New Windows Media Center Presentation Layer (MCML) application now available - Big Screen Weather

Niall Ginsbourg from Mobilewares (who has also created the Big Screen Photos Flickr photo browser and the Big Screen Business financial application for Windows Media Center for Windows Vista) has created a new Windows Media Center application, this time using Media Center Markup Language.  This application, called Big Screen Weather, provides a wide variety of weather data for Australia, including the following:

  • 7 day forecasts
  • Animated satellite images and radar loops
  • Tide information
  • 72 hour weather history
  • Worldwide weather predictions for 100+ global cities

You can find a detailed list of features here and some screenshots of the application here.  You can download the latest version of the application at this location.

It is really exciting to start seeing such a variety of applications being built with the new platform features available in Windows Media Center for Windows Vista.  This application is particularly interesting because Niall developed his previous applications using .NET Framework 3.0 XBAP applications and this is his first attempt to create an MCML application.  Niall provided some detailed feedback about his development experiences, including some comments about the pros and cons of MCML development versus XBAP development for Windows Media Center in this post on the Media Center Sandbox site.  I encourage you to take a look at that post if you are evaluating whether or not to try creating a Windows Media Center application and/or are deciding what technology to use for your development work.