Impressive start at a Silverlight Commodore 64 Emulator

I stumbled across a great start to a Silverlight 3 Commodore 64 Emulator today.

The emulator is the work of Pete Brown. You can find all the files you need and help on his section on codeplex.

The emulator currently only runs a small set of games, and supports a basic set of commands. There isn't any sound support yet and it a tad CPU intensive if you don't have a high spec PC.

Give it a go - it's a great example of what can be achieved with Silverlight.

Please Visit CodePlex for full details.

SLR outting at Arundel Wetlands

This afternoon I visited the Arundel Wetlands Centre armed with my Nikon SLR. It's a great place to spend an afternoon in the sun and experiment with the camera in amoungst some lovely wildlife, ducks, birds and water voles.

Spring is here and the centre was full of Mallard Ducklings, I was fortunate enough to find a family that were extremely photogenic and brave. They litterally allowed me to sit inches away from them - I think they were actually posing for the camera!! With Macro on and my 200mm lens I was able to capture some great close up images. I have added a few of my favourite pictures to the main website gallery - www.sceniceye.co.uk . More pictures will follow soon.

Great afternoon out and managed to get some good snaps - well worth a visit if you havn't been before.

Skype to launch SIP Support

There are reports emerging that the popular VOIP Client (Skype) will today announce support for the SIP Protocol. This in turn enables corporate IP based phone systems to connect to the Skype network and could lead application vendors to integrate Skype into their contact centres - watch this space.

The new service is believed to be name "Skype for SIP" and will be aimed at small and medium businesses looking to keep costs to a minimum.

Skype are offering for companies to participate in the BETA, the requirements are an IP Based PBX. Join Beta Trial

Skype claim that the economic downturn was the main reason for this initiative, claiming that now even relatively big businesses are looking at Skype to help reduce their phone costs.

FOX News cover Twitter for Customer Service

FOX News have covered the growing trend of companies adopting Twitter for Customer Service. Well worth a view.

http://www.rexburggeeks.com/2009/03/22/customer-service-via-twitter/

Salesforce integrates with Twitter

Social Networking "Customer Service" is now becoming a massive thing with large organizations beginning to use sites like Twitter and Facebook to keep in contact with their customer base.

One of the most popular CRM applications "Salesforce" has now integrated with Twitter. The integration allows customers to monitor Twitter for message that contain their company name and aggregate the replies and conversaions surrounding those messages, then response as necessary.

Alex Dayon, Salesforce CRM's senior vice preseident of customer service and support, said that with the abundance of social-media tools on the Web, people are turning to "crowdsourced" help with customer-service issues. I don't blame them. When was the last time you spent ages on the phone with your TV manufacturer only to have some random Twitter follower provide you with the solution in five minutes?

"While $20 billion of software is being spent on call centers, the customers are somewhere else" he said.

Internet Explorer 8 Features - straight from MIX09

Some key benefits of IE8

• Address Bar - The address bar updates to filter from previous pages visited.
• Web Page/Application Crashes - These are now contained and only affect the current process or page. Not the entire browser. This means if one tab crashes the rest can continue to run.
• Improvements to malware protection. Please see www.nsslabs.com
• More standards compliant. CSS 2.1 more compliant.
• More CSS Test Sites work with IE8
• Improved performance
• One step further away from IE6
• Accelerators
• Web Slicing - great little feature for IE8 only

Web Slicing - how many times do you check for news, email updates, footy scores? We all needed to do this manually before, checking individual sites using either links or favourites. Using Web Slices we can now keep up to date with new information from a new bar within IE8. If a Web Slice is supported in a site then a green icon appears in the upper right hand corner of the browser. Click on this icon and you can then subscribe so you can keep up to date with that "slice" of information. Means it's always quickly availabe and only one click away. When new information is available the Web Slice becomes highlighted. Give it a try. I guess the only down side is this new feature now needs to become adopted by other browsers ?

Microsoft is about to launch IE8 Final Release at MIX09

Microsoft has made available its next major release of the Internet Explorer product (IE8) today. It is currently about to be launched at MIX09.

Internet Explorer 8 concentrates on User Experience, Security, accelerators and also standards consistancy.

IE8 will be included as part of the Windows 7 OS. However, for the first time since adding browser technology to its operating system, Microsoft will give users the ability to turn off IE8 as a feature in the system. This decision was outlined in a blog post on the Engineering Windows 7 blog. Microsoft is under pressure from an ongoing antitrust case in the European Union to give users more browser choice in Windows.

Link to download IE8

SuperPreview - Update

Been continuing to look at SuperPreview and they have some really cool features in this tool. It's going to be a great asset in Web Development for testing multi browser support.

They offer several different modes for testing/previewing your web pages.

• Side by Side Mode
• Over Lay Mode

The over lay mode is really great. You can overlay two different browers over each other and the tool will highlight the subtle differences between the two browsers. This allows you to make your site look identical on all browsers.

Super Preview is currently available as a standalone installation in BETA form today which allows you to currently compare IE6, IE7 and IE8 compatibility but doesn't offer support for firefox or chrome yet. I'm currently unsure if this will become available in standalone mode after GA release.

Link to download SuperPreview BETA for IE6, 7 and 8

Microsoft announce new translator API at MIX09

Microsoft have today announced a new Language Translation API named Microsoft Translator Widget at MIX09 which will allow developers build in the ability to translate their website into another language without leaving their site.

From reading the basic articles it sounds like the API should make the production of multilanguage web applications easier and quicker and in theory without the need for multiple resource files.

Currently it appears the API is on trial and I'm keen in trying it out. I will try and post some examples ASAP.

Link to Microsoft Translator Details

Microsoft announce SuperPreview at MIX09

Microsoft have today launched a new tool called SuperPreview at MIX09 which could speed up the testing of web applications on a multitude of different web browsers.

The tool will allow developers and designers to preview how their sites will look and work on various different browsers and versions.

SuperPreview will be released as part of Expression Web 3 but have currently released a version which will allow developers to preview their code on IE6, IE7 and IE8.

The final release version is expected to provide the ability to visualise web sites on Firefox, Sarari, Chrome and more.

Link to some screen shots and more detail on SuperPreview

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20090318/expression-web-superpreview-cross-browser-testing/

Robozzle - Great and very addictive Silverlight puzzle

Stumbled across this very addictive Silverlight puzzle today called Robozzle. Well worth a play, but remember to reserve some time before you start.





Link : http://robozzle.com/





This game reminds me of a 80's retro toy called Big Trak.



Big Trak was a six-wheeler toy tank that could be programmed to drive forward, backward, turn and fire a 'photon canon' in the sequence you entered.

To program the tank you needed to type the commands into the brightly coloured keyboard at the top of the vehicle. Big Trak could remember up to sixteen commands at any one time, but you needed to program in the movements in sequence.

Big Trak was quite advanced for its time being one of the first programmable robotic toys and it became extremely popular among children and adults alike.

It served no real purpose other than novelty but many people became addicted to improving their Big Trak programming to the point where they could get Big Trak to circumnavigate their homes.

Google branches out to voice market

Google has today branched out today and launched a new service named Google Voice which could rival the likes of Skype and other online phone applications by offering customers more fuctionality.

Google has managed to provide this service by acquiring a company called Grand Central who offer customers a lifetime phone number. The benefit of the lifetime number to customers is that you can then route or divert all your other numbers (home, work or mobile) to it.

The service also offers a single unified voice mail access point which provides the additional benefit of allowing a speech to text service. Customers can then opt to have their voice mails presented in their standard google mailbox with their email.

Other features include:

• The ability to SMS the single number which will result in your SMS messages being presented in your google mailbox.
• Cheaper International Calls
• Ability to conference upto six calls together.
• Advanced call routing facilities. The ability to block calls at certain times of the day or only accept calls from certain numbers.

This is yet another attempt by Google to reach out beyond online searching and advertising.