Windows Experience Blog : Windows Live, Windows Live SkyDrive

Personalize Windows 7 with the Personalization Gallery on Windows.com

Brandon LeBlanc — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:37:27 GMT

One of my favorite things about Windows 7 is how you can customize it and make it your own. Our personalization features give Windows 7 the ability to be as individual and to reflect who you are! Adding to this is a new Personalization Gallery on Windows.com, launched on Oct 22nd. With Windows 7, we’ve made it easy for people to customize their PC with different themes. Each theme has a custom background (or a series of backgrounds that shuffle), different Aero Glass colors, and sounds. Not only will you find Windows 7 themes on the Personalization Gallery, you’ll also find desktop backgrounds and desktop gadgets to download as well.

For the first time ever, Microsoft is working with other companies to enable them to offer their customers a branded experience on the desktop through Windows 7. The effort is part of a pilot program running until October 2010 by Microsoft Advertising. As of today, you will find themes from 7 global advertisers with well-known brands such as Coca Cola, Ducati, Ferrari, Infiniti, Pepsi, Porsche and Twentieth Century Fox on the Personalization Gallery for download. So if you are a fan of one of these brands, check them out! For more on this effort from Microsoft Advertising, see this blog post.

We’re also offering new Microsoft branded themes too – including the Xbox game Gears of War, Zune, and Bing!

So what if you want to make your own theme? No problem – it’s very easy. Click here for a step-by-step outline (and video) on how to customize and create your own themes. Once you’ve created your own theme, you can share it with you friends and family on Windows Live SkyDrive.

For you geeks out there wanting to know more about how we went about designing the ability to use themes in Windows 7, see this blog post on the Engineering Windows 7 Blog.

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 Features Hit Windows Live SkyDrive Today

Brandon LeBlanc — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 21:16:35 GMT

The Windows Live SkyDrive Team just announced several updates to Windows Live SkyDrive which begin happening today.

Using Silverlight, you can now arrange your photos within a SkyDrive Folder just the way you want them. All you need to do is choose “Sort” in a folder with photos and select “Arrange photos”.

The new “Arrange photos” feature isn’t the first feature on Windows Live SkyDrive to use Silverlight – the Slide show feature for your photos also uses Silverlight to showcase your photos in a nice way.

You also have the ability to sort your files (including your photos) by name, size, date, or type.

There is also upcoming changes to profiles on Windows Live (to accommodate easily accessing photos of your friends) as well as Windows Live Favorites too! Again, you can get the lowdown on today’s update here from the SkyDrive Team.

Vote for us on CNET’s 2009 Webware 100!

Brandon LeBlanc — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 06:29:49 GMT

13 Microsoft Products have been nominated in CNET’s 2009 Webware 100 including several from Windows Live (Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live SkyDrive, Windows Live Hotmail, Windows Live Sync and Live Mesh) and Internet Explorer 8.

My colleague Antonia over on the Windows Live Team Blog has all the details including links on where to cast your vote. Voting voting ends on April 30, 2009 (12pm Pacific Time) so vote now!

25GB of Free Online Storage with Windows Live SkyDrive

Brandon LeBlanc — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 06:06:00 GMT

The Windows Live SkyDrive Team has posted a in-depth post offering a overview of what’s coming with their next update. First and foremost: Windows Live SkyDrive will be boosting everyone’s storage from 5GB to 25GB. Secondly, they want to give you more control over your files by offering you new features to do so:

Download photos directed to your to Windows Live Photo Gallery.
Download as a .zip file. Download an entire folder in one compressed file (initially available only in the United States, Denmark, and Ireland).
Move files between folders.
Copy files to multiple folders.

Sharing photos is huge these days. They’ve added almost 20 new features to make the photo experience on Windows Live SkyDrive even better such as supporting People Tags, bigger thumbnails, and a new online slideshow using Microsoft Silverlight.

You will be able to also keep your Internet Explorer favorites synced up with multiple PCs using Windows Live SkyDrive and Windows Live SkyDrive.

There is a lot coming to Windows Live SkyDrive! Check out their blog post for more details on what’s coming up.

Bring the Summer to Your Desktop with a New Wallpaper!

Brandon LeBlanc — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 04:38:00 GMT

I couple days ago I went outside and took some photos with my Nikon D40 (a Certified for Windows Vista camera) as the weather was very nice for taking some shots. I took a really neat close-up shot of a leaf with the sun shining from behind - highlighting the details of the leaf.

I am particularly fond of the shades of blue and green in the photo myself. I've been running it as a wallpaper on my own PCs and thought it would make a great desktop wallpaper for readers here. So I've uploaded the wallpaper up to Windows Live SkyDrive in a variety of resolutions for all to download!

For other wallpapers - you can check out my Railroad Wallpaper I took in the Columbia River Gorge (here in the Pacific Northwest) and my Certified for Windows Vista Wallpaper.

Windows Live SkyDrive gets comments, favorites, and more!

Brandon LeBlanc — Thu, 22 May 2008 17:49:00 GMT

Today you might take notice to a few cool changes in Windows Live SkyDrive. The Windows Live SkyDrive Team has released an update bringing the following new features for our enjoyment:

Users can now leave comments on files.
New Recent Comments page for comments left recently on files shared in Windows Live SkyDrive.
Users now have the ability to leave descriptions on files (captions for photos).
Ability to manage favorite websites in Windows Live SkyDrive.
New navigation control (called the "browsing widget") to navigate between files in a folder.
Ability to change folder views from "icon view" to "detailed view". For photos you have the added "photo thumbnails" view.

You can read about today's release on the Windows Live SkyDrive Team Blog as well!

I went ahead and shot a demo video of today's new features in Windows Live SkyDrive showing off the capabilities these new features bring to users. Check it out below.

Video: Demo: Windows Live SkyDrive 5-22-08

Windows Live SkyDrive will also become available in 24 new countries today: Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Thailand, Ukraine, Venezuela, Serbia, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Windows Live SkyDrive Launches Today

Brandon LeBlanc — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 18:58:00 GMT

Today Windows Live SkyDrive leaves the "Beta" tag behind - introducing 5GB of storage for its users and becoming available in 35 new countries and regions. Read the Windows Live SkyDrive launch announcement from their team blog!

On top of being available to users in the United States, United Kingdom, and India, Windows Live SkyDrive is now available in the following 35 countries and regions:

Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bolivia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Finland, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Turkey.

With 5GB of storage, you can store quite a bit of your photos, music, Office documents and more. Did I mention that the 5GB of storage is also free?

For those who have been beta testing Windows Live SkyDrive - with today's launch you can expect to see improvements with the backend that help improve performance on top of the increase to 5GB of storage from 1GB previously.

Here on the Windows Experience Blog, I use Windows Live SkyDrive to host the OPML files for my Microsoft Team Blogs page. Yes, the page may be a little out of date but a big update is coming very soon with a few more categories. You can download the OPML files and add them to your RSS feed reader directly from Windows Live SkyDrive. We also have a Public Folder setup on Windows Live SkyDrive for the Windows Vista Team Blog too.

You can head on over to skydrive.live.com and login with your Windows Live ID to use Windows Live SkyDrive today.

Windows Live SkyDrive gets 1GB of storage and more!

Brandon LeBlanc — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:40:00 GMT

Today, Windows Live SkyDrive has received some updates to the service - including everyone now having 1GB of storage. That's double what was previously there. Along with increased storage, the SkyDrive Team has included a few more things worth taking note of:

RSS Feeds on Public Folders: Users can now subscribe to an RSS feed for their Public folders. This allows folks to keep track of each other's public files and stay up-to-date with what is uploaded. You can subscribe to our Windows Vista Team Blog's Public SkyDrive folder here.

See who uploaded a file: you can now check out and see who has uploaded specific files to your shared folders in SkyDrive. I have quite a few shared folders which are shared out to large groups of friends - it is great to be able to see which files were uploaded by whom.

Add a contact directly within SkyDrive: you can now add a friend via Windows Live SkyDrive instead of having to go to Windows Live Messenger or Windows Live Hotmail.

Expect to see fixes and tweaks across the board. You'll also notice that the UI around to Windows Live header has also been tweaked to include easy access to Windows Live Spaces (such as your Friends List and Photos).

I've noticed a bunch of small things myself - such as the fact with this release they have added an icon for .XPS files (check out our Public folder to see).

For more information on the updates to Windows Live SkyDrive, be sure to check out their team blog here.

Store your files in “the cloud” with Windows Live SkyDrive

Brandon LeBlanc — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 17:56:00 GMT

Today Microsoft is announcing the final product name for what was previously known as Windows Live Folders. Windows Live SkyDrive gets not only its final product name but also a few new features and enhanced UI reflecting changes coming across many of the Windows Live services including Windows Live Spaces.

So what's Windows Live SkyDrive? Windows Live SkyDrive is a brand new Windows Live service that gives users 500MB of web space for the storing and sharing of files. Think of it as a personal "harddrive" on the internet - or "the cloud". By default, you get several protected directories which you can store your files in. These directories are completed protected from the public. Only you can view them. However, Windows Live SkyDrive allows you create or choose specific folders to share with everyone (Public folders) or specific people on your Windows Live Contacts list. You can set specific permissions for those viewing your folders as well - such as someone who can contribute (add and remove files) or someone who is simply just a reader. Your Public folder allows ONLY reader permissions for the public in viewing files within the folder. No need to worry about people maxing out your account with files.

I put together a small demo outlining Windows Live SkyDrive and several of today's beta improvements with a few new features. Check it out:

Video: Demo: Windows Live SkyDrive

For those who've been using the beta of Windows Live SkyDrive, today's changes and updates include the new Windows Live UI (header), improved file upload, thumbnails in folder views, and a section for visited SkyDrive folders from other people.

Nick and I use Windows Live SkyDrive quite a bit in sharing files. With me being outside Portland and him of course in Redmond - Windows Live SkyDrive has enabled us to quickly access and share files while working on projects. It has been a tremendous help overcoming the distance.

Give Windows Live SkyDrive a spin and let me know what you think. I'll be setting up a Public folder for you all to check out with some photos while visiting Redmond.

Screenshots: