Folders beta closed, for now

The Windows Live Folders beta opened up yesterday, and contrary to what we understood, was simply open to the first 5,000 users to get there, with a slight caveat of changing your locale to en-us.  That explains why many of you were able to get in, with or without an invite.  While we’re not sure that’s going to sit too well with the beta testers who didn’t get in, at least they’re in the Photo Gallery beta.

You can get on a mailing list for the next wave of Folders testing, and truthfully the interface and functionality of Folders is pretty well set, it’s scaling it up that needs testing.

In the meantime, if you want to take a peek at folders and didn’t get in, I posted the powerpoint presentation (six slides, 188kb, in .pptx format) that Chris Jones used in our discussion yesterday (it’s on the web, too, at Read/Write Web) on a public Folder, here.

Update: oops sorry my bad.  I failed to notice the Microsoft Confidential notice on the slides (it’s not on the first one), even though the slides are posted elsewhere on the web, so I took down the slide deck. We’ll find something fun and less controversial to post in a bit.

Comments

  • jamiet

    Hey Kip,

    With regard to “changing your locale to en-us” – I presume that means on my O/S right?

    Strange thing is, I can use Live Folders at work (which has a locale of en-us) but I can’t at home which has a locale of en-uk. I tried changing it to en-us but it still didn’t work.

    Weird.

    -Jamie

  • DougW

    It’d be kinda cool if drag & drop functionality was added to the folders.

  • http://www.liamdaly.co.uk DN2004

    @jamiet

    You can get it to work in UK either in Firefox or you can simply Open up IE 7 –> Tools –> Internet Options –> General –> Appearance –> Languages –> Add –> English (United States) [en-US], then select English (United Kingdom) [en-GB] and click remove then click OK then OK again and then retry loading it in Internet Explorer I guarantee this method will get it working or at least it does in Windows Vista

    Hope this helps

  • http://alpesh.nakars.com/blog alpesh

    Lucky I just got in from Australia y’day!

    Changed locale to en-us and can get in. Otherwise I could not :-)

    Phew!

    Yes DN2004, it works the way you have suggested – atleast in Vista.

  • mrx9898

    wait, so where can you get the WL Photo Gallery? coz i so wanna try that. :D

  • pmbalmfo

    i got three live folders accounts with my various ID’s… it’s a pretty cool service… you are even able to upload .exe files to your “documents” folders…

  • tophtucker

    I was lucky enough to get into the Folders beta, but is there a mailing list anywhere for the next round of Windows Live Photo Gallery invitations?

  • BV2312
  • BV2312

    Does anyone know how to get the windows live folder connected via web folders in windows or even as a network drive?

  • http://blogs.freshlogicstudios.com/smiller smiller

    @DougW

    We agree that drag/drop functionality was added. That’s why a couple of month ago we created Fresh Logic Studios Folders (http://www.freshlogicstudios.com/Products/Folders). There’s a lot of goodies in there like drag/drop, right click, cut/copy/paste. Thought you might be interested in checking it out.

  • mrx9898

    Hey, has anyone seen these sites for windows live hotmail and messenger? Windows Live Hotmail: http://imagine-windowslive.com/hotmail/#0
    Windows Live Messenger: http://imagine-windowslive.com/Messenger/Post/