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NTK 2015: Slides from my intro talk on IoT and “Smart Home”

First of all, I’d like to thank everybody who attended my introductory talk at this year’s NT Konferenca (celebrating 20th anniversary this year – and back to Portorož venue).

I’ve talked about my smart home wiring and how I’m able to manage it from inside and outside my home network using my Windows Phone and Surface 2 RT. How various sensors and switches are connected to the main bus and are communicating with the actuators that control the lights, outlets, valves, blinds, etc. How little & cheap devices can help us connect our home devices to the Internet.

SurfaceHome
[Very early version of my Windows app, running on Surface 2 RT provides me a dashboard to monitor AND control my home]

My talk also aimed to feature a very simplified version of the above app (with simulating sensors instead of reading actual values) running on the Raspberry Pi. Unfortunately, due to the lack of HDMI->VGA adapters, I couldn’t show actual UI from Pi’s video output, but the app worked flawlessly otherwise (with Visual Studio 2015 debugger attached to the app running on the Pi).

Problems aside, we were able to monitor faked sensor data that was sent by the Pi to the web app and then relayed, in real time - thanks to SignalR running on Microsoft Azure – to a simple UWP monitoring app running on a Windows 10 desktop.

I’ve also shown a UI-less version of that same app, running on the Pi in headless mode (a kind of Windows service-ish mode), which I hope proved that Raspberry Pi running Windows 10 makes one very very powerful combo. Even if Windows 10 IoT Core Is currently still way from being final and it’s going to improve on its way to the release.

Some more info in the following slides…

Going forward, I’m exploring the possibilities of the internet and cloud-stored data. Computing power that it can give you. Analysis. Learning. Reaction.

What I’m learning right now is finding the right balance between private and cheap.

Windows Phone 8 and our “localized” keyboard layout

This is a rant (somewhat).

Windows 8 features a nicely convenient on-screen keyboard, which is mostly useful when using on a touch device, like a tablet. I’m quite often using it on my Surface, when my touch cover is not attached.

Now, let’s take a look at a Slovenian layout of this keyboard:

win8keyboard

The keyboard layout is QUERTZ, with South Slavic layout, standardized in the 80’s and used in Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and other (at that time) republics of former Yugoslavia. That means there are five additional letters on there. Letters č, š and ž (circled green) are part of all South Slavic alphabets, while đ and ć (circled red) are not in Slovenian alphabet.

Although this is a Slovenian keyboard layout, the presence of non-Slovenian characters is far from annoying or discomforting – besides the fact that there are also other (English) characters present, we’re used to this layout and have adopted it a long time ago, plus sometimes those characters come in rather handy.

But again, those red characters are not part of Slovenian language and that’s why I was surprised to see the Slovenian on-screen keyboard on my Windows Phone 8 (taken on my Nokia Lumia 920):

wp8keyboard1

It struck me weird that Microsoft would, out of five Slavic characters, pick the two that are not part of the Slovenian alphabet.

Taking another look at the above Windows 8 keyboard layout - notice how š and č are right next to  p and l? Wouldn’t it be natural to take this exact layout  to the Phone keyboard? So now, out of 28 letters on Windows Phone keyboard, there are 6 of them that aren’t in Slovenian alphabet – q, w, y, x (English), and ć, đ (Croatian/Serbian Latin/Bosnian).

Weird.

Of course, you can also (besides typing a combo of c and ˇ) access all letters by pressing and holding down the base letter, which gives you more options – and - behold č as the first option:

wp8keyboard2

Weird.

Fix please?

Announcing a new user group

Dear Slovenian developers and UI enthusiasts, mark your calendars for 8th of November 2011 as that’s the day we’re launching a new user group targeting the UI/UX professionals.

SIUX LogoSIUX – Slovenian UX User Group – a sister user group (or a Siamese twin group as we fondly call it Smile) of now years-running SLODUG, Slovenian Developers User Group (SLODUG), where we’ll focus on technologies and areas like WPF, Silverlight, HTML5, Kinect, Windows Phone, Windows 8; talk through their visual and interaction design aspects; explore user interface examples, usability and related factors.

SLODUG and SIUX will share their members and meeting place. As mentioned, the first, inaugural meeting, will take place on Tuesday, 8th of November 2011, starting at 17h. Two talks are scheduled for the meeting: Developing for XBox Kinect by Sašo Zagoranski and Metro: the UI of the future?  by me. The meeting will take place in Microsoft Lecture room at Šmartinska 140.

Full agenda:

17:00: Intro & announcements
17:15 – 18:00: Developing for XBox Kinect, Sašo Zagoranski / Semantika d.o.o.
18:15 – 19:00: Metro: UI of the future?, Andrej Tozon / ANT Andrej Tozon s.p.
19:00: Discussion over pizza &  beer

We’re also looking for speakers – if you’re interested or  know anybody from the field, please contact me and we’re schedule your talk in one of our next meetings.

Hope to see you!

Until then, you can follow us on Twitter or join our Facebook group.



Twedge, a simple Silverlight 4 twitter widget

Today’s brief IM conversation about twedge reminded me about this project I put together in the last minute for a local conference last May. Twedge is a simple twitter widget, build with Silverlight 4. You can  specify some colors, time interval and search terms for displaying tweets through the InitParams, making it somewhat configurable. Uses layout states to  display the tweets, allows text selection and highlights links, #hashtags and @names.
I wanted to finish it properly before releasing it to the Codeplex, but with that not happening any time soon, I decided to do it regardless.

So there it is, twedge on Codeplex.

twedge
Run the live version



My Month with Windows Phone 7

I had a pleasure of using a Windows Phone 7 device (LG Optimus 7 to be exact) for the past month and this is me sharing my experience with it. A quick note on my phone background: I’ve been using an iPhone for the past two years and am used to my wife’s HTC Hero (Android).

The thing is – I had to switch back to the iPhone after I returned my WP7 today (had it on a one month test drive) and it felt - weird. Let me just say that switching from the iPhone to WP7 and back felt a lot like switching from ZX Spectrum to a PC and back to the ZX (a 20-year old metaphor but who cares Smile). Something along the way of comparing serious, monochrome OS to a colorful, toyish one, if you will… Which OS suits you better remains a matter of personal taste, but to answer the question I got on one of my recent WP7 developer talks, I definitely don’t think that younger population won’t be attracted to Windows Phone 7; there are a lot of features that young audience will very much appreciate.

First, there’s the people hub – to track and manage everything and everybody from a single place is just awesome. Android is offering a similar story, but IMHO it’s not that well executed as it’s on WP7. My only wish here is that Microsoft would allow for 3rd party apps to easily integrate into the hub. And on the subject, twitter not being integrated into the hub is a huge miss, for example.

I also definitely love the Metro UI – simple, quickly recognizable graphics and large fonts. Easy for brains to process while on the move. There are, a couple of quirks I ran into… you can only add tiles on the single main screen (vertically, from the top down), and the main screen can hold up to 8 tiles. Imagine a live tile you put in the 7th row of the main screen. The gesture for unlocking the phone would be flick up, flick up. Except when you flick up the second time you can’t be sure where you’ll land - it depends on how hard you flicked. When in a hurry or on the go, that tile hunting game can be pretty time-consuming. And this is the phone that is supposed to save us from our phones, right? Either making flick up / down gestures to move a whole page up or down, or the ability to put tiles on the secondary screen on the left of the main screen would make more sense because your flick up, flick right gesture would land you exactly where you expected.
One additional thing that annoyed me was having to do two gestures to answer the call (unlock, answer) – why, oh why? Phone calls are the reason they are called phones – they should require the least amount of thinking and physical activities with this devices.
And, and I don’t know if this is related to WP7 OS or physical device - when answering a call, there was a certain lag involved before the microphone got switched on. That resulted in many confusing calls when I answered with ‘hello’, which the person on the other side didn’t hear, and waited for me to say something.

Build quality – I don’t know, the phone felt plasticky to me. I was especially worried I would accidentally pull out the Start button because of it’s embossed logo on it. And just to be clear – putting USB port on the side? That’s the worst place to put it. Cradle, anyone? Also, the photo button would be one of the greatest features on the phone if I wasn’t accidentally repeatedly hitting it when holding the phone in my left hand. It responds immediately, making your phone ready to take a photo in a matter of a second. But because of its position, it’s either a blessing, or a curse.

Ringtones – well, I tried to find a ring tone on my Optimus 7 but I couldn’t find one. The wide variety of beepy and clicky tones didn’t do much for me; I need noise to tell me it’s my phone ringing. Old phone, please!

Applications – tried them a few and they worked great… except for some with long(er), virtualized lists… jerky as hell. Hardly usable. Hard to keep up reading a list when every second or so you completely lose your track. Marketplace hung a couple of times. People’s hub crashed a couple of times, esp. when deleting a contact, imported from the SIM card. I was really impressed with the shipped IE browser. Very responsive and smooth. The whole being online experience is totally abstracted away from the phone, it feels really great.

A couple of other quirks: When trying to make a phone call, the contact info always tended to show in a landscape mode. I realized that I needed to hold my phone in a straight vertical position in order to be displayed correctly. The typing keyboard didn’t exactly liked my fingers’ typing, I was missing the keys constantly – wish there was a way to calibrate the keyboard.

In conclusion: yes, the OS has issues, some of them quite serious. From a casual user’s standpoint, I’d say the most annoying is the one with microphone lag and I hope this  will get fixed somehow, either by Microsoft or the device manufacturers. On the positive side, the phone is very easy to use and offers a great experience.
I have to say I got pretty used to it in the past month and I’m definitely considering buying my own WP7 in the near future. If I was living in a country, supported by the WP7 marketplace and the App hub, that would be a non-brainer.



Slides: Application Development for Windows Phone 7

I had the pleasure of participating in the local Microsoft roadshow that was going on in the past month.

4 talks. 4 cities. 1 subject: Application Development for Windows Phone 7.

I said I’d publish the slides. Here.

Also, from last I’ve heard, the situation for WP7 developers in Slovenia is improving. More details soon.



NT Konferenca 2010 – Where you’ll find me

This year’s NT Konferenca is starting next week! Organized by local Microsoft, it will be held (for the 15th year in a row!) in beautiful Portoroz (Slovenia), that’s now become a traditional venue for this event. Over 130 sessions, labs and seminars will be delivered by over 130 speakers in only four days – that’s a lot of content.

I’ll be speaking (and discusing things) on the following conference sessions:

Tuesday, 25th

10:15 – 11:30 Silverlight and MEF
11:45 – 12:30 ASP.NET, WebForms, Silverlight – What to choose? [BoF session, co-hosting with @dusanzu]

Wednesday, 26th

10:15 – 11:30 Silverlight and WCF RIA Services
11:45 – 12:30 Tips & Tricks: Expression Blend For Developers [Tips & Tricks session, co-presenting with @krofdrakula]
13:30 – 14:15 What’s new in Silverlight 4?
16:30 – 17:30 MVP Panel [A panel discussion with all Slovenian MVPs]

See any theme/pattern here? ;)

You can follow me and my whereabouts next week through twitter [@andrejt], with the official conference hashtag being #ntk10.

See you next week…



NT Konferenca 2010 – Where you’ll find me

This year’s NT Konferenca is starting next week! Organized by local Microsoft, it will be held (for the 15th year in a row!) in beautiful Portoroz (Slovenia), that’s now become a traditional venue for this event. Over 130 sessions, labs and seminars will be delivered by over 130 speakers in only four days – that’s a lot of content.

I’ll be speaking (and discusing things) on the following conference sessions:

Tuesday, 25th

10:15 – 11:30 Silverlight and MEF
11:45 – 12:30 ASP.NET, WebForms, Silverlight – What to choose? [BoF session, co-hosting with @dusanzu]

Wednesday, 26th

10:15 – 11:30 Silverlight and WCF RIA Services
11:45 – 12:30 Tips & Tricks: Expression Blend For Developers [Tips & Tricks session, co-presenting with @krofdrakula]
13:30 – 14:15 What’s new in Silverlight 4?
16:30 – 17:30 MVP Panel [A panel discussion with all Slovenian MVPs]

See any theme/pattern here? ;)

You can follow me and my whereabouts next week through twitter [@andrejt], with the official conference hashtag being #ntk10.

See you next week…



Windows 7 Launch talk: Building cool applications with MS Expression tools

Windows 7 launch day was fun. I gave a talk on Expression tools (and related) – here’s the PowerPoint slide deck for those who asked for it:

I used Expression Blend 3 to build a photo viewer application, which I’ll blog about later; key points here were designer-developer workflow + using sample data and behaviors.

I blogged about the Microsoft ICE last year and I used that exact sample I’ve used in that blog post, but with one difference: did you know that by installing ICE on your desktop will, you can stitch panoramic (or large composite) photos right from your Windows Live Photo Gallery? It’s as easy as selecting the photos and click on the Extras menu item:

Create Image Composite...

Yet another option for stitching a bunch of photos together will give you the Deep Zoom Composer(free and not listed as an Expression tool, but sure looks and feels like it), which has similar features and much more compositing power (different zoom levels, layers, etc.)

And for closing I briefly showcased Expression Encoder 3 and IIS Smooth Streaming.

Yup, fun.



I put a Tag on you…

This blog has been tagged.

Tag

Microsoft Tag Reader is available for a range of mobile devices, including iPhone. This is the second (I think) Microsoft app available in the iTunes Store - a way for Microsoft to introduce and promote their latest technologies to the Apple crowd.

I snapped a few tags I could find online. The results were at 100%, showing that the technology is quite stable and reliable... Just wondering how long until these “visual URLs” appear in the real life…