Partner Otaku

.toolbox is a free online training program from Microsoft for designers and developers that focuses on the design and UX aspects of Silverlight using Expression Studio, as well as on User Experience best practices.

This program will be helpful for your designers to ramp up in the use of Expression Blend and become Silverlight-ready, as well as for your developers who want to ramp up on design composition and best UX practices. .toolbox will guide them through 100 to 400 level training modules. The curriculum offers approximately 36 hours of training content around Expression Blend and Silverlight and approximately 12 hours UX principles training content making .toolbox a comprehensive learning program. People on your team will be able to study the modules at their own pace and schedule.

.toolbox is a structured curriculum-based program that features two core learning tracks with materials that increase in difficulty to build individuals’ knowledge and understanding.

· In Design Scenarios, designers and developers learn to create dynamically-rich Silverlight applications using Expression Studio. They learn to add code-free functionality to designs by following step-by-step tutorials that illustrate how to create interactive user experiences.

· In Design Principles, designers and developers learn fundamental UX concepts (e.g., choosing the right colors, alignment, grids) along with tips in how to apply them.

Badges are earned and accumulated in both tracks upon successful completion of the evaluation found at the end of each level.

To Get Started

1. Go to .toolbox and sign up using your Windows Live ID

2. Visit the School section and explore the curriculum.

3. Select a module, watch the videos, and follow along using the provided guide and assets.

4. Take the evaluation for a completed level to achieve a badge.

5. Broadcast your achievements by posting to Twitter and Facebook.

Useful Links

· .toolbox Website | http://www.microsoft.com/design/toolbox

· .toolbox Twitter | http://www.twitter.com/designtoolbox

· .toolbox Facebook | http://www.facebook.com/pages/toolbox/349923567926

· .toolbox YouTube | http://www.youtube.com/designtoolbox

· .toolbox Promo Video in YouTube | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5JNwiqpGqI

In case you missed this information. Read the overview to get more detailed information about the Facebook SDK Toolkit.  The goal is to provide a Facebook Client Library that is similar to the Client Libraries provided for PHP and JavaScript. There are samples and tools for helping develop Facebook apps on the .NET platform (ASP.NET, Silverlight, WPF and winform).

Link to the Facebook SDK 3.0:

http://facebooktoolkit.codeplex.com/

Facebook Developer Wiki:

http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Main_Page

How to Guides:

http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/How-to_Guides

The Eclipse tools for Silverlight project, aka eclipse4SL, is an eclipse plug-in that enables Eclipse developers to use the Eclipse IDE to create applications that run on the Microsoft Silverlight runtime platform. It also enables collaboration on Silverlight projects between Eclipse (Java) developers, .NET developers, and web designers on both the Windows and MAC operating systems.

http://www.eclipse4sl.org/

This is not exactly PC, but it’s kind of cool to check out… Winchester and Silverlight

Each month through June 2010, we’ll bring you a 90-minute Architect focused Webcast focused on new and emerging technologies.

These webcasts are free, just visit the link and register using the event ID(s) below.

October 27, 2009 at 11:00-13:30pm PST

An Architect’s perspective on Silverlight

Presenter: Tim Heuer

Abstract: Many .NET developers are becoming more and more interested in the Rich Internet Application development space, and in particular Silverlight.  In this session we will step back from a detailed implementation technology and take a higher level look at Silverlight from the architect’s perspective.  We will discuss the types of applications where Silverlight makes sense and some scenarios where Silverlight may not be the appropriate technology.  We will also delve into some of the architectural decisions that the architect must consider when writing applications for this platform and where some of the tradeoffs may lie.

Event ID: 1032427862

Link to Register: An Architect’s perspective on Silverlight3

October 28, 2009 at 11:00-13:30 PST

Deploying Windows 7 from an Infrastructure Architect’s Perspective

Presenter: Doug Klokow

Abstract:

We’ll discuss 5 key areas centered on deploying Windows 7: Developing business justification – Evaluate the capabilities provided by Windows 7 and develop a plan for how to realize business value from these solutions; Where are you today – Explore the differences of preparing for Windows 7 based on your current desktop operating system; Application readiness – Explore the tools and resources available to gain insight into your readiness to deploy Windows 7, Internet Explorer 8, and/or Office 2007/2010; Deployment readiness – Explore the tools and resources available to create a design and deployment solution for your enterprise; Training your employees – Discuss available resources for training your IT Staff and End Users.

Event ID: 1032427863

Link to Register: Deploying Windows 7 from an Infrastructure Architect’s Perspective

Speaker Bios

Tim Heuer

I currently work for Microsoft as a program manager for Microsoft Silverlight, a web technology for delivering rich internet experiences to users.  Before this current role, I was a developer evangelist for Microsoft serving the Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, Montana and Utah areas aiming to strengthen and support communities and software developers in these geographies.

Doug Klokow

Part of Microsoft Consulting Services for 9 years focused on client desktop deployment solutions. He is part of the Virtual Deployment Practice focused on driving early customer deployment on Microsoft client technologies and is also supporting Microsoft’s Desktop Virtualization capabilities and service offerings.

Today, July 7^th, 10AM PT, 1PM ET – We are broadcasting the Michael Jackson memorial, live in HD from the Staples Center in Los Angeles using IIS Smooth Streaming and Silverlight to the world.  As you can imagine this has come together fast so sorry for the last minute notice. Here’s the link below.

http://inmusic.ca/news_and_features/Michael_Jackson

I would like to invite you to a one hour webcast on Friday 6/26 @ 12:30PM PST. If you would like to attend please refer to the link below for registration.

Building Web Applications with Windows Azure

This session will begin with a brief overview of Azure and discuss some of the announcements made at MIX. We will then illustrate through demo how to build a Windows Azure application from the ground up. We will illustrate how to consume Azure Table Storage, how to host services, web pages and Silverlight components, as well as how to deploy your solution to the cloud.

Presenter: Bruno Terkaly, Developer Evangelist, Microsoft
Bruno’s Bio: http://adjix.com/6y3j
Registration Link: http://adjix.com/nv5m

ARCHITECT COUNCIL | Pragmatic Patterns for Architects

“Cloud computing will supersede traditional IT”, “SOA will enable business agility”, “my way or the highway”, etc. We’ve all heard this type of proclamations before, as many look to the “next big things” in technology to exact sweeping changes and solve many issues; truth is, technologies and tools aren’t as instrumental in influencing progress, as the design and discipline in applying them to specific issues. When used appropriately, technologies and tools can be powerful enablers that bring about change.

One of the things we hear a lot working with the community is a desire for more guidance about how to use the technology instead of just talking about features and functions.  To address this, our team has put together a series of live webcasts on June 9^th – 11^th which will focus on guidance and patterns for some of today’s hottest topics. 

DAY 1 – June 9, 2009 at Noon PST

Patterns for Moving to the Cloud

Larry Clarkin & Wade Wegner

Everything that you read these days seems to suggest that you should be moving to the cloud. But where do you start? Which applications and services should be moving to the cloud? How do you build the bridge between on-premises and the cloud? And more importantly, what should you be looking out for along the way? In this session, learn architectural patterns and factors for moving to the cloud. Based on real-world projects, the session explores building block services, patterns for exposing applications, and challenges involving identity, data federation, and management. This session provides the tools and knowledge to determine whether cloud computing is right for you, and where to start.

DAY 2 – June 10, 2009 at Noon PST

Building Silverlight & WPF Applications with Prism

David Hill

Prism provides guidance, via design patterns, to help you build robust, flexible and modular Silverlight and WPF applications. These patterns support unit testing, separation of concerns, loose coupling and the ability to share application logic between Silverlight and WPF applications. Prism includes source code for the library itself, extensive documentation, and a sample application that shows how the patterns work together in a real-world application. It also includes a Visual Studio add-in to help you easily share code between WPF and Silverlight. This session provides an overview of Prism, and shows how you can use Prism to design and build composite Silverlight applications.

DAY 3 – June 11, 2009 at Noon PST

Patterns for Parallel Computing

David Chou

With recent advances in cloud computing, service-oriented architectures, distributed computing, server virtualization, multi-core processors; we are now seeing parallel computing techniques being implemented across the spectrum. It’s moving towards mainstream applications such as internet-scale web applications, massive data processing, graphics rendering, but the myriad of choices also present a number of questions on when and how to utilize parallel computing. This session explores the architectural patterns and trade-offs between different forms of parallel computing including: approaches for utilizing them to improve application performance, optimizing the use of existing infrastructure, and applying concurrency towards day-to-day enterprise information processing needs.

WEBCAST AGENDA

REGISTER

To register, please click on the link below for each day:

We will email you with the LIVEMEETING information and log-in detail a few days before the actual event. We will use the email address you provide in the registration. Thanks!

SPEAKER BIOS

Larry Clarkin – SR ARCHITECT EVANGELIST, Microsoft

Wade Wegner – SR ARCHITECT EVANGELIST, Microsoft

Architect in the Developer & Platform Evangelism division at Microsoft, tasked to collaborate with organizations in the advanced and emergent areas of enterprise architecture, SOA, Web 2.0, and cloud computing, as well as to support decision makers on defining technology adoption strategies. You can reach Wade at his blog http://www.architectingwith.net/ or through twitter at http://twitter.com/wadewegner.

David Hill – PRINCIPAL ARCHITECT, Microsoft Patterns & Practices Team

David Chou – ARCHITECT, Microsoft

Architect in the Developer & Platform Evangelism organization at Microsoft, focused on collaborating with enterprises and organizations in many areas such as cloud computing, SOA, Web, RIA, distributed systems, security, etc., and supporting decision makers on defining evolutionary strategies in architecture. Drawing on experiences from his previous jobs at Sun Microsystems and Accenture, David enjoys helping customers create value from using objective and pragmatic approaches to define IT strategies, roadmaps, and solution architectures.

When I speak with partners, they often express exasperation in trying to find information on our websites. I can empathize with that frustration. It’s difficult for me to find useful information as well.  That’s why I wanted to point you to to Bruno Terkaly’s Blog that has a list of resources, tools and downloads  (i.e. Silverlight, WPF, Videos, HOL etc.) .  Bruno is a great Developer Evangelist based in Northern California and I encourage you to visit his site. If you attended the Silicon Valle Pro Dev Briefing earlier this month, he was the presenter for the Live Mesh Platform Services Discussion.

My parents collected editions of LIFE Magazine and the San Francisco Chroniclewhenever there was a significant historical event.  Well times have certainly changed over the past few decades and we have new innovative ways to interact with information.

No matter your political affiliation, this past election was a historic moment.  I wanted to link to an interesting Deep Zoom example from Vertigo. It’s montage of the many headlines after his victory.