Welcome to blogs.conchango.com

In the wake of all the glorious Silverlight announcements at MIX09, we’ve lined up a couple of sessions around the new features to be found in Expression Blend 3 and Silverlight 3. Microsoft are kindly providing the facilities of Cardinal Place (nr Victoria) so that we can accommodate a larger audience, and EMC Conchango will be providing the refreshments.

So, the details are:

By the way, Michelle and I have created a group on Facebook for the Silverlight UK User Group so that we can all keep in touch with other, and she also created an event the next meeting too.

AGENDA

Registration @18:00

Welcome/Kick off @ 18:30

“Expression Blend with Tricky”
with Tricky from TrickyBusiness

“We want to create something that the customer loves , enjoys and becomes an ambassador for” – there may be a thousand ways to do that and in this session you’ll hear from Tricky, Creative Director at TrickyBusiness about some of the ways that they go about designing unique experiences. We’ll include demos of real projects and go on to describe the functionality in the next version of Microsoft’s Expression tools to support it.

Learning opportunities:

• Creative approach
• Insight into Expression Blend 3 and SketchFlow

Breakout for refreshments

Silverlight 3 and Expression Blend 3: what’s new for designers and developers
with Paolo from Microsoft

In this session we will see what new features are coming in Silverlight 3 and Expression Blend 3 to help create great user experiences, from the initial concept to production. We will take a look and dive into some of the new experience oriented features like SketchFlow, behaviours, sample data, pixel shaders, perspective 3D, animation enhancements, bitmap APIs and improvements to the media stack and the Silverlight 3 out-of-browser model.

End.

Please register and I hope to see you there!

mark.

Want to join the discussion?
The event is geared to please/interest/inform both developers and designers alike, so if you are interested in coming along then please contact either myself or Michelle Flynn (here) and we will be glad to take your details.

Want to present or showcase?
We are always on the lookout for presenters for future sessions - whether it be a high or low level coding walk through, a workflow perspective or showcase demo. If you think that you have a topic/presentation that ought to be shared with the community then please contact me (here) and I'll see if I can get you scheduled in!

Facebook
In addition to emailing us directly there is also a Facebook group for the "Silverlight UK User Group" group that we set up. Check for updates there too!

I recently cleaned out my laptop and realised that I did not backup my Visual Studio settings or any of the other tweaks or enhancements that I’ve made over the years. Most infuriatingly my Intellisense for NHibernate mapping files disappeared, so to put them back in place:

If you haven’t got the latest version of NHibernate, you can get hold of v2.0.1GA here. Be sure to get the source archive because this contains the schema files  which can be found in the src/NHibernate folder.

Find the 3 files:

1. nhibernate-configuration.xsd
2. nhibernate-generic.xsd
3. nhibernate-mapping.xsd

Copy them to Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Xml\Schemas  - there should be a lot of existing xsd files in there already.
Note: if you run a 64bit Windows OS, you’ll find that %ProgramFiles% will point to the wrong folder… Visual Studio remains 32bit.

Now the important bit….

Rename the above 3 files by adding the suffix “-2.2” – I guess that the standard build never renamed the files from 1.2, but Visual Studio / Intellisense needs this to map the namespaces. Thus:

1. nhibernate-configuration-2.2.xsd
2. nhibernate-generic-2.2.xsd
3. nhibernate-mapping-2.2.xsd

If you haven’t got Visual Studio open already, then open it up and play…. otherwise you might just have to close and reopen the mapping files.

I've been following Photosynth for a while now (amazingly nearly 2 years!), since seeing some early demos of Piazza San Marco in Venice to the announcement that Microsoft finally unleashed Photosynth upon the web (see article). At the last Silverlight User Group meeting, we had a talk from John Penrose about Graphico's efforts of synthing the London Eye; and this, coupled with my passion for photography and a upcoming trip to Hong Kong made me think of exploring the latest version of Photosynth (rather than the tech previews).

Photosynth provides the avid photographer with the opportunity to present photos as a relational composition -the end result is a 3D looking presentation of the images in the Photosynth composition, however since the images are actually the presented in their 2D slices, I like to think that its rather more 2½D!

It is presented as a Silverlight application that leverages DeepZoom to keep the image quality respectable to the area being actually viewed (allowing you to get 1:1 to large resolution images without the hefty download).

Photosynth looks like this below... (I did NOT prepare this one):

Maybe this is a good time to point out a rather fascinating feature - point clouds. These is the mesh to which Photosynth determines where corresponding points in the composition overlap. You can see the point cloud by pressing "P" and the results can be stunning... the more overlapping points there are in a composition the more spectacular is the resulting 3D model. You can see the corresponding point cloud for the synth above, in the picture below:

That is enough of an intro to Photosynth, what I really wanted to share was the results of a bit of experimenting with Photosynth. I just recently returned from vacation in Hong Kong - its an absolute joy taking photos there especially with the diverse array of subject matter, from culture/traditions, architecture/landscapes, to everyday people and family. I had planned to visit the Sha Tin Racecourse (one of the two horse racing venues in Hong Kong) and thought that this would be an interesting panorama to synth.

Normally, when I've taken panoramas I've had to resort to taking a series of panning photos and then stitching them together into a larger image. I'm sure that you know the sort of picture that you end up with... it kind of looks like the to images below: 

Urrghh.... Although this is my normal method of stitching panned panoramas, I loathe those horrible black background fills where the lens distorts, and those "seams" where the stitching software tries to overlap the images. There are a number of tolerance settings that can be tweaked, but it takes time to get a decent seamless image that one can be happy with.

Now, I shoot with my DSLR which results in 3888x2592 sized images (~2MB each) - and to be honest is a bit big for posting on your average web site (of course Flicker and suchlike can help you out). Let me bring to your attention, that processing a collection of these images into a panorama is usually results in a grotesquely large file for the web... the two stitches above are reduced to 9% - yes! 9%! - since the full stitches are 11469x2729 (6MB) and 7572x2708 (3.2MB).

Roll in Photosynth...

With my Windows Live account in hand, creating a Photosynth space turned out to be really easy. It will download a tool to your computer to facilitate the processing and publishing of your synth. It's all very straightforward and there is plenty of help available.

I had taken about 200+ images throughout the day at the Sha Tin Racecourse, but for the purpose of these exercises I had selected about 50 images and 4 panoramic stitches. Many of these photos were actually from the same vantage point, just generally panning and scanning the surrounding area as I normally do - I also selected a few images from my wanderings about the racecourse too. Let me state here that, normally I do a fair amount of post processing to my photos and these have not been post processed otherwise I would be posting article weeks later!

Resisting a big bang approach, I selected 24 initial images that looked both interesting and what I "expected" to be reasonably suitable for my first synth. Wow, without even trying I managed to hit a 96% synth rate (which means that the Photosynth tool was able to match the majority of my images to the generated point cloud). The "unsynthed" 4% would site in their own point clouds if they could be grouped further. I don't need to list the images themselves, the synth itself can show you by pressing the "@" key (UK keyboard, since the US keyboard has "~" instead) and then you can DeepZoom from a neatly rendered high level view into the detailed image I imported.

After playing about with the synth, exploring the different angles/depths and getting a general feel for the navigation, I thought that maybe there was a better way of controlling the composition of the synth. I picked a even smaller control set of 14 related images and just added them in filename order (just a simple CTRL-A and 'OK') and was surprised that the synth rate had dropped to 58%. I imagine that Photosynth works best with either lots of images or at least those with good overlap - when I shoot panoramic compositions I do tend to reduce the overlapping margins so that I don't end up with many "stitch seams" - so I'll have to change my behaviour for future synthing. Using the same 14 images as before, but importing them in a random order, resulted in a drop in the synth rate which would suggest that when Photosynth is processing files for the cloud map, it does it in a sequential order expecting there to be a reasonable level of similarity between successive images. The previous synth worked pretty well since there were groups of related images already in sequence that I took the pictures.

Forming a notion of what makes the Photosynth tool construct the point cloud, I used the 14 images again but added them in my own "visual order", the result this time was a more successful 65% synth rate giving some proof to my observations that similar images should be added sequentially. Determined by getting an even higher synth rate out of the 14 images, I turned my attention to overlap. If Photosynth relies on a decent amount of overlap, then maybe, if I add in my whopping 13121x2660, 7.3MB panoramic stitch image which features at least 5 of the individual images, then this might get my synth rate up. This worked a treat and achieved a 100% synth rate, so you are able to navigate to all pictures within the synth. Using the stitched panorama comes at a disadvantage though because overall experience of the synth has been greatly reduced, since Photosynth displays the panoramic stitch in the initial view and makes it difficult/awkward to get round it. You win some and you lose some!

My endeavours have been summarised in the following table... including links to all the synths created.

Photosynth Name	Images	Synth Result	Conditions
Blog Test #1	24	96%	Initial test of compiling a synth without any panoramic stitch images.
Blog Test #2	14	58%	Reduced set of photos from Blog Test #1, added in filename sequence.
Blog Test #3	14	41%	Same set as Blog Test #2 but added in a random order.
Blog Test #4	14	65%	Same set as Blog Test #2 but added in a visually optimised order.
Blog Test #5	15	100%	Same set as Blog Test #2 but added in filename sequence AND with a panoramic stitch image.
Blog Test #6	46	91%	Same set as Blog Test #2 with additional photos - all added in filename order.
Sha Tin Racecourse	46	98%	Same as Blog Test #6 but added in a visually optimised order.

The last tests I performed were to add more photos to my previous set of control images, resulting in a total of 46 normal images with no panoramic stitches. The results we pretty good at 91%, but armed with my new found knowledge of how to order the imported images, I created my final synth by adding them in a visually optimised order.

You can see the final fruits of my labour, below (if you look carefully you'll find the horses galloping past!):

Embedding a synth as I've done above is easy, since each synth allows you to export a unique HTML snippet so that you can embed them to your own web site:

<iframe style="border: black 4px solid;"
        src="http://photosynth.net/embed.aspx?cid=64bfdb94-35af-437b-a201-277e2dd8d9be"
        frameborder="0" width="600" height="480"></iframe>

What next....

Well, the Photosynth team have a regularly updated blog which is a veritable mine of information on how to get the most out of your synthing efforts. What I did not know was that they published a tricks and tips guide not more than 2 days ago! I wish that I had been forearmed with this guide since it would have made me slightly modify my approach to composing the pictures to make up the Photosynth. Ensuring that overlapping your images by quite a wide margin was one of their top tips that I found out the hard way, but I'm pretty glad that most of the rules are straightforward and won't make me readjust my photography technique in a major way - I can continue taking my usual photos and still get some good Photosynth opportunities at the same time.

Now go and take loads of photos and get going with Photosynth!

mark.

I have added more information to my synths... keywords, Virtual Earth map tags..
I'm sure that the Photosynth team will be expanding more "attributes" that we can hang off our synths too. :-)

Map tags are particularly cool... look for the icon which will popup a mini Virtual Earth window for you to locate where your synth related to in the world.

To find and view mapped synths, go to Virtual Earth, type in a location eg: "Sha Tin, Hong Kong SAR", and then click "Explore collections" which will change the left panel to display a variety of items such as related photos, 3D models or synths in the map area. You can filter down to just the Photosynth items by clicking the right-most filter icon (highlighted below).

mark.

A slight change on the usual proceedings, in that Microsoft kindly provided conference facilities at their swish Cardinal Place office (nr Victoria in London). Despite a clash with bonfire night and sandwiched between conferences, 60 people attended the user group night.

Last week, at the PDC, there had been a number of important announcements around Silverlight - mainly in the Tuesday keynote.

• Silverlight v2 had been officially released, just weeks before - an important milestone of achievement, especially since Silverlight was the main agent in providing live feeds and recorded sessions to those unable to attend the PDC in person.
• Silverlight Toolkit was announced by Scott Guthrie, introducing a plethora of new controls and themes that will help to speed up the development time of Silverlight applications. An example of the more complicated/comprehensive controls now available include AutoCompleteBox, TreeView, Expanders and Charting!
• Microsoft even showed a sneak peek of "Office 14 for Web" which is effectively the Office suite in a Silverlight host so that it can run on any browser! With Scott Guthrie's announcement that Visual Studio 2010 would be written in WPF, does this mean we might see Visual Studio ported into Silverlight???

At the PDC, there was a demonstration of a multi-touch, WPF application for Windows 7 on the Tuesday keynote (~85mins in). It was an application developed  for tesco.com, by Conchango with the backing of Microsoft to showcase a possible glimpse of the future where shopping is not a "chore" but an embedded part of managing our day. I would recommend that you watch the demo by Nick Lansley (Head of Technologies at tesco.com) and Paul Dawson (Conchango) because the application is innovative, fresh and shows off many of the new Windows 7 features in action. I caught up with Paul on his return and he mentioned that although only 3 weeks was spent on development, the journey through "design and concepts" took much longer.

One of the underlying trends that seems to becoming increasingly apparent is Microsoft's commitment to user experience - from providing a richer platform to host our browser applications (Silverlight), bringing "killer" applications to the web (Office 14 for Web) or enriching the operating system to make it easier to design and develop highly intuitive, discoverable and interactive applications. This had in turn driven the user group to get a bit more brand and designer orientated...

I had quite a mental issue with calling our first presenter "Tricky", but nevertheless Tricky (Creative Director of  TrickyBusiness) gave a thought provoking insight into experience design and the importance of giving experience/design concepts up-front consideration when creating software. Tricky's slick slide deck captivated the audience and contained plenty of examples of the iterative design process from projects with Audi and Alton Towers. He also set this also helped to visualise what should be the "Rules of Engagement" and important questions asked of the client when trying to plan and design their unique experience. From sketching out the initial concepts to fleshing out the designs with the Expression toolset, both designers and developers can see how to build the next set of innovative applications. <<Webcast of the session will be posted soon>>

After a break for refuelling - pizza (courtesy of Microsoft) and beer (courtesy of Conchango).....

John Penrose (Technical Director for Graphico) and Mark McDonald (Senior Developer) gave us insight to the development journey of a couple of web sites. They initially concentrated on how they went about the building the Barcardi La Fiesta site which was part of the Barcardi festival season. The event had already passed, so John and Mark took us back in time and demonstrated the site as it counted down to the event date with a promotional video and then switched to a live feed during the event. This presented a number of challenges such as keeping elements of the event secret until the last moment, security and streaming the live feed and portraying multiple camera angles.

Then, John walked us through a number of implementations of Photosynth, which is a marvelous new medium for navigating about your photo collection of a particular object/scene - it brings to life your panoramas and gives them an extra perspective. Photosynth has spent a long time in beta and was only recently released to the public in August, so John demonstrated the new synthing experience, and discussed how Graphico went about producing a set of new synths for the London Eye. Photosynth is still an emerging technology somewhat still looking for an appropriate use outside of the tourism/hobbyist/social web sites so watch this one closely...

Finally; two of my colleagues, Richard Griffin and Felix Corke, will be doing their Developer-Designer Workflow session at TechEd 2008 next week. If you are lucky enough to be in Barcelona for the conference, check out their session it generates a lot of interesting discussion!

Hope to see you at the next meeting!

mark.

Want to join the discussion?
The event is geared to please/interest/inform both developers and designers alike, so if you are interested in coming along then please contact either myself or Michelle Flynn (here) and we will be glad to take your details.

Want to present or showcase?
We are always on the lookout for presenters for future sessions - whether it be a high or low level coding walk through, a workflow perspective or showcase demo. If you think that you have a topic/presentation that ought to be shared with the community then please contact me (here) and I'll see if I can get you scheduled in!

Facebook
In addition to emailing us directly there is also a Facebook group for the "Silverlight UK User Group" group that we set up. Check for updates there too!

As expected, the conference season has managed to put a couple of spanners in the works (in terms of the previously published proceedings). So, here is the revised agenda for the next Silverlight User Group meeting, we've decided on the venue and changed a speaker.

The next user group meeting will be held on Wednesday 5th November - that hasn't changed! We have about 70 signed up so the plan is to hold the meeting at Microsoft's  office in Cardinal Place (nr Victoria). Registered attendees will be notified on Monday 3rd November (should this revert back to Conchango's  Notcutt House).

You can register here or via Michelle.

By the way, Michelle and I have created a group on Facebook for the Silverlight UK User Group so that we can all keep in touch with other, and she also created an event the next meeting too.

AGENDA

Registration @18:00

Welcome/Kick off @ 18:30

The 'Tricky' Design Experience
Tricky from TrickyBusiness
Rich internet applications have changed the way that super-brands connect with their customers. If you want to compete in this cluttered marketplace it's essential that you evolve your product or service into a unique brand, creating a circle that people want to join.

People don't buy products, they buy experiences. Get the thoughts of Tricky on 'experience design' and the methods that his team have put into practice on digital projects for Audi, Alton Towers and John L Scott. Discover why design is an essential stage in the creation of rich interfaces, and how you can shape your product so that it's right for the people who really matter, your customers!

This session covers the iterative approach that Tricky and his team use to design experiences, including: Branding, ideation, research, sketching and conceptualisation. It is a great opportunity to check-out some exciting WPF & Silverlight projects, also to understand and discuss how designers are using Microsoft's Expression tools.

An engaging session for both designers and developers alike.

Pizza and beer*.. a chance to recharge and discuss in the interlude.

Real world Silverlight & Photosynth 
John Penrose from Graphico 
John is Technical Director for Graphico, a creative digital agency based in Newbury. As the RIA trend gathers pace, he has been working with key clients and Microsoft to help develop opportunities that will make use of these new technologies.

John’s session will be focused on the practical and commercial considerations of adopting new technologies, and will be based around two real-world examples. Firstly, he will be talking about a recent Silverlight project involving live streaming, multiple partners, assistance from the Microsoft team, and a lot of rum! Secondly, he’ll speak about working with the DPE and Live Labs teams on providing launch content for Photosynth.

So what are you waiting for!
Get registered and I hope to see you there!

mark.

*dependant on venue

Want to join the discussion?
The event is geared to please/interest/inform both developers and designers alike, so if you are interested in coming along then please contact either myself or Michelle Flynn (here) and we will be glad to take your details.

Want to present or showcase?
We are always on the lookout for presenters for future sessions - whether it be a high or low level coding walk through, a workflow perspective or showcase demo. If you think that you have a topic/presentation that ought to be shared with the community then please contact me (here) and I'll see if I can get you scheduled in!

Facebook
In addition to emailing us directly there is also a Facebook group for the "Silverlight UK User Group" group that we set up. Check for updates there too!

Gosh, it seems that conference season has kicked in with the imminent arrival of the PDC2008 later this month followed by TechEd EMEA 2008 ... this means everybody is getting energised with Silverlight!

In time for the PDC2008, the product team have made "Silverlight 2 Release Candidate 0 (RC0)" available to developers to test and prepare their Silverlight 2 Beta2 applications for the final upgrade to Silverlight 2 RTW. Futher details can be found here. This release should not be used for general public release though, since there is no end-user upgrade path from Beta2 to RC0. Even if it is not part of your readiness plans, give it a go and get ready for the next wave!

The next user group meeting will be held on Wednesday 5th November - right in the middle of PDC2008 and TechEd EMEA 2008. Dependant on numbers, the event will be held either at Conchango's  Notcutt House (nr Southwark Bridge) OR at the Microsoft's  office in Cardinal Place (nr Victoria). Registered attendees will be notified on Monday 3rd November  as to the preferred location.

You can register here or via Michelle.

By the way, Michelle and I have created a group on Facebook for the Silverlight UK User Group so that we can all keep in touch with other, and she also created an event the next meeting too.

AGENDA

Registration @18:00

Welcome/Kick off @ 18:30

The 'Tricky' Design Experience
Tricky from TrickyBusiness
Rich internet applications have changed the way that super-brands connect with their customers. If you want to compete in this cluttered marketplace it's essential that you evolve your product or service into a unique brand, creating a circle that people want to join.

People don't buy products, they buy experiences. Get the thoughts of Tricky on 'experience design' and the methods that his team have put into practice on digital projects for Audi, Alton Towers and John L Scott. Discover why design is an essential stage in the creation of rich interfaces, and how you can shape your product so that it's right for the people who really matter, your customers!

This session covers the iterative approach that Tricky and his team use to design experiences, including: Branding, ideation, research, sketching and conceptualisation. It is a great opportunity to check-out some exciting WPF & Silverlight projects, also to understand and discuss how designers are using Microsoft's Expression tools.

An engaging session for both designers and developers alike.

Pizza and beer*.. a chance to recharge and discuss in the interlude.

Silverlight & Mesh
Michael McClary from Microsoft
Mesh is a new and emerging Windows Live platform for syncing files and, eventually, applications across different devices. Mesh lets you set up a virtual desktop online, and connect different computers to it. Put any file into a Mesh folder and it automatically syncs between the online desktop and every connected computer. Select a file or folder and you can easily share its contents—photos, videos, music, documents—with any friend or family member. You can also remotely control a connected computer from the Live Mesh desktop.

Michael will explore the integration between Silverlight and Mesh and open our minds to Microsoft's vision of connectivity in "the Cloud".

So what are you waiting for!
Get registered and I hope to see you there!

mark.

*dependant on venue

Want to join the discussion?
The event is geared to please/interest/inform both developers and designers alike, so if you are interested in coming along then please contact either myself or Michelle Flynn (here) and we will be glad to take your details.

Want to present or showcase?
We are always on the lookout for presenters for future sessions - whether it be a high or low level coding walk through, a workflow perspective or showcase demo. If you think that you have a topic/presentation that ought to be shared with the community then please contact me (here) and I'll see if I can get you scheduled in!

Facebook
In addition to emailing us directly there is also a Facebook group for the "Silverlight UK User Group" group that we set up. Check for updates there too!

I was trying to access my local web service this morning and was getting back the dreaded, generic "Server Application Unavailable" each time I hit the service via my code or browser.

For Example:

http://localhost/mywebservice/endpoint.svc

Resulted in:

Recorded in the eventlog:

Solution?

Try reinstalling ASP.NET (2.0.50727) to refresh the ASP.NET settings, config, metabase and security/worker accounts on the local machine:

1. Open a command prompt and....
2. Stop IIS: iisreset /stop
3. Change to the .NET Framework 2.0 root directory: C:\windows\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v2.0.50727\
4. Reinstall ASP.NET 2.0 by using the following command: aspnet_regiis -i
5. Start IIS again: iisreset /start
6. Try to access your web page again.

Note: there are many other fabulous options available to refresh your IIS settings... just give aspnet_regiis /? a run!