Silverlight is Microsoft’s cross-browser, cross-platform browser plug-in that allows the creation of interactive web applications that employ high quality streaming media, vector graphics, images, and animation. Deployed as a plug-in for the major browsers on the Windows, Mac and Linux (supported by Novell) operating systems, web developers can craft interactive applications that have an identical user experience on the vast majority of web browsers deployed today. Silverlight addresses a disconnect that exists today in web development workflow where the design intent of graphics designers and interaction designers cannot be faithfully communicated to and crafted by the web developers. In Silverlight, this intent is created in design tools like Expression Design and Expression Blend and passed off to web developers in XML-based XAML data files. The fidelity of the designers’ ideas is kept as there is a clear separation between the design in XAML and the code in JavaScript.
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Google Earth is a virtual globe program, allowing viewers to visualize data on top of displayed satellite images of the Earth’s surface. Launched in 2005 and released to the public in 2006, Google Earth fast became a household name hailed as a revolution for humanitarian development, much as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) were several decades ago. According to MapAction, “There seem at present tobe two distinct groups of humanitarian practitioners: those who are already, albeit tentatively,exploiting Google Earth and related geospatial methods in their work,and those whowill be, as soon as they see their first demonstration of its potential.” (MapAction, 2008: 9)
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BioTeam first became interested in Univa UD’s software efforts after hearing Univa CTO Steve Tueckespeak in Regensburg, Germany at the 2007 Grid Engine workshop. Shortly after that event Univa formally became Univa UD after merging with United Devices. At the time, Steve’s company seemed to be one of the few companies positioning themselves to offer full support and professional services encompassing commonly used open source products such as Sun Grid Engine that BioTeam often works with in the field. Individually these popular open source resources are relatively easy to acquire but Univa UD seemed to be making an interesting effort to become the one stop shop for a fully supported and integrated set of commonly required tools and technology.
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Many software developers are attracted to the idea of aspect-oriented programming (AOP) but unsure about how to begin using the technology. They recognize the concept of crosscutting concerns, and know that they have had problems with the implementation of such concerns in the past. But there are many questions about how to adopt AOP into the development process.
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Technologies known collectively as Web 2.0 have spread widely among consumers over the past five years. Social-networking Web sites, such as Facebook and MySpace, now attract more than 100 million visitors a month. As the popularity of Web 2.0 has grown, companies have noted the intense consumer engagement and creativity surrounding these technologies. Many organizations, keen to harness Web 2.0 internally, are experimenting with the tools or deploying them on a trial basis.
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Web 2.0 is a general term applied to any website that reacts to the input and activity of its users, such as a blog, a MySpace profile, a forum, or a Squidoo lens. Social Networking is best defined as the regular interaction of people for some common cause. Of course there is really nothing new about social networking, and it’s something many of us do every day offline, especially in schools or in the workplace. But as a marketing trend this concept is growing more and more popular online. This is because unlike most high schools, colleges, or workplaces, the Internet is filled with millions of individuals who are looking to meet other Internet users and develop both business and personal relationships.
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In general, the World Wide Web has a high potential as a platform for distributed groupware systems. Authors create and change documents locally and upload them to a Web server, where they can be accessed by their collaborators. However, Web browsers and servers which implement the protocol HTTP are mostly limited to provide reading access to Web documents. For this reason, existing Web-based groupware systems (e.g. the BSCW system) are implemented using client/server side scripting. These scripts are used to implement the basic operations needed for this kind of applications.
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The convergence of windows and the web is upon us . Google Maps, Gmail, Flickr and a variety of ne
AJAX and Rich Internet applications have begun to legitimize moving beyond HTML to deliver interactive applications that deliver the best of the web and the best of the desktop experience. We will show how these techniques are changing the way designers think about their applications designs. You will learn how to develop complex GUI’s for mixed user profiles, effectively use multimedia, implement visual design patterns, and effectively develop for multiple platforms plus, you will see the usability challenges introduced when these new interaction techniques are implemented. Learn from the experts who have been helping companies develop world-class enterprise applications for over a decade.
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