Windows Live Wave 3: SkyDrive (Updated)

By ScottIsAFool on December 3, 2008 6:19 AM

18 comments

The SkyDrive team blog announced a couple of weeks back about the updates that were coming, and now they’re here.

From the announcement post:

Here are a few things you’ll find on your shiny new SkyDrive:

25 GB of free online storage

Available in 6 more regions and 13 more languages

Download entire folders as Zip files (limited release)

Gorgeous online slide show for your photos

And much, much more!

So those are some of the highlights, let’s take a closer look.

The first thing to notice is the unified banner at the top for all the Live services (Home, People, SkyDrive):

The initial layout has also changed when you first sign into SkyDrive, showing your most recent folders, as well as a What’s New section, that you will have seen on home.live.com, only this What’s New is more relevant to SkyDrive:

One of the features I have been most excited about for this update is the ability to copy and move both files and folders around which makes it so much easier to organise files without having to re-upload them!

The other really cool new feature is the ability to download a folder as a zip file, but please remember, that at the moment it’s in a limited release (hey, even I don’t have it yet!):

If you have a photo album, then these folders can be downloaded using Windows Live Photo Gallery (much like you could in Live Spaces):

Unfortunately at the moment, every time I try this, I get told that my WLID doesn’t have permissions, so hopefully this should be fixed when the Essentials programs get updated to the final release.

The other thing to note is that all your photo albums from your Live Space now appear in your SkyDrive area, which means easy access and browsing of your photos:

And speaking of browsing photos, the new update includes a very cool Silverlight photo browser which you can get to by clicking the slideshow link when you’re in a folder with photos:

All in all, this is a very pleasing update, so good job. The only main feature I think is missing from this is named links (eg, http://liveside.skydrive.live.com).

Update: I now have the “Download as .zip” option for my folders. How did I get this? Some of you I know won’t like it. I changed my Windows Live ID locale to US. Once you’ve done that, wait a few hours for it to propogate round the various servers, then you should have download as .zip as an option.

Posted in News | Tags: SkyDrive, Wave 3

Comments

http://www.liveside.net/members/DN2004/default.aspx DN2004

Any idea if named links are coming to photos, skydrive, home and profile?
damaster

@DN2004: I don’t see why named links would come to Home. But Chris did mention that it will come to Profile =)
http://www.liveside.net/members/DN2004/default.aspx DN2004

Doh I meant SkyDrive, Groups, Events, Photos and Profile, as they all have ..live.com
http://liveside.net/members/wH1spEr/default.aspx wH1spEr

Does anybody know how to disable picture resizing in Photo Gallery when uploading to Photos – I want the full size, not just 1600. Another way is uploading them one by one from skydrive, but I want to use Photo Gallery?

As for the update I think it’s awesome, only if we had some plugin or addon in windows explorer for connecting to SkyDrive as a remote drive.
damaster

@DN2004: Groups and Events already have named links available. (In fact, Events had that ages ago) So you could have your group with an address of .groups.live.com . Profile’s named links is coming. I’m not sure about SkyDrive and Photos though.

@wH1spEr: I know the Photo Upload tool allows you to drag and drop from Photo Gallery into the browser and upload to Photos – and it allows you to upload the original too. Sorry if this wasn’t answering your question directly, I havn’t tried uploading from Photo Gallery to Photos yet…
http://www.liveside.net/members/lbastie/default.aspx lbastie

Interesting to see that windows live sync is not in there (which makes sense?)
http://www.liveside.net/members/calum_2D00_r_2D00_/default.aspx calum-r-

There’s another feature missing: the ability to upload entire folders from your local directories :(

I find SkyDrive useless without this, which is a shame because I’d love to use it to have an online back-up of my documents and photos (it would also be easier then to upload photo albums.

Is there a reason why they have not included this simple fundamental feature?

As I say, I find SkyDrive useless without this, unfortunately, because I do not have the time to upload each individual file directly in order to backup the files on my computer :( – it would take over a year to backup all my photos and university documents :(
http://www.liveside.net/members/DN2004/default.aspx DN2004

SkyDrive & Photos service seems to be intermittent. They are going up and down like a yoyo here
http://www.liveside.net/members/DN2004/default.aspx DN2004

Wish you could select multiple files to move instead of 1 at a time or just a folder
http://www.liveside.net/members/lbastie/default.aspx lbastie

“the ability to upload entire folders from your local directories” is covered by Live Mesh

Maybe in the next release SkyDrive and Mesh will be a same service.
damaster

@DN2004: I agree with you there – quite frustrating when I wanted to move a bunch of files to another folder, I had to do it one by one.
http://www.liveside.net/members/ScottIsAFool/default.aspx ScottIsAFool

@DN2004 I’ve been told that the reason skydrive doesnt have named links yet is due to “server scalability”. In other words, having named urls put too much strain on the servers. I did argue that surely this must be the same for Spaces, but that’s the only answer I was given.
http://yertblog.blogspot.com yertthedestroyer

The lack of these features being worldwide is a real shame.
Ditto for single file uploading; SkyDrive is different from Mesh (although SkyDrive getting Mesh syncing would be really cool) in its function and may be for some time. This needs fixed sooner rather then later.
http://www.liveside.net/members/calum_2D00_r_2D00_/default.aspx calum-r-

I’ve just noticed, again, scottisafool, that your contacts in your What’s New feed have their status showing (e.g. ‘Away’, ‘Busy’, ‘Available’, etc), however, throughout my whole Windows Live web services, this is not shown for me. I cannot see mine or anyone else’s status.

Does anybody know why please? Ths is a vital feature to me.
http://www.liveside.net/members/JonT/default.aspx JonT

so im a bit confused about the whole Skydrive/Mesh thing. Aren’t they basicly the same thing except mesh has the sync features and skydrive seems to be more integrated into other windows live services? Are we always going to have both these services or will they one day become one?
http://www.liveside.net/members/ScottIsAFool/default.aspx ScottIsAFool

@JonT I think the easiest way to look at it is Mesh (in its current form) is file synchronisation, and SkyDrive is file sharing.

You also have to remember that the sync features in Mesh is just a feature of the Live/Mesh platform :)
http://www.liveside.net/members/JonT/default.aspx JonT

So why not just combine the 2? that way, for example, I can keep my photos synced, all in one place, on my windows live sites and share them with friends?
http://www.liveside.net/members/gregsedwards/default.aspx gregsedwards

My idea to take Windows Live SkyDrive to the next level http://tinyurl.com/7hfxwp

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