In this first post we are going to define some gradients and color resources for a glass style that can be applied to a Border control. Here is what the finished button will look like.
Archive for April 1st, 2010
A Chrome and Glass Theme – Part 1 and Part 2
Phil Middlemiss has started a series on creating a glass and chrome theme in Blend. In the first post he creates a resource dictionary and defines some brush and style resources to create a glassy panel. In part 2 he defines some more brush and resource styles for a chrome looking button.
Social Media as a Software Development Tool?
One thing about software development I have always struggled with is inter-team communication. As I develop, I am often thinking things like “I need to make sure I tell Elvis I moved this method” or “The team is really going to like the reduced friction of this new implementation”. I have used various methodologies to try and address this, most of which you have probably tried too:
- Detailed check-in notes (no one reads unless they are tracking down who broke something)
- Code-reviews (*yawn*)
- Stand-ups (wrong medium, too high level)
- Pair programming (exclusive to 2 or 3 developers, and is too expensive to do at a high frequency)
- IM (Too exclusive, temporary, can be distracting)
- Shouting “Hey dude check this out”
- All of these can be valuable, however none of them offer the signal to noise balance I am looking for. I want a mechanism which promotes and enables a different form of communication. So what about a form of social media? Wikipedia tells us:
“Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction… Social media uses…technologies to transform and broadcast media monologues into social media dialogues. It supports the democratization of knowledge and information and transforms people from content consumers to content producers.”
Personally I have gotten really adept at tracking and participating in twitter conversations, IM, email etc while I work. I am ready for a social client that lives in my development environment. A tool which enables me to informally talk to my team as I am writing code.
I have a bunch of ideas around what this could look like, and I think implemented properly it would make developing software better.
So is anyone out there doing anything like this? What sort of features would make it useful?
The IT Services Delivery Revolution
Need a pair of shoes, an airline ticket, or a book? Looking for 100 servers to get you through an online sales rush? No problem. Go online and your needs are (nearly) instantaneously fulfilled. Instant gratification may be the single greatest driver in the revolution that is fueled by virtualization and the delivery of software and services from the cloud. The impact is only beginning to be understood.
Some obvious advantages are driving cloud-based development, such as eliminating the expense and endless cycle of procurement and upgrading of a long list of IT solutions, and the never-ending fight for priority with IT to move an innovation forward. The cloud provides a world in which the end user has complete control over their client/server, web-based, and computing solutions – allowing them to choose what they use, where they use it, and where they get solutions from. It is the culmination of a 25-year end-user computing revolution that began with the introduction of the PC. Each phase of this revolution has created terrific efficiency gains and cost reductions for businesses, moving from the mainframe to the PC, from the PC to client/server, to the web and now to the cloud.
Layer 7 Technologies to Exhibit at Cloud Expo East
SYS-CON Events announced today that Layer 7 Technologies, the leader in SOA and Cloud governance, will exhibit at SYS-CON's 5th International Cloud Expo (www.CloudComputingExpo.com), which will take place on April 19-21, 2010, at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City.
Cloud Expo is the world's leading Cloud-focused event since 2007, and is held five times a year, in New York City, Silicon Valley, Prague, Tokyo and Hong Kong.
Layer 7 Technologies is the leader in SOA and Cloud governance. Layer 7 helps organizations connect to the cloud, protect applications in the cloud, and securely span private and public clouds.
What Inspires You?
Everyone has their moments of inspiration. You see something, and just think "wow". It inspires you, makes you think of all the possibilities, gets the "creative juices" flowing, or just makes you think "whoa, that was cool". 
