Blankenthoughts

Today, the last day of 2007, I'm making my 100th blog post. And, yes it's about CodeMash.

Perhaps some of you missed my post on the CodeMash contest I am running. Maybe some of you didn't get around to it yet. And I'm betting some of you are just being stubborn. Regardless of the reason, I've got 5 entries so far, and was expecting for something more in the 100ish range. We've got some work to do.

As a recap, I'm running a contest about CodeMash. I want everyone that reads this to create some enthusiastic content about CodeMash. Make it meaningful. Let your excitement show. And once you've posted it on the web, leave a comment on this post with a link to yours.

The deadline to get them in is the event itself. January 10, 2008 at 8:00 AM. Each and every entry that is listed in my comments will be entered in a drawing for a SwagBag. I'm not going to disclose the contents of the bag, I'm only going to assure you that it will be well worth your while to enter.

Also, each person that enters will get a small something. Just come find me at the event (Microsoft will have a booth) and introduce yourself. If you had a post in my comments, I'll give it to you right then and there.

In addition, if we can get 100 blog posts (from 100 people, you cheater) on this list, I will guarantee that there will be a Zune 8GB in the SwagBag in addition to everything else it will contain.

So get writing. And if you don't like writing...make a video. Or a song. Or a poem. Or a photo collage. The medium doesn't matter, as long as we can get it on the web to share with everyone else.

Here's a little incentive:

Here's just part of the list of things that will be in the SwagBag on January 10.

Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse 2000
Microsoft Office Professional 2007
Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate
Halo 3 for the Xbox 360
1GB USB Flash Drive
"Heroes Happen Here" fleece/nylon jacket
.NET t-shirt
Microsoft Visual Studio Hat

And like I said before, if I get 100 entries, I'll add an 8GB Zune to the bag as well. So tell your friends, and get to posting!

Labels: codemash

You're reading this post, so clearly you have enough time to write your own.

Here's what I've got planned for my loyal readers...

A CodeMash enthusiasm contest.





I want to make sure that we're spreading the word about CodeMash, and the amazing event that it is. For those of you that were there last year, let's hear about it. For those of you that weren't...let's hear what you're hoping to get from it this year. I want to crush the web under the weight of the enthusiasm for this conference.

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Haven't heard of CodeMash? Go to http://www.codemash.org and get registered!

CodeMash is a technology conference taking place in Sandusky, OH in just a few weeks. It is taking place January 10-11, 2008 at the Kalahari resort.

The purpose of the conference is very unique. The idea is to give software developers from all of the different technologies and platforms an opportunity to learn from one another. For example, I learned quite a bit from Neal Ford and Bruce Eckel last year, two noted Java enthusiasts.

We have so much in common in what we are trying to accomplish with our respective technologies, that sometimes we only focus on our differences. OOP is OOP. Plain and simple. So why do we keep our distances? Let's take an open-minded approach to software development, and perhaps learning a bit about Ruby, Python, .NET, Java or others will help us to better understand the technologies we are most familiar with.

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So...on to the contest. I want everyone that reads this to create some enthusiastic content about CodeMash. Make it meaningful. Let your excitement show. And once you've posted it on the web, leave a comment on this post with a link to yours.

The deadline to get them in is the event itself. January 10, 2008 at 8:00 AM. Each and every entry that is listed in my comments will be entered in a drawing for a SwagBag. I'm not going to disclose the contents of the bag, I'm only going to assure you that it will be well worth your while to enter.

Also, each person that enters will get a small something. Just come find me at the event (Microsoft will have a booth) and introduce yourself. If you had a post in my comments, I'll give it to you right then and there.

In addition, if we can get 100 blog posts (from 100 people, you cheater) on this list, I will guarantee that there will be a Zune 8GB in the SwagBag in addition to everything else it will contain.

So get writing. And if you don't like writing...make a video. Or a song. Or a poem. Or a photo collage. The medium doesn't matter, as long as we can get it on the web to share with everyone else.

Labels: blogging, codemash, jeff blankenburg, swagbag

UPDATED: Here is the link to the presentation.

I'm heading up to Cleveland tonight for the .NET SIG meeting.  They are deviating from their standard meeting type (speaker, pizza) to more of a holiday party style.  I'll be bringing 3 XBoxes, projectors, and a decent selection of games to play, including Halo 3, Guitar Hero III, and Project Gotham Racing 4.  But that's not really what I'm most excited about for tonight.

I'll be giving a short presentation on some of the cool things that Microsoft is working on.  I've given this a few times in the past, but it always generates more discussion and "WOWs" from the crowd than any Silverlight or WCF presentation I'm going to give.  The reason is because people haven't seen this stuff before.  And it's amazing.

For those of you not coming to Cleveland for the meeting tonight, here's a rundown of what you're going to be missing:

 

Microsoft Popfly - A mashup engine.  Imagine having the power to create a map with all of your Facebook friends on it.  Oh yeah, and you didn't write a single line of code.

 

Tafiti - I call it a research engine.  It's a new search engine interface, based on Windows Live Search, which is built entirely in Silverlight.

 

Microsoft Surface - a completely new model for computing.  Take one coffee table, add 400% innovation, and you've got an amazing new way to interact with files, the internet, and more.

 

Photosynth - Let's say you wanted to take a virtual tour of Seattle.  You could certainly look for pictures on the web, of if you really wanted to see a bunch, maybe you search on Flickr for Seattle.  Photosyth allows you (eventually) to take a set of photos from the web, and visually "stitch" them together to create a 3-D model of the space.  If you check nothing else out from this post, make this the one.

 

Seadragon - the technology that Photosynth is based on, Seadragon is primarily focused on showing immense amounts of image data at one time.  Their philosophy is that the only thing [in this technology era] that should restrict your ability to view large [we're talking TB] sets of images should the be number of pixels on your screen.

Labels: jeff blankenburg, photosynth, Silverlight, surface, user experience, user interface

This evening, Yahoo! Messenger for Windows Vista went live. You can download the software here. You can read the official release information at the Yahoo! Messenger Blog.

You can skin it.

You can tab it.

You can scale it.

Today, it is one of the largest applications available that is built in WPF. The application is all .NET 3.0 built on top of an unmanagaged legacy layer of code. The bridge is a mixed-mode C++ DLL. These together provide a WPF-friendly data model to the unmanaged code portions.

I think it will set the trend for the next generation of messaging applications. In addition to just looking cool, it's also compatible with MSN Messenger. So you can talk to all of your MSN buddies using this client as well. Now if they would just all play nicely, we'd finally be getting where we need to be.

GTalk, MSN, Yahoo!, AIM, Jabber, etc. Can't we all just get along?

Labels: messenger, microsoft, WPF, Yahoo