Archetype Creates innovative Associated Press Phone 7 Application, Showcased in MIX Keynote

As part of the keynote presentation at the MIX 2010 Conference, Joe Belfiore, Microsoft’s Corporate Vice President, Windows Phone Program Management, showcased Archetype’s Associated Press News Reader Application. Taking advantage of the new Windows Phone 7 platform, the AP News Reader provides a next generation experience for accessing news content. The AP News Reader application allows users to browse articles, view images and play video through a rich and visually compelling interface. Through taking advantage of Windows Phone 7’s multi-touch capabilities, the application allows for intuitive gesture-based interactions like flipping through and resizing photos. The AP News Reader also ties into popular social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook and supports dynamic ad placements, such as pop-ups, page takeovers and videos.

“We are very excited about the Phone 7 platform and the amazing opportunity that it brings our customers. Our partnership with Associated Press on the AP Phone 7 Application is a great example pushing the boundary of a new platform while engaging users in compelling mobile experiences,” said Danny Riddell, Archetype, CEO, Founder.

The Associated Press Application highlights the powerful capabilities of Silverlight and Windows Phone 7, as well as Archetype’s commitment to being at the forefront of emerging technologies. Through partnering with the Associated Press, and Microsoft’s Silverlight and Window Phone 7 teams, Archetype produced a compelling and useful application that demonstrates a new way to experience news, and provides AP’s constituent news outlets with a rebrandable and customizable platform for creating market-specific news readers of their own.

You can see the AP demo and the rest of the MIX keynote here: http://live.visitmix.com.

Archetype works with Microsoft to produce a set of learning applications for Microsoft.com/design

In tackling everything from community involvement and design challenges to better accross-the-board workflow and tooling support, Microsoft is working hard on rounding out, or beveling and adding a drop shadow to, its developer-centric image and offerings. One of the more recent signs of this shift can be found in the .toolbox area of microsoft.com/design site.

Articulating key design principles and techniques, the .toolbox site includes a set of Silverlight demo applications and associated curriculum centered around Microsoft’s tools and technologies. Archetype assisted in the production of this site by developing several of the demo applications, including Canvas, Slideshow, Weather, Mixer and Videos. Additionally, two members of our team, Eric Anderson and Guido Rosso, were officially drafted to be part of the .toolbox faculty. Take a peak at the apps and try to stump Eric and Guido with your questions. If you do, we’ll send ya a T-shirt.

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.

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

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.

Luminate - Archetype’s Recycling Game

Amongst many cool things in both the LA and Austin Phizzpop design challenges, one of the best was the wide open nature of the contests. Far from being limited to a single approach, participants were actively encouraged to use the best technologies, applications and platforms for whatever solution they were creating. And with the Austin Phizzpop challenge centered on sustainability, we developed a wide array of eco-centric applications focused on everyone from business people to consumers to students in the local elementary school.

One such application is Luminate, which you can play here:

http://www.luminateaustin.com/

Built using Silverlight, the game teaches kids how to recycle. As you’ll see once you open the game, you can use the left-right arrows and spacebar to maneuver and drop items into the appropriate bins. If you select the wrong bin, the item will bounce out and onto the ground. As more and more items fall out of the bins, the ground is raised until it covers the city. Yep, you’ve just trashed your once-beautiful city! Game over, man.

Since the design contest was based in Austin, the current game reflects the specific recycling and composting rules for that area. Also, the game was showcased by Microsoft at the recent Web 2.0 conference as the first application on the MySpace Silverlight platform.

Play it, share it, and don’t let Austin get trashed!

Archetype Partnering with Microsoft’s Silverlight Team to Build Next Generation Silverlight 3 Applications

Archetype is engaged with Microsoft’s Silverlight team to push the boundaries of the next generation release of the platform. Even in the early stages, the Silverlight 3 feature set is fertile ground for Archetype and we’re building a set of applications that showcase some powerful advancements. We’ve been really impressed with features like 3D support and GPU hardware acceleration, especially for advanced data visualizations. Features like these go a long way in extending the capabilities and performance of Silverlight RIAs, and bring them ever closer to desktop applications.  Additional UI controls and improved support for data-binding are also rounding out the platform and opening the doors for data rich applications of all types.

Considering the pace at which interactive platforms and technologies are evolving, engagements like these are core to Archetype’s strategy and capabilities. The insights we’re gaining working with the Microsoft Silverlight team flow directly into our product and service offerings, and we can’t wait to start sharing this work with the larger community.

Microsoft MIX Conference

Here we are again, looking forward to participating in the Microsoft MIX 2009 Conference in Las Vegas. This year’s MIX is clearly shaping up to be the best yet with innovations in Microsoft’s Silverlight, WPF, and Surface platforms, just to name a few. We are particularly excited this year as there are a number of our initiatives that we will be showing off around MIX, as well as our projects being showcased throughout the sessions. We are looking forward to seeing everyone there!