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This site is my way to share my views and general business and IT information with you about Microsoft, IT solutions for ISVs, technologists and businesses, large and small.  

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  • Is Microsoft finally getting back a "cool" rap - Popfly, Silverlight, Home Server, Surface?

    Again, I saw this on the home Server blog and thought it was worth sharing. Not the information about Surface or Home Server - I have commented on those before, but the fact that people are finally saying these products are cool: Unless you've been hiding in a cave somewhere (or just maybe working really hard this week) you've probably caught some of the incredible buzz for Microsoft Surface , unveiled at the Wall Street Journal's D conference this week. USA Today tech columnist Andrew Kantor says Surface is the "second product in a row ( following Windows Home Server ) to 'just work,' a la Apple." Kantor wrote about Home Server last week, too: "Even if you only have a single computer in your home, dedicating an older machine as a WHS is a good idea simply for the protection against hard disk failure and the ability to pool your drives." ZDNet bloggers Dan Farber and and Larry Dignan also connect Home Server to Surface, saying the two could complement each other. What do...
  • How I created my popfly carousel

    If you go to the blog entry on Microsoft Surface you will be asked to install Microsoft Silverlight. When you do so you will see a carousel effect to show the 12 Surface pictures. As many of you know I am NOT a developer by any means, so I thought I would show you what I had to do to get to the finished product - it is not hard at all. 1st off I signed up for a Popfly account at http://www.popfly.com and was lucky enough to get an account very quickly. OK, so I dropped 3 blocks onto the screen - one to read the RSS fead of the Surface pictures, one to pull out the picture urls and one to display them. That was it (well I did drag those blue lines across too) Here is what I put in the RSS feed Here is what I put in the filter Here is what I put in the carousel initially (I changed it to a more complex piece of code later to change the screen resolution of the images it pulls down) that was it. That is why popfly is so simple to combine things together. ttfn David Technorati tags: popfly , mashup , silverlight
  • WOW!!! Microsoft Surface has just made me say - "I have to have one" and so does everyone else in the family too. This is seriously cool (and not really much to do for most small businesses)

    [updated 1:05 with more information and moving silverlight code to a 2nd page] I'm a difficult person to impress - Silverlight is one technology that impresses me seriously as to the future direction of media and web applications. Now however we have a new platform that I really like the look of - Surface . Have a look at the web site - see the possibilities of this touch and object sensitive device. Put a camera on it and the pictures poor out of it. look at photos and movies on it. It is just a wow, how cool is that type of device. Maybe I should run some form of competition on the blog and see if anyone wants to win one when they ship!! For more information go to www.microsoft.com/surface/ with the "Executive Q&A: What the new surface computing category means for Microsoft and consumers" found at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2007/may07/05-29Surface.mspx and the general PR at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/may07/05-29MSSurfacePR.mspx . Finally you can see more...
  • Microsoft Silverlight (the new name for WPF/E) - the future of web based apps - try some samples on the site

    I saw the news about Silverlight and the things that struck me was that it was a) cross platform and b) provided a fantastic experience. You can also use the Expression tools to build this stuff. So much was I impressed by the stuff that I have hosted it on my server for you to see what is there. To find out more go to Microsoft Silverlight It does pretty graphics, movies, effects like turning pages and more. If you install the runtime (you must have .Net 3.0 installed - i.e. native on Vista and installable for Windows XP) then pop along to http://uksbsguy.com/febctpsamples to see the demos. To get started you need to do some downloading (click below for Windows or http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/asp/downloads.aspx for Windows and MAC): System Requirements and Installation Instructions There are a number of blogs on this product and they can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/asp/blogs.aspx . It is also worth noting that the Silverlight web site ( http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight ) will...

(c)David Overton 2006-23