Windows Live or the new Microsoft platform

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Last Friday I did a presentation on the Windows Live services for a number of influential people in the Belgium developer and IT-Pro community. From what I've read on Kris' blogpost "Windows Live session London" and Miel's excellent coverage of the event in London, I touched more or less the same Windows Live services but - of course - not with the same depth as Phil Holden, Kevin Briody and Koji Kato did.

I started with describing the Windows Live platform, its relationship to MSN and start.com. Next I discussed the following (beta) services:

 

At the end of the presentation I also mentioned that the Windows Live team is busy rebranding the current MSDN Windows Live Developer Center to the https://dev.live.com site. More information on the developer story for building mash-ups, gadgets and messenger activities can be found on this site. Check also out the Windows Live Developer Forums. Note that all services are based on the evolution of Microsoft Passport: Windows Live ID.

Another topic discussed during the Q&A session of my talk was Windows Desktop Search, its future and his reach to the enterprise. The LiveSide blog points to a whitepaper "Enterprise Search White Paper - May 2006" that discusses how to bridge the gap between Information Management and Enterprise Search. This new search product is described as an enterprise level solution that provides a single user interface, binding together separate systems including new search capabilities built into Vista, Windows Desktop Search 3.0 utilized by Office 2007, the Business Data Catalog and Knowledge Network in Office SharePoint Server 2007, and internet search from Windows Live Search (the other one), including image search, news, rss, email, local, and shopping searches. Indeed … the 2007 Office System users will agree that for enabling "Instant Search" Office 2007 relies on Windows Desktop Search 3.0.

It was interesting to note that in the beginning of the presentation - when asking the for their knowledge of Windows Live - everybody was pretty much familar with the services of Windows Live. But when discussing the third Live service people started asking questions and were surprised to see so much features they hadn't noticed before. Erwin has a blog post and some pictures talking about some of these features.

Now it looks like I provided Erwin with some ideas on how to use Windows Live: over the weekend he built his first mash-up. Using the Windows Live Local service he visualizes the number of downloads of his recenly nominated Doppler project. This is a great example of leveraging the power of the Windows Live platform. Great stuff! And what's even better is that Erwin is now developing a solution similar to the Google Web Toolkit but from within Visual Studio 2005 and using Script# !

Though some people already see the value of these "beta" services today, for most of the users the value of this platform will become clearer when some services will start integrate with eachother and leverage eachother functionality at least that's what I hope.

 

For the Live Messenger users that are interested in a chat on Tech Ed US … the TechEd06 Bot for Messenger is available!

Add TechEd06@hotmail.com to your Messenger contacts and start a conversation with the bot. (Compatible with Windows Live Messenger and MSN Messenger 7.x.)

 

Some of the Windows Live-blogs I read: LiveSide, Windows Live Spaces, Wndows Live Mail, Start.com, Live.com, Windows Live Local, Windows Live Expo, Windows Live Safety Center, Windows Live OneCare, Windows Live Search, Windows Live Mail Desktop and the blogs mentioned above.

 

Tag: Windows Live