Flash vs. Silverlight: take your bet

Some of the technical differences between Flash and Silverlight to help you choose the technology that best suits your needs.

Animation
Flash uses the frame-based animation model. In frame-by-frame animation, we create an object for each frame to produce an animation sequence. For example, if you want to move something across the screen in 3 seconds, calculate how many frames 3 seconds will take, then calculate the matrices required for each frame along the way. Keep in mind that the player won’t actually maintain a frame rate unless you embed a blank audio track; otherwise, 3 seconds might turn out to be 2 or 6 or 5.

Silverlight is based on the WPF animation model, which is time-based instead of frame-based, so you define the start and end conditions, and it figures out how to do it. No need to deal with matrices like with Flash. Also, no need to calculate the positions of objects in various frames.

File Size
Flash uses a compressed format, and text and images are embedded in the movie, hence the file size of a Flash component is relatively small.

Silverlight uses XAML for its description language, and it is non-compressed, so the size of a Silverlight component is usually larger.

Scripting
ActionScript is used to program Flash objects. ActionScript is an object-oriented language with a full range of controls for designing user interfaces. And it can be integrated with back-end technologies that use other languages and frameworks, such as PHP, ASP and Ruby On Rails.

For Silverlight scripting, you can choose from among a number of programming languages such as Visual C#.Net and Visual Basic.Net, including client-side scripting with JavaScript. C# and VB.NET can be used to write managed code that runs on and uses all of the enhancements and capabilities of Microsoft’s .NET framework.

Sound
ActionScript offers a set of sound classes that can be used to generate and control sound in a movie. You can add sounds from the library while the movie clip is playing and control those sounds. If you do not specify a target when you create a new sound object, there are methods to control sound for the whole movie.

Silverlight doesn’t have the low-level audio APIs you would need to write an audio application in the browser. It doesn’t even support playback of WAV files because .NET has very little audio playback support.

Platform
Flash supports Windows Vista/XP/2000, Windows Server 2003/2008, Mac OS 10.1/10.5 (PowerPC), Mac OS 10.1/10.5 (Intel), Linux 5, openSUSE 11, Ubuntu 7.10 or later and Solaris 10.

Silverlight supports only Windows Vista/XP/2000, Windows Server 2003/2008, Windows Mobile 6, Mac OS 10.1/10.5 (PowerPC) and Mac OS 10.1/10.5 (Intel). Because Linux and Solaris support is missing, users of those operating systems won’t be able to experience Silverlight on their machines.

SEO
Flash stores fonts using shape definitions and the player doesn’t understand TTF, hence we cannot separate the text layer from the movie. Typically the text written on a flash component was not SEO friendly however Adobe has made the modifications to Flash so that it will be indexable, and the search engines have begun to index Flash.

Currently Google is the only search engine that is noticeably reading Flash files. They have worked closely with Adobe to develop the right toolset for the Googlebot in order to read the files for indexing. Yahoo is working on it and MSN is working with their own format, Silverlight, so they probably won’t be developing the toolset necessary to read Flash files.

In Silverlight applications, user interfaces are declared in XAML and programmed using a subset of the .NET Framework. XAML can be used for marking up the vector graphics and animations. Text is deployed on web server as separate entity and can be read and accessed separately. Textual content created with Silverlight is searchable and indexable by search engines as it is not compiled, but represented as text (XAML).

Image Formats
Flash supports almost all image formats.

Silverlight supports only PNG and JPEG file formats. Some other file formats are supported by Silverlight but in a limited way. A full list can be found here http://www.accusoft.com/ig-silverlightformats.htm

Suggested reading material:
http://www.learn-silverlight-tutorial.com/
http://silverlight.net/forums/t/3015.aspx

It’s raining free office suites

The office suite is perhaps the most used of all software applications. Rare is the person who does not use a word processor, spreadsheet or presentation tool. Though Microsoft office is the ruling application in this segment, a number of free office suites have sprung up in recent times, most notably OpenOffice.org. And a few months ago saw the free office party get into full swing with two leading contenders releasing major updates and a surprise new entrant!
 
Free Symphony from Big Blue
IBM’s (aye, Big Blue itself) free office Lotus Symphony suite is based on the OpenOffice.org. code. It comes with a snazzy interface and the ability to open applications in tabs within the same window. The first beta of application (available from http://symphony.lotus.com) features a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation tool. It is available for Windows and Linux and supports most popular file formats (read “MS Office formats”).

Symphony has its share of false notes. It requires 1 GB of RAM to run – a staggeringly high amount – and even then moves at a sluggish pace, especially when starting up for the first time. Of course, developers say that later versions will be faster. But one wonders why Big Blue started off with such a slow application in a segment where speed of operation is of paramount importance.
 
Updates from OO and Google        
Meanwhile, Openoffice.org has come out with an update for its OpenOffice suite, taking it to version 2.3. The new suite promises better charting options, improved multilingual ability and better mail merge options. And it remains by far the most feature-packed of all free office options. However, the interface remains as dull and unintuitive as ever. Though, developers at OpenOffice.org say that the interface will undergo a radical revamp when version 3 is released this year.

Even as all this happens, Google has added a presentation tool to its online office suite, throwing in the usual basic features and adding the option to collaborate online – so two people in different places can open the same presentation and work on it!

But are these suites going to hurt Microsoft? Well, the perfect office suite would be free, have IBM Symphony’s interface, Google’s online collaboration ability and OpenOffice.org’s incredible feature set. But until that happens, free office suites are unlikely to dent MS Office’s market share, although they do offer an excellent alternative to software piracy. 

Also read: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/6-free-office-suites-that-are-not-microsoft/ and http://opengoo.org/

GMail is just getting better !

In typical Google style, new features (or existing , but hidden tricks) are coming to light and they are indeed adding pretty unique capabilities.

This one is sure to make you look twice. You get to own/control more than one email address with just one account. In fact, let me revise that – you get to own/control as many email addresses you want (could be infinite!!!!) with just one gmail account.

Can be very useful to segregate and manage emails from diverse sources. For more details and examples, follow the link.

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/2-hidden-ways-to-get-more-from-your.html

Sony Vaio G2 ultra-portable Laptop With Drip-Proof Keyboard and SSD

The upgraded version of Sony Vaio G laptop will go on sale in Japan from October. The new laptop will come with a drip-proof keyboard which obviously discharges water via a special “water pit” at the base of the laptop and even shuts down the system when it got too much water spilled on it. Running on both Windows Vista and XP operating system, the Vaio G2 can be configured either with an Intel Core 2 Duo U7600 or a U7500 processors, Solid State Drive (with 32GB, 48GB or 64GB options) and several different Hard Drive Disk sizes.

Other features, include a fingerprint reader, pair of USB ports, memory card slot, 802.11a/b/g WiFi, Gigabit Ethernet and a high speed Bluetooth connections. The size of a mere 277×215×23.5/25.5mm and weighs between 1.9 and 2.5 pounds. The company claims that the Lithium Ion battery on the G2-KAN will last up to 11 hours.

The Sony Vaio G2 ultra-portable laptop will come in black and silver colors and retails between 154,800 Yen (about $1,346) and 270,000 Yen ($2392), depending on the configuration.

read more here…

VooDoo is in here…

Hewlett-Packard introduced Monday a new notebook PC from its November acquisition of VoodooPC. HP acquired VoodooPC, a gaming PC provider located in Calgary, Canada, late last year to strengthen its gaming market portfolio.

The new Voodoo Envy HW:201 notebook PC, which begins shipping to customers Monday, features a 20.1-inch high-resolution display, and is powered by a 64-bit Turion 64 X2 dual-core processor from Advanced Micro Devices. It has two GeForce Go 7950 GTX GPUs (graphics processing units) from Nvidia running in Nvidia SLI (Scalable Link Interface) mode. SLI is a technology introduced by Nvidia that allows two graphics units to run in parallel to produce a single output.

The company has focused on speed and performance, and is positioning the product as an “insanely fast” notebook for the gaming market.

Users can choose between two Nvidia graphics cards, the GeForce Go 7950 GTX with 512MB of memory for high-performance PC gaming, or the Quadro FX 2500M with 512MB of memory if they are looking for a high-performance portable workstation, the company. Users can also select to use a single graphics card or two graphics cards in SLI mode.

The Envy HW:201 comes with up to 320G bytes of storage using two hard drives. Users can also choose RAID 0 (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) storage, the company said.

With all these features, the new notebook is large and measures 18.75″ x 13.5″ x 1.9″, and does not offer a lot by way of battery life, HP admitted. Other features of the notebook include a Webcam, Bluetooth and 802.11 connectivity, and a theater audio system, HP said. However the company did not disclose the pricing of the product.

Kwel Knol!

The official Google Blog carried the announcement of their new project called Knol. The aim is to encourage writers to contribute articles of significant importance and share it with the internet community, in what seems to be a head-on challenge to Wikipedia.

Limitations of open source

Following are some limitations that I have observed. It is important to know them before initiating a project. These are not very serious in nature and using free open-source products remains a good option for many small and medium sized enterprises around the world.

1. Like any product, it is very important to align the product with your workflow and/or requirements. You must fit the product into the organization by making necessary changes. Therefore a gap analysis should be done and the effort must be estimated for aligning the product as per the current work-flow and/or requirements.

2. Most free open-source products lacks in usability. Therefore if you are doing a major implementation which will be used by thousands of people and you are going to pay for their time, you must consider a major overhaul of interface by involving a usability consultant from your vendor. Otherwise you will end up spending a lot of money.

3. Most free open-source products have very poor reporting system. These reports are not good enough to run a business as they fail to provide any insight into the business function that you are tracking. They should be re-done as per your company requirement aligned with your key measurement matrix for the given business function.

4. The programmers who can change the software as per your needs are the code-hackers types, who love to dive into an existing system architecture and make small changes to achieve the desired results. Therefore you must identify and hook up with the right programmer / programming company to get it right.

5. It is a myth, that implementing open-source software is free. Software code is free, not the hard work of programmers and analysts which goes behind implementing it. And you need the later to successfully implement it in your scenario and reap the benefits of the solution. Yes, it considerably reduces the cost, improves reliability and gives you a head start from where you can take informed decision about your IT needs.

Do not get me wrong. I am only listing the limitations. The benefits are well-known and they out-live the limitations any day. However it is very important that these limitations are known before proceeding.

Some popular (and free) open-source products are SugarCRM, Drupal, osCommerce for CRM, content management and e-commerce respectively…

Some Links:
How Stuff Works 
Open Source at Microsoft
Open Source Blog at ZDNet
Google Open Source Projects

Feel free to discuss / debate!

Dell Unveils its first XPS desktop for Indian Buyers

Dell India has made available the XPS 420 Desktop PC for gamers and performance enthusiasts. This is the first major gaming PC released by Dell in India. The stock config is powered by a quad-core Intel processor, 20-inch widescreen LCD with integrated microphone & webcam (SP2008WFP), 2GB of DDR2 667MHz RAM and 256MB PCIe ATI Radeon HD 2600GT GPU featuring Dual DVI & HDMI out. Of course, like other Dell systems, you can even configure this monster according to your requirements. Optional customisation options include Intel Core 2 Extreme processor, 768MB GDDR3 Nvidia GeForce 8800GTX, AGEIA PhysX Physics Accelerator in addition to bigger HDDs, more RAM and wider screeens. Starting at a price tag of Rs. 54,500/- , the XPS 420 also features integrated LCD screen on the chassis and free PCIe-based Hybrid PAL/SECAM/DVB-T TV Tuner with Remote Control.

Continue for more…

Phone with solar battery

You forgot to charge your phone ? CECT launch a phone with solar battery C2000.

If battery it’s low and need to make a call, you just have to turn the phone to sun and voila.

This model have 2 SIM, 3” display, 1.3-mepapixel camera, Bluetooth, microSD slot and support MP3 and MP4 playback. Price 176 $

Now get the Power 2 Charge

The problem with all of your portable gadgets is that the battery always dies when it’s least convenient. Philips has announced a new product that hopes to eliminate this issue.

Well, the Power4Life won’t prevent your battery from dying completely, but it will add up to 60 additional hours of life to it. That time will vary depending on what you plug into it of course. The universal plugs that are included will allow you to use it with anything from MP3 players to laptops and includes an LED indicator to tell you how much juice it has left.

They will be releasing several different models of the Power2Charge sometime in December of this year.