LiveSide - Interview Blog : Wave 3

Windows Live 2009: Jeff Kunins and Windows Live Social Experience

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 23:02:00 GMT

Jeff Kunins is a Group Program Manager for Social Networking for Windows Live, working on some of the features of Windows Live that cut across what used to be separate products. Working on Spaces and Groups, Profile, What’s New feed, and the 3rd party web activities are some of what Jeff’s group focuses on. Jeff sees Windows Live Wave 3 as “the birth of Windows Live as a suite”, more than just a set of products with a single name.

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We like how Jeff explains where we’re at with Windows Live today, that 10 years ago search was able to simplify the “cacophony” of information on the web, and now 10 years later Windows Live seeks to simplify the cacophony of the many and different social networks we find ourselves immersed in. Good stuff.

Windows Live 2009: Omar Shahine part 2 – People in Windows Live

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 06:46:00 GMT

While Omar Shahine has been kind enough to talk to us (twice) about POP3 support in Hotmail, it’s not really what he works on. Omar has been busy down in Mountain View, California, working on Hotmail, and the People features in Windows Live Wave 3. In the second part of our chat with him, he gives us a quick overview of the new features in Wave 3 dealing with people. Omar explains that contacts updates are now automatically “dynamic” (before Wave 3 it required an opt in), so that when you update information in your profile the people you give permission to access that info will be kept up to date.

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In the next few weeks we should be seeing some new stuff in Hotmail: POP3 access of course; web messenger, and even a few surprises. Keep an eye out, and of course keep checking back with us here at LiveSide!

Windows Live 2009: Rodger Benson on Windows Live Photo Gallery

Kip Kniskern — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 20:51:00 GMT

In our next interview, we spent some time with Rodger Benson, a program manager working on Photo Gallery talking about facial recognition, new upload limits for photos on photos.live.com (or Spaces), how Photo Gallery works with the suite (for example: picking face names from your address book):

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We’ll get the last two interviews up as soon as we can convince Soapbox to play nice ;)

Windows Live 2009: Colin Anthony and Emmanuel Miranda

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 18:11:00 GMT

Up until Wave 3, Windows Live has been a suite pretty much in name only. In Wave 2, services were focused, some were culled, in order to make some sense of the seemingly random slapping of the Windows Live moniker on any piece of code that walked by (remember Windows Live Barcode?). In Wave 3, not only was the look and feel of the online experience cleaned up, but internally teams started working on a single product: Windows Live, instead of a number of separate products with a common name.

In our next segment, Colin Anthony, Senior Program Manager, Custom Experience Platform team, and Emannuel Miranda, Developer Lead for the same team, talk about Home.live.com, shared experiences across the web applications, and how the way they look at their work has changed:

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Previously, we chatted with Windows Live Senior Director Ryan Gavin, and let Omar Shahine explain a bit about POP3 – we’ll have more from Omar soon, and hear from 3 more Windows Live managers.

Windows Live 2009: Our interview with Ryan Gavin, Sr. Director, Windows Live

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 19:04:00 GMT

2008 was a momentous year for Windows Live. After lots of fanfare, but with no real direction, Windows Live first appeared in early 2006, with lots of new apps, lots of rebranding (and re-rebranding), and lots of queries from the press and from customers on “what IS Windows Live?”. That continued into 2007, where even Microsoft had had enough of all the rebranding foolishness, pulled back on new releases, and started cleaning up the Windows Live act. We got our first glimpses of a new direction in Wave 2, in early 2008.

But Wave 3, which debuted in the fall of 2008, for the first time offered a clear definition of Windows Live, and a (mostly) unified presentation experience. In January of 2009 Steve Ballmer took the “beta” tag off of Windows Live Essentials, and this week we were able to fight the freeway traffic and head up to Redmond to speak with a number of Windows Live managers about where we are.

Our first interview of the day was with Ryan Gavin, Senior Director, Windows Live. Ryan was busy at CES, talking to a number of publications, and we were grateful to be able to catch him while missing all the CES Vegas madness. Ryan gives us an overview of the Windows Live platform, talks about “simplifying the web”, about partners, including Facebook, and give a shout out to LiveSide readers at the end:

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In the next few days, as we get the videos processed and loaded up to Soapbox, we’ll be bringing you more in our short series of Windows Live interviews. Our thanks to Microsoft, Windows Live, and Waggener Edstrom for setting this all up for us.

Hotmail POP3 access on the way: Omar Shahine explains

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 04:12:00 GMT

We spent the day today (Jan 13) on campus, talking to some of the people who have helped to bring you Wave 3. In quite a coincidence, one of them was Omar Shahine, who we spoke to last fall when POP3 access was announced. We’ll bring you more from Omar coming up, but we wanted to get this bit out on POP3 now while the news is fresh. Funnily enough, Omar doesn’t actually work on POP, although he has been working on Hotmail, and more recently on some of the social networking aspects of Windows Live, specifically People and Profiles. We just happened to catch him, twice, right when there were POP announcements.

Last night we reported that users in the Netherlands were accessing their Hotmail via POP3 (as Omar explains in the video, POP is a kind of lowest common denominator for email retrieval. It isn’t nearly as rich an experience as DeltaSync, which is what Windows Live Mail and Outlook use, but it does allow just about any email client – including most notably the iPhone – to access Hotmail), and we’ve since seen reports of access in the UK and in Australia. If you’re waiting for POP access, perhaps for your iPhone, you shouldn’t have to wait long. And if you are able to access POP for the first time in your region, let us know in the comments.

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(Our friend Arnout Hemel posted on Hotmail access in the Netherlands on the LiveLog blog today – it’s in Dutch but you can play with Windows Live Translator)

In the next few days, we’ll be posting the rest of our chat with Omar and our other interviews, just as soon as we can get the videos processed and posted. Thanks to everyone for a fun day!

Windows Live Messenger Program Managers talk Wave 3: Part 3 of 3

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 03:59:00 GMT

In the first two parts of our interview, we talked to Alton Kwok and Brian Moudy. In this part, we talk to Marisol Ontaneda about design, and then we get into an overview of what it means to be a program manager. We really enjoyed our session with Alton, Brian, and Marisol, and want to thank them again for taking the time to meet with us.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Just a note about the videos: Sorry about the mess, MSN Soapbox, which I wish we could count on to use, wouldn't play nice at all last night and it took me til now to get the files uploaded. I won't go through all the gory details, but this was way too hard.

OK anyway, we have MSN Soapbox videos of everything up now, so you can watch without needing Silverlight (although go get it!), and/or link or embed the videos. Hopefully we’ll get this mess sorted out soon.

Part 1: Alton Kwok on Messenger conversation window, pawns, and more

Part 2: Brian Moudy on Messenger Groups

Not to take anything away from our talk with the Messenger guys, they were great, we'd love to do it again. Any other Windows Live teams want to talk we’d love to talk to you, too!

Windows Live Messenger Program Managers talk about Wave 3: LiveSide interview part 2 of 3

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 08:15:00 GMT

In part one of our interview, Alton Kwok talked about some of the new features in the new Messenger beta, including an interesting history of “the pawn”, and how it finally was replaced in Messenger Wave 3 with “the chiclet”. Next up is Brian Moudy, who works on Groups, and is “incredibly excited” about the possibilities:

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(While we get our video hosting all figured out, here’s a couple of screenshots of Alton, Brian, and Marisol):

I’ll have part three up soon, where Marisol talks about design, and the group talks about what it means to be a Program Manager. Good stuff.

Windows Live Messenger PMs talk Wave 3 Part 1
Part 1 wmv

Windows Live Messenger Program Managers talk about Wave 3: LiveSide Interview Part 1 of 3

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 06:14:00 GMT

Today I ventured to Microsoft's Red West campus to talk to three Windows Live Messenger Program Managers; Alton Kwok, Brian Moudy, and Marisol Ontaneda. It was great getting a chance to talk to them about Windows Live Messenger and Wave 3.

In this first part of the interview, I ask the three to introduce themselves, and then Alton starts off by talking a bit about contacts, pawns, and What's New:

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(about 7 minutes)

(here's a link to the file, in case you want to download: just right click and "save target as": Part 1 wmv )

I'll have parts 2 and 3 up shortly, just don't ask me about Soapbox or Expression Encoder anytime soon ;).