Tafiti - Search Visualization with Silverlight

Microsoft today announced the launch of Tafiti, an experimental web site showcasing a different take on the Live Search experience. The site "helps people use the Web for research that spans multiple queries and sessions by helping them visualize, store and share the result." While the search is powered by the Live Search engine, the client experience is built on Silverlight.

With Tafiti and Ms. Dewey before it, it is interesting to see development teams at Microsoft move out of the rut of the run-of-the-mill search interface and experiment with specialized usage scenarios with richer visualizations.

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Silverlight 1.1 controls from ComponentOne

ComponentOne Labs features a suite of over 30 UI controls and components for Silverlight 1.1. This is an impressive list covering the gamut with buttons, text controls, lists, date pickers and layout containers. Apparently charting controls and grid are in the works. You can play with these controls on their slick gallery. I'm very impressed.

My team shipped a set of sample UI controls with the Silverlight 1.1 Alpha SDK building on the platform's basic foundations for control extensibility. I've been pleasantly surprised by the the sorts of things the community has done with what can only be kindly referred to as rudimentary support in the platform. As Silverlight 1.1 evolves, you will see the platform provide a lot of the building blocks such as robust keyboard/input support, a layout system, basic UI controls and more. The possibilities are endless. Of course, there's still a lot to get done. If you've read this far, you probably care. Please tell us about your experiences building RIAs using Silverlight and what you'd like to see in the platform and the framework.

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Barry Bonds hits 756th homer

Barry Bonds hit his 756th home run last night passing Hank Aaron's record. In terms of records in baseball, this is probably the single most important one, earning anyone that holds it the arguable distinction of being the greatest player of all time. As a San Francisco Giants fan with little to boast about thus far, I am going to savor this moment for a long time.
Here's the video of the moment... in Silverlight, courtesy of Major League Baseball.

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