Ian Blackburn from bbits.co.uk gives the Silverlight UK User Group a talk on his social networking application "SilverlightPulse.NET". This presentation was given on 29th September 2009 at the EMC Consulting offices in London.

1. Silverlightpulse.net A micro app for a micro-blogging world Ian Blackburn www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

2. What is Silverlightpulse.net? www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net Silverlightpulse.net shows and aggregates live tweets about Silverlight Disclaimer: This isn’t me

3. What’s it look like? www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net OK – it needs some designer love!

4. What is Twitter? www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

5. No - What is Twitter really? www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

6. Silverlightpulse.net www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net How quickly and effectively can I create a Silverlight app that shows the Twitter heartbeat for Silverlight ? Disclaimer: Not me, obviously!

7. What am I thinking about? www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

8. Development Process www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net Disclaimer: Not me, obviously!

9. What was in that evenings work? Took a look at the Twitter Search Api http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Search+API+Documentation Picked the Json Rest API Took a look at the Silverlight Toolkit Charts http://codeplex.com/silverlight Decided on a simple line chart Quick architectural choices No storage (server or ISO) for now Simple UX – limited choices, if any. No login. All client based – no server code – because I can! Do the simplest thing that works and no more TDD and Unit Tests (oops – fell by the wayside in the rush) Did “R-TUIT” instead though! Real-Time UI Testing + lots of refactoring! Some features didn’t make it Wordle-like analysis Map www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

10. The Code Section Lets briefly look at Using the Twitter Search API The XAML Some Value Converters The Chart Top Twitterers www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net Disclaimer: I don’t look like this (I think!)

11. Using Silverlight with the Twitter Json Search Api www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

12. I had to do a bit of work for missing values in the response from Twitter www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net Used for things like the ToUser value which is often not present in the response

13. Built a Simple Xaml UI www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

14. Some Simple Value Converters www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

15. The Chart Probably the most work Needed to aggregate the tweets retrieved from the search so they could be displayed Used a couple of Linq queries and settled on hard-coded 10 minutes grouping www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

16. Logic For the Chart www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

17. Chart Xaml www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

18. Top Twitters – Linq is your friend! www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net Linq makes these things such a pleasure!

19. Getting the Top 10 Used Words – Linq again! www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net This works but I need to remove common words (‘in’, ‘a’, ‘at’ etc) and create some sort of Wordle UI for it

20. Lessons Learnt You can do these micro apps quickly and they can have real benefit and impact Silverlight is great at working with REST API’s Silverlight is in a great position to take advantage of “the real-time web” and new business models Linq is fantastic for working with any sort of data Negatives Using Google analytics on a Silverlight page doesn’t tell you much! www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net

21. What next? Make open source on codeplex if there is anyone interested in helping out Include missing features Maps (using new Silverlight VE Map) Some UX Design Wordle-like display of popular words Choose term or hashtag to analyse (not just Silverlight) Other thoughts? Who wants to help? www.bbits.co.uk www.silverlightforbusiness.net This is me with my family! Disclaimer: Not me