This blog has moved to a new location. Come check out my posts here: http://www.fizzylogic.nl
Geeknight 2011–Building cross platform mobile apps using C#
1
There hasn’t been a lot of Silverlight on my blog. Truth be told, I haven’t been writing a lot of articles at all. There is a reason for that and a very good one too 
I’ve been very busy working on a not-so-top-secret project called “Waar Is I”.
What’s that?
Waar Is I is a mobile app on Android, Windows Phone 7 and iPhone (In a non-important order) that you can use to manage assets that you have loaned to family and friends. The idea is that you are now able to always trace back where that drill has gone off to. Ooh and if you don’t have a drill, you can also enter other types of assets.
Next up: Geeknight
Tomorrow I will be demonstrating with my partners in crime Marcel de Vries and Roy Cornelissen, the app and show you how to build a cross-platform app using C#. It will be a session filled with fluffy androids, shiney iStuff and one hell of a metro ride down Windows Phone 7.
Interested? You can check us out for free!
MIX11– Day 1 and 2
Day one and two are already over, but here it is; another update on the MIX11 conference.
Keynotes
There were two keynotes, one on tuesday and another one on wednesday. The first keynote was mainly about HTML5, the Web, IE10 and the updated tooling for ASP.NET MVC3. While IE10 hasn’t been announced before it wasn’t a total surprise. It was about time Microsoft got back into the game and show the competition they sill could do it. For me the first keynote was really more a google bashing fast rather than surprising everyone with something cool and exciting.
The second keynote contained information on Silverlight 5, Windows Phone 7 Mango and Kinect. This keynote for me contained a lot of exciting stuff. Especially the things they are doing to Windows Phone 7 are exciting to see. When the new update is out, more people will have access to devices running Windows Phone 7 (And yes, that includes the Netherlands too). Also they improved the performance and included IE9 which makes the browsing experience on the phone a lot better.
The second day keynote also showed a little bit of what Microsoft’s phyiosophy is with HTML5, Windows phone 7 and Silverlight. HTML5 is key for consumer websites, you are going to be using HTML5 if you want a good website for consumers. In the corporate market however, the number of hardware and software configurations is more limited, so Silverlight is the best choice there. It just takes less time to build a Silverlight application than it takes to make the same thing in HTML5. Lastly I think it’s important to note here that Windows Phone 7 and apps are the best thing for a mobile experience. Users choose apps over mobile websites every time. There is really no beating a good mobile app.
Silverlight vs HTML5 an uneasy relationship
One of the things I noticed after the keynote of the first day was that there’s still that uneasy relationship between people that love Silverlight and people that love HTML5. When Microsoft ddin’t talk about Silverlight in the first keynote, people started complaining again. They were tweeting that Silverlight is dead and that Microsoft is indeed abandoning Silverlight for HTML5. The fact of the matter is though that really they don’t. Silverlight is a mature platform now, so it makes sense that the focus has shifted more towards the new and cool HTML5 stuff Microsoft is doing with their browser.
The second keynote however pretty much fixed the problems of the first day with a really cool demo done by John Papa, demonstrating the new features that are coming in Silverlight 5. Don’t forget, they are adding a ton of new API sets for you as a developer. That does count for something. They are still listening to feedback from the community and oncorporating that into the framework.
The Kinect hype
Many of you may already have noticed this. Everyone attendant got a Kinect. During the keynote Microsoft showed off a lot of cool projects that are already using the Kinect for other purposes than gaming. I personally like the present very much. I have an XBox 360 at home and was thinking of getting one myself. So getting one for free is really nice. That however isn’t the main reason Microsoft handed them out. Some of the projects that were shown are really fun, others have a more serious goal.
I personally think the whole Kinect thing has a bit of a hype feeling to it. It’s fun for now, but it needs more serious projects to move from the hobby corner into the big boys arena. Having said that it’s cool to see so many initiatives out there to make the Kinect more than just a gaming device.
User experience, developers, designers and awesomesauce
MIX11 for me is huge fun, very interesting and gives me a great chance to talk to people that I otherwise would never meet. I especially like the sessions on User Experience. Also the sessions that touch the Developer/Designer combo are interesting. I’m not a pure designer and also not a pure developer, so for me this is excellent stuff.
To give you an idea I’ve seen sessions on digital typography, inspiring user interfaces, metro design and “the Microsoft web stack of love”. The last one sounds weird (And it really was), but the idea behind the session was to shiow developers that building ASP.NET is like building with lego. You comine a number of frameworks into one working piece of software. Scott Hanselman did a great job showing off all the great stuff Microsoft has done to make the ASP.NET platform work.
The user experience sessions gave me some great inspiration for new applications and new ways to design user interface. I’m pretty sure I will be trying out a few things in the near future.
Conclusion
MIX is interesting, exciting, inspiring all at the same time. I have talked to a lot of people over there, showing them what we (Marcel, Roy and I) are doing with our mobile app. We get a lot of positive feedback on that. I think it’s great and it inspires me to really work on building the best experience possible.
There’s still this stupid physics principal called time, so it will be a while before all the ideas are put to the test. I don’t care however, I think it’s great to be here and I hope to show you more of the ideas I got 
in the future.
MIX11–The open source fest
One of the cool things of MIX11 is the amount of people you get to talk to. It’s amazing how many developers from Microsoft and other well known IT companies walk around the hallways. The best way to get a hold of those people however is the open source fest.
So what is the open source fest? It’s a party for geeks to show off their open source projects to the audience with a chance to win an award. To give you an idea how popular this is, there were 50+ open source projects last night at the party. 500 people came to the Mandalay bay ballroom to see the projects and talk to the makers. It’s big, it’s fun and useful at the same time.
Catching up with the heroes in the open source scene
Roy and I have been talking to a bunch of people about some open source projects we’re using or just like. For example, we’ve been talking to some of the guys on the Orchard team from Microsoft. These guys build a open source content management system based on ASP.NET MVC 3. Really cool stuff.
We have also been talking to some guys that work for Novell on the mono-android/monotouch/mono team. I even had the chance to bug them about the problems with the performance of the debugger that I’m experiencing lately. Their answer? File a bugreport and trust us, we’re on top of it. They were friendly enough to provide me with a workaround to get me going again. We also talked to them about the fact that Novell is being aquired by Attachmate and what that means for the mono project. They couldn’t tell us much more, but we were assured that the mono project would continue no matter where they were going.
Aside from talking to guys on open source projects (And we talked to a lot of them) we were able to catch up with John Papa and ask him a few questions too. So all in all I think it was a good day.
A heads up
As you may have noticed I’m writing a series of blogposts on MIX11. They don’t follow a day to day pattern, but more a tour along the points of interest. The posts will be short and somewhat unstructured, because I have to be even faster than normal to get them out 
So please bear with me and enjoy!
MIX11 – Day -2 and -1
Yes I know it’s a weird title and with good reason. Roy and I are in Las Vegas the coming week to attend MIX11. Instead of skipping the days before the MIX11 conference I thought it might be fun to show you a little more about the location where the MIX11 conference is held.
What am I doing in Vegas?
Roy Cornelissen and I are in Vegas the coming week to attend MIX11. The MIX11 event gives developers insight into what Microsoft is doing now with web and user interface technology today and what is going to happen in the next few years. For use this means that we will be checking out sessions on HTML5/CSS3, Silverlight 5 and Windows Phone 7. During this week I am going to try to post some information up here to give you a sense of what’s going on.
MIX11 however isn’t the only reason why we are here. It is the main reason, but we came up with a few more things to do as we have a bit more time here. As soon as we started talking about plans for Vegas we got some ideas. After tweeting about it and talking some more we came up with a culitour and a movietour for ourselves.
Movietour and culitour sounds worse than it is really. We’re both so-called foodies and discovered that Vegas features some very good restaurants one of which we’re going to try out. The movie thing was an idea of Alex Hoeksma who by the way is running a #FilmTip thread on twitter where he gives daily picks of movies that are broadcasted on dutch television. He told us about a few movies that were recorded in Vegas to watch and from that we’ve extracted a few locations that we will be checking out before the conference.
So there it is, a very jammed trip to Las Vegas.
First impressions
After leaving the plane on to our way to grab our baggage we quickly discovered that Vegas is about gambling and shows period. Before you even get to the baggage carousel you see the first series of slotmachines and giant ads to lure you into going to some of the best shows in Vegas. Or so they make you believe.
|
|
|
|
Things you should definitely see or do
It’s a bit early for a top 10 of things to see in Vegas. However, I’m still going to give a few tips. The main thing you should be doing in Vegas is to take a walk down the strip. Roy and I did it and it’s a lot of fun. Be sure to bring a camera as there’s more than enough to photograph. I took about 250 pictures during the walk. They are not yet available online, so instead I used pictures from Roy’s mobile phone.
Note: A walk up and down the strip is about 15 miles. I suggest you don’t do this without a couple of breaks. There are plenty of starbucks coffeebars along the route and a couple of lunch locations, so there’s really no reason to do this in one go.
Don’t forget to enter the various hotels along the way. Each hotel you see is even more extravagant than the previous hotel. For example, Ceasar’s palace is build completely in roman style. It has a pool that gives you the feeling that you’re inside a roman bathhouse.
 |
 |
 |
Other hotels you should check out are:
- Luxor
This hotel is shaped like a piramid. It even has a sfinx in front of the hotel. What makes this hotel special is the way the hotel rooms are placed. Every floor is shaped like a terrace against the side of the piramid. It’s hard to explain here, so you should definitely take a look when you have the chance. - Bellagio hotel
The bellagio is a very classy hotel, the lobby and the garden that is located inside the hotel are beautifully decorated. Kids will love this place because of the butterfly theme, but I think this place is good for nerds too. - The Venetian
They build Venice, what else do you want?! - Paris hotel
Roy and I haven’t checked this one out from the inside, but the outside sure does look promising with a miniature eiffel tower and a smaller version of the arc de triomphe.
Also be sure to check Vegas by night. The hotels look great during the day, but I think they look even wilder at night. They spend a fortune in neon light in this place with all kinds of effects.
Last, if you got the time I suggest you take a tour to the grand canyon. Don’t have the pictures right now, because Roy and I will be going there tomorrow, but from what I’ve heard it’s a pretty dramatic landscape.
What’s up next?
As I said in the introduction, there’s a lot of work to be done. First I need to get of this jetlag thingie (Don’t want to wake up in the middle of the night every two hours or so). Don’t worry, I’m sure it’s over by the time it’s monday.
During the conference I will be spending a lot of time talking to various people about technology and working in the IT business. Roy and I have made a planning (Does sound like work, doesn’t it?) to cover as much sessions, that we think are important, as we can. I will be posting about it here, so you can follow me/us as the week progresses. After that we will be going home, with new insights in how to improve the way our customers do their business.
Keep following me (@wmeints) and Roy (@roycornelissen) on twitter. We will be posting updates there as well.