LiveSide - Interview Blog : Windows Live

Windows Live 2009: Pierro Sierra on shared data experience

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 02:59:00 GMT

We hope you’ve enjoyed our discussions with some of the program managers working on Windows Live, we really appreciate the opportunity to get to sit down and talk to them, and appreciate the opportunity to bring them to you.

Our last interview of the day was with Piero Sierra, Group Program Manager for Shared Data Experience. We ended up talking for a good twenty minutes on camera, and since we try to keep these video interviews around 10 minutes or so I broke this one up in to two parts.

In part one, Piero begins with a quick definition of shared data experience (sdx), his team is responsible for SkyDrive, Windows Live Sync, and Windows Live Toolbar. We started out talking about the differences between Live Mesh and Windows Live Sync, talked a bit about SkyDrive, and then Piero described one of his favorites, Windows Live Toolbar:

(Please visit the site to view this media)

In part two, Piero talks about the uptake of the new services without getting too specific about numbers, we talked about what it means to run these services the scale of the internet, and then touched on how FolderShare has been transformed into Windows Live Sync, and some hints of what’s to come now that the move to Live ID and the inclusion into the Essentials suite has taken place.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Hopefully we’ll be able to continue our discussions with the people who bring you Windows Live, again, we really enjoyed our day of meetings, and look forward to doing it again soon.

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.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

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: 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):

(Please visit the site to view this media)

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:

(Please visit the site to view this media)

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:

(Please visit the site to view this media)

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.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

(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!

Our interview with David Treadwell of Windows Live Platform Services at Mix08

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 02:49:00 GMT

Microsoft is betting heavily on Software + Services, the concept that all the power of the desktop will not go away when services are introduced, rather that storage and computing power, local to the user, will continue to play a big role in how we use computers. For the past couple of years, David Treadwell has been working along with Ray Ozzie and others to develop what has been known as Windows Live Core, now Windows Live Platform Services. This platform, which we will be talking quite a bit more about shortly, is the beginnings of a transformation at Microsoft - not switching from Software to Services, but bringing services along as an integral added piece to software. David Treadwell is the Corporate Vice President for Windows Live Platform Services at Microsoft, and we talked to him at Mix08 about the platform, and how it relates to Windows Live.

01 00:00:34         Windows Live Platform Services defined: A developer platform for services, blended with client: the best of both worlds

02 00:01:23         Messenger Services Library API: A good example of the Software + Services model

03 00:02:57         Integrating a front end for Messenger into a website

04 00:04:03         The Windows Live Platform: Comparing it to the PC file system in the 80’s; working towards an ability to create a service just like creating an application

05 00:07:36         Identity Services and Interoperability: What’s different from Passport and Hailstorm

06 00:10:39         Issues with ID services: Spam

07 00:11:52         Is Microsoft turning towards an Open model?

08 00:13:12         Advertising? Artificial barriers to keep users will fail in the long run

09 00:14:38         Microsoft is serious about Software + Services

8mb mp3 download - 17 minutes and 20 seconds

Interview with Stephen Lawler - Virtual Earth

Chris — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 04:07:00 GMT

Last week, Harrison got the chance to talk with Stephen Lawler, General Manager for Live Local/Virtual Earth product development, about their new release, making its debut this week. He has some really interesting things to say about their vision for Virtual Earth, innovative monetization, and where Virtual Earth is going from here. So, enjoy the new release and give this one a listen.

0:00 Introductions
0:15 The Vision
1:10 The Problem with Search Today
1:37 Extending Search into the Real World
2:36 The Announcement
3:58 Photorealistic Cities
6:20 What does this mean for 3rd party developers?
7:00 Advertising in Virtual Earth's New 3D Mode (Virtual Billboards)
9:40 How does it work?
11:35 How does Streetside fit into the picture?
13:18 Where is the 3D view launching?
14:16 Extent of the integration in 3rd party application
15:28 Are there any plans for a standalone client?
17:28 Virtual Earth Mobile application?
18:03 Any plans for Virtual Earth branded hardware?
18:38 Wrap-up

LiveSide with Stephen Lawler

Length: 19 minutes and 13 seconds
File Size: 17.5 MB

Round Table Discussion with Live Search

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 22:21:00 GMT

Last week LiveSide sat down with some people from Live Search to talk about a wide range of topics, including the switch from MSN Search to Live Search, the Windows Live name and brand, migrating MSN Search users and acquiring new ones, Live Local, QnA, Google and Page Rank, and a lot more.

My apologies if I spell some names wrong, but the participants were:

Neil Freeland:      Marketing Programs and Acquisition
Laura Kern:         User Experience
Sebastian Gard: Evangelism for Live Search
Sean Nordberg:   Group Program Manager,Windows Live Local Search
and thanks to Kevin Briody from Windows Live for putting it all together.

A couple of links referenced in the discussion:

Nicholas Carr: Beyond Question - Oct 2, 2006
Comscore: Local Search Continues to Gain Momentum - Sept. 28, 2006

I broke up the interview into two parts to make it a bit easier to download, or you can listen to the whole thing at once:

Download the full Interview (20mb mp3 - 44 minutes)
Download Part One (8.5mb mp3 - 18 minutes)
Download Part Two (11.5mb mp3 - 26 minutes)

(edit: fixed links to point to direct download)

Exclusive: Interview with J.J. Allaire, Architect for Windows Live Writer

Harrison Hoffman — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 18:37:00 GMT

Now that the word on Windows Live Writer is out, LiveSide has the exclusive interview with J.J. Allaire , the founder of Onfolio and Architect of the Writer team. You may remember that Onfolio was acquired by Microsoft back in March of this year. Since...(read more)

Windows Live Spaces Tour, Part 2: Gadgets

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 06:20:00 GMT

With Spaces being released yesterday ( not without a few glitches ), we continue to take a look at the new features with Part 2 of the audio tour, this time with Jay Fluegel on Gadgets. Definitely a program in it's infancy, there's not much yet...(read more)

Windows Live Spaces Audio Tour Part One: Social Networking

Kip Kniskern — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 07:49:00 GMT

Moz Hussain , Group Program Manager for Spaces, and Jay Fluegel , Lead PM, Spaces, invited me to come to Redmond last Friday and get a little preview of a couple of the new aspects of Spaces; Social Networking and Gadgets. In the first half of this audio...(read more)

Audio tour of Windows Live Mail m7

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 05:19:00 GMT

At Gnomedex a couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to talk to Steve Kafka, program manager for Windows Live Mail. As part of that conversation, Steve showed me around "m7", the milestone 7 beta release of Windows Live Mail. Steve talks...(read more)

Interview with Kurt Weber from Windows Live Expo

Harrison Hoffman — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 21:52:00 GMT

With the recent release of Windows Live Expo, we took this opportunity to sit down with Kurt Weber, Group Program Manager for Expo . In this interview, we talk about what the team learned from the Expo beta process, API's and mashups, international...(read more)

Interview with Steve Kafka from Live Mail

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 06:14:00 GMT

At Gnomedex this past weekend, I got a chance to talk with Steve Kafka , Program Manager for Windows Live Mail. After being inside the conference most of the day, we went outside the Bell Harbor Convention Center into a glorious Seattle day to talk a...(read more)