Live Services

Microsoft® Silverlight(TM) Streaming by Windows Live(TM) Beta has ended

Frogs69 — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 21:00:00 GMT

The home page of the Silverlight Streaming admin web site has been updated as follows:

The Microsoft Silverlight Streaming by Windows Live beta has now ended. Content that was hosted on the beta is no longer available.

For Silverlight application deployment and video hosting, you may consider Windows® Azure(TM). For more information on Windows Azure and how to use it in order to host Silverlight applications, please refer to the following resources:

Please note that Windows Azure is a paid service. Information on the pricing structure is available at: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/pricing/

Microsoft® Silverlight(TM) Streaming by Windows Live(TM) Beta is ending

Frogs69 — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:00:00 GMT

Note: Throughout this post, I'll refer to Microsoft® Silverlight(TM) Streaming by Windows Live(TM) simply as "SLS".

As per my previous post about the SLS service going away now that the Windows Azure platform is available commercially, we are entering Stage 2 of the SLS grandfathering phase.

The SLS home page has been overhauled this afternoon to provide comprehensive instructions on how to retrieve your SLS content and store it in Windows Azure.

It also confirms the deadline by which this content has to be removed from SLS before it becomes unavailable: January 31st, 2010. Until that time, the SLS admin web site will remain fully functional.

Important News for Users of the Microsoft® Silverlight(TM) Streaming by Windows Live(TM) Beta October 2009

Frogs69 — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:00:00 GMT

Summary:

Microsoft Silverlight Streaming by Windows Live Beta is being discontinued and will eventually be taken down
A new Windows® Azure(TM)-based hosting and delivery service will be launched by the end of 2009, though this is not a direct replacement for Silverlight Streaming and will have costs associated with its use
You can access, retrieve and if desired remove your content that is currently hosted on Silverlight Streaming by following the instructions below
Key dates and information about the availability of the new Windows Azure functionality, and when the existing Silverlight Streaming beta service will be taken down, will be communicated in the coming weeks

Background:

Since May 2007, we have been offering a free beta service to host Silverlight applications and videos. This service is being discontinued to make way for a new Windows Azure-based service. Once this new service is launched, the current Silverlight Streaming beta service will eventually be taken down.

Don't panic! All your current content is safe and you will receive sufficient notice for you to make an informed decision on where to host your Silverlight content and applications. However, in the interim, we would like you to be aware of the following:

Effective immediately, no new sign-ups are permitted for the Silverlight Streaming service. In addition, the Silverlight Streaming publishing plug-in for Expression Encoder will no longer be available for download.
The new Windows Azure functionality will not be a direct replacement for the Silverlight Streaming service and will be a paid subscription service.

Steps you can take today:

You can access all of your content that is currently hosted on Silverlight Streaming and also view the file system to retrieve your content locally. For complete instructions on how to do this, please refer to the Step by step instructions for retrieving Silverlight Streaming content section below.
Stay tuned for more information. Key dates about the new Windows Azure-based functionality, and when the existing service will be taken down will be communicated in the coming weeks.
You can learn more about the Windows Azure Platform here.

If you have additional questions, please contact us at slsfbk@microsoft.com.

Step by step instructions for retrieving Silverlight Streaming content:

You can directly access the file system of the Silverlight Streaming hosting service. This will be the easiest way to retrieve content directly to your computer. In order to do this, you need to know the Silverlight Streaming Account ID and Account Key used to access the file system. To get this information, do the following:

Open a web browser and connect to http://silverlight.live.com
Login with your Live ID.
Click on Manage Account.
You will see your Account ID and Key under the Account Information section at the bottom of the page.

You can connect to the SLS file system in a number of ways:

1. Map a network drive

Map to the following network drive, replacing <Account ID> with the numeric Account ID you found by following the steps above.

https://silverlight.services.live.com/<AccountID>/

2. Open as a web folder

Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 200 and Windows Server 2003 users must install the latest Software Update for Web Folders.
Internet Explorer users: open the web folder by connecting to the following URL, replacing <Account ID> with the numeric Account ID you found by following the steps above:

https://silverlight.services.live.com/<AccountID>/

Other web browsers: copy and paste the following path into the "Run." box on the Start menu:

\\silverlight.services.live.com@SSL\DavWWWRoot\<AccountID>\

When prompted for credentials, supply your Silverlight Streaming account information that you found by following the steps in the previous section.

Note for Vista users:

For improved performance, disable thumbnails as follows:

Click on the Start button, then choose All Programs followed by Accessories
Run Windows Explorer
In Windows Explorer, click on the Organize button on the menu bar
In the pull-down menu, click on Folder and Search Options
In the Folder Options dialog window, click on the View tab
Under the Files and Folders tree heading, ensure that Always show icons, never thumbnails is checked

3. Mac OS X users

In the Finder, choose Go ->Connect To Server. In the Server Address field, paste the following address, replacing <Account ID> with the numeric Account ID you found by following the steps above.

https://silverlight.services.live.com/<AccountID>/

Announcing Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit V3.5: better UI, faster development, richer experience for non-Messenger users

lsteam — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 18:49:00 GMT

We’ve been working hard on the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit (MWT) which allows you to connect your web site to 330M+ people who use Windows Live Messenger every month! Today we’d like to announce the availability of the Messenger Web Toolkit v3.5 which will enhance the user experience, make it easier to enable sharing via Messenger scenarios on your site (new sharing control), and enable new scenarios (e.g. people who don’t use Messenger will be able to see display pics / names). Specifically, the improvements we have made are:

User experience: smoothed out the user experience, added a first run experience, expanded the browser support, increased the performance
Developer experience: reduced the amount of code for you to implement “Share via Windows Live” and the Messenger Web Toolkit is now built on the Microsoft Ajax library.
New scenarios: Allow people who don’t use Messenger to see display pictures and names of Messenger users.

How did we figure out what are the most important things to get in this release? We listened to and incorporated the great feedback from our partners (some award winning), and were able to come up with new and exciting scenarios.

User Experience: Sexier, faster, supported in more browsers

To bring more people to your site and get them to spend more time there, the user experience needs to be superb. We have made the Messenger Web Toolkit user experience better in many ways:

Speed: In March 2009 we extended Windows Live Hotmail to use the Messenger Web Toolkit (see the post ). By having our bits running at Hotmail scale we were able to gather a ton of information around performance and we’ve acted on it: the MWT will now load faster (full/first time loads and cross page navigation).
Availability/Reach: added browser support for Firefox 3.5, Safari 4, and Google Chrome 2 - now more people can connect & share with their Windows Live friends on your site.
Education: One of the most tangible UX changes we’ve made is the first run experience for the Web Bar (a single control you can use if you don’t want to build your own experience). When you first use the Web Bar on a site, a small popup will inform the user they can sign in and tell them the key things they need to know to start connecting and sharing with their friends.

Looks: we have also updated the web controls and web bar user experience to cleaner

Developers: Easier to add sharing controls and aligned with more tech

We’ve done two things for developers 1) created a new control for sharing which reduces the amount of code required and 2) changed the underlying JavaScript libraries to the Microsoft Ajax libraries.

Sharing control: aside from in-page chat, the next most common scenario we see is sharing via instant messaging. Sharing content is important and it is often a major driver of user acquisition (or user retention). To understand the differences between sharing via a public feed, newsfeed and instant messaging read my post on user acquisition.

The gist is: a user’s friends are more likely to click through to see the content/service being shared with them if it is done via instant messaging and in a conversational way.

To make sharing via Windows Live Messenger much easier we have created a new control, msgr:share. The sharing control reduces the amount of code required to the following:

// include the JavaScript libraries
<msgr:app … insert the code for app tag here… />
<msgr:bar></msgr:bar>

<msgr:share
message="I am sharing the Messenger Web Toolkit http://dev.live.com/messenger with you"
picker-label="Select Contacts">
</msgr:share>

The control contains a user experience which will sign the user in (via the consent flow), show the contact selector control, and send an IM with the predefined content.

Aside from visible features such as the sharing control, we have also done some infrastructure work. The Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit is now built with the Microsoft AJAX Library. With this integration, a Messenger Web Toolkit application works with the standard browser runtime library for Microsoft web development tools. Prior to version 3.5, the Web Toolkit worked with the Script# runtime library named 'sscorlib'. See Microsoft Ajax to determine whether you need to make any changes with your application.

Something for people who don’t use or aren’t signed into Messenger

People using Windows Live Messenger generally chat with people they have ‘friended’ in Messenger. However, sometimes people who use Messenger on a web site may want to chat with other people they know from that web site (who are not their friends on Messenger). We call this feature Application Contacts. The cool thing about this is when I sign into a web site (and grant permission to sign into Windows Live Messenger) which uses Application Contacts, other site visitors can chat with me while I’m on the site, or anytime when I have Windows Live Messenger client open (all the time, like hundreds of millions of other people).

We have made a lot of enhancements to Application Contacts (more information ), but the major change is that you don’t need to be signed into the Messenger Web Toolkit for all scenarios. People who are not Windows Live Messenger users (or are not signed into Messenger on the web site) can still see the profile picture and display name of user’s the web site chooses to display. This is particularly interesting for commenting and user profile scenarios. To use this functionality a new Messenger Application Key must be used. This is analogous to a service account. Our documentation on Application Contacts outlines how to get a key.

Previously, if you wanted to show the display pictures/names to a user who wasn’t signed in to Messenger the pics/display name weren’t available. Using the updated Application Contacts functionality you can now show display names and pictures to people who aren’t Windows Live Messenger users (or people who haven’t signed in yet). See the before & after:

Party on

Try out the new bits dev.live.com/messenger and if you have ideas or questions, hit us in our forum .

/Angus Logan, Technical Product Manager

Engineering the Windows Live / MySpace integration and Leveraging Activity Streams

lsteam — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:22:00 GMT

My name is Rob Dolin, I work as an engineer on the Windows Live Social team and I’m honored to have the opportunity to guest blog here at http://dev.live.com/ about one of our latest (and IMHO most exciting) features, our integration with one of the world’s largest social networks, MySpace.

We just announced on the Windows Live Team blog, starting the week of September 14^th, you can add a MySpace “Web Activity” to Windows Live so that you can bring your activities on MySpace like posting photos, updating status, sharing music, or blogging into Windows Live. Heck, if you have a MySpace account (and hundreds of millions of people already do) you can try it right now:

http://profile.live.com/WebActivities/add.aspx?AppID=1140860417
(link will open in a new window)

About Web Activities

With today’s latest partner integrations on Windows Live, we’ll have over fifty web activities that Windows Live customers can add into their Windows Live experience. (To learn more about all the Windows Live partners, check out our Windows Live Team blog). Nearly all of the web activities employ a polling model where a customer enters some basic information about their presence on a website and then Windows Live periodically polls an XML feed of the customer’s activity on that site. In the past, this feed has been in RSS 2.0 or Atom and then for each partner, we have a custom XSLT that maps the elements from the customer’s feed to the data attributes in Windows Live’s system. For example, yesterday, I was out to dinner with my partner and I posted the below tweet:

(from: http://twitter.com/robdolin)

Since I have already set up the Windows Live web activity for Twitter, my twitter feed, Windows Live can go and read my twitter feed (http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/4044361.rss):
<item>
     <title>robdolin: @ Capital Grille ! New fall prix fixe menu was great value; H said she would hijack a truck for the truffle mac & cheese #seattle #food</title>
     <description>robdolin: @ Capital Grille ! New fall prix fixe menu was great value; H said she would hijack a truck for the truffle mac & cheese #seattle #food</description>
     <pubDate>Thu, 10 Sep 2009 03:31:14 +0000</pubDate>
     <guid>http://twitter.com/robdolin/statuses/3879866454</guid>
     <link>http://twitter.com/robdolin/statuses/3879866454</link>
</item>

And then publish the update on my behalf to my Windows Live profile:
(from: http://cid-3c8ca60f8f925fec.profile.live.com/)

My friends who use Windows Live then see my update from the Twitter web activity in the following places:

· When they use Windows Live Messenger

· When the login to http://home.live.com/

· When they send me email from Hotmail

· When they visit my Windows Live Profile

Challenges with Web Activities

There are two big challenges with this basic polling model of RSS 2.0 or Atom:

1. We need to develop a custom mapping for each partner

2. Each partner needs to have only one activity type or they need a way to communicate what type of activity each RSS 2.0 <item> or Atom <entry> is.

The emerging Activity Streams open standard comes in to help solve both of these problems.

How Activity Streams Helps

Activity Streams helps to address both of the above issues. First, instead of having to do a custom mapping for practically every Web Activities partner, with an open standard like Activity Streams, we can build a single mapping that can be used by multiple partners.

Second, Activity Streams includes <activity:verb> and <activity:object-type> elements so we can identify that one <entry> is a status update and another is a blog entry. Thus, services that have multiple activity types (like MySpace) can have a single feed that includes photos, status, blogs, music, and more.

MySpace Example

Let me show you an example with MySpace.

On MySpace, I’ve gone and uploaded some photos and written a blog entry. You can see these on my MySpace profile:

(from: http://www.myspace.com/tesstingms)

If I authorize it, MySpace will share an XML feed of my activities that uses the Activity Streams elements:

<entry>
        <id>tag:myspace.com,2009:/activity/473185983/BlogAdd/473185983/509685053</id>
        <title type="text">Tess Ting posted a new blog entry: My Thoughts on the Health Care Debate</title>
        <published>2009-09-11T14:54:33Z</published>
        <updated>2009-09-11T14:54:33Z</updated>
        <author>
            <name>Tess Ting</name>
            <uri>http://www.myspace.com/tesstingms</uri>
        </author>
        <link rel="icon" type="image/gif" href="http://x.myspacecdn.com/modules/common/static/img/blog.gif"/>
        <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&friendId=473185983"/>
        <category term="BlogAdd" label="BlogAdd" scheme="http://activities.myspace.com/schema/1.0/"/>
        <content type="xhtml">...</content>
        <sx:sync id="tag:myspace.com,2009:/activity/473185983/BlogAdd/473185983/509685053">
            <sx:history sequence="1" when="2009-09-11 14:54:33Z"/>
        </sx:sync>
        <activity:actor>
            <activity:object-type>http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/person</activity:object-type>
            <id>tag:myspace.com,2009:/Person/473185983</id>
            <title>Tess Ting</title>
            <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.myspace.com/tesstingms"/>
            <link rel="avatar" type="image/jpeg" href="http://c2.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/75/s_94cbd2c0ed5e4ef0a4bc02a10aecc011.jpg"/>
        </activity:actor>
        <activity:object>
            <activity:object-type>http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/blog-entry</activity:object-type>
            <id>tag:myspace.com,2009:/Blog_Entry/473185983/509685053</id>
            <title>My Thoughts on the Health Care Debate</title>
            <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=473185983&blogId=509685053"/>
        </activity:object>
        <activity:verb>http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/post</activity:verb>
    </entry>
    <entry>
        <id>tag:myspace.com,2009:/activity/473185983/PhotoAdd/855905/9132545</id>
        <title type="text">Tess Ting added a new photo to the My Photos album.</title>
        <published>2009-09-11T14:50:50Z</published>
        <updated>2009-09-11T14:50:50Z</updated>
        <author>
            <name>Tess Ting</name>
            <uri>http://www.myspace.com/tesstingms</uri>
        </author>
        <link rel="icon" type="image/gif" href="http://x.myspacecdn.com/modules/common/static/img/photo.gif"/>
        <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=473185983&albumID=855905&imageID=9132545"/>
        <category term="PhotoAdd" label="PhotoAdd" scheme="http://activities.myspace.com/schema/1.0/"/>
        <content type="xhtml">...</content>
        <sx:sync id="tag:myspace.com,2009:/activity/473185983/PhotoAdd/855905/9132545">
            <sx:history sequence="1" when="2009-09-11 14:50:50Z"/>
        </sx:sync>
        <activity:actor>
            <activity:object-type>http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/person</activity:object-type>
            <id>tag:myspace.com,2009:/Person/473185983</id>
            <title>Tess Ting</title>
            <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.myspace.com/tesstingms"/>
            <link rel="avatar" type="image/jpeg" href="http://c2.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/75/s_94cbd2c0ed5e4ef0a4bc02a10aecc011.jpg"/>
        </activity:actor>
        <activity:target>
            <activity:object-type>http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/photo-album</activity:object-type>
            <id>tag:myspace.com,2009:/Photo_Album/855905</id>
            <title>My Photos</title>
            <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewPicture&friendID=473185983&albumId=855905"/>
        </activity:target>
        <activity:object>
            <activity:object-type>http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/photo</activity:object-type>
            <id>tag:myspace.com,2009:/Photo/855905/9132545</id>
            <title>
            </title>
            <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=473185983&albumID=855905&imageID=9132545"/>
            <link rel="preview" type="image/jpeg" href="http://c3.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/14/s_cb0b48037818485bb99d521a4051ed2a.jpg"/>
        </activity:object>
        <activity:verb>http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/post</activity:verb>
    </entry>
    <entry>
        <id>tag:myspace.com,2009:/activity/473185983/PhotoAdd/855905/9132542</id>
        <title type="text">Tess Ting added a new photo to the My Photos album.</title>
        <published>2009-09-11T14:50:47Z</published>
        <updated>2009-09-11T14:50:47Z</updated>
        <author>
            <name>Tess Ting</name>
            <uri>http://www.myspace.com/tesstingms</uri>
        </author>
        <link rel="icon" type="image/gif" href="http://x.myspacecdn.com/modules/common/static/img/photo.gif"/>
        <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=473185983&albumID=855905&imageID=9132542"/>
        <category term="PhotoAdd" label="PhotoAdd" scheme="http://activities.myspace.com/schema/1.0/"/>
        <content type="xhtml">...</content>
        <sx:sync id="tag:myspace.com,2009:/activity/473185983/PhotoAdd/855905/9132542">
            <sx:history sequence="1" when="2009-09-11 14:50:47Z"/>
        </sx:sync>
        <activity:actor>
            <activity:object-type>http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/person</activity:object-type>
            <id>tag:myspace.com,2009:/Person/473185983</id>
            <title>Tess Ting</title>
            <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://www.myspace.com/tesstingms"/>
            <link rel="avatar" type="image/jpeg" href="http://c2.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/75/s_94cbd2c0ed5e4ef0a4bc02a10aecc011.jpg"/>
        </activity:actor>
        <activity:target>
            <activity:object-type>http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/photo-album</activity:object-type>
            <id>tag:myspace.com,2009:/Photo_Album/855905</id>
            <title>My Photos</title>
            <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewPicture&friendID=473185983&albumId=855905"/>
        </activity:target>
        <activity:object>
            <activity:object-type>http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/photo</activity:object-type>
            <id>tag:myspace.com,2009:/Photo/855905/9132542</id>
            <title>
            </title>
            <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=473185983&albumID=855905&imageID=9132542"/>
            <link rel="preview" type="image/jpeg" href="http://c3.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/22/s_e15bb4f34a324a9fbc4c23d518230ff6.jpg"/>
        </activity:object>
        <activity:verb>http://activitystrea.ms/schema/1.0/post</activity:verb>
    </entry>

(The above example XML is of a blog entry and two photos. MySpace supports a ton more activity types and they have great documentation on this on their developer wiki: http://wiki.developer.myspace.com/index.php?title=Standards_for_Activity_Streams. The Windows Live web activity integration includes these MySpace activities: posting a blog entries, posting forum topics, updating status, posting photos, getting tagged in a photo, posting a song, adding a profile song, adding a profile video, and RSVP’ing yes to an event.)

Now, if I’ve connected the MySpace Web Activity in Windows Live: http://profile.live.com/WebActivities/add.aspx?AppID=1140860417, Windows Live will periodically poll my Activity Stream XML feed from MySpace and when there are new entries, Windows Live will publish these new MySpace activities to my Windows Live Profile:

(from: http://cid-e16138db6f261cbd.profile.live.com/)

Reading More

If you’re interested in learning more about Activity Streams, you should feel free to visit the working group’s website: http://www.ActivityStrea.ms/ and the group’s wiki: http://wiki.ActivityStrea.ms/.

If you’re interested in developing more with Windows Live, I’d encourage you to start at http://dev.live.com/ and http://msdn.microsoft.com/.

Thanks very much for reading all of the way through ;) and I’m looking forward to working with more of you to enable our mutual users to share their activities with their friends across the web. All the best—

--Rob Dolin
Engineer, Windows Live team
http://robdolin.spaces.live.com/

P.S. I want to extend a personal thank you to Monica Keller and the folks on the MySpace Engineering team who were great to work with.

What do you want to see @ SXSW - vote it up!

alogan — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:28:00 GMT

Angus Logan here from the Live Services team, and I am starting to get pretty excited about the SXSW Conference coming up in March 2010. One of the great things about the conference is that you get to decide what you want to see there. It is up to the audience to vote for what sessions and content they would like. Simple really - and great - the most popular sessions get picked for the conference. There are some sessions I think are pretty interesting, and you can check them all out on my personal blog and vote for them. To give you a taste of what sessions look interesting (among others):

Web Mail - Is There Room Left to Innovate?

The Stream has become a tidal wave.

Social Networking Interop.

Get more details on the sessions on Angus Logan's blog. Voting is about to wrap up and ends on Friday, so get your vote on! Looking forward to a great SXSW Conference in 2010. See you there!

Lessons learned from Windows Live ID's foray into Open ID

kevinle — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 23:14:24 GMT

Yesterday the WLID guys shared some interesting stuff they learned from their OpenID CTP. CTPs are often used to get feedback from developers, validate ideas, and/or correct the course of an effort. Sometimes they are even used to prove the feature/service is economically viable. Jorgen provided an update on the future of Windows Live ID's Open ID efforts:

Currently, we do not have a schedule that I can publicly share for when we will release full Production support of OpenID for Windows Live ID users, but rest assured that we are working actively to provide OpenID functionality to all of our 500+ million Windows Live ID users!

In addition to multiple entry-points, and being able to explain unique vs. static identifiers to end users - the main challenge was aliasing:

In the CTP, Windows Live ID users were required to create an OpenID alias (such as "http://openid.live.com/john") attached to their account, and then to use that alias not just at the OpenID relying party site, but also as the way to identify themselves to the Windows Live ID OP. When arriving at the OP sign-in screen, users were required to enter their OpenID alias (instead of their normal Windows Live ID user name) plus the password (or one of their other associated credentials, such as an Information Card) from their main Windows Live ID account.

We had envisaged that using an alias for OpenID sign-in could provide some separation of the two identity networks. However, the usability model for this approach has turned out to be unfeasible and/or just plain confusing to users!

Read more about it along with the other lessons.

Important Updates to Live Services

david.treadwell — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 14:39:00 GMT

Hi Everyone,

I wanted to give you some important updates on our developer services as we prepare for the next release of Windows Live. We are focused on making the next release of Windows Live the very best for you. Our vision is to provide you with deeper access to the more than 500M Windows Live users and a more consistent programming interface for both our services and controls. We want to make it as easy as possible to consume and use Windows Live capabilities in your solutions.

At the Professional Developer Conference 2008, we gave the developer community access to the technical preview of the Live Framework. The Live Framework is core to our vision of providing you with a consistent programming interface. Now we are working to integrate existing services, controls and the Live Framework into the next release of Windows Live. Your feedback continues to help us build the best possible offerings for Windows Live users, for you and for your customers.

There will be some changes to services and controls you may use today, in particular the Live Framework CTP, making them unavailable starting September 8^th. These changes may affect you and your development work and we want to ensure that you take appropriate action to secure your work and make adjustments to existing implementations of the affected services.

Starting September 8^th, 2009, the following services will be unavailable:

Live Framework CTP (Services, SDK & Tools)
The Live Framework will be integrated into the next release of Windows Live. Stay tuned to dev.live.com for more details in the future.
Contacts Control (JavaScript)
As an alternative, please use the UI Controls from Messenger Web Toolkit.
CTP Tools/ASP.NET Controls (Contacts, MessengerChat, IDLoginStatus, IDLoginView, SilverlightStreaming)
As alternatives use:
- The UI Controls from Messenger Web Toolkit for Contacts and Messenger Chat
- The Windows Live ID Web Authentication Service to replace the IDLoginStatus Control

If you are a Live Framework technology preview user, we ask you to please download any data and/or code from the service prior to September 8^th as well as remove your devices from the service. If you are using any of the controls, we ask that you please remove them from your site prior to September 8^th. For more details see the Q&A at the bottom of this post.

There's also some updates on the future of the Bing ASP.NET Map Control CTP (formerly Virtual Earth ASP.NET Map Control CTP); to learn more, please visit the Bing Maps Blog.

Please note that Live Mesh will continue to remain available to end users and is not affected.

Thanks again to everyone for your participation and feedback. Stay tuned to this space for updates and more details on the platform capabilities of the next release of Windows Live.

Q&A

Q: I'm a user of the Live Framework CTP, do I need to do anything prior to the Live Framework CTP being taken offline?
A: Microsoft asks that if you have any data and/or codebase/solutions running in the Live Framework CTP that you please move it to a local hard-drive. If you have several devices that are "claimed" as part of your Live Framework CTP account, we ask that you please remove any of these devices. To do this, go to each device that you have as part of your Live Framework CTP service, click the Start Menu, then Control Panel, then Add/Remove programs, select Live Framework CTP, and uninstall. This will remove your device from the Live Framework, and retain any files and/or folders you had synchronized on the device itself.

Q: Will I still be able to access my Live Framework CTP solutions after this preview is taken offline?
A: No.

Q: Will Microsoft retain any data and/or solutions that are currently available on the Live Framework CTP?
A: Microsoft will not retain any data and/or solutions that are a part of the Live Framework CTP offering.

Q: What is changing in the Live Services developer portal (live.azure.com)?

A: The ability to create Live Framework-enabled web sites and Mesh-enabled web applications will be removed. It will not be possible to edit the settings of Live Framework-enabled web sites and Mesh-enabled web applications and Analytics because these applications won't be available any longer. Live Framework CTP tokens will no longer be valid and can be discarded.

Q: What will happen to my Live Framework-enabled web sites and Mesh-enabled web application Application IDs?

A: Your Live Framework-enabled web sites and Mesh-enabled web application Application IDs will get re-imported the next time you log into the portal after the CTP discontinuation. You can either use these Application IDs to connect to the Live Services Existing APIs or delete them.

Q: What will happen to my web site if I am using the Contacts Control?

A: Starting September 8 the contacts control will render on your site with an error message. Users of your web site will see the following statement: "This control is no longer supported, please contact your site administrator for more information." Starting September 8 the control will no longer be available or render.

Q: What can I use in lieu of the Live Framework Contacts resource?

A: You can still use the Windows Live Contacts API Beta.

Q: What can I use in lieu of the Contacts Control?

A: You can use the contacts picker control that is part of the Windows Live Messenger Toolkit.

Q: Will the permissions granted to my site by users for accessing contacts data be lost?

A: Yes. Users of your web site will have to go through the Contact Picker control's permission flows to re-establish access to their contacts data from you site.

Q: What will happen to my site if I am using the ASP.NET server controls from Windows Live Tools?

A: The ASP.NET control will keep working but we are no longer supporting it going forward. If you are using it in combination with the Contacts Control then the Contacts Control will stop working on September 8 (see above for more details). All other underlying controls (ID Login, Messenger, Silverlight, and VE Maps) will continue to work.

Q: Are the Silverlight Streaming Services being discontinued or just the wrapping ASP.NET controls?

A: Only the controls which wrap the Silverlight Streaming Service will be discontinued.

Q: What can I use in lieu of IDLoginStatus and IDLoginView Control?

A: You can make use of Windows Live ID Web Authentication service. Only IDLoginStatus and IDLoginView control is being discontinued.

Q: What will happen to the Windows Live Web Role template for Windows Azure?

A: The template is no longer supported and will not work with the current version of Windows Azure Tools.

Q; By Microsoft taking the Live Framework CTP offline does this mean that my LiveID account also will be unavailable?
A: You can continue to use your LiveID account to access the other Windows Live services you care about, including the Live Mesh beta.

Q: If I want to stay informed on updates regarding Live Framework, where should I go?

A: Visit http://dev.live.com to stay up to date with Live Framework.

Q: What role do developers play in the future development of Mesh technologies?

A: This is an exciting journey for all of us and your commitment and feedback helps us build the best possible offerings for our customers and for you. Our commitment to the great developer community is stronger than ever, and we are looking forward hearing more of your feedback in the future.

Photobucket builds a rich and social visual search with Windows Live Messenger

kevinle — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:49:00 GMT

Imagine a great consumer experience that provides visual search and the ability to share photos with your friends via IM – that is what Photobucket landed this week by using Silverlight to create a rich visual search and combining it with Windows Live Messenger to make it social. Photobucket visual search is a great example of how the activity of searching for images can be turned into a rich and compelling social experience, taking full advantage of one of the most widespread social sharing behaviors with Windows Live Messenger. Photobucket made use of the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit UI Controls which provides a skinable and flexible way to interact with the 320+ million people who use Windows Live Messenger monthly. The UI controls can be easily integrated (see Interactive SDK) in web sites and makes a lot of the heavy lifting (coding JavaScript) only required if you want a fully custom experience. To get more in-depth details of how the implementation was done see Angus Logan's blogpost.

Windows Live Messenger Hackathon in San Francisco: May 27th!

kevinle — Tue, 19 May 2009 11:02:00 GMT

Join the Windows Live Messenger team to learn how to integrate Messenger capabilities into your Web site. The Windows Live Messenger Hackathon takes place on May 27, 2009 at Microsoft's offices on 835 Market St in San Francisco - very cool digs just around the corner from the Moscone Conference Center.

What's in it for me?

Get the State of the Nation from our social media guru (TBA)
Build a web app that uses Messenger APIs with the Messenger Devs
Prizes for best implementations - Xbox 360, Zunes, Microsoft Hardware up for grabs!
Oh yeah, and we have beer and Pizza ;-)

When is it? (27th May 2009)

5:30 - 6:00pm: Arrival, Beers, Pizza

6:00 - 6:20pm: Social Media: State of the Nation from social media guru (TBA)

6:20 - 6:40pm: Messenger Library High Level

6:40 - 7:00pm: Chill, Network, Beer, Pizza (Biz Guys can slink off)

7:00 - 7:30pm: Messenger Library Deeper Dive

7:30 - 10:00pm: Hackathon - let's code!

Who should attend?

CxO - for the state of the nation and networking
Developers - for the hackathon
Everyone - for the beer and pizza!

What do I need to bring?

Bring your codebase for a web app (if you have one) on your laptop so you can work together with the Messenger experts from Windows Live to hack instant messaging into your site!

No web app? Don't worry we can load a sample site with code onto your laptop instead.

Some Inspiration

Here's James Senior Esq. to tell you more about the event and provide some examples of things you can build with the Messenger Web Toolkit.

Video: Live Services Hackathon

And here is a video by Angus Logan, demo'ing even more functionality from the Messenger Web Toolkit:

A bit of background on Live Messenger:

We won't bore you with too much marketing fluff, but you should know that Windows Live Messenger is the world's most popular IM network with over 320m users and we've opened up our APIs so that web applications can integrate with our service to provide cool experiences for their users. To find out more about the Messenger APIs, check out http://dev.live.com/messenger

The Social Web and Windows Live

lsteam — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Dare Obasanjo here, from the Live Services Program Management team. I'd like to talk a bit about the work we are doing to increase interoperability across the "Social Web."

The term The Social Web has been increasingly used to describe the rise of the Web as a way for people to interact, communicate and share with each other using the World Wide Web. Experiences that were once solitary such as reading news or browsing one's photo albums have now been made more social by sites such as Digg and Flickr. With so many Web sites offering social functionality, it has become increasingly important for people to be able to not only be able to connect and share with their friends on a single Web site but also to take these relationships and activities with them wherever they go on the Web.

With the recent update to Windows Live, we are continuing with the vision of enabling our 500 million customers to share and connect with the people they care about regardless of what services they use. Our customers can now invite their contacts from MySpace (the largest U.S. social networking site) and Hi5 to join them on Windows Live in a safe manner without having to resort to using the the password anti-pattern. These sites join Facebook and LinkedIn as social networks from which people can import their social graph or friend list into Windows Live.

In addition to interoperating with social networks to bridge relationships across the Web, we are also always working on enabling customers to share the content they are find interesting or activities they are participating in from all over the Web with their friends who use Windows Live services like Hotmail and Messenger. Customers of Windows Live can now add activities from over thirty different online services to their Windows Live profile including social networking sites like Facebook, photo sharing sites like Smugmug & Photobucket, social music sites like last.fm & Pandora, social bookmarking sites like Digg & Stumbleupon and much more.

We are also happy to announce today that in the coming months, MySpace customers will be able to share activities and updates from MySpace with their Windows Live network.

Below is a screenshot of some of the updates you might find on my profile on Windows Live

These recent announcements bring us one step closer to a Social Web where interoperability is the norm instead of the exception. One of the most exciting things about our recent release is how much of the behind-the-scene integration is done using community driven technologies such as the Atom syndication format, Atom Activity Extensions, OAuth, and Portable Contacts. These community driven technologies are moving to ensure that the Social Web is a web of interconnected and interoperable web sites, not a set of competing walled gardens desperately clutching to customer data in an attempt to invent Lock-In 2.0

As we look towards the future, I believe that the aforementioned standards around contact exchange, social activity streams and authorization are just the first steps. When we look at all the capabilities across the Web landscape it is clear that there are scenarios that are still completely broken due to lack of interoperability across various social websites. You can expect more from Windows Live when it comes to interoperability and the Social Web.

Just watch this space.

Windows Live Users Can Now Easily Sign Up for Sites Using RPX

alogan — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 20:02:00 GMT

Hey, Angus Logan here, I'm at Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco - there is a great vibe and lots of action. I've been spending time with and learning a ton from some of the open stack crew, Joseph Smarr, David Recordon, and Chris Messina. We've been talking about the technology, adoption, and when Microsoft (we) will roll our preview Open ID and Portable Contacts endpoints into production (nothing to announce right now).

Microsoft is a proponent of open standards through our work in the Open ID foundation and the Open Web Foundation. As these open specifications continue to mature, services such as RPX are great because they provide a stepping stone for developers.

I’m excited to see the announcement that RPX now consumes Windows Live IDs.

RPX delivers both user experience for identity provider selection and a translation layer between many proprietary and standardized protocols used by identity/resource providers.

End-users can spend their time in so many places on the web. The battle for attention is harder than ever. The downside of having limitless choice is the tax of signing in and telling websites about yourself. RPX makes it possible to sign in using one of the many identities a person already has - this includes authentication and profile information (first name, last name, etc.)

Web site owners just need to go to www.rpxnow.com and create an account. As end user data is being shared you need to create a Windows Live App ID and you tell RPX the details of your app ID and specify a privacy statement. You can also use the authentication page co-branding to make the experience somewhat smoother for your end-users. After this you implement some UI on your website, and you should see higher end-user satisfaction and conversion for signing in and profile information.

The Live Services APIs used are Windows Live ID Web Authentication and the Windows Live Contact API. Web Authentication is one of the options third parties have for becoming a relying party of the Windows Live ID identity provider/Microsoft federation gateway. It is built using standard web technologies and techniques such as browser based redirects/form posts. The Windows Live Contact API in this case is being used as a profile API as it exposes the "owner record" of the Windows Live user. To gain permission to the profile & address book Windows Live ID Delegated Authentication (DelAuth) was used. DelAuth provides a few unique controls for users to select certain objects to be shared, and the duration of the access.

Below are some screenshots from www.ladygaga.com which uses RPX:

(Windows Live ID, sign in and delegation stuff you've all seen before)

MIX 09 Roundup: 8 Sessions on Live Services Available Now

alogan — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 23:29:00 GMT

Hey - Angus Logan here, back from MIX09 in Las Vegas. We had a whopping 8 sessions about identity/safety, messaging and the Live Framework at MIX - below are links to all of the sessions about Live Services, which you can view online.

Overview of Sessions

Messaging / Presence : On Wednesday we announced the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit, which is a set of controls and libraries that enable you to connect Windows Live Messenger users and their friends with users of your Web site.

Keiji Kanazawa gave an overview of the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit
Chris Parker showed 5 of the top scenarios we identified for a site to become more social & sticky by being enabled with the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit.
Angus’s pick! Jordan Snyder from Effective UI shared her experiences in integrating the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit into a slick Silverlight application for a major photo sharing web site (more news coming soon.)

Identity & Safety : Microsoft is in a unique position to be running one of the largest services in the world, with over 500 million people signing in every month.

Jorgen Thelin gave an overview of the different aspects of the Live Identity Service and how we are making it available for web developers, companies that sell solutions and also organizations that want to adopt cloud services.
Angus’s favorite :: John Scarrow talks about the things you need to think about when running a massive high scale service in terms of people abusing your service. “the terrorists are no longer in their camps in the desert, they are moving into apartment buildings (i.e. your web site)”

Live Framework – we unveiled the Live Framework at PDC and have been working away taking feedback, hardening and evolving it.

Ori Amiga gave an overview of the Live Framework all up
Arash Ghanaie-Sichanie went deep on what meshifying a web app really means
Angus’s pick! Gregory Renard from Wygwam had the most fun session and showed a great new tool the Live Framework Explorer for Visual Studio.

Full list of sessions with links

Identity & Safety
	Protecting Online Identities Learn how Microsoft provides a range of identity solutions for helping developers more easily build seamless user experiences that include Federation, Authentication, UX Customization, Open Standards, Open ID and more.
	Protecting Against Internet Service Abuse Come hear how Microsoft protects content and identities as servers and users become more distributed worldwide.
Messaging & Presence
	<3 the New Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit for Social Websites See how to add IM to a site with the Windows Live Messenger Library and UI Controls, and how to build new relationships around content with Messenger social capabilities. Also hear how top sites and marketers are using the social connections of Windows Live users to grow and …
	Five Killer Scenarios for the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit Come learn how to make your site more engaging with the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit.
	A Shot of Windows Live Messenger and a Pint of Microsoft Silverlight Learn how to add instant stickiness and drive new users to a Web site while uncovering the hidden social network within. Hear how Effective UI quickly and easily added these capabilities to its customers' existing Microsoft Silverlight projects using the Windows Live Messenger …
Live Framework
	Live Framework and Mesh Services: Live Services for Developers Learn about the Live Framework including new and future services (such as Mesh Services), protocols, APIs, and tools which enable your Web, service, or client applications to access, store, and synchronize user data with Live Services, obtain audience analytics data, and more.
	Mesh-Enabled Web Applications Come learn how to extend your existing Web applications and get them to live and breathe within Live Mesh. See how Mesh-enabled Web applications can be accessed from anywhere through a Web browser as well as run locally (and offline) on a user's desktop. Also see how Web …
	Lighting Up Web and Client Applications with Microsoft Live Services Learn how to use Live Services to light up rich client applications or to extend Web applications to the desktop. See how to easily access Live Framework to produce and consume data that automatically syncs with the cloud and the devices in a user's digital life.

Reach your people everywhere, in real time!

kevinle — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 18:49:54 GMT

For users of the Web, being able to connect to friends and build social networks is becoming more important every day. Today, we are releasing the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit--a set of controls and libraries that enable you to connect Windows Live Messenger users and their friends with users of your Web site.

See a video demonstration.

Windows Live Messenger is the most used instant messaging services world wide, with more than 320 million monthly active accounts in over 50 countries and in 36 languages.

For Web site owners

The Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit provides Web sites with three core benefits:

User acquisition: Your Web site visitors can help you build your audience on the fly by inviting their friends to your site through instant messaging.
Deeper engagement: The toolkit allows people on your Web site to easily chat with their Messenger friends or others on your site, keeping them their longer.
Return traffic: Bringing people back to your Web site is difficult when the only weapon in your arsenal is email. Using Messenger functionality you can break through the inbox chatter and remind people why your service is so great.

For the people

The Windows Live Messenger Web toolkit provides these key benefits to your users:

See your friends in more places: Sometimes using a new web site is a lonely experience. You want to go where everybody knows your name, or at least you want to be able to find your friends. The toolkit allows your users to easily find their friends who already use the site, or connect with existing friends and bring them to the party.
Meet new people and choose if you want to stay connected to them: Want to connect with others who share a common interest? Discover and connect with someone who is watching the same videos or commenting on the same content. Be discovered and contacted by someone who lives in the same town or likes the same music. Earn yourself a new friend.
Express yourself across the web: Windows Live Messenger users invest a lot of time changing their status messages, display pictures and display name to reflect their mood. Now, this personal expression can be shared with others on your Web site.

Show me the bits

Web developers can choose the level of customization by using the pre-built and skinnable Web Bar control, using the 16 modular UI Controls, or building the entire experience from the ground up using the Windows Live Messenger Library.

We have many cool samples in multiple languages (C#, VB.NET, PHP, Ruby, Java, Python and Perl) that show you how simple it is to integrate the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit. So, no matter what your style, you've got the help you need to kick start your development and get these new capabilities on your Web site in a snap.

Getting started

The easiest way to begin is to use this tool, which provides a step-by-step guide and sample code to get you started.
See a video demonstration.

For people familiar with the Windows Live Messenger Library

We've heard from developers that they "want to control the entire experience, just give us APIs and we'll build it". To provide the best experience for everyone using Windows Live Messenger there is a certain baseline of functionality that needs to exist. Building this functionality was a lot of effort and while some great implementations were built, most developers felt the effort required was a lot so they asked for tools to make it easier for them to develop faster.

We decided to deliver a set of 16 JavaScript/HTML controls that can be skinned using CSS and extended using the Windows Live Messenger Library. These controls make it very fast for Web developers to let their users connect and share with their friends no matter where they are.

From v1 to v2.5 we also got some great feature requests and we have delivered a bunch of these, included:

Automatic Sign In: Once a user opts into using Messenger on the site by using the "softer" opt-in screen, they can be automatically signed in by the Web site even if they use a different PC.
Cross page state - you can now use this on content portals where users click between pages without losing their signed in status.
Performance - the web based performance has been increased and should be similar to the Windows Live Messenger client when connected via HTTP.
Connecting people who aren't Windows Live Messenger friends, yet - People have connections/relationships all across the web, we have now made it possible to for users to take these relationships and get to know the people more via IM (both web and client) and then if the user so chooses add that person to their WLM contact list. Anyone who opts into using Messenger on their website makes it possible for the website to play "match maker" for contacts and show the presence of people on any IM client (Web/phone/Xbox/desktop).

Try it out

You can go to dev.live.com/messenger today to add this to your web site.

Live Framework Update Released

kevinle — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:25:00 GMT

The Live Framework team has released the April 2009 CTP update for the Live Framework. This update includes performance improvements, bug fixes, and improved functionality. For the details on what's new, see the release announcement on the Live Framework team blog.

To learn more about the Live Framework, see dev.live.com/liveframework.

Silverlight Streaming service update

Frogs69 — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:30:00 GMT

As some of you have noticed, and taken the time to report either by email or in the forum, the Silverlight Streaming service experienced an unplanned outage yesterday afternoon. As of this morning everything should be up and running again.

A bit more information about this issue:

Direct access to videos and video upload functionality was impacted, videos were still accessible via iframe invocation. For that reason applications were mostly not impacted by the problem, as most of them would be instantiated using the iframe invocation method.

The administration web site itself was not affected.
The data store was not affected.

Live Services

Microsoft® Silverlight(TM) Streaming by Windows Live(TM) Beta has ended

Microsoft® Silverlight(TM) Streaming by Windows Live(TM) Beta is ending

Important News for Users of the Microsoft® Silverlight(TM) Streaming by Windows Live(TM) Beta October 2009

Announcing Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit V3.5: better UI, faster development, richer experience for non-Messenger users

User Experience: Sexier, faster, supported in more browsers

Developers: Easier to add sharing controls and aligned with more tech

Something for people who don’t use or aren’t signed into Messenger

Party on

Engineering the Windows Live / MySpace integration and Leveraging Activity Streams

About Web Activities

Challenges with Web Activities

How Activity Streams Helps

MySpace Example

Reading More

What do you want to see @ SXSW - vote it up!

Lessons learned from Windows Live ID's foray into Open ID

Important Updates to Live Services

Photobucket builds a rich and social visual search with Windows Live Messenger

Windows Live Messenger Hackathon in San Francisco: May 27th!

The Social Web and Windows Live

Windows Live Users Can Now Easily Sign Up for Sites Using RPX

MIX 09 Roundup: 8 Sessions on Live Services Available Now

Overview of Sessions

Full list of sessions with links

Identity & Safety

Messaging & Presence

Live Framework

Reach your people everywhere, in real time!

For Web site owners

For the people

Show me the bits

Getting started

For people familiar with the Windows Live Messenger Library

Try it out

Live Framework Update Released

Silverlight Streaming service update