Virtual Earth Map Control for VS 208

Imagine, just drag-n-drop from your toolbox onto a Web form, set a few properties, without requiring a single line of JavaScript, and you have yourself Virtual Earth on your ASP.NET Web application, with full support of stuff like zooming, panning, AJAX and everything to fulfill…your “mapping” needs.

 

Introducing the Virtual Earth Map Control for Visual Studio 2008, which was unveiled at Remix Australia by Angus Logan in his Windows Live session.

For more information, check out LiveSide.net’s report on it, and the Virtual Earth site. Definitely looking forward to the release!

Tech.Ed SEA 2007

This coming September, Microsoft will be having its premier & largest annual conference in the South East Asia region, Tech.Ed SEA 2007, at 10-13 September at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Center.

Why should you attend?

Those attending would be able to learn about the new Microsoft products and technologies, not from just any instructor, but experts and specialists in the industry, some of them even from Redmond, and even some which helped built the products and technologies. Which means you can fire questions at them without thinking twice, neat! (On second thought, do think twice)

Not only will you be able to learn, you would also get to know more people in the industry, share your knowledge, get to know more on what’s happening in the ever-changing world of technology.

Who should go?

The conference is mainly targeted at IT professionals and developers, not only to get them exposed and aware of the new products and technologies available, but to better equip them with the priceless knowledge on how, when, and what technologies or products should be used as their business solution, better improving both themselves, and their organizations.

But this time around, developers that like design, or designers that have technical knowledge, should also take part in this conference! Why? Continue on to find out more!

Why need RIAs?

RIAs, from Adobe’s perspective, Rich Internet Applications, from Microsoft’s perspective, Rich Interactive Applications, well, they are both referring to the same thing, which is basically an application running on a browser that has some of the characteristics of a desktop application.

The million dollar question, why do we need RIAs?

We’re seeing more and more applications throughout the web that have embraced the “standards” of Web 2.0, and to live up to these standards, and there are more than a few key areas of the Web 2.0 standard that directly relates to RIAs, like the capability to enhance user experience through richer interactivity, allowing these applications to be much more accessible, usable, and user friendly.

These points alone have highlighted some of the reasons why RIA has become an essential part of web applications nowadays. But these are all just a glimpse of the surface on why we need to adopt RIA for our web applications.

To find out more, check out the RIA motivator series by Matt Voerman, a Senior Consultant for Adobe Systems, that I found from this post from Ryan Stewart’s ZDNet Blog.

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Part 1: RIA Motivators – User Experience (UX)

For part one, Matt focuses on the areas where RIAs could enhance User Experience, stressing on various key areas that includes the overall design of the application, which doesn’t only include the interface design, personalization, striving on the how the end users would be able to customize their experience when dealing with the application, and how productivity could be further enhanced.

Part 2: RIA Motivators – SOA, SOC & Web 2.0

For part two, Matt dives down deep into how RIAs complies to Web 2.0 “standards”, and how it relates to service-oriented architectures (SOA) and service-oriented clients (SOC), and how the Flash Player comes into the picture.

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Absolutely love the in-depth analysis by Matt, thankfully the series doesn’t end there, definitely looking forward to them!