from the coverage below the event was a definite success.
photo courtesy of electricpig.co.uk
Microsoft Surface UK Press Event Coverage:
Times Online
Microsoft Surface launches in the UK
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5933868.ece
Channel4.com
Keeping in touch with computing
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/science_technology/keeping+in+touch+with+computing/3036517
CIO
Microsoft Surface: You’ll believe a coffee table computer can fly!
TechDigest
Microsoft Surface takes the stage in the UK with home integration planned for the future
http://www.techdigest.tv/2009/03/microsoft_surfa_1.html
Reuters
Microsoft’s ‘Surface’ comes to UK
http://uk.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=100579&videoChannel=6
TechRadar
Microsoft confirms UK Surface price
http://www.techradar.com/news/world-of-tech/future-tech/microsoft-confirms-uk-surface-price-586291
Pocket-lint
Microsoft Surface to get bigger screen
http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/news.phtml/23039/24063/microsoft-surface-bigger-screen-inbound.phtml
Shiny Shiny
Microsoft’s Surface… surfaces in the UK
http://www.shinyshiny.tv/2009/03/microsofts_surf_1.html
Computer Weekly
Photos: Tesco use Microsoft Surface in the workplace
http://www.computerweekly.com/galleries/235321-1/Tesco-Microsoft-Surface-Tesco-shopping-desktop.htm
Computer Weekly
Microsoft Surface – its about making computing social, rather than asocial
http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/editors-blog/2009/03/microsoft-surface—its-about.html
Electric Pig
Microsoft Surface coming to Tesco this year?
http://www.electricpig.co.uk/2009/03/18/microsoft-surface-coming-to-tesco-this-year/
IT Pro
Yesterday saw the official launch of Microsoft’s Surface platform in the UK
http://www.itpro.co.uk/610249/microsoft-s-surface-launched-in-the-uk
IT Pro Portal
This morning IdentityMine released information on our IdentityMine Gesture Engine solution accelerator. At IdentityMine we have a variety of offerings to help customers get a jumpstart on their development projects. Those come in the form of Solution Starters such as our Surface Wine Guide and Surface Event Photos applications. Both serve as base applications for clients to build on. In addition we rely on a set of technologies we call Solution Accelerators which are packages of code that can be reused in client projects to accelerate development utilizing these building blocks.
With the announcement of the IdentityMine Gesture Engine we are for the first time able to talk publicly about an exciting solution accelerator that is sure to become a must have component of all Touch projects in our immediate future. With Windows 7 launch on the horizon many companies are looking for a way to differentiate their software experiences through the use of the multi-touch capabilities built into Windows 7. We build on those technology ideas with the Gesture Engine to allow for such things as multi-level cooperative gesturing which allows more than one gesture to be grouped onto single elements which can help to create more natural user interfaces.
While the Gesture Engine is a great set of code technologies it’s really our clients that help us bring the experiences to life through their brand and applications. Stay tuned for future announcements on some of the great partners we have already utilizing the IdentityMine Gesture Engine.
Other IdentityMine folks on the announcement:
Laurent Bugnion: IdentityMine releases Gesture Engine for advanced multitouch development
Nathan Dunlap: IdentityMine Introduces the IdentityMine Gesture Engine to Support Advanced Multi-Touch Development
A couple of posts ago I wrote a bit about PhotoSynth and and how it was being used for the inauguration to capture “The Moment”. As of today there is a new application on the App Store called iSynth which puts the Photosynth interface in the palm of your hand.
The interesting part about this story to me though is how it came to be. The iSynth application was developed by an ex-Summer intern on the Photosynth Team named Greg Pascale with permission from Microsoft (from On10.net). I’m wondering if this is a model the company will continue to explore for iPhone or even Android based app development. It might be the perfect answer to get some of Microsoft’s technology out into the large iPhone/Android app space without officially backing those platforms. If I was a product group internally at Microsoft my first order of business would be to help push a products technology out to the masses regardless of cross team dependencies and/or feelings (WinMobile).
If the idea of having a bunch of semi-backed applications on iPhone starts to get a little unwieldy they may also want to think about a policy where iPhone/Android/Blackberry application development support is allowed or even encouraged as long as there is first an equal or more compelling version created for Windows Mobile. I think that’s a fair tradeoff and allows me to support iPhone while still backing the larger company’s initiatives. Also it could help prove parity of the underlying development environment if similar versions of the application are supported on Windows Mobile.
A few weeks ago I posted about the 10K Smart Coding challenge in highlighting Robby Ingebretsen’s Moustachr entry. Little did I know that a few folks at IdentityMine were hard at work developing a few more submissions.
ColorClock 10K by Laurent Bugnion*
“The application is inspired from the “ChromaChron” clocks that were a huge trend in Europe in the 70’s. These clocks have 12 areas, each with one different color and representing one hour, and a cache rotating in front of these areas. This version with a brand new UX and 2 skins will enchant you.”
Verdant by Karim Hernandez
“Growth bends toward the sun. Rain water sustains growth. Collect as much as you can. Too much growth slows you down. Succeed and you may multiply.”
“Search results will be displayed on a time line panel going towards the Z-space. Please use keywords like ‘2009′, ‘Gaza’, ‘new year’ etc. Move the mouse with left button down to see the parallax effect. You can click on the hyper link on top of each tweet to go to their twitter page.”
It’s great to see the team involved in the community and I can’t help but be impressed by what they can squeeze in to just 10K. It’s also fun to see what they came up with given a blank slate.
*Laurent was actually chosen as a judge for the contest so his entry will actually not be in the running for the top prize. Congrats Laurent!
Even though this has been all over the news with CNN etc I couldn’t help but embed it here on brockett.net. I changed up the embed codes a bit to make it fit at 700 px wide. What a great event to really showcase the technology. Ever since this Photosynth was first showed I’ve been waiting for someone to do something like this. My first thought was back in 2007 when Bonds broke the HR record. Amazing to see how fast this stuff is now moving from preview tech to mainstream. Biggest wins for tech today were definitely Photosynth and the CNN + Facebook live viewing.
Director of UX Evangelism at IdentityMine - A User Experience company specializing in WPF, Silverlight and Microsoft Surface.