Windows Experience Blog : SmugMug

An Overview of Recent Updates to Windows Live

Brandon LeBlanc — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:33:44 GMT

Over the past few weeks, we’ve introduced quite a few improvements to Windows Live. I thought it would be nice to list all those improvements in a single blog post for everyone to read.

New web activities: 20 new third-party feed partners were added to Windows Live including Facebook, Digg, and SmugMug. MySpace will also be added in the coming months, so that MySpace customers can share activities and updates from MySpace to people in their Windows Live network.

By adding new feed partners to Windows Live, it’s easier for you to connect your activities various blogging sites, social networks and photo sharing sites and share them with your friends in your Windows Live network. This update will make it easier for the 500 Million users who are active on Windows live today to connect their activities on these partner sites and share them with their friends on Windows Live.

For instance, when you add the Facebook web activity – any photo, video, note or status update you make on Facebook will now appear on Windows Live via your What’s New feed. When you add Digg, any article you “digg” or submit to Digg, will now appear on Windows Live via your What’s New feed. Since Windows Live is global, it’s interesting to note that fourteen of the 20 new feed partners are headquartered in countries outside of the United States. According to Comscore, Hyves is the top social network in the Netherlands, and Metroflog is a top social network in Argentina.

There are quite a few partner web activities you can add today! Check them out by going to your Windows Live Profile and choosing “Web activities” in the lower left-hand corner of your profile

Add new contacts to Windows Live: MySpace, hi5, and Tagged join Facebook and LinkedIn as contact partners on Windows Live. Now you can exchange contacts between Windows Live and these five social networks and vice versa.

Messenger has come to Hotmail: Now you can IM through the web via Windows Live Hotmail. You can sign-in to Windows Live Messenger directly from within Hotmail and exchange IMs with your Messenger contacts.

If you are ever on a PC that doesn’t have Windows Live Messenger installed, just go to your Hotmail inbox and sign in to Messenger there to chat with your contacts. Once you sign-in, you can browse your contacts via your People page. If you are signed in to Messenger while checking your Hotmail and a contact sends you an IM, a toast will pop up in the lower right-hand corner of the page just as it does on a PC. For more details on Web IM in Windows Live Hotmail – see this blog post from Antonia on the Windows Live Team Blog.

Arrange your Photos in Windows Live SkyDrive: I blogged about this last week. Windows Live SkyDrive now allows you to arrange your photos in any order you want (thanks to Silverlight).

In one of your Photos folders on SkyDrive just click “Sort” and choose “Arrange photos”.

Photos of you: A new entry point has been added to Windows Live Profile pages called “Photos of you”. Essentially, this new link will take you to a page of photos tagged with a specific person (or yourself). It’s a great way to see all the photos your friends appear in or photos you appear in.

SkyDrive takes your Favorites: All your Favorites from favorites.live.com are now automatically moved to SkyDrive where you can use Windows Live Toolbar to sync your Favorites with Internet Explorer on your PCs.

And the Windows Live Sync website has now been integrated with the new Windows Live UI we launched with this last fall.

The new Windows Live Sync website makes a huge difference in managing your personal and shared folders and managing the PCs you are syncing them with.

Enjoy the improvements to Windows Live!

New Web Activities and Contact Importing Coming Soon to Windows Live

Brandon LeBlanc — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:56:15 GMT

Rob Dolin, Program Manager for Windows Live, just announced over on the Windows Live Team Blog new Web Activities such as Facebook, Digg, and SmugMug will be hitting Windows Live next week. He also announced that MySpace, Hi5, and Tagged will join Facebook and LinkedIn as contact partners. These contact partners allow you to invite your friends to Windows Live and vice versa. And in the next few months, MySpace customers will be able to share updates and activities from MySpace on Windows Live. For more information – read Rob’s blog post and take a look at the Q&A with Brian Hall, General Manager for the Windows Live Business Group, over on PressPass.

Windows Live Beta Round-Up & Plug-ins for Windows Live Photo Gallery

Brandon LeBlanc — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 02:19:00 GMT

Right now as I write this everyone should be enjoying the shiny new Windows Live Betas - available for download at download.live.com. I'd like to take a moment to highlight several blog posts from the Windows Live Product Teams I think folks will be interested in reading.

Tanja, Program Manager for Windows Live Mail, is back on the Windows Live Mail Blog talking about today's Windows Live Mail Beta release. We all know that Windows Live Mail is sporting calendar sync with Windows Live Calendar (currently in Beta at calendar.live.com) but Tanja sheds some light on some specific calendaring features such as the "Add to Calendar" button. When you're reading an email with important information about an event or related to an event all you need to do is click "Add to Calendar" and you can take that information within the email and turn it into an Event in one of your Calendars. She also discusses the Event window where you can set the event to reoccurring, set a start and stop time and more.

Speaking of Windows Live Calendar - tomorrow Thursday Sept. 18 starting around 3PM Pacific Time the Windows Live Calendar Beta will be down for a few hours while the service gets upgraded.

Aaron from the Windows Live Messenger Team posted on the Windows Live Messenger Blog and discusses their Beta release and the features within the new Beta release such as Favorites, Group IM, Personalization, and the What's New feed. Aaron also mentions that the Windows Live Messenger Beta also has the ability to sign in at multiple locations called MPOP (short for Multiple Points of Presence).

The Windows Live Writer Team published a very extensive list of changes and updates in their Beta release. You should definitely check it out if you're a heavy Windows Live Writer.

And the Windows Live Digital Memories Team has posted lists of new features and changes in both the Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta and Windows Live Movie Maker Beta.

And Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta? Yup! Michael Palermiti, Program Manager for Windows Live Photo Gallery, has a blog post up on the Windows Live Dev Blog discussing new extensibility in the Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta. Developers now have a framework to develop publishing plug-ins for Windows Live Photo Gallery.

Matter a fact, Omar Shahine has published a plug-in he created for publishing photos to SmugMug.

When folks create new plug-ins for Windows Live Photo Gallery, the Digital Memories Team will add the plug-ins to this page off their blog. Bookmark it now ;-)

Be sure to check out previous blog post on the Windows Live Betas and outlining what's new in each of the client applications.