Frank La Vigne

O’Reilly Cloud Computing WebCast

Frank La Vigne — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 13:42:00 GMT

I saw this invite for a free webcast on Cloud Computing and thought I’d pass it along.

Join us for this free, live webcast
The current financial crisis has raised enterprise interest in two technology trends: open source and cloud computing. In this presentation, Bernard Golden, CEO of HyperStratus will discuss how the two trends reinforce one another, and why cloud computing is a significant driver of enterprise open source adoption. Key issues he will touch upon are open source's role in application scalability, software licensing, and cloud infrastructures, along with open source product and platforms heavily used in cloud computing.
Attendance is limited, so register now. We'll send you a reminder before the webcast. And please feel free to share this invitation with others.
Date: Thursday, July 9th at 10 am PT
Price: Free
Duration: Approximately 60 minutes
To register: oreilly.com/go/cloudcomputing
Questions? Please send email to webcast@oreilly.com
Register now and we'll send you a reminder!
Meeting link: oreilly.com/go/cloudcomputing
About Bernard Golden
Bernard Golden is considered one of the true thought leaders in cloud computing. He is CEO of HyperStratus, a Silicon Valley-based consulting firm that helps its clients plan, design, and implement their cloud computing systems. He has over twenty years experience in the technology field, having worked in global consultancies, enterprise software companies, and large IT organizations.
Bernard is the author of Virtualization for Dummies, the most popular book on the subject ever published. He serves as the Virtualization and Cloud Computing Advisor for CIO Magazine, which publishes his highly popular blog examining the benefits and challenges of cloud computing. Bernard is a popular speaker, appearing at many conferences like CloudWorld, OSCON, and EDUCAUSE.

Technorati Tags: Cloud Computing,Azure,WebCast,O'Reilly

Atari 2600s and the Real Cost of Poor Usability

Frank La Vigne — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 11:14:00 GMT

John Berman of ABCNews offers up his Atari 2600 as a replacement for the company’s expense reporting system in this humorous video.

The video is clearly a rant with a tongue-in-cheek twist, but during the course of the video he does mention some metrics.

And you know how we love metrics.

Given Mr. Berman’s assertion that 1 receipt takes 3 minutes and his average business trip has 10-20 receipts, he can spend one to two hours entering receipts.

That’s at least one hour of lost productivity per business trip per employee.

Since we all know that time equates to money, entering an expense is an expense over and above the travel costs employees are entering into the system.

In other words, it’s money down the drain.

It Doesn’t Have to Be This Way

Sadly, ABC is not alone.

Generally, the bar for usability design in internal applications is much lower than external applications.

It’s easy to understand why. Out on the internet, your site has to compete with others and external users have no problems critiquing your site with honest (aka harsh) feedback.

On the intranet, it’s a different story. You have a captive audience and employees will hold back their criticisms either out of politeness or fear of reprisals.

Plus, external customers bring in money, internal users cost the company money.

Since we all love to get money, users are lined up accordingly.

I would say that businesses ignore their internal user base at their own peril.

It’s Still a Usability Crime Even If You Don’t Get Caught

Companies pay their employees to get work done. Unless you work in an hourglass factory, staring at hourglasses all day probably isn’t in the job description.

Productivity lost is money lost and, make no mistake, having a behind-the-firewall application that’s frustrating to use will cost you money.

Just because the world can’t see your app, doesn’t mean you get a free pass on usability concerns.

I’m not suggesting that internal applications have dancing logos, rounded “Web 2.0” buttons, or all the other trappings of the “big budget” web sites.

Most users want to get their work done, not admire your artwork or “mad skillz” at technologies they don’t know or care to know about.

Always remember that users use your application as a means to an end and your job as developers is make your application as seamless as possible.

Technorati Tags: Usability,UX,ABCNews,John Berman,UI,RIA

SlideShare Add-In for PowerPoint 2007

Frank La Vigne — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:08:00 GMT

Here's a really great add-in for PowerPoint if you use SlideShare a lot.

Meet the SlideShare Ribbon in PowerPoint 2007

View more presentations from Jonathan Boutelle.

Technorati Tags: SlideShare,PowerPoint

Fun With Speech Recognition in WPF

Frank La Vigne — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 08:02:00 GMT

At last week’s CapArea.NET meeting, I demonstrated using the built in speech recognition of Windows Vista with a demo compass application. [source code]

I spoke the direction I wanted the needle to point and the computer would recognize the command and point the arrow. After a few commands, the computer tells me to “stop bossing it around.”

It was simple but it illustrated several points. One, speech can add value to you applications. Two, it’s easy to add. Three, it’s free.

Best of all, it’s fun.

First, you’ll need to add a reference to the System.Speech library. This is where all the speech recognition and speech synthesis classes live.

Once your project has the references, add the following using statements to your code behind.

   1: using System.Speech.Recognition;

   2: using System.Speech.Synthesis;

The Recognition namespace contains all the code needed to recognize speech and the Synthesis namespace handles the code to turn text to speech. Input and output, respectively.

With all the references to the speech DLLs in place, we can now instantiate the speech related objects.

   1: this._speechSynthesizer = new SpeechSynthesizer();

   2: this._speechRecognizer = new SpeechRecognizer();

3:

   4: this._speechRecognizer.SpeechRecognized += new EventHandler<SpeechRecognizedEventArgs>(_speechRecognizer_SpeechRecognized);

   5: this._speechRecognizer.Enabled = true;

When speech gets recognized, the SpeechRecognizer fires an event, appropriately named “Speech Recognized.”

   1: private void _speechRecognizer_SpeechRecognized(object sender, SpeechRecognizedEventArgs e)   2: {   3:     string directionResult = e.Result.Text;   4:     5:     // Set Window Title   6:     this.Title = directionResult;   7:     8:     Storyboard directionStoryboard = this.Resources[directionResult] as Storyboard;   9:    10:     if (directionStoryboard != null)  11:     {  12:         directionStoryboard.Begin();  13:     }  14:     else  15:     {  16:         this.Title = "Not a storyboard";  17:     }  18: }

It’s in that event that we get passed the results of the recognition inside the SpeecRecognizedEventArgs and you’ll see I drop that into a string and set the Window’s Title property to display what the system interpreted the speech to be.

On line 8, I use the recognized string to get the appropriate Storyboard. I saved myself some time by cleverly naming them. ;)

   1: <Storyboard x:Key="South">   2:     <DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames BeginTime="00:00:00" Storyboard.TargetName="pthArrow" Storyboard.TargetProperty="(UIElement.RenderTransform).(TransformGroup.Children)[2].(RotateTransform.Angle)">   3:         <SplineDoubleKeyFrame KeyTime="00:00:00.7000000" Value="179.048"/>   4:     </DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames>   5: </Storyboard>   6: <Storyboard x:Key="West">   7:     <DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames BeginTime="00:00:00" Storyboard.TargetName="pthArrow" Storyboard.TargetProperty="(UIElement.RenderTransform).(TransformGroup.Children)[2].(RotateTransform.Angle)">   8:         <SplineDoubleKeyFrame KeyTime="00:00:00.7000000" Value="-89.818"/>   9:     </DoubleAnimationUsingKeyFrames>  10: </Storyboard>

Don’t worry if the Storyboard syntax doesn’t make sense to you, I could talk about Silverlight and WPF animation all day, but here the focus is on Speech, not XAML.

When you run the application, you may get the Speech Setup Tutorial if you’ve never run speech recognition before.

You don’t have to run through the tutorial, but I recommend you do as it will demonstrate the power of the engine built right in to the OS.

The system also uses the tutorial to set up your microphone, adjust your settings and start learning your voice.

Once you get past the tutorial (it takes bout 10 minutes), you’ll notice the speech recognition tool bar on your desktop.

Stop! Grammar Time

In order to increase the reliability of the sample app, I added a grammar to limit the number of possibilities the speech recognizer had.

You want to do this to narrow down the potential results from millions of words to dozens. Narrowing the recognition pool increases the accuracy.

Grammars can get quite complex and there even is a W3C standard (SRGS) for defining them.

However, since we’re dealing with a compass, we really only need eight points: the four directions (North, West, South, East) and the four in between points.

   1: private Choices GetChoices()

   2: {

   3:     Choices choices = new Choices();

4:

   5:     choices.Add("North");

   6:     choices.Add("West");

   7:     choices.Add("East");

   8:     choices.Add("South");

9:

  10:     choices.Add("NorthWest");

  11:     choices.Add("SouthWest");

  12:     choices.Add("NorthEast");

  13:     choices.Add("SouthEast");

14:

  15:     return choices;

  16: }

I use the following code to load the grammar into my recognizer.

   1: Choices choices = GetChoices();

2:

   3: GrammarBuilder grammarBuilder = new GrammarBuilder(choices);

   4: Grammar grammarDirections = new Grammar(grammarBuilder);

5:

   6: this._speechRecognizer.LoadGrammar(grammarDirections);

Talk to Me

The code to make the computer speak is actually much easier.

In fact, it can come down to one line of code (two if you count the call to the constructor):

this._speechSynthesizer.Speak("Stop bossing me around!");

I wrote a blog post a little while back just on speech synthesis and it’s own demo app.

Now, you know that it’s actually quite easy to add a little bit of NUI (Natural User Interface) to your applications.

Technorati Tags: Speech Synthesis,Speech Recognition,SRGS,WPF,NUI

UX Team of One

Frank La Vigne — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:53:00 GMT

Leah Budley talks about being a UX team of one, a role that many "Devigners" find themselves in.

Video and slides from her SXSW presentation are below:

UX Team of One @ SXSW 2009

View more presentations from Leah Buley.

Technorati Tags: Leah Budley,SXSW,UX,Devigner

Musings About Project Natal

Frank La Vigne — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 17:27:00 GMT

I've been fascinated by Project Natal since I first saw the videos from E3 and as a card carrying geek, I've been combing through the videos looking for clues on how the system works.

The marketing videos make a lot of promises: facial recognition, speech recognition, image scanning, object scanning, motion capture, and a slew of other "out there" technologies.

It's easy to stage a demo where you can control a lot of factors such as lighting and even wardrobe, but how would this work in consumers' hands in the real world?

Based on my experiments with the Touchless SDK, the Project Natal had their work cut out for them.

It's not just what the Project Natal device can do, but where it will be expected to do it.

From dimly lit dorm rooms to bright and cheery family rooms, consumers are going to expect the technology to "just work."

As Seen on TV

Right now, it's very hard to separate fact from fiction, hype from FUD about how ready the technology is to come to market, let alone for people to start guessing a release date.

There's a lot of debate on how well the technology works. Project Natal even landed a guest spot on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, where the technology showed some cracks.

First off, what's with the red jumpsuits? I take it that's not the normal attire for appearing on Jimmy Fallon.

Based on my own experiments with the Touchless SDK, this was probably done to increase the contrast of the person against the background.

This raises some interesting questions (aside from the obvious "how ready is this?")

For one, if you can't control lighting conditions to set up the ideal environment in a TV studio, where the heck can you? Secondly, will the Project Natal documentation recommend you wear something bright and paint your room a nice neutral earthtone?

Sean Malsrom points out a less obvious oddity:

It is clear it doesn’t yet work properly. I have yet to see a Burnout video where people are not driving 50 mph when they should be driving 200 mph, and they’re still crashing into walls all the time.

He has a good point and if you follow the player's movements, sometimes they match up, sometimes they don't.

Sean also has a lot of other commentary and analysis on the buzz around Project Natal.

Now wonder then, that the "breakout demo" has been making the rounds, it's easiest to capture the location of four limbs pointing out in different directions.

So, the real question is now what?

When will this be out? How much will this cost? Will it connect to the XBOX 360 by USB?

If so, could you plug it into your PC can capture the data from it? Where's the SDK? Will there be integration with XNA Game Studio?

There are a lot more questions than answers and I suspect it will be like that for a time to come.

Technorati Tags: Project Natal,XBOX 360

Just Google It With Bing

Frank La Vigne — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:12:00 GMT

Bing is an immense improvement over Live Search, but to overtake Google, it's going to take a lot to de-throne Google from the public consciousness.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

[found via Shawn Wildermuth's Twitter feed via CNET]

Technorati Tags: Bing,Google,Search

Don't Microwave This Book!

Frank La Vigne — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:19:00 GMT

I recently saw an odd description on the "Expression Design Step by Step" book.

It's a good read, but please don't microwave this book and be sure to only wash it by hand, not in a dishwasher.

Technorati Tags: Error'd,Humor,Expression Design

Windows 7 in Pictures: 10 Cool Desktop Features

Frank La Vigne — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:06:00 GMT

Network World has a slide show on 10 Cool Desktop Features in Windows 7.

Even if you've been playing around with Win7 since the early betas, there may even be a thing or two you haven't seen yet.

Technorati Tags: Win7,Windows 7,Network World

Slides, Links and Code from Poor Man's Project Natal

Frank La Vigne — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:45:00 GMT

Thank to everyone who came out on Tuesday to CapArea.NET for my "Poor Man's Project Natal" talk.

Poor Man's Project Natal

View more documents from Frank La vigne.

Technorati Tags: Project Natal,Speech Recognition,Speech Synthesis,Johnny Lee,Wii,Touchless SDK

What a Week!

Frank La Vigne — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:32:00 GMT

Blog posts have generally slowed down this month, and there's a lot going on around here lately.

This week I spoke at CapArea.NET on Tuesday and led the Hands On Lab at the CapArea Silverlight SIG on Wednesday. Speaking two nights back to back to back was a lot of fun, but prepping two new presentations at the same time is a lot of work.

Speaking of a lot of work, I've been working on editing Chapter 1 of my Silverlight book while writing chapter 2. No one who has ever wrote a book has ever said that it was easy, but everyone of them will tell you that it's worth it.

I've also been doing a lot of landscaping now that the monsoon season here in Maryland has ended. The previous owners hadn't done any work in the yard for a few years, so undoing all that neglect has been a challenge.

I really need a vacation. :)

Technorati Tags: CapArea.NET,CapArea.NET Silverlight,Silverlight

DC/MD/VA Microsoft Robotics Studio Group Meeting Tomorrow

Frank La Vigne — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:20:00 GMT

The DC/MD/VA Microsoft Robotics Studio Group is meeting tomorrow at the Tysons-Pimmit Regional Library in Falls Church.

Reminder that the Microsoft Robotic Developer Simulation Meeting is tomorrow at 10:00 AM at:
Tysons-Pimmit Regional Library
7584 Leesburg Pike
Falls Church, VA 22043
703-790-8088
[Map]
All are welcome.

Technorati Tags: Robotics Studio,Developer Community

Speaking Tomorrow Night at CapArea .NET

Frank La Vigne — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:08:00 GMT

Yesterday was the first "official" day of Summer and nothing says Summer like some fun and games. Tomorrow night, I'll be speaking at CapArea.NET on adding a little extra interactivity to your projects with a little help from the Touchless SDK.

Touchless SDK: Poor Man's Project Natal
Tuesday, June 23, 2009 at 7:00 PM
So you’ve seen the cool video from E3 on the new “controller-less controller” technology called Project Natal. There’s not been any word yet on how to integrate Project Natal’s technology with your Windows applications.
But with the Touchless SDK from Office Labs, you can implement Natal-Style experiences in your applications today with only a web cam.
It’s free and it’s fun to add multi-"touch" input with M&Ms, tennis balls, or markers.
Frank La Vigne is a Microsoft Tablet PC MVP and Lead Architect/Designer for Applied Information Sciences (AIS) in Northern Virginia. Frank started in software development when he was twelve, writing BASIC programs for the Commodore 64. He began his professional career writing Visual Basic 3 applications for Wall Street firms in 1993. He then moved on to be the first webmaster for a major book retailer. Frank then went on to develop a large multinational online banking project in Germany. In 2004, Frank became heavily focused on Tablet PC application development. Frank is also the co-founder and Manager of the CapArea .NET Silverlight SIG.

Technorati Tags: CapArea.NET,Touchless SDK,Fun,Project Natal

Is MSNBC Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?

Frank La Vigne — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:52:00 GMT

And the answer appears to be "No."

Check out that check mark on the ballot. Add “Clip Art Copy/Paste Fail“ to this one.

[found via a co-worker via FamousDC]

Project Natal in Use

Frank La Vigne — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:10:00 GMT

Project Natal, the new controller-less experience for the Xbox 360, made a big splash at the E3 trade show.

Sure, the demo video looks cool, but how much is marketing hype and how much is a real, tangible product?

The good news is that from this video, we can infer the following:

This is a real and it works reasonably well.
There is at least one sample game to demo the technology
There probably is an SDK

If you the video more closely, you will also see that something has been censored.

Clearly someone went out of their way to blur out something this in the video.

Could the final shape and form of the Natal camera still be NDA? Are there other sensors on it such as infrared and motion detectors?

To do all the things that Natal promises, it would need to have a sense of depth.

Based on my experiments with the Touchless SDK, I'd put money on there being a second camera on the Natal device. If it's not a second camera, then it could be some kind of range-finding mechanism to get that third dimension clearly.

Or, does the Natal device have its own onboard circuitry to figure out what its "seeing." That would save the XBOX CPU from doing the extra work.

In that case, how big will it be and what is it sending over to the XBOX? How will it connect? USB?

If it's USB, then can I plug this into my Windows based machines?

Now, the real question is: when and where can I get my hands on the SDK?

Technorati Tags: Project Natal,Felixia Day,E3,XBOX360

Two Must-See Videos from MIX09

Frank La Vigne — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 11:43:00 GMT

During the course of the day at Saturday's Silverlight FireStarter DC, I kept referring to two presentations from MIX09 that were a must-see for anyone serious about knowing more about the inner workings of Silverlight.

Here are those videos:

Principles of Microsoft Silverlight Animation

http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/T12F

Come and learn the fundamentals of Silverlight animation. Start at the beginning with a review of storyboards and keyframes, and then break free from storyboards and explore procedural animations. This is where the rubber meets the road and your objects come to life-vectors, frame-based animations, collisions, particle systems, and VR objects.

Jeff Paries
As a Sr. Digital Experience Developer, Jeff Paries is the lead Silverlight developer with Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, a leading integrated communications company. Jeff has a strong background in 3D graphics and animation. Jeff is also an accomplished author and instructor in the area of 3D graphics and animation — he has authored several books and numerous magazine articles related to 3D. An early adopter of Silverlight, Jeff’s interests lie in developing animation concepts and methodologies within Silverlight. As a developer with design experience, Jeff’s mission is to help bridge the gap between design and development. His latest book, “Foundation Silverlight Animation” works to further this goal through a scenario-based approach.

Deep Dive into Microsoft Silverlight Graphics

http://videos.visitmix.com/MIX09/T17F

Come hear about the Silverlight 3 rendering pipeline, and learn how to enhance your application experience with the latest additions to the Silverlight graphics APIs.

Seema Ramchandani
Seema is a PM on the Silverlight team in Redmond, where she works on the graphics system and optimizing the platform’s performance. Seema initially joined Microsoft in 2003 to design and build WPF’s Controls and Panel system, and then moved to work on the platform’s hardware acceleration story. Prior to her tenure at Microsoft, Seema worked on brain-computer interfaces at Brown.

Technorati Tags: MIX09,Silverlight,SilverlightDC,SLFSDC