New Official Logo & Tagline

Hey everyone, after a month of setting up this site, plus with the amazing response from the readers, we have finally hit over 300 hits in less than a month! That means, we have been receiving about 10-15 new visitors, or returned visitors every single day! First and foremost, we really have to thank our readers for the continuing support, as well as those that make this site a regular visit every single day! Be it to learn about something new, or to check out what's happening! We're really happy to be able to share what we know with the world! Hopefully by doing so, it will make this world a better place, and make businesses a better place to work in!

Anyway, there's no better way to celebrate the success so far, than to create our very own first logo:

 

As you can see above, we wanna stick to the classic, 2 - 3 color scheme. We do not want to give the design too much complexity, but rather, we want to maintain a professional, classy look-and-feel! We have broken down our title into the initials "D" and "(fx)". "D" stands for Dashboards, and well, "(fx)" stands for functionalities, or an infinity of numbers.

The reason we wanted to use the tagline "Bringing Data to Life", is because we believe that data and information alone is not enough in our current technology age. People, and organizations are getting smarter. This inspired us to have a mission of helping you, our clients, target consumers to bring your data to life! We strongly believed that data, when given the right context, placed in proper perspective, can come to live! And without you have to do much, the data will all come together in perfect synchrony, and give you the necessary push to make certain decisions you need to make for your company. Be it whether to push out a new Credit Card into the market, or to launch that new model of car into a country. We hope that the tools that we create for you, will help you to make smarter, more effective, and faster decisions!

We love you, our readers! And we certainly hope to get to know you better in the days, months and years to come! 

Silverlight Re-Use

In the course of working on Silverlight-driven applicatons, as well as WPF development, I have come to know other silverlight-eager developers and learners. And I am quite surprised at the number of people that do not know about the templates that comes from Silverlight. I like some of the ready-made templates from Silverlight,

 

If you enlarge the image, you can see that the silverlight team at microsoft has created 4 templates that will help people like me to get started with an application. Now, if you are from a designer background, I'm sure you'll be able to do a much better job than these templates. As for myself, I'm not exactly a graphic designer kind of person, but I appreciate the art of designing, and I strive to learn as much as I can about whatever design tools there are out there. Unfortunately, all of us only have 24 hours, so when it comes down to prioritizing, I prefer to re-use templates that have already been created for me.

In the current age of technology development, re-inventing the wheel is no longer appreciated. Nowadays, people are looking for more efficient, time effective solutions. Nobody wants to create something from scratch. The time and effort to do so just doesn't justify the means.

Here's a sample of the template when executed:

 

If you are like me, and being productive your on the top of your priorities, then you seriously need to learn how to use these templates. What I love to do, is to create a new silverlight application using VS, then switch it over to Blend 4, where I can easily manage the Resources using the Properties Panel. This is a much faster method I felt, to create your desired design and layout.

Hope you will enjoy developing silverlight applications the way I do! Have fun guys! 

Get to Know Microsoft Expression Blend 4

Hey everyone! After a really busy day, glad to be able to come back and post again! I thought of finally sharing about Microsoft Expression Blend 4! Now, if you are new, and or an experienced Silverlight/WPF developer, you probably might have heard of Microsoft Expression Blend 4 before. Microsoft Expression Blend 4 is an whole IDE by itself, and frankly, for a developer like myself, I had my reservations about using Expression Blend initially.

The honest truth is that I'm someone born without the flair for design. Although I do enjoy the benefits of using Photoshop when it comes to producing simple web graphics. But if you are to come to me and ask me to churn out brand new, graphically engaging effects, well, I'll probably turn you down 9 out of 10 times. Lolx!

Anyway, one thing I've learnt as a developer/consultant is that you can never totally ignore the design aspect of development. Regardless of whether you are doing ASP.NET, or you are doing Silverlight/WPF. At the end of the day, it pays off to know abit about what Photoshop, or even Expression Blend can do for you.

I've definitely come to appreciate Expression Blend a lot more now. So, since we are on the topic of Expression Blend 4, perhaps I can share a little more about it's amazing UI:

Main View

Click on the image to see the larger detail version. Here is a simplified description of what you can do with this amazing UI:

1. The Quick Utility Belt!!
   
   This is the simple term I like to call it. Despite of what the books name it. Yes, there is a proper term for it, Blend Toolbar. Here, you can actually achieve so many things, but its too much for me to go into detail here on each and every single functionality. But I particularly find the Gradient Tool, Layout Controls, Text Input Controls and the Input controls most useful! I used to think Photoshop has a easy way to control the appearance of Gradients, but after using Expression Blend 4, I hate to admit it, that its much more easy using Expression Blend.
2. The Assets Library
   
   If you are new to Silverlight, or WPF, or development in general, then you must know that it's very easy for you to create controls, layouts, buttons, other silverlight related controls using the Assets Library. All you need to do is to drag and drop the controls you need to the workspace (the white area that appears in the center of the screen when you create a new project). Once you have dropped the controls you need to the workspace, next thing you need to do is to set the relevant properties in the Properties Panel.
3. Objects and Timeline Panel
   
   One more thing I've come to love about Expression Blend is it's simplicity in managing and creation of Animation, and managing the behaviors for user controls and objects on the workspace. I have worked on Adobe Flash for many years (eventhough I'm not an expert at it), and I must admit, I picked up on the timeline panel much faster than Flash. Flash...I think I took 6 months to actually figure it out.
   
   The simplicity of the Timeline Panel really made it such a ease and joy to work with necessary animations in my applications. Generally, I do only about 10-20% of animations on most projects, unless the client requires a silverlight-driven game or WPF-driven game.
4. Workspace (The Blank Canvas where anything is POSSIBLE!)
   
   Yes, that is what I believe in strongly. The blank workspace is where you can create anything imaginable. It's just like the blank canvas of our minds. If you can envision what you want to create, start to envision it on the workspace. Where do you want the menu to be, where will the member sign in panel be? Where will be the products listing section? There is just endless possibilities to what you want to create. 
5. The Properties Panel
   
   Every object and control on the workspace has a personality and life of it's own. When you envision your layout, think of it like a breathing living human being. Or a character that you want to create for your blockbuster movie. What sort of personality do you want your button to have? What sort of characteristic will your application have? Fanciful? Eye Candy? Or corporate, yet fluid layout? What you have envisioned, trust me, with some tweaks and combinations from the properties panel, and you will be able to achieve what you want! 

Okay, so maybe you are wondering, is this Expression Blend really as good as what he says?? Disclaimer, when I first came to this UI, I was confused by what it does. The layout doesn't look anything like what I have used before, and definitely different from Visual Studio! I was immediately turned off.

But it was only 1 day, that I finally decided to give Expression Blend a try, and then I realized that its so easy to do so many things, and trust me, it's much faster than trying to code everything using VS. Sure, you can also code it using Visual Studio, but take my advice, Expression Blend will save you many precious hours, and perhaps buy you more sleeping time! If this experience sounds familiar, you are right, I shared a similar experience with one of the authors from the Silverlight 4 books.

4th on Google Rankings

This is absolutely exciting for us, as we just discovered today, that we are ranked 4th in the area of "wpf silverlight dashboards singapore".

4th on Google Ranking

We are really happy and will continue to strive to be among the top few in Google Rankings when it comes to providing quality WPF, silverlight solutions to businesses within Singapore. But more important than the rankings, we are also very happy to have finally received our testimonies from 2 Final Year students from 2 very esteemed tertiary institutions within Singapore.

Since WPF and Silverlight applications are still on the pick up within Singapore at the moment, we want to start creating more awareness about the use of Silverlight and WPF in the real world projects, as well as what it can do. Many people know what ASP.NET and Windows Forms can do. They provide you with the websites and desktop applications.

However, its clear that there is still a smaller majority that isn't aware of the power of using WPF and Silverlight.

In our opinion, Silverlight is much more powerful than using normal ASP.NET webpages. Reason being that Silverlight can provide the animation, behaviors portion that websites don't have. And WPF is able to create interactive Line of Business (LOB) and Point of Sales (POS) applications that can be used with touched interfaces.

In the next 6 months to a year from now, you will start to see many many places, retail outlets, using Silverlight or WPF powered applications. This is an inevitable trend now.

177 Hits in the First Month

Hi everyone! Thank you so much for supporting my blog site which I am using to facilitate my consultation services for Silverlight and WPF Projects! It's only been 1 month since I've started this website, and as of last night, we have reached 177 hits in total.

The total page views just in yesterday alone has increased to 87!

 To be very honest, the outcome actually has out-done my expectations, never thought something like that is ever possible, but now I am hungry for me. For the month of August, let's aim to increase the blog site's viewership to 500!

The Key to Success is Being Different

Pardon for being a little busy lately, and I was working on a new Silverlight project, and also another possible project. Nothing is confirmed at this point, so its better not to say too much first. I recently been asked a lot about 1 question (in many variations ofcos), "Why do you want to do Silverlight & WPF? Isn't it very challenging to do in Singapore?"

You see, there is a reason why I have chosen to specialized in Silverlight and WPF. Yes, it is a fact and reality that for most Asians, many of us have grown up being taught to be afraid of change, and its always best to stick to what we are comfortable. Stay within the safe zone, and you will never be disappointed if something doesn't work out the way you expect it. For many of us, we have grown up being so customized to living and reaching within our own comfort zone, so much so that we have grown lazy to stretching ourselves.

But that is not how I want my life or my business to be eventually. I do not want to live in the same pattern for the next 50, 60 years of my life. I like to believe that I will live a long and prosperous life. And even if that doesn't happen, I want to be sure of 1 thing, and that is I will have a great and fruitful life!

And in terms of business, I want to stop following the mainstream. I do not want to keep fighting and struggling with everyone else for a slice of the Pie. I want an entire Pie, or at least a large portion of it. I want to leverage on the fear of change, the fear of unknown that many Asian people have, and turn it into my advantage. I love change, and I welcome the un-expected. Because I have learnt that with the un-expected, it helps us to grow, and also trains us to become more resourceful, efficient problem solvers. It keeps us on the toes.

And after being a professional web developer for almost a decade, I've come to understand that its very challenging for a software house here in Singapore to suddenly switch technology. 90 - 95% of the industry is already with web-driven consultation service. Why should I even bother to go fight for the remaining 5% of the market, when for Silverlight and WPF, I probably can have the entire 85% - 95% market!

In this day and age, we no longer need to be as hard working as others, we do not need to invent something from scratch. Everything is already there prepared for us. We have all the tools, and resources we need. We just need to work smart and be innovative. We need to DARE TO BE DIFFERENT.

If you want to succeed in your country, or city, wherever you are, take my advice. Be Different. Just like a fish who decides to swim upstream, so he can find better, fresh water, and he can have the entire lake at the top, rather than compete for space with the rest at the bottom. Sometimes, the path with the greatest resistance, is your only assurance that you are on the right path. Trust your gut, no matter what your friends, your family, your ex-colleagues, your teachers tell you. You live for yourself. Take ownership, take responsibility. Go live your dreams!

Our Vision

To be able to help at least 55% of the Fortune 500 companies in Singapore and around the Asia Pacific region master the use of Knowledge Management through Effective Data Representation by 2017.