Silverlight 3.0 beta

Today I discovered this page about the upcoming Silverlight 3.0 and I was really surprised about the ton of new features they are adding in this new release. In fact, reading at the features list it confusing me… it seems to me like I was reading a page with the flash player capabilities.. more or less.

If SIlverlight 2.0 was comparable, more or less to flash 5, I believe ( but I should test it before ) that this new version has quite all the features of flash 10.

  • Support for Higher Quality
  • Live and on-demand true HD
  • Perspective 3D Graphics
  • Pixel Shader effects
  • Bitmap Caching
  • New Bitmap API
  • Themed application support
  • Improved text rendering & font support
  • Deep Linking
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  • Element to Element binding
  • Application library caching
  • Binary XML allows communication
  • Local Connection
  • Out of Browser Capabilities

Moreover, dont forget, Silverlight has a couple of advantages above flash: a more powerful vector rendering engine and threads capabilities.

Read the full article here: http://silverlight.net/themes/silverlight/getstarted/sl3beta.aspx?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1#whatsnew

P.S. …just because I continued following links around MS pages I also came across a new feature microsoft will add to C#, one of those features I always envy to python: the named arguments. I really find it useful, instead of writing twenty null arguments ( like when you create a textformat… ) you simply call arguments by name.

Win a 3D Flash Gallery!

This is a great opportunity for all the readers! Thanks for flashloaded we’re giving 3 free licenses of 3D Wall Pro ($199/each).

To win the prize is very simple, just leave a comment to this post with at least “I want the license” text besides any other comment and after 12 days we will select randomly 3 winners! ( remember to leave your email in the comment )

What is 3D Wall?

The 3D Wall is a papervision powered component to isplays images on an engaging interactive 3D wall. This PRO version can also display FLV videos and SWF’s and more..

Some of the key features of the 3D Wall are:

  • Flat or curved wall
  • Customizable animations
  • Glow and reflections
  • Double sided thumbnails
  • Complete customizable properties (rows, columns, preloader…)
  • Complete interaction (keyboard or mouse)
  • Use of external xml configuration file
  • A Flash component inspector
  • Images, flv and swfs
  • Customizable video controls
  • Youtube, flickr images
  • Watermarks

Here’s a couple of screenshots:

See more screenshots at the 3D Wall page

REMEMBER: Winners will be selected randomly from commenters 10 days later (31 October 2008) and will be contacted directly via email.

Contest is over!

Today (1st November 2008) the contest is over! After running this mysql query to find out 3 random commenters:
SELECT * FROM mt_comment WHERE comment_entry_id = 268 order by RAND() LIMIT 3
we got the three winners who are: (5170) moon, (5135) Pieter and (5176) tm!

iPhone & Ubuntu notes…

No Flash stuff this time 🙂
During my last trip to New York city I finally decided to buy an iPhone for me too (I think I have everything from Apple right now.. except a mac 🙂 ).
The most annoying thing for a linux user like me is obviously the fact that the iPhone syncronization should pass from iTunes, which is not available for linux…
Ok, there are some ways indeed to copy music like this: http://help.ubuntu.com/community/PortableDevices/iPhone, but as you can see is not so smart.

Sync your address book isn’t easy too. The AddressBook sqlite can be easily browse using an SQLite browser such as SQLite Database Browser http://sqlitebrowser.sourceforge.net/, just get the AddressBook.sqlitedb (it’s into  /private/var/mobile/Library/AddressBook/)  from the iphone via sftp (just remember to install BSD Subsystem and OpenSSH) and call a simple query like this:
SELECT t1.First, t1.Last, t2.value from ABPerson as t1, ABMultiValue as t2 WHERE t2.record_id = t1.ROWID
For a full AddressBook sync you can read more here: http://www.estamos.de/blog/…the-making-of/

Another tip I just discovered is how to upload into the iPhone my own Ringtones.
First convert the mp3 file into an M4R file using this command line script:
mplayer -ao pcm input_file.mp3 -ao pcm:file="~temp.wav"
faac ~temp.wav -o output_file.m4r -w
rm ~temp.wav

then using sftp put the output_file.m4r into /Library/Ringtones directory. A sample workflow can be this one:
~/iphone/Ringtones$ mplayer -ao pcm The_Spell.mp3 -ao pcm:file="~temp.wav"
MPlayer 1.0rc2-4.2.3 (C) 2000-2007 MPlayer Team
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T7600 @ 2.33GHz (Family: 6, Model: 15, Stepping: 6)
CPUflags: MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1
Compiled with runtime CPU detection.
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.
Playing The_Spell.mp3.
Audio file file format detected.
Clip info:
Title: The Spell
Artist: Lunatica
Album: Fables & Dreams
Year: 2004
Comment: 00001A75 000016D0 00004374
Track: 6
Genre: Other
==========================================================================
Forced audio codec: mad
Opening audio decoder: [libmad] libmad mpeg audio decoder
AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 128.0 kbit/9.07% (ratio: 16000->176400)
Selected audio codec: [mad] afm: libmad (libMAD MPEG layer 1-2-3)
==========================================================================
[AO PCM] File: ~temp.wav (WAVE)
PCM: Samplerate: 44100Hz Channels: Stereo Format s16le
[AO PCM] Info: Faster dumping is achieved with -vc null -vo null -ao pcm:fast
[AO PCM] Info: To write WAVE files use -ao pcm:waveheader (default).
AO: [pcm] 44100Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Video: no video
Starting playback...
Cannot sync MAD frame 538.0 (08:58.0) 0.8%
Cannot sync MAD frame
Cannot sync MAD frame
Cannot sync MAD frame 538.0 (08:58.0) 0.8%
A: 288.3 (04:48.2) of 538.0 (08:58.0) 0.8%
Exiting... (End of file)
alessandro@alessandro-u-laptop:~/iphone/Ringtones$ faac ~temp.wav -o The_Spell.m4r
Freeware Advanced Audio Coder
FAAC 1.26.1 (Jan 22 2008) UNSTABLE
Quantization quality: 100
Bandwidth: 16000 Hz
Object type: Low Complexity(MPEG-2) + M/S
Container format: Transport Stream (ADTS)
Encoding ~temp.wav to The_Spell.m4r
frame | bitrate | elapsed/estim | play/CPU | ETA
12388/12388 (100%)| 137.8 | 12.5/12.5 | 22.95x | 0.0
alessandro@alessandro-u-laptop:~/iphone/Ringtones$ sftp root@192.168.1.203
Connecting to 192.168.1.203...
root@192.168.1.203's password:
sftp> cd /Library/Ringtones
sftp> put The_Spell.m4r

(my)SQL-Front is back!

After more than one year I received an email saying that finally mysql-front is back and no it’s SQL-Front.
MySQL-Front was one of the first mysql clients I ever installed and I was very disappointed when it closed..

Here I quote the Nils entry about the comeback and the new name:

“Hi,
16 months ago, many users of this program were surprised and disappointed to see the project discontinued rather suddenly. I am sorry that I was unable to find a way of continuing the project at that time, so that the users had to suffer from its disappeance. This discontinuation was the result of a senseless fight – from which, at the end of the day, noone had an advantage.

So the question is: Why do people fight when they don’t have an advantage from it? There are multiple answers to this question, but often jealousy of other people or fear about one’s own future are the reasons for it. In my humble opinion, if someone fights against you, you should consider how to help them instead of getting involved in senseless fighting. Therefore, I decided not to fight with them last year, but to withdraw.

In the past weeks, I was able to find a solution…” (read full article)

P.S. Great, my old license key is still valid!

Microsoft to release .NET libraries source code

Well, it seems that Microsoft will release the .NET libraries (not all, but it seems the most relevants ) source code with the next release of Visual Studio 2008 late this year.

This will be useful indeed while debugging in VS, but also it would be very interesting to look into the source code to view how they did it, expecially the Windows Form related part.. (..but what about Silverlight? :))

Read more here: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/…framework-libraries.aspx

Apple Safari for Windows. Terrible!

Probably you know that Apple just released a public beta version of its web browser Safari for Windows.

Why don’t try it out? So, after Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera I downloaded and installed it immediately just for curiosity, even if looking at the demo I saw they forced the application UI to be like OSX rather than following the Windows standards (like for iTunes).
And this is the first reason I dont like Apple applications for Windows (I’m on pc, not on a mac and I dont want to have a mac UI!).

Ok, I’ve installed it and uninstalled just after 5 minutes. I can understand it’s just a beta, but quite all the pages I tested are weird with lot of things missing, the HTML isn’t rendered as I expected.
I did just a search on google as first attempt but the result page was unreadable at all!

Some minor issues:
why the font smoothing can be changed in the application preferences? On Windows the font smoothing it’s set in the OS preferences, so just use that value.

During these 5 minutes I found many other issues, but I really think this is due to the fact it’s still the first public beta..