Well, MIX10 is over.  It was a great time to meet a lot of people and see friends from afar.  As anyone knows, the networking is a HUGE part of being in-person at any conference…that vibe, value and friendship cannot be matched online.

But the sessions – there were a TON of them.  It is quite impossible to be in 3 places at one time.  Thankfully the MIX team record all regular sessions and make them available for viewing online or offline.  For you Silverlight developers here are my picks to ensure you watch:

• EX55: Building the eBay Simple Lister
• CL13: Overview of the Windows Phone 7 Application Platform
• EX14: Understanding the Model-View-ViewModel Pattern
• CL24: The Microsoft Silverlight Analytics Framework
• CL02: Authoring for Windows Phone, WPF and Silveright with Expression Blend
• CL10: Stepping outside the browser with Silverlight 4
• CL08: Microsoft Silverlight 4 Business Applications
• CL16: Building Windows Phone Applications with Silverlight
• CL09: Developing with WCF RIA Services Quickly and Effectively
• CL59: Unit Testing Silverlight and Windows Phone Applications
• CL51: Building an Accessible Microsoft Silverlight Experience
• CL52: Microsoft Silverlight Optimization and Extensibility with MEF
• CL60: Silverlight Performance on Windows Phone
• EX07: Principles of Microsoft Silverlight Graphics and Animation
• CL50: Search Engine Optimization with Silverlight
• CL58: Accessing Web Services in Silverlight

And there are many more…

Since OData was a big part of MIX10 this year, I thought I’d make this easier for you to get all the MIX10 Silverlight-specific videos (my pics above and all tagged with Silverlight). 

Yes, this is yet another way to get access to the MIX videos.

The site’s RSS feed will get you *all* of MIX sessions, but you may not want that.  Unfortunately they don’t expose tag-specific RSS feeds.  Fortunately though, they DO have an OData feed available for us.  I thought I’d have some fun and play around with that.

MIX10 Online Silverlight Viewer

If I were the visitmix.com team – I’m sure they love to hear that.  But look at the list above.  If you watched each one of these, you’d be clicking a lot and going from page to page.  Why not treat them like a video library?  Let me see the ‘guide’ in one place and choose which ‘channel’ I want to watch, allowing me to switch channels quickly.  This was my vision:

Since their OData feed was exposed I could create queries to get to the list of sessions, details and video URIs.  I could (and would like) to do a lot more as far as adding a filter by tags, creating a playlist and then just hitting play, etc.  But you know, I was just tinkering.

I will have to say that the OData querying got me frazzled in some places.  OData is SUPER easy for single entity stuff, but trying to understand building up a relational query got me messed up at times since ‘normal’ LINQ querying wasn’t always supported in a translation to a URI query.  Special thanks to Jonathan Carter (@lostintangent) and Chris Woodruff (@cwoodruff) for being my ears of frustration and helping me get the right queries (didn’t end up implementing them all).

The sample MIX Viewer can be seen here and supports multi-monitor full-screen pinning (requires Silverlight 4).  So you can start a video on your 2nd monitor and go to full-screen on that one while still working on the other.

Tag-specific podcast feeds for MIX10 videos

While the MIX team does have RSS feeds for the videos, they are all-inclusive.  I would really like to have tag-specific feeds…let me search on a tag, then generate a podcast feed based on the result. 

Well, I did just that.  Since they expose the feed, I could use Yahoo Pipes to do some quick manipulation in a ‘no-code’ sort of way (yes I could have used OData, etc. blah blah – look, this was no-code/tools…just a few clicks).

So I created a podcast feed for anyone who wants to use it.  Here’s the Silverlight feed links you can use to paste into your iTunes or Zune or whatever podcast software:

• WMV High Quality ‘Silverlight’ tagged sessions
• WMV standard quality ‘Silverlight’ tagged sessions
• MP4 (iPod) ‘Silverlight’ tagged sessions

If you look at the URI:

   1: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?MediaType=WMV&Tag=Silverlight&_id=2cf69ebc6e9c4f0a1ea4bc76cfd273df&_render=rss

You’ll notice that you can just substitute the format (WMV, WMVHigh, or MP4) and the tag.  This will give you your own custom feed for your topic.

Anyhow, I really enjoyed MIX and have been catching up on all the sessions I missed.  Hope this helps you get caught up as well!

If you installed the Silverlight Client for Facebook, and also upgraded to the release candidate for Silverlight 4, you may have noticed it stopped working :-).

NOTE: Applications compiled on Silverlight 4 beta will not work on machines with Silverlight RC runtime.  This is known/expected.  As with all pre-release software, this type of breaking can be expected.

We’ve recently updated the Facebook application, and you will have to re-install.  Follow these steps:

1. Uninstall the Silverlight Facebook client.  You can do this in a few ways.  First on Windows through the Add/Remove Programs or by right-clicking on the application while it is running (even though it doesn’t work) and choose ‘Remove Application’ – I recommend the Add/Remove Program control panel option.  On Mac OSX, simply move the application to the trash.
2. Ensure you have Silverlight 4 RC installed.  If you don’t the Facebook client welcome page will provide the links.  Reminder that this is still pre-release software and future uninstalls might be required.
3. Visit http://bit.ly/facebookclient and follow the instructions.

You should now have the updated Silverlight for Facebook application installed.  The team received a lot of good feedback they look at.  This build doesn’t necessarily have any of those suggestions/fixes…and is more of a compatible build for the Silverlight RC runtime.  There are a few things that we finally brought forward from the initial PDC09 demonstration.

Custom Window options are clearly visible.  You’ll notice the ‘window chrome’ (as it is referred to) is gone and the custom window is in the application:

Notice the custom maximize, minimize and close buttons:

Also notice in the lower right corner the resize adorner:

The updated application also implements the ‘mini-mode’ (from the toolbar area in the upper right) which produces a stripped down view of the main news feed:

Again this is a subtle update to keep the client working for you.  These features use the custom window options available to Silverlight 4 developers.  You can read about this updated feature here and also watch a developer video tutorial on how to implement similar functions in your application here.

Have fun on Facebook and hope this helps!

One of the announcements that happened during the MIX10 conference was the availability of the V2 of the Microsoft Translator API.  This is the engine that powers the translation behind http://www.bing.com/translate and some other Bing-related properties as well.  A lot of research has gone into the engine from Microsoft Research and others.  Language translation isn’t an easy task especially taking into consideration cultural significance of words, etc.  I have heard that the most challenging in machine translation is to Asian languages.  I will admit to not speaking any of them, so I don’t know how well we are performing here – you’ll have to let that team know if they are doing well.

After reading the announcement and working on my translate plugin for the new Seesmic Desktop Platform, I noticed that there was a Speak API.  After reading I saw this literally translates text to a WAV file for platback.  Pretty cool I thought.  I wanted to play around with this in Silverlight so created a simple application to do so:

The Speak translation isn’t available for all the Translator languages (currently 30 languages for text language translation) but does support seven (7) languages: English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Russian.  So how is Silverlight talking back to you?

The Translator API comes in 3 flavors: SOAP, HTTP and Ajax.  Now I could have used the SOAP version and used Add Service Reference but I felt for what I was doing this was overkill.  The SOAP API doesn’t return me back super-strongly typed objects, so I saw little value in doing that over the REST-based HTTP methods which I decided to use.  The code is relatively simple.  I first want to translate the text input into the selected language, then pass the translated text to the Speak API and play the results in a MediaElement.

First, we use the Translate method and a WebClient call to accomplish this:

   1: private void TranslateTextToAudio(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)

   2: {

   3:     if (Languages.SelectedIndex < 0)

   4:     {

   5:         MessageBox.Show("Please select a language first...");

   6:         return;

   7:     }

   8:     WebClient client = new WebClient();

   9:     client.OpenReadCompleted += ((s, args) =>

  10:         {

  11:             if (args.Error == null)

  12:             {

  13:                 DataContractSerializer des = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(string));

  14:                 string responseText = des.ReadObject(args.Result) as string;

  15:                 SpeakIt(responseText);

  16:             }

  17:         });

  18:     client.OpenReadAsync(new Uri(string.Format(TRANSLATE_URI, _appId, HttpUtility.UrlEncode(TextToTranslate.Text), Languages.SelectedValue.ToString(), _currentLang)));

  19: }

Notice the DataContractSerializer use here.  The HTTP API returns serialized objects, so you’ll want to use this method here to deserialize to make it easier.

After we have the translated text, we pass that to the Speak API (notice the call to SpeakIt above) which returns a Stream that is an audio/wav format.   We know that Silverlight’s MediaElement cannot directly play lossless WAV format.  But luckily there is a MediaStreamSource API that enables us to essentially write our own decoders for audio/video.  One of the Silverlight team members, Gilles, created a WAV MediaStreamSource for us to use.  After having that and not worrying about decoding, I could create a new WaveMediaStreamSource with my result Stream and set that as the Source for the MediaElement – here is the resulting SpeakIt() method (TranslatedPlayback is the name of my MediaElement in the application):

   1: private void SpeakIt(string responseText)

   2: {

   3:     WebClient client = new WebClient();

   4:     client.OpenReadCompleted += ((s, args) =>

   5:     {

   6:         if (args.Error == null)

   7:         {

   8:             WaveMediaStreamSource mss = new WaveMediaStreamSource(args.Result);

   9:             TranslatedPlayback.SetSource(mss);

  10:         }

  11:     });

  12:     client.OpenReadAsync(new Uri(string.Format(SPEAK_URI, _appId, responseText, Languages.SelectedValue)));

  13: }

That’s it!  It’s pretty cool (bonus points to you in identifying the obvious pre-filled text being used in my sample).

I’ve almost completed my Seesmic plugin and using the Translator API has made it easier.  I’ve found that a simple wrapper to the HTTP-based methods is going to make things easier for people to use, so I’ve created a Translator Client for Silverlight that I’ll be releasing once I can complete the plugin (waiting on a few things).  This will make it easier for Silverlight developers to quickly consume the API for text and Speech translation.

The code (C#) for the above sample is here: MSTranslatorSilverlightSample.zip.  You will need a Translator Application ID key to run it yourself (put it in the App.xaml resources).  If you just want to see it running really quick, you can view it here: Speak Translator for Silverlight.  You will need Silverlight 4 RC to run the sample.

NOTE: The Translator API actually doesn’t need Silverlight 4, but I just created the app using that base.

Hope this helps!

If you’ve been excited about Windows Phone 7 development and the platform being Silverlight for application development, you probably rushed and downloaded all the tools (which are free by the way).  You may have even got the samples from the SDK and noticed the Location services example…but wondered why it doesn’t work.

If you are just getting started, I created some quickstart videos to help you through some of the basics.  You can view them here.

In case you haven’t figured it out: Location services (aka, GPS) is not emulated in the developer tools CTP. 

As you might expect, this makes it difficult to play around with location-based applications.

The API in Windows Phone 7 revolves around the GeoCoordinateWatcher class.  This class is what you would initialize to start listening for events:

   1: GeoCoordinateWatcher watcher = new GeoCoordinateWatcher(GeoPositionAccuracy.Low);

   2: watcher.StatusChanged += new EventHandler<GeoPositionStatusChangedEventArgs>(watcher_StatusChanged);

   3: watcher.PositionChanged += new EventHandler<GeoPositionChangedEventArgs<GeoCoordinate>>(watcher_PositionChanged);

As you can see, this watcher class looks for Status and Position changes.  The status is about the device peripheral itself (initializing, reading, etc.).  Position is more likely what you are interested in and would give you the details of where the device is reading the current location (longitude and latitude).  In the emulator right now the status will always return Disabled.

It’s relatively simple to simulate this, and here’s a really simple mock class for doing so.  Now, note this is not a complete emulation of the Location services APIs for Windows Phone 7 SDK.  This mock is to simply simulate a coordinate location and position changing.  The GeoLocationMock class implements the IGeoPositionWatcher<GeoCordinate> interface for mocking the location service.  There is a Start, Stop, PositionChanged and StatusChanged methods and events (TryStart is implemented, but simply calls Start).  To implement the mock in your application you would instantiate watcher (using above sample) as IGeoPositionWatcher<GeoCoordinate> instead of the GeoCoordinateWatcher specifically.  Here is a sample, and then an explanation:

   1: public partial class MainPage : PhoneApplicationPage

   2: {

   3:     IGeoPositionWatcher<GeoCoordinate> watcher;

   4: }

   5:  

   6: private void StartLocationService(GeoPositionAccuracy accuracy)

   7: {

   8:     if (watcher == null)

   9:     {

  10:         GeoCoordinateEventMock[] events = new GeoCoordinateEventMock[] {

  11:             new  GeoCoordinateEventMock { Latitude=34.4, Longitude=11.2, Time=new TimeSpan(0,0,5) },

  12:             new  GeoCoordinateEventMock { Latitude=31.4, Longitude=21.2, Time=new TimeSpan(0,0,1) },

  13:             new  GeoCoordinateEventMock { Latitude=34.3, Longitude=28.2, Time=new TimeSpan(0,0,2) },

  14:             new  GeoCoordinateEventMock { Latitude=32.4, Longitude=34.2, Time=new TimeSpan(0,0,3) },

  15:             new  GeoCoordinateEventMock { Latitude=31.2, Longitude=37.2, Time=new TimeSpan(0,0,4) },

  16:             new  GeoCoordinateEventMock { Latitude=33.73, Longitude=39.2, Time=new TimeSpan(0,0,5) },

  17:             new  GeoCoordinateEventMock { Latitude=31.87, Longitude=41.2, Time=new TimeSpan(0,0,6) },

  18:             new  GeoCoordinateEventMock { Latitude=11.81, Longitude=42.2, Time=new TimeSpan(0,0,7) }

  19:         };

  20:     

  21:         watcher = new EventListGeoLocationMock(events);

  22:         watcher.StatusChanged += new EventHandler<GeoPositionStatusChangedEventArgs>(watcher_StatusChanged);

  23:         watcher.PositionChanged += new EventHandler<GeoPositionChangedEventArgs<GeoCoordinate>>(watcher_PositionChanged);

  24:     }

  25:  

  26:     watcher.Start();

  27: }

The ‘watcher’ is created using a list of geo location points in this sample above.  Now this could be some web service that does IP address reverse lookup or use hard-coded examples as well like I’ve done above.  Using this mock above and replacing it in the LocationServiceSample in the SDK, here’s what my screenshot shows:

So you can see I can start the GPS emulation and simulate subtle position changes (or drastic ones if I wanted, aka maybe a social network map application of sorts).

Hopefully this little snippet will be valuable to play around with or expand upon for your needs.  If anything, you can create some emulation of the behavior temporarily.  The mock object used in a modified LocationServiceSample project can be downloaded here: LocationServiceSampleWithMock.zip.

Hope this helps!

UPDATE: Peter Torr actually had another geo location mock in his MIX10 talk which his code is now available for download.  It is much more comprehensive emulating accuracy, etc.  The above is a simpler approach, but both will get the job done depending on what you really need/want to emulate.

So the news is out! 

Silverlight IS the platform for Windows Phone 7 Series development!

Sweet.  We also made available an update to Silverlight 4 that you might be interested in too!

You may be wondering how you get started.  If you are new to Silverlight, I recommend getting familiar with Silverlight first.  You can find all the tools you will need at the Silverlight community site.  In addition to the core tools you’ll want to get the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP.  This will add to your Visual Studio 2010 installation (or install Visual Studio Express) to enable Windows Phone and XNA Game Studio development.  Be sure to read the documentation on the release notes to understand any limitations.  A link to the tools, documentation, developer/UX guides and more can be found on the Silverlight for Windows Phone page.  The key elements you’d want to get  are:

• Windows Phone developer tools CTP (read the release notes)
• Expression Blend 4 add-on for Windows Phone (Christian Schormann’s blog)

I’ve also taken some quick time to get some quick videos up for some tips and familiarity with the tools and some initial areas you’ll want to take a look at.  Here are some starting videos for you:

• Getting started with Silverlight and Windows Phone development
• Windows Phone Application Bar
• Navigation framework for Windows Phone applications
• Custom application splash screen
• Windows Phone 7 Series Developer Training Kit

The getting started video has some quick tips and tricks about the emulator and using the keyboard input control (referred to as the ‘SIP’).  I suggest taking a look at these for some primer.  If you have questions afterwards, check out the dedicated forum for Silverlight for Windows Phone.

I’m looking forward to seeing what you’ll develop using Silverlight for Windows Phone!  Be sure also to watch for @ckindel and @wp7dev on Twitter for information about Windows Phone 7 Series development.