Blog List

For our first Girl Geek Dinner of 2010 we're going to have a casual networking night.

We'll be heading to Vapiano restaurant in Albert Lane just off the Queen Street Mall.  You can have a look at the food on offer at there website : http://www.vapiano.com.au/our-food.html

Details for the night:

when: 7pm 23 February, 2010

where: Vapiano - Albert Lane, just of the Queen Street Mall

Who can attend: Any female in the IT industry or who has an interest in the industry, or any male invited by an attending member

Earlier this month at Australia’s first Silverlight Code Camp I showed a simple invert pixel effect applied to the base road map layer of Bing Maps. At the time I challenged the audience to look at pixel shaders to further customise and integrate Bing Maps into their applications. Today Nokola posted a sample Hue Shift pixel shader with source code.





http://www.soulsolutions.com.au/silverlight/hueshift/

I couldn’t help but quickly apply the effect to the Bing Maps control with some nice results. Rather then apply to the whole control I’m applying the shader in code to just the base layer, this means that pins and navigation controls are not effected:

effect = new ShiftHueEffect(); map.Mode.Content.Effect = effect; map.ModeChanged += (e, o) => map.Mode.Content.Effect = effect; The ultimate for me would be a shader that allowed the designer to selectively change the key base layer colours to those of their choosing. Thanks to Nokola I think I now know the right direction to take.

Technorati Tags: Bing Maps,Pixel Shader,Silverlight

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Nicolas Boonaert’s book on Bing Maps has been released and it looks awesome! Nicolas lives in France and is an active developer in the Bing Maps community.



The book is in French, but amazingly I can still understand much of it :) It covers quite a bit in 450 pages:

History, including TerraServer, MapPoint Web Service and Virtual Earth Architecture of the platform AJAX control Silverlight Bing Maps Web Service Building Mobile applications 3rd Party Projects, including DeepEarth Comparison with Google Maps, Yahoo Maps and OSM. If your interested in Bing Maps or web mapping in general and can read French this is a must. If you don’t speak French but this sort of title interests you, then ping Nicolas and encourage him to do an English translation, he is on twitter here. Great work Nicolas!

Technorati Tags:...

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Good news for all Bing Maps developers with windows update 979202 solving a major performance issue.

CPU usage is high when you use the Deep Zoom feature in Silverlight 3. This problem occurs when the Deep Zoom feature cannot load or decode a tile. The problem persists even if you minimize the Web browser in which the Silverlight 3 application is running.

This would occur if you had either :

1. a custom tile layer that would return 404 errors when tiles were requested (typical for a simple file system on edge tiles that don’t exist but are still requested by the control) or
2. if you disabled the coverage map of the base layers and zoomed into the non-covered area.

Additionally my tests prove that an additional problem with animations causing the MSI control to redraw have also been solved.

This is great news and allows us to do some clever things with dynamic tile layers and animated icons on the map without major performance hits. I hope to share some of these with you in coming posts.

To finish up the year we’re presenting at the QLD MSDN Usergroup to show off a bunch of Silverlight 3 features like perspective 3D and Deep Zoom and combine these with Dallas, Pivot, PhotoSynth and Bing Maps.

The official blurb:

Data Visualisation with Silverlight 3

To finish up the year come join Windows Live Platform MVPs Bronwen and John for a festive drink and a look at how you can visualise your data on the web using Silverlight 3.  We will explore some of the many controls available including the new Bing Maps control giving you some great ideas for your next project.

Date and Time: 8 December, 2009 17:30 for 18:00

Location: Microsoft Brisbane Office, Level 9, Waterfront Place, 1 Eagle St, Brisbane.

RSVP: mike@fitzsimon.com.au

Announced at PDC this week in awesome new technology preview called Pivot. I was lucky enough to get an invite code to this private preview, I highly recommend you sign up today for your invite or at least watch the HD video below.

In short this for me takes what we have seen in custom Silverlight DeepZoom applications like Vertigo’s Hard Rock Memorabilia site and then blows it away. Not only does Pivot show you that dynamic DeepZoom collection with metadata and filters but it handles seemingly unlimited number of objects, provides a standardised format to put your collection data into and then does amazing things like the range sliders applied to dates.

The application is currently only running on Windows7 with a recent 3D graphics card, my new XPS Studio 16 runs perfectly while my older XPS M1330 is very stuttered. But the idea here to see the concepts working and they really do, given time clearly this is going to be possible in Silverlight and, if that is so, then that means this technology will be available to PCs, Macs and even your phone.

falsefalsefalsefalsefalsefalsefalsefalse0falsehttp://content.getpivot.com/wmv/1002290_LiveLabs_111109_v03_512x384_600kbps_VBR.wmvhttp://www.getpivot.com/silverlight/images/videos/hero-02-pivot-screenshot-play-btn.jpgClicking this takes you to video 2" /> ...

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This week I caught up with Laura Diaz from NAVTEQ to chat about how Bing Maps developers can win their share of US 10 million dollars in the global LBS Challenge. This is the first year that web based applications can be submitted and with Microsoft’s Bing Maps use of NAVTEQ data the ideal platform to build your entry is clear.

Your browser does not support iframes, download the MP3 directly below.

You can download the mp3 here.

“First launched in 2003, the NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge is focused on driving the development and visibility of innovative location-based solutions (LBS) for wireless devices. The Global LBS Challenge has become the premier event in the wireless industry and a global symbol of LBS innovation and opportunity. From business applications to sports, travel and security, integrating the accuracy and richness of NAVTEQ digital map data facilitates the discovery of the next wave of LBS using dynamic positioning technology.”

Highlights:

$10,000,000 in prizes consists of cash and data licenses. Real opportunity to meet some of the top companies in this field. Competition is broken into regions, must register soon, North America closes 20th November! Web applications can simple be submitted as a working URL Mobile applications making it to the next round will get a sponsored device if they choose that device in their entry. Open to non-commercial applications With the release of the new Bing Maps Silverlight control will we see some very cool entries?  

For more information visit the competition homepage...

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October 22nd is Windows7 day, I didn’t think I’d see anything new but the HP TouchSmart 600 has really impressed me. Like many I’ve been running Windows7 on my daily machine since beta2, I love the windows management, new taskbar and speed. Mainly everything just works and works well. So what makes this new “all in one” computer so amazing? It’s because it’s the complete package!





When you combine all the new features of Windows7 with all the latest hardware and then wrap it in a sleek all in one unit you get the HP TouchSmart 600. And the best part is this thing is actually affordable – RRP for the top of the range model is AU$2,499.

Let’s talk features

Windows 7 Home Premium 1920x1080 23” LCD Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor T6600 2.2 Ghz 4GB DDR3 750GB SATA HDD Slot load Blu-ray NVIDIA GeForce GT230M 1GB, DirectX 10 DVB-T Digital TV Tuner 10/100/1000 network Wireless 802.11b/g/n Slim Cordless Keyboard, mouse Media Centre Remote The screen is 1080p, crisp and very watchable, Blu-ray movies like The Dark Knight look amazing. This machine isn’t your 9 to 5 development machine, this one is for your home, your parents home or your friends. Its for photos, surfing, games and movies.

So what is the out of the box experience like? Its got one cable to plug in, the power. HP...

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Back in February Microsoft had a special promotion that allowed you to get 10% off you Microsoft Certification exam and if you failed, you got a free retake. The MVP’s were given special discount codes that they could give to people to claim the 10%.

Today I received this shiny plaque in the mail: ASIA MVP Certification Hero Award 2009.  This was given to the top 3 MVP Australia and New Zealand contributors to the promotion.

I’m not sure who the other 2 were but if you’re one of them, let me know so I can add to to this post.

Who is invited?

If you are a geek and a girl or know of one who is willing to escort you then you are welcome and encouraged to come along. There is a technical focus with the intention of having fun and connecting with other women in IT.

This month we're having an open mic night. Please let us know if you'd like a 5 min speaking slot to talk about a topic of your choosing.

Who pays for dinner?

This month is not sponsored so you will have to pay for your own dinner

Where + When

Date: Tuesday 24th November, 2009

Time: 7:00 pm

Where: Greystone Bar & Cellar - 7/116 Grey Street South Brisbane QLD 4101

Menu: http://www.greystonebar.com.au/sites/default/files/Enitre%20Menu.pdf