LiveSide - News blog : Gallery

First of Many New Live Developer Articles

John OBrien — Sun, 11 May 2008 14:22:17 GMT

Hello fellow LiveSide readers, my name is John O'Brien. Its my second season as a Windows Live Developer/Platform MVP and I'm pleased to announce many new developer related articles in the works for your reading pleasure here at LiveSide. Today I published Create a Deep Zoom Panorama with Windows Live on the Developer Blog.

Its a how to guide for taking a Panorama Photo, stitching in Windows Live Photo Gallery, crunching in Deep Zoom Composer, uploading to Silverlight Streaming and display on top a Virtual Earth map. I hope you enjoy the read, I had fun making it, even the 5am trip out to the Story Bridge here in my home city of Brisbane, Australia.

Windows Live Gallery gets update - Adds Microsoft Points for micropayments

Chris — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 07:05:00 GMT

Today sees the update of Windows Live Gallery, the online site where users can personalise their Windows Live experience. From a user's perspective the update adds the new Wave 2 UI, as well as a new area showcasing gadgets for Windows Live Events, not surprising given that Events runs as part of Spaces.

The Gallery update adds much more for developers though, turning it into a true marketplace for developers to showcase their wares, and if they want to, receive payment for their efforts.

Gallery now uses the existing Microsoft Points system, which also power Zune and Xbox Live purchases. The addition of a points-based based payment method to Windows Live has been talked about for a while, with confirmation that it would be included as part of the Windows Live developer platform being given at CES 2007. As well as potentially providing the impetus to galvanise independent Windows Live developers, integrating Microsoft Points potentially provides a further revenue stream for Microsoft, albeit maybe only a small one. Just as Facebook has Gifts, Microssft Points enables a similar scenario with Windows Live. Think Messenger content available to buy, with parents being able to give Microsoft Points gift cards, and not have to hand over their credit card.

Additionally those who have partnered with Microsoft can now set up their own virtual shops, turning Windows Live development into a serious business opportunity. What isn't known is whether the silver partners (those who contribute a lot but have no formal business arrangement) can have their own shop, or what cut Microsoft takes from these micropayment sales.

Purchasing items is an easy three step process, all of which can be completed without leaving the page of the item you wish to purchase. Top marks to the Gallery team for that one.

Hopefully we'll now see some kick-ass Windows Live sidebar gadgets for Windows Vista. At the moment they are distinctly lacking or have zero performance (Live Maps traffic gadget excluded of course). Any ideas where else Microsoft Points could also make an appearance within Windows Live? QnA? Live Search club?

Local Boy Does Good

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 08:09:00 GMT

Our own Scott Lovegrove, or ScottIsaFool, was recognized on Friday by the Writer Zone, the blog of Windows Live Writer:

I wanted to send out a little love out to Scott Lovegrove (http://scottisafool.spaces.live.com/) on behalf of the Writer team to recognize all the contributions he has made as a member of the Writer community the over the last year...

Scott has helped us out immensely here at LiveSide, both with his dev bloggings, and just general helping out and being a good guy. It's great to see him getting some recognition for the hard work he's doing for the Writer community, by providing the plugins, providing source code, writing how-to's here on LiveSide, and helping out in the Writer forums. Oh, and he's an MVP, too!

Scott will be having more to say on Live Writer soon, so keep reading LiveSide. In the meantime, if you haven't tried them already, here's some handy links:

Congratulations, Scott. Keep up the good work!

Windows Live Gallery announces first Silver Tier developers

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 12:17:00 GMT

Windows Live Gallery recently awarded Silver Tier medals to some top developers, looking to recognize them for their frequent contributions, and to begin to develop a system of reputation that will make it easier to choose gadgets on Gallery. Gadgets from these developers now have a Silver medal next to their name. When we talked to Chris Butler about the program in our interview with him, the program hadn't started yet, so it's good to see it up and running. Read more on the Gallery King blog.

Windows Live Gallery updated: most visited personalization site

Kip Kniskern — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 01:35:00 GMT

Windows Live Gallery (http://gallery.live.com), according to Nielson the most visited personalization site on the internet with over 3.9 million unique users and over 27 million page views in March, is updating to provide more content and a new look. Check out the new features and the new look now!

Windows Live Messenger personal expression – now you can get all of your Windows Live Messenger personalization needs on Windows Live Gallery including emoticons, display pictures (aka avatars), backgrounds, winks and more. We will launch with a sampling of content and users and our partners will be adding loads of content in the future.
User experience updates – we have changed the navigation in the community after lot of great user feedback. This will make it easier for everyone to find what they want and need.
Windows Live Gallery partner tiers – we help our premium publishers be differentiated through the user experience. We want to enable our partners to provide great, high quality content to our users. The benefits include, but are not limited to, a visual differentiator and ability to do bulk uploads. We will be announcing more benefits of the Windows Live Gallery program in the coming months.

Live.com Sharing enabled

Kip Kniskern — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 14:24:05 GMT

Tonight brings an update to the Live.com home page, allowing for sharing of Live.com collections, which we recently posted about. By clicking on the new "Share" button on Live.com:

You can share your Live.com collections, either by email or by posting them to Gallery.Live.com, where you'll also find some new celebrity home pages to share:

Check out more at the Gallery.Live.com Collections page

Live.com to get social - share your own pages

Chris — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 06:00:00 GMT

In a relatively un-noticed post on the Windows Live Gallery blog last week, a new feature called Windows Live Collections was mentioned. Collections are pre-made Live.com pages with feeds and gadgets that you can add to your own Live.com homepage. Although the only collections currently available are celebrity pages and the standard Live.com pages such as the new Valentine's Day template, users will soon be able to share their own pages.

While letting users share pages is a great feature, no advertising on live.com means the corporate angle is equally as important. The Bacardi Instant Party gadget is one existing example and in time I suspect we'll see companies create full pages of content, using both RSS and gadgets. Any suggestions for full pages you'd consider using? (Some ideas I had were entertainment based - TV shows, movies, music artists....)

There's also the possibility of seeing more co-branded Live.com homepages. With Verizon already signed up, some of the other ISPs such as Qwest, who currently has an MSN co-branded homepage, might decide to follow suit. Then there are the ever-powerful PC manufacturers, with Google already providing a personalised homepage for Dell, although Dell has changed providers all the time [first MSN, then Excite]. For Live.com to really take off, Microsoft needs to partner with the likes of Lenovo or HP and ensure its place as default in the browser - afterall, this strategy worked for MSN.com. Interestingly enough, lenovo.live.com currently redirects to live.com.

Windows Live Writer 1.0 (Beta) Update with Windows Live Gallery

Darren Straight — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 05:39:00 GMT

Just got word from Scott Lovegrove that as a result of all the feedback the Windows Live Writer Team receieved after their initial Windows Live Writer release, the Team have created an update to the Windows Live Writer 1.0 (Beta) that includes changes that address issues that were reported frequently or severely impacted your ability to use Writer.

The following is a summary of the changes in the Writer 1.0 (Beta) Update:

Tagging support
Support for Blogger Beta
Categories are sorted by name and support scrolling, plus improved support for reading categories from your blog
Improved startup performance
Paste is enabled for Title region and TAB/SHIFT+TAB navigation between title and body supported
Insert hyperlink added to context menu when text is selected
Title attribute in Insert Link dialog
Custom date support for Community Server
Improved keyboard shortcuts for switching views
Change spell-check shortcut key to F7
Add ‘png’ to insert image dialog file type filter
More robust image posting to Live Spaces
Improved style detection for blogs
Fixed issues with pasting URLs and links
Remember last window size and position when opening a new post
Open post dialog retrieves more than 25 old posts

Download Windows Live Writer

Update: Writer plugins are now available from gallery.live.com (Currently only works if you work for MS) Have fun!

Windows Live Gallery gets update

Chris — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 04:03:00 GMT

Windows Live Gallery, the central hosting area for 3rd party development projects relating to Windows Live has just been updated.

New additions to the site include a section on SideShow, with a section on Windows Live Writer ~~expected also today~~ expected in the near future. For the moment, its presence is limited to just a brief mention at the bottom of the Developer Center page, with a link to the Writer SDK on dev.live.com.

Microsoft promotes customizing your Live.com

Harrison Hoffman — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 03:27:00 GMT

It is no secret that Microsoft's " Gadgets " are a central focus of the company, with integration already present in Live.com and Windows Vista. The buzz around CES was that there are plans in the works to bring Microsoft Gadgets to Spaces...(read more)