Olivier Bloch, evangelist guy in the Windows Embedded team dropped by my office about a week ago to ask about the Sparks will Fly competition - and he brought his video camera with him - here's my explanation of the competition.
Sparks Will Fly
- Mike
When: Wednesday January 7th 2009, 6:30pm
Where: Mount Si, Bldg 118, Microsoft Campus, Redmond WA
What: Microsoft recently announced Silverlight 2 on mobile at PDC. In this session, Amit and Anand will talk to you about core scenarios and value proposition for Silverlight on mobile; with interesting demos on what scenarios can be enabled with Silverlight 2.
Sounds like it will be a really interesting session!
- Mike
Here's Dion Hutchings, Technical Product Manager describing Windows CE in only 5 minutes (but only if you play the video at 1.4x speed!)
5 Minutes to understand Windows Embedded CE
- Mike
Don't forget that you only have a few days left to complete your entry to the SPARKs will Fly competition - Round 1 ends on Jan 7th 2009.
Time to get your skates on and submit your entry.
- Mike
Here's another really cool project from Georgia Institute of Technology - the GigaPixel Panorama project - the project page has more information about the project and an image that clearly shows the ICOP eBox.
- Mike
This is extremely cool, digitally assisted billiards running on Windows Embedded CE 6.0, software developed using Visual Studio 2005.
Here's a link to the project page.
- Mike
The ESC Boston presentations are now (really) online and DRM free :)
Here's the blog post from Oliver - this lists all of the presentations and links to the documents.
- Mike
I’ve had reports from a number of you that the slides from ESC Boston can’t be downloaded, it looks like some form of DRM/IRM has been applied to the content – I’ve got the embedded web team looking into the issue, I will post an update once the slides are “really” available for download.
- Mike
Olivier Bloch has just posted all of the session slides from ESC Boston online – here’s the blog post and session listing.
Here are the two sessions I presented:
Develop the next generation of Windows Embedded CE applications using Visual Studio and .Net or native code
This demo heavy breakout session walks you through and compare the process of writing a simple application using Win32, MFC and C# (Managed) for Windows Embedded CE 6.0.
Building connected and distributed systems using Windows Embedded
This session focuses on the underlying technologies and programming models used to allow devices to discover each other and exchange information.
- Mike
A couple of weeks ago a few people in the team had an international food tasting experience, starting with Spotted Dick and custard – This week we decided to step up a notch, trying “Baked Beans” from around the world, in this case three US bean varieties (two Van Camps, and one Bush’s), and Heinz Beans from the UK – we also had a truly international group of bean tasters on hand to provide feedback and vote appropriately.
Beans were as follows…
- Van Camps Pork and Beans (no visible pork – although there was a white(ish) blob of something in with the beans.
- Bush’s Original beans (has brown sugar)
- Van Camps Beanee Weenee (Beans and slices of Pork Sausage)
- Heinz Baked Beans (from the UK)
Out of the four bean types there was a tie between “Van Camps – Pork and Beans” and Heinz Beans. We needed to find an impartial judge to nudge the taste test one way or another… And the final winner was <drum_roll>Heinz Baked Beans</drum_roll> from the UK.
We now need to decide what the next taste off is going to be – suggestions?
- Mike
I got an e-mail this morning that contained a link to an interesting series of blog posts on the topic of “Playing media from the .NET Compact Framework on Windows Embedded CE” – the series of blog posts review a number of potential approaches to playing media, including hosting the web browser control in the NETCF application and having HTML host the media player.
- Mike
Remember when you first got started programming, probably using Basic? (actually, my first touch into programming was in assembler on a mainframe, but that’s another story).
Basic programming was simple and lightweight, probably using GWBasic (Gee Whiz Basic) or similar, just typing some stuff, and running the code – simple, fast, and fun!
Introducing Small Basic – a light weight development environment that makes it super easy for people to get started programming using Basic – the user interface is simple but intuitive, and has full intellisense support to make it easy for programmers to get something running.
Here’s a link to the Small Basic download from Microsoft DevLabs.
- Mike
To assist Spark developers get up to speed creating their “home of the future” (Sparks will fly competition) projects there’s a series of training modules that have just been published online – Whether you are new to embedded development, or already have Windows programming knowledge there’s probably something new to learn! – here’s a breakdown of the modules (each has an associated video and PDF download).
| Item Name | Description |
| Starting Guide | The Starting Guide contains a flowchart outlining how to navigate this training and an overview of the code examples. |
| Embedded Design for Windows Developers | Module 1e is for Windows developers and is designed to provide an understanding of what makes up an embedded system. |
| Embedded Design for Embedded Developers | Module 1w is for embedded developers and is designed to provide an understanding of the Windows paradigm, the concept of Windows programming, the Windows GUI, and the Windows Software Development Kit. |
| Windows Embedded CE 6.0 Introduction | Module 2 is intended for all developers and is an introduction to Windows Embedded CE 6.0. |
| The Target Device Hardware | Module 3 is intended to introduce the target hardware and hardware-related topics. It features 4 different hardware platforms. |
| The Development Tools | Module 4 introduces the development tools: Platform Builder and Visual Studio 2005 which hosts it. |
| Understanding the Build System | Module 5 takes a first look at the building process and is intended for all developers, provided Modules 3 and 4 have been completed. |
| Creating and Building an OS Design | Module 6 describes the process of creating and building an OS design. This module presumes all earlier modules have been completed. |
| Application Development | Module 7 is intended for application development. It discusses the importance of the SDK and how to create and roll it. It also discusses the creation of three application development tools; Win32 API and MFC, both native tools; and developing managed applications in C#. |
| Remote Tools | Module 8 reviews available remote tools and describes how to use a remote tools framework to create a customized remote tool. |
| How to Attach a USB Webcam | Module 9 discusses how to attach a USB webcam, covering preparing the OS design for using the webcam and creating an application to show camera input. |
- Mike
Pavel Bánský has been working on more cool .NET Micro Framework, I just found this article over on his blog - Pavel has written an SMTP class that makes it easy to send e-mails from the .NET Micro Framework, including attachments! - very cool.
- Mike
It's official - TechEd 2009 US will move back to the one week format, combining Developer and IT Pro content. This move is apparently based on feedback from attendees.
I was at TechEd Developers Europe last year, and at TechEd Developers US this year (but only for two days), the format appeared to work quite well - I guess we will have to wait and see how this works out for next year.
- Mike
