Big Screen Blog

(April 2 - not April fools day anymore down here)

Big Screen Headlines v2 has now been officially launched on the bigscreenglobal.com website - and is available for 30 day trial and online purchase (and retails for just USD$24.95).

Headlines v2 (which for those new to this product - is a RSS + Rich Media viewer for Vista Media Center) - is pretty much a complete rewrite of v1 - and contains a truckload of new features and enhancements from the original release (many of which have been detailed on this blog in the past).

You can check out the full product details online (which includes detailed feature list and loads of screenshots) - with some pictures below to wet your appetite.

What's New :-

Apart from the core functionality provided by v1 (such as RSS Browsing and Content viewing, IE7 Subscriber Feed System support, Parsing of RSS HTML content to Media Center friendly text) - some of the major enhancements in v2 include :

- new main menu system - with direct access to all your content via the left/right sliding panels (which reveal several menu items when selected) - and direct viewing of 'latest' updated items and feeds without further menus. The main menu system is similar to that found on Big Screen Weather v2 - however has been enhanced to better support and accommodate mouse/touch control.

- loads of new presets with substantially updated video and audio section of new Web Media designed for Media Center (WMV Video etc).

- Enhanced Parsing of RSS based blogs / HTML Content (with Inline Image support - allowing you to view images contained with the content)

- Enhanced support for latest variants of RSS 2 Media (and other new formats such as OPML 2) with ability to drill down on multiple content attachments (where made available) - and comments feeds. When browsing items - additional content such as item and feed thumbnails are also displayed.

- Supports and recognizes and watch a whole range of new content types (where 3rd party codec support is available) - and even caters for the additional codecs on the new PIKA 2.0 Extenders (by allowing you to watch MPEG4, H264, DivX based content). For media center PC's - you can install additional Directshow compliant video filters and add support for numerous popular codecs (such as Apple Quicktime, Flash FLV Video, DivX/XVid, MPEG4 etc).

- Highly customizable viewing/browsing experience for RSS Feeds, presets and Articles with sorting, filtering, text size control and view styles. Your settings are also automatically saved (per user).

- Full Media Center Extender Support - with auto device detection/configuration for PIKA 2 (Linksys, DLink etc) extenders + XBox 360's - with customizable display/usage options (such as filtering out codecs etc). Display options can also be adjusted - such as disabling background animations for slower/lower powered machines) manually.

- Includes the Feed Synchronization Tool (which runs as a scheduled task) - which preprocesses and summarizes your Subscribed feeds (incorporating any recent updates made) - so they are ready for instant viewing when you load Headlines 2. The synchronized feeds (and any auto downloaded enclosures) are also then made available to extender users via the synchronization tool. The synchronization tool also creates 'best of' style feeds internally so you can quickly view lists of 'latest' items from the main menu - without substantial processing time (by media type or online/offline status).

- User Interface is available in 5 languages : English, German, French, Spanish and Italian.

Headlines v2 also features the new Activation/Trial/Unlock system found on the other v2 products (Weather v2 and Photos v2) - and allows you to upsize your existing trial to a full version if you decide to buy it.

Take it for a spin :-

If you want to try Big Screen Headlines v2 out for yourself - download a free 30 day trial version or purchase the full version - at these links below. Please note that you will need to sign up for a free account on bigscreenglobal.com if you don't already have one.

Trial + Download page : http://bigscreenglobal.com/bgproductdownload.aspx?PID=BSHV2
Product Purchase page :   http://bigscreenglobal.com/bgproductpurchase.aspx?PID=BSHV2

More screenshots :   http://bigscreenglobal.com/bgproductscreens.aspx?PID=BSHV2

As mentioned over past couple of blog posts - Silverlight v2 Beta 1 is being launched at Mix 08. 

I just noticed that the downloads have now been launched to the public - and are available at the following links :

- Install Microsoft® Silverlight™ 2 Beta

- Microsoft® Silverlight™ 2 SDK Beta 1 

- Source Code for Silverlight 2 Beta 1 Controls  

- Microsoft® Silverlight™ 2 SDK Beta 1 Documentation

or you can download the following pack (which includes the Silverlight 2 Beta 1 + SDK + a KB for VS2008)

- Silverlight Tools for VS2008

The new Beta/Preview version of the Expression Products  (which has the bits required to create/edit Silverlight 2.0 projects) is also available at :

- Microsoft Expression Blend 2.5 March 2008 Preview

- Expression Web 2 Beta

- Expression Studio 2 Beta

but wait there's more...

- Deep Zoom Composer (Prepare Images for use with the Deep Zoom feature in Silverlight 2 Beta 1

These are of course previews/beta's so expect lot's of pain (and crashing) whilst test driving these new tools and SDK's.

In the lead up to Mix'08 - Nokia announced last night that they were going to making Silverlight available for their Series 40, Series 60 mobile phones and Internet Tablets  (via Sean Alexanders Blog). Please see here for the press release .  This also means other Series 40/60 licensees (which includes LG, Panasonic, Samsung, Siemens and many more) will also reap the benefits at some time in the future. 

This is quite an interesting (and exciting) development - and hopefully means there's a commitment to get Silverlight into a whole lot of new devices in the future (I'm really hoping it makes it to some set top boxes / or media players). I'm quite surprised that there wasn't an announcement yet for Silverlight on Windows Mobile devices (or even Zune or XBox360) - as one would think that Microsoft's own mobile/pda platform would have been not only a priority - but a far simpler option allowing for a much faster time to market (given that it already runs CF.NET - a more feature rich version of the framework offered in Silverlight 2).

Nokia have mentioned that the first S60 devices with Silverlight will be available 'late 2008' and Series 40 + Internet Devices to be available after that (2009?).

There's a few challenges, caveats and unknowns with the announcement and how it would actually be deployed/usable on the mobile phones - although the press release hints that it will be rolled out/available via the Web Browser. I personally would have liked an option that gave it a 1st class citizen treatment on the device (as non browser hosted standalone apps) - and directly launchable from the devices main menu/display (similar to how J2me Midlets worked - but more directly accessible to end users without all the sub-menus/hoops in between currently found in j2me). Given the extensibility/customization available on Series60 (which is a more complete 'O/S' than S40) - it's probably going to be possible to expose it via shortcuts on the phone's menus - but unlikely to be the same on S40.  One of the big problems in the past with J2me (apart from the challenging development aspect), was that it was too difficult for consumers to actually find the applications on their phones once they had been installed (and hence they never really took off 'en masse - despite the capabilities and power offered over standard mobile web browser sites and Flash lite).

Another big issue, and a reason why it might really be 2009/2010 by the time we can actually expect anyone to have Silverlight on their Mobile Phones (and even then it would generally be early adopters only) - is that the runtime needs to be deployed to the phone's O/S (which generally equals firmware).  This means that users need to purchase brand new phones (once they become available) - update their O/S if possible (if Series 60) - or at bare minimum update their firmwares if such a thing is offered (given the cost/downtime/hassle of this process - which generally involves visiting a phone repair place - it's a highly unlikely scenario).    

Given that Flash Lite (now at v2.1) - is already available in many of these devices - Silverlight has a lot of catching up to do. (and hopefully it has some success out on the web so that Nokia doesn't have a change of heart). Given this - I would predict its more likely 2010/2011 timeframe that we'd see Silverlight enabled devices in the hands of an average consumer. (who generally have the less powerful Series40 based devices).

Apart from these above mentioned 'reality checks' - it is indeed an exciting announcement - and hopefully means Silverlight is here to stay (and will be taken more seriously out in the real world with a chance of survival).

I'm looking forward to seeing what other Silverlight announcements appear over the next few days at Mix. (and playing with the Beta if that appears as hinted).

Although this news is a little old (announced last week) - it's hard not to get really excited by the new developments happening over in the Silverlight camp at Microsoft for the upcoming Beta 1 release of Silverlight 2.0. (which I believe is being scheduled for launch at Mix '08 next week).

Silverlight 2.0 (formerly known as Silverlight 1.1) is essentially the cross platform technology trying to give Flash a run for it's money in the RIA space - but leverages the 'developer' focused tools, technologies and audience that Microsoft has by using .NET and XAML - which in turn means you get great tools like Visual Studio 2008 to work with coupled with design tools like Expression Blend (which are starting to take shape - although still quite a way to go there).

While a lot of 'designers' out there will just say Microsoft are simply playing 'catch up' with Adobe - I think Adobe never quite understood the whole 'developer IDE' thing (and I know I was pretty put off Flash everytime I had to do any project work involving more than 10 lines of code - as the ActionScript etc experience is really quite disturbing for anyone spoilt by Visual Studio - or just about any other Developer IDE such as Borland's, Eclipse etc etc).

What's so good about Silverlight 2.0 - didn't 1.0 tank?

While Silverlight 1.0 didn't get a lot of traction against Flash last year (and the fact that most of the Microsoft sites still use Flash instead of Silverlight is proof of that) - it was a great 'start' and a sign of MS moving forward from WPF/.NETv3 (which 'sported' a pretty buggy, incompatible and clunky runtime platform - and made it pretty unusable/un-deployable in the vast majority of scenarios).  After WPF -  Silverlight 1.0 came back - reduced the feature set (substantially) - but offered a mean/lean runtime which was (sortof) cross platform - and actually made it a serious contender in the RIA space.

The really promising thing with Silverlight 2.0 (and the team behind it) - is that after initially announcing 1.1 (which was essentially the addition of a cross platform version of .NET - but not much else - where 1.0 used javascript from the HTML layer) - they appear to have 'reinvented' themselves and added a whole bunch of things developers were asking for. (well according to this post at least) - including some of these things :

• controls, controls, controls... (with SL 1.0 you had to reinvent the wheel from primatives - ie. not even a scroller, listbox or flow layout panel was provided)
  
• reduced cross domain security restrictions  (SL 1.0 was massively restrictive in that everything had to come from the same domain- which was I guess a great big misunderstanding of how Web 2.0 actually worked.) - and true support for a raft of commonly used webservice models and even socket support.
  
• Styles, Templating and more. (aka. Some of the great features that made initially WPF a fantastic 'specification' are back - and this time *hopefully* they don't perform like a bucket-of-crap).
  

Although not directly mentioned - I really do hope some of these other things get improved/sorted (either for this BETA 1 release or at least for the full release) :

• Full 64 bit compatibility (ie. so we can use Silverlight in 64bit containers - ie. Vista Sidebar and Vista on 64bit machines). Same goes for Windows CE and other mobile platforms - which is really a must to sway people away from Flash.
• Full Key Focus/Handling behavior (and x 2 for full screen mode) - so Remote Controls + 10 foot can be properly supported too.
• Support for more Video codecs + IPTV protocols (SL 1.0 was WMV only). Moving forward - for any video playback technology to be treated seriously - support for codecs like H264, MPEG2/MPEG4 is an absolute must (DVR-MS, Divx/XVid etc would be nice too). I think Flash can do all (or some of) this already.
• Protection of IP (thats NOT just DRM on Video/Audio). Hopefully there's some serious thought given to how BOTH developers and content owners can protect their assets when deploying them via Silverlight 2.0 (as obfuscators etc are somewhat less useful the smaller the codebase). Silverlight 1.0 didn't offer any form of protection whatsoever (except for dynamic XAML being generated by a back-end server) - so developers were essentially serving up their IP on a silver platter (to anyone who wanted to take a look).

Why I (personally) am excited about what I see coming with 2.0...

While it's still early days - the really great thing about Silverlight is that it's a sign the team (and thinking) behind it are :

• Adapting : Moving forward and adding the features that the market wants..  (In a very short time frame / release cycle as well..). We don't need to 'wait until Windows 7' etc etc to get the new goodies.
  
• Doing (not just 'listening') : v1.1 wasn't going to win them too many new friends - so they took a good look at themselves, canned 1.1 - and focused on 2.0 which incorporated a what a lot of developers were asking for.
  
• Talking + Showing : Even though the BETA hasn't been launched yet (if you exclude SL 1.1 Beta - which has been around for 12 months now) - guys like Scott Guthrie are out there telling the market what's to come - and there's that element of transparency going on all the way with Silverlight (by screenshots and feature lists being detailed before it's even available to developers).

And the winner will be..(not the public just yet) ?

So - it's going to be an interesting time over the next couple of years in the world of Web 2.0/3.0/RIA/IPTV etc.  Microsoft are currently really suffering from the 'self inflicted' fragmentation caused by offering a lot of different developer platforms to the public - Silverlight for the Web, WPF + WinForms for desktops, CF.NET + XHTML for Mobiles, XNA for XBox360 + Zune, MCPL for MediaCenter - and the list goes on and on (and most of these are reliant on Windows being used for the development and proprietary devices/platforms being used for the runtime).

There's simply no unifying technology (other than .NET) in the Microsoft camp just yet - so makes it quite a poor value proposition for companies who want to invest in this new world. (and want some reuse across platforms with their investment)

In this respect - companies like Adobe and Apple are clearly winning - and via their 'lack of options' on offer - they are making the choices a lot simpler and clearer for both companies and consumers.

Hopefully technologies like Silverlight 2 (which are more developer friendly) can make it's mark and get some inroads on Flash. (and it's looking like the best bet so far out of all the Microsoft technologies on offer). All we need now is a release date for the full version (which is the real date when it can start to make this traction).

I know it's an age old problem - but my blog has been severely targeted of late by spammers leaving their crap as comments.

Unfortunately - the Spaces system/team doesn't seem to be doing anything to prevent this from happening (even though it seems to the same 3 or 4 people repeatedly leaving the same stupid messages) - and to make things even more difficult - it takes about 3-4 clicks to get to the point where I can actually start to delete the unwanted comments from a single post. (and have to to do that 'per post' - rather than being able to go to one place and delete all the unwanted comments across posts).

There doesn't seem to be any 'moderated' comment system on Spaces - and the only option seems to be either to not allow comments - or prevent anonymous comments (which won't work either as these spammers seem to actually have 'hidden' spaces accounts/profiles). None of the common options provided on other blogging systems - such as typing in 'the code' (where an image is displayed containing rendered letters/numbers) seem to be offered either - and combined with developer SDK's - make it really too easy for people to abuse the system.

Just to top it off - the spaces terms/conditions also states that I as a blog writer am 'responsible' for anything posted in the comments section- which is really ludicrous given it's their own security holes and lack of implementation of what is standard on other blog systems that's allowing this to happen in the first place.

If I can find the time I will (try to) send an email to the spaces team explaining these problems - and how every other blogging system has dealt with it. (but given previous experience of having my blog delisted for the wrong reasons and then not being able to get it reinstated via leaving comments to the team - without pulling MVP strings - this might be a real waste of time).

I'm yet to find any 3rd party tools to assist with this spam removal (hopefully there's something out there). If I have to go to the effort of making my own tool (or trying to raise a response from a automated reply system here) - I might as well use that effort to move my space to another system (or host it myself).

Anyone with a spaces blog with any good ideas?