I’ve been curious about how to setup an rss reader in Silverlight, and this was the perfect opportunity to do so. XML is the main language for rss feeds, and this is a rough demo that parses a file called kongkoro.xml. That xml file was generated from my pownce page at Pownce. I modified it to increase the file size, so i could see the downloader in action. Pownce is basically a twitter like service that allows one to share pictures, links, events, etc… The XML file is located locally on this server, as this was just an exercise for parsing XML. The XML file is downloaded from this server and loaded into the silverlight application where it is processed and displayed. Right now I’m only displaying the body of the message, I hope to create a fancier version in the near future. This project is based on two tutorials @ silverlight.net:

1. Display a Waiting Animation While Downloading Content Overview
2. Dynamically Load Data from XML in Silverlight 1.0

I’ve heard talk about using Silverlight on a LAMP server, and I decided to give it a go. I didn’t think it was going to be easy, but it was! I’m currently running wordpress 2.6, and above you’ll find my proof of concept Hello World with silverlight. One interesting note my server doesn’t support the “.xaml” File extension, so I had to change the file extension to “.xml” and everything worked like a charm.
I also had to use a plugin, so I could write javascript code in my wordpress post:

1. Script Enabler by Otto

I also used Microsoft’s Blend to do the animation.
**You may have to download and install the silverlight Runtime for this work. It’s painless I promise**

So, I finally got a new phone, a palm centro. It was a welcome upgrade from my hummer like, heavily abused LG vx8300 that I loved dearly.  Now why the Centro you ask? Honestly because of the bang for the buck. For $50 I got a stable os, full qwerty keyboard, and access to the huge library of palmOS software.  How could I say no??  Only gripe is the keyboard is small, but you get used to it, so it’s not that bad.

I used the bluetooth to pair my vx8300 with my Centro, beamed all my contacts over to the new phone. It was freakin SA UH WEET. Recently found some cool apps that i’m currently using with MY Centro , so i’ll post those up here….eventually