If you’ve started playing around Microsoft Azure then you are probably going to appreciate this post ;-). I know I did. Kudos to Ryan Dunn On Tuesday an azure table Browser service was launched for developers at MyAzureStorage.com. The service was build using ASP.NET MVC on a rich AJAX interface.  and its goals are to provide developers an easy way to create, query, and manage their Windows Azure tables. with it you’ll be able to: ...

Back on February 2007 I blogged about a prototype project of Human Productivity Lab, code named Bumptop and was claiming that we’re really not that far from seeing something like that becoming available for end-users. Well today I found out that I wasn’t wrong. Bumptop is officially released and available in two versions a free one as well as a Pro one for a small fee. Check it out in the following video. Now imagine that desktop running on Windows 7 at a multitouch screen ;-) Unfortunately I’m using the default windows 7 beta graphics...

I don't know how many of you played this game at school, with your friend sitting in the same desk, maybe during the Foreign language course eh? It sure brought back some nice memories to me ;-) Seriously now, JVC, a Euro 2008 sponsor has developed a nice online flash game where you pick one from the participating in the finals team and try to win. Your points are summed with all the others that have chosen the same team and an average is calculated. The team that will have the most points at the end of the...

Yesterday I had the opportunity to speak in front of a large audience about Microsoft's Live Services, available to developers, in a Microsoft hosted event called "The Next Web Now". Although I had to write this presentation twice, as I lost my first one with my stolen laptop, and had to prepare the second one in just a few hours, I was glad to do it as I always enjoy speaking and communicating with other developers. In general I believe it went well, even with all the computer related problems Panos' laptop had ;-). The event's sessions were video recorded so they're...

A lot of people have been complaining on not being able to login to MyFacebook gadget and I really didn't know what was going on as I followed Facebook API's authentication instructions to the letter. So I've decided to change it's authentication method. It now uses the same authentication method Popfly uses in its Facebook Data source block. To login you'll have to click on the first page link in order to get an authentication token, then you'll have to add that token to the gadget settings page. Note that if this is the first time...

My friend Panos wrote today about Nikhil Kothari's Facebook.Net framework (hosted at Codeplex) as well as Steve Trefethen's starter kit as various tools you could use to develop Facebook applications using .Net. I'd like to add to those The Facebook developer toolkit that evolved from the Microsoft - Facebook partnership. Although this download comes from the Microsoft Visual Studio Express Editions product line (as you may notice) nothing stops you from using it with Visual Studio. Furthermore (if you're willing to play with cutting edge technology ;-) you could give Popfly's Facebook blocks (which are products of the same...

It's been four months since I received my Popfly invite but haven't really been able to do anything on it due to lack of time. Looking for Silverlight applications yesterday though I happened to bump into it and remembered that I already had an account so I decided to check it out. Well it seems that a lot have changed since the last time I've used it although the project is still in its Alpha phase. First of all the user interface is completely revamped. It now loads up much faster and resembles more an office application than a...

I hadn't given too much attention to all those social networks that have developed over time as I thought that they were mainly for people looking for dating and this sort of things. A recent friend invitation for FaceBook though, proved me wrong and opened a new world full of potential for communication, collaboration, play and so on. So from know on you can catch up with me through my Facebook account...

When all Greek channels yesterday, were either re-running ancient Greek movies, having long boring political debates or playing some b-movie I was able to: (This is why TV is sentenced to death...) Watch LIVE EARTH concerts from all over the world Listen to Artists I love to hear Make my pledge to save Earth Make a subscription to stay connected with the climate crisis news and TO DO's from Liveearth Watch Artists video and photo galleries Download LiveEarth...

 I've spoken a couple of times about innovation in Greece and I'm glad when I see other people talking about it too. So when I was invited to show all the things we're building at www.dol.gr at Microsft's Innovation Day, I was thrilled. Luckily there was WiFi netwrok availableso here are some snapshots from the event. Stay tunned more will come later...     Special thanks to Panos for the pictures

I usually check my email boxes before leaving home to see if something interesting is there and today there was. The popfly invite, I had to wait for a couple of weeks, had finally arrived. Unfortunately I had to wait again in order to get to work before being able to give it a go. Once I've started playing with it though,I found out that it was worth waiting after all. Popfly is indeed a great tool for developing cool mashups and gadgets quickly and easily. And although it's rather unstable at the moment (a couple of my mashups did not work...

Having been to Mix06 I knew that there were going to be a lot of cool things coming out this year too. So I've been following closely Mix07, although I didn't manage to go this year and I must say that I'm pretty excited with all the things announced (although some were expected ;-) ). One of the coolest demos I've seen so far is the Silverlight Airlines application posted by David Anson. I just hope that it will work for Europe as well as USA soon. Check it out.

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...

I don't know if you're into web and/or web development but even if you're not, you're surelly going to find this list of sites offering Web 2.0 features at least interesting. I myself found a couple of sites I wasn't aware of... (can you believe that :P)

Now that is something worth blogging about, Patrick started his blog. Glad to see you on board Patrick.Subscribed of course.

A few days ago I was showing a couple of colleagues the Human Productivity Lab’s work on the future of the desktop. Some of them joked about not settle for anything less than a Minority Report style GUI (you know the one Tom Cruise used in order to track criminals). Well, unfortunately for them the technology exists and from what is seems it’s really not so far away before we start seeing production GUIs like those.

I’m a huge fan of dilbert cartoon so when I found out that there is a Daily Dilbert Vista Sidebar Gadget I raced and installed it. Why isn't this posted on http://gallery.live.com? Kudos to Quartz…

Several events occurred this week making it a truly WOW week: Microsoft’s much awaited, new operating system, Windows Vista, was finally launched. British Library published a great WPF application that presents old historical books. The user experience is so rich that you think you’re actually holding the book. I think I had already seen a demo of this app on Mix06, but nothing compares with the real thing. A few days after the final release of Microsoft’s Ajax library, MS opened up its Source Code under the Microsoft Reference License (Ms-RL). Microsoft released a new version of its browser enhancement module that enables browsers to...

You’ve probably seen or worked with a number of them, but here’s the complete and admittedly rich list of Shared Source Licensing programs for developers offered by Microsoft. It sure is worth checking out.

Over the years I’ve seen and/or participated on quite a few interesting projects but VisualWebGui is probably the best work I’ve ever came across. VisualWebGui is a project that tries to unify the development model of Web and Windows Forms development. So with VisualWebGui you can create a new project, design forms like you would have done for any windows forms application and run it on the web. The Guy or guys behind this (I still haven’t found any references on who’s behind this) have made most of the window form controls not only...