CUCUSOFT has released the Zune Video Converter Suite. I purchased this last week prior to heading out to Vegas for the WebBuilder 2.0 confernence. As you might imagine, this is a much nicer experience in comparison to the pseudo-hack methods I posted earlier. While I’ve not used it for DVD video yet, I did use it to convert some of my MediaCenter recordings (about 10 episodes of one of my favorite TV shows) and it did a great job.
The night before my trip, I queued up 10 episodes of one of my favorite TV shows (that had been recorded with MediaCenter). I’m happy to report the result were files that were resized to the size of the Zune and were a little over 200 megs each. I watched 3 episodes on the Zune (each over an hour) on my way to Vegas, and can report quality was quite satisfactory.
On the DVD side, I’m very interestied in testing it out when I get back. I’ve used PocketDVD Wizard in the past (for smartphone and pocketpc), but the conversion time was an absolute nightmare (very long). CUCUSOFT claims to be faster than most packages, as it does the conversion in a single pass (vs. 2 pass conversions in other software packages).
I would imagine this functionality would come to the Zune at some point (wishful thinking, anyway), but if you’re looking for a quick fix, I’d personally recommend it.
NOTE: I ran this on my MediaCenter PC at home which is not migrated over to Windows Vista yet – if you’re looking to run this on Vista, I’d double-check with the folks at CUCUSOFT to confirm that it’s compatible.
http://www.cucusoft.com/dvd-to-zune+zune-video-converter-Suite.asp
I'm finally getting a chance to revisit InfoCenter. With major internal deliverables at work delivered, my book schedule finally getting back on track, with end of the year 'use or lose' vacation time upon us, and personal need for a better way to get my podcasts on my Zune, the project is back on.
The first go around was - as I mentioned - strictly an alpha, and I learned a fair bit. There were challenges with proxies, there were challenges with certain UI resolutions (prior to getting a 24 inch widescreen monitor myself, I had no idea how many folks were using them). For the alpha, I 'rolled my own' bits in a number of places - RSS, UI, etc. - because pieces of the platform that would have made this far easier, specifically IE7's RSS support and .NET Framework 3.0 were not available.
The good news is that IE7 and .NET Framework 3.0 are both released, so a large portion of the old code base has been retired. The new version has a Windows Presentation Foundation UI, utilizes the new feedstore, etc.
There's a commitment to some internal colleagues for an internal prototype a week from Monday. The focus of this drop will solely be on the podcasting/feed functionality, as this is what I continue to get emails about on a regular basis. The next drop will use the very cool Live Search macros as a replacement for the existing search functionality.
I might also mention that since the original version I've dabbled a bit with compact framework development, not to mention Atlas, so once I get v1 out the door, there may be some other interesting stuff coming...
After alot of hassles (online retailer not delivering, local stores being totally sold out), I finally managed to get my hands on a new Zune device today.
If you've got a Zune as well, you may have noticed that there are some cool videos pre-loaded on the Zune, but there does not appear to be any Zune videos for sale in the marketplace yet (atleast I haven't seen them).
If you have MediaCenter installed or you have DVDs you'd like to watch on the Zune, this entry's for you.
Media Center MS-DVR files on Zune
Ok, there's presently no out-of-the-box syncing of MS-DVR files to Zune. The good news is that there's a tool, DVRMSToolkit that readily will convert your MediaCenter recorded tv shows from MS-DVR format to .WMV. You can find this here - http://thegreenbutton.com/files/15/dvrms/entry112402.aspx
DVDs on Zune
Pocket DVD Wizard will convert DVDs to WMVs. In addition to converting it to WMV, it will also convert it for other players (i.e. ipod, psp). not to mention your pocketPC and smartphones. At $28, it's worth the price.
Find it here:
http://www.pocketdvdwizard.com/
TiVo on Zune?
I'm using Tivo Desktop to pull over some video files now. I'll post feedback on whether this works later in the week.
Anyone else going to WebBuilder 2.0 in Vegas in December? I've just confirmed If you're going and want to chat about anything from InfoCenter to WCF to CardSpace to Mashups, send me an email: mmercuri@microsoft.com
Dude - where's my InfoCenter? What can I say, but sorry for the delays. The drop of InfoCenter coincided with me taking a new job and starting a new book, so InfoCenter fell by the wayside for a bit. Because I get paid for the job and the book, those have been coming first for the past couple of months.
I know some folks have written me asking about availability of a client for Podcasts, as the latest drop of Media Player didn't include podcast support. I will actually be releasing to web two versions of InfoCenter dropping soon. One is an add-in for Visual Studio, the other is .NET Framework 3.0 based. When the latter drops, I'll also drop a simple sample of how you can build one yourself. The new versions, by the way, utilize the common feed store you'll have with IE7 and/or Windows Vista. The Visual Studio integration is working and something I particularly like, as you can listen while your coding.
People have also commented that the blog's been quiet. My new job is as an architect on the incubation team, which means my work is almost exclusively hush-hush until Mix or PDC. It's *very* exciting stuff, but can't say much publicly until next year.
It looks like the migration by the hoster is now complete. I'll have a chance this weekend to modify the look/feel. Expect to see a post Monday/Tuesday next week announcing it's been re-launched.
I should have more details on the status of the InfoCenter portal (InfoCenter.tv) on Monday. There were some additional delays in my hoster's migration, but it sounds like it should be right around the corner.
When the site goes online, you'll see that the guide will now be driven by the audience. I'm looking at doing something like 'Digg' only with workflow and some oversight. On a related note, I'm seriously thinking of releasing InfoCenter 2.0 (based on .NET Framework 3.0) into CodePlex as a shared source project.
I saw this over on Engadget this morning. It looks like the Nissan Nav system will include the ability to read RSS feeds out loud.
If you look at the picture in the article, you can distinctly see an antenna and a number of bars. Not sure if this would be WiFi or GSM, but definately interesting.
Posted Sep 31st 2006 4:05AM by Cyrus Farivar
Filed under: Transportation
 Wouldn't it be great if your car could actually read information to you? We're not just talking about reciting driving directions (that's so 2001), but rather an audio version of RSS feeds, specifically Yahoo Japan, Sony's So-net "lifestyle blog" and Nissan's travel guide blog. (C'mon Nissan, no love for Engadget Japanese?) It appears that this new addition to the Carwings system, which already provides ho-hum GPS navigation will also pack a 30GB hard drive so you can rock out to Pizzicato Five if you get bored of that mechanical voice. If you attend the Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies (October 3 - 7) to be held at the Makuhari Messe in Chiba, you can check out the updated Carwings system -- if you do, be sure to let us know how distracting the synthetic voice is while zooming down the road.
Earlier this week at X6 in Barcelona, there was an announcement of new game taking part in the Halo universe, namely Halo Wars.
I just watched the trailer, and it looks pretty amazing.
Check it out here:http://www.halowars.com/trailer.html
There's actually a ton of great stuff coming out of that conference, from info on the HD-DVD drive, info on games like Grand Theft Auto 4 and Gears of War, news on some great old school additions for Xbox Arcade (Contra, anyone?).
Get the full scoop over on Major Nelson's blog - http://www.majornelson.com
Someone sent me an note asking about Information Center this morning, and wanted to follow up.
My hoster, in an attempt to keep existing customers happy, did a read-only mirror of the existing sites while they did the upgrade to Sharepoint 2007. It was actually excellent for them to do that for most of the folks on the service, unfortunately, it wouldn't have worked for what I wanted to do for Information Center.
This pushed the Go Live for their upgrade to this week, I'd hope to have InformationCenter.TV up and running for next Tuesday.
As you're likely aware, we've had a new RC1 release of Vista, and along with it a RC1 release of .NET Framework 3.0.
I've gone ahead an updated the code for several chapters from the book WCF: Hands On to be compatibile with RC1 changes
You can find the code for Chapter 9 on Custom Behaviors here:
09PerBook.zip (98.58 KB)
As you're likely aware, we've had a new RC1 release of Vista, and along with it a RC1 release of .NET Framework 3.0.
I've gone ahead an updated the code for several chapters from the book WCF: Hands On to be compatibile with RC1 changes
You can find the code for Chapter 6 on Legacy Integration. In addition to ComPlus and MSMQ which were in the book, I've also added another sample that shows how to call WCF from COM. This allows you to empower legacy applications written in Visual Basic, vbscript, Lotus Notes to now consume WCF services.
You can find the updated samples here: Chapter6Code.zip (350.48 KB)
The WCF Hands On book started off as WCF Labs for last years PDC. We started writing it last year, when the docs were pretty sparse in places (as one would expect).
I haven't spent alot of time in the help file until this morning. I'm updating the chapter of the book that deals with COM Interop and needed to double-check something. I shouldn't have been surprised as we're much closer to RTM, but it was *much* more complete and has lots of good info and downloadable samples. There If you haven't look at the doc (or the samples) lately, I'd definately recommend revisiting them - there's also a good POX sample in the RC1 drop as well.
If you want the absolute latest public drop of docs, there was one made on September 15th. It's posted over on netfx3, check it out here:
http://wcf.netfx3.com/files/folders/product_team/entry5854.aspx
As you're likely aware, we've had a new RC1 release of Vista, and along with it a RC1 release of .NET Framework 3.0.
I've gone ahead an updated the code for several chapters from the book WCF: Hands On to be compatibile with RC1 changes
You can find the code for Chapter 5 on Reliable Sessions, Transactions, and Queues here:
05CodeRC1.zip (226.14 KB)
As you're likely aware, we've had a new RC1 release of Vista, and along with it a RC1 release of .NET Framework 3.0.
I've gone ahead an updated the code for several chapters from the book WCF: Hands On to be compatibile with RC1 changes
You can find the code for Chapter 7 on interoperability here:
Code.zip (295.39 KB)
This has nothing to do with WCF, WF, CardSpace or Information Center, but if you have Xbox and an HDTV, this is some cool news coming out of game show in Tokyo:
"In addition, Microsoft announced that its fall software update, scheduled for release later this year, will allow all Xbox 360 consoles around the world to output game and movie content in 1080p resolution. "
If you've read the blog for awhile, you'll know that I moved over to the incubation team in Microsoft's Platform Strategy Group back in August.
My old team is still looking for my replacement, and they're now expanding their search. if you're passionate about CardSpace, Windows Communication Foundation, and Workflow Foundation and working with large Enterprise customers you might be interested in this.
In addition to working with some great technologies, you'll be surrounded by a great group of folks on the Longhorn Server evangelism team, many of whom are authors (or authoring) books on .NETFX 3 or other topics.
James has the full scoop on his blog, check out the link below for details:
http://blogs.msdn.com/jamescon/archive/2006/09/19/761696.aspx
As you're probably aware, I separated Information Center from my main blog to www.informationcenter.tv. In addition to providing a portal for adding more feeds, etc., part of the rationale was that the downloads of the August CTP pushed me over the download limit with my hoster. As this is a personal side project, I went out and found a separate 'free' hoster to handle the bandwidth challenges. Going through my email over the weekend, you can imagine my surprise when I ran across the following:
"I don’t know where to start to share with you the joy and fun on running upgrade!
We are still running testing on our mirror environment. While we think we are getting closer, a few buggy issues pop up and we are still debugging. If everything goes well by EOD tomorrow, then we will start upgrading our production environment next week.
What does it mean to you?
<hosternameomitted/> will need to be out of service for about a week. Our schedule down time is
September 18th 8:00am PST till September 24th 11:00pm PST
If there is any specific information you’d need to pull off from the production environment, please make sure you do that before next Monday."
The hoster has had very little downtime in the last year, which is why I chose it, but they're upgrading all their servers to Office 2007 B2 TR. I've heard they could be online sooner than a week, if so, we'll get it posted sooner.
Watch this space for announcements.
InformationCenter.tv will be going down for a couple of days, it's being moved to a different hoster. It will now be in a hosted Sharepoint server. For those not using Sharepoint, there are a number of great features that I think will make it much easier to modify/maintain. It will also allow me to utilize workflow to handle public additions of new blogs not currently in the directory.
I'll post a note here when the site is back online.
Cheers,
Marc
The blog has been quiet this past week, as between the new job and the new book (Understanding CardSpace), I've been incredibly busy. The next release of InfoCenter has been pushed, it will now be out on Sept. 18th. Now that IE7 has gone to a release candidate, I'm strongly investigating taking a dependency on the RSS functionality provided by it and have it in the next release (hence the long interval).
By leveraging the work those folks have done there, there are three direct benefits - (a) by going with platform componetns for RSS, it removes a disconnect between the InfoCenter stored feeds and the RSS platform stored feeds, (b) the code underneath the RSS functionality has a dedicated group of developers/testers behind it, and (c) it will allow me to focus on some of the next-gen functionality much sooner (i.e. information dvr, community, etc.)
If anyone is strongly opposed to taking a dependency on IE, I'd like to hear your thoughts.
Also, I'm investigating moving parts of this over to CodePlex as a shared source effort to have InfoCenter move along regardless of my personal schedule. Is this something you'd be interested in participating in? If so, let me know (and let me know what your coding background is in)
Cheers,
Marc
People have been asking about Icons to use on their sites for Information Center. Specifically, if you'd like to expose your podcast on your site such that it will launch Information Center. Also, you may want to share a Mix that was created in Information Center.
I spent a few minutes in Photoshop and whipped up the following:
I'd ask you not start using these until the next drop, as the current CTP is very much a alpha/preview where the next drop is something that is more inline with a beta quality CTP.
I spent some time working on Information Center this weekend. I'll be working 1:1 with some folks who've offered to test some of the features that I can't reproduce here (i.e. web proxy issues), and look to post up a new drop late this week.
Splash Screen removed
Non-full screen mode (screen resizing - see screenshot above)
Backward/Forward buttons (see screenshot above)
Integrated Feedback
Integrated Update Notifications
WebProxy Support Added
Change Location of Subscription File/Mix File storage
Current Channel Media Player Enhancements
Modify button and list controls to Left Justify (in anticipation of new layout to debut in September)
Display descriptiion / last published / title on mouse-over in the list controls.
Resolve configuration save issues.
Create RSS feeds for downloads area.
Based on the feedback re: InfoCenter on multiple-monitors and a number of resolutions, I'm going to do a quick rev of InfoCenter this weekend that address the resizing issues, as well as a couple of other tweaks. Expect to see a link here soon to a new drop.
Also expect to see www.informationcenter.tv to expand to allow you to recommend new podcasts for inclusion in the directory, support for feedback/feature requests, and start to become more of a portal.
I'll also be sharing a mix or two so you can see what can be done with mixes (not to mention see some very funny content)
I'll also be adding more channels to the guide, if you've got some suggestions that you think should be in there, definately shoot me a note at mmercuri@informationcenter.tv.
Cheers,
Marc
One thing to point out - if you listen to the audio cast on ARCast, it was recorded while I was in my old role. As I mentioned last week, I recently took a position in another team, which I started on Monday.
I'm now an Architect on the incubation team inside the Platform Strategy Group here at Microsoft. Not sure how much I can talk about specifics about the projects at this point, but what I can say is the work is both challenging and exciting. I started my career in startups l(ong before they were fashionable), and there's just something about incubation that's at my core.
Lots of opportunities to do great stuff, and I'm already impressed with my new manager (in addition to being just a very smart guy I can learn from, he's been both a beta tester and big evangelist for InfoCenter) As things progress, I'll be able to chat more about what we're doing, as I think alot of people who subscribe to this blog would find it interesting.
I was checking it out and found... myself. I did an interview with Ron Jacobs over at ARCast awhile ago, and it's just recently been posted. If you're interested in checking it out, there's a link to ARCast on the featured page in InfoCenter.
Overall, responses have been good (particularly given there's no doc posted yet).
I did want to address a couple of comments -
Two people raised an issue today that's not handled in the CTP - scenarios where you are running on a network that requires a username and password to get to the internet. I'll send a note when this is updated and ready to share. If you're using a proxy to get to the web, this CTP won't work for you unfortunately.As this is not a scenario I have in my home lab, someone has been kind enough to offer to test.
Someone else commented on the display on a tablet PC. There have been some issues with the re-drawing on certain resolutions. The reality is, I have everyone from people who use 15 inch CRTs to people who use 24" wide screens that can alternate from portrait to landscape mode. This CTP does have issues in some resolutions. (tests were done on 1024x and 1280x). If you have an issue with display, this is something I'll look into - but remember, I'm one guy. If you can tell me the resolution you're using, I can add it to the test matrix.
I'll be working on this again this weekend, if you get your feedback to me before then (particularly on resolution), there's a good chance I can tackle that by next Monday.
Cheers,
Marc
The August Community Technology Preview of Information Center aka InfoCenter is now available for dowload.
It should be pointed out that this is a CTP - not a released product/project. It's still rough in spots, but it's more than functional enough for people to start using it and deriving value from it. The work on categories (searching), media syncing, more media management, rating, and some other bits is coming next.
I've pre-stocked the directory with almost 200 channels, so there's plenty of content. I will be adding even more channels this weekend, and you can always add your own channels via the 'Manage My Subscriptions' area of the guide.
As I mentioned when I first started talking about this, it's free. If you like it, great - if you think there are opportunities to make it better, definately let me know.
I will be working on an updated version very soon (likely this weekend) that will alert you to updates, as well as allow you to provide feedback / report issues directly through InfoCenter itself. Until that next drop, if you send me an email a mmercuri@infocenter.tv or mmercuri@microsoft.com, I'll make sure to review the issues.
It should be pointed out that InfoCenter does take a dependency on certain things. While it's very flexible, if you download a podcasts in the .MOV format (Quicktime), it will require Quicktime software to play it. You can download Quicktime from here (http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/win.html). If you already had iTunes installed, then you've got quicktime, if you don't - you'll probably need to install that via the link.
In addition, if you want to play videos from YouTube, they use technology from Macromedia. Chances are this is already installed on your machine, but if for some reason you don't have it installed, you can install it from here (http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash&promoid=BIOW)
The downloadable file can be found on http://www.informationcenter.tv
Enjoy!
-Marc
While I can't FTP from within the corporate firewall, I can blog. One of the ideas I think is fresh in Information Center is the concept of 'mixing' and sharing RSS content.
The following set of screen grabs step you through how this works.
(1) Navigating through content, I see an item that I want to add to a mix, in this case Episode 58 of Diggnation.
(2) Click the Add to Mix button, and the 'Add to Mix' dialog appears. Select the Mix name you want to add this to.
So far this is similair to a playlist in a music player application - but trust me, it gets better.
(3) As I browse, I add other items to my mix. In this case I add the August 21st Dilbert cartoon.
(4) You may have noticed there's an item titled 'Manage Mixes' in the guide.
Clicking on this shows list of mixes you've built, and clicking on a mix shows you which items are there.
You can remove items from a mix, you can remove a mix altogether, but most importantly, you can share a mix.
(5) Clicking Share Mix, brings up a mail dialog (mail server setup is in the config section).
I enter the information and click send. My mix is then sent to the recipient, in this case that's me at my microsoft address.
It's important to note that what I'm sending is not the graphics for the dilbert cartoon or the video for diggnation. I'm sending an RSS Channel that was created on-the-fly, behind the scenes through Information Center (a mix is an RSS feed)
 >
(6) I receive an email. It's my shared 'Mix'. Because Information Center registers the file extension .IC, the infocenter icon is located next to the mix name. Note that the file is only 3k. We are not passing around the actually 200+ meg diggnation video or the dilbert graphic. We are passing around meta-data that says where the information can be found. You can now share information in a context without having to embed the heavy media and document objects.
(7)
Opening the item, triggers the launch of Information Center. It knows it is starting up from a file, and takes you directly to your mix
We can now see the mix. I can see all of the items that were shared and can access them.
If I go back to the UI, I can see that in the my mixes tab in the guide, Marc is listed as one of my mixes.
In addition to making them shareable so that other people can see, you can access them through information center as well.
Think about it - this effectively let's you build your own channels for your personal use and sharing from content provided by any number of individuals. For example, if I wanted to go through a number of blogs and pull out all of the items relevant on a topic - say Security in Windows Communication Foundation - I could reference content from all of the sites in a single mix.
If a colleague of mine in Europe asked me - I want to learn more about security in WCF, can you help me out ? - I can simply share my mix with him, and he has all of the information quickly.
In addition to technical content, you can build mixes with things like YouTube videos, etc. It starts getting really powerful.
I went to sign the bits last night with my new code signing certificate and ran into an issue. I've not done publisher code signing before, and I received a .SPC and a .PVK but not a .PFX. After some late night research, I was able to make a .PFX from the other two, but Visual Studio wasn't liking it.
I'll get it sorted out today, but the reality is I can't FTP out from inside Microsoft (security policy), so the soonest this will get out for non-Microsofties is tonight.
Cheers,
Marc
I came across an issue last night with Information Center running on Vista. Apparently, the last time I tested it was before adding in the Subscriptions and Mixes. The way it had been coded ran afoul of LUA.
Fortunately, I got the 411 on the LUA specifics from a colleauge this morning (yes - we Microsoft folks are always online, even on Sunday), and have re-wired where the files are stored so they play nice on Vista. Impacted the schedule some, but not to worry, this is still being released tonight (maybe a bit later  , but before I go to bed).
Cheers,
Marc
Atom support is now incorporated in (see below). There are a couple of sites with some challenges, but I'm sure that's tied to the hour (>1am here in Seattle) and will get resolved later today.
With Atom support, MySubscriptions, and MyMixes in, it's just testing, adding some additional error handling and dealing with the odd issues that come up.
If you scrutinized the screenshots, you may have noticed there was some overlap in the background frame in the feed display (curved frame at the bottom.) The great design folks in another part of the company have agreed to do one more edit for me, so this will be resolved for the release this weekend. Not sure if I can say the name of the team, but you can figure it out if you read some of the earlier postings
As this is a side project, it's a bit tougher to give dates, especially this week. I'm actually starting a new job next week (still at MS - details to come later) , so am in the midst of transitioning out of my old role, packing up my office, and ramping up on the new job in addition to working on Information Center.
No other features on the checklist, though, so if you check back on Sunday afternoon/evening, it will definately be here. If I post it Friday or Saturday, if you're on the email list, I'll send you a note.
Cheers,
Marc
Ok - before anyone says it.. yes, the grid in the version posted earlier tonight was not pretty.
It's been changed and now looks much better. See below:
 
I did four things this weekend - (1) I read some comments on blogs regarding what people thought Information Center was (and their expectations), (2) did a fair amount of usability testing, (3) wrote alot of code, and (4) consumed more diet coke than any individual should in a 48 hour period.
I've had feedback from alot of people both direct and through comments I've read on various sites, that they'd really like to be able to use this for more than just technology blogs / podcasts. There were *alot* of people who said they'd like a new tool to manage their podcasts specifically. I listened and I made some significant changes such that I think this is going to meet expectations. You'll see in the screenshots below sites that are distinctly non-technical, like NBC's Meet The Press and YouTube's Top Rated feeds. You'll also notice the guide now lists *alot* of non-technical categories. Alot of people were asking for this, so I rolled this in as a core feature in the first CTP vs. delivering it later on.
I've totally overhauled the UI, and for the first time since Information Center's inception, I'm really happy with it. One challenge was in providing as good as an experience for text based content (standard blogs) as media, the other was integrating subscriptions, subscribing, sharing, and mixing in such a way as it was intuitive. I really think the UI is finally there. I've taken a number of screenshots from my testing today and have placed them below so you can see for yourself.
In addition, you'll notice there are graphics for the blogs that are there. Where are these coming from? Images will be pulled from the relevant tags for the channel in core RSS (seen in my blog below), iTunes extensions (seen in Meet The Press and MajorNelson.com), or NewsGator extensions (seen in Channel 9). For those sites that do not specify a channel graphic, it will go to a default (see YouTube below)
I also had a fair amount of comments around the browsing window. Specifically "What if I want to watch the video in a bigger window?" What's not visible in the screenshots - but it's there, I swear - is a slider. The upper section (video/blog description, image, description) and the list of items are on two separate panels. You can extend either as much as you'd like. Once you click on an item, it determines you current window size and resizes the embedded media player appropriately. You'll also note that the video/blog area is large in general. This works out particularly well for text blogs, as you can extend to the full screen to read.
I've also been building out a tool behind the scenes which I call FeedCenter/FeedStation, which is helping me manage all of the feeds behind the scenes as well.
So - if you've ever done consulting or project management, you're familiar with the trade-off triangle. For those unfamiliar, you have time, resources and features and impacts to one area have carry on effects on others. In this case, the UI has been re-done and locked down and this can be used for lot's on non-tech content much easier now - but it's pushed this back a few days more.
This is a slow week at the office, so should be able to freely crank this out in the evenings and turn it around soon.
Please keep those comments coming - mmercuri@microsoft.com - as you can see by the accelerated inclusion of non-tech content, I really do listen
Cheers,
Marc
 
        
I mentioned in an earlier post that InfoCenter would be delayed a few days. What does that translate to? No later than 12:01am Monday PAC time. Likely before, if you signed up for a notification, you'll receive an email.
Otherwise, if you check back on Monday there will be bits available for use.
If you're asking 'Why the delay?'. There were some things I'd wanted to include in V1, that I hand't and given the state of where InfoCenter is, and how long it would take to get them in, I decided to push the drop back a couple of days. It will, without question, be on the site on Monday. Right now, there are close to 200 channels configured, and there are a couple of additions I think you'll like when you get it on Monday.
If you're really keen, if you check back over the weekend, you'll start seeing some interesting stuff pop up on Sunday.
Cheers,
Marc
"Do we really need another aggregator?" - This is a question I've been asked alot lately, in regards to Information Center.
My answer is Yes. I hope yours is too. Let me tell you why I think this, and then I'll show you some pictures from the UI that underscore the point.
I think there are a couple of things that set InfoCenter apart:
(a) featured feeds. This isn't just a client, it's pro-active - new feeds find you.
(b) media is a first class citizen in InfoCenter. The future is in media. Audio in the form of podcasts, video in any number of forms. Look at the success of podcasts on portable media devices, look at the popularity and growth rate of places like YouTube. In most aggregators, media is viewed as an attachment. in Information Center, media is a first class citizen.
(c) Information Center is designed to support just about any type of mainstream media out of the box (or can readily support it something like, say , quicktime, with a download from that vendors site). This means it will play MP3s and WMAs, it means it will play WMVs, MOVs, and other video files, and it also will play shockwave and flash. What does this mean? You can play podcasts, vblogs, and even embed YouTube's player in a feed.
(c) Information Center heavily leverages categories. You'll be able to leverage this for discoverability, and dvr-like suggestions based on your tag preferences.
(d) As stated earlier, InfoCenter will come with feeds out of the box - but you can change them and re-mix them. AND you can share them. Think about television - tv shows like Friends, Law & Order, the Brady Bunch, are all in syndication (remember that last S in RSS?) You can effectively become your own network. You can build your own feed of *links* - even if they exist across multiple sites - and take that feed and publish it as your own network. You can generate IC files (these are familiar RSS files) and share them however you like online, via email, CD/DVD, etc.
(e) Speaking of DVD, you can ship a DVD with an IC file in root, and with InfoCenter defined in the autorun, and it will start up in a kiosk mode. Allowing you to use this for content that exists offline, online, or both.
(e) InfoCenter is going to be delayed a few more days, such that I can ship a tool to allow you to easily mix your own feeds on Day 1.
Take a look at the screenshots below, it shows how powerful RSS and a new style aggregator can be. You can see that this readily displays Microsoft content (Going Deep on Channel 9, a GnomeDex video from On10.NET, and ARCast with Ron Jacobs from Skyscrapr.NET), as well as content from other third parties - including TWiT, Digg, and YouTube.
How difficult was it to do? One line in a configuration file. You just point to their feed direct or add it to your subscriptions, and you're in business.
Oh, before I forget, alot of people assumed this was done in WPF. I WISH! This is a Window |