Microsoft's Expression Design Event @ Chennai India

Well i got to attended the recently held Microsoft's Unique Design Event (Expression) in Chennai at "Dublin, ITC Hotel Park Sheraton & Towers".

Supreet Singh, User Experience Evangelist, and Pandurang Nayak, Technical Evangelist , did manage to impress the audience who had turned out in pretty large numbers.

What i was most impressed with was the sample solutions they showcased especially the travel website. You can check that out in http://www.silverlight.com/.

What i was not impressed by was by the claim that this tool can be used by designers who don't know any coding. The target audience should have been Usability Sales professionals, Business Analysts, Competency Leads, and RIA/usability analysts who need to come up with quick walk through for their clients.

One the whole Microsoft Expression tools shown did promise a lot but the real question was can it generate requirements from the client?

With its immediate competitor Adobe already way ahead and still going strong in this race track we need to see if this rookie can catch up.

Digital Bucket - online file folder

Came across this interesting and elegant site for online file storing and sharing.

http://www.digitalbucket.net/

I like the simplicity of the functionalities in the site - where they have maintained our age old windows explorer feel in a web based utility.

No software is required to install.
Fully drag and drop capability between files and folders.
Copy, Cut, Move, Delete, Rename and zip files or folders.
Folder publishing using direct links or RSS feeds.
Sharing with digitalbucket.net users with permission assignment.
Photo Album and Photo editing capabilities.
Word, excel online editing and PowerPoint presentation viewing.
Online music and video players.

1GB space is there for free. I tried it and i liked it. :D

Copyright your content! Numly

Yes you have read it correctly. We can copyright our content on teh web now, using Web 2.0 technology provided by "http://www.numly.com"

Now the advantages of doing this is that one can track who is viewing the content and when it is views, ratings can be monitored and to top it off no matter where the content is published it can be consolidated.

Final verdict is this is a must watch out Web 2.0 feature for all you bloggers/content writers out there in the Cyberspace :D

RIA job trends and salaries

Everyone is talking about how RIA is growing, next in thing, etc.... but here is actual facts which support these enthusiastic statements. The growth of Flex jobs and the salaries are shown here. One can also search for other RIA technologies to understand the job trend.

http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=%22adobe+flex%22 - (Adobe Flex Job Trends)

http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=%22AJAX%22&l= ("AJAX" Job Trends)

http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=Nexaweb&l= (Nexaweb Job Trends)

http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=Java+FX&l= (Java FX Job Trends)

http://www.indeed.com/

Flex based virtual desktop

For those who assume FLEX is only for playing around with page data and UI elements. Here comes a pleasant surprise.

http://www.thereplicants.net/flex/test/Dashboard.html

Imagine a 4 sided desktop which can be personalized. Here one can drag and drop availabe tools on to teh desk top and also rotate between the desktops using the following key comobo

Shift+Esc+mouse click(right or left) to rotate the desktops. This gives a 3D cube effect.

Powerpoint as an effective RIA storyboarding tool

I agree it sounds little unbelievable that our good old PowerPoint can be used as an effective RIA storyboarding tool.

But believe me it is - i use it almost daily to showcase various RIA features like Auto suggest, text pop ups, sliders, etc... - i primarily use animation feature in PPT and have also created one "RIA_Story_suite" where the components are created and i can just drag and drop them into the new story board i am creating.

There is one more good article on the same topic in boxes and arrows by Maureen Kelly - "

Interactive Prototypes with PowerPoint"

http://findin.gs/davids/?p=202

Silverlight VS Flex

I came across this simple but pretty good comparison between Flex and Silver Light.
Do check it out

http://blogs.bluemango.in/index.php/2007/08/02/silverlight-vs-flex/

P.S do read the comment below the comparison - that too is informative

Data Visualization

For anyone intrested in data visualization, especially with wanting to create some mashups using RIA technologies and tonnes of data. Then this site is a must read.

This is the single largest source of really appealing information i have come across on Data Visualization.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/02/data-visualization-modern-approaches/

Geni - Online Family Tree

One of the most easiest and cool sites i have come across for creating a family tree. Its pretty simple, just keep adding ur siblings /spouse / kids information and it will automatically relate you to that person.

Here you can invite anyone or all in ur tree to update their links so that your treee gets to grow real big.

There are lots of features and information one can use or just stick to the basic feature of the site.

http://www.geni.com/

INM eLibrary

A good structured way of showcasing and retrieving documents. Here one can see the usefullness of Flex as well as Google book search (image thumbnail) kind of mashup.

Its pretty simple to use and can be a good demo of Flex documentation and retreval capabilities

Tag graph

A simple but intresting way to showcase the power of tags. I would quote this site as an good example of IA and RIA mashup.

http://taggraph.com/

Tags:

Adobe Apollo Application Gallery

Quite a few good applications created using Adobe Apollo can be found here.

http://www.apollohunter.com/index.php

You would need to install Apollo runtime to view/run these applications. Also beware most of them are not verfied and have full access to your system once installed

Flex, Apollo, JavaFX and Silverlight Comaprison

I came across this good comparision between top RIA technologites at " Tech Team Lead News" blog site. Would strongly recomend this to all who want a high level overview of the technologies mentioned.

http://ttlnews.blogspot.com/2007/05/test_22.html

Adobe Kuler

Adobe Kuler

Amazing site for creating ones own color scheme. It is a great showcase as a Flash and RIA tool.

A must for all in the creative field

http://kuler.adobe.com/