I was just thinking the other day that I have some decent subscriber numbers here, but the same volume isn’t matched on my Twitter account.  For those who don’t know about Twitter, it’s a great short message service that kind of works like a global messaging system.  The best description I’ve heard has been:

Twitter is like an ongoing conversation at a party.  Come in and listen/participate whenever you want with whomever you want.  Leave at your leisure.  Come back often if you’d like.

I use Twitter to communicate along with friends, family and mostly developers across the world.  Rather than blog every little cool thing I find interesting in Silverlight, for example, I often send out links to very innovative and helpful information via Twitter.  Sometimes when something isn’t long enough for a blog post in my mental benchmark, it ends up going out through Twitter.  I’ve given software and passes to conferences away on Twitter as well.

Sure, all these social networking things can get overwhelming, but I’ve found Twitter to be the most useful of them all for me on various levels.  So if you aren’t on Twitter, consider it.  It is extremely helpful when actually attending conferences (usually where you’ll see the most activity) in keeping up to where/what the happenings are.  That being said, I’ll be pointing to a lot of resources during these next weeks while at MIX09 and DevConnections Orlando.

If you are on Twitter, I’d love for you to follow me for these updates.  If you aren’t, then sign up and follow me and Silverlight updates on Twitter.

Okay, about a month ago I was shown this demonstration by my new favorite friend Ward Bell of IdeaBlade.  Why is he my new favorite friend?  Well besides being a great guy, wait till you see what he has to show you.  I briefly alluded to my excitement via Twitter as a teaser. 

I previously mentioned that we saw some sneak peeks of Silverlight 3 added features for line-of-business application development with Brad Abrams.  Today, check out what Ward has to show you:

I am really, really excited about this platform that Ward showed me and I think that you will be as well.  Watch the video and show how easy it is to use their framework to enable rapid business application development with data.  Visit their DevForce for Silverlight page for information and to sign up for the March 2009 Release Candidate.  It’s chalk full of great features including client-side data caching binding to anonymous types and easy validation customization.

Ward will be at MIX09 and you must grab him for some personal demonstration.  Hopefully we can convince him to grab some common area and chat with a group of people.  He’ll gladly answer all your questions and even accept your jabs if you have them.  He’s just returned from the Alt.NET conference in Seattle as well and hopefully can share some thoughts around that with regard to Silverlight and this framework.

Honestly, check this out.  What do you think?  Sign up for the RC.

Want some sneak peeks at Silverlight enhancements for line-of-business applications?  Check out the video with Robert Hess and Brad Abrams where Brad shows some some sneak preview of some feature enhancements.

If you want to download the episode above, visit the Channel 9 page here.  Be sure to stay tuned for MIX09 for more announcements and updates!

Did you know that there are some whitepapers on Silverlight development?  Just recently released is one on security in Silverlight development and deployment.  You can view some others (some older, but there are still some gems):

• Security Guidance for Silverlight Applications
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Silverlight Applications
• Silverlight and Web Analytics
• Content Protection
• Silverlight Migration Guide – Upgrading Online Media

These can all be found on the Silverlight community site in the whitepapers section.  We’ll be adding more soon, hmmm, say around March perhaps?

The other day I was given a peek at a company who implemented a full-frame Silverlight application that when I saw it it was one of those “wow” moments.  A lot of the public-facing Silverlight examples are very different from one another and sometimes you see some that are full Silverlight applications that really give you a glimpse of how people are thinking about using the platform and how creative you can get.  Colaab is one such example that I saw at PDC last year (check it out if you haven’t).

Another example is a recent one called SnapFlow.  SnapFlow itself is a tool to really make creating workflows simpler to the end user.  The way they have designed their product makes it easy to understand how to create a decision-driven workflow that can be exposed to your users (customers, employees, etc.).  Essentially they separate the workflow into Stages, Actions and Data – all integrated into a user interface that if you are an Office user, you would have no problem understanding.  The best part is…the entire user interface is Silverlight.  Take a look at the screen below:

All of that design surface is Silverlight with full drag around behavior, connecting stages together in a visual, intuitive manner.  The application is very responsive and incorporates a lot of features.  I highly recommend you view the simple walk through video below for a view into all of the features…everything you see is Silverlight:

What is cool in one of the features is that once you, the creator of the workflow, are complete, you can then deploy that workflow into your web site or other portal (the demonstration shows using Sharepoint for example).  So you could develop a workflow for gathering some data from your web site, and embed the generated Silverlight application on your site with absolutely no coding required on your part.  Your employees will be able to act upon that workflow given the permissions assigned to them which then triggers the next part of the workflow (duh, it’s a workflow!) based on the action chosen.

It’s a convenient use of workflow, both simple and complex.  I am really impressed with the use of Silvelright and how responsive and fluid the user experience is.  I have walked through the application a few times and send my beta feedback on some things that I’ve seen from a general usability standpoint and the company was responsive.

The team at SnapFlow also put up a blog, where one of their first posts is: Why Silverlight?  It is an interesting read from a customer standpoint demonstrating some of the pros/cons in their decision and use.

SnapFlow is in beta right now and you really can’t appreciate it just looking at a screen shot.  Sign up for the beta and try it out yourself to see how they’ve used Silverlight to implement these types of usability features.  It uses a lot: controls, user interaction (drag/drop), popup modals, data input/validation, connecting objects, etc. – it’s a great example.  Sign up for the beta to play around with it.