Sunday, June 03, 2007

I've post an article about Microsoft Popfly on CodeProject.com.

CodeProject.com: Meet Microsoft Popfly: Part I - Mashup App Creator Built On Silverlight

It covers the following areas:

image image 
Popfly Space Popfly Web Page Creator
image image
Popfly Mashup Creator Popfly Block Creator

If there is enough interest, then I'll do a part two on building mashups, and a part three on creating Popfly blocks.



Sunday, June 03, 2007 18:44:59 (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [1]  |  Trackback
Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Make Magazine, one of the coolest magazines ever, has an article on their blog on all the progress being made in the world of 3-D printers, or as I like to call them replicator prototypes.

The article I'm referring to is The Desktop Factory - Fab@Home.

Here's a real good overview section from the article:

Lipson’s fabrication machine, called a “fabber,” can print thousands of three-dimensional objects, everything from toy parts to artificial muscles, using dozens of materials, including PlayDoh, peanut butter and silicone, by following simple directions sent to it by a PC. About the size of a microwave, the fabber costs $2,300 to assemble—roughly one tenth the cost of commercial 3-D printers.

While I was watching Star Wars: The Legacy Revealed on History Channel I happened on one of the coolest commercials I have send in a long time. It was a commercial for the Craftsman CompuCarve. You can pretty much see the same thing here.

image image image  image

The Craftsman CompuCarve is $1,899.99, which I think is still a little high. But if you consider the business opportunities, from everything like mall kiosks, flea markets, business logo items, and eBay and other online possibilities I think it would be easy to make you money back on the investment. (Yeah, I'm tempted.) smile_teeth

I'd want to make a Möbius strip or a maybe a Sierpinski triangle. It's a shame it is limited on 3-D capabilities. I think I'll hold out a little longer and see how the The Desktop Factory - Fab@Home project does. Besides I probably couldn't resist trying other things besides wood in it.

Famous Last Words: "Hey, look its winter. Let's make ice sculptures." smile_omg



Wednesday, May 30, 2007 20:12:04 (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [1]  |  Trackback

imageI just saw on Robert Scoble's Blog that Microsoft has released a new version of Windows Live Writer. And I thought the previous version was good.

Since I both use and really like Windows Liver Writer, and its Free, I figured I give my endorsement and big thanks to the team for great job.

"Writer is a desktop application that makes it easy to publish rich content to your blog."

Highlights of New or Improved Features

  • Inline spell checking
  • Table editing
  • Ability to add categories
  • New look and feel

Key Features

  • Compatible with your blog service
  • WYSIWYG editing
  • Rich media publishing
  • Powerful editing features
  • Offline editing

Developer Community

[Download]

---

image   image 

There are new versions of Windows Live Messenger 8.5 Beta and Windows Live Mail as well.

 



Wednesday, May 30, 2007 19:04:09 (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback
Tuesday, May 29, 2007

CodeProject.com: Sierpinski Triangle - An Introduction into Silverlight by Example I've put together a beginner's introduction into Silverlight on CodeProject.com. The article covers how to use Silverlight to create the famous Sierpinki Triangle fractal. It's really meant to help someone who wants to create their first Silverlight experience, but then again maybe that's you?

Sierpinski Triangle - An Introduction into Silverlight by Example



Tuesday, May 29, 2007 19:06:13 (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback
Monday, May 28, 2007

There's a whole set of "Hi, I'm a Marvel... and I'm a DC." parodies on YouTube. They are terrific, made my day. There are nine of them in total, and they crack me up. I think I'll watch them again.

 



Monday, May 28, 2007 10:49:00 (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [2]  |  Trackback
Saturday, May 26, 2007

Yeah, I was tempted to name it, Chris Craft's Custom Clock Block officially, and then I decided to just name it Clock.

There didn't appear to be an easy way to get access to Date and Time information in Popfly, so I figured it would make for a good test case for my first custom Popfly block.

Clock Block

  • displayMilitaryTime
  • displayTime
  • getSeconds
  • getMinutes
  • getHours
  • getDay
  • getDate
  • getMonth
  • getFullYear
  • getTime
  • about

Clock Block Popfly Example Application: Clockr

 I made a quick application to see Clock Block in action. It takes the current military time and grabs images off of flickr for each digit and makes a Ransom Note clock out of it.

As you can see in the screenshot it was 15:08:46, a little after 3pm, when I took the screenshot.



Saturday, May 26, 2007 14:35:06 (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [1]  |  Trackback

I've been using Popfly for just a short while now, and while I do enjoy the drag and drop visual design surface, it doesn't lend itself to text lists very well. Sometimes I just want a text list of all my possibilities in one place.

This "Cheat Sheet" covers the top 50 official Popfly blocks, and not any end user created blocks. There's almost another 50 of those as well.

I figured I'm probably not the only one so here's my list. I created the list using the Block Inspector Block's getOperations method.

Overtime I'll probably spruce this up some and add more detailed information. Hope it helps!

 BLaugh - drag this to the editor to add it BLaugh Block

  • getRandomComics
  • getComic

 Block Inspector Block

  • getOperations
  • getAllowedValues

 Calculator Block

  • getRandomWholeNumber
  • getRandomNumber
  • getMaximum
  • getMinimum
  • round
  • add
  • subtract
  • multiply
  • divide

 Carousel Block

  • addImage
  • setFrameColor
  • setAttribution

 Combine Block

  • combineTwoLists
  • combineThreeLists

 Conversation Block

  • addMessage

Digg - drag this to the editor to add it Digg Block

  • GetStories
  • GetPopularStories
  • GetUpcomingStories
  • GetStoriesByContainer
  • GetPopularStoriesByContainer
  • GetUpcomingStoriesByContainer
  • GetStoriesByTopic
  • GetPopularStoriesByTopic
  • GetUpcomingStoriesByTopic
  • GetStoryByStoryId
  • GetStoriesByUser
  • GetTopics
  • GetTopicByName
  • GetUsers
  • GetUser
  • GetUserFriends
  • GetUserFans

Digital Podcast - drag this to the editor to add it Digital Podcast Block

  • Search

Facebook - drag this to the editor to add it Facebook Block

  • getFriends
  • getUserInfo
  • getPhotosOfMe
  • getPhotos
  • getPhotoAlbums
  • getGroups

 Filter Block

  • filter
  • truncate

flickr - drag this to the editor to add it flickr Block

  • getGeotaggedPhotos
  • getPhotos
  • getTags
  • getUserPhotos
  • getPhotoset

Gauge - drag this to the editor to add it Gauge Block

  • setValue
  • increaseValue

GameTrailers - drag this to the editor to add it GameTrailers Block

  • getFeeds
  • getTrailers

GeoNames - drag this to the editor to add it GeoNames Block

  • getLatitudeAndLongitude
  • lookupOnPlaceName
  • lookupOnLatitudeLongitude
  • lookupOnZipCode
  • lookupOnCityState

 Image Scaper Block

  • getImages
  • getUniqueImages

 Image Comment Block

  • comment

Indeed Jobs - drag this to the editor to add it Indeed Jobs Block

  • search

Live Spaces - drag this to the editor to add it Live Spaces Block

  • getPhotos
  • getFriends
  • getLists

MSN Horoscopes - drag this to the editor to add it MSN Horoscopes

  • getMonthlyHoroscope
  • getWeeklyHoroscope
  • getDailyHoroscope

MSN Horoscopes - drag this to the editor to add it MSN News Feeds

  • TopBoxOffice
  • JimJubekMoneyCentralColumn
  • LizPulliamMoneyCentralColumn
  • InCarNation
  • TopCelebrities
  • TopMovieRentals
  • InTheaters
  • ComingSoon
  • TopStories

My Live Contacts - drag this to the editor to add it My Live Contacts Block

  • getContacts

 News Reader Block

  • addNewsItem

PageTurner - drag this to the editor to add it Page Turner Block

  • addNewsItem

 PhotoFlip Block

  • addImage

 PhotoSphere Block

  • addImage

 PhotoStack Block

  • addImage

PhotoTiles Block

  • addImage

RegExp Block

  • getMatches
  • isMatch
  • isWholeNumber

RSS - drag this to the editor to add it RSS Block

  • getItems
  • getFeed

SeattlePublicLibr - drag this to the editor to add it SeattlePublicLibrary Block

  • getBooks

 Slideshow Block

  • addImage

Snipshot - drag this to the editor to add it Snipshot Block

  • editImage

SoapBox - drag this to the editor to add it SoapBox Block

  • search
  • getFeaturedVideos

 Sort Block

  • sort

Stock Quotes - drag this to the editor to add it Stock Quotes

  • getStockGraph
  • getQuote

 Text Helper Block

  • getSubstring
  • append
  • skipFirstCharacters
  • split

Timer - drag this to the editor to add it Timer Block

  • tick

Trynt - drag this to the editor to add it Trynt Block

  • calculateLoveFactor

Twitter - drag this to the editor to add it Twitter Block

  • getLatestPosts
  • getFriendsPosts

 Upcoming Block

  • findEvents

User Input - drag this to the editor to add it User Input Block

  • getText
  • getTwoTextValues
  • getThreeTextValues
  • getChoiceFromDropdown
  • getTwoChoicesFromDropdowns
  • getThreeChoicesFromDropdowns
  • getTextAndChoice

Video Player - drag this to the editor to add it Video Player Block

  • findEvents

Virtual Earth - drag this to the editor to add it Virtual Earth Block

  • addPushpin
  • setMapView
  • drawLine
  • deleteAllPushpins

 Whack-A-Mole Block

  • addImage

 Yahoo! Answers Block

  • getAnswers

 Yahoo! Images Block

  • search

 Yahoo! News Block

  • search

 Yahoo! Term Extraction Block

  • getTerm

 Yahoo! Traffic Block

  • getTrafficForAddress
  • getTrafficForZipCode
  • getTrafficForCoordinates

 Yahoo! Video Block

  • search

Xbox Live - drag this to the editor to add it XBox Live Block

  • getGamerCard
  • getLastPlayedGames
  • getPlayerPresence


Saturday, May 26, 2007 08:45:44 (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback
Friday, May 25, 2007

My first Popfly application: Who is Digging You? Lets you see, literally, who is digging you on Digg.com. It works best when the Digg user has set up a profile picture otherwise you get the "anonymous coward" picture. :)

Feel free to add me as a friend on Digg.

 

Great user experience, and it couldn't have been easier.

I combined the User Input Block, Digg Block, and the PhotoTiles Block to make my "Who is Digging You?" Mashup.

Wait until you see how little effort it was to implement this mashup.

I really think this could do for Web programming what QBasic did for DOS programming.

 

Here are my block settings:

User Input Block

  • label: To see who is Digging you enter your Digg Username:
  • defaultText: CJCraft
  • buttonText: Go

Digg Block

  • Operations: GetUserFans
  • userName: UserInputBlock.OutputString

PhotoTiles Block

  • imageUrl: DiggBlock.thumbnail
  • title: DiggBlock.name
  • description: DiggBlock.name
  • owner: DiggBlock.name


Friday, May 25, 2007 22:23:24 (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [1]  |  Trackback

The Silverlight Launch Pad has been popular, so I figured I start one for Microsoft Popfly as well, and see how it goes.

My Popfly user name is CJCraft (got my invite today) feel free to add me as a friend.

Popfly Core Web Sites

Popfly Downloads

Popfly Videos

Popfly Web Sites

Popfly Blogs



Friday, May 25, 2007 20:49:12 (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [1]  |  Trackback

“May the Force be with you.”

 

"On May 25th, 1977 the first film of the Star Wars Saga was released to theaters."



Friday, May 25, 2007 17:31:34 (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback
Thursday, May 24, 2007

 Silverlight, Windows Presentation Foundation, XAML, and Expression Blend are all best friends. And like any super hero team, they work best when they work together.

I've been wanting to learn more about the fab four, so I've put together this collection of reference material for our consideration. I'll update as I discover more...

 

Silverlight

Book Cover

Windows Presentation Foundation

Book Cover Book Cover Book Cover Book Cover 

Book Cover Book Cover Book Cover Book Cover

 XAML

Book Cover

 Expression Blend

Book Cover Book Cover Book Cover Book Cover

Book Cover Book Cover Book Cover



Thursday, May 24, 2007 20:19:33 (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [0]  |  Trackback
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Theme design by Jelle Druyts

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