Awesome Interview with Scott Guthrie by Tim Anderson

Tim Anderson has just posted an awesome interview with Scott Guthrie, where they talked about many cool geek stuff like LINQ, ASP.NET, Silverlight, and WPF.

I finally understand why they’re going crazy about LINQ, that allows the use dynamic SQL to perform CRUD operations on other databases like MySQL and SQLite, that’s the next best thing to seeing the functionality of stored procedures in free databases!

Tim was great in pointing out certain issues that many have always wondered about Microsoft’s vision of Silverlight, and based on what Scott says, it could be fair to say that Microsoft is definitely sticking by their word in enabling the delivery of Silverlight across different platforms and browsers.

There was also comparison of Silverlight between different technologies like WPF, Google Gears, Adobe AIR, and of course, Flash and Flex, where some very very good points were pointed out, like whether or not XBAPs are still viable now that Silverlight is out in the streets.

Especially loved this part:

“I’ve seen comments from Mac users that have used the Silverlight 1.0 release, say for the Halo 3 streaming video, to the effect that “I didn’t think video on the web worked this well, and I’m pretty shocked that when I right-clicked on the control it says Microsoft.”

This is the link to the Halo 3 trailer powered by Silverlight, (the original version is still Flash though) I’ve never seen Silverlight work on Macs, could anyone justify that statement?

AIR and WPF

Well, even with the hype surrounding Silverlight and WPF nowadays, this doesn’t mean it will be edging Adobe out of the graphics and animations market anytime soon, because when it comes down go graphics and animation, Adobe is at the top, they have the best graphics design tools (Photoshop), and have the widest used animation plug-in, Flash, a solid programming model in Flex, and now, AIR which stands for the Adobe Integrated Runtime, to allow web designers and developers that are used to their tools to be able to create desktop applications with the stuff they’re used to, e.g: HTML, CSS, Javascript, Flash, and Flex.

I belive most of you know what WPF is already, but for those of you who don’t know, WPF stands for the Windows Presentation Foundation, and its the graphical platform of .NET 3.0, one of its greatest strengths is that it facilitates the collaboration between developer and designer, allowing seamless integration of coding and design. The GUI is declared using XAML (pronounced as ‘Zammel’), which is a markup language just like XML, and its used to define the whole interface, animaitons, 3D objects, its the presentation layer, which is separated from the code-behind, which could be done using C# or VB.NET

After my “brief” introduction I believe you should have now have a clearer idea on what both technologies are (that is, if you don’t know it already ).

Pownce, send stuff to your friends

 

 

Well, i’ve just found out about this cool new site from TechCruch, Pownce, which allows the sharing of stuff like messages, files, links, and events amongst people online, pretty similar to twitter (or more like a direct competitor). Some further description of what you can do with Pownce:

You might send an event out to a dozen of your friends letting them know you’re hosting a party this Friday. They could easily get the event details you entered, respond with questions or comments and then quickly rsvp.

Say you had a great photo you wanted to share with all of your friends. Just add the file and all of your friends will get it right away. They’ll be able to reply and tell you if it’s cool. You could even post songs you recorded in your home studio to share with your friends.

(Taken from Pownce.com)

It’s currently in closed alpha, so you would have to enter your email at Pownce.com and wait for the next round of invites if you’re interested to join alpha testing.

There are not two, but three things that interest me the most about Pownce, which are…

Apollo? Nope, it’s now the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR)

 

Apollo anyone? It’s not at all related to Apollo 13, the unsuccessful lunar-landing mission, but in fact, Apollo is the code name of Adobe’s new technology, which has been just renamed as the Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR).

So, just what is AIR? It’s not air (with oxygen and carbon dioxide , etc), and it’s not air (means water in malay, it’s not air, and not AIR either!). It’s cool seeing them actually coming up with cool names to represent their technologies, using just a single word, cool! Oh and I haven’t answer my question, let’s go back to what AIR is:

 

“Adobe® AIR™, formerly code-named Apollo, is a cross-operating system runtime that allows developers to use their existing web development skills to build and deploy rich Internet applications to the desktop.”

(Logo and quote taken from the Adobe’s AIR website)