.NET RIA Services roadmap update

Tim Heuer, program manager for Microsoft Silverlight posted an updated roadmap for RIA Services on his blog yesterday.

The roadmap

• July 2009: Updated CTP
• PDC 2009: Beta
• First part of 2010: RTW

The July CTP version is still considered a preview, but Microsoft are thinking about removing any production (go-live) restrictions. But it will be a “use at your own risk” product, not a tupical official “Go live” support license.

Read Tim’s blogpost: .NET RIA Services roadmap update

Silverlight 3: Improved Web Service performance

One of my developers are working on a Silverlight integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM. One thing that we discoverd was really bad performance when initializing the CRM Web Service proxy in Silverlight.  We also discoverd that same code running on Silverlight 3 beta had mutch bether performance.

It seems that the Silverligth Web Service team has done some magic in the new beta.

See: Improving the performance of web services in SL3 Beta

Silverlight 3 to launch July 10.

Mary Jo at zdnet write in her blogpost that Microsoft will launch Silverlight 3 the 10. of July:

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Earlier this year, Microsoft officials said they planned to deliver the final version of Silverlight 3 before the end of 2009. Looks like they meant months before…

Microsoft is planning to launch Silverlight 3 and its Expression Studio 3 family of designer tools on July 10 in San Francisco, company officials said on May 28.

Silverlight 3 adds 3D support, GPU acceleration, H.264 video support and out-of-the-browser capabilities to Silverlight, Microsoft’s competitor to Adobe Flash. The out-of-browser support will add to Silverlight capabilities that are available currently in Adobe AIR.

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Read the entire blogpost at : http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=2912

Nice CowerFlow experience

Jose Fajardo at Cynergy has build a nice Cower Flow experience with Silverlight 3’s Projection feature. Have a look at his great blogpost.

http://www.cynergysystems.com/blogs/page/josefajardo?entry=coverflow_built_using_silverlight_3

Channel 9: Multi-touch .NET Library for Windows 7

Multi-touch is one of the exiting capabilities in Windows 7. Developers and Software venders will now be able build applications and solutions that benefit from these new capabilities and build user experiences that far exceeds that we are used to on Windows plattform. Just look at what HP has done with their HP TouchSmart computers.

Channel 9 has published a series of videos that shows how Developers can start building for Multi-touch.

Windows 7 Mutli Touch Overview

Programming Windows 7 Multi Touch – Part 1

Programming Windows 7 Multi Touch Part-2

Multitouch Library Win7

See Microsoft SecondLight in action.

If you are think Microsoft Surface is amazing. Have a look at the video below. On this video the Microsoft Research Cambridge Lab presents the what they are working on now. The SecondLight. Enjoy!

Smashing Mag: Optimizing Conversion Rates: It’s All About Usability

I just found this very interesting article about how to optimize your conversion rate, at Smashing Mag. The author claims that eCommerce usability improvements usually have a huge impact on conversion rates.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/05/15/optimizing-conversion-rates-its-all-about-usability/