When I did my presentation on WPF/e (SilverLight) a few weeks back everyone kept asking about the tools and the controls they could use in order to develop silverlight applications. Unfortunately at the time there realy wasn't anything ready they could use, so I kept saying that in the future control vendors will startpublishing tools for it.

Thankfully control vendors are indeed starting to build software (tools - controls) to support SilverLight, Telerik leading with its RadControls (Button, Cube, Media & StripLayoutPanel). At least next time I will have some examples to give when presenting ;-).

Today I had to visit Nafplio for some family business. So I've spend all day yesterday searching on the Internet for available public wireless hotspots which I could use in order to connect to the Internet. Unfortunately I didn't find anything, so I've decided that at the worst case I could use my mobile phone's GPRS connection to connect to the Internet for a little while (GPRS costs a lot in Greece). After finishing my business though I've decided to go WiFi fishing. So I walked around the city using my QTEK 9100 WiFi network open searching for open Wireless routers. To my surprise I found at least 10 WiFi network connections and what's more interesting? Only 2 of them were secured. So I've sat to a coffee shop on Nafplio's port feeling the sun and the light breeze listening to music and watching Burtzi castle while surfing the web at the same time. Probably the best surfing experience ever... If you don't believe me see for your self...

p.s. I've read today at ?? ??? that some say that WiFi connections might be as dangerous as mobile phones are. What's your opinion? Should we use it?

Finally the project I've been working for the last year has gone Live.

The project had to do with the semi-automatic digitizing of newspapers and magazines from their raw form (PDF or postscript files) into rich fully decomposed digital content and the creation of new services that would consume this content.

Two of these services have gone live, specifically www.tanea.gr and http://digital.tanea.gr, but more are going to go live soon. I feel congats are appropriate to everyone that participated in the project.

As for the future services I really can't say more, except that the engine is so powerful and the content so rich that you'll going to be amazed... ;-)

Quite a few people have already started talking about UMPCs (Ultra Mobile PCs) on the web, Panos included. I agree that it's time we start putting our money on convincing fashion industry to grow clothes pockets ;-)

As promised, I'm publishing 1.3 minutes (I couldn't post more as they get pretty large pretty quick) of video footage from each developer session (sorry Marios I didn't have enough tape to get your session too, I promise I will be more prepared next time) of the Live the web developer's day event.

Web 2.0: Breaking news session part 1 and part2

WPF/E: Impress the Web session part 1 and part 2

AJAX-enabled sites? Piece of cake! session part 1 and part 2

Enjoy!

I've been proposed for an MVP award a few months back, and today I received an email saying that I've received the MVP award and thankfully it wasn't an April fool's joke.
So I want to thank everyone that supported my nomination and want to assure you that I'll do my best to prove my self worthy.