For more information on Pivot, have a look at the Pivot website at http://getpivot.com

On the Silverlight portal you can find more information on the PivotViewer Contol at http://www.silverlight.net/learn/pivotviewer/

Danny wrote a post on the Pivot desktop version a little while back. In his article he show you the FIFA World Cup matches. We will make this soon available in Silverlight.

I will also soon write an article on getting you pivot collections in to the cloud using Azure.

Go and play, it’s powerful stuff

Open to Everyone:  Windows Azure Platform Introductory Special Offer.

For Microsoft Partners:  Windows Azure Platform Introductory Special Offer for Microsoft Partner Network members.

For MSDN Subscribers:  Windows Azure Platform MSDN Premium Offer for MSDN Premium Subscribers.

You can read more in the Windows Azure Team Blog

Have fun!

With the SFM 1.1 release, progressive download is now fully supported making the SFM a fantastic framework to build on for any kind of video playing.

Updates in version 1.1 release

• Progressive Download is now fully supported.
• Integration with the SmoothStreamingMediaElement Beta 2 Release

You can download SFM 1.1 on codeplex.

On silverlight.net you can find how to videos on SMF to get you up to speed:

Embedding The Video Player
Styling And Templating The Video Player
Extending The Video Player
Out Of Stream Data Access
Using Application Settings
Creating Custom Timeline Markers
Building A Custom Bitrate Meter
Using SMF Logging
Live Mode vs. VOD
Hosting VOD using IIS Media Services

and / or download code samples

The downside is that the final release date will be moved back a few weeks.

The steps that we need to take are as follows:

• Create a virtual machine using Windows Virtual PC (If you already have one, go to step 2)
• Open you virtual machine in Windows Virtual PC
• Run sysprep
• Make it bootable

First you need a virtual machine. You can create a new one or use an existing one.
Open the virtual machine using Windows Virtual PC. When the virtual machine is loaded and you have logged in, run sysprep.
Open the command prompt as administrator. In the command prompt type:

c:\windows\system32\sysprep\ sysprep /generalize /shutdown

This will open the System Preparation Tool. Be sure to select the Generalize checkbox.

Wortell blog - Create bootable VHD’s in Windows 7

The next step is to add the VHD to the boot menu.
On your main system open the command prompt as administrator and type:

C:\>bcdedit /copy {current} /d "Beta System VHD"

This will great a GUID for your new entry. Copy this and use it in the line below:

C:\>bcdedit /set {98684a74-c96a-11de-a111-002170eb3c93} device vhd=[c:]\VHD\BetaSystem.vhd
C:\>bcdedit /set {98684a74-c96a-11de-a111-002170eb3c93} osdevice vhd=[c:]\VHD\BetaSystem.vhd
C:\>bcdedit /set {98684a74-c96a-11de-a111-002170eb3c93} detecthal on

Note: point the vhd= to your VHD on you file system.

That’s it. If you reboot your system, you will see you new VHD in the boot menu.

You can also create an VHD using the Disk Manager. Aviraj Ajgekar’s writes a great article on his blog “Windows 7: Boot from VHD First Impression”.

I hope this helps you having a clean production system.
Happy programming,

A special thanks to Volkert for testing this with me!

Silverlight plays a large role in our website. We created a fun integration with Microsoft Unified Communications Server. Deep Zoom and IIS Smooth Streaming are used throughout the website. In our references page we use Silverlight for filtering.

Go have a look  http://www.silverlight.net/showcase/ add done forget to give your rating!

“Developing for Microsoft Surface”
The first comprehensive Microsoft Surface book is written for developers, designers and ‘C’ level personnel who are looking to explore and exploit this new paradigm in computing hardware. Developing for Microsoft Surface explains the potential of the digital platform that is Microsoft Surface, and how to utilize its immensely empowering features.

At PDC last week the OCS team had two session on their next release:

• Microsoft Unified Communications: Developer Platform Futures
• Integrating and Extending the Microsoft Office Communicator Experience with Windows Presentation Foundation and Microsoft Silverlight

 In this post I’ll try to give you a shore summary of what’s to come.

 OCS 14 Managed API
A new fully managed API adopting standard .NET. What we can see from the demo’s is  that there will be less code writing.

Support common applications
Support for Silverlight 4, Visual Studio 2008 and up, Blend 3 and up, .NET 3.5 and up, IE 7 & 8

 WPF and Silverlight controls
Drag and drop controls for WPF and Silverlight. Seems like there will be controls for all the features: 

• Search controls: Search input and search results
• Browse contacts
• View contacts
• Contact details as contact & hover cards
• Presence

Docking OCS windows in WPF and WinForms
Conversation window can be docked in your own applications

Conversation Contextual Information
You can send and receive contextual information for you custom application to the Communicator window. Contextual information is data that send to you calling party to quickly bring them into the same context as the context that you are in. An example is that you receive an email and you click on the sender presence symbol to start a conversation. The sender gets an OCS message. In this message a link is show to the email from where you started the conversation. When the calling party clicks this like the same email will be opened. You could do the same for you custom applications.

Menu extensions
You can add you own applications to the Communicator menu. Menu items can be added to right click main window and to the Contact Card overflow window.

Shell execution
You can shell execute your custom application and pass SIP URI’s

Conversation Window extension
A window can be attached to the conversation window. This is much like the Windows Live Messenger activities. This window has access to the conversation data. A very nice feature is, unlike now, that the conversation window stays open after the conversation has ended. This gives the user to do something with the conversation data afterwards. Seems like the OCS team does listen to their users.  And best of all, native Silverlight hosting. (so we only develop an application once J)

Extend communications to role specific kiosks
Meaning that your custom application can start a conversation without being a contact itself. This is great for hospitality like applications!

 It looks like great improvements and I’m getting all excited again. In January the Merto will start, I can’t wait to get my hands on the bits and start playing.

Keep you posted, happy programming

You should install XNA Game Studio before installing the Surface SDK. If the Surface SDK is already installed, you should install XNA Game Studio and the run the Surface SDK repair. After this software is installed, a new template “Surface   Application (XNA Game Studio 3.0) is available in Visual Studio.

Resources:

• Microsoft Surface SDK 1.0 SP1 Workstation Edition
• Surface SDK Documentation in the MSDN Library
• Microsoft XNA Game Studio 3.1
• XNA Game Studio 3.1 Documentation in the MSDN Library

Enjoy!

Click here to view the embedded video.