People are increasingly sharing different types of information on Twitter. For example, Tweets point to web pages, photos, videos, hashtags, people, check-ins, and more. Exploring Tweets is a great way to discover new and interesting information. And with devices of all shapes and sizes connecting to the Internet, we’re constantly looking for new ways to make this easier. To date, we’ve created applications for a variety of mobile phones, giving you instant access to Tweets and great content when you’re on the go.

Today we are bringing Tweets to a device that really lets content shine - the iPad. Twitter for iPad takes advantage of the iPad’s fluid touch interface, letting you move lots of information around smoothly and quickly – without needing to open and close windows or click buttons. There are a few things we want to point out that make this app a really fast and fun way to read real-time content.

Panes: Tapping on a Tweet opens a pane to the right. Depending on the content in that Tweet, you’ll see a video or photo, or maybe a news story, or perhaps another Tweet. You can continue tapping on Tweets, opening new panes, and getting new content as long as you’d like to. And, it’s really easy to move between panes by swiping to the right or left.


Media: When you tap a video link or open a web page with an embedded video, you can play that video inline. And, let’s be honest, video is great but sometimes it can take some time to load. The panes in Twitter for iPad let you look through your timeline while a video is loading, and then you can just swipe back to the video when it’s ready to play. You can also pinch on a video to watch it fullscreen.

Gestures: You can pinch on a Tweet to quickly view details about the author and to take actions on a Tweet, such as reply or retweet. Put two fingers together and pull down on a Tweet to peek at the replies, showing the entire conversation leading to that Tweet.

News Flash: Redwood is GA

A Quick Introduction:

I'm not going to talk about VMware vCloud Director (vCD), or how it's a true game changer in the evolving world of Cloud Computing. I urge you to watch the VMworld 2010 opening keynote (a great presentation/demo by Paul Maritz and Steve Herrod) or check out the product page for high level information.

The first time I got my hands on the beta binaries of vCD, it took me one week (i repeat: one week) to get this beast up and running. I didn't have at that time a hardware lab or even any guide to help me with the task. My idea was simple: I had a brand new 8GB memory laptop from VMware and I was so excited to run redwood on this PC (yes it was not a Mac and don't ask me why!). This task took that long not because of the vCD software itself, in fact, and as you will see in this post, installing vCD takes less than 1 min! The task took so long with me because of the other dependencies for that software, to be more specific the Oracle DB (which I had absolutely no experience with it) and the SSL certificates generation!

With all that said, I'm going to be very practical in this post and help you experience this incredible product with the least requirements, whether it's hardware or software.

Motivation!

By the end of this post you should have a virtual private cloud running on your laptop/desktop, and you should see the following screens on your monitor!

__

__

Lab Overview:

As you see in the diagram below, we will utilize here the VMware Workstation 7 for running our cloud. I prefer to use the Workstation "Team" here to organize things better and to have this one whole container should I choose to move, or share the VMs with someone else. As you see also, we have 4 base VMs running Win2k3 AD+DNS, Win2k3 64bit running Oracle 11G and vCenter 4.1 Server, CentOS5.5 64bit running the vCD, and last but not least the vESX 4.1.

The vESX host will run vShield Manager (vSM) as a nested VM. It will also run the nested cloud computers when you finish configuring your vCD.

 

What You Will Need?

Here are the downloads that you need to start with right away:

• VMware vCloud Director – [200MB]
• vShield Manager – [500MB]
• CentOS 64bit DVD ISO – [3.9GB]
• Oracle 11G 64bit Enterprise – [2.1GB]
• Java Development Kit – [78MB]
• vSphere 4.1 Enterprise-Plus (vCenter & ESXi) – [2.5GB]
• VMware Workstation 7.1 – [568MB]

Before We Start: DNS, DNS, DNS!!

To avoid any issues during your installation and configuration, please make sure that your DNS server is up and running with all the entries for the VMs set in advance. This includes: vCD, vSM and the ESXi host. I can't stress enough on this point!

Step1: Installing the Oracle DB (VIDEO)

First thing first. You need a backend database for all you apps. I chose to install here Oracle 11G on Windows rather than Linux for two reasons:

1 – It's easier and there is no shame from that! Installing Oracle on Windows requires no tweaking, optimization or prerequisites. All what you need is to download the binaries and set it up. If for any reason you think that you really need to run Oracle on Linux, then I won't leave you in the dark. Here is an excellent article detailing step by step how to do it if you are a newbie. (click here)

2 – We need to save memory. I'm assuming all the way through this article that you are having a maximum of 8GB memory on your laptop/desktop. By installing Oracle on Windows you will save a new VM because we will install vCenter on the same VM. It's not just that, we will actually leverage that same Oracle server to host the vCenter DB. Bingo! No need for MS-SQL Express.

Now let's install Oracle in this video and set it up to be ready for our vCloud Director and vCenter Server.

Click here for an iPod/iPad version of this video

The commands used in this video:

• sqlplus system/oracle@localhost/cloud
• create user cloud identified by oracle;
• grant "RESOURCE", "DBA", "CONNECT" to cloud;

Step 2: Configuring vSphere 4.1 in Workstation

It's never been easier. Workstation 7 now supports running vESX 4.x out of the box. All what you need is to download the ESXi 4.1 iso from vmware.com and then create a new VM and choose your GOS to be (VMware ESX) as shown in the screenshot below. After that you will need to install the vCenter Server 4.1 on top of the Oracle DB VM as described above. OF course you will need to setup before that the ODBC connection to the Oracle DB which is quite straight forward.

Step 3: Preparing the SSL Certificates

You will need to download the Java Development Kit (JDK) from the link provided above to your Guest OS (e.g XP or W7), and then generate the self-signed SSL certificates using the following commands:

• "C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk1.6.0_20\bin\keytool" -keystore certificates.ks -storetype JCEKS -storepass hypervizor -genkey -keyalg RSA -alias http
• "C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk1.6.0_20\bin\keytool" -keystore certificates.ks -storetype JCEKS -storepass hypervizor -genkey -keyalg RSA -alias consoleproxy
• "C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk1.6.0_20\bin\keytool" -storetype JCEKS -storepass hypervizor -keystore certificates.ks -list

Please note that the password in the example above is "hypervizor" and the output file is "certificates.ks".

Step 4: Installing vShield Manager (VIDEO)

This is a fairly simple task and needs nothing but deploying the vShield Manager OVF package.

IMPORTANT NOTE: After Installing the vShield Manager there is one more step. You need to apply your vSM licenses to the vCenter Server. Without doing this step you will not be able to leverage the vSM in deploying the new edge devices for the different networking options in vCD.

Step 5: Installing CentOS Linux

I was going to record a video for installing CentOS linux but then i thought that it might be an overkill for this post. It's pretty straight forward with the famous Anaconda GUI, so I expect no issues even for the Linux newbie. A few notes here:

• I'm using here CentOS because it's the closest distribution to RHEL. I knew later on that some of the SE in VMware are using the same for doing the labs and testing. Needless to say that this distribution is not officially supported by vCD and that everything you see in this post is *NOT* meant for production.
• I recommend installing the complete packages to avoid downloading a lot of RPMs and going through the dependencies mess. This could be quite difficult for people new to Linux.
• You have to install the CentOS VM with two network cards. The first will be used for the Web UI access, and the other one will be used for the vCenter proxy access.
• After installing the CentOS i recommend disabling the embedded firewalls because it could affect some of the communications with vCenter Server and the Oracle DB. Don't worry, you will see this option to disable the firewall at your first login.
• You will need to upload some files to the CentOS before and after the vCD installation, this includes: the certificates.ks that we generated in the previous step. The vCD .bin package you downloaded from vmware.com. The sysprep files needed for the vApp customizations later on. Now, you can either do this the traditional way by enabling the FTP daemon (service vsftpd start) and then upload the files with your favorite client, or, on the other hand, you can use the Shared Folder in Workstation as shown in the screenshot below. I'm an old school so I always prefer using FTP and command line, but it's your choice.

Please also note that you will need to install the VMware Tools for the CentOS to use the Shared Folder option. It's always a good practice to install VMware Tools on all your VMs.

Step6: Installing VMware vCloud Director (VIDEO)

Are you ready to unleash the beast? Let's do it:

Click here for an iPod/iPad version of this video

You will notice in the video that I had an issue with the path to the certificate. I'm not quite why this was happening, but I realized that if you put the file (certificates.ks in my case) to the vCD home folder (/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/) and then just type the file name with no leading path, the installer will accept it.

Here is the command for "tailing" the log file for the application startup:

tail -f /opt/vmware/cloud-director/logs/vcloud-container-info.log | grep "Application Initialization"

What's next?

Now you need to start exploring this incredible product and see if you can get your first vApp up and running in the cloud. You won't be left alone. The front-page wizard will take you through the process step by step, starting from allocating your vCenter resources, all the way to creating your first service catalog. You can use the vCD evaluator's guide as well to walk you through the process, but remember that this whole "cloud in a box" thing is limited by its nature and meant only for having a working vCD installation on the go with you!

I have a couple of ideas and I might be coming back soon with something like a demo-script to show you (on a deferent physical lab) a real-life example how you can leverage vCD in your private cloud journey.

Until then, Happy Clouding!

Video Guide: Taking VMware vCloud Director for a spin…and on the GO! posted by Hany Michael @ HYPERVIZOR.COM

VMware is doing a great job with recording interviews during the VMworld 2010 and broadcasting them through their YouTube VMworldTV Channel. In a recent interview VMware’s Senior Director, Mobile Solutions; Srinivas Krishnamurti showed a real cool app on the iPad which is able to manage virtual machines and ESX servers. Take a good look at the ESX version number, it’s showing the future ESX 5.0

 

Yes, we at VMworldTV try to hunt down all the good stuff that is going on here at VMworld. Including this exclusive cool new iPad App to manage your entire vSphere environment. So 'soon' you can use your iPad besides your win32 vSphere client to manage your servers, including possible features like vmotion and SRM interaction. How cool is that!!

ETA for iPad vCenter client is VMworld Europe! info first hand from Srinivas Krishnamurti, the guy in the video! Very cool !!!

Kudos to @diederikm for discovering the leak

A new study by email software purveyor Xobni confirms what we bloggers know to be true, there’s actually no such thing as a day off in the Internet age (Want more visceral proof than an email study? Check out the timestamp of this post).

Information anxiety has pretty much put the kibosh on “time off” as two out of three Americans and Brits check their email outside of regular business hours (ha) and half of Americans email while on vacation (double ha).

The Xobni study, an online survey of 2,200 British and American adults conducted in August, holds that the traditional 9-5 work day has gone the way of the Dodo, due to the fact that Americans and Brits can’t stop checking their email. Apparently we sneak a peak at our inboxes while on vacation, weekends, sick days and even when we are (gasp!) in bed.

The press release blames this behavior on the down economy and the iPhone, but I blame it on the fact that we now live most of our lives online, and we feel compelled to check our email/Facebook/Twitter because that’s where most of the exciting stuff is happening anyways.

More highlights from the study/the life we have chosen:

* The 9-5 work day has gone the way of the Dodo. 72% of Americans and 68% of Brits say they regularly check their email on vacations, sick days, and at home in bed.

* Yes, IN BED. Conveniently for Xobni, work email in bed is apparently, you know, like a thing, with 1 in 5 Americans checking email as the first thing they do in the morning or the last thing they do at night before falling asleep (Again I can personally vouch for this).

According to Xobni, email has become an addiction, and like most addictions it is fueled by peer pressure:

* 27% check email outside of regular working hours because they feel it is expected.

* 26% of Americans feel they can’t handle/overwhelmed by the number of emails they receive during vacation.

Everyone in the world agrees that managing email has become a challenge to our sanity. And various companies are scrambling towards solutions including Google with its recent Gmail Priority Inbox launch and Xobni, obviously. My favorite low-fi way to deal with the bottleneck is a service called Sentenc.es which makes it clear to your email reader that you are limited to short responses.

Even though I’m not sure how well that will work, in bed.

Video, vaguely related.

Email overload image above: Ario_

[Updated at 2:14 p.m.] For continuing coverage of the incident involving a production platform on fire in the Gulf read the full story here.

[Updated at 2:08 p.m.] U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Elizabeth Bordelon tells CNN there is a sheen at the site of the production platform that measures approximately 1 mile by 100 feet. This information comes after Gov. Bobby Jindal who said there were reports of a mile-long sheen.

[Updated at 1:03 p.m.] Mariner Energy, owner of the production platform, said in a press release that no hydrocarbon spill has been reported after an initial flyover of the incident.

"Mariner has notified and is working with regulatory authorities in response to this incident," the statement said. "The cause is not known, and an investigation will be undertaken. During the last week of August 2010, production from this facility averaged approximately 9.2 million cubic feet of natural gas per day and 1,400 barrels of oil and condensate."

The company also said no injuries have been reported.

[Updated at 12:48 p.m.] David Reed, a paramedic on board the Rowan Gorilla II oil rig located 14 miles from the platform that exploded told submitted an iReport saying he saw all thirteen workers rescued from the water.

“We were up here in the radio room and all of sudden we saw a whole bunch of smoke coming from the platform," Reed said. "Shortly after all the radios started lighting up like a Christmas tree. They called any helicopters in the area, any boats in the area to respond, they were saying there were people in the water. There were multiple people in the water.”

See Reed's iReport of what he witnessed

WWL: Coast Guard reporting production platform incident

WDSU: Production platform explodes in Gulf

iReport: Did you see the explosion? Share images

[Updated at 12:32 p.m.] White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday that the federal government has "assets ready" to respond to any environmental problems resulting from the explosion of an oil platform off the coast of Louisiana.

[Updated at 12:31 p.m.] All thirteen people aboard a production platform that exploded in the Gulf are accounted for and safely on a commercial vessel according to initial information, the U.S. Coast Guard said in a statement.

"We continue to gather information as we respond with full force, and have oil spill response assets ready for immediate deployment should we receive any reports of pollution," the statement said.

[Updated at 11:53 a.m.] U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Bill Colclough tells CNN that 12 people from the production platform are in water immersion suits as they await rescue.

Colclough told CNN there are reports the production platform, which is for both oil and natural gas, is still on fire.

"We don't know what caused the rig to catch on fire," he told CNN, noting the incident is under investigation.

Asked about concerns regarding oil leaks or pollution, Colclough said "there are reports the rig was not actively producing any product, so we don't know if there's any risk of pollution."

Mariner Energy is a leading independent oil and gas exploration and production company in the Gulf of Mexico. About 85 percent of the company's production comes from offshore assets, with a growing share of that coming from deepwater developments.

The explosion comes nearly five months after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded April 20, killing 11 people and causing oil to gush into
the Gulf of Mexico, leading to one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history.

[Updated at 11:43 a.m.] U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Bill Colclough tells CNN that all 13 workers involved in the production platform explosion are accounted for, but one person is injured.

Coast Guard Choppers are on the way to the site 80 miles south of Vermilion Bay.

[Posted at 11:33 a.m.] An oil production platform has exploded 80 miles off the coast of Louisiana, with 12 people overboard and one missing, the Coast Guard said Thursday morning.

Rescue attempts are under way for at least 12 people, Coast Guard spokesman John Edwards told CNN. 13 people were on board the production platform total, Edwards said, noting 12 have been accounted for, but one person was missing.

The accident took place 80 miles off the coast of Louisiana on the Vermilion Oil production platform 380, which is owned by Houston-based Mariner Energy.

The Coast Guard has multiple helicopters, an airplane and several Coast Guard cutters en route. It's unknown if there are any injuries.

Apple announced on Wednesday a cornucopia of new hardware and software: sleek iPods, a brand new Internet-enabled video streaming device and new versions of its iOS software and iTunes 10. However, the most impressive to me by far was Ping, the music-only social network that Apple is opening up its 160 million existing iTunes users.

No, I’m not blown away by the 160 million number. What I’m impressed by is the thinking behind Ping.

Ping may function like a cross between Facebook and Twitter for iTunes by allowing you to follow celebrities, create social cliques and get artist updates via an activity stream. I think it could have tremendous impact on social sharing and commerce.

From a content perspective, there are three different types of media we love to talk about: movies we see, music we listen to and books we are reading. These are accepted social norms. In fact, many relationships are made on the basis of collective love of a movie and many friendships have started with mixed tapes.

It makes perfect sense for a music service to be social. I’m not alone: The popularity YouTube, the fast-growing MOG and the sadly defunct iLike and Imeem show that people gravitate towards music as a common, collective experience. A recommendation from friends on Last.fm often resulted in me buying many-a-few music tracks. My friends who listened to Thievery Corporation turned me on to The Broadway Project and Chris Joss, which I ended up buying on the iTunes store or via Amazon’s MP3 store.

This click-and-go-somewhere-to-download model of affiliate links can never match a unified experience. Amazon, for example, encourages bloggers and others to link to things they like and then get a piece of the action. This separates social from commerce and treats them as two discrete activities. On the post-Facebook Internet, I don’t think anyone can afford to keep these two actions distinct.

Ping, from what little I saw during Steve Jobs’ demo, allows a similar level of social interaction. It can tell me who my friends think are cool and the top 10 favorites of people in my social graph. Some of my friends are famous deejays. Others just have eclectic musical tastes. They can collectively sift through over 10 million songs and help with the discovery of music. This social-powered discovery is part of the biggest theme of our times: serendipity. About two years ago, when I wrote about serendipity, I said:

The problem is that there’s too much data coming online too quickly, and the traditional method of search that involves first finding and then consuming the information is not going to work for much longer. There just won’t be enough time for us to do that and still have a life. It’s a problem, and therefore solving it is an opportunity — a very big opportunity.

My belief has only been affirmed by growth in the amount of data available. With 12 million songs and 250,000 apps, the best way for Apple to enhance the iTunes store – aka its shopping experience — is through the use of social. Back in 2007, I argued that social networking was merely a feature that had to be embedded into applications to enhance their value. Apple has done a great job of that, but it’s also gone one step further, not only by adding a social networking layer to iTunes, but by meshing it with its commerce engine, the iTunes Store. And it’s made this experience available on both the desktop and its devices.

Apple received much of this social capability with the acquisition of Lala, an online music service, which as a standalone company used sharing of social objects to drive folks towards paid music downloads. Now Apple is only closing the loop by further sharing what users bought. I wouldn’t be least bit surprised if sales of music on the iTunes store rocket upwards, thanks to social discovery.

Amazon, which recently started experimenting with Facebook Connect, has similar ideas, but its implementation leaves a lot to be desired. On Amazon, I’m reduced to reading reviews from absolute strangers for music. I have a handful of friends who have impeccable taste in non-fiction business books, are all members of Amazon, and they already use email to share new book suggestions with me.

What if they too could share their likes and dislikes via a social layer inside Amazon.com? Or what if I could follow my favorite authors and get updates on their books? Much like Apple, Amazon owns book-based social service, Shelfari, and should find ways to embed the social layer inside of all Amazon products and connect its tens of millions of users.

Like Apple, Amazon too has a lot more data about its customers and their behaviors and could create a compelling discovery experience. I believe with tens of thousands of products in its store, the retail giant needs to figure out ways to surface content and other offerings smartly.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d): Why Google Should Fear the Social Web

---

Op Vmworld 2010 in San Francisco heeft Ed Bugnion de Cisco Virtual Security Gateway geintroduceerd voor de Nexus1000v. De VSG is een virtuele firewall die op een Nexus1000v omgeving geimplementeerd kan worden Om een goed beeld te geven van Cisco’s security portfolio en om te laten zien waar de VSG geplaatst kan worden geeft onderstaande slide een goede guideline.

De Virtuele Security Gateway is de eerste virtuele service binnen de Data Center services strategie die Cisco op dit moment naar de martk brengt en waar u in de komende weken meer over kan verwachten. Met deze virutele services wordt een flexibele oplossingen aangeboden waarmee security en L4-7 services in een virtuele en cloud omgeving toegepast kunnen worden.

De Virtual Security Gateway is een voorbeeld van een Virtual Service Node (VSN). Een VSN is een virtuele appliance die services aanbiedt in een virtuele omgeving. De Virtual Security Gateway geeft u de mogelijkheid om firewall policies te managen en toe te passen op VM-level. De VSG is een uitbreiding bovenop de Nexus1000v en maakt gebruik van de successen van de Nexus1000v, waaronder:
VM-level granularity – Toepassen en maangen van policies op VM niveau.
vMotion support – Policies blijven de VM volgen wanneer een Vmotion plaats zal vinden op het VM.
Gescheiden rollen – beheer en verantwoordelijke voor security policies blijft binnen het security team en het nis niet meer noodzakelijk om server beheerders security policies te laten bepalen.

De VSG maakt gebruik van zones wanneer security policies worden aangemaakt. Een VM maakt deel uit van een zone door middel van het toepaasen van VM profiles. Hierdoor is de policy die aan een VM hangt losgekoppeld van del locatie in het DataCenter. Zone Membership is nu onafhankelijk van fysieke server, locatie ,fysieke poort of VLAN.
Op het moment dat een VM onderdeel uit maakt van een zone, dan zorgt de VSG door het gebruik van security regels met welke andere zones gecommuniceerd mag worden.

Het designen van de zones kan op verschillende manieren opgepakt worden.
Wanneer een serivce provider zoning wil gaan toepassen zal die kiezen voor een zone voor elke klant. Een enterprise klant zal kiezen voor zoning op basis van de verschillende afdelingen binnen zijn of haar organisatie of op basis van type applicaties.

Wat de Virtual Security Gateway interessant maakt is een nieuwe feature in de Nexus1000v, genaamd Cisco vPath. vPath is een intelligent mechanisme om pakketten te sturen richting een Virtuele Service Node voordat deze bij de VM aankomt. Door deze oplossing wordt het implementeren van een VSN flexibel en efficient.

De Virtual Security Gateway kan op dezelfde host geplaatst worden als de host waarop de VM’s draaien. Daarnaast is an de VSG geplaatst worden op een eigen server. Een VSG kan meerdere ESX hosts voorzien van security features.
Om een redundante omgeving te bewerkstelligen kan een VSG in een Active/Standby opstelling ingezet worden.

vPath zorgt voor enorme performance voordelen omdat alleen de intiele eerste pakketten van de flow naar de VSG gestuurd worden. De policy die toegepast wordt op de flow kan door de Nexus1000v lokaal in de Virtual Ethernet Module op de ESX host gecached worden. Hierdoor kunnen volgende beslissingen lokaal gemaakt en toegepast worden.

Met de implementatie van de VSG zal de security beheerder de controle over de security policies behouden, maar we maken het voor de server beheerder gemakkelijk om in Vcenter toegang te krijgen tot security policies die vanuit vCEnter toegepast kunnen worden.

Op het gebied van beheerbaarheid van de omgeving is Cisco samen met VMware de VSG aan het integreren in vCloud Director, zie ook: http://www.vmware.com/products/vcloud-director/.

Voor vragen:

Jan Heijdra
Data Center Systems Engineer
Cisco Nederland
jheijdra(at)cisco.com

From the technote department. One of the oldest articles in the RESguru Technote library has finally received a long deserved overhaul. The article in question, RG005 was first published back in January 2009. The new and improved article is optimized with an index, jumplinks, and organized into 3 main sections:

• Parameters for the RES PowerFuse console
• Installation parameters for the different PowerFuse components
• A mixed hodgepodge of parameters for different sub-components

Click here to read the article

Thanks to a partnership with Vlingo, owners of Android 2.0 or higher-equipped phones can now check in to Foursquare and update their status on Facebook and Twitter simply by speaking into their phones.

To try it out, download the free Vlingo app to your Android handset.

Using your voice, you can then update your location status on Foursquare by saying “check into Logan Airport”, locate your friends with commands like “where are my friends?” and “who’s nearby?” as well as send shout-outs to your buddies (e.g. “shout at Logan Airport waiting to board a plane to San Francisco”).

That’s not all though. The latest version of the Vlingo app also lets users share the service with their friends with the click of a button and also update their status on Facebook, Twitter and/or Foursquare at the same time by saying “social update” and speaking the message.

Previous Vlingo features remain, too: you can still use the app to send text and email messages, search the web, use Google maps and more.

As for BlackBerry, iPhone and Nokia S60 users – they’ll have to be patient for a while before they can start updating their status and locations with their voice.

Vlingo says it plans to roll out this functionality to other supported platforms in a future release but didn’t mention specific dates.

Do you consider voice-driven applications to be an ideal way to interact with mobile apps on your phone? Why (not)?

There's been a lot of discussion lately around web standards and HTML 5 in particular. People have been asking us how Silverlight fits into a future world where the <video> tag is available to developers. It's a fair question—and I'll provide a detailed answer—but I think it's predicated upon an oversimplification of the role of standards that I'd like to clear up first. I'd also like to delineate why premium media experiences and "apps" are better with Silverlight and reveal how Silverlight is going beyond the browser to the desktop and devices.

Standards and Innovation

It's not commonly known, perhaps, that Microsoft is involved in over 400 standards engagements with over 150 standards-setting organizations worldwide. One of the standards we've been involved in for years is HTML and we remain committed to it and to web standards in general. It's not just idle talk, Microsoft has many investments based on or around HTML such as SharePoint, Internet Explorer, and ASP.NET. We believe HTML 5 will become ubiquitous just like HTML 4.01 is today.

But standards are only half of the story when we think of the advancement of our industry. Broadly-implemented standards are like paved roads.  They help the industry move forward together.  But before you can pave a road, someone needs to blaze a trail. This is innovation. Innovation and standards are symbiotic—innovations build on top of other standards so that they don't have to "reinvent the wheel" for each piece of the puzzle. They can focus on innovating on the specific problem that needs to be solved. Innovations complement or extend existing standards. Widely accepted innovations eventually become standards. The trails get paved.

In the past, this has happened several times as browsers implemented new features that later became standards. Right now, HTML is adopting as standards the innovations that came from plug-ins like Flash and Silverlight. This is necessary because some of these features are so pervasive on the web that they are seen by users as fundamentally expected capabilities. And so the baseline of the web becomes a little higher than it was before. But user expectations are always rising even faster—there are always more problems we can solve and further possibilities needing to be unlocked through innovation.

This is where Silverlight comes in. On the web, the purpose of Silverlight has never been to replace HTML; it's to do the things that HTML (and other technologies) couldn't in a way that was easy for developers to tap into. Microsoft remains committed to using Silverlight to extend the web by enabling scenarios that HTML doesn't cover. From simple “islands of richness” in HTML pages to full desktop-like applications in the browser and beyond, Silverlight enables applications that deliver the kinds of rich experiences users want. We group these into three broad categories: premium media experiences, consumer apps and games, and business/enterprise apps.

Premium Media Experiences

Examples include:

• Teleconferencing with webcam/microphone
• Video on demand applications with full DVR functionality and content protection like Netflix
• Flagship online media events like the Olympics as covered by NBC, CTV, NRK, and France Télévisions
• Stream Silverlight video to desktops, browsers, and iPhone/iPad with IIS Smooth Streaming

Even though these experiences are focused on media, they are true applications that merge multiple channels of media with overlays and provide users with full control over what, when, and how they experience the content. The media features of Silverlight are far beyond what HTML 5 will provide and work consistently in users' current and future browsers. Key differentiators in these scenarios include:

• High Definition (HD) H.264 and VC-1 video
• Content protection including DRM
• Stereoscopic 3D video
• Multicast
• Live broadcast support
• (Adaptive) Smooth Streaming
• Information overlays / Picture-in-picture
• Analytics support with the Silverlight Analytics Framework

Consumer Apps and Games

The bar is continually rising for what consumers expect from their experiences with applications and devices. Whether it's a productivity app or a game, they want experiences that look, feel, and work great. Silverlight makes it possible for designers and developers to give the people what they want with:

• Fully-customizable controls with styles and skins
• The best designer – developer workflow through our tools and shared projects
• Fluid motion via bitmap caching and effects
• Perspective 3D
• Responsive UI with .NET and multithreading

Business/Enterprise Apps

As consumers get used to richer, better experiences with software and devices, they're bringing those expectations to work. Business apps today need a platform that can meet and exceed these expectations. But the typical business app is built for internal users and must be built quickly and without the aid of professional designers. To these ends, Silverlight includes the following features to help make rich applications affordable:

• Full set of 60+ pre-built controls, fully stylable
• Productive app design and development tools
• Powerful performance with .NET and C#
• Powerful, interactive data visualizations through charting controls and Silverlight PivotViewer
• Flexible data support: Databinding, binary XML, LINQ, and Local Storage
• Virtualized printing
• COM automation (including Microsoft Office connectivity), group policy management

Other Considerations

For simpler scenarios that don't require some of the advanced capabilities mentioned above, Silverlight and HTML both meet the requirements. However, when looking at both the present and future state of platform technologies, there are some other factors to take into consideration, such as performance, consistency and timing.

Performance

The responsiveness of applications and the ability for a modern application to perform sophisticated calculations quickly are fundamental elements that determine whether a user's experience is positive or not. Silverlight has specific features that help here, from the performance of the CLR, to hardware acceleration of video playback, to user-responsiveness through multithreading. In many situations today, Silverlight is the fastest runtime on the web.

Consistency

Microsoft is working on donating test suites to help improve consistency between implementations of HTML 5 and CSS3 but these technologies have traditionally had a lot of issues with variation between browsers. HTML 5 and CSS 3 are going to make this worse for a while as the specs are new and increase the surface area of features that may be implemented differently. In contrast, since we develop all implementations of Silverlight, we can ensure that it renders the same everywhere.

Timing

In about half the time HTML 5 has been under design, we've created Silverlight and shipped four major versions of it. And it's still unclear exactly when HTML 5 and its related specs will be complete with full test suites. For HTML 5 to be really targetable, the spec has to stabilize, browsers have to all implement the specs in the same way, and over a billion people have to install a new browser or buy a new device or machine. That's going to take a while. And by the time HTML 5 is broadly targetable, Silverlight will have evolved significantly. Meanwhile, Silverlight is here now and works in all popular browsers and OS's.

Beyond the Browser

In this discussion of the future of Silverlight, there's a critical point that is sometimes overlooked as Silverlight is still often referred to—even by Microsoft—as a browser plug-in. The web is evolving and Silverlight is evolving, too. Although applications running inside a web browser remain a focus for us, two years ago we began showing how Silverlight is much more than a browser technology.

There are three areas of investment for Silverlight outside the browser: the desktop, the mobile device, and the living room. Powerful desktop applications can be created with Silverlight today. These applications don't require a separate download—any desktop user with Silverlight installed has these capabilities. These apps can be discovered and downloaded in the browser but are standalone applications that are painless to install and delete. Silverlight now also runs on mobile devices and is the main development platform for the new Windows Phone 7 devices. Developers that learned Silverlight instantly became mobile developers. Lastly, at NAB and the Silverlight 4 launch this year we showed how Silverlight can be used as a powerful, rich platform for living room devices as well.

Expect to see more from Silverlight in these areas especially in our focus scenarios of high-quality media experiences, consumer apps and games, and business apps.

When you invest in learning Silverlight, you get the ability to do any kind of development from business to entertainment across screens from browser to mobile to living room, for fun, profit, or both. And best of all, you can start today and target the 600,000,000 desktops and devices that have Silverlight installed.

If you haven't already, start here to download all the tools you need to start building Silverlight apps right now.

For more information on this topic, you can watch a video with more details here.

Brad Becker, Director of Product Management, Developer Platforms

…as I said, “more to come”.

You may have heard of the Double Rainbow Video. The guy who filmed this, Paul “Bear” Vasquez, lives in Yosemite and in the past month has gotten huge traffic for his ‘vivid’ reaction to that double rainbow. We hooked up with Bear to learn more about him & show him how to capture a full on double rainbow with Windows Live Photo Gallery using our panorama stitch feature. It’s so intense!

Some more background…

When I first showed the Windows Live team the famous “Double Rainbow” video back in July they thought it was hilarious. But when I said I wanted him to come and do a video with us, they looked at me as if I had been seeing rainbows all day…they thought I was kidding. I e-mailed Bear that night and sure enough, he responded, and with great enthusiasm.

I called him and gave him the lowdown on the project and asked if he would do a “Double Rainbow” redux. He was ecstatic! So we jumped right on it. He flew to Seattle and we had an absolute blast. After a 10 hour shoot we shared stories, ate delicious Vietnamese food (his favorite), and hung out with the crew.

 

Photo Caption: Bear and our crew. From left to right: Connor Lanman, Max Lanman, Adam Collins, Matt Garrett, Bear, Austin Chick, Michael Fishman, Andrew Sobey, & Shawn Anderson not pictured: Tommy Yacoe & Brendan Schlagel

We did a second video called “Meet Bear” where talks about his experience posting “Double Rainbow” and his love for sharing photos and videos with the world using Windows Live Essentials – video coming soon (will update post when its up). UPDATE: You can check out the second video called “Meet Bear” by clicking here!

Bear is something special. He’s entered the world of social media in hopes to share laughs, smiles, and insights. It’s not about the product, it’s about the people. It’s about the viewers, the users, it’s about you. And more importantly this project also shows how powerful sharing photos and videos can be. If tools like Photo Gallery and Movie Maker didn’t exist, Bear and I wouldn’t have met.

People can now share their lives with everyone and anyone, and can influence each other’s lives in a positive way. That’s what is so cool about Bear’s story.

Till next time,

-Connor