10 May 2008
Hard Rock Memorabilia: Re-Wired not Tired
Wired Mag's Blog, Listening Post got right to the point with this entry. Rock and Roll history (along with some good burgers) made Hard Rock cool. The Memorabilia site that Vertigo and Duncan/Channon created is all about sharing that vast collection of history with Rock and Roll fans, not just Hard Rock customers. That already makes Hard Rock cool again in my book.
I hope to see Hard Rock continue to expand its online collection, using more Deep Zoom. Everyone should be able to experience this stuff at nose distance.
05 May 2008
Vertigo Presents @ ReMIX08 Keynote
05 May 2008
Vertigo at NAB Las Vegas
08 April 2008
The Seat of Capitalism and Capital of Spin
Washington DC hosts the 2008 IAA World Congress.
Scott Stanfield, Vertigo's CEO, demonstrated the benefits of Silverlight to the international community of advertising executives attending this year's event.
Microsoft asked Scott to show off the work we did with Duncan/Channon and Hard Rock as a fantastic example of Silverlight's creative potential.
Using Silverlight's Deep Zoom Technology allowed Vertigo and Hard Rock to give the world up-close and personal access to its ginormous collection of Rock and Roll history.
21 March 2008
MIX08 Show Off’s
29 February 2008
Scott Stanfield Speaking at MIX08
Don't miss Scott Stanfield's (our CEO) super secret "blacklisted" session at the Microsoft MIX08 conference at the Venetian in Las Vegas. All we can say is that it is going to be awesome. Fortunately, we've been able to secure a few key details:
22 February 2008
The Signal Episode 11: Scott Stanfield and Guitar Grease
Scott Stanfield, Vertigo's CEO, was recently interviewed by Thomas Lewis and Mike Swanson on the Signal. Scott gives a semi-authorized peek behind the scenes of Vertigo and Mix 08.
It's packed full of good stuff…here's a list of topics that I noted in the first 10 minutes of the show. Maybe ADD should have been added to the list.
- Vertigo
- Geek toys
- Mix 08
- Tactical Bags
- Velcro
- Kindle (iPod for books)
- Insomnia
- Post Singularity
- Respect my time with a MacBook Air
- Atari
- UX
- New Acronym– WYNWYNI
Check out the last 26 minutes, 34 seconds here.
22 February 2008
Vertigo at SD West 2008
Vertigo is contributing two sessions to the "must see" SD West 2008 line-up. Dave Britton and Petar Vucetin from Vertigo will present on two technologies that we think you'll definitely want to know more about, Silverlight and LINQ.
Petar Vucetin: LINQ for ASP.NET Developers
Time to let go of ADO.NET (finally!) and embrace the unbridled power of LINQ. Seriously, if you've been building ASP.NET sites using classic ADO.NET, there's a whole new world to learn with LINQ. You can query and update databases, call stored procedures and execute joins, all without leaving the comfort of VB.NET or C#. This is a great session if you're new to LINQ but have experience with databases or if you just want to see some cool technology with lots of demos.
Dave Britton: Arcade Games with Silverlight
After "Hello World" in Silverlight, you need a more interesting challenge in which to test your Silverlight skills. That's why at Vertigo we set out to remake our favorite arcade games in this new (and sometimes difficult) technology: Asteroids, Pong and Dragonslayer. This course will show these and other games, dig into the code and discuss how they're built.
15 February 2008
Vertigo Design?
We were recently invited to join the Microsoft Mercury Program. It's an invitation only program for influential agencies around the world who are using Silverlight and WPF as tools for building creative products. The program offers its members a chance to influence the technology and inspire others to take advantage of these exciting tools.
Being invited to join the program got me thinking. I realized that our customers know something that other folks may not.
Vertigo has had a dedicated UX and Design Practice for 9 + years. We saw the value in combining good design with technology right from the start. I'll be honest though, in the beginning (pre .NET days), our customers had to be convinced that it was worth paying for. Nowadays customers know the value. Our design practice is hard at work, and in growing demand.
At Vertigo, our Engineering and Design/UX practices equally share the credit for our customer's success.
12 February 2008
Video.Show Leaves the Nest
They grow up so darn fast! After a couple of preview releases, Video.Show 1.0 has shipped and is a blueprint quality reference. Best of all, you get it free with just a click.
Video.Show provides everything you need to create a website for uploading, encoding, cataloguing, publishing and commenting on videos, using Silverlight, Expression Encoder and Silverlight Streaming by Windows Live.
I could say more, but why bother when Tim Sneath says it best. You might be interested in Video.Show if…..
01 February 2008
Slide.Awesome
28 January 2008
Slide.Show Climbs the Charts
Vertigo closed out '07 with some big Silverlight releases, including Slide.Show.
Like proud parents do, we like to follow the progress of our creations, so we decided to check in on Slide.Show. It's thriving! Here's the proof.
Even more exciting news coming soon, to the .Show family. Stay tuned
28 January 2008
Silverlight Happens Here
A great customer of ours came to us with a challenge. She needed Vertigo to quickly build the "Heroes Happen Here" Silverlight banner for the Microsoft Partner landing page.
"Heroes Happen Here" is the largest IT professional and developer launch in the history of Microsoft, featuring Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and SQL Server 2008.
The interesting part about this project is that she needed to leverage an existing CMS tool, so that regional offices could manage their own content. This meant, that we had to build the application, without the support of a database, or web server.
MacGyver would have been proud. One talented engineer and a designer cranked out this cool little application that features a Quiz, Dynamic Feeds, and Regionally Updateable Content.
Heroes Happen Here and Here.
30 November 2007
Vertigo .Show (Now with Silverlight)
With 3 new Silverlight releases in one week, you could say we've been fabulously productive.
Check out the new additions to the .Show family, plus a bonus. A lovingly recreated classic that we'll call, "Rotating Space Rocks of Doom", all delivered direct to you via Silverlight.
Slide.Show
Your family vacation pictures in Silverlight 1.0. Full-screen support, keyboard nav, transitions, you name it.
Video.Show
Between you and me, YouTube in Silverlight.
Rotating Space Rocks of Doom
A faithful reproduction of a classic, delivered in Silverlight 1.0. Note the hand-drawn vector art fonts for the high-score. Press the "A" key to see the aliens pop-up. No shields, but the hyperspace does come in handy.
13 November 2007
It’s good to be liked.
Vertigo took a chance earlier this year by completely upending our perfectly respectable identity.
It's really not a big deal or anything, but the new Vertigo identity system was just recognized in an international design competition -- the 8th Mohawk Show Awards.
No big whoop. It's just this little thing. I wouldn't even read the rest of this post if I were you.
To be eligible, entries had to have been printed on Mohawk paper, but the judging was for all aspects of the design. Only 20 or so finalists were chosen out of over 1400 entries worldwide.
Barely worth mentioning.
Only work that was flagged unanimously by all four judges became finalists. The judges were also total nobodies: Paula Scher, Jessica Helfand, Dana Arnett and Luke Hayman. Never heard of them.
We credit our creative friends at Duncan/Channon.
19 July 2007
Family.Show Version 2.0 Now Available
What started as a fun way to show off the best of Microsoft's Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), has evolved into yet another Vertigo Best Practice Phenomenon.
Please take a look at the Family.Show website and see what's new for you, and the family.
http://www.vertigo.com/familyshow.aspx
Don't Cha Wish Your Program Was Hot Like Me?
At Vertigo we tackle impossible projects for our clients by combining the latest WPF, Silverlight, and .NET Framework 3.0 technologies with our expert designers and developers. If you like what you've seen with this app, wait till you see what we can do with yours.
07 June 2007
The Importance of Aesthetics
Vertigo's CEO, Scott Stanfield was recently interviewed on .NET Rocks regarding cultivating an aesthetic sense around software. Scott has been passionate about this topic for many years. Hear how Scott's commitment to design began with humble everyday encounters and has grown to become an inseparable part of Vertigo.
26 May 2007
Microsoft’s UI Double Play: Silverlight and WPF
XAML debuted as Microsoft's all-star starting pitcher last year with the introduction of Vista and WPF. Now with the recent addition of Silverlight to the field, the Redmond team has a potent defensive lineup that covers both bases: Windows and the Web.
Windows XP and Vista apps get a big boost with the combination of XAML + WPF. Now, following up on their promise of XAML as a flexible UI definition language, they release Silverlight, a cross-browser RIA platform aimed squarely at Flash. The Rubicon was been crossed: .NET CLR in every browser. And now with the Expression suite of tools released, we've got a completely new set of tools and technologies to figure out.
So, what does this mean for your next app? Vertigo's CEO, Scott Stanfield, will give you a sampling of these two gems, with lots of real code and demos, so you can decide. But if you're still using MSPaint for your designs, you're in for ride!
June 6th, 2007
Palo Alto SDForum
23 May 2007
Family.Show: Behind the Scenes
07 May 2007
Microsoft’s UX Hat Trick: AJAX, WPF and now Silverlight
Watching Microsoft embrace the user-experience ("UX"--UI is so 1990s), you get the feeling they know what they're doing up in Redmond. First we got "Atlas", their rock-solid AJAX toolkit for building seamless web apps that hide the ugly post-backs of HTML. Then XAML + WPF blew the doors off what a Windows program could be. Now, following up on their promise of XAML as a flexible UI definition language, they release Silverlight, a cross-browser RIA platform aimed squarely at Flash. The Rubicon was crossed: .NET CLR in every browser.
So, what does this mean for your next app? My presentation will give you a sampling of all three technologies, with lots of real code and demos, so you can decide. But if you're still using MSPaint for your designs, you're in for ride!
5-8-2007
San Luis Obispo .NET User Group
http://www.slodotnet.org/
5-16-2007
SF Bay.NET
http://www.baynetug.org
5-29-2007
Sacramento .NET UG
www.sacnetug.org
27 April 2007
Vertigo launches Family.Show, our latest WPF Sample for Microsoft
Continuing Vertigo's legacy developing best practice reference applications for Microsoft, we're proud to announce that Family.Show launches today! Family.Show is our latest Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) reference application that that takes genealogy to the next level. The application can be installed via ClickOnce and we've provided all of the source code. You can get both on our Family.Show page.
Tim Sneath, Microsoft's WPF Technical Evangelist, commissioned Vertigo for the project and posted a nice blog write-up on the application.
Scott Stanfield, Vertigo's CEO, will dive deep into Family.Show during his Mix07 presentation "Family.Show": I See Dead People, with Windows Presentation Foundation at the Delfino 4005 room at the Venetian on Tuesday May 1st at 11:45 AM.
If you'd like to learn more about Family.Show and Vertigo, drop us a line: Blake Sorrell, 510 307 8223.
13 April 2007
Come hang out with Vertigo at MIX07
Vertigo will be in Las Vegas for Microsoft's MIX07 conference where Scott Stanfield will present Vertigo's latest best practice WPF application, Family.Show.
The talk is on Tuesday, May 1st at 11:45 AM in the Delfino 4005 room at the Venetian.
"Family.Show": I See Dead People, with Windows Presentation Foundation
Speaker(s): Scott Stanfield - Vertigo
Audience(s): Designer, Developer
For a hobby that revolves around dead people, genealogy is remarkably popular: it's the fastest-growing scene in North America. And a perfect study for Vertigo's next Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) reference application for Microsoft. Our designers employed every trick in the WPF book (styles, resources, templates, data binding, animation, transforms) to present an innovative visualization of the classic family tree, freeing our developers to concentrate on behind-the-scenes features like XPS, printing, PInvoke wrapper for Windows Vista common dialogs, and Click-Once for WPF. See all of this with hands-on demos and our top-10 list of stuff to know about WPF and Microsoft Expression Blend. And, unlike the real-world case studies, you get the source code.
13 April 2007
Vertigo Launches “The Region”
Vertigo was selected to help the Microsoft Regional Director Program launch The Region—a destination designed to share knowledge among RDs and the developer community.
The site brings together blog postings, upcoming events, and bio information for all of the RDs. It's a great place to check out what the RDs are blogging about. We don't store any content on the site itself. It's more like a blog roll that launches you off to their respective blogs.
Scott has been the Regional Director for the San Francisco Bay Area for over 8 years. You can see his page here (nice photo Scott):
For future reference, the URL is:
www.microsoftregionaldirectors.com
22 March 2007
Scott Stanfield, Vertigo's CEO @ SD West 2007
Scott will present two sessions March 23 at the Santa Clara Convention Center. It's the 20th birthday for SD West, so it should be a great time to attend.
If you're there, make sure you say hello.
Everything New in ASP.NET 2.0
See how it all comes together––the ultimate demo that covers every new feature in ASP.NET 2.0. You’ll see membership, roles and profile; master pages; themes and skins; SQL Server Express (master-detail, sorting, paging, editing); navigation controls; table-less design with CSS 2.0; new IDE features; caching; and Atlas. And there’s no need to take notes. It’s all based on a series of videos that the Vertigo did for www.asp.net, where you can download the code.
ASP.NET Ajax
If you haven’t yet been asked to sprinkle the Ajax fairy dust on your Web 1.0 app, you will be soon. The project formally known as “Atlas” is here. So, if you haven’t yet probed the mysteries of Ajax (Hint: it starts with XMLHTTPRequest), starting with this presentation is a good idea. The speaker will start slow, with the Hello World of Ajax. Then we’ll switch to Atlas and see how it makes things easier, mows the lawn and finds your next job. We’ll finish up with the next cool sample app from Vertigo, Coho Winery— chock-full-of Atlas goodness.