I’ve been dreaming about XD for a while now – I like electric cars, the idea and the concept, but what I like the most is the fact that it was developed in Croatia. I’ve read a lot about it, but last week on WinDays conference I have finally had an opportunity to see it live and to sit inside the prototype. Now I like it even more and there is quite a chance that I will buy it next year in spring, when it should be available on the market (first in Croatia, and then in the rest of the world, unlike anything else).

You can read about it here, I’m just sharing a few photos.

I delivered a Silverlight presentation on WinDays conference last week in Rovinj. I talked about Silverlight in general, naming a few the most important and interesting features, as well as new features introduced in new version, launched the week before.

During the presentation, I did a small contest – if you explain me the meaning and the purpose of one of the Silverlight features, you get a spirit, rebranded as a feature you’ve talked about. It was a fun way to go through top 5 features in Silverlight, excluding the version 4. Here they are:

Hope you like the idea :-) Feel free to use it, credits are appreciated.

I’ve developed Wall of Silver in Silverlight version 3, and Moonlight (Linux version of Silverlight) supports only a number of features from 3rd version. I wasn’t sure if my Wall of Silver would work on Linux or not.

Vladimir Savić gave it a try and announced on Twitter that it does work on Ubuntu 9.10 + Moonlight 2.2 with no modification. Thank you!

So, it’s official – my twitter wall is a truly multiplatform application. :-) Please let me know if you tried it with any other distribution.

You probably know that Silverlight 4 RTW (release to web = final version) is out. But you may not know the following:

• Today is Silverlight’s third birthday – three years ago today the name Silverlight was officially announced (code-name was WPF/E = WPF Everywhere)
• Silverlight 4 Tools are not RTW yet – they are in release candidate mode and the final version is expected soon
• WCF RIA Services are RC, too; included with Silverlight 4 Tools
• Silvelright 4 Tools RC are an upgrade for Visual Studio 2010 RTM (final version) – VS2008 is not supported
• Windows Phone 7 developer tools are not compatible with Visual Studio 2010 RTM nor Silverlight 4 Tools RC – stick to Visual Studio 2010 RC for a few weeks
• There is a corresponding version of Expression Blend 4, also in RC

It all started about a year ago, on last WinDays conference in Opatija when I had a cup of coffee with guys from Shout’em (that’s how we do business in Croatia :-)). We talked about Silverlight and they asked me to build an application that will show shouts (“tweets” from Shout’em network) on the big screen during concerts, events etc. Essentially, a “twitter” wall for Shout’em. Unfortunately, at least for me, they eventually decided to develop the application themselves in WPF if I recall correctly. Wrong choice if I may add, but no hard feelings :-)

At the beginning of this year, MIX conference in Las Vegas organized the contest called Mix10k. The goal was to build an web app in under than 10 kilobytes, using Silverlight, HTML5 or Gestalt. The idea about twitter wall seemed perfect so I took the night off and had a working application in 6 hours, just few hours before the deadline. The main problem was to reduce it to 10k – I was renaming variables to a, aA and Aa to save space, using lambda expressions, removing whitespace and even some features at the end (silly things, like link to my Twitter account). I didn’t win any of the prises, competition was really good, but i got “this is awesome” from Scott Hanselman :-) followed by a great buzz on Twitter.

I promised to build a new version of Wall of Silver and few days ago I have finally managed to find some time to do so. It has been tested by small, yet great group of friends (thank you all) and now it is ready to see the world. It’s officially in beta, just because these days it’s cool to have the word “beta” in a logo.

You can use it wherever you like, for free and no strings attached. I would appreciate if you let me know where do you use it, especially if used on public events, just to keep a track and brag about it. You can customize the application to fit your needs (just use the form on the bottom – nice showcase of communication between Silverlight and JavaScript/jQuery), but there are few more, hidden features and parameters you can use that I will reveal on the Twitter and here, on the blog. For example, there is an option to use Shout’em networks instead of Twitter, but I’ll announce that in public when fully tested.

Let me know what do you think – comments, questions, suggestions and feature requests are welcome! Have fun!

It has been announced that Silverlight 4 launch keynote will be available on demand here, but currently there are only follow-up talks on Channel 9 (very interesting as well). They will probably fix this when they wake up, but for now, you can find the keynote here.

To save you a click, I’ve embedded the video here – it last for about an hour.

PS. Embedding doesn’t work right now, but I’ll leave the code in case they fix it. In the meantime, watch it here.

Visual Studio 2010 was launched yesterday and I expected full Silverlight 4 support included in the build. Unfortunately, that was not the case – Silverlight 4 was launched today (whatever that means), but it will be available on Thursday, as a separate download.

Furthermore, Windows Phone 7 development is not yet supported in Visual Studio 2010 RTM version – to use it, you need RC version of Visual Studio. Of course, you cannot have both versions installed on the same machine. Windows Phone development tools will be updated “in a few weeks” and until then, WP7 developers should stick to VS2010 RC (that works very good, I’ve been using it for some time now for all my projects, with no 2008 version installed on the system).

I normally wouldn’t complain about this, it’s better this way than to postpone everything, but I’m doing a presentation next week on WinDays conference in Rovinj, and I planned to show Silverlight on the desktop as well as on mobile phones. Now I cannot do it on the same machine, so WP7 will be left out and I have only few days to tune my demos to work with Silverlight 4. Sounds like a lot of fun :-)

Danas cijeli dan sjedim u Microsoftu Hrvatska i kao član žirija za Microsoftove ovogodišnje nagrade slušam brdo 20-minutnih prezentacija raznoraznih projekata koje konkuriraju za nagradu, u četiri različite kategorije. Nakon našeg današnjeg vijećanja, za koje se nadam se neće previše odužiti, nagrade će javnosti biti poznate na ovogodišnjim WinDaysima. Kategorije su:

• najinovativnije rješenje
• najnaprednije tehnološko rješenje
• rješenje s najvećom poslovnom vrijednošću
• rješenje s najvećom poslovnom vrijednošću za male tvrtke

O nagradama i dobitnicima možda kasnije napišem post, kad bude sve javno, no ovdje sam zapravo želio ukazati na jednu vrlo bitnu činjenicu – ma koliko neka rješenja bila zanimljiva i atraktivna, u pravilu je najslabija karika sama prezentacija. U dvadesetak minuta nije jednostavno predstaviti sve što biste trebali, no neki svijetli primjeri pokazuju da je to itekako moguće, i to vrlo kvalitetno. Nažalost, neki vrlo zanimljivi projekti totalno su razočarali po pitanju prezentacije svojih rješenja. Iako smo svi ovdje u žiriju svjesni da ne ocjenjujemo kvalitetu prezentacije, već samo rješenje, to u većini drugih slučajeva neće biti slučaj – konkurencija je opaka i metode eliminacije su rigorozne.

Čuo sam da je strah od javnog nastupa jedna od najčešćih fobija, no svatko tko se iole ozbiljno želi baviti biznisom, a posebno prodavati i promovirati svoje rješenje, mora poraditi na svojim prezentacijskim sposobnostima. One su ponekad i važnije od tehničke superiornosti rješenja. Moja sugestija je – vježbajte. Koristite ogledalo (glupo zvuči, no vrlo je efikasno), radite interne prezentacije, brusite svoje sposobnosti na korisničkim grupama unutar zajednice koje (među ostalim) upravo tome i služe.

I’ve been using Live Writer to write blog posts for last three posts :-) and the only thing I can say is – this is awesome! I’ve managed to migrate all posts from old blog in about an hour and when writing new ones – posting was never easier! Here is my top 5 features list:

• image manipulation – you can resize, crop, add effects, shadows etc.
• it generates standard and clean HTML code
• spell checker (Croatian included!)
• automatic linking
• click publish – and the post is online

There is support for probably every blog engine in the world so, if you’re a blogger, you have no excuse not to at least try it.

I’ll be speaking at WinDays, biggest IT conference in Croatia, organized by Microsoft Croatia. I’ll talk about Silverlight 4 (no suprise there) on Tuesday, 20.4.2010. at 11h, room no. 7. Stop by if you’re interested – description is here (in Croatian).

I’ve been to all ten WinDays so far (speaking at last three) and this is without doubt my favourite event of the year. Can’t wait! See you there!

PS. Photo on the right is me ten years ago, at first WinDays in Opatija.