Channel 9

Blaise Aguera y Arcas: The technology behind Photosynth

Dan — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 21:36:00 GMT

PhotoSynth is a technology that automatically combines 2D photos into an immersive 3D environment.

With the official release of Photosynth, we catch up with Blaise Aguera y Arcas, one of the Photosynth architects to talk about the technology and team that powers

More Photosynth love:
- Laura Foy's 3-minute overview on Photosynth
- Nic Fillingham's Photosynth Shutter Speed episode
- Max Zuckerman interviews Noah Snavely, who originally created the Photosynth project while a student at the University of Washington

Also, for an in depth look into the technologies addressed here, see the Photosynth Going Deep from 2006 with Blaise.

Synchronizing Data: Inside the Microsoft Sync Framework

Charles — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 18:16:00 GMT

The Microsoft Sync Framework is a comprehensive synchronization platform that enables collaboration and offline scenarios for applications, services and devices. It supports any kind of data type and any kind of data store. The framework was designed to be transfer protocol independent and to allow the developers to map any kind of network topology.

Here, Software Developers Aaron Greene, Andrei Maksimenka and Niner intern Christian "LittleGuru" Liensberger sit down with me to dig into the details of the Sync Framework and explore the complexities of sync, generally. As usual, the conversation winds down many roads and it's a great discussion (yes, it's a tad long, but find some time. It's worth it...). It's always a pleasure to chat with the folks who write the platforms and frameworks we depend on to get our algorithms written in efficient ways. The Sync Framework enables several interesting scenarios, most of which have yet to be thought up.Thanks guys!

Oh, and by the way, I hear that LittleGuru is doing a smashingly great job in his role as a PM for the Sync Framework team. Right on, LittleGuru! Go Niners! :)

Check out the Microsoft Sync Framework team blog. The team is very much engaged with developers who use our framework and monitor the forums very closely. Aaron and Andrei spend a good deal of time on the forums, just as many devs do in support of their products around the company.

NBCOlympics.com Update

AdamKinney — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:40:00 GMT

Eric Schmidt drops by to tell stories about the NBCOlympics.com site launch and answer a few questions from the viewers.

Why is it US Only?
Where is the FullScreen mode?
How does the streaming work?
Why choose to run on a beta?
Will we see the same coverage in upcoming Olympics?

endpoint.tv - The Road to "Oslo"

rojacobs — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:23:00 GMT

Microsoft's "Oslo" project aims at creating a unified platform for model-based, service-oriented applications. This new approach will affect the next versions of several products and technologies, including the Microsoft .NET Framework, Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft BizTalk Server, Microsoft System Center, and more. Although many details of "Oslo" won't be public until later in 2008, this session provides an overview of what Microsoft has revealed so far. Along with a description of the problems it addresses, the session includes a look at several new "Oslo" technologies, including a general-purpose modeling language, role-specific modeling tools, a shared model repository, and a distributed service bus. With David Chappell and Ron Jacobs.

Gabriel Aul: N-State Chaos and Windows Performance

Charles — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:09:00 GMT

Gabriel Aul is a 16 year Microsoft veteran who has always had his hand in the chaotic world of system performance and reliability, from technical product support and testing to being a leader on the Windows performance team. In fact, he was part of the team that developed the original Watson failure reporting tool. He's a dev at heart (once a dev, always a dev) and understands the complexities of Windows as a platform: Windows supports thousands of devices and the thousands of drivers that make them useful to users (devices sometimes have more than one driver, so add that to the complexity quotient...). How can so many devices (drivers) work together successfully (meaning not hosing the system) with so many supported configurations and possibilities for drivers to bring Windows to a screeching halt (think about task scheduling, resource allocation, background processing, foreground processing user mode code execution, kernel mode code execution and the sheer amount of concurrent running code, all over the place, all contending for Windows' attention...).

The world of Windows as platform is incredibly complex (n-state chaotic). It's amazing, actually, that the chaos doesn't lead to more performance and reliability issues. The Windows performance team has some really powerful tools (and an effort called Velocity) that can help ISVs find highly complex performance issues. Gabriel touches on this in this conversation and we address the continued need for more guidance and samples for developers.

One thing is for sure: The developers who write applications and drivers for Windows are great developers. You are craftsman, artists. Windows is a great platform in many ways because of the people who innovate on top of it. You know who you are. Yeah, you. Thank you.

This Week on C9: Christian "LittleGuru" Liensberger, VS 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1

Dan — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 23:08:00 GMT

This Week on Channel 9, Dan is joined by Christian "LittleGuru" Liensberger where they cover:

- LittleGuru's first week of being a Microsoft intern
- Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 shipped
- Julia Lerman - Tips and tricks for installing VS 2008 SP1
- Scott Hanselman: Hidden Gems of .NET 3.5 SP1
- Dan and Christian share their favorite SP1 features
- Brad Abrams: Managed code can now be launched from a network share
- WPF Performance blog: Using WPF SP1 splash screens to improve precevied startup performance
Codeplex: Official WPF Codeplex project for DataGrid and other out-of-band enhancements
- Patrick Smacchia: NDepend on .NET 3.5 SP1 shows hundres of new namespaces, methods, types and more
- Lloyd Humph - Painting his office ceiling using the Channel 9 guy!
- frickinsweet: A tool to build custom Visual Studio Themes
- CodeProject: Adding wallpaper to Visual Studio
- NewScientistTech: Rat brained robots (video demo)
- Video clip of Charles Torre interviewing Vince Orgovan on Windows Vista error reporting
- Sync Framework for Windows Mobile devices CTP1
- Steve Clayton: Office Lab's PPT Plex, kind of like adding DeepZoom to PowerPoint (video demo)
- Charlie Calvert: Axialis IconWorkshop Lite Visual Studio addin available including free pre-built icon templates
- DotNetKicks: Add Windows Explorer directly into Visual Studio using free Mindscape addin.
- DevExpress releases 60 free Windows Forms and ASP.NET controls
- Steve Sinofsky launches Engineering Windows 7 blog
- Coding4Fun: Jerry Brunning's Stall Status Silverlight Sidebar gadget let's you check to if the bathroom is occupied using ZWave Home Automation.
- CodeProject: .NET wrapper for Intel's Open Source Computer Vision (OpenCV) library via Greg Duncan
- We learn that Christian's thesis uses OpenCV for image analysis of "adult" content
- Christian's pick of the week: Daily cartoon - Wulffmorgenthaler
- Dan's pick of the week: Rob Burke combines DeepZoom and LOL cats to build DeepLOL

Countdown to PDC2008: Poems, Pre-Conferences, Prosise and Petzold!

Dan — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 22:12:00 GMT

Not only does Mike issue his PDC Hard Hat Geek Challenge in the form of a poem this week (be the first to figure it out and win a limited edition PDC2008 shirt), but Jaime Rodriguez, who is driving the PDC pre-cons, talks about all of the awesome content you can get for just a mere 400 bucks! Pre-cons plus PDC = a can’t be missed bargain. Sign up today!

Not your grandmother's service pack!

wzack — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 20:01:00 GMT

Shanku Niyogi, Microsoft Product Unit Manager for the .NET Framework gave a presentation to the New York City .NET Developers Group on Visual Studio 2008/.NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1. This presentation was streamed live to the Internet and also recorded for posting here.

The Dynamics Duo talk about CRM and WPF

benriga — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 04:05:00 GMT

In this episode The Dynamics Duo dive into the deep rich coolness that is WPF. We also spend some time talking about the offline data framework that Dynamics CRM provides developers.

In past sessions we built solutions on SharePoint and Office and those are great for the specific scenarios they were intended for. Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) gives developers the ability to build rich interactive smart clients. You’ll have to admit that nothing beats the inherent coolness of a well written WPF app. I’ve worked on a few WPF projects (here and here) and it never ceases to amaze me the way you can reduce complexity and immerse users in the experience.

If your solution requires a desktop apps then WPF is absolutely the way to go. If you’re building web apps then Silverlight is the right way to go. When you’re not sure then you should think a little harder about your requirements. Things like access to local PC resources require WPF. Also if you’re doing heavy graphics that would require graphics acceleration then WPF is the right choice. Finally if your app needs to be both online and offline then WPF also would be a good choice.

In keeping with the series of demos for a professional services organization, Girish shows off an eye-popping jaw-dropping WPF app that radically improves the time sheet entry process. The scenario is an offline one. Dynamics CRM provides a great offline framework as part of both the end-user experience and the developer toolkit. By designating an entity in the system as available offline, the framework will automatically pull data from the CRM server and store it locally. In order to make the experience a natural one a local web server (Cassini) and database server (SQL Server Express) are used. In this demo we used the Microsoft Office Outlook client to take CRM offline. I even surprised Girish by yanking out the network cable. :)

Windows Vista - 64 bit in the Mainstream

Charles — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 16:46:00 GMT

Gary Schare and Bruce Burns sit down (well, sort of, Bruce stands, Gary leans) with us to talk about the sudden uptake of the latest Windows 64 bit client OS. It's very encouraging that Windows 64 is finding its way onto consumer client systems and into mainstream computing. This spike in uptake also poses some challenges for ISVs who are not 64 bit "ready". 32 bit Windows applications should just work on 64 bit Windows, right? Well, sort of. Tune in.

The Dynamics Duo talk about CRM and Office Business Applications (OBA)

benriga — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 23:11:00 GMT

In the last episode we talked about Microsoft Office SharePoint Server; in this one we talk about Microsoft Office on the client side.

CRM actually integrates really really well with Microsoft Office Outlook right out of the box. That’s a natural as it’s the place where many people work day-in day-out (and especially those sales and marketing folks). But what about those people that need that data in Word or Excel? In this episode we talk about how easy it is to customize the integration of Dynamics CRM with Microsoft Office on the client side. This category of applications, often referred to as Office Business Applications (OBA), help to unlock the value of line-of-business (LOB) systems, such as the ones built on the Dynamics CRM platform, and turn document-based processes into real applications. There’s lots more info about these types of apps over at OBA Central.

In the demo Girish put together, we see how the app is surfaced with a custom ribbon. This in turn opens a Status Report template which has a custom task pane. That task pane pulls all the relevant information for my status report from the CRM server (in our case CRM Online). It authenticates and then grabs the project info. When I choose a Project it also pulls in the work items for that project. Just like with the SharePoint example, it’s trivial to open a CRM form right from within Word where I review more detailed info or even start an Office Communicator session with the owner of the work item.

I can then insert the work items along with descriptions and hours worked directly into the status report. Since you’ll want to share that status report with your customer, Girish built in the ability to publish it to Office Live Small Business. Office Live is the ideal place for sharing documents with customers or partners who won’t have access to SharePoint sites behind your firewall (and it’s free!).

The secret sauce that allows these kinds of apps to be developed so quickly is right in Visual Studio in the form of Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO). As you might expect, the same authentication code we used in the SharePoint example is used for authentication from with the OBA. Then it’s just a case of using the Dynamics CRM web services to pull info from CRM and post it into the Word doc. Nice!

Saqib Shaikh and Scott Hanselman: Designing for Accessibility

Dan — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 22:17:00 GMT

In this interview, Scott Hanselman and Dan Fernandez to to Saqib Shaikh, a developer for Microsoft Consulting Services in the UK who is also blind. Saqib talks about some of the key things to know when designing for accessibility, the Windows UI automation framework, Windows Mobile accessibility and more.

You can hear more about developing accessible applications in Scott's Hanselminutes podcast.

For more accessibility resources, visit:

- www.microsoft.com/enable/
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Charlie and Scott introduce themselves and we see Scott's new upcoming books, I Am ASP.NET (and so can you!) and Why I became a Paid Microsoft Shill (0 - 0:39)

SQL Server 2008 RTMs including RTM Feature Pack (0:39 - 1:40)
Microsoft Sync Framework v1 RTMs (1:40 - 2:02)
Charles Stacey Harris on .NET Rocks discussing Home automation with MSRS (2:02 - 3:00)
Send SMS messages to any phone number using AOL's text gateway and Office Communicator (3:00 - 5:02)
Video clip of Swashbot by CrabFu an honorable mention from the Trossen Robotics August Contest competition and Scott learns to pronounce "trough" (5:02 - 7:35)
Cakemail, Flaming Ninjas and the unofficial Microsoft Overworked Advisory System (7:35 - 10:47)
Granville Barnett - Visual Studio vNext Wish List and Charlie, Scott and Dan share the one VS feature they wished they could get in the future (10:47 - 12:25)
Clip from Tina Wood and Eric Schmidt demoing NBCOlympics.com (12:25 - 13:58)
Clip from Adam Kinney interviewing Phil Haack on MVC Preview 4 (13:58 - 15:18)
Webmaster Tools v1 ships (15:18 - 16:25)
Free Office 2007 Add-Ins for Math and Creative Commons attribution (16:25 - 19:04)
CodeProject article on Converting IP Addresses to Country (19:04 - 20:55)
Stefan Dobrev builds an add-in that adds IntelliSense to Expression Blend 2.5 using Kaxaml! (20:55 - 21:48)
Julie Lerman's Drawing in Silverlight article (21:48 - 22:30)
Amazing PDC Contest: Win tickets to the Emmy Awards by submitting a photo of the brain! Juval Lowy cutout theft of PDC (22:30 - 25:23)
Charlie's Pick of the Week: Kotaku Ultimate Gaming Rig with 27 67" HD displays (25:23 - 27:25)
Scott's Pick of the Week: BabySmash! and Scott comments on how the previous This Week on Channel 9 BabySmash petition spiked his traffic (27:25 - 30:05)
Dan's Pick of the Week: Fun Silverlight Popfly Olympic games (30:05 - end)

Building NBCOlympics.com with Silverlight

AdamKinney — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 20:37:00 GMT

NBCOlympics.com is one of the most ambitious projects on the web and one of the largest Silverlight applications today. Eric Schmidt takes us on a technical tour of how the site works and how it was built with Silverlight 2 and Windows Media.

Behind The Maps - Flying the UltraCam

Mark Brown — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:51:00 GMT

In this second episode of Behind The Maps we go to Philadelphia to see the UltraCam in action. One of our partners, Keystone Aerial Surveys, shows us the next step in the process where the UltraCam is used to capture imagery for Virtual Earth.

This is a little bit of a long episode because there are three interviews in one video, but really fun to watch and TONS of great information on the next step in our journey on how we bring Virtual Earth to life.

Seema Ramchandani: From Brain Science to Silverlight

Charles — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 18:33:00 GMT

Seema Ramchandani is the performance and controls PM on the Silverlight team. Seema talks about how cool Silverlight is including it being FREE, runs on the Mac, and leverages existing developer skills but she also tells us how she moved from being in the business of brains to software. Yes, brains! Before joining Microsoft almost 5 years ago, Seema was getting her master’s degree at Brown in the area of brain sciences, which is the convergence of applied math, computer science, and neuro science. (Is she a smarty pants or what?!) Specifically she was working on implanting chips into the motor cortex of humans so locked-in patients can control a cursor. Pretty cool, eh? Find out more by watching her WM_IN interview with Charles and Ritzy.

MVC Preview 4 with Phil Haack

AdamKinney — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Phil Haack, one of the driving forces behind ASP.NET MVC, provides the lowdown on what MVC is, what's new in Preview 4 and how you can help shape the next version. He also takes a call from his wife, but its worth the wait.

Links mentioned in this video:

endpoint.tv - SOAP and REST a Perspective

rojacobs — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 12:41:00 GMT

Most of you know all about SOAP but perhaps you have been hearing a lot more about REST web services lately. Wondering what this is all about? Well check out this episode where Bob Familiar and I discuss the two.

This Week on C9: ASP.NET Maps, Apache, Sphere, Warcraft, and more

Dan — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 13:25:00 GMT

This week on Channel 9 Dan and special guest host Nick Hodge (on10) is in studio where they discuss:

**Update: I accidentally linked the article "Controlling your treadmill with Silverlight to Chris Craft when it should have been Page Brooks. My apologies! (Dan)

- Nick shares his view on Flickr photos and TechReady, an internal event for the Microsoft field (0 - 1:45)
- Microsoft and Facebook partnership adds Live Search to Facebook, Dan hopes that means a Live Search API too (1:45 - 2:41)
- Video Clip of Mark Brown with Angus Logan demoing the new CTP of the ASP.NET Virtual Earth server control (2:41 - 5:30)
- We finally have an Angus Logan Fan Club on Facebook to share all of our Angus Logan photos, stories and rumors (5:30 - 6:53)
*** Update: Buttons and Stickers now available courtesy of Scott Lovegrove!
- SharpMap - Free, open source GIS project on Codeplex (6:53 - 7:30)
- Sam Ramji discusses Microsoft joining the Apache Software Foundation and the new open source PHP driver for SQL Server 2005 (7:30 - 8:53)
- Mojave Experiment videos are now up (8:53 - 10:08)
- PDC 2008 August Session Updates and early bird registration ends soon (10:08 - 11:15)
- Microsoft Research: The Robotic Receptionist (11:40 - 13:00 )
- Laura Foy shows off Microsoft Sphere (13 - 14:12)
- Martin Woodward: How to build "Brian the Build Bunny" via Greg Duncan (14:12 - 16:00)
- Page Brooks - How to control your treadmill in Silverlight via Coding4Fun (16:00 - 16:25)
- Nick's Pick of the Week: The F# Programming Language (16:25 - 18:34)
- Dan's Pick of the Week Attila Kisko and Gabor Ratky demoing AddOn Studio for World of Warcraft Beta (download) (18:34 - 21:24)
- Pictures from Brian Keller in Patagonia

Countdown to PDC2008: Content be King

Dan — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 09:05:00 GMT

50 new sessions with abstracts announced! Pre-conference workshop popularity soars, Show Off contest launches, microwaves and the Gothic Charm School. Not only that, but Jillian is writing a book coming out next year on the Goth movement! (Good gig for an editor, eh? It should be well written.) It takes all types, and Microsoft proudly accepts them all. Enjoy!

Gabor Ratky and Attila Kisko: AddOn Studio for World of Warcraft

Dan — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:26:00 GMT

Gabor Ratky and Attila Kisko from EPAM Systems are two of the developers building AddOn Studio for World of Warcraft.

AddOn Studio is a free developer tool built on top of the Visual Studio Shell that brings a Visual Studio-like experience to creating Lua addons for World of Warcraft. In the video, you'll hear Gabor and Attila discuss how they build the key features Visual Studio developers expect including a visual designer, properties Window, a language service including a Lua parser and much more. You'll of course see a demo of an early version of AddOn Studio which is now an open beta!