Chad Brown, IdentityMine - Recognizing our team.

I've Moved! - Blogging full time at IdentityMine.

2010-12-13T16:47:00.000-08:00

User Experience - Doing it right

2010-05-27T09:02:00.000-07:00

My grandpa always said: “Measure twice, cut once”. I agree completely. At minimum you’ll lose half as many fingers.

In our world of User Experience proper upfront planning is just as critical. No one is losing fingers, but customers are easily lost and difficult to win back if you don’t get the UX right. Given that, we encourage our clients to let us run our process which always delivers. Of course, it’s easy to flash a fancy methodology graphic, see:

Beyond a fancy methodology graphic, (which most every UX company has) we also have some real meaty deliverables. Here are a few videos which help describe the early part of our process in greater detail:

Ideation:http://www.identitymine.com/#Personnel_Room
Envision: http://www.identitymine.com/#Intergraph
Architect: http://www.identitymine.com/#Grupo_Elektra

For more detail on our process and a deeper dive on the individual deliverables /artifacts please reach out to us. Happy to talk through it.

IdentityMine, UX, NUI and 2010

2010-01-16T07:16:00.000-08:00

Last night I was reading a blog post about IdentityMine from a local UW director. Look at that... We share the same blogger template. I was confused for a second. Isn't it sad I have a creative company and don't have a custom one? (hint, hint if any of our creative folks are reading this) I'm sure they'll just tell me to switch to WordPress.

Anyway, I appreciated Andrew's comments and it inspired me to take a few minutes and post again. It's been awhile.

Yes, we are busy and last year was our biggest year ever with 2010 looking better yet - despite the downturn. I thank all you out there who demand a better user experience for that. People have been given a taste of good UX and now they have an appetite for more. After all, what good is a feature rich application if the features remain buried in a help file somewhere begging to be used? What good is a collection of data that hasn’t been turned into information via a rich visualization?

The technology is no longer a limiting factor. With presentation technologies like WPF and Silverlight and NUI platforms like Surface, Windows 7 and the various multi-touch overlays, an applications UX is only limited to your creativity and willingness to invest in the engineering required to build the vision. Of course, the “appetite for innovation” and change is only so big depending on which ecosystem your “experience” is targeting. Therefore UX innovation must be managed with good user research and tested with proof of concepts and prototypes. I’m very proud of IdentityMine. One of the things I’m most proud of is the culture which allows all competencies required to deliver the perfect balance of UX innovation to live under one roof.

Collectively we all expect more from the interfaces we use day to day at work, home or during play. The UX is now a major component in our perception of “quality”. As a result, the next couple years will offer companies the opportunity to meet or exceed this new and constantly raising UX bar or disappear into yesterday. Exciting times indeed.

IdentityMine HealthCare Product Selector for Microsoft Surface

2009-05-12T22:18:00.000-07:00

Great article from uihero regarding the IdentityMine presence at TechEd this year. Well done Jason!

I especially appreciated the context around the IdentityMine effort as we supported the Surface team highlight the release of Surface SP1 within an accelerated timeline.

The HealthCare Product Selector IdentityMine built proved to be a testament to both Microsoft Surface SP1 and the IdentityMine Product Selector Solution Starter. Well done team!

FYI - since our application leverages the IdentityMine Product Selector you can expect it to be available on both Microsoft Surface and Windows 7.

Jonah Sterling Joins IdentityMine as Creative Director

2009-03-15T10:12:00.001-07:00

IdentityMine welcomes Jonah Sterling to the team! (Official Press Release) Although relatively new to IdentityMine I’ve had the privilege of working and interacting with Jonah quite a bit over the last several days. It’s clear that Jonah is going to make a positive impact on the unique challenges IdentityMine faces on a daily basis.

Although Jonah loves “shiny things” he’s very much driven by the scientific aspects presented in UX challenges. He’ll fit in nicely as we very rarely get the request to simply make something look pretty. Rather, the requests are more like: “Can you get 1000 pages of data translated into a single interactive page of information?” or “Can you coordinate the interactions of four people standing around a Microsoft Surface table?” or “Is it possible to make Windows 7 do a pinch, rotate and flick gesture at the same time?”

Jonah’s diverse background ranging from Taco Bell toy design to TommyBahama.com web re-design will bring some fresh and creative ideas to our UX challenges.

Again... Welcome Jonah!

IdentityMine at MIX09 – 10K challenge

2009-02-08T18:28:00.000-08:00

Quick shout-out to some friends who submitted entries for the 10K challenge… Yes that’s my personally best Verdant score! I thought I was pretty cool until I found out some green-thumb scored 18K.

Karim Hernandez – Verdant
Jobi Joy – Twitter Search
George Phillip – WPF Word Game
Dr. WPF – JAGS 10K
Robby Ingebretsen – MOUSTACHR
Laurent Bugnion – ColorClock 10K

Nice job on your submissions guys! Don’t forget to MIXTIFY.

XAML Guidelines from the experts

2008-12-16T15:16:00.000-08:00

Jaime Rodriguez and Adam Kinney... Thanks for the visit. Well done Jonathan Russ, Jared Potter and Nathan Dunlap.

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Continuum/XAML-Guidelines-Part-1/

First Ever Production Microsoft Surface in the UK / EMEA

2008-11-18T18:57:00.000-08:00

For those of you who read my blog regularly you might be sick of my “First Ever” series. (First ever WPF, First ever Silverlight, First ever Surface) To that I say… Cut me some slack. I want at least one more “FIRST EVER”!

(FYI – I’m moving on to “First Time Ever!”)

Our understanding is that IdentityMine was the first to bring Microsoft Surface to the UK public via the Tesco London and Bristol Wine Club Fair events. This was a fantastic experience for us as we shared a custom IdentityMine Microsoft Surface application with a non-technical audience. As you will see in the video below the response was fantastic and entertaining to boot. Enjoy!

Windows 7 + Microsoft Surface = Success at PDC2008

2008-10-30T12:52:00.000-07:00

What a fantastic showing for IdentityMine at PDC this year. So many people to thank. Between the demo development, IdentityMine website update, press releases, logistics and booth support I could literally list all 70 members of our team as contributors. Thanks everyone!

A special highlight this year was an application we built to show off our unique design and development capability on emerging platforms. Take a look at an Event Photos application we built for PDC2008 using Microsoft Surface, Windows 7, NextWindow and some Secret Sauce from IdentityMine:

More on our Windows 7 Secret Sauce (below):

Welcome Lu Silverstein! – Bye, Bye old Role.

2008-10-15T08:40:00.000-07:00

Lu Silverstein will be officially joining IdentityMine today as our SVP of Products and Services. Wait a second… that’s my role.

Thus far I’ve been focused on the delivery side of the IdentityMine products and services business. Since officially taking the role of SVP of Products and Service back in early 2007 we’ve shipped three product offerings under the blendables brand and have several service offerings in the WPF, Silverlight and Surface space. However, as these emerging technology ecosystems grow, so must our ability to deliver.

Lu Silverstein has been part of Surface Computing at Microsoft Corp. since September 2003. Silverstein has worked with Microsoft for ten years on a variety of new-category products. His experience growing teams at Microsoft will be invaluable to IdentityMine as we move to take our business to the next level. Again, welcome Lu!

What will I be doing? IdentityMine does some amazingly fantastic things. The problem is… Very few know about it. In addition, we need to transition from an “order taking” to “self directed” company. Meaning - thus far we have yet to build a sales team which targets industries and associated customers that are ideal for our offerings and objectives. Thankfully, as of today we have a long list of very relevant customers. However, as the ecosystem grows it will make sense to be strategic about where we focus our delivery mechanism.

In my new role as SVP of Sales and Marking it will be my responsibility to make the above adjustments. Although today is my first official day on the job, in the background I have been working with Kurt Brockett (Director of UX Evangelism) and Craig Jaris (Director of Business Development) for the last couple months on these new challenges. Come see us at PDC 2008 and be sure to monitor identitymine.com to see how these new initiatives surface.

First Ever Microsoft Surface + Media Card Reader Deployment

2008-10-07T20:54:00.000-07:00

Excellent write-up from Kurt Brockett our Director of UX Evangelism on the Hotel 1000 Microsoft Surface deployment. IdentityMine was privileged to be chosen as the Hotel 1000 surface partner. Of note was the first ever public deployment of the Microsoft Surface external media card enhancement. Details on this enhancement can be seen at 3:55 in the following video:

Microsoft Surface Physics Panel

2008-09-08T09:47:00.000-07:00

Now here’s a Nitty-Gritty video for diehard Microsoft Surface developers to sink their teeth into. A special thanks to Jason Cook, Victor Gaudioso and Andrew Whiddett for making it happen!

This video illustrates what can be done on the Microsoft Surface platform in a relatively short period of time as well as provides a sneak peek at a component of the IdentityMine Framework for Microsoft Surface.

Most of you in the WPF community are familiar with blendables our product line for WPF tools and components. IdentityMine Frameworks will be solutions focused and provide a new mechanizm for delivering our Intelectual Property. Come see us at PDC this year and we’ll tell you more about our Surface Framework as well as other frameworks for various technologies and industries.

Finally! IdentityMine can talk about Microsoft Surface

2008-08-12T10:28:00.000-07:00

It’s been a long time coming. Having the opportunity to be one of the first Microsoft Surface partners was both an honor and a curse. An honor in every way imaginable and a curse in that we couldn’t talk about it.

Take a look at the following video for a small sampling of the many Surface applications our team has built thus far:

Of note you saw an application built specifically for Bill Gates last CES presentation as a Microsoft employee.

Expect to see many more Surface applications from IdentityMine as we officially launch service offerings around “multi-touch” and other “Natural Human Interface” experiences.

Meet IdentityMine at Seattle Events

2008-06-12T20:17:00.000-07:00

IdentityMine will be sponsoring back-to-back events in the Seattle area this weekend. It would be great to see you there!

First up is Thingamajiggr on Friday Night, June 13th

A party celebrating the innovative tech community in the Pacific Northwest

Proceeds for this event are donated to 911 Media Arts Center, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting independent digital media artists.

----------

Next on tap is barcamp Seattle on Saturday and Sunday, June 14th and 15th

This event will be held at the Adobe Campus in the Fremont district and will cover a wide range of community generated topics. The event is open to all so it should be a great time to exchange ideas and learn something new in a relaxed and fun environment.

First ever production quality Silverlight 2 application

2008-06-03T22:19:00.000-07:00

Back in March 2007 I blogged about the first ever production quality WPF application. Now that Bill Gates announced Crossfader v.Next at TechED 2008 can we say we’ve seen the first ever production quality Silverlight 2 application?

Keep watching www.crossfader.com and decide for yourself. True, we’re talking SL 2 Beta 2 bits at this point. However, I said production quality – not production bits. ;-)

Congratulations Team!: David Kelley, Haridas Nair, Joy George, Kurian George, Paul Alexander, Paul Thomas, Roby George, Samudhiram Lakshmipathy, Vijay Narayan

IdentityMine at Microsoft Innovation Days

2008-05-30T18:00:00.000-07:00

Microsoft invited IdentityMine India to participate in the Kochi, India Microsoft Innovation Days event on May 30th. Some of the key topics covered were: 1) Building RIA using Silverlight 2) Building high performance .NET apps, and 3) LINQ.

Jim Mangaly did a great job presenting an application our team recently created for SL 2 training purposes. It’s too bad they couldn’t talk about Crossfader a production Silverlight 2 application developed for http://www.crossfader.com/ to be publicly launched shortly. I guess that needed to be saved for Bill Gates and TechED 2008. ;-)

Dr. WPF trumps Dr. Spock on "conceptual children"

2008-05-19T17:00:00.000-07:00

Congratulations Dr. WPF on winning this month’s C# article competition at http://www.thecodeproject.com/

I’m not going to pretend to know all the ins and outs of this article. (A little too technical for me) However, when Dr. WPF speaks about any topic WPF I think those in the industry should listen.

Top Silverlight Contributor

2008-05-15T15:00:00.000-07:00

Congratulations Jim Mangaly for hitting the top 10 list on the Silverlight forums. Every time I check he seems to climb the ranking. Last I checked he was #3. It’s challenging to find time to share when you’re so busy shipping applications. Thanks for the extra effort Jim!

Jim recently participated in an agency training tour assisting Microsoft promote Silverlight adoption in India. He is also scheduled to speak at Microsoft Innovation Days on May 30th.

WPF in Finance - Lab 49 Finalist

2008-05-01T21:33:00.000-07:00

Congratulations Jobi Joy!

WPF excels at data visualization and the Financial Services industry is positioned well to benefit from its capability. IdentityMine congratulates Jobi on his individual submission and finalist ranking for the Lab 49 "WPF in Finance" innovation contest! Well done!

New WPF / Blend book hits the Market!

2008-03-27T23:32:00.000-07:00

I’m very proud to announce a new book from one of our very own at IdentityMine. Congratulations Mr. Victor Gaudioso!!

In Victors own words, “This book is for you if you know the basics of object-oriented programming (OOP) and have some programming experience in languages (such as JavaScript, ActionScript, C++, Visual Basic, Java, and C,) but have not used WPF.”

Victor is a very animated and entertaining individual. I was pleased to see his engaging personality come through in his writing. Nice job Victor!

Come say Hi to IdentityMine at MIX08

2008-03-03T22:15:00.000-08:00

Please stop by our sessions or catch us in the hallways. We have some exciting news to share about blendables. (Not to mentoin fun giveaways as well) Rember the IdentityMen comic last year? - Similar but different. It will be fun!

Session highlight:

Making it Simple: Designer/Developer Workflow Wednesday, March 5 3:00 PM - 4:15 PM

Real World Design: Working with Silverlight and WPF in the Design Studio Thursday, March 6 8:30 AM - 9:45 AM

Nerd + Art: Ten Code Snippets to Empower Your Inner Artist Friday, March 7 10:00 AM - 11:15 AM

The power of the Darkside per Robby ;-)

2008-02-09T00:03:00.000-08:00

Listen to Robby Ingebretsen a "Silverlight/WPF Rockstar" from IdentityMine talk about RIA topics.

Hi, I'm a ???

2007-12-17T23:15:00.000-08:00

Besides creating confused laptops, Nathan Dunlap and team also create very cool user experiences. Check out the VisitMix video and hear Nathan talk about some of the Mac + Vista tips, tricks and techniques IdentityMine uses.

The New Iteration - XAML Love

2007-12-08T00:13:00.000-08:00

Very nice whitepaper from Karsten Januszewski and Jaime Rodriguez. This is the type of communication we need to see more regularly from Microsoft. Hopefully the type of information that will grow the WPF ecosystem.

Anecdotaly - I had the pleasure of spending a week in Spain at TechED Barcelona. I was there to talk to people about our WPF Controls. However, I spent the vast majority of my time educating enterprise developers on the need for good design and the user experience. Tim Sneath comments on the challenge at hand: "A lot of desktop application development teams I've seen, particularly in the enterprise, don't even include a formal role for a user interface designer."

The reality is...Without an appreciation for these things the value of WPF is diminished.

Some time ago IdentityMine started out as a group of developers with design sensibilities. We soon came to realize that sensibilities were not enough. In addition, we found that throwing designers at a team proved challenging even when a technology such as WPF enables it. What we needed was an individual capable of bridging the genius of two very different talents. Ultimately what we needed became the integrator.

It was a pleasure to read this whitepaper. I enjoyed the information about why WPF, specifically XAML is different in a good way. I also appreciated the acknowledgement that solving the workflow problem involves more than just technology but rather affects team makeup and orchestration. Of course I also appreciate a couple members of our team getting a specific mention. :-) Well done Paul Alexander and Robby Ingebretsen.

Keep it up Microsoft. But also keep in mind that much of your ecosystem still needs to be convinced that the investment in technology, team and workflow is worth it. They need to be convinced that users and consumers want a change. They want to love their software.

blendables ™ in Barcelona

2007-11-07T15:59:00.000-08:00

TechED Barcelona - blendables first conference booth and opportunity to directly interact with the masses. Although our product was developed out of need and already validated by the market place, it’s been a pleasure to interact with numerous potential new customers to get their reaction. The result…very positive.

Thank you TechED attendees, the IdentityMen have enjoyed talking to you! The mix of conversations have been interesting including those who truly appreciate the need for design and new UX paradigms as well as those who are a little skeptical.

IdentityMine is convinced that the world is tired of traditional approaches to the user experience and is ready to love their software. Regardless of your industry, sector or target market – Come join us.

WPF Controls get interesting with blendables™

2007-10-12T21:56:00.000-07:00

It's official! IdentityMine is both a product and services company. The press release announcing general availability of blendables went live on October 9, 2007. I feel this is a milestone event for both our company and WPF as a presentation technology.

Thus far, WPF hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves as a UX technology. Due to the nature of our business, IdentityMine knows its true potential. Our intentions are to use blendables as a vehicle to provide the UX community the tools and processes they have been hungry for. Our team hopes that the blendables essentials mix will serve as an inspiration providing a taste of what WPF can really do.

Trust me; this is just the first course.

IdentityMine at REMIX UK & TechED

2007-10-02T20:34:00.000-07:00

Great shot of Robby Ingebretsen from the London Eye. He's saying something like - London Rocks, WPF rules or possibly...I'll put your eyes out if you use that flash again - Not sure.

Regardless, Robby is an extremely interesting and entertaining guy. If you get the chance to chat with him you should do so. At London REMIX he and Paul Dawson of Conchango co-presented on three sessions highlighting WPF & Silverlight, user centered design and the value of a good Designer / Developer workflow.

If you missed this event I'd highly recommend attending TechED in Barcelona. Robby, Dale Jones and Josh Wagoner will be covering the following sessions:

DES305 ZAP!, WHAM!, KAPOW!: Windows Presentation Foundation and the Next Generation of Online Comic Book Reading

DES303 Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF): Beyond Styles and Templates Presentation Foundation

DES302 Design to Blend: How to Express Your Creative Self with Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)

IdentityMine interview on Beet.TV

2007-09-05T20:42:00.000-07:00

"Last week, our video producer David Kavanaugh visited the office of IdentityMine, the Tacoma, Washington-based design and software implementation shop that brought Silverlight to ET site. LA-based REZN8 was also a participant in the project.

David met IdentityMine co-founder Chad Brown for a tour of the "war room" of designers working on the big Hollywood site. Lots of functionality with the new platform - users can create virtual mash-ups, one designer tells Beet.TV" -- Andy Plesser

Premium Silverlight experience for the Emmys

2007-09-05T19:10:00.000-07:00

Content is king and Entertainment Tonight (ET) regularly raises the content bar through acquisition of some of the most interesting entertainment related media available. ET desired a web based media delivery mechanism to compliment its highly visual broadcast quality experience regularly aired weekdays on CBS.

IdentityMine in partnership with REZN8 created a Silverlight 1.0 web based media channel which will initially be delivered in the form of a mini-site dedicated to the Emmys. Microsoft will be highlighting this work as part of the Silverlight 1.0 launch on September 5th.

Show us your blendables™

2007-08-08T19:39:00.000-07:00

Along with the release of blendables™ July CTP IdentityMine also announced a contest. (With all the cooking speak I can’t believe Kurt didn’t call it a cook off) From blog posts and community feedback we know there are many great applications and samples already out there using our controls. Please share with us and be handsomly rewarded...

Our team can’t wait to see what comes in!

A special thanks to Kurt Brockett our Director of Product Management for dreaming up the concept. Let’s not forget Paul Spallas and Jared Potter for implementing it so well. Thanks guys! – Well done.

IM on Surface Computing

2007-06-11T22:31:00.000-07:00

It’s no scoop that Surface Computing is no longer Hollywood magic. It’s gotten some buzz from several contributors. However, recently Microsoft announced a commercially viable solution. If you haven’t heard, it’s called Microsoft Surface™ and it provides a new way of working with computers that moves beyond the traditional mouse-and-keyboard experience.

Now that the product is launched, IdentityMine has been given permission to say that we’ve been working very closely with Microsoft ahead of the Surface launch building WPF applications on the Surface platform. Unfortunately, we can’t say much more than that at this time. Nevertheless, we can say that that the technology is very real and very viable. In fact, we’re currently in negotiations to build the very first commercially viable Surface applications.

We’re very excited about the potential this platform brings to user experiences and human interaction. Just when I finally figured out this keyboard thingy!

Silverlight - Reusable Skills

2007-05-25T22:03:00.001-07:00

For IdentityMine it’s about re-defining the user experience and helping people love using software. We don’t want to draw “experience lines” between enterprise applications, consumer facing applications, and rich internet applications. So as you can imagine, this requires us to stay on top of industry innovations in general. Microsoft is making some strategic moves with WPF and Silverlight which are designed to help bridge the experience gap significantly for these applications that are traditionally very different.

"For a company like ours where we're already invested in Microsoft technologies, Silverlight is a no brainer and it's the thing we needed. It's the thing that allows us to take the content that we have, the knowledge that we have and push forward the kinds of experiences that we can offer on the web." - Robby Ingebretsen

"When it comes to creating web applications the most recent trend has been to build ASP, PHP, AJAX style applications and Silverlight plugs in very naturally into that suite of technologies." - Mark Brown

ElementSnapshot - The BitmapEffects Fix

2007-05-24T21:47:00.000-07:00

Technology limitations are constantly blamed for killing the vision of designers and artists. IdentityMine and Electric Rain show off a solution to common performance challenges associated with the use of BitmapEffects. No excuses now...

"IdentityMine’s mission is to help their customers visualize their software’s potential and build something remarkable" - on10.net

Mike Swanson "WPF Controls" mention

2007-05-22T22:39:00.000-07:00

Nice mention from Mike Swanson on his "WPF Tools and Controls" page under the Controls heading. I have a feeling that blendables might be showing up in the Tools section in the "not too distant" future. ;-)

Zoombox - Interview with Kurt Brockett

2007-05-20T22:39:00.000-07:00

Kurt Brockett our Director of Product Management is interviewed at MIX07. Here Kurt demonstrates the value of Zoombox one of our favorite WPF controls from the blendables : essentials mix.

Video - http://visitmix.com/Blogs/Joshua/identitymine/

Go here to get access to the blendables May CTP. New samples and documentation are being added regularly. Lee Brimelow put together a nice Zoombox sample complete as a ClickOnce application. You can find it on thewpfblog.com.

Innovation out of need

2007-05-14T23:14:00.000-07:00

Now that we’ve entered the product space and specifically the WPF Controls market, I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes IdentityMine different from potential competition. I keep coming back to the concept of “Innovation out of need”.

IdentityMine began working with WPF back in 2003. At the time our efforts consisted of technical marketing demonstrations, Proof of Concepts and Prototypes. The platform at that time was really less of a platform and more of a pogo stick. As the MS product group hopped around from approach to approach we were forced to develop balance through the practice of multiple design and development techniques. In time, the platform began to stabilize and our “lessons learned” were working consistently across newer builds. Real customers began making their bets on the technology and along with these bets came demands. The most demanding customers were our own internal customers…Our Designers (and Developers), asking for solutions to existing limitations of the platform so we can meet our external customer demands.

"In this way we are different. Our innovation and associated product came from deep down in the trenches need."

Don’t get me wrong. Our teams are always discussing and debating forward thinking concepts and techniques we “don’t need” but “think we might” some day. However, it’s extremely beneficial to have a model where we can exercise our product ideas or even drive and inspire them early on in the process. The results are tools and components uniquely relevant to the WPF and Silverlight community.

What brought this home for me was hearing Nick Petterssen talk about the value of ElementSnapshot during MIX07 this year. (Navigate to 47:20 – 49:20)

Further solidifying my opinion was a very nice post from Don Burnett where he described the value of TimelinePanel in his new Twitter application. (Don’s Post)

It’s exciting to see how our lessons learned can impact the community. Just as exciting is the thought that we’ve started the process all over again with Silverlight. Hop…Hop…Hop… ;-)

blendables™ is official!

2007-05-01T22:40:00.000-07:00

There is so much to comment on. (Josh and Jonathan's talk, PR Release, etc.) However, after reading Nathan Dunlap’s posts for today I wonder “why bother” :-) . Take a peak at what he has to say: Nathan Dunlap: P1, P2, P3, P4, P5

In addition to Nathan’s blog please take a look at our official statements: Press Release (((((Podcast)))))

WPF meets blendables™ - IdentityMen Comic

2007-04-30T22:35:00.000-07:00

MIX07 day 1 was fantastic. Great conversation, sessions and dinner. Did I mention that I wish the entire company could be here?

The keynote was very good. I enjoyed seeing the opening video present several of the IdentityMine WPF applications. Knowing that we had a hand in one of the Silverlight demos (Silverlight Arilines) kept me smiling. ;-) The technology has come a long way and we’re looking forward to riding the Silverlight wave similar to WPF.

Great Session - Nathan and Robby did a fantastic job showing off the power of WPF while providing a sneak peak of our blendables controls. It was standing room only. In fact, current buzz suggests interest in doing a repeat of the session on Wednesday. If you missed the session no worries…We'll post a link to the online video. In addition, keep watching http://identitymen.com for more information about the session and other fun content we’ll use to keep you in touch with our team.

Great Dinner – I believe we planned on 30-35 VIPs. However, the who’s who also brought the who’s who and therefore we ended up with 60 + who’s who of the who’s who at the IdentityMine sponsored dinner. Looking around the room was a treat. It was totally worth it and I wouldn't change a thing!!

MIX07 Countdown

2007-04-26T22:13:00.000-07:00

It has begun. The crew is aboard and we’re about to launch. It’s exciting times for our team as last minute tweaks to presentations, attire adjustments (oh yes we have matching shirts) and other formalities for event preparation are winding down.

It all began with Codename: Mission Control (i.e. blendables ™)

Although our MIX presence will be about much more than our product launch, no doubt blendables ™ will generate some serious buzz amongst the WPF community. The current tally for IdentityMine session participation is up to 5 now. In addition, we should have a couple interviews from Mark Brown and Robby Ingebretsen shown during the Keynote sessions.

If you’re at MIX this year there are a few things to watch for… IdentityMen (not Mine), a cool handout you will only get at our sessions and a bunch of guys running around in Black and White shirts - Referees of the UI paradigm. (Ask us to assist you with your WPF challenge, we’ll help you make the right call)

I wish we could bring the entire company to MIX this year. Unfortunately logistics and budget will only allow 13. Not to mention that MIX07 is sold out. Come by and say hi…

XAML Goodness – Just in time for Silverlight

2007-04-18T16:31:00.000-07:00

CHATBlender is live! Today it was officially approved and published as a Messenger Activity. Check it out in the Windows Live Gallery under the Business category: http://gallery.live.com/results.aspx?c=16&l=6

CHATBlender is an example our teams dedication to the XAML community. Although not an officially supported product by IdentityMine, we hope it’s of help to all the WPF, WPF/E (aka Silverlight) designers and developers out there.

For our officially supported “Tools and Components for Designers and Developers” visit http://www.blendables.com

WPF Controls = blendables™

2007-04-16T19:07:00.000-07:00

WPF Tools and Components for Designers and Developers! Curious? Keep watching the following blogs for more detail:

Nathan Dunlap - http://designerslove.net/

Robby Ingebretsen - http://notstatic.com/

Kurt Brockett - http://brockett.net/

blendables - http://blendables.com/

WPF Portfolio (AKA “Stories”)

2007-04-11T20:15:00.000-07:00

A couple posts back I made the statement: “Helping our customers love their software is very consuming. So much so that it’s been a challenge to find the time to thoroughly communicate what our tagline Love your software.™ really means.”

We're making progress...First we began with a site dedicated to the tagline, next we tweaked our corporate presence, then we told our story at major events and team blogs, now…we’ve got a new portfolio site:

http://www.identitymine.com/portfolio/Default.aspx

Thanks Jared and team! This looks fantastic!!

WPF Case Studies Galore

2007-04-09T22:07:00.000-07:00

Searching the internet for WPF case studies I came across this link from MSDN: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/aa497320.aspx

After reviewing the 12 case studies I realized that IdentityMine was a major contributor for 3 of them. We must ask our friends at Microsoft to properly represent our team’s contribution!

Wells Fargo – Thomson – Accruent (Image Below)

Beginning to define our tagline

2007-04-05T22:42:00.000-07:00

Helping our customers love their software is very consuming. So much so that it’s been a challenge to find the time to thoroughly communicate what our tagline Love your software.™ really means.

http://www.loveyoursoftware.com

Recently one of our folks blogged on the topic: “The best experiences are more than the exciting first impression. Great software is about working, looking and feeling great over the long term.” – Robby Ingebretsen

Enjoy the complete post: http://notstatic.com/archives/70

Case study for a major sportswear manufacturer

2007-04-02T17:46:00.000-07:00

“… technology team knew it couldn’t take the Virtual Retail Wall project on by itself. As a result, it recruited Microsoft Gold Certified Partner IdentityMine to help with the development effort. Given IdentityMine’s unique level of experience with Windows Presentation Foundation, it was tasked with creating the presentation layer.”

http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=201270

A special thanks to a few folks from our team who pulled some MAJOR hours over a 3-week period: Franklin Jose, Robby Ingebretsen, Nathan Dunlap, Rob Hogue

WPF Training - Five Days at IdentityMine

2007-04-01T08:09:00.000-07:00

IdentityMine has had the opportunity to develop and deliver custom training for some very large and prominent companies. In most cases, we travel to their location. However, most recently we had the pleasure of hosting Siemens at our Tacoma office for a week of WPF Designer and Developer training.

I hope this model becomes the norm. Having the ability to expose the customer to numerous members of our team added significant value. Don’t take my word for it…

http://geekswithblogs.net/lbugnion/archive/2007/03/31/110500.aspx- Laurent Bugnion, a Microsoft MVP and Siemens Architect talks about his week at IdentityMine. It was good to see him properly reiterate our suggestion to have a 3rd role beyond Designer and Developer called the Integrator. (Laurent and others sometimes call it the Devigner)

A special thanks to Nathan Dunlap who ran the Designer track and Josh Wagoner who delivered the Developer track. Let’s not forget Robby Ingebretsen who came in on the last day to assist with Workflow training.

Robby Ingebretsen at VSLive (San Francisco)

2007-03-29T01:08:00.000-07:00

“Kurt and I attended Robby’s session at VSLive and Robby did a great job showing the crowd how to Love your software™ with WPF” said Ashvil D’ Costa, “It was amazing to see the Seattle PI application on a 25 foot screen!”

Kurt Brockett our Director of Product Management took this shot of Robby:

It was a busy day for IdentityMine. Jonathan Russ had the opportunity to present at Microsoft's WPF Boot Camp on the Redmond Campus. It was great to see so many leading companies taking advantage of the WPF training. Karsten Januszewski did a terrific job organizing the event. Thanks Karsten!

If you missed Robby at VSLive come see him and several other members of the IdentityMine team at MIX07! - http://visitmix.com/Blogs/News/cool-session-alert-quotzap-wham-kapowquot-wpf-and-the-next-generation-of-online-comic-book-reading/

CHATBlender – The CEO is coding again! ;-)

2007-03-29T00:39:00.000-07:00

When you are deep in the creative process, any tool that can speed things up is extremely valuable. Mark Brown the CEO of IdentityMine came up with this cool tool in his spare time. (Between 1:00Am and Coffee Time)

At IdentityMine we're always coming up with tools that help our developers and designers work more efficiently and effectively together. CHATBlender allows us to communicate our XAML assets with ease. Designers are constantly creating XAML assets that need to be sent to a dev to be included in a project, and visual assets that need to be sent to management for approval. CHATBlender allows us to work together on assets so we can "blend" multiple people's expertise into one asset all via instant messenger. http://www.chatblender.com/

With a simple copy and paste you can be sharing your XAML assets too! Nathan Dunlap, a key CHATBlender contributor has a few things to say about this app as well. http://designerslove.net/?p=26 and http://designerslove.net/?p=34

Love your software.™

2007-03-29T00:34:00.000-07:00

The Forbes news reader presented an opportunity to develop several IdentityMine ads to show off the potential of advertising in a WPF news reader experience. Since IdentityMine has never advertised before, we started from scratch.

In the end, what resonated with the entire team was a single phrase…”Love your software”. We LOVED it so much it’s now Trade Marked.

We believe this statement summarizes how we feel about software, our jobs and the potential impact of WPF on the end user. www.loveyoursoftware.com

First ever production quality WPF application…Maybe?

2007-03-29T00:21:00.000-07:00

How do you present the Microsoft Dynamics customer model which consists of a complex set of departments, roles and responsibilities? WPF of course!

IdentityMine had the privilege of working on several Proof of Concept (POC) applications for Microsoft including CaseBuilder (Codename for PDC 2003 demo), Patient Monitoring, Accruent, DinnerNow and the list goes on. This experience gave us the opportunity to work with the Dynamics team to build a WPF production application that was screaming for rich visualizations and powerful relationship views. Is this the first production quality WPF application every created? I’m not sure but it might be. Regardless, it’s likely the first with rich editing and keyboard navigation features used in production by data entry personnel. Hmm…A static shot doesn’t do it justice:

Sure Step Business Modeler (aka DVA) was built initially for Microsoft internal development team so they could better understand the customer model and therefore create even better software. Next steps are to help Microsoft partners in a similar way.

Numerous individuals had their fingers in this application. Our Kochi India team really stepped up to help provide some of the editing functionality. Thanks Franklin Jose and Vijay Narayan for your help on editing. Jobi Joy performed some much needed research around keyboard navigation and Liby Simanthy followed with a top notch QA effort. Job well done!

The team agrees that Jonathan Russ should take some serious credit for the end result. The entire team consisted of: Developer and Team Lead: Jonathan Russ – Developers: Franklin Jose, Vijay Narayan, Jobi Joy – Interactive Designer: Nathan Dunlap – Designers: Dale Jones, Jimmy Jones – DB Architect: David Kelley – QA: Liby Simanthy

WPF Training – Key to customer co-development efforts

2007-03-29T00:10:00.000-07:00

I think our project methodology is unique. (Strategy – Training – Envisioning – Design – Development – Deploy) Notice the training element. It seams waterfall-ish but in reality it’s an iterative approach simply broken up into manageable phases.

Our team realized early on that building production WPF applications was going to require some customer training. Although we don’t sell ourselves as a training company we typically engage the customer in a strategy phase where we learn about the project at a high level and understand specific challenges. In addition, we also analyze the team. Do they have developers, Designers or Both? What capabilities does the collective team have? We then distill the multiple weeks of content into a week of focused developer and/or designer training + workflow concepts.

For more information see: http://www.identitymine.com/services/CustomizedTraining.aspx

Seattle PI and Forbes – Extra! Extra! - WPF Readers for Sale!

2007-03-28T23:08:00.000-07:00

Let’s face it; the web isn’t cutting it today. How much content are you really willing to read on the web? It’s not the reading experience or feature set that’s going to keep people coming back. Publishers need something better and that’s what our reading experience offering is about.

Nathan Dunlap says it best, “WPF is the foundation that can finally provide a reading experience that gets technology to step out of the way and lets the user focus on reading instead of interacting with the medium”. http://designerslove.net/?p=23

Several members of our team including Nathan worked on the Seattle PI and Forbes readers. Team Lead and Developer: Ashvil D’ Costa – Designers: Nathan Dunlap, Jared Potter and Fil Fortes – Installer Development: Karim Hernandez – PM: Suzanne Anderson

For a complete list of the WPF Reader feature set please visit: http://www.identitymine.com/readers/Default.aspx

To view our Press Release please visit: http://www.identitymine.com/press/02_22_2007.aspx or http://www.prweb.com/releases/2007/2/prweb506903.htm

((((( Podcast )))))

A StandOut Team!

2007-03-28T22:30:00.000-07:00

IdentityMine was invited down to the Electric Rain headquarters in Boulder CO to take a sneak peak at the latest build of StandOut. http://www.erain.com/products/standout/ Very impressive!

You might ask…This blog is dedicated to our team. What does Electric Rain or their product StandOut have to do with our team? Well, Electric Rain valued our team’s talent enough to ask for our opinion as it relates to the current implementation and future design decisions of StandOut. This was in itself enough to write about. However…

What really impressed me was the response of the seven IdentityMine team members who became stranded during the December 21st snow storm which closed down the Denver airport. You might imagine spirits would be low as we contemplated entering 2007 without our families. As the weekend came and snow continued to fall this thought became a possible reality. Regardless of the situation, everyone remained positive and enjoyed the time together. This was a test and our team passed with flying colors.

In the process, we had a few extra days to spend with Electric Rain. A bonding experience both with the team and Electric Rain. Take a look at some PR we released with Electric Rain.

http://www.identitymine.com/press/01_30_2007.aspx

WPF Beginnings - PDC 2003

2007-03-27T01:48:00.000-07:00

Although IdentityMine has been around since 2001, I’m only going to go back to 2003. That was when we were introduced to XAML, Avalon (WinFX then WPF), WinFS (Gone), Indigo (WCF) and a few interesting people that would one day join our company.

Microsoft was preparing for PDC 2003 and we were asked to deliver several keynote demonstrations on a very short timeline. In addition, we were asked to learn a completely new set of technologies as well as integrate with a Microsoft team we’d never worked with before. Thankfully, the Microsoft team consisted of Nathan Dunlap (Designer) and Jonathan Russ (Developer). Yes, they now work with us. You’re going to be hearing a lot about these two guys. Nathan Dunlap is a rather large voice in the WPF community. You can follow him at: http://designerslove.net

IdentityMine Intro

2007-03-27T00:53:00.000-07:00

IdentityMine is an Interactive Design and Development firm. We’re roughly 50 people today with offices in the Seattle area, Cochin India and now starting to build a presence in the bay area. What’s unique about IdentityMine is our blend of Designer and Development talent. You see…There are plenty of good Design Agencies as well as Development firms but very few that bring them together. IdentityMine has managed to create a culture to successfully do just that. This combination is what allows us to create some truly amazing applications and experiences.

We’re very excited about where we’re at as a company right now. A few years back we made a big bet on a suite of beta technologies called WinFX, today known as .NET 3.0. Now with the recent release of Vista and the 3.0 available on XP we’re getting the opportunity to apply our technical expertise and creative talents on production software. http://www.identitymine.com

Enough about the company. Let's talk about the people and what they're doing! BTW - You can contact me at: http://2idi.com/contact/=chad.brown (Simply provide your e-mail and message)

IdentityMine not Identity Mine - For the record. :-)

2007-03-15T23:47:00.000-07:00