Two new resources came to my attention recently that could be helpful resources for Flash developers wanting to learn Silverlight.  The first has been out there for a bit actually, but the other is new.  Let’s start with the new one, Project Rosetta (video).  As Adam Kinney said this week while in meetings in Redmond, “because we need another web site.”

Project Rosetta describes itself as:

Project Rosetta is a site dedicated to helping designers and developers build applications in Silverlight while taking advantage of skills they already know.

There are two articles up there now, The New Iteration and From Flash to Silverlight.  The newest article involves a Flash maestro, Rick Barazza.  The articles aren’t blog posts, but rather more in-depth discussions of various aspects of design/development where your skills can be re-used while doing development for Silverlight.

The second resource is a blog called Shine Draw from Terence Tsang and describes itself as Your Flash and Silverlight Repository.  Terence has 6 years of Flash experience, but even concedes he is not as much of an expert as he aspires to be.  This site is great in that he combines the knowledge of Flash with the concepts of image and animation to see how things are done in each respective technology.  Terence starts with a concept/question to himself (i.e., 3D image navigation) and then goes about creating that sample in both Flash and Silverlight…with the goal of an same experience in each technology.  He provides code for both (Flash 9/AS3 and Silverlight 2/C#) as well as documents the time it took to do each example.  It’s really an intriguing read and some helpful nuggets of code as well.  Oh yeah, and he takes requests.

I hope you find these useful, or at least interesting…I certainly have.

Earlier this year I wrote my thoughts on the current mobile scene and what troubles certain players more than others.  I made the assertion that Android will face the same troubles that Windows Mobile is challenged with.  That being that Google/Android are providing a platform and not a physical device.  I think it would be hard to argue that owning the complete platform and hardware is not a good idea.  Apple’s complete control of every aspect of the channel provides them with the ability to deliver in a somewhat more reliable fashion (except for the fact that Contacts suck and their implementation of ‘enterprise’ features is questionable).

So why another post on the failure of Android?  Take a look:

(source: CrunchGear)

What you can’t really see in the photograph is the proposed angle of the button controls (they angle upward in other design drawings/renderings), making it look like a more old-school handset more than a revolutionary device.

And therein lies the struggle for Android: they aren’t making the device.  I’ve seen the demos of Android and have already said they are impressive.  The fact that all of that is made available via open source is great and exciting.  But for consumers, useless unless some great packaging comes with it.  Remember the old adage of lipstick on a pig?  When I look at the above T-Mobile picture device running Android, that’s what I think about.  There isn’t anything innovative in the design and regardless of innovation it doesn’t even match some of the sleekness of current designs.  In the consumer market, design matters over features. 

I will say that the “HTC Dream” has other shots/drawings around that look a lot different than the above picture, so I could be eating my words.  But right now it looks like a Nintendo Wii accessory.  And in some angles it looks like an iPod sized thing with an FM transmitter adapter on the bottom…just not polished.

I foresee a bunch of Silicon Valley types walking around with this device, but my wife won’t be carrying it because it looks too Star Trek-ish.

Better view of the weird angle bottom in this video ("is that Android in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"):

I first saw the accelerators (the artists formerly known as activities) during The Code Trip, when Woody created an IE8 activity for Wikipedia.  It was a convenient tool to have in your right-click toolbox on IE and I loved it (and still do).

Well, now that IE8 Beta 2 is out, I decided (well, my selfishness decided) that I should create an activity accelerator for something that I use often so I introduce you to: IE8 Accelerator for TinyURL.  So with a little XML, it was done.  Seriously, like < 5 minutes.  I ran into one problem with URL encoding, but Kevin at TinyURL fixed his end to handle the encoded URL information sent to his service. 

Kevin rocks.  Seriously.  We’re still trying to figure out why his icon dosen’t display in the context menu, but he’s been super responsive and willing to try different random things on his end to help.  Thanks Kevin.

Basically you can select (highlight) text that is a URL and right-click (or choose the accelerator icon in IE8) then choose the “Shrink URL” option (I’m taking votes if this should be “TinyURL-ify” instead).  This will take your selection (or selected hyperlink) and send it to TinyURL.  A simple, but hopefully useful accelerator for you to use.  Here’s a little video demonstration:

Oh, and I also modified Woody’s Wikipedia one to meet the new specifications for the accelerator manfiest, so here’s that one as well!  To install them, just click on these links:

• Install TinyURL Accelerator
• Install Wikipedia Accelerator

Enjoy.

A new (and great) idea has been making its way across the country.  It’s called Startup Weekend.  What is it?  From their site:

Have you ever wondered what a group of highly talented and motivated people could accomplish in a weekend? Could they start a company from concept to completion?

Startup Weekend answers that question and more. A unique three-day experience, Startup Weekend brings the best and brightest people together in a local office space to select the concept, break into teams, and develop the product, marketing and revenue model. 

Occurring in cities across the world, Startup Weekend is the new way to allow your local entrepreneurial community to come together and incubate a company from concept to completion in just 54 hours. – Source: StartupWeekend.com

Still don’t understand?  Get a bunch of smart people with entrepreneurial spirits, ideas from their brains and those provided by community members, put them in teams, and make the ideas come to life.  Phoenix was recently selected as one of the cities to host one of these weekends.  This isn’t a user group.  So if you think you can show up and sit in the back of the room, my guess is you can’t.  Roll up your sleeves and get ready to collaborate.

You literally take an idea, bring it to a vision, and in some cases get to an implemented 1st cut of a product.  Your team builds a company in a weekend.

Several local sponsors in Phoenix (and other cities where these are happening) have come together to provide the facilities, food, and other forms of sponsorship so the weekend can be successful.  Want more information?  Here’s some links for you:

• Startup Weekend main site
• Phoenix Startup Weekend
• Phoenix Idea Gathering
• Phoenix Planning Wiki

Still need some convincing?  Local entrepreneur Sean Tierney wrote some of his thoughts when he went to a Startup Weekend in San Francisco:

Let me just say that in every respect this was an amazing event. It condensed a year long product dev and launch cycle into just 2.5 days and it began on a Friday night with a room full of 132 complete strangers. The fact they were able to keep the wheels on the bus and deliver a working alpha by midnight on Sunday was an impressive feat in itself, but what was even more impressive was to see how leaders emerged and groups solved problems."

I’m looking forward to seeing how this event evolves and being a part of it.  It isn’t a free event (but isn’t expensive), but hopefully that will give you more incentive to be serious about it.  It will be a great event for learning, leading, networking and being creative.

Had enough media players, games, and animated shapes with Silverlight?  How about integrating into some line of business applications?  Microsoft produces an application called Microsoft CRM, now in it’s 4th release (those closer to the CRM information can correct me if I’m wrong…I’m actually not too familiar with the roadmap/releases of CRM).  What is CRM?  What you’d expect, a customer relationship management system…define your use of those systems as you wish.  There are many CRM systems out there, but what struck me as interesting about MS CRM is based on a demonstration I saw about a year ago when v4 wasn’t yet released.

The presentation was from David Yack, a Microsoft MVP and Regional Director, during a meeting in the unbelievably gorgeous mountains of Aspen, Colorado.  David is a smart dude, but among his technical prowess I believe CRM sits pretty high up in his knowledge.  He’s built a company around CRM consulting and such and I’ve not come across people in my paths that have spoke with the type of authority that David does with regard to MS CRM.  In this meeting David actually didn’t focus on CRM as a product, but as a platform.  The way it is structured (you really have to experience it and I’m not going to do it justice by trying to describe it here) enables it as a developer platform, providing flexible entity models on the back end with great end-user customization on the front-end (read: no coding to change data models and interaction with certain data).  In his hour discussion I came to appreciate his knowledge even more about presenting CRM as a .NET developer platform above the product features it provides.

A few months later at MIX08, David sat me down and showed me some stuff he was tinkering around with regarding Silverlight 2.  This was < 1 day after Silverlight 2 Beta 1 was released at MIX.  Sitting on some bean bags in the open space area, he had created a Silverlight interface to CRM data.  Turns out, CRM provides a pretty extensive service layer for developers.  Of course he did hit some snags along the way given that the CRM services implement some features not supported by Silveright 2.  Have no fear though, it still is possible!  How?  Well, David’s done a lot of the work for anyone wanting to access CRM services using Silverlight in his book CRM as a Rapid Development Platform.  In his book (chapter 7 specifically) he talks about building different user experiences for CRM, one of which is Silverlight.  The companion source code for the book provides about a 20K library to access the CRM service features from Silverlight, taking the hard work away from you and providing you with the already-implemented work-arounds to access the services. 

If you are involved in customizing or even understanding Microsoft CRM as a developer, this is a must-have resource.  I was fortunate to have been provided a code that I could share with you here to get you $10 off the current price for the first 20 readers here to buy the book.  Does this sound like a commercial?  Well, sorry if it does, but I know David, I’ve read portions of the book (as I mentioned I don’t work in the CRM world, so some of it doesn’t make sense to me as the API isn’t something I work with daily), and I’ve seen him speak about the developer platform capabilities.  This is a must-have resource for CRM developers.  So go to www.thecrmbook.com and use code “timheuerblog” for the deal.  Thanks to them for hooking me up with the code.

Related material:

• The Dynamics Duo Talk about CRM and Silverlight