Harjeet’s Blog

I’ve just been watching the live Mix webcast. There have been some great demos and interesting announcements already!

Internet Explorer 8.0 beta 1 now available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/ie/ie8. The demo showed of this really cool feature around web slices where you can add content such key information from an ebay auction into your favorites toolbar.

Silverlight 2.0 beta 1 is available for download. Silverlight 2.0 is going to be extremely cool as it’ll see the next wave of rich advertising, adaptive bandwidth use and a lot more..

I’ll update this post with more information at the end of the webcast!

Update: Check out the Silverlight 2.0 demo at http://memorabilia.hardrock.com/. This shows off the seadragon or deep zoom technology from MS Research.

Technorati Tags: silverlight,ie8,microsoft,mix

Web-Harmoy.co.uk was just launched. The thought is to find a solution to the gap that exists between web designers and web developers at present. Web designers creatively think of nice designs and when the have a chat with the developer, the communication of what they want is not always crystal clear and technical feasibility needs to be tested. The result is a website that is a little if not very different from what the designer wanted. Microsoft’s Expression suite of products allow designers/developers to work using the same tools so that there is coherence in the process and the result is a website that looks and feels like what the designer and developer intended! Here’s something for a nice chuckle…

I knew there would be really cool silverlight enabled sites coming up,  this one is simply brilliant. Tafiti was launched by Microsoft today. It’s a search engine to be used as a research tool where you can search websites, blogs, feeds, news, images, books and more for the information you want. Collect it all, put it together in the form of a collage and share it with others via email or blog. It’s pretty impressive. I tried searching “Harjeet Kumar” on it and the results were very accurately linked to me . That’s not all I searched for though. I also tried putting myself in the position of doing a university coursework, something that I used to do not too long ago. I searched for “Infosys”, put together websites, images, news articles and could even filter down to annual results, HR policies etc. Stacked it all up and it was easy to review. I think its a great start and search and UI have a long way to go. I also think Microsoft’s on to something new! It looks alive and looks “cool”. Check it out at www.tafiti.com

Today, the Microsoft and BT Innovation Accelerator took off at TVP, Reading. It was good to meet some of the folks from the winning teams of Imagine Cup last year. These were teams from Italy, Brazil, Norway, China, Germany and Croatia. I also attended some of the sessions and was amazed at some really cool WPF and WPF/E demos shown there. There is some great stuff that you can do on windows vista with the power of vector based graphics, animation and truly unleash the power of XAML. I am loving Windows Vista more and more everyday! Well if you still dont believe me about the “coolness” factor of these apps, check out http://www.seewindowsvista.com/ and see the videos there, its a collection of WPF Demos created in the Vista environment. And if you still dont like what you see, then head over to Yahoo Messenger, designed for Vista in WPF at http://messenger.yahoo.com/vista. So thats what the next gen apps will look like!

Update:

Some live applications

Weather News

http://weathernews.com/wpfglobal.xbap

As a weather information provider, Weather News wanted to provide customers with rich 3D functionality and flexible animation of global view of weather with real-time weather mapping and zoom in and out. Be sure to click the different views on the bottom, like clouds, day-night, and world climate.

For more information, see Somasegar’s blog.

Impress Japan (DOS/V POWER REPORT)

http://www.dosv.jp/parts_assembler/PartsAssembler.xbap

As a PC magazine publisher, Impress Japan (DOS/V POWER REPORT) leveraged the 3D functionality of WPF to provide customers with an organized view of PC parts selection for DIY PC’s.

Shiseido

http://www.shiseido.co.jp/biyou_dic_vista/shiseido.xbap

As a cosmetics manufacturer, Shiseido used WPF to provide customers with an organized view of cosmetic how-to’s for women and men. Check out the integration of rich media, like the video of how to apply the make-up.

Microsoft Japan (special site of TV program)

http://www.ms-tenkafubu.com/wpf/truth.xbap

This one provides customers with a new generation of interactive experience, powered by Voix.

Windows Vista/WPF Real-World: Microsoft Japan (Windows Vista Web Showcase)

http://labs.microsoft.com/japan/xbap/dominoken.xbap

Source: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsvista/bb330852.aspx