Entries for Michael S. Scherotter

MySpace Qizmt, a .NET MapReduce Framework [MySpace Qizmt, a .NET MapReduce Framework]

Michael S. Scherotter — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 18:35:00 GMT

MySpace just released a MapReduce framework for .NET called Qizmt as an open source project. MapReduce is a software framework "to support distributed computing on large data sets on clusters of computers" ^Wikipedia.
I interviewed Mikhael Berlyant, Executive Director of Information and Discovery and Daniel Rule, Data Mining Manager at MySpace to learn more about the framework that they built.

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CCR at MySpace [CCR at MySpace]

Michael S. Scherotter — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:22:00 GMT

MySpace has done some pretty amazing things with the Robotic Developer Studio. When they found out it contained a very powerful component, the Concurrency and Coordination Runtime (CCR), the architects built it into the architecture of MySpace, the largest .NET site in the world. At MySpace, I met Principal Architect Erik Nelson and Senior Architect Akash Patel who walked me through how they were using the CCR.
If you have an MSDN subscription, you are a student, or you are at a qualifying startup, you can now download and use the Robotic Toolkit as part of the program.

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Artist Explorer - a Silverlight 2 Mashup [Artist Explorer - a Silverlight 2 Mashup]

Michael S. Scherotter — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:12:00 GMT

At the South by Southwest Interactive Conferece in Austin, Texas this past week, Mashery hosted a contest, Circus Mashimus to encourage people to create mashup applications using their customers' web services. I learned about it a week before and decided to create an entry using web services from Best Buy, The New York Times, Billboard, and Intelepeer (not a Mashery customer but one of our partners). The mashup is an artist explorer that lets you research musical artists using the services and then lets you send an SMS message about your findings to anyone's mobile phone.
I will be releasing Silverlight kits with source code for each of the APIs (Best Buy, The New York Times, Billboard, and Intelepeer) shortly - watch my blog for more info on the kits. With these Silverlight kits, developers and designers can access these companys' services and build cool applications with little to no coding - just Expression Blend.

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JamBase.com - Go See Live Music [JamBase.com - Go See Live Music]

Michael S. Scherotter — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 05:30:00 GMT

Last week I visited JamBase.com, a San Francisco-based website that is all about finding and going to live music performances. I met Andy and his colleauges at the Bandwidth Conference this summer and after hearing about their new API, I just had to try doing a mashup with it using Popfly - I wrote about it on my blog here. Because their site runs on ASP.net with SQL Server, I wanted to sit down with Andy Gadiel, the founder to have a chat.

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CaaS Conceptual Architecture [CaaS Conceptual Architecture]

Michael S. Scherotter — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 04:48:00 GMT

Michael Scherotter joins his colleauge Joe Hofstader, a telecommunications sector architect evangelist, for another discussion on Communications as a Service (CaaS), this time going deeper into the conceptual architecture of CaaS. In the previous interview, Joe explained how a CaaS architecture could be applied to building telecommunications applications.

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Communications as a Service (CaaS) [Communications as a Service (CaaS)]

Michael S. Scherotter — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 23:14:00 GMT

Michael Scherotter interviews his colleague Joe Hofstader, an architect evangelist within the telecommunications sector to learn about Communications as a Service (CaaS) a architecture for building multi-tennant telecommunications application.
In a follow-up interview, Joe explains the conceptual architecture behind CaaS.

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A New Photobucket.com API [A New Photobucket.com API]

Michael S. Scherotter — Mon, 19 May 2008 17:57:19 GMT

Publishing an API (Application Programming Interface) is an essential part to becoming part of Web 2.0. Recently at the Web 2.0 expo, Michael Scherotter caught up with the Photobucket.com team who has just released a new API for their site. In this interview Michael talks with Justin Hart, an engineer with Photobucket.com who has been working on the API. Photobucket is a photo sharing site popular among bloggers as a location to store their images.

The REST API is extensive with many methods so Michael has created an open-source project on Google Code to build a Silverlight 2 library for it which supports REST web services.

Other Download Formats:

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Grid Computing at Layered Technologies [Grid Computing at Layered Technologies]

Michael S. Scherotter — Fri, 02 May 2008 18:35:54 GMT

At the Web 2.0 Expo, Michael Scherotter talks with John Pozadzides from Layered Technologies about their grid computing technology. Grid computing is where many systems are assembled together to create one large computing system with vast amounts of processor power, RAM, and storage.

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Video4Ever - School Sports Online [Video4Ever - School Sports Online]

Michael S. Scherotter — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:35:28 GMT

When I was at the NAB show earlier this month, I met Dan Gustafson from Video4Ever who proceded to show me the coolest Silverlight application for watching high school sporting events and including scoreboard/event data.

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A Tour Through CrystalTech's Data Center [A Tour Through CrystalTech's Data Center]

Michael S. Scherotter — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 20:46:50 GMT

Michael Scherotter just visited CrystalTech a web hosting provider in Scottsdale, Arizona. President Bob Cichon took Michael on a tour of the data center.
At $2.95 per month for an ASP.Net 3.5 developer account Michael is also a customer of CrystalTech with his xmldocs.net site.

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Myxer: Ad-Supported Mobile Content [Myxer: Ad-Supported Mobile Content]

Michael S. Scherotter — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 21:29:26 GMT

At South by Southwest, Michael Scherotter met Jeff Sass of Myxer a company that has built an ASP.net/SQL Server-based web service for ad-supported mobile content.
They were at SxSW to show their service to artists and musicians to be able to get their content into mobile ringtones and other mobile-oriented services.

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Desktop Music Channel [Desktop Music Channel]

Michael S. Scherotter — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 04:57:26 GMT

At South by Southwest in Austin, Tamara Phillips of Desktop Music Channel showed Michael Scherotter a Software+Services solution that includes a compelling desktop applications with service-based push technology.
The Desktop Music Channel is a new way for artists and bands to create an interactive desktop experience for their fans.

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Iventa - SaaS E-Commerce [Iventa - SaaS E-Commerce]

Michael S. Scherotter — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 04:42:08 GMT

At the South by Southwest Music tradeshow, we meet Jamison Stafford and Matt Kauffman from Iventa, an e-commerce vendor that has a SaaS solution built entirely on .Net and SQL Server. Jamison tells about the company walks through the application, showing the Grateful Dead online store as one example of a site using their service. Matt then explains the technology underneath the hood and how they have found real productivity gains with .Net.
They're also hiring .Net developers in the Los Angeles area.

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Interview with Ice Cube [Interview with Ice Cube]

Michael S. Scherotter — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 13:43:00 GMT

Usually behind the camera, Michael Scherotter sat down with Hip Hop icon Ice Cube at South by Southwest before he was scheduled to perform at a free live concert streamed to his new UVNTV.com site using Silverlight for high-quality video. Michael asked Cube questions about the intersection of technology with music, hip-hop and celebrity.
Here are some highlights:
1:00 Starting out in rap
2:30 What tech Ice Cube uses
3:12 How technology impacts music and film
5:23 Maintaining a 20-year career in hip-hop
6:53 Technology and being a celebrity
9:05 Possibilities of direct-to-web contect on UVNTV.com
10:10 How hip-hop will change the web?
12:14 Cube's Vison for UVNTV.com
13:09 Hip-hop's global reach
14:14 Gangsta Rap Made Me Do it Video and a surprise for Cube
16:40 Video and music quality on the web and Silverlight
17:50 Why artists should be on UVNTV.com in addition to MySpace
19:50 What Cube's listening to now

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Tyson Foods - the Next Media Company [Tyson Foods - the Next Media Company]

Michael S. Scherotter — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 02:42:28 GMT

When you hear Tyson Foods, you probably don't think of new Media. But it looks like that's about to change. I met up with Jeremy Sharp, Lead Programmer Analyst at Tyson Foods at the Mix conference in Las Vegas and he explained a vision for the future of the Tyson Foods website - and it's all about a rich, media-oriented experience. He came to Mix to learn about Silverlight and how he can use it to make a better user experience on the web.

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iStreamPlanet - Streaming Media Experts [iStreamPlanet - Streaming Media Experts]

Michael S. Scherotter — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 15:04:16 GMT

Working to get the SxSW Ice Cube concert streamed live in Silverlight, I've gotten to know Mio and Randy at iStreamPlanet. Because of their expertise in streaming live events to the web, Microsoft contracts with them to do many live events like the Mix keynotes.
I sat down with them at Mix between sessions to understand what it takes to get video streamed live to the web to be played in Silverlight.

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Windows Media Workflow at Starz: Episode 3 of 3 - The Software [Windows Media Workflow at Starz: Episode 3 of 3 - The Software]

Michael S. Scherotter — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 03:44:36 GMT

Starz Entertainment, the providers of premium TV channels like Starz and Encore and Vongo downloadable movies has built their entire media infrastructure around Windows Media. Stephen Smith, Director of Media System Integration walks us through the entire workflow and architecture of the system that they built.

This is a 3-part series, the architecture, then the software that they built.

In this final episode, Stephen walks Michael Scherotter through the WPF application that Starz built to control the pipeline of media jobs that are each instances of Windows Workflow Foundation workflows. WPF has allowed Starz to craft a highly skinnable and adaptable user interface.

One of the most interesting applications of this digital media architecture and workflow has been the indexing of the spoken content of their entire catalog using SQL Server database and exposing that index via search through Interactive Media Manager (IMM). Stephen explains that process at 20:36 in the interview. That step has enable users of this system at Starz to search their entire 200 Terabyte SAN for specific instances of spoken words directly from IMM.

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New Yahoo! Messenger for Windows Vista Beta [New Yahoo! Messenger for Windows Vista Beta]

Michael S. Scherotter — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 05:38:42 GMT

Joshua Jacobson, Product Manager for Yahoo! Messenger for Windows Vista gives Michael Scherotter a tour of the latest beta of the product. The coolest feature in this latest version built using WPF is voice visualizations that animate graphically based on the audio. This latest version of Yahoo! Messenger is planned to ship in Q2 2008.

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A Tour Through the THX Best Practices Lab in Hollywood [A Tour Through the THX Best Practices Lab in Hollywood]

Michael S. Scherotter — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 23:20:23 GMT

Huch Platt, Operations Manager of the THX Best Practices Lab, takes Michael Scherotter on a tour of the Hollywood facility. Created as a joint project with THX, Avid, AMD, and Microsoft and with hardware supplied by HP, the lab is a place for the Hollywood community to learn about media workflow technology. I thought it was an amazing facility with some great potential.

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Windows Media Workflow at Starz: Episode 2 of 3 - The Architecture [Windows Media Workflow at Starz: Episode 2 of 3 - The Architecture]

Michael S. Scherotter — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 17:37:33 GMT

This is a 3-part series, the software that they built.

In this second part focusing on the architecture, Stephen whiteboards out their entire media architecture that is based on a 200 terabyte SAN of Windows Media digital masters. Using Windows Workflow Foundation to automate the application of DirectShow filters to Windows Media files, Starz has built a media delivery pipeline that lets them create media in a variety of formats.

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Reborn Studio: Web Video Experts [Reborn Studio: Web Video Experts]

Michael S. Scherotter — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 06:23:11 GMT

Michael Scherotter interviews Michael Marina and Patrick Tran, founders of Reborn Studio, a web development company that is specializing in building ASP.Net-based web video community sites like My Damn Channel, WebRidesTV, LogicBuy, and LogicTV.

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