Archives for January 2008 | Software Development in the Real World

January 31, 2008 By miguelcarrasco 40 Comments

Silverlight is Here

Last nights .net User Group was fantastic! It was great to see so many new faces out, and pack the room! I was also really pleased at all the positive feedback! The only negative comment was “More Food!”. We will try and do a better Job of that next time! With the deep freeze in Winnipeg (-47), we thought less would come, but you all made it!

I hope you all gathered from yesterdays presentation that Silverlight is rebooting the Web, as well as Developer and Designer Workflow. I am swamped at the moment with some projects at work, however I wanted to quickly put up the PowerPoint from yesterday’s talk, as well as some of the samples I demonstrated in yesterdays presentation!

Silverlight is really going to change the web! I know a lot of you mentioned on your evaluations yesterday that you loved the technology, but were concerned on its application to your business. To that I say… come work for me instead… just kidding (Am I?). Seriously though, I really think you are seeing a shift these days, and will continue to see a shift over the next 5 to 10 years. While a lot of people are still building traditional web applications, windows applications, etc. I strongly believe those lines will blur over the next several years. WPF/E (Silverlight) is a step in the right direction.

I really have to stop and wonder why Microsoft still gets so much heat, when they are coming up with such amazing stuff, even Michael Arrington gives a shout out to! True, you have your nay sayers saying its a copy of flash, but when you really dive into it, you realize, it is so much more! Its truly like comparing a Aston Martin Vanquish, and tricycle! Why do I sense I just lost about 500 flash devote readers?

Download Silverlight in the Real World (PowerPoint)

Many thanks to Scott Gu for lending some ideas and inspiration!

If you would like links to all the examples, or some of the videos that were shown, just shoot me an email at: miguelc@anvildigital.com and I’d be happy to share them with you!

Technorati Tags: Silverlight

Filed Under: Software Development

January 9, 2008 By miguelcarrasco 15 Comments

Software Development in 2008

I’m so pumped about software development in 2008. All these new tools coming out from the various big software vendors are fantastic. Even the tiny companies out there are releasing some phenomenal products! Software development is going to be a hot topic in the new year!

While most blogs are busy stuffing you brains with information, how many of them are asking users what they want to see in their blogs? Maybe some, but not many. There are so many software development issues that can be covered. Are their products out there you wished had other features? Is there a certain concept you would like to see explained in more detail? Let me know, I love a challenge!

Software Developers Chance To Be Heard!

There are nearly 2,500 daily readers now, don’t be shy! What kind of topics do you want to see covered in Software Development in the Real World? I have about 20 or so draft postings on software development, but before I start publishing them, I’d love to know all your thoughts. Please hammer on the comments below!

Filed Under: Software Development

January 7, 2008 By miguelcarrasco 47 Comments

Silverlight is coming!

If you live in Winnipeg, make sure you check out my presentation on Microsoft Silverlight at the Winnipeg .net Users Group! What else are you going to do in -30 degree weather! This month I am going to try and shake things up a bit by combining some really cool technology, to make an extremely impressive Silverlight application. As some of you may have read already on TechCrunch, Silverlight just had a huge win at CES when it was announced the weapon of choice to develop an extremely kick ass site, would be Microsoft Silverlight. That’s gutsy! Your talking hundreds of thousands of users accessing content, 2,200 hours of live video coverage, and an additional 3,000 hours of on demand videos.

I’ve been playing around with WPF, WPF/E (Silverlight) for some time now, and I love the possibilities. The key’s to its success are mainly developer adoption, and powerful systems. I will leave the getting powerful systems up to Moore’s Law, however, I am going to do my best attempt over the next few months to show developers, and artists, the power of Microsoft Expressions, and all the goodness that WPF and Silverlight bring to the table! This will be the first run of a pretty heavy technology intensive demo, so if you come out, make sure to be nice!

What I will be showing is nothing you haven’t seen hyped before. However, during this presentation, we will build the application, run the application, and actually see it working in front of you. I will be taking the same principles that Johnny Lee and Brian Peek came up with, and applying them to WPF, Silverlight, and real world applications.

You can register for the event here.

Below is the official Presentation details! Hope to see you all there!

Featured Product/Topic: Silverlight
Recommended Audience: Software Developers
When: January 29th, 2008 5:45 PM – 8:00 PM
Welcome Time: 5:15 PM Central Time

From Movies to The Real World: Silverlight is here!

Join us on a tour of one of the most exciting, graphic intensive application development platforms to come out of Microsoft in years. Don’t expect to see hello world or death by PowerPoint during this world wind tour through Visual Studio.net 2008, WPF, Silverlight, Expression Blend, Expression Design, Expression Media, and XAML. This presentation will have you energized and pumped to expand your horizons. Closing the night, users will be allowed to try the application built during the presentation, and believe me, you will want to try this! If you watched in awe as Tom Cruise navigated a futuristic 3D interface in Minority Report, you will leave this session running home (or driving in this cold) and loading up your development weapons of choice.

Filed Under: Presentations, Software Development, Web Development, Web/Tech

January 7, 2008 By miguelcarrasco 26 Comments

Xobni Makes Outlook Better

When I first heard of Xobni through Michael Arrington, I was insanely excited to see a tool with this much power coming out for Outlook! As a software developer / software manager / software tester / software architect, software visionary, I have an unbelievable amount of email! And it never seems to stop! But what emails are the most important to read? Who sends me the most emails? Or how about that thing I know you all have asked yourselves at least a hundred times “Hey, didn’t you send me that file the other day? What day did you send it?”.

The Power of Xobni

What makes Xobni so powerful (software developers out there, take note!) is that you can continue to use Outlook exactly as you do today, however you get additional functionality and data intelligence added to your user experience. I’ve used other tools for Outlook (A ton, like some of you) and I always end up removing them because they slow down my system, or just plain don’t seem to add the value for the cost. Cost vs. Value, that’s a great title for another entry later on! What makes your users switch, upgrade, pay maintenance fees. I won’t diverge into that topic here.

Xobni focuses on three issues that make Outlook seem ancient. Fast Search, Finding Attachments Easily, Navigating Outlook by People, and creating Threaded Conversations.

Finding Attachments from someone that sent you a file a few days ago will be as simple as looking to the right of the email, and just finding the file you wanted! It will literally take you seconds!

Having a conversation about budgets with your boss? Can’t seem to remember who else was involved, and what files were shared? No problem at all! Just use the Conversations With xyz option, and watch a whole new world open up in front of your eyes!

Context at Your Fingertips

Even if you don’t click a single thing within the Xobni Insight panel, you will love Xobni. By creating various profiles for all the contacts you have in your e-mail, you finally get fantastic context to all your emails extremely easily. This is a powerful feature for me. For example. I can quickly see what rank a user posses when I get an email from them. How much weight does this user really have? And who is connected to this user anyway? Anybody important? Maybe I should CC them on the email? When was the last time we talked about this, I thought we just did last week? When is a good time to send them an email so they read it? All these questions are answered almost instantly by just glancing over at Xobni Insight’s panel.

The Genius Behind Xobni

The real genius behind Xobni is that they realized that they can give users more information, and allow users to interact in whole new ways with their email, without asking them to track any more information at all! Most new programs you use, ask you to enter more information for tracking purposes. Applications like Xobni are the way of the future my friends! I can’t believe more people are not jumping all over ideas like this. Instead of asking users to track more information, do more work, and try and convince them to enter more data up front in order to provide them with new features and reports, why not let them install an application, that analyzes the data, and then gives you a ton of cool features! What a concept!

This is what Google figured out, this is what Facebook does so well, and this is what Xobni does phenomenally well. I’m curious how long it will take before the company is snapped up. Sadly it probably won’t be to sell Xobni, it will probably be to acquire the talent behind the tool. Just look at what Microsoft did with Lookout. Lookout was a fantastic product, but it has yet to be integrated into Outlook. Sure we have a new Search option in Outlook 2007, but come on, it is the slowest thing I have ever used.

Xobni is full of so many features I don’t even want to get into them here. If you want fast search, awesome data mining capabilities for your email, Xobni is the tool for you. I can’t remember the last time I used a tool and within minutes ran to people sending them screenshots of my new Outlook Experience! It definitely lives up to its branding of effortless email management!

If you would like to try out Xobni, visit the Xobni site and sign up for the closed beta. You will be impressed! Xobni was founded in 2006 in Cambridge, Massachusetts by Adam Smith and Matt Brezina.

Xobni – It’s Inbox Backwards

http://www.xobni.xom

Filed Under: Reviews, Software Development