Johnnys Blog

Bing Maps meets PhotoSynth and Flickr and Video and OMG...!

2010-02-14T14:38:00.000Z

From the TED conference, Bing Maps' Blaise Aguera y Arcas demonstrates how augmented reality on top of Bing Maps can help us see into the past, or the future or into space..

Using Photosynth like technology to integrate photos from sources such as flickr, I think its fantastic that this software can map photos from multiple sources can be integrated so semlessly. Add in the telepresence options from a roving camera on a backpack, or other video source and we get the ability to get an understanding about somewhere that are just not possible with standard mapping stuff outthere at present.

Imagine looking a a map that shows how busy the traffic is at a location, or watching some street entertainment happening now, or following some other incident happening anywhere in the world theres a camera.

Blaise also shows integration from telescopes when he points the 'map view' into the sky.

Its just awesome...!

Watch it at http://www.simplyzesty.com/technology/stunning-microsoft-augmented-reality-maps-ted/

Fantastic work guys..

A Snow Dalek!

2010-01-24T01:13:00.001Z

Nothing else to say, other than Brrrrrrrrrrrrilliant!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gamelaner/4214770802/in/set-72157622945615849/

DDD8 Fills with record speed

2010-01-16T10:54:00.000Z

I did warn you, but this time DDD8 has reached capacity and is now operating a waiting list. Whats more it did this in 15 minutes!

While I wasnt chosen as one of the speakers, I dont mind based on the fantastic talks that are now included on the agenda, which you can see here.

Better yet, I managed to register in that short time window so will be able to relax a bit and watch and learn from these guys.

DDD8 Place your votes now

2010-01-12T17:16:00.000Z

Voting for DDD8 is now open. Theres a whole host of goodness in terms of sessions put forward, and you get to choose which ones actually happen.

If any of you have been to a DDD event before, you will know what this is about. If not, then check out http://www.developerday.co.uk.

You cant register to attend yet, but you can vote for your favorite sessions.

Also, put the date in your diary.. Saturday 30th January 2010. When registration opens, theres likely to be no more than a few hours until is closes again due to being full!

Hope to see you there...

Google badness...

2010-01-05T19:57:00.001Z

I have a need to upload a whole load of videos to YouTube from an application, so I decided to consider the YouTube API.

Guess what, in order to look at the examples, you need to install Googles Chrome browser. Now, I've not installed it and dont know if its any good or not, but to insist on yo installing a new browser. No wonder Google are claiming that Chrome is chasing IE and Firefox as the most popular browser with nonsense like this!

If Microsoft did this they would probably end up in court in an anti trust case!

Watch Sky TV in Windows Media Center

2009-12-29T22:18:00.001Z

Over Christmas, I stayed with relatives that didn't have Sky TV, fortunatley though, they did have a reasonable broadband connection. Facing the prospect of not being able to get my nightly dose of Star Trek: The Next Generation, I connected by laptop to the TV and watched Sky via Windows Media Center.

Heres the process I went through to get it to work. You only have to do this once, to register your Sky account number with Media Center and off you go. Having selected the Sky Player from the Media Center menu (if you havent got it on the main menu, then try getting the latest updates from Windows Update), click on install to begin the process of installing the required addin.

Once installed, you get a menu integrating the usual Sky guide into Media Center guide, along with a recommended viewing page.

To actually watch anything though, you need to sign in with your Sky ID, If you have already registered an email address and got a login from Sky then of course you can use that, Or you can follow a link and get your own login. You will need to be able to identify yourself to Sky, by providing details of your viewing card number, or details of your latest bill.

When you sign in for the first time, you get a message saying that a licence is being obtained to watch the video. On my PC and Internet connection which is quite good, this process took just over 5 minutes, so dont get impatient and start clicking on things, like I nearly did, and cancel the process by mistake!

Thats it, you can now watch Sky TV on your PC! You even get the popup showing now and next thet you get when watching Sky from a Sky Box.

The channels you get to watch depend on what subscription you have, but you get all the FreeSat channels, and any other you subscribe to. Theres a catch however, you can only add four machines, which is not that bad, but you can only watch Sky 1 and Sky Movies on the 'Main PC'. You can select which is the main machine, and while you can change it from Skys website, you can only change it once a month.

To find out more you can visit Sky TV for Media Center at http://skyplayer.sky.com/watch/windows-media-center/

Update: Its now also possible you get Sky TV on your XBOX 360!

How to crash a car from the outside

2009-12-22T15:42:00.000Z

I would love to work in a certian car insurance companies claims department today. A colleague today managed to crash his car into a tree while not in the car.

Apparently he reached into the car to start it this morning, without realising it was in gear.

The car moved forward about 6 foot and smashed into a tree, pulling the guy with it.

After checking that he was ok, I have to admit that it took several minutes to stop laughing. ;-0)

Windows 7 UK wallpaper - Find the Castle

2009-12-02T11:17:00.002Z

Bit of discussion in the office todaty about where the castle by the river is. After several suggestions, I resorted to the universal search engine, G....er...Bing.

Found out its Conwy Castle in Wales.

Heres a list of where the other pictures were taken, just to be complete.

http://blogs.msdn.com/robmar/archive/2009/10/30/the-pictures-in-the-uk-windows-7-theme-pack.aspx

Viral Gaming?

2009-11-24T14:02:00.004Z

With NxtGens up and coming XNA games day and the work I've been doing around social media, I thought I'd write some notes as to where these two interesting areas overlap.

Richie Costall and Pete McGann did a really cool silverlight version of the ZX Spectrum game, Manic Miner, which has a level in it promoting NxtGen. (play it here).

Heres another really good example of some games from Cadbury. Each of the elves have their own game, and they even have their own blogs!

These so called 'Viral Games' are usually small, easy to play, and usually web based.. and most importantly if you want it to spread, fun to play!

These games, if you can get people engaged with them, becomes a powerful marketing tool. But to be sucessful, you cant just write any old game, here some things to consider.

Marketing Strategy

So, you've managed to get half the world playing your game, but if the marketing message is not there, then all you have is a cool game. You need a theme that gets your audience thinking in a particular way is the key. Games that are way too overbranded, or make you register before you can play, will be a turn off to the gaming community - which is who you will be relying on to pass your message around.

Get The Game Right

The game itself needs to have enough meat on it for people to actually want to play. It needs to look good enough to encourage people to have a go, but watch the size of downloads, bandwidth needed to play.

You dont want a Halo, massive 3D game that takes 6 fingers on each hand to play, but neither do you want something thats going to get boring after 5 mins. There needs to be a low entry level of difficulty, but that climbs up as you progress, to keep people wanting to beat thier previous best. Placing high score tables for people that register, will add an additional level of competition and encorages registration. We do this for the Manic Miner game.

Get The Game Out There.

Most games will spread amongst work colleagues and friends on a peer-2-peer basis. but there still needs to be a number of initial people going this to get going in the first place. If you have a website lots of people visit, then placing a link, maybe to a 'challenge' (score more than 1000 points for a discount for example) to encourage play.

Remember, the biggest group of people who are likely to 'distribute' your game is going to be the gaming community, so placing you game on the many gaming portals is a good idea.

Deciding On A Technology

As i've already said, a lot of these games tend to be web based, so building the game to support this is really a must. Flash games abound on the Internet. As you are (hopefully) expecting a load of visitors, you need to make sure your infrastructure is cabable of delivering the game. Imagine you have managed to attract 5 million people but you servers cant handle more than 20 downloads!

As well as the web, theres another large market that can be exploited. Console community games. Games consoles, such as the Xbox360, and development environments such as XNA allow development of games that can be downloaded and played by the casual console user. Theres also the possibility to make a small charge for the game in this arena as well. With 'proper' console games costing in excess of £40, good, playable games costing £1 will be readily be adopted. The Manic Miner game is written to be playable both on the web and also on the XNA platform to take advantage of both audiences.

If you would like to find out more about XNA, then NxtGen is running an 'XNA assult course' in Birmingham on Saturday 5th December. Have a look here for registration details.

Broadcasting Live Video and Audio

2009-11-20T22:43:00.002Z

Been playing with Expression Encoder 3.

You can click on live encoding, select a port on your local machine, select your webcam and click start.

No other setup, and you are broadcasting a live stream!

Fantastic!

Build your own WartHog at PDC09

2009-11-20T16:33:00.003Z

Only difference is, this one was wired up to use an Xbox 360 wireless controller to drive it! Cool!

Better yet, the guys had mounted an electronic rifle on the back of the car... and then configured it to operate the same way as the gun on the Warthog in Halo. Reloading included!

All I can say is..... You guys rock!

More info to their blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/coding4fun/

Bing in the wild..

2009-08-19T13:31:00.003+01:00

Following on from some posts that Ian Moulster did showing Bing stickers on different vehicles, and the aquasition of some Bing swag imported especially for NxtGenUG from the US.

Some of you may know that NxtGenUG holds some of its meetings at Coventry Flying School, and some of you may know that I have an interest in flying. So, trying to combine these two passions, I ventured into the hanger and took these pictures..

Finally, I spotted the sit on lawn mower in the corner of the hanger. On closer inspection, and on lifting the bonnet, I found this..

Learn something new every day

2009-08-18T09:58:00.003+01:00

One of the Tech Support guys in the office had the need to set a date in a SQL 2008 database record to null. Not knowing TSQL, he used SQL Management Studio edit view to type in 'NULL' into the date field.

Watching him as he typed, I was about to say something deep and meaningful about strings into date fields, and that he should use ctrl-0 instead, but before I could, he had tabbed out of the field and it was accepted as a null value!

I didnt know you could do that. In fact I'm convinced that never used to be the case in SQL 2005 Management Studio.

Thanks Chris!

DDD Southwest

2009-07-09T23:22:00.002+01:00

DDD Southwest was a brilliant event a few weeks ago, and not just because I was speaking at it! For thouse of you who couldnt make it, and also for those of you that did and are getting nostalgic, the DDD Swouthwest team have put together a video showing some of the goings on. Go on, watch it - Happy memories.

Roll on DDD SW2 (sounds like a postcode;-0)

You can find the video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KU_G9otbW0

Ever struggled to find a spare socket?

2009-06-24T16:33:00.000+01:00

We have all seen the spaghetti under the desk where we need to plug in 5 pieces of kit, into 4 sockets. So we add a trailing socket, and the spaghetti grows.

I came across this photo looking around the IWOOT site, that has a whole new take on this! I thought is was cool so I would like to share it here..

Speaking at DDD Southwest

2009-05-20T14:32:00.003+01:00

I am privileged to be speaking at DDD Southwest on the 23rd May (Saturday).

I'll be talking about Media Center development and how to use it for home automation.

You can find out more about DDD Southwest by visiting the site, which is http://www.dddsouthwest.com/. If you are about, come and say hello.

PS. Richie Costall is also going to be there doing something with Silverlight, which will also be a very good session. (I've seen it already). Just dont tell him I said so... ;-0)

WebDD Registration is open

2009-03-30T14:45:00.002+01:00

Registration is now open for WebDD, which is the web dedicated arm of the fantastic DDD series of days.

Heres the link to register http://developerdeveloperdeveloper.com/webdd09/register.aspx

I personally am looking forward to Andy Westgarths Deployment presentation, and Mike Taultys Silverlight 3 one.

I will have to put up with Richy Costall doing his Miner Willy Talk, though Pete McGann is awesome as usual. If you want to see whats possible with Silverlight and XNA then go watch this. Alternately, you can play the game for yourself on the NxtGEnUG site.

The complete agenda is here http://developerdeveloperdeveloper.com/webdd09/Schedule.aspx

Been a long time..

2009-03-30T14:43:00.003+01:00

Its been some time since I last made a post here. Not going to make excuses, usual things like work getting in the way!

I did a couple of presentations on using home automation and tieing into Media Center, the last one being for VBUG in London.

Thanks for your hospitality Sam!

Live 2 Code - Code 2 Live - Swagilly Fortunes

2008-06-16T19:42:00.004+01:00

As one of the founders of the NxtGen user group, myself and the other two reprobates, Rich and Dave, realised that after spending a whole day listening to presenters talk about the latest technology, there’s only so much information that the human brain can absorb. I felt that some light relief was needed at the end of the day. So, Swaggily Fortunes was born.

Since its first outing at NxtGens’ Fest 07 at Reading, its appeared 4 times since, including at TechEd Barcelona. We still receive requests to run it at various events.

So, what is it? I’m sure you remember Family Fortunes on ITV, (even if you don’t want to admit to it!) Well this is my take on this game show.

There are 2 teams and one member of each team steps up to a table, then the quizmaster asks question and whoever buzzes first gets to answer, if they get it right the whole team gets to come up with answers. Each correct answer earns their team some points. Get it wrong, and you lose a life. Lose 3 lives and the other team wins.

So, whats the technical makeup of this? Well, first there’s the question master. In Swaggily Fortunes thats Microsoft Anna. She reads the question out each time, and waits for the buzzer.

Theres some hardware involved as well, the buzzers. They are big red buttons mounted on plastic boxes connected via some howngrown electronics to a usb port, where they are recognised by Vista as a HID (Human Interface Device)

The input from the buzzers is dealt with by DirectX, Direct Input to be precise. This scans the game controller ports looking for which button is pressed first.

When one is, the WPF code runs an animation to show which team pressed and well as playing the obligatory buzzing sound.Theres 2 screens that make up this application.

The first is want the audience sees, the main game screen. This is a WPF application that shows the question in play, the answers given and the lives lost down the side.

The second screen, which is where I run the game from, appears on the Laptops own screen, whereas the main screen is put out to the projector using some .NET code to detect the presence of the number of monitors and allocates the right thing to the right display.

From the control screen, I can allow people to test their buzzers, choose the question, change which team is playing, although this is automatically selected. If the teams take too long to answer, I can also play a tick tock sound to tell them to hurry up.

So, if you hear that Swagilly Fortunes is playing at an event near you then come and say hello!

Vista and XP search updates

2008-06-08T19:10:00.003+01:00

When Vists was first release, I wrote an article for Microsoft about the new search machanism in Vista. Well, theres now an update to it, called Windows Search 4.0

The search engine in Windows Search 4.0 is a Microsoft Windows service that is also used by programs such as Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 and Microsoft Office OneNote 2007.

You can use this search engine to index a program's content and to obtain instant results when you search in a particular program. Windows Search 4.0 includes the following improvements:

Support for indexing encrypted documents of local file systems
Reduced affect on Microsoft Exchange when you index e-mail in online mode, and there is no local cache (.ost)
Support for indexing online delegate mailboxes
Support for client-to-client remote query to shared indexed locations
Improved indexing performance
Faster previewer updates for Windows XP
Per-user Group Policy settings
Windows software updates for Watson errors

You can find out more and can downloads updates for XP, Vista SP1 and Windows 2008 from http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=940157

CSI: Photosynth

2008-05-06T13:50:00.002+01:00

I noticed a link here showing off photosynth in the middle of an investigation. Looks as though it was used as is - cool.

Ian Moulster talked about it as well here.

Media Center Presentation In Cambridge

2008-03-28T17:12:00.002Z

Been a while since I updated this Blog, been busy with work stuff. I did manage to get to present a Media center session at NxtGen in Cambridge on the 25th though. It seemed to go well, with questions galore and the usual vast quantity of pizza.

I was asked for a copy of the slides. They are attached here..

VMC.pptx

DD6 Open for session voting

2007-10-14T13:28:00.000+01:00

If any of you have been to a DDD event before, you will know what this is about. If not, then check out http://www.developerday.co.uk.

Basically its one of the best free events around. Theres no Microsoft speakers, all of the presentations are done by people who are using the technology they talk about for real. One of its major benefits is that the content of the event is, as yet unknown. A whole load of presentations are listed on the web site for you to vote for, and the sessions that are voted for most will be the ones presented.

You cant register to attend yet, but you can vote for your favorite sessions, or off to do a short 'Grok' talk during lunchtime.

Hope to see you there...

NXTGENUG OPEN A NEW REGION IN SOUTHAMPTON!

2007-09-21T20:56:00.001+01:00

Then there were 5!

Two months, two new regions, first Cambridge now Southampton. Yes, the Next Generation User Group (NxtGenUG) is expanding (again) and this time they're heading South. The latest and warmest region of NxtGenUG is Southampton. The region is being organised and run by John McLoughlin and Rick Allen two local guys who have sourced a venue, projector, screen, pizza, swag and speakers all on their ownsome - all that a User Group needs or could ask for!
As ever when a new NxtGenUG region opens they insist on having a 'Launch' extravaganza, and this one is no different! The event will be held on 18th October 2007 at St Andrew's Hall, Southampton. The main speaker for the evening is top UK Community speaker Guy Smith-Ferrier speaking on Astoria and there will be a SQL Nugget from Dave 'Readyboost' McMahon. Pizza and Swag will be present also in abundance. All the details of the meeting are at http://www.nxtgenug.net/ViewEvent.aspx?EventID=85, and you can register for the event as always through the NxtGenUG website. Don't miss out on this event which kicks off at 6.30pm and finishes at 9.00pm, as there is only ONE launch meeting after all.
NxtGenUG are a User Group focused on current and future technologies and provide monthly meetings in Birmingham, Cambridge, Coventry, Oxford and Southampton. They love technology, chatting, pizza, swag, Halo 3 (well Richie Costall does) and having a laugh. If you're in one area, get along to one of their meetings and get involved in the UK Community, its well worth it socially and professionally!

VBUG October Conference Announced

2007-09-18T13:56:00.000+01:00

This year, and under new leadership, VBUG are proud to announce that their annual conference will be on the 17th and 18th October 2007 at Microsoft in Reading.

More details can be found here: http://www.vbug.net/Conference/2007/default.aspx

If you are a vbug member get yourself down there.