Partner Otaku

Being one of the few “techies” amongst my group of friends and family, I often get enquiries about technologies and products.  Over the weekend, my friend asked, “what is the cloud”.  I proceeded to explain with much hand waving and within a couple of minutes he had a vacuous look in his eyes. I had driven the car into the weeds.

I thought this document from David Chappell & Associates does a good job of providing an overview from an enterprise perspective. I should have forwarded this link to my friend and called it a day.

I just heard that that the PDC2008 Early Bird Discount has been extended three weeks. Register by 11:59PM PST, Monday Sept 8th and save $200 of the full conference registration of $2395.

I thought I would point you to the new Engineering Windows 7 Blog on MSDN

Have you ever wondered how much uptime translates into calendar time?

The 4x 100m Relay was an incredible event.  It had drama and lots of smack talk from the French team. Not only was it one of the 8 Gold Medals that Michael Phelps won, but the amazing finish by Jason Lezak. Jason is an Alum of the University of California at Santa Barbara, my alma mater . If you haven’t seen it – please take the time to watch it – it really was amazing.

I thought I would post this since some have asked questions about Silverlight on other platforms and how to to view the enhanced player on the NBC Olympics website. 

How to access the enhanced player:

The link back to the NBC Olympics site.

All politics aside, i think this site a very interesting example.  This montage is includes over 12,000 thumbnail images.  if you want to go to the site click below:

Deep Zoom Obama

I’m a big fan of Pixar’s films and it’s also exciting that RenderMan 14 will support both HPC Server and Vista 64 later this year.  There is a long list of movies that have used Pixar’s RenderMan including this summer’s blockbuster WALL-E  and a host of other films listed here.  Here’s the press anouncment for more information.

One of the issue that always comes up in conversation these days is the pure number of websites/portals to find information.  I agree – it’s hard for me to find information and I work here.  Anyhow, i’ve included a link to a number of Silverlight 2.0 screencasts, if you haven’t seen it, it’s worth taking a look on Channel 9.

Silverlight 2.0 Screencasts on Channel 9

One of the cool things about Silverlight, is that it provides for new and compelling ways to interact with users.  If you’re new to Silverlight, here is a cool example. 

Vertigo, a local partner from Richmond CA, leveraged Silverlight to highlight the many pieces of memorabilia that Hard Rock Cafe owns.  Here are few shots as well as link to the site:

Hard Rock Cafe Memorabilia Site

Wall Street Journal Article about Silverlight

Vertigo

When you visit the Hardrock Memorabilia website, you’ll first see this screen:

Let’s take a closer look, by clicking the Rolling Stones

I’m interested in that letter so let’s take a deeper look

For more information on Silverlight visit this site: Silverlight.net