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I'm starting some research on skype programming. Is there one technologie for skype plugins or are there multiple frameworks or apis?
I'd like to make a plugin where user from my database can communicate with each other (video, audio, chat) over skype without seeing each others' real skype id's - is it possible? (I guess yes, I tried skycandy a couple years ago and it was actually the same)
any hints for realization?
primary platform would be windows, but maybe android/ios as well (are mobile versions plugin enabled?)
Is skype a good choice for the requirements or is there a better solution for a small project without budget?
Skype offers an API for its Desktop clients, Desktop API and an SDK for you build your own client.
The Desktop API is in maintenance mode and doesn't support newer features in the client and has a number of known bugs.
SkypeKit is fully supported but doesn't currently support Multi Part Video, at the time of writing.
Neither of these technologies can be used on mobile devices, in the case of SkypeKit its specifically prohibited in the licence terms, and you may never obscure the sending or receiving parties Skype name as this is prohibited.
For additional info please see http://developer.Skype.com
Allen Smith
Community Manager
Skype Developer
I need to implement video conferencing in a ASP.Net application.
We have cases that contains 3 users. Per case we need to set up a Video Conferencing possibility.
Are there any services or libraries to use for this functionality?
EDIT:
TokBox was a good service to use, however I need a solution to maintain on own servers now. Are there existing services that let me do this?
See here: http://www.red5chat.com/.
By far your easiest solution at this point will be to embed Flash into your ASP.NET pages. You can use Red5 as your media server backend if you want a free and pretty good solution. (You can also pay for back-end media server solutions like Wowza or Flash Media Server.)
You can in theory do this with Silverlight (see http://silverlightvideochat.codeplex.com/), but it's not nearly as sophisticated as the Flash solutions, i.e., the video codec isn't nearly as good, there's no AEC, noise reduction, etc.
As for HTML5, Google has open-sourced WebRTC, and it's working its way through the standards process. But it's currently supported by ~0% of the browsers out there. (It was released into the Chrome dev channel in mid January: http://www.webrtc.org/blog/webrtcnowavailableinthechromedevchannel.)
But the short answer, again, is "Use Flash on the client and Red5 on the server."
EDIT: With a little bit more client-side coding and Adobe's RTMFP solution, you can create a peer-to-peer Flash-based solution that doesn't use a server. It won't scale to more than 2-4 users per "room", but it'll have very low latency, and won't require you to standup and support a server. See here to get started.
Also, the production channel of Google's Chrome now supports WebRTC (and so does Opera). You can see a demo of it here. Firefox also supports a version of it, but the two aren't yet compatible, though achieving interoperability is a high priority for both dev teams. Neither IE nor Safari has yet announced support.
Tokbox also has a reasonably simple API that will allow you to use WebRTC when it's available (it produces higher quality audio/video than Flash), and degrade to Flash when it's not. It's free for 1:1 sessions or for less than 25,000 group minutes per month.
Is WML and WMLScripts are used anymore ? I remember writing WML apps with classic-asp on server-side and we used interact with phone functionality from client using WMLScript and WTAI and do some cool things like, adding phone numbers to address book, trigger a call from WMLScript and much more. I still miss those things. I really want to know if modern web-browsers on phone have replaced WML with rich HTML support.
I also found that one of the most active WML and WAP forum Openwave Developers of our time is now discontinued which is no less than a shock to me. The forum also provided a nice WAP development SDK for testing WAP gateway simulation and WAP-pages on openwave browser simulator. All of these is now not seem to be available.
BEFORE DOWN VOTING EXPLAIN WHY, IF IS JUST BECAUSE OF IGNORANCE THEN STAY AWAY.
It is not dead yet.
It is used by some POS systems such as POSWEB, I have been developing on it for years in conjunction to ASP.NET to generate dynamic WML cards or downloadable catalogs, receipts, etc.
APPI Tecnologia's POSWEB Solution
Also another similar platforms do exist such as VERIWEB which are intended for the same purpose. Also I heard about similar ported WML/WMLScript being used in compact network enabled devices such as food / groceries dispensers, traveling card machines, etc.
This implementations supports mostly of the WML/WMLScript standard however it usually integrates additional functionality (depending on the target device), such as Smart Card processing, Simetric and assimetric cryptography, flat and indexed files creation and so on.
WML is still alive and in use many modern browsers doses not supporting WML for example andoid browsers like Firefox, Chrome but Opera still support WML for mobile and for web browsers also.
WML is more friendly to old phones but xHTML MP is the future in mobile WAP sites.
I would say, it's becoming less and less common out there in the wild.
You might find the odd device coming through that only does WML, but the effort to support those few might not be your goal in which case starting at html should be OK.
The users of those older phones typically already accept that their phone isn't the best and can't do as much as other phones.
Check out 0.facebook.com! There's been some resurgence of WML interest among some companies, mine included after Facebook Zero. The idea is that much of the technology still used in the developing world utilizes old technologies like WML, and coding up modern pages in WML will increase access in the developing world.
Silverlight v2.0 is getting closer and closer to RTM but I have yet to hear any stats as to how many browsers are running Silverlight. If I ask Adobe (by googling "Flash install base") they're only too happy to tell me that 97.7% of browsers are running Flash player 9 or better.
Not that I believe everything I read, but where are these statistics from Microsoft or some other vendor about Silverlight? I'm going to be making a technology choice soon and a little bit of empirical evidence would be an asset at this point...
All you Silverlight developers out there, show me your stats!
Quick Answer: www.riastats.com
This site compares the different RIA plugins using graphical charts and graphs.
It gets its data from small snippets of javascripts running on sites accross the web (approx 400,000 last time I looked)
At the time of this post, Silverlight 2 was sitting at close to 11%.
I would not take this as the end-all, be-all in RIA stats, but it's the best site I've found so far.
If you are developing something for a general audience, I would highly recommend against Silverlight as you immediately cut out Linux users.
I went to watch videos for the Olympics (and I run exclusively Linux), and I couldn't watch the video on their site because they were in Silverlight. On top of that, they actively removed all videos from YouTube, so I had no alternative but to try and scrounge up a Windows boot. This only served to give me a very negative opinion of NBC, and consider them quite amateurish to pick such a restricting technology for something that should be available for everyone.
While Flash has it's problems, it works fine in Linux, so I would say (at this point), it is a much superior technology choice.
If you KNOW your audience is entirely on Windows (maybe Mac).... then you can consider Silverlight with knowing you won't be cutting out part of your audience.
if you're that concerned about locking out potential users, you should be building a low-bandwidth HTML only version of your site anyways...regardless of whether you use Flash or Silverlight.
I struggled with this for a while. Ultimately, I chose to develop my site using Silverlight for the major components. I did a good bit of research, and I reached the following bottom-line conclusion:
If Silverlight fails, it will not
be for lack of installed base. There
are simply too many levers for MS to
pull (windows update, embedding it in
IE8, or even paying highly trafficed
sites to use it.
I will add this from Alexa - microsoft.com has pretty impressive daily reach and it uses SL on the main page. I would also not be surprised at all if Outlook Web Access is moved to Silverlight - thereby turning every single office outlook user who wants to access email from home/other into a roaming SL installer.
Alexa Link comparing microsoft.com/ebay.com/amazon.com
I will add this from ScottGu's blog entry:
In addition to powering the Olympics
experience in the US, Silverlight was
also used in France (by FranceTV), the
Netherlands (by NOS), Russia (by
Sportbox.ru) and Italy (by RAI). In
addition to video quality, a big
reason behind these broadcasters
decision to use Silverlight was the
TCO and streaming cost difference
Silverlight provided. In the August
2008 edition of Web Designer Magazine
(a Dutch publication) a NOS
representative reported that they were
able to serve 100,000 concurrent users
using Silverlight and 40 Windows Media
Servers, whereas it would have
required 270 servers if they had used
Flash Media Servers.
Over the last month we've seen several
major new deployments of Silverlight
for media scenarios. For example: CBS
College Sports is now using
Silverlight to stream NCAA events from
its 170 partner colleges and
university. Blockbuster is replacing
Flash with Silverlight for its
MovieLink application. And Netflix two
weeks ago rolled out its new Instant
Watch service using Silverlight.
At the 2009 Microsoft Professional Developers Conference, Scott Guthrie said that Silverlight was installed on "45% of the world's Internet-connected devices"
http://www.betanews.com/article/PDC-2009-Live-from-the-Day-2-keynote/1258561992 (quote taken from "9:28am PT") entry
This was the weekly poll over on CP a few weeks back. Out of the 1463 developers responding, aprox. 62% had Silverlight installed on at least one system.
So... if you're making a site targeted at Windows developers... and don't mind locking out a third of your potential market...
I haven't been able to get stats. I'd assume they might release some at PDC in late October. If you're building a site which needs to target a non-developer audience who won't want to install another plugin, you might want to wait for Silverlight.
I have done a good amount of testing with Moonlight on Linux, and it works well for sites which use either use Silverlight 1.0 functionality (pretty much 100% supported) or which happen to use the Silverlight 2.0 bits which Moonlight currently supports. The caveat is that some websites explicitly check the user agent and won't offer content if you're not on a "supported" platform. That's poor website coding, not a fault of the Silverlight plugin.
During the keynote # ReMIX UK when ScottGu gave the figure of 1.5 million installs/day I was sat next to Andrew Shorten, one of the Adobe platform evangelists (and also a good chum). He was telling me Adobe have independant evidence of an AVERAGE of 12 million installs a day, with over 40 million downloads.
It would appear 1.5 million is a tiny amount of what it could be.
Well 6 million watched the Olympics on NBC, which used a silverlight player. So at least 6 million. I've never seen exact stats, but you can be pretty certain that it is pretty small still.
Also, there is an implementation of silverlight for linux called moonlight.
I think an interesting stat comes from this site itself. Have a look at how many silverlight questions there are! And how many responses - it's not the most active topic!
I think you'll see a dramatic increase in the Silverlight install base after Silverlight 2.0 officially comes out. Right now it's still in beta. Silverlight 1.0 is out and runs quite well from what I've seen in Moonlight on Linux, but it's much harder to create full-scale applications for than version 2.0. According to Microsoft, Moonlight will be "100% compatible" at release time. See Scott Guthrie's blog (note: 2.0 was called 1.1 at the time).
Nick R, as for the fact that there isn't much Silverlight activity on these forums, I think the biggest reason for that is the very active community on the silverlight.net forums.
Scott Guthrie said (at Remix UK Sept 18 2008) that Silverlight is currently downloaded 1.5 million times per day. Over 115 million downloads since the version 1 release.
The Version 1 installed base will automatically update to version 2 when it is out of beta.
Wow! Scott said the same thing at Mix in February 08 about run rate - 1.5m. So it seems that a daily run rate of 1.5m per day for 6 months would add 270m installs to the installed base. So their numbers are not exactly clear in their meaning.
If one assumes the 115m installed base is correct, then it implies a run rate around 700k per day in the six months since SL2. Of course, many users are upgrading versions B1 to B2 as an example.
Either way, it is gaining some steady installs. It would be nice to see the run rate improve. By 2nd quarter of next year, it should be dramatically higher due to v2 shipment, application/web site adoption, pre-installation on various computers (like HP) and any unannounced distribution mechanisms.
While in general I support the idea of developing a site using silverlight and feel that that, depending on your audience, you should not have too much trouble getting users to download the plug in I would caution you against assuming that Microsoft will release the plugin built into IE or as a part of windows update.
I have had two separate Microsoft Technology Evangelists tell me that the company is reluctant to do that due to Anti-Trust reasons.
This was over a year ago and their strategy has probably evolved since then, but it enough to make me not count on that as an option for greater market penetration.
Don't forget that the Silverlight 2 install base will never include PPC Mac users. It doesn't look like the Moonlight people are targetting them at all, despite the heroic effort to add PIC streaming for Silverlight 1.0 users for the Obama inauguration.
The larger question is how many users will your site lose if implemented in Silverlight. And, it very much depends on your audience.
If you're running a site about the joys of Linux kernel hacking or the virtues of Internet security, you'll probably lose a significant chunk of your audience. If you're running a more mainstream site, my experience is that, sadly, people will download anything they're told to most of the time. That's why spyware and malware work. And, as the NBC/Olympics deal shows, Microsoft will aggressively push its partners to use Silverlight until it's fairly ubiquitous.
I won't be using Silverlight until it's more mature because I do cater to a fair number of Linux users, but I might for a less technically-oriented site.
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Yes, Podcasts, those nice little Audiobooks I can listen to on the way to work. With the current amount of Podcasts, it's like searching a needle in a haystack, except that the haystack happens to be the Internet and is filled with too many of these "Hot new Gadgets" stuff :(
Now, even though I am mainly a .NET developer nowadays, maybe anyone knows some good Podcasts from people regarding the whole software lifecycle? Unit Testing, Continous Integration, Documentation, Deployment...
So - what are you guys and gals listening to?
Please note that the categorizations are somewhat subjective and may not be 100% accurate as many podcasts cover several areas. Categorization is made against what is considered the "main" area.
General Software Engineering / Productivity
[Stack Overflow ] 1(inactive, but still a good listen)
TekPub (Requires Paid Subscription)
Software Engineering Radio
43 Folders
Perspectives
Dr. Dobb's (now a video feed)
The Pragmatic Podcast (Inactive)
IT Matters
Agile Toolkit Podcast
The Stack Trace (Inactive)
Parleys
Techzing
The Startup Success Podcast
Berkeley CS class lectures
FLOSS Weekly
This Developer's Life
.NET / Visual Studio / Microsoft
Herding Code
Hanselminutes
.NET Rocks!
Deep Fried Bytes
Alt.Net Podcast (inactive)
Polymorphic Podcast (inconsistent)
Sparkling Client (The Silverlight Podcast)
dnrTV!
Spaghetti Code
ASP.NET Podcast
Channel 9
Radio TFS
PowerScripting Podcast
The Thirsty Developer
Elegant Code (inactive)
ConnectedShow
Crafty Coders
Coding QA
jQuery
yayQuery
The official jQuery podcast
Java / Groovy
The Java Posse
Grails Podcast
Java Technology Insider
Basement Coders
Ruby / Rails
Railscasts
Rails Envy
The Ruby on Rails Podcast
Rubiverse
Ruby5
Web Design / JavaScript / Ajax
WebDevRadio
Boagworld
The Rissington podcast
Ajaxian
YUI Theater
Unix / Linux / Mac / iPhone
Mac Developer Network
Hacker Public Radio
Linux Outlaws
Mac OS Ken
LugRadio Linux radio show (Inactive)
The Linux Action Show!
Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML) Summary Podcast
Stanford's iPhone programming class
Advanced iPhone Development Course - Madison Area Technical College
WWDC 2010 Session Videos (requires Apple Developer registration)
System Administration, Security or Infrastructure
RunAs Radio
Security Now!
Crypto-Gram Security Podcast
Hak5
VMWare VMTN
Windows Weekly
PaulDotCom Security
The Register - Semi-Coherent Computing
FeatherCast
General Tech / Business
Tekzilla
This Week in Tech
The Guardian Tech Weekly
PCMag Radio Podcast (Inactive)
Entrepreneurship Corner
Manager Tools
Other / Misc. / Podcast Networks
IT Conversations
Retrobits Podcast
No Agenda Netcast
Cranky Geeks
The Command Line
Freelance Radio
IBM developerWorks
The Register - Open Season
Drunk and Retired
Technometria
Sod This
Radio4Nerds
Hacker Medley
I like
General Software
Stackoverflow (perhaps too obvious)
Deep Fried Bytes
Hanselminutes
Software Engineering Radio (via Brenden)
Herding Code
Dot Net
Alt.NET Podcast
Polymorphic Podcast
Productivity
43 Folders
My list:
Hanselminutes
.NET Rocks!
Herding Code
Deep Fried Bytes
Spaghetti Code
The Sparkling Client
Plumbers # Work
Polymorphic Podcast
ALT.NET Podcast
ASP.NET Podcast
Radio TFS
PowerScripting Podcast
Software Engineering Radio
stackoverflow Podcast
The Thirsty Developer
ThoughtWorks - IT Matters Podcast
Agile Toolkit Podcast
Ajaxian Podcast
Pragmatic Podcasts
Channel 9 Audio Feed
EDIT: Missed one:
Elegant Code Cast
This one's not specifically about development, but Security Now from Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte is an excellent discussion of security issues. I think it's a must-listen for just about any computer user who's concerned about security, and especially for web developers who are responsible both for the security of their site and at least partially responsible for their users' security.
I love FLOSS Weekly. Another Twit Podcast where Leo and Randal Schwartz interview open source geeks. My favorite was their interview with Dan Ingalls (Smalltalk/Squeak fame). I also enjoyed their interview of Richard Hipp (SQLite).
Am I going to be downmodded for suggesting that the Stack Overflow podcast is hilariously bad as a podcast? Anywho, you can find it, and a number of not-bad podcasts at
itconversations.com.
As this question asked for a "good" rather than "exhaustive" list, then this is obviously just my opinion. My opinion bounces between .NET and Java and just geek. And obvious omissions would reflect my opinion on "good". (Ahem, DNR.)
The rest of these are easily found by doing a podcast search in iTunes, or just googling (I'll do some repeating here to condense the list):
Buzz Out Loud (General Consumer Tech, Daily)
This Week in Tech (aka TWiT. Weekly Consumer Tech.)
The Java Posse (Weekly.)
Google Developer Podcast (which went long fallow, but seems to be coming
back, possible renamed as the Google Code Review. Schedule uncertain, technologies vary.)
Hanselminutes (Usually, but not always, .NET-related)
MacBreak Weekly (The Mac version of TWiT)
Polymorphic Podcast (All .NET, usually ASP.NET)
Pixel8ed (All .NET, focused on UI. Same guy who does Polymorphic Podcast)
tech5 (Consumer Tech. Mostly a fun waste of 5 minutes because Dvorak is so... Spolsky.)
In the Stack Overflow podcast SE-radio was mentioned. It's pretty in depth.
Also if you are an aspiring JavaScript developer, the Douglas Crockford "The JavaScript Programming Language" and "Advanced JavaScript" talks on YUI Developer Theatre are excellent. There are a few other gems on the podcast too.
I listen to the javaposse regularly, they cover mostly Java, but not solely.
JavaPosse If you want to hear all that you (n)ever wanted to know about closures (7/2010 - This is actually a good podcast, but now it's all you (n)ever wanted to know about apple & android)
.NET Rocks For when you want to hear the billionth interview about databinding controls in the trenches during the transition from VB6 to VB.NET
Stack Overflow You really do want to hear a guy who doesn't know C debate a guy who pretends to have invented it, or something, or maybe just listen for spoilers to wallee
Security Now! You want to listen to someone who thinks he's the most ingenious security architect in the world, because he writes EVERYTHING IN ASSEMBLER (no, I'm not kidding), while overlooking the obvious solutions to problems that have existed for years. Please don't listen to this thinking it's good
Yahoo! Dev Network - I haven't seen a lot of good stuff here, but Crockford's talks on advanced JavaScript are wonderful
Suggestion: If you post each of your recommended podcasts as a separate answer then people can vote for your "answer".
BTW, Joel discussed this on the Stack Overflow Podcast (can't find the reference in the transcript Wiki) and suggested something like:
- Post your suggested "favorite" (tech podcast, in this case) as a question: "Do you like < > podcast and tag it with "technology podcast".
The beauty of this is that we get a simple poll. Yes, it would be nice to actually have a poll but that's not yet a Stack Overflow feature.
The Google Developer Podcast is good.
The way I understand the question, you are asking for developer centric podcast. My personal number one is Late Night Cocoa from the Mac Developer Network followed by Mac Developer Roundtable. Although I agree that every developer should probably listen to Steve Gibson's Security Now! (with Leo Laporte's TWiT network).
For general tech stuff, check out other TWiT podcasts: This week in Tech, MacBreak Weekly, MacBreack Tech (with PixelCorps), Windows Weekly and FLOSS Weekly
On a side note: relevant to some developers who think about becoming a Micro-ISV in the Apple Universe: MacSB - Mac Software Business
Brad's list is pretty good. I also listen to:
Sparkling Client (Silverlight specific)
Jon Udell's Perspectives series
Herding Code (shameless plug for a podcast I put on
with Kevin Dente, Scott "lazycoder" Koon, and K. Scott
Allen. We recently interviewed Jeff Atwood about
Stack Overflow, discussing both how the site is
designed and the technology behind it.
I found this on a similar discussion, I think it was at Reddit:
UC Berkeley Webcast
I found it most useful, since it podcasts entire classes from Berkley courses such as Operating Systems and System Programming, The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Data Structures and Programming Methodology, among others.
Almost all of my favorite podcasts have already been mentioned but not the No 1. Do yourself a favor and listen to the best podcast ever, Linux radio show - LugRadio.
If you are into web design and website creation then I recommend Boagworld and also The Rissington podcast even if you are not.
Also make sure you don't miss the dnrTV webcast show that Carl Franklin (the man behind .NET rocks) publishes. Even if it's a not a podcast and requires a more attention while watching it it's really informative and if you're into .NET and Microsoft related techniques you'll learn a lot.
I can second Jon Galloway's mention of Herding Code, and since I have absolutely nothing to do with the podcast, with nothing to gain, my opinion may be more valuable than his :-).
There are only a few there as it's relatively new, but they are jam packed with good stuff that is very relevant to today's programming paradigms and strategies.
I also love the smooth format they've got going since 4 guys all giving input on a topic can make for a very jerky conversation with all (most?) of them dialed in, but whether it's the post editing or just a good format, either way it comes across as a very comfortable listening experience to the end user. Keep it up guys!
Hope that helps,
Rob G
It does not seem like this one was mentioned yet.
http://thecommandline.net/ --
"Exploring the rough edges where technology, society and public policy meet."
He does a weekly News show and a weekly topics show.
From the website,
Endorsement:
"Thoughtful, informative, and deep, a real plunge into the geeky end of the news-pool. There's great analysis and rumination, as well as detailed explanations of important security issues with common OSes and so on." -- Cory Doctorow
Not hardcore technology but I really enjoy Drunk and Retired. It's like you're talking to your programmer buddy mixed in with life stuff.
Besides Stack Overflow of course, here are mine.
Many have already mentioned Hanselminutes.
Some have already mentioned .NET Rocks!
Not quite as many have mentioned RunAs Radio.
I can't believe the size of some of these lists. With podcasts, I like to keep the list short and the quality high. As such, I tend to skip the aggregates like ITConversations et. al.
Extending on what Mike Powell has to say, I am actually a big fan of almost all of the podcasts at http://www.twit.tv. Most of the content is watered down a bit, but some of the speakers are top notch thinkers - especially on "This Week in Tech", the flagship program.
Oh - and Car Talk on NPR but those guys hardly EVER get into the SDLC!
FLOSS Weekly
Pragmatic Podcasts
Rails Envy
Webdev Radio
If you started out on an 8 bit machine, don't forget your roots:
The Retrobits Podcast
A good weekly update to the Ruby on Rails world: Rails Envy.
The thestacktrace is good general programming podcast, which covers every thing from git to Scala.
If you're interested in Linux, Linux Action Show is a wonderful podcast !
It's about Linux news, distributions and softwares releases and also Linux based hardware testing (like drobo, Amazon Kindle and so on).
It's very good quality and the hosts, Brian and Chris, sounds amazing.
It's my number one podcast !
Also, I've just discovered that IBM offers some developer podcasts which seems very interesting, some are from Erich Gamma by the way. Of course, it's a little bit more Java and Eclipse oriented (It's IBM).
http://herdingcode.com/
Plus one for the following:
The Java Posse
Software Engineering Radio
The Grails Podcast
Linux Outlaws are pretty good. They discuss GNU/Linux distros, software and IT news.
My favorite is Manager Tools. Technically it is a business podcast, but very valuable for programmers or other individual contributors working in corporate environments. Been listening for 3 years, new to StackOverflow
-- Mike
Elegant Code Cast