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Analyzing CES 2012

Bill Evjen — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 21:50:41 GMT

I just got back from the Consumer Electronics Show 2012 (CES) which was held in Las Vegas. This is a good show for me and the company that I work for as it shows us some of the possible future trends of digital media consumption. Things presented at CES may just come and go and be quickly forgotten, but at the same time, there are definite themes on the conference that companies need to pay attention to.

3D is so yesterday!

This was actually the second CES that I have been to and both were focused on different themes as it seemed to me. Last year’s CES was really all about 3D TVs and even some companies trying to show up the others with glassless 3D TVs. It was amazing to me how much hype there was around 3D televisions at the 2011 CES. The press was really all over this.

For me, I never really enjoyed the presentations on 3D TVs. I wear glasses and everything is tough for me to view on these TVs. My eyes strained constantly and watered when I watched. It was always an uncomfortable experience for me to view these types of TVs. There were many instances in watching 3D that you had to be perfectly positioned for the best picture. This approach obviously won’t work that well in the home. The glassless 3D televisions were the absolute worst when it came to positioning yourself in front of the TV. Being off a bit for a glassless television meant that you could almost be certain of a migraine.

As far as 2012, there really wasn’t that much in the way of 3D. Don’t get me wrong, it was there, but all the hype was gone. The reason is that it hasn’t really taken off in the public market. More people are gravitating to HD, LED, and Smart TVs while not getting to excited about 3D. The new 3D TVs would be fine if you are a massive movie buff and want to watch your 3D movies a lot, but in my opinion, they don’t fit in that well with the average home TV usage. Most people watch TV in a social setting, with others, their eyes moving from the people they are talking to and back to the television in constant glances. People are walking in and out of the room to stir the macaroni on the stovetop or something similar. This doesn’t make for a great 3D television experience. I think people like 3D – but they would rather have this experience in the theater rather than in the home.

So what is new in 3D? Well for one, there was some hype on better looking 3D glasses.

These glasses were being showcased in the LG booth. There were also quite a wide variety of other styles from some designer brands (e.g. Oakley, Alain Mikli, etc).

OLED TVs! I want one now!

Well, the thing that got me the most excited on the TV front was the new OLED TVs. These TVs are so thin (we were seeing them at 4mm thick!). They are also incredible bright and clear. Do you remember that experience when you saw HD for the first time and wondered how that was even possible? Well, looking at OLED was almost as good as that experience. It is considerably better than the HD TVs of today. The picture quality was amazing and the photos/videos here wouldn’t do it any justice.

This video doesn’t do the quality justice. It was way way better than this.

Even though, this is a video I took of the LG OLED TV. Here is a shot of the thinness of the TV (at 4mm thick) at the Samsung booth:

Smart TV Fight!

The entire smart TV arena is really starting to come to a battle on direction. First you have the television companies themselves working to bring apps and the entire application model to the television set. The TV companies are creating their own app world. You have Sony, LG, Philips, Samsung, and others working to create an application model that is good for them and their users. Originally there were TV companies that really had a walled-garden approach to their app world. Some of the companies would only allow their own company to supply the apps that were on the TV. But now, there was a lot of movement at CES to include SDKs so that application developers can build apps specifically for their TVs (some working in private clouds only).

By far the leader in this market is Samsung. They have been letting developers specifically develop for their TVs for some time now (really more than anyone else). They also have an SDK that is easy to use and get up to speed with. Samsung has a tremendous amount of support as well for the developers from their website. But with this new found love for the application developer from the TV companies, it is still very difficult for the app dev. It isn’t as if you are going to build a single instance of your application and then have the ability to get this application to work across all the TVs. In fact, you are going to be doing some serious work to build TV-specific applications where some of the TVs might have the APIs that you are looking for to complete your application while others fall considerably short. What is a TV application developer to do? Well – Google TV might be the answer.

Google TV was released in 2010 and basically the street thought that it failed right away. The UI was considered not that well designed and it was tough for the end user to figure out how to navigate through the application. Google then went back to the drawing board and came out in CES with their new Google TV.

I was really impressed with what they have designed. With Google TV, you will have access to the Android Market for applications that can be placed on your television. At this moment there are only about 150 applications that have been specifically designed for the TV, but they are their way.

The absolute best thing for TV application developers is that they can now build a single application for the TV and be agnostic to the underlying TV. This is really what the industry needs at the end of the day for maximum innovation and growth. I would think that the best approach for the television companies is to create an experience on top of Google TV so that it isn’t a vanilla branded version of Google TV. With this, they can do more that works specifically with their hardware while at the same time allowing end users to reach out to the application market. At CES, there were TV companies that were hedging their bets and showcasing both their own Smart TVs with their own environment, while also showcasing Google TV versions of their TVs.

The ability to work with TVs in an agnostic fashion as a TVappDev is also possible with some of these smart TV overriders such as Roku and Boxee. All in all, the Smart TV world is taking off and by 2015 most TVs sold will be smart TVs. It is pretty exciting and this will dramatically change the ways in which we are entertained. I look forward to these coming changes.

Concept Cars

Ok – I don’t work with cars as part of my job, but who doesn’t like to look at concept cars? CES had some neat ones:

Summary

I did enjoy myself at CES this year. There was some cool things and strange things as well. Some of those things included:

An alien from the upcoming Men In Black 3 walking the floor
Every booth selling something that was tied to an iPad in some fashion (iPads were EVERYWHERE!)
The new Galaxy Note (nice)
A section of a booth showing the new Walkman (huh?)
The new Sony and Nokia phones (Sony was using Android and Nokia was using Windows 7)
The Tesla car … (my photos were no good)

See you there next year!

Windows 7 Up and Running

Bill Evjen — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:41:43 GMT

I have installed Windows 7 on “bare metal” on one of my machines. This was a laptop that I work with and it was a very easy install. First off, it was the quickest OS install that I have ever experienced. You can tell that Microsoft spent some significant time working on the performance and quality of the install and bravo to the team that worked on that feature!

I also used the 64-bit version of the operating system. More and more people are turning to 64-bit and it is really starting to be the time that we should only be installing this OS (even at home). I want to get 8GB of RAM in my home computer and the only means to do this is really to turn to 64-bit.

I have also installed the 64-bit Windows 7 on one of my work machines and I am using it for my day-to-day work now. So, my recommendation is this:

If you are going to install Vista with or without its service packs on one of your machines – you should install Windows 7 instead. It is *considerably* faster than Vista is and more stable. I have to say that I was a big negative voice out there for Vista. I needed to use it for real work and the performance of the OS, the strange behaviors it brought, and more – all of this would always just make me stop in my tracks and say – why am I working with this OS? I gave Vista about three tries before uninstalling it and going back to Windows XP. I am not the only one by the way.

But I have to say that Windows 7 is the Vista that should have been. It is what you are going to want in an OS. It is fast, has some great workflows, is sexy, and is a lot of fun to work with. So far, I am rather impressed. I am looking for some things that are going to stop me from ever using it – but there has been very little.

When I installed Windows 7, it immediately found all my drivers for the two computers that I installed it on. There wasn’t a single driver problem that I experienced with the install. This was very very nice.

I also installed this items and they worked just fine on Windows 7:

Microsoft Office 2007
Microsoft One Note 2007
Microsoft Visio 2007
Paint.NET
Tortoise SVN 64-bit version
Notepad++
Window Live Writer (using it right now)
Visual Studio 2008 SP1
ReSharper 4
FoxIt Reader

With that said, there were some things that didn’t install so well. One being some ISO reader software that I usually use to install things. I ended up finding PowerISO that seems to work and you can use it as a trial for a little bit to get your machine going at least.

Technorati Tags: windows7,microsoft,windows,installation,vista

IIS 7.0 Rocks the House!

Bill Evjen — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 12:55:33 GMT

Yes, we have Windows Server 2008 coming. Yes, also SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008, the .NET Framework 3.5, and more - but probably one of the more exciting new items to come at this same time is IIS 7. As Scott Guthrie states in his recent blog post on IIS, this is a major update to the technology.

IIS 7 will allow for a plug-in architecture and allows you to take out all the pieces of the IIS stack that your applications don't need. It also allows you to build your own extensions and plug those directly in the stack. Before this, when Microsoft came out with enhancements to IIS, they usually had to wait for the next release of IIS. With the new IIS 7, new enhancements can be sent out as extensions and easily plugged in. If you work with IIS in anyway, you really should start getting up to speed on this.

IIS has just hit RC0 and here are some good sites to start taking a look at:

Microsoft Releases XML Schema Designer CTP1

Bill Evjen — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 22:02:55 GMT

As noted to me from Scott Hanselman, Microsoft just released the CTP1 of the XML Schema Explorer. Seems that there are a lot of changes coming in the XML space for the .NET 3.5 release and the XML tools that are currently present in VS2005 will be no more as they are replaced by some new XML tools - the XML Schema Designer being one of them.

Here is a screenshot of the new XML Schema Explorer. You can see from this screenshot that the schema is open on the left-hand side of the shot, while the schema explorer is open on the right. The big items that Microsoft seems to be making note of is the ease of visually dissecting your schema document from this explorer. You can see the search capabilities across the document and the highlighting in the explorer to quickly point you to the correct places in the document.

Quite interesting that they are using the "ticks" on the scrollbar showing places in the document that the search results are found. Clicking on one of these scrollbar ticks will bring you to that place in the document. This is a style of navigation that I am a big fan of ever since using the ReSharper tool from JetBrains. Navigating large documents through visual signifiers in the scrollbar is an something I would think we are going to see a lot more of in tools coming forward.

Overall - I like it. Haven't played with it - but you can see the video about it here. You can also read the XML team blog about it here. And you can download the new XML Schema tool here.

Microsoft Surface and the Future of Home Computing?

Bill Evjen — Wed, 30 May 2007 19:41:17 GMT

The big news of the day is that Microsoft's Steve Ballmer introduced Microsoft Surface.

A table computer that allows the end user to interact with the computer through their fingertips! No keyboard - no mouse. First thing you should do is take a look at the movies Microsoft made about this:

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

The ability to drag and drop items around with your fingers. The ability to place a digital camera on the table surface and automatically pull the images / send them / edit them / etc. A bit off in the future but a wonderful look at where technology might be taking us. Is this a glimpse of the future of home computing? I think so. Will it be a table? - maybe not - or will it be a stand up screen like in the movie Minority Report? Its funny, but the table reminds me of my first days of seeing a "computer gaming machine" which was a pong game at my local Pizza Hut when I was a kid. We would lean on the tabletop computer game and play a ton of those pong/asteroids games. Though - that table got really greasy after awhile.

It is interesting to see where Microsoft is spending their dollars for the future of home computing. There will be a emergence of technologies in the future for the home - but when will that come is anyone's guess. Though, right now, Microsoft is making investments in gaming consoles (and doing a good job at it I might add), Tivo-like machines such as Media Center, this Microsoft Surface and more.

Whatever it will be - there will be a heavy emphasis on networking with devices, dummy terminals in the house, communicating with house members at their jobs, as they travel and more. There will be a heavy emphasis on a massive data store in the home for the huge amount of video, pictures, history that a family will want to digitally collect. I, today, could use a 5TB data store for everything I want to store - but alas - not yet.

Too bad we die and don't live on and on as I love seeing technology evolve and the experience just gets better over time. My kids are the lucky ones that will get to play with all those cool gadgets. Enjoy the moment, eh?

Alas my friends - I'm not TechEd bound

Bill Evjen — Tue, 29 May 2007 03:10:57 GMT

I wanted to ... oh yes, I wanted to come to TechEd. It is one of the best conferences out there and it is something that you will find simply overwhelming. I am unable to attend as the product that I have been working on for more than a year for Lipper is about to release (June 15th) and that is tooooo close to be messing around at a conference (no matter how cool I think that conference might be).

I have to say though that the product we are releasing (for the financial services industry) is outstanding and will be the premier product in the collective investment space. I am simple amazed and stunned by it and will give you all more details after its release!

With that said, enjoy TechEd! If this is your first time - don't get hung up with all the PPT sessions. The absolute best experiences in learning that I have EVER had at TechEd is sitting with the MSFT teams in the exhibition hall and going over my issues and their futures. Keep that in mind. You will get the DVDs with all the PPTs and the audio and can review those later - you will not get the opportunity to sit next to Steve Lasker everyday and go over what you are dealing with in your SQL Server environment!

New Book - Professional VB 2005 with .NET 3.0!

Bill Evjen — Tue, 29 May 2007 03:03:46 GMT

Another book! I and some friends just finished a new release of our Visual Basic book. This is another book I wrote with the wonderful Kent Sharkey! :) We really cleaned up this version of the book. This book came together quite well and shows not only the core of .NET 2.0 in depth - but it also covers the new ground of .NET 3.0. The .NET Framework 3.0 includes the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), and the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF).

The table of contents of the book is as follows - (the new chapters are in yellow):

1. Understanding the .NET Framework.

2. Visual Basic 2005 Core Basics.

3. Object Syntax Introduction.

4. Object-Oriented Programming.

5. The Common Language Runtime.

6. Localization.

7. Generics.

8. Namespaces.

9. Exception Handling and Debugging.

10. Data Access with ADO.NET 2.0.

11. Using XML in Visual Basic 2005.

12. Security in the .NET Framework 2.0.

13. Visual Studio 2005.

14. Working with SQL Server.

15. Windows Forms.

16. Windows Forms Advanced Features.

17. Windows Presentation Foundation.

18. Integrating WPF with Windows Forms.

19. Working with ASP.NET 2.0.

20. ASP.NET 2.0 Advanced Features.

21. Assemblies.

22. Deployment.

23. Working with Classic .COM.

24. Threading.

25. Windows Workflow Foundation.

26. XML Web Services.

27. Remoting.

28. Enterprise Services.

29. Network Programming.

30. Windows Communication Foundation.

31. Windows Services.

32. Visual Basic and the Internet.

Appendix A. The VB.NET Compiler.

Appendix B. VB.NET References.

My Latest Book - Professional XML

Bill Evjen — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 15:52:00 GMT

This week marked the release of my latest book - Professional XML. I wrote this with friend Kent Sharkey and some other authors including Michael Kay (editor of the XSLT specification and other things). This book came out really nice and after quickly covering XML - goes straight into covering all the major technologies that are based upon XML. The Amazon site doesn't seem to provide the table of contents at the moment, so here it is:

1. XML Syntax
2. XML Editors
3. XHTML and CSS
4. XFL-FO
5. Document Type Definitions
6. XML Schemas
7. RELAX-NG
8. XSLT
9. XPATH
10. XQUERY
11. XML in the Data Tier
12. The XML Document Model (XML (DOM)
13. Simple API for XML (SAX)
14. Ajax
15. XML and .NET
16. XML and Java
17. Dynamic Languages and XML
18. RSS and Atom
19. Web Services
20. SOAP &WSDL
21. Advanced Web Services
22. REST
23. XML Form Development
24. Resource Description Framework
25. XML in Office
26. XAML

HOW TO: Build Your First WPF Application

Bill Evjen — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 13:16:00 GMT

I just really started playing around with WPF and XAML and how to build an application in this new format. I really like it, but at the same time, I have a lot to still learn! For my first example, I wanted a form that would have some sort of event that caused UI to change in some manner. For this, I put together a form with a simple Button control on it and a place to put some results on the form after the button is clicked. This form really needs two pieces to work - Window1.xaml and Window1.xaml.cs. Window1.xaml is the visual form and it is laid out using XAML, while Window1.xaml.cs is the code-behind file.

What I really like about this WPF model is that it is very much like the ASP.NET model - which I find quite attractive. You have a page dealing with presentation and another page that deals with all of the business logic surrounding the page. The code for the Window1.xaml file is presented here:

<Window x:Class="XAML_Example.Window1"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
Title="XAML_Example" Height="300" Width="300"
>
<Grid>
   <Button Height="23" Margin="15,15,125,0" Name="button1" VerticalAlignment="Top" Click="button1_Click">Random Number</Button>
   <ScrollViewer Margin="0,50,0,0">
      <TextBlock Name="textBlock1" TextWrapping="Wrap" FontSize="20" FontWeight="Bold" />
   </ScrollViewer>
</Grid>
</Window>

From this, you can see the entire form is defined using the <Window> element. Looking at the attributes of the element, you can also see that I defined the title of the form and its size. All the items within the <Grid> element can actually be in any order you want as the real emphasis is on the Margin attribute which specifies the location of the object. You can see that I have a Button control, a ScrollViewer control, and a TextBlock control on the form. Looking more closely at at the <Button> control, you can create an event for this by simply adding the appropriate attribute. In this case, the Click attribute is added and a method name is assigned to it (button1_Click()). This points to a method that is contained in your code-behind file - Window1.xaml.cs.

using System;

namespace XAML_Example
{

   public partial class Window1: System.Windows.Window
   {
       public Window1()
       {
             InitializeComponent();
        }

        public void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
             Random generator = new Random();
             int randomValue;
             randomValue = generator.Next(10, 100);
             textBlock1.Text += " " + randomValue.ToString();
         }

       }
}

Running this bit of code and pressing the button to initiate the button1_Click event will give you something like the following results as presented here:

Enjoy!

Office 2007 to the Rescue!

Bill Evjen — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 16:12:00 GMT

I installed Office 2007 on my laptop. This was for me an upgrade from Office 2003 and the upgrade went beautifully. It launches by asking you for the Office key right at the beginning and you can copy and paste the entire key in at once as it is a single textbox (which is a nice feature). You can also provide the key later and just install Office directly without this key. From there, you are provided two buttons - Upgrade and Custom. For kicks, I pressed the Custom tab to see what it was installing and you could also see how the install was going to occur. It was interesting to note that it seems it is not doing an actual upgrade of Office 2003 - but instead, does an uninstall of Office 2003 (saving your files and settings of course in the process) and then doing a new install of Office 2007.

The results? Outstanding and completely worth the upgrade! I love the Ribbon approach and I am of the opinion that all application styles will change over the next few years to incorporate this feature to be the norm. The reason I think this is that end users using Office will learn to use the Ribbon feature and will then come to expect this functionality in the other products that they use each and every day. In fact, Infragistics realizes this as well and is already providing a Ribbon control for your Windows Forms applications and the other control vendors are also jumping on the bandwagon. Really, wait till the product managers, end users, and others start using this and when those guys start designing applications and feeding requirements into development, they will be asking for a Ribbon control functionality.

The other and by far the best product of the Office 2007 suite is Outlook 2007. Really, that is the application that most people spend their entire day in and by far the first feature I have gravitated to is the To-Do Bar:

This bar, on the right, shows the calendar, your next three appointments and all the emails that you have marked for Today, Tomorrow, This Week, Next Week, and more. You can also type tasks in as you get them and have them appear in the Today section. Talk about keeping me organized! I love it. I didn't use the past Task section of Office 2003 because it wasn't in my face as the To-Do Bar is. I now can't live without it.

Bravo Microsoft for putting out a great release!