Pitching at the Community Summit was much fun! I was last but the audience was still focused and listening. Thanks, especially for the applause! The applause decided which startup would be best. No, we are not #1, but nevertheless the day was fantastic. I met many interesting people and learned some new insights from successful communities. I’m looking forward to tomorrow, the second day of the Community Summit.

Like many other folks in these days we also had to migrate our Silverlight code from Version 2 Beta 2 to Version 2 RC0. Fortunately almost none of the API changes affected our code, except an undocumented change to the predefined user control TextBox. We used to trigger the MouseLeftButtonDown event successfully until RC0. After the RC0 update the event didn’t fire and no error was thrown.

Additionally the TextBox was somehow locked whenever its visibility attribute was set collapsed and visible again: the user could not change the text within the TextBox any longer.

Here is our workaround:

• Replace the MouseLeftButtonDown event by a GotFocus event.
• Remove the TextBox from the children collection of its parent element and add it again.

The old code:

XAML:

<TextBox
x:Name="MessageTextBox" Text="(attach a message)"
MouseLeftButtonDown="MessageTextBox_MouseLeftButtonDown"
Height="80" Width="280" FontSize="14" Cursor="IBeam"
AcceptsReturn="True" VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Auto"
Style="{StaticResource TextBoxMessage}"/>

The new code:

XAML:

<TextBox
x:Name="MessageTextBox" Text="(attach a message)"
GotFocus="MessageTextBox_GotFocus"
Height="80" Width="280" FontSize="14" Cursor="IBeam"
AcceptsReturn="True" VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Auto"
Style="{StaticResource TextBoxMessage}"/>

C#:

ConfirmationDialog.Children.Remove(MessageTextBox);
ConfirmationDialog.Children.Add(MessageTextBox);

Another book I’ve not read but listened to the last months was Bang!. The subtitle is: “Getting Your Message Heard in a Noisy World” and that is what the book is about. It’s mainly about successful marketing or to be more precise advertising campaigns. The two authors run a very successful marketing agency in the US and they created many big bangs – how they call advertising campaigns which explode. Their main concept (in my opinion) is: be paradox! Don’t make what everyone does or what everyone expects or what you would do in the first place. Think about it a second time, from a different perspective. Think about: what wouldn’t you do and why. And then do exactly this. The authors also describe in detail how they generated an environment where such ideas can pop up. My favourite story for example is this one:

The AFLAC insurance company, for example, was turned into a household name when a member of the KTG team realized that AFLAC sounded like the quack of a duck. The AFLAC duck raised the company’s profile from zero to instantly recognizable.

The quote is taken from Amazon btw.

To summarize: the book is at first entertaining, at second it will change maybe slightly the way you think about advertising, but it won’t guide you in creating big bangs! You know the reason why: don’t do what someone tells you to do – be different, be paradox, be unique!

And have a good time!

Martin

After several tries on Facebook and Google searches I found this blog post (which I shortened):

When Facebook announced the Fan pages, there were a number of mixed reviews.  Some where hailing it and its integration to the new advertising platform and some hated it – claiming it was turning Facebook into Myspace.  Whatever your stance is, here are 6 reasons you need to make a Facebook page for your website or company now.

1. Pages are public.

2. Pages include links. 

3. Send “updates to fans”. 

4. You control the page. 

5. News feed. 

6. It’s free and easy. 

You can make your page here.

Here is an answer from Bret (an expert on social games):

Warren Buffett says that the economy in a recession. When it comes to the economy, I believe Warren Buffet. Recession is a scary word. But if you’re a social games company (or thinking about starting one), a recession may actually be a good thing.

…

When it comes to a recession, the common wisdom is that home entertainment surges, because people feeling the pinch opt for staying home rather then the more expensive option of going out. If that holds true during this recession, then online games are certain to benefit. After all, no one is giving up their Internet connection. And if you’re a free online game, then…well, I mean is there any better entertainment deal for a consumer then a free game?

Of course, the problem as always with free services on the internet, is that we rely on advertisers for our revenue stream. Fortunately, the digital goods model removes that dependency, making it even more attractive in the face of an advertising downturn. It’s still an open question whether people will buy virtual goods with a thinner wallet.

This is an aside, but I’d suggest that virtual goods can offer an excellent substitute for purchasing more expensive real goods. The desire to shop does not go away just because a consumer has less money. That desire to buy real items, such as clothes, shoes, and accessories is easily transferred to vanity virtual goods. Goods that come at a fraction of the cost of a real item, and therefore attractive even when you have a thinner wallet.

…

And if you need further convincing, the biggest games company in the world, EA, started in a recession.

Read the full article: Starting a Games Company in a Recession

Great news this morning (in Germany):

This evening we published the first public release candidate of Silverlight 2.
There are still a small handful of bugs fixes that we plan to make before we finally ship. We are releasing today’s build, though, so that developers can start to update their existing Silverlight Beta2 applications so that they’ll work the day the final release ships, as well as to enable developers to report any last minute showstopper issues that we haven’t found internally (please report any of these on the www.silverlight.net forums).

Via Silverlight 2 Release Candidate Now Available – ScottGu’s Blog

TechCrunch reports about the Facebook campaign in Germany:

Facebook may be the world’s largest and fastest growing social network, but apparently Germany remains a tough market to crack for the company. The site is just ranked 19th on Alexa’s Top 100 list for this country, ten positions behind StudiVZ, its local clone. While Facebook currently has a German user base of 800,000 (according to the site’s ad placement tool), StudiVZ boasts a membership of over 10 million, making it the largest social network in the German-speaking world. Facebook has been available in German since March of this year and reportedly grew by just 200,000 members since then. Comscore numbers suggest that number might be higher (see below).

Read on: Facebook Recruits Street Troops To Grow in Germany

Crazy art:

Watch them all.

SnipClip! 137 Counts for SnipClip! Unbelievable! Thanks again dear friends and fans! You are wonderful!

Greetings from Mainz (BASTA conference)

Martin

A German guy named Julius von Bismarck invented and patented the Fulgurator:

Technically, the Image Fulgurator works like a classical camera, though in reverse. In a normal camera, the light reflected from an object is projected via the lens onto the film. In the Image Fulgurator, this process is exactly the opposite: instead of an unexposed film, an exposed and developed roll of slide film is loaded into the camera and behind it, a flash. When the flash goes off, the image is projected from the film via the lens onto the object.

Watch it in action:

Via Digital in Berlin