Over the last few weeks I have been using the following product found here (http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/features.htm) which provides some cool features for downloading. Since using it I am starting to get the most of out of my 20mbps cable connection. The reason is due to the fact that the when downloading, the software creates multiple HTTP connections to the file. Check this download speed for the Silverlight 2 Beta 2 tools. Awesome.

Great speed for downloads

Key features

• Multiple HTTP connections for a single download (Make downloading ALOT faster)
• Automatically resumes on broken connections
• Torrent support
• Media Previews for partially downloaded files
• Download only certain files held in a zip file.
• Download entire sites

Screen shot

I was having a read through of the feature set for Silverlight 2 Beta 2. One of the items that instantly stood out for me was the fact that with Beta 2 Support for DRM (Digital Rights Management) has made it, and more importantly...........IT’S CROSS BROWSER AND CROSS PLATFORM! Now let me be clear on this, I am not a fan of DRM as I believe as a consumer I have the right to use the content I have paid for in anyway I choose. I’m not suggesting copying and passing on too friends is fairplay but I do feel I should be able to duplicate the media for all the devices in my home. That said, although I am not a fan of DRM personally, I can greet this news with optimism and here is why.

About 18 months ago I was working on a contract for Siemens who were developing the packaging and delivery of the BBC IPlayers content. This was interesting work and really opened my eyes to the amount of effort that must go into launching a platform like the IPlayer. 18 months ago none of us working on the project had any idea as to how successful the IPlayer would be, therefore the application was built with performance and scalability in mind. A good thing too given the way it panned out.

While working on the project, one area I felt was seriously lacking was the cross platform support. All content delivered via the VOD system is encrypted using Windows DRM. As the name suggest, the result that decision was that all content inevitably becomes locked into the windows platform. Therefore unless you’re on a windows platform, the IPlayer would be useless to you.

The BBC were not the only ones to adopt this approach, SKY, ITV and Channel 4 have all built their VOD platforms on the Kontiki P2P system using Windows DRM. So as a guy with a Mac (Yes I run windows vista on it) I could consider myself up shits creek! So the question is, why is this good news? It’s good news as whether we like it or not DRM is essential for large media conglomerate when it comes to delivering their content over the web. Whether we like it or not, I still cannot see them dropping it due to public demand. Therefore, with Silverlight providing the tools necessasary for cross-platform DRM, adaptable streaming and the ability to generate amazing RIA’s there are very little hurdles left to overcome.

I expect to see the BBC move this way as they have previously confirmed that Mac support was on their todo list. Also some of the demo’s from MIX07 with the BBC Radio 1 site delivered via Silverlight show the potential. I am hoping to have a play with the new Silverlight 2 Beta 2 features in the next few weeks so expect some posts then.

I'm off to the Isle of Wight festival this week and as usual I have spent the weekend getting all the essentials together. I've got my tent dusted down, wellies, wet wipes beer and much more ready to go. However I am starting to think that I am a little to addicted. Here is a rundown of the gadgets i'm taking.

• IPod Touch
• ITrip
• Stereo to transmit music from IPod too.
• Solar Charger
• Camera
• Mobile Phone
• Walkie Talkes
• Windup torch
• Smartphone

Something tells me I may need to lock my tent up!

As you probably know the power of WPF and its subset Silverlight is its ability to render images using vector graphics. I am not a graphic designer myself, I can usually get a decent design together but it’s usually more evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

As all images in vector graphics are expressed using mathematics they provide computers with some superior processing capabilities that are not possible with common binary formats. We can transform them, scale them, animate them to name just a few . However, with the advantages of having an image represented in mathematics, we also suffer with increased complexity when trying to create them from scratch.

With the current release of Silverlight, we have the power in the framework to represent near photo realistic images purely in vectors. Take for example the photo of me  shown below, this image, running in Silverlight, has been built using only vectors. You can see this running in Silverlight here.

Bad Mood

If we take a closer look at the structure of the eye, we can see that the complexity of the XAML path objects, which are the basic building blocks used to compose the image, are far beyond the capabilities of any human designer using tools such as Blend or Visual Studio.

The image was actually constructed using the cool site  vectormagic.com. On this site you can upload any photo and it will convert the image to vectors. This covered off the majority of the grunt work of converting the image into vectors.  VectorMagic offer you two free downloads in a range of formats.... but no XAML option. Therefore, I downloaded the file in Adobe Illustrator format, from there it was a simple process of exporting the image into XAML using Mike Swanson’s awesome AI-XAML converter.

Hope this quick example has helped illustrate the power of Silverlight’s graphical capabilities and gets you thinking about what other assets you could convert into XAML.

If you get this error in your designer when working with XAML in Visual Studio 2008...make sure you dont have any visual elements that inherit from an abstract class.  May seem obvious but can be easily missed.

Could not create an instance of type '{0}'