Archetype International, Inc. Announces the Archetype Media Platform (AMP)

Media Management, Production, Analytics, and Playback on Windows Azure Platform

Archetype, an interactive solution provider, announced today the release of the Archetype Media Platform (AMP). AMP relies on Microsoft platforms, specifically Microsoft Silverlight, Microsoft .NET, and the Windows Azure platform, to create a dynamic and scalable experience.

AMP is a complete media management solution and includes a set of robust applications that enable users to upload, search, browse, select, and publish media to various formats, sizes, and platforms. The AMP system offers highly intuitive interfaces and can be deployed both commercially and in the enterprise.

Together, the AMP Manager, AMP Editor, AMP Portal, and AMP Analytics applications comprise the AMP system. AMP applications can be deployed individually or as an integrated system.

The AMP Portal offers end users an intuitive interface for discovering, viewing and sharing media of all types.

The AMP Manager is a media management and workflow application and allows users to upload, organize, tag, edit and select a given deployment path for a variety of media types.

The AMP Editor is a dynamic video editing solution used for creating, editing, and viewing multiple video compositions. The application combines more traditional video editing functionality with next generation editing functionality such as freeform dragging and dropping for video clip placement, stacking of multiple clips for timeline creation, and a filmstrip view that allows detailed in and out point editing on individual clips.

AMP Analytics provides users, such as business and marketing managers, detailed reporting on specific components of the AMP system. Information is presented in a highly visual manor and includes data relating to usage, ads and performance. Users can drill down into specific metrics and receive alerts and system updates.

The compatibility capabilities with the Windows Azure platform allows AMP to make real the notion of next generation media collaboration and management, and brings together a company’s entire media collection into a single, unified system. Windows Azure increases the scalability of the entire AMP system, enabling a virtually unlimited number of concurrent users, uploads, and encoding sessions to occur at any given time.

 “We are thrilled that Archetype has decided to utilize the Windows Azure platform to deliver its solution to customers,” said Doug Hauger, general manager of Windows Azure at Microsoft Corp. “The compatibility and scalability capabilities the Windows Azure platform offers will enable Archetype to seamlessly integrate its media management solution and applications into one efficient and unified experience for its customers.”

“Users may have hundreds, or even thousands of media assets uploaded to the system. In non-cloud- based solutions, server-side encoding performance can be hampered by the number of servers and bandwidth available. Utilizing the Windows Azure platform,- application tie-ins enhance the server side media encoding process by minimizing the upload and conversion video cue through distributing the entire process throughout the cloud.” - Danny Riddell, Chief Executive Officer, Archetype

“Customers know and trust Microsoft technologies and many of our existing customers already heavily use Microsoft products. The familiarity, integration, and timeframe that come with basing our solution on the Windows Azure platform are all big selling points for us and for our customers.”  - Mike Lucaccini, President, Archetype

By working with the Windows Azure platform, SQL Azure, and Silverlight teams and technologies, we are confident in our ability to provide our customers with stable, scalable, and high value experiences.” - Danny Riddell, Chief Executive Officer, Archetype

Coming to a City Near You: The Official Silverlight Gallery Application

Working closely with the Microsoft Silverlight Team, Archetype designed, developed and helped launch the Silverlight Evangelist Kit Gallery Application. Intended primarily for Microsoft’s worldwide Evangelists and Sales and Marketing teams, the Gallery App showcases numerous best-of-breed Silverlight applications that demonstrate key Silverlight features and functionality. Included within the Gallery App are games, RIAs and line-of-business applications all highlighting Microsoft’s partners’ innovative Silverlight-based solutions. And not only do the apps within the Gallery showcase Silverlight’s features and functionality, but features such as dynamic layout and resizing, deep linking and a lightning fast search make the Gallery app itself a lighthouse example of Silverlight.

Within the Gallery app, users can discover and view a wide array of Silverlight solutions, videos and application screenshots, along with browsing key Silverlight feature demos. The app also incorporates advanced searching, sorting, and filtering options. The app is sure to make the rounds at upcoming conferences and Microsoft events, and sourcecode could be made available for download. Stay tuned.

Archetype’s Media Platform (AMP) Highlighted in SQL PASS 2009 Keynote

Archetype’s Media Platform (AMP) featured in keynote at the PASS (Professional Association for SQL Server) Annual Summit in Seattle, WA (November 2nd-5th). PASS 2009 is one of the largest SQL Server focused conferences and Archetype is proud to be a part of the keynote announcements. Archetype has been working closely with the Azure and SQL Azure teams and we are excited to have our AMP system selected as a demonstration of the power of SQL Azure and the synchronization of on-premise and cloud based applications and databases.

The AMP system is a complete media management solution that includes a robust set of applications that help customers manage, edit, and deploy media asset more efficiently and effectively. Together the AMP Manager, AMP Editor, AMP Portal, and AMP Analytics comprise the AMP System.

Happy Halloween (Application) from Archetype!

To get into the spooky spirit of this year’s Halloween, we’ve created our own pumpkin carving application. You can carve your own virtual pumpkin, create a personalized message and share it with your friends. Oh, and it’s a Silverlight 3 application running entirely on Windows Azure.

Check out our pumpkin, then carve and share your own:

http://halloween.cloudapp.net/pumpkin/02a97183-d2c3-4b5f-a692-75c23da13703

Have fun, pass it along and Happy Halloween!!!

- The Archetype Team

Archetype Highlighted by the SQL Azure Team in the Latest SQL Azure Launch

Archetype is proud to be working with Microsoft’s Azure cloud services and SQL Azure team in the testing and launch of their latest release. 

“We see SQL Azure as the perfect fit for information that needs to be kept in one safe, well-structured, accessible spot. Partitioning the data helps ensure scalability as more and more users interact with the site, and it also isolates tracking resources, helping avoid single points of failure,” said Luigi Rosso, Chief Technology Officer at leading interactive firm, Archetype. “To establish the kind of default redundant installation we get with SQL Azure, we’d have to purchase at least two dedicated servers and hire IT staff to administer them. A reliable system in place that is managed, efficient, and fast is critical for us. With SQL Azure, we don’t have to buy servers or manage and monitor them for capacity to ensure availability for our customers.” 

Find out more about the latest  SQL Azure launch at http://blogs.msdn.com/ssds/archive/2009/10/14/9907238.aspx.

Archetype CEO Attends Exclusive Steve Ballmer Web Development Roundtable

Attending Microsoft’s World Wide Partner’s Conference (WPC) is a fantastic experience. The sheer breadth of companies, technologies and people that make up Microsoft’s Partner Group is amazing. Wandering the event hall, you’ll see companies focusing on everything from hosted Exchange all the way to the most esoteric applications, robotics and simulations. It is always great to see how many markets and technologies Microsoft is involved in, not only through platforms and technologies but as business units and areas of market focus. 

Needless to say, experiencing all of this in one venue is a great experience. But perhaps even better was talking to the CEO running it all, Steve Ballmer. Along with a few other leading technology firms in the web space, I was invited to an exclusive Steve Ballmer roundtable discussion centered around Microsoft’s Web Development Platform.

Far from a formal presentation of Microsoft’s web dev strategy, this was an open dialogue where the group exchanged ideas and gave feedback on Microsoft’s future web strategies around .NET, Silverlight, SharePoint, Visual Studio and other Microsoft technologies. We discussed with Ballmer the current market trends we’re seeing and experiencing in web and RIA development, as well as our perceptions of Microsoft’s strengths and challenges.  Archetype is proud to have been a part of this discussion and have the opportunity to share our perspective with Ballmer and the rest of the group.

Bump Mapping with Silverlight 3

Silverlight 3’s new pixel shaders feature allows writing full HLSL pixel shader effects which can be applied to any UIElement in the visual hierarchy. This allows for some of the usual UI effects like blurring and drop shadows but also opens up a lot of possibilities for creative uses.

We’ve implemented basic normal mapping and added a few other things which shows some of the cool new capabilities exposed by this new functionality including the ability to databind to ui components, use multiple brushes as inputs, and create some really interesting blending effects which are not natively available.

If you’re interested in how normal mapping works, read below for the specifics. Get the source here.  Feel free to use it or modify it, please let us know if you do!

Grab the light icon on the top right and move it around to see how it affects the surface below. Use the sliders to change the lighting parameters.

Normal (or bump) mapping is a technique used to give a very detailed lighting effect on an otherwise flat image.  The effect works by calculating the amount of light reflected at each pixel of the image.  This value is then modulated (via simple multiplication) with the original color.  This darkens the original pixel value in direct relation to how the light would reflect off the surface at that pixel.  In order to understand how the light reflects off of a single pixel in the image we need to know the shape of the surface at that pixel.  This is done by storing the normal vector for each pixel in another image.  The normal vector is a unit vector (length of 1) pointing in the direction the surface faces at that pixel.  The normal vector is three dimensional.  This can be easily stored in an RGB image by simply compressing the three dimensions into each of the 8 bit channels.  This image is called the normal map.

In order to calculate how the light reflects off a surface we use a mathematical operation called a dot product.  The dot takes two vectors as input and returns a single value that describes how these vectors are aligned in relation to each other.  This can be used for other useful things like calculating the angle between the vectors.  In this case we’re just interested in this scalar value, it approaches 0 as the normals move close to 90 degrees apart.  When the vectors have less than 90 degrees between them the value will be between 0 and 1, past 90 the values are between 0 and -1.  When the vectors point at each other the value is 1, when they point away from each other it’s -1.  This is perfect for describing the light reflected.  We clamp the range at 0 since the negative values don’t really mean anything to us as any value of 0 or less just means that no light is reflected.

We use the surface normal as the first vector and the vector describing the direction from the light to the pixel as the second vector.  We can calculate the direction of the light to the pixel by simple geometric point subtraction (the pixel’s point minus the light’s point).  That’s basically all you need to do normal mapping.  We’ve taken this example a little further by adding in some other parameters like attenuation for the light source, bumpiness, and over exposure which simulates a very bright light source.

Fundamental Icons

Most interactive applications require a core set of icons, yet designers all over the world must constantly create them over and over again. Play/pause buttons, search icons, close buttons, and more. Let’s face it, we’re constantly building and rebuilding them. But fear not, those dark days are over!

Instead of periodically wasting precious time on redundant vertex points and bezier curves, we decided to create a set of core icons for our applications, which we’ve accordingly named Fundamental Icons. This set includes the essential icons your applications need to not only look great, but effectively communicate features and functionality to users. Icons are provided entirely in vector format (AI and XAML). Scale them and manipulate them as much as you need.

This first release includes black and white icons, along with slightly shaded variants. Download them here!

Silverlight 3, Not Just for Breakfast Anymore…

We just got back from the official Silverlight 3 launch at the Intercontinental, right near our offices in San Francisco. Before I get to the event, I have to mention the swag: Microsoft gave all the attendees a PaperShow Kit. I haven’t cracked the seal yet, but this looks to be one of the better conference giveaways I’ve had in a while.  Yes, better than the mini fans, logo key chains, and countless insulated mugs (most of which no longer have lids).

While we’ve been working with several of the new features in Silverlight for quite some time (you can see several demo apps and videos we created at www.microsoft.com/silverlight), one of things that struck me this morning is how rapidly the platform has advanced.  As Scott Guthrie and Soma Somosegar noted, the first version was launched in early 2007, the second managed code and more robust version in September of 2008, and now we’re at Silverlight 3. That’s a pretty impressive pace for a mature software development platform, let alone a relatively new one. No sleeping allowed in Redmond.

As with other launch events, Microsoft brought on stage an impressive lineup of partners, who showcased a variety of solutions ranging from media-related apps to line-of-business solutions. Video still seems to be at the heart of the Silverlight story, and Microsoft underscored this with a live Smooth Streaming demo as well as several other video-related showcase pieces. The two other big ticket items were Sketchflow, a  prototyping system built into Expression Blend 3, and Out of Browser. We’d seen Sketchflow at Mix and have been playing with it for the last few months, but it was interesting to see and hear reactions from other attendees to whom it was brand new. People are intrigued to say the least. While I don’t think I can watch another one of Microsoft’s ‘broken egg metaphor’ presentations, they’re definitely working hard at closing the designer/developer gap. As for Silverlight Out of Browser apps, the possibilities are vast. Accenture showed off a nice video portal application that can launched from the Start Menu or desktop and taken offline. But this is largely uncharted territory and there are tons of other possibilities.