Saturday, January 26, 2008
Silverlight!!!
Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of Microsoft .NET-based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.
What Wikipedia says:
Microsoft Silverlight is a browser plugin that allows web applications to be developed with features like animation, vector graphics, and audio-video playback - features that characterize a rich internet application. Silverlight competes with products such as Adobe Flash, Adobe Shockwave, Java FX, and Apple QuickTime. Version 2.0 of Silverlight (currently under development) will provide additional capabilities, including advanced interactivity features. Significantly, version 2.0 allows developers to use .NET languages and development tools when authoring Silverlight applications.
Watch the showcase.
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Going Mobile with James Eberhardt
On January 23, 2008 we had James Eberhardt as our speaker, who talked about mobile technology. Currently he works at Design Axiom. Previously, he was the Director of Technology at Marblemedia, and instructor for FlashLite at
James started with introduction of various mobile terms like SMS, MMS, GPS, and GPRS etc. For information on these terms you can visit GSM World. He showed us various mobile devices ranging from cell phones to PDAs and made the comparison of today’s mobile technology with the technology available twenty years ago.
Mr. Eberhardt showed us a mobile applications on his Nokia N95 where he could upload images directly to his flickr.com account using GPRS network and if the mobile phone is GPS enabled then it could tell you the location on GoogleMaps, where the picture was clicked. The only bad part of it was its expense of use; almost $20 for uploading 1MB of data. He talked about another GPS based application called Sports Tracker which is specifically designed for athletes for the track of information like speed, distance and time.
When it comes to testing and installation then James recommended Nokia phones. Even personally I would recommend Nokia phones too as they support both Java and Symbian applications. I would compare Nokia phones with Windows and Sony Ericsson phones with Mac. Nokia = too many application available like for Windows :), Ericsson = good interface, but just supports the Java applications :(. But the latest Nokia phones like N Series are my favourite, especially N95 and N70. I miss my N70. I had it when I was in India and it was like my mobile computer which used to let me do almost all the daily tasks that I used to do on my computer like, chat on Yahoo, search on Google, GoogleMaps, etc. Telecommunication services are quite cheap in
For downloading mobile applications and other mobile stuff I find www.mobango.com very useful.