Asynchronous Programming in C# 5

Pause ‘n’ play: Asynchronous C# Explained is a quite nice presentation from Microsoft Research’s Claudio Russo about asynchronous programming in C# 5.

Flash and Silverlight Video Players

Needed Flash and/or Silverlight web-page video players for our web site, and found Silverlight – Video Player (at CodePlex) and Flowplayer – Flash Video Player for the Web. Both look really good and are fully customizable.

Viral Marketing in Action

Don’t know how I missed it when it came in February, but here it is – absolutely fantastic and hilarious viral video clip titled “Sony releases new stupid piece of s%#$ that doesn’t f#$%ing work”. Must see! :)

ClaroVision.NET Platform Videos

My company, Oy ClaroVision Ltd, has been developing a media center (how we understand and see it) since 2006. What you get is:

• Digital Television PVR Record up to 6 channels and watch one more simultaneously
• Photo Album Organize your photos in a way most convenient for you thanks to extensive support of playlists (and, of course, you can view your photos too!!! :)
• Music (including CD) Take control of your music collection thanks to playlists and CD-ripping function
• Video (including DVD) Watch and organize all your videos, including DVDs (Blu-ray coming)
• Web Browser Access exciting Internet services on the living room TV (it is not a walled-garden browser!)
• Videophone Stay in touch with your family and friends

It is networked, so you can access content stored on your home PC/server as well. The main accent was made on usability – whole thing is very uniform and is controlled using remote control’s arrows, OK, Menu, and Back buttons.

We reached the beta milestone some time ago, and now we are ready to go to the public with our product. Here are some demo videos (all of them have HD version, so they are a bit bandwidth-demanding for proper watching) that make it easier to understand what we are talking about. You can find these same videos on our completely revamped website together with more detailed information about the platform and our company. Your comments are very welcome!

Stanford Engineering Everywhere Courses

The Stanford Engineering Everywhere has launched a series of free online computer science and electrical engineering courses (10 available so far). The courses span an introduction to computer science and an introduction to artificial intelligence and robotics, among other topics, and offer anytime and anywhere access to complete lecture videos via streaming or downloaded media, as well as full course materials including syllabi, handouts, homework, and exams.

Prioritizing Your Product Backlog

Mike Cohn, the author of Agile Estimating and Planning and User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development, the founder of Mountain Goat Software, a blogger, and a founding member of the Agile Alliance, gave an excellent Prioritizing Your Product Backlog presentation on Agile 2008 Conference.

The Periodic Table of Videos

This is not software-related, but cool nevertheless… The Periodic Table of Videos has a short video about each chemical element. This is work-in-the-progress – videos are constanly updating with new stories, better samples and bigger experiments.

Today’s Sites/Blogs

“How Do I?” Videos for Security from MSDN site.

Dime Casts .NET

Dime Casts .NET video podcast helps .NET developers learn about various aspects of .NET development in short, focused segments – no longer than 10 minutes each.

Channel 9 Videos

Going Deep episodes – leading Microsoft architects and engineers discuss the inner workings of core technologies:

• Rob Relyea – There’s Something About XAML

All WPF-tagged Channel 9 content