EVENT: HTML5 Dev Conf SF

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by Kurt Brockett

Over in SF today for the HTML5 Dev Conf.  It’s a great little conference with what seems like around 500 attendees.  There are some great talks lined up and it will be interesting to see how the attitude is vs. last year around mobile apps and the power capabilities of the mobile web.  Last year there was a lot of talk around the performance gotchas in mobile browsers and their native web UI components.  We’ll see if this year some of those issues have been solved and hear more about the latest roadblocks with going web v. native development.

EVENT: Lean Back Meetup

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by Kurt Brockett

Down in Sunnyvale this evening attending the Lean Back meet up.  This is Vertigo’s first time at the event and with our recent involvement with Xbox and our continued push into online video experiences it’s a perfect meetup for us.  The event covers all Connected-TV platforms and should be a great place to meet other companies that work in the space.

Shoot me an email kurt[atnospam_yesyou]vertigo.com if you are in the area.

Welcoming the 2012 Vertigo Interns

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by Kurt Brockett (@kurtbrockett)

It’s May which means it’s that time of year again.  The time where college breaks for the summer and we welcome a new crop of interns.  It’s great to be able to offer a fun program for students to come work for the summer and get some experience of what the agency/consulting business is like.  This year we have 4 interns in the Point Richmond office and 3 up in our Portland office.  2 of the 7 are repeat offenders from last year.  The goal is not to scare any of them away and hopefully have them join once they graduate.

Here’s Matt T. and Alex S. getting settled in up in Portland.  This is the first day task of take apart an old dell and put it back together without any left over screws.  I kid! I kid!…though based on Kristy’s menacing laugh in the background that might just be the case.

We’re always looking for great folks so even if you aren’t fresh out of school we’d love to hear from you.  Give Bee Tan a shout (btan[atnospampleasekthanxbai]vertigo.com) if any of our job openings strike your fancy: http://vertigo.com/Jobs.aspx

 

EVENT: Creative Mornings SF

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We’re over in the city this AM for Creative Mornings SF.  Tony Sokolowiski (@tonysoko) our Director of UX and I (@kurtbrockett) are here for a little end of week design shot in the arm.  It helps that the weather in SF is absolutely amazing!  If you happen to be here give us a shout.  At the very least join us next month, time TBD.  Below is the description of the talk.

From: http://sfcreativemornings.eventbrite.com/

This will be a live recording of the Let’s Make Mistakes podcast led by Mike Monteiroand Katie Gillum of Mule Design. They talk mostly about design and how to do it, with a few tangents along the way. Audience participation at this live recording is encouraged, so come with questions!

Mike Monteiro is the co-founder of Mule Design. He also writes about design and paints words. Katie Gillum heads up the massive research department at Mule Design. She also runs the Disposable Film Festival and writes and makes films about media, women, and health.

New Fuel

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by Kurt Brockett

Just a quick service announcement to those folks out there wondering about joining Vertigo as a full time employee.  I know one of the most important questions on everyone’s mind is “What is the free beverage situation?”  So to get it right out there in addition to our stellar coffee machine we recently upgraded the beverage distribution mechanism (AKA soda machine) to accommodate additional form factors including, yes that’s right Apple Juice!  For our Redmond visitors we also have Talking Rain in stock for when you long for the comfort of the Microsoft campus amenities.  New hotness on the right.

EVENT: NAB Show this week

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by Kurt Brockett

Live from Gate 26 at Oakland International Airport.  This Kurt Brockett checking in for Vertigo.  We’re heading to Las Vegas today through Wednesday for the National Association of Broadcasters Show 2012.  Increasingly Vertigo is seeing a trend where media companies are turning into ISVs.  This means instead of just focusing on content creation the largest media companies are also looking at ways to get that content direct to consumers.  Vertigo has a history of creating these experiences and thus we find NAB to be a perfect intersection of media and technology.

If you are someone you know is heading to the show please don’t hesitate to shoot me a note at kurt [at] vertigo.com.

Event: TYPO San Francisco – April 5-6

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by Kurt Brockett

One great thing about being in the SF Bay Area is the conference circuit usually swings out this way.  Today and tomorrow (4/5-4/6) the TYPO International Design Talks are being held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.  Our Director of UX, Tony Sokolowski (@tonysoko) is out at the show taking it all in.  Give him a shout if you’d like to connect.

Event: Reimagining App Development: Introducing Windows 8

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by Kurt Brockett

Just a quick note that some of the Vertigo team will be making the trip down 880S to visit our Microsoft friends in Mountain View this afternoon.  The BizSpark is putting on an event to showcase Windows 8 here in the valley.

Look for me (@kurtbrockett) and a few of the other Vertigo folks wondering the halls at 1065 La Avenida.

You can still register for the event here:  http://introducingwindows8.eventbrite.com/

See everyone down there!

Downtime – Vertigo Employee Projects

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by Kurt Brockett

Recently we highlighted Tim Greenfield (@timgreenfield) and his work on PuzzleTouch for Windows 8 (Happy “Windows 8 Consumer Preview” Day).  In the spirit of showing off some of the work Vertigo employees have out there in the community we rounded up a list of projects put out by some of our folks in their spare time.  There are a bunch of Windows Phone apps as well as an Open Source unit test framework for Windows Phone.

Check them all out here below:

APPS

BobbleHead by Tim Greenfield

Bobblehead your friends! Poke, push, and shake your phone to see the bobble heads bobble and jiggle. Take pictures of your friends, give them different bodies, and save them to your phone. BobbleHead includes 3 sample bobbleheads. The full version is required to make your own bobbleheads.

http://windowsphone.com/s?appid=84239d1b-7401-e011-9264-00237de2db9e

PuzzleTouch by Tim Greenfield

Fun and addictive jigsaw puzzles by the award winning PuzzleTouch.com. PuzzleTouch features dozens of spectacular and realistic jigsaw puzzles as well as the ability to create your own puzzles from pictures you take on your phone! Plus, you can send your personal jigsaw puzzles to friends and family and have them play on the web. PuzzleTouch is for adults and kids alike and even includes advanced puzzles that allow the pieces to be rotated 360 degrees. PuzzleTouch makes it fun and easy to snap pieces into place and is truly one of a kind.

http://windowsphone.com/s?appid=5309e1b0-acf3-df11-9264-00237de2db9e

Favorite Numbers by Chris Vigna (@cvigna)

Favorite Numbers provides quick access to the phone numbers you dial the most. Numbers can even be grouped in to categories in order to keep like contacts together. A trial version is available which limits the number of contacts you can add and sets the categories to a default set of group.

http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/apps/fdbbf588-da03-e011-9264-00237de2db9e

Get Stuff Done by Dan Slightam  (@SDanUp)

GSD helps Get Stuff Done!  It’s a list application optimized for simplicity, organization, efficiency, and customization.   Quickly add and cross-off prioritized tasks while doing them.  Share the stuff you have to do and the stuff you get done with others.  Customize the app based on personal preferences.

http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/apps/decfc1bc-483d-e011-854c-00237de2db9e

Apples to Oranges by Dan Slightam

Decision helper application that helps you decide between options.  Create weighted pro/con lists for different options, comparing them against each other, and then seeing which option is the favorite after based on all the weighted pros/cons

http://www.windowsphone.com/en-US/apps/f4a20bab-2478-e011-986b-78e7d1fa76f8

 

OPEN SOURCE

StatLight for Windows Phone 7 by Jasson Jarret (@staxmanade)

Support for running unit tests inside StatLight. This basically allows you to build a unit test project, point StatLight at the test project Xap and StatLight will start the phone emulator, run your tests and then you can do anything you can normally do with StatLight as far as handling the results. (Print to console, TeamCity integration, dump an MSTest TRX file, standard StatLight XML output, NUnit xml output, etc…)

http://github.com/staxmanade/StatLight

Microsoft Media Platform: Player Framework for Windows 8 Metro style apps

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originally posted by Tim Greenfield (@timgreenfield): http://programmerpayback.com/2012/03/11/microsoft-media-platform-player-framework-for-windows-8-metro-style-apps/

Need to build an app that plays video? This week we released a new version of the MMP: Player Framework (formerly the Silverlight Media Framework) made for Windows 8 Metro style applications.

With guidance the Windows 8 and IIS teams, we (Microsoft Media Platform team & Vertigo Software) created an open source media player framework that you can use for both HTML-based and XAML-based Metro style applications.

Support for HTML and XAML

The player framework supports both HTML/JavaScript and XAML/C#/VB based Metro style applications. Technically, there are two different components (one for HTML and one for XAML based apps), but they share very similar APIs, feature sets, and in some cases even share the same source code. Under the hood, the XAML version is built on top of the MediaElement that ships with .NET and similarly, the HTML version is built on top of the HTML5 <video> tag.

Our primary goal was to ensure both flavors felt natural and familiar to both HTML and XAML developers. If you are an HTML/JavaScript developer, using the JavaScript version will be very similar to using the other JavaScript controls that ship with Windows 8 as well as those already familiar with the HTML5 <video> tag. If you are a XAML/managed code developer, you can expect the XAML version to adhere to the practices and patterns of .NET & Silverlight controls.

Extensibility

The framework: We refer to the player framework as a framework as opposed to a control or component because it is intended to be a mini-platform in it’s own right. While these details will be hidden to the majority of developers using it as is out of the box media player, the player framework is built on a plugin style architecture that enables the feature set to be expanded and evolve after the fact without touching the core code base. In fact, many of the features currently in the framework are implemented as plugins. For example: the main control bar that the user interacts with is technically a plugin that could be swapped in our out for a radically different implementation.

Styling: One of the most common requirements in building a media player is to be able to skin the UI to match your brand. By default, the player framework ships with a Metro style skin, but you can easily modify the look and feel of the player from CSS or XAML without having to build a custom player.

Open source: the player frameworks ships with full source code under the liberal Ms-Pl license. Crack it open and see how it ticks or make changes to suite your needs.

How similar is it to the existing HTML5 or Silverlight versions of the player framework?

You may already be familiar with the existing HTML5 for the web or Silverlight for the web/desktop and phone versions of the player framework. The Windows 8 version of the framework should feel familiar and is in fact based on much of the same code. However, you should not expect full compatibility. We wanted to make sure the player framework felt like it was made for Windows 8 Metro style apps and it’s respective development model (HTML vs. XAML). We also wanted to meld the two versions and their APIs when it made sense. Lastly, we used this opportunities to make architectural improvements that would better position the framework for a long and bright future.

Features

You’ll find that the player framework has an extensive API chocked full of many useful hooks and features. From 30,000 feet, here is a sampling of features you will find in v1 of the player framework.

  • VOD
  • Progressive video
  • Smooth streaming
  • Rich DVR (Play, pause, stop, fast forward, rewind, skip next & back, seek-able timeline, volume, slow motion, instant replay)
  • Full screen
  • Closed captions (plain text for Xaml and WebVTT for js)
  • Styling support
  • Buffering and error/retry visual states.
  • Poster image
  • Click-to-play UI to let the user choose to start watching.
  • All features already included with the MediaElement and <Video/>
  • Playlist
  • Chapters
  • Timeline markers
  • Support for localization
  • Compact UI for snapped view
  • Support for DRM (e.g. PlayReady)

What’s next?

The fun doesn’t stop here. We’re already hard at work on more features. Here are some prominent ones in the cards.

  • Adaptive streaming APIs
  • Advertising
  • Audio player
  • TTML closed captions
  • Audio track selection (multi-language audio)
  • Live video

Got feedback?

We’d love to hear your feedback and make sure the player framework offers the features and functionality you need in your apps. We encourage developers to check out the player framework on CodePlex and post feedback on the CodePlex forum.

Hope you enjoy!