LiveSide - News blog : Live ID

Tafiti and Windows Live Quick Apps

Sunshine — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 06:30:00 GMT

As Kip already said in his article, Windows Live Platform Announcements: Cool new toys just in time for Mix, some new WL Quick Apps were added. In this article I want to highlight an updated WL Quick App: Tafiti Search visualization.

First let me explain Tafiti:

Tafiti, which means "do research" in Swahili, is an experimental search front-end from Microsoft, designed to help people use the Web for research projects that span multiple search queries and sessions by helping visualize, store, and share research results.

Tafiti uses Silverlight 1.0 RC and AJAX to provide rich, cross-platform user experiences and leverages the following Microsoft services on the backend:

Tafiti’s user interface is built entirely in Silverlight. When the user does a search, drags an item to the shelf, or performs some other action, Tafiti uses ASP.NET AJAX to contact the web server. In turn, the web server hits the Live Search API to get the results. A user’s shelf is stored in a SQL Server database, indexed on the unique ID provided by Windows Live ID.

On Tafiti you can stack search results (web, images, news, feeds, books) on a shelf to make one research project. This project get's saved for later use if you sign in with your Live ID. You can send stacks to anyone’s email address, or you can post your results to your Windows Live Space. Because Tafiti uses Silverlight this all works very smooth and intuitive; you search, find, and drag results you would like to use to your Shelf on the right. You can name your research project by adding a label to it, to do that hover over the stack and click ‘type to label…’ To view your stack click on the shelf and it will load in the middle. Want to remove stuff from your project? No problem, simply hover over the items and click the red remove button. To delete the complete project hover over the shelf and click the white X that will appear in top right of that shelf. The basics are explained in the Tafiti video walkthrough.

More info: Tafiti faq

Windows Live Quick Applications:

Windows Live Quick Applications Beta provide customizable out-of-the box solutions for specific Web scenarios. Each Quick App is built on Windows Live services and is offered as a source code download for you to use today.

Tafiti Search Visualization:

Tafiti Search visualization is a Windows Live Quick Application. Where does Tafiti Search visualization differ from http://www.tafiti.com/? Angus posted the following:

Tafiti Search visualization has had a major addition. Using the Windows Live Messenger Library and Script# we turned Tafiti from being a slick search UI to being a social search application. You can now perform searches, save your results and share that experience with your Windows Live Messenger friends. Research has never been so fun! try it | watch it | get it

So in short, on top of creating a research project on your own, you can now create them with one, or more, of your Windows Live Messenger contacts!

When you sign in with your Live ID it will also sign you into Messenger (this is mandatory). You can IM straight from the Tafiti Search Visualization site, just click on the contact in the buddy list that appears at the bottom of the middle pane when you view your stack. To make a contact co-owner, click and drag that contact from your list on top of the stack. You will then be prompted if you want to allow Tafiti to send IM's to other shelf stack owners. When you choose yes or always, a notification IM will be sent to the contact you made co-owner. When your contact logs in on http://tafiti.mslivelabs.com, he/she will also see the stack you created and is able to edit that stack.

All changes made will also appear at your end. TEAMWORK! Awesome!

Angus explains how to do this step by step, and more, in his video. Watch it! Then try it! You'll love it, I know I do!

Previous LiveSide articles:
Tafiti Search Visualization - Overview
Microsoft launches Tafiti - Search and Silverlight experiment

Windows Live service restored (again?, still?)

Kip Kniskern — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 11:03:00 GMT

See, is this so hard? The Email Support Space blog posts tonight, reporting that "nearly all customers are once again able to sign in", with some specific information coming for customers who are still unable to login, "once you log in" (ummmm, ahhhh, no, wait - deep breath - don't go there). Anyway whatever the problem was (and problems do happen) we're glad to hear that it's fixed, and especially glad to see even this little bit of communication from Microsoft on the subject. Here's the post, in total:

February 28

WIndows Live ID and Hotmail Service Restored

Good afternoon everyone -

We've been busy working to restore our services after the recent downtime, and by our estimates, nearly all customers are once again able to sign in with their Live ID and access services like Hotmail and Messenger.

There is a very small group of customers who are still unable to login, but we're hoping to restore that final bit of service Thursday afternoon (today), PST. If you are a member of this group, once you log in, you will see a message from us "Hotmail Customer Support" with some specific information about your experience and instructions if you need more assistance.

No service provider likes their service to be down, and we do everything possible to avoid it and then mitigate when it happens. I am especially grateful for your patience and good humor during these times.

Thanks.

Michael

7:13 PM | Add a comment | Send a message | View trackbacks (0) | Blog it

We'd be interested to see the "specific information about your experience", so if you're one of the lucky ones, and wouldn't mind posting the info in the comments, it would be much appreciated. And special thanks to "Michael", for the information - that's much appreciated, too.

Windows Live Platform Announcements: Cool new toys just in time for Mix

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:00:00 GMT

With Mix08 less than a week away, details of what's coming are slowly creeping out: details of the IE8 beta, Scott Guthrie has posted details about Silverlight 2.0. And now the Windows Live Platform team is announcing today a series of new and updated features, including a new Messenger Library API, significant updates to Silverlight Streaming, an updated Windows Live Contacts API and Windows Live Photos API, and new Quick Apps and Visual Studio tools. Update: David Treadwell has just made the announcement on dev.live.com.

We'll go into more detail (and will be trying out ourselves) many of the new toys soon, but for now here's a quick look:

Messenger Library API beta
- This new addition to the Windows Live Platform family will allow third party developers to build their own complete custom Messenger applications on cross platform websites, using a new set of APIs to access and deliver Messenger functionality to websites. This means that websites could build their own front ends to Messenger on their websites, with all of the functionality (and a good deal more) of a Messenger client.
Silverlight Streaming updated:
- Silverlight Streaming, which has been in Alpha and offering 4gb of storage space and 22mb file limits, is now in beta.
- Upgraded to 10gb of storage space and 100mb+ file size limits
- 1400kbps streaming speeds (free for up to 500,000 minutes/mo)
- Better file manipulation with the ability to use Windows Explorer
- and better support for Visual Studio 2008 with Windows Live Tools for Visual Studio,
- You can take a look at a Hi-Def video streamed from Silverlight Streaming video here, and we'll have more soon.
Windows Live Contacts API Beta
- The Windows Live Contacts API Beta allows people to use their Windows Live contact information (including Hotmail, Messenger, and Mobile contacts) with any site—while keeping complete control of their data. Featuring Windows Live Delegation Authentication, the Contacts API can return Full or "invite" information (many sites just need name and primary email for invitations, and the Contacts API now allows that without exposing any other Windows Live Contacts information).
Windows Live Photo API CTP
- The updated Windows Live Photo API gives full control of photos stored on Spaces using the Atom Publishing Protocol or WebDAV, and now photos shown on a third party site are not required to go through the site - the API will call Spaces directly, and photos can be shown as thumbnails as well as time-limited permalinks (yeah, sounds contradictory...):
Windows Live ID Delegated Authentication
- Windows Live ID Delegated Authentication enables any web applications to request permission from users to access their Windows Live data
- Windows Live servers securely handle access control and user authentication
- Some Web sites would request Live ID and password – this is not necessary with Delegated Authentication
- Users can manage and revoke access at any time
Windows Live Quick Apps
- Two new Quick Apps, Contoso University and AdventureWorksResorts have been added, and Tafiti, the search app, has been updated. We'll have more on Tafiti and the Quick Apps soon, in the mean time, Angus has some more information on them.
Windows Live Tools for Visual Studio
- 4 key enhancements:
  - Windows Live Messenger IM Control integration (which Angus hinted at)
  - Deploy your controls to partially-trusted environments, including medium trust web hosting farms
  - Silverlight 2 SDK compatibility
  - No longer depends on ASP.NET Futures
ATOM Publishing Protocol
- Atom is a simple XML format for exchanging data in the form of feeds (which Windows Live Writer already supports)
- The Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub) is a lightweight HTTP-based protocol for publishing and storing Atom-encoded feeds
- Windows Live services will align with a consistent AtomPub-based interface

This is a lot of information to throw down all at once - but we'll be going into more detail in the upcoming days, as well as hearing more about a lot of it at Mix. We're writing this under embargo a few hours before it's set to go live, so we don't have a lot of live links yet, but we're sure Angus will have more on his blog, and of course there will be lots of info at dev.live.com.

More from Mobile Congress 2008: Windows Live Mobile Services in Latin America extended; Windows Live Mobile Developer Program; mobile advertising progress

Sunshine — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 19:21:20 GMT

Over at his blog, Phil Holden wrote a Mobile World Congress 2008 update. First he updates us on the expansion of Windows Live Mobile services in Latin America:

The first thing we have is a nice endorsement of our Windows Live mobile services in Latam where Telefonica Latin America has announced that they are adopting our services in 12 countries. This deal is for WAP browser based services, including Hotmail, Messenger, Contacts and Spaces so that means that they work on pretty much any data enabled phone under Telefonica's movistar brand. The rollout should begin next month and will happen in a phased approach for the 12 countries that include Chile, Mexico, Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, Uruguay and Peru. Associated with this is an extension to the deal where Telefonica has also agreed to deploy MSN Mobile in Venezuela and Mexico as well.

Press Release: Microsoft and Telefónica Extend Reach of Windows Live Services Across Latin America

He also reminds us that we don't need a PC to create a Live ID. You can create a Live ID from your mobile by going to account creation directly, https://mid.live.com/reg, or by going to http://mobile.live.com/, finding a service and selecting “Get a Windows Live ID.”

Second update is on the Windows Live Mobile Developer Program, which Kip covered in News from Mobile Congress 2008: MSN Direct; Danger acquisition; Sony Ericsson deal, and a Windows Live Mobile Dev announcement, whew!. So the only thing I'm going to add to that is that Phil lets us know that Microsoft now has over 70 ISV partners that are building applications that work on more than 800 devices equipped to support Windows Live for mobile.

Last but not least there's news on the mobile advertising progress:

On the syndication side we are announcing that a number of new mobile publishers have chosen Microsoft Advertising Platform Services team to syndicate display ads on their mobile sites. Publishers include Disney mobile in the United Kingdom, L’Equipe, Boursier.com, and Autonews in France; and Orange in Spain. Then we have MSN Mobile where they were a number of new advertisers signed up including Nike, Coca Cola, Voyages-sncf.com (VSC), Jean-Paul Gaultier perfume, and Pages Juanes in France, and Saturn, Best Buy and Verizon Communications in the US.

Press Release: Microsoft Expands Mobile Advertising Syndication

Are you receiving password reset emails? Let the email support team know

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 11:24:00 GMT

When we wrote about Omar Shahine's hijacked email account last night, we showed it around a little and heard of some problems regarding password reset emails. Apparently some users are receiving emails informing them that there has been a request to reset their passwords. The password reset process is two steps; first request the password reset, then an email is sent out with a link to confirm that the requester is actually the one with the email account.

Well today, and we have no idea whether or not this has anything to do with Omar's post last night, the Email Support team posted this:

We're starting to see an interesting pattern of customers who are receiving password re-set messages from us, but claim to not have requested the password to be re-set. I'd like to find out more information, so if you've experienced this issue recently (since late December), please let us know. You can click hereto send a message to our team alias and we'll keep track of your feedback.

If you use the link above to send any other requests, it will be disregarded.

So if you've been receiving password reset notices that you didn't initiate, let the Email Support Team know (and please don't use the alias for any other reason). Actually, if you've had the issue, let us know in the comments, too.

Hotmail Lead Program Manager's email compromised

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 13:28:10 GMT

Wow don't really know what to say about this. Omar Shahine, a Lead Program Manager for Hotmail, who we've interviewed and had numerous conversations with about Hotmail, has apparently had his email account hijacked. Omar posted this tonight:

What do you do when some one:

hacks into your account

changes your password

changes your secret question

changes your "alternate email address"

changes all your profile information

sets up mail forwarding to another account

Turn on the exclusive junk filter (deleting all your email)

Deletes your life (email, contacts etc)

That is what I found this evening. I believe that some one managed to issue a password reset command to my account and then somehow logged in and reset my password essentially owning my data.

Don't really know what to say about this one, other than "sorry, Omar". Ouch.

Microsoft to join DataPortability.org

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 23:44:08 GMT

Word is filtering out this morning that Microsoft, along with recent additions Google, Facebook, and Plaxo, will be joining the DataPortability.Org working group, represented by Windows Live Platform Corporate Vice President David Treadwell. DataPortability.Org seeks to allow data sharing between different applications, as stated in their Philosoply and Mission:

Philosophy As users, our identity, photos, videos and other forms of personal data should be discoverable by, and shared between our chosen (and trusted) tools or vendors. We need a DHCP for Identity. A distributed File System for data. The technologies already exist, we simply need a complete reference design to put the pieces together.

Mission To put all existing technologies and initiatives in context to create a reference design for end-to-end Data Portability. To promote that design to the developer, vendor and end-user community.

While those perceiving Microsoft as anti-open may be surprised, in fact Microsoft, and especially Windows Live, have been making great strides to open up the platform. Along with the OpenID efforts of Kim Cameron and others at Microsoft, the company has been providing APIs for access to Windows Live Contacts stores, among many others, with more to come. We will certainly be following this in the weeks and months ahead.

Via ReadWriteWeb, thanks for reading, Marshall!

Catching up on some stuff we forgot to tell you about

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 05:13:00 GMT

Been a lot going on with Windows Live in the past few weeks, with Events, and new Live Search and Maps features, Linked IDs, and Gallery. Unfortunately when we're scrambling to keep up with the big stories (not that we're complaining, bring it on!), some other interesting stuff gets overlooked. Hopefully this will get us caught up:

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First, and this has been floating around for at least a couple of weeks - the Inside Windows Live Messenger blog posted yesterday on a site that will help you build a little gadget to add to your website or email signature to let people add you to Windows Live Messenger:

You can add a button to:

Spaces
Blogger
Facebook
MySpace
Outlook 2003
Outlook 2007
MSN Hotmail
Windows Live Hotmail
Windows Live Mail beta
...or add the code to your own website

Unfortunately in reading through the comments the Messenger blog apparently posted the wrong URL (hey it happens, been there, done that). Here's the correct one:

http://www.gowindowslive.com/messenger/button/Default.aspx

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Next, Windows Live Developer Evangelist Catherine Heller presented at Mix07 Boston on Windows Live ID web authentication - the service we use here at LiveSide to allow you to sign in with your Live ID. What was fun for us is that Catherine used LiveSide to demo how the web authentication works. You can watch a series of videos on her presentation (we're at the end of #2 and the start of #3), or read her blog entry on Live ID web authentication.

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The OneCare Family Safety blog noted an upgrade to their service, mostly bug fixes, but including a website that "will convert your MSN Premium Parental Controls family to Windows Live OneCare Family Safety" if you choose to do so.

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As usual there's lots of information on new stuff on the Virtual Earth/Live Maps blog. Congrats to the team there for continuing to ship interesting stuff, continuing to innovate, and continuing to blog. They are a model for what all Windows Live teams should be doing. If you only have two blogs in your feed reader, the other one (besides LiveSide, of course) should be the Virtual Earth/Live Maps blog.

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John Thornton over at the Microsoft Photo Blog posted a nice little screencast on organizing your photos on Windows Live Photo Gallery. Take a look.

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Geez I need a calendar to keep up with all of this!

Coming soon: Get a Windows Live ID from your phone

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 08:37:00 GMT

An announcement coming at CTIA in San Francisco this week will unveil plans to offer the ability to sign up for a Windows Live ID from your phone, simply and securely. Why is this important? This from Phil Holden from Windows Mobile:

We think this is an important step in delivering a great end-to-end solution in the 'mobile first' scenario where we know many customers in countries like China, India, Brazil that their primary computing device is the mobile phone. We already have services like Hotmail broadly available in most countries around the world already so this enables folks to sign-up directly for a new Live ID and get access to email for the first time.

The service is going live as we speak, it can be accessed via your mobile phone from

Go directly to the account creation: https://mid.live.com/reg

Go to http://mobile.live.com, find service like hotmail, and select “Get a Windows Live ID”

Anyway, we think its a nice clean experience that is appropriate for a mobile device. In the past its been way too hard to try and create a Live ID on a phone and in fact was really limited to a couple of operators/countries. Now we have a sign-up experience that is available to a much broader list of potential customers and so much easier - yeah!

(...)The service has been designed to work with the built in mobile browser that comes with your phone and all folks need is a data plan to get started. Its going to be available in 33 languages and about 70 different countries

Accessing Windows Live (and other) services in many parts of the world comes either from a mobile phone or not at all. Om Malik wrote recently about the importance of Symbian (read: Nokia) around the world, with a graph of phone usage around the world:

..so this new service, in conjunction with Windows Live for Nokia and Windows Live for Mobile, continues efforts to broaden Windows Live presence around the world, on a variety of devices, something we will be following closely in the coming months.

Update to Windows Live Account enables Linked IDs

Gregor — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 21:52:00 GMT

Microsoft has silently updated its Windows Live Account pages. They are now featuring the new Wave 2 look. In addition to the visual make-over the update brings a long requested and hinted at feature: Linked IDs.

When you sign in to Windows Live Account the new option to link Windows Live IDs is presented right on the first screen. In order to link IDs you will need to click on the link, enter the password of the account you are currently logged in with and the ID and password of the account you want to link it with. That's all...

You can link several IDs together. We haven't tried what the max is but four worked fine for us. You do have to pay attention to security though. Access to all accounts is now secured by the lowest-level password of all IDs linked. Also you should not link an ID that several users have access to with your personal account ID. The user that has access to the shared ID would get access to all your personal stuff doing so.

Ok, linking is done - but what would you link the IDs for? When you have linked IDs together you will only need to sign in to Windows Live once and can then switch easily between the accounts. If you are on Windows Live Hotmail for example you can check your email on one account and then simply click the dropdown arrow next to your login in the upper right corner and choose one of your linked IDs that are listed their. Without the need to enter a password again you will get to access that accounts emails. Pretty convenient. Unfortunately this only works on the new Wave 2 products, so you are out of luck on WL Favorites, Gallery or the personalized homepage for now - we guess that at least some these properties will be updated to Wave 2 soon though.

Another change the update to Windows Live Account brings is an overview of Windows Live Services you are using. Hotmail, Spaces, Custom Domains, OneCare and so on will be listed there if you do use them (beta products and desktop applications won't).

In addition to the update of Windows Live Accounts (and the needed backend update to Windows Live ID to support the Linked IDs) the new Wave 2 look has also been implemented on Windows Live Feedback and Windows Live Support - unfortunately not full blown though meaning that the orb does not have a dropdown menu, links to WL Hotmail, Spaces, etc are missing and you cannot use easily switch accounts using Linked IDs there.

Live ID with CardSpace support announced as in beta

Chris — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 15:45:00 GMT

Yes the Information Card support in Live ID v5 we've been raving about has now been announced. To recap, CardSpace, and the Information Cards it manages, allows you to log into a website without entering your password, reducing the risk of both phishing attacks and keyloggers. Angus Logan gives a great walkthrough showing how to enable this Information Card support (I count 16 screenshots!) and includes a Channel9 video not yet posted on the main site.

Another key way to reduce phishing scams is by using certificates to verify the identity of websites, which as Bink spotted is why login.live.com now shows a green address bar for IE7 users (Firefox gives me a yellow address bar?). Unfortunately this only appears when using the Enhanced Signin option (https), though with all the wifi sniffing demoes going on in recent months this is something you should consider setting as default.

For those noticing the increase in Windows Live content coming out of Microsoft, Catherine Heller is the person responsible for organising all these Channel9 and On10 videos. On the topic of Live ID, there is a recent one that discusses the Web Authentication SDK. If you want to subscribe to all the Windows Live videos, here's the Channel9 feed and On10 also.

To wrap it all up, for those with multiple Live IDs who want to link them together, the response seems to be "Stay tuned :)" - that smiley face is Catherine's, not mine ;-)

Bebo partners with Windows Live

Chris — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 15:40:00 GMT

Microsoft looks to have added another company to its growing group of Windows Live partners with Reuters reporting that Bebo is to use the platform for its social networking site. Recently declared the largest social networking service in the UK, and reputedly having 36million users globally, Bebo will add Windows Live integration by allowing its users to export and import their contacts into Bebo. Users will also be able to put an "IM Me" link on their profiles if they use the Windows Live services.

Chris Jones was quoted by Reuters, ending the piece with the line "It starts with the contact list." Microsoft's biggest advantage over Google and Yahoo is Live ID, and the centralised contact store (ABCH) ties in strongly with this. With the developer aspect of Windows Live improving rapidly, it may not be too long before we see other social networking sites using this for their own benefit. As Brandon says, Live ID web authentication and the Contacts Control both look very promising parts of the Windows Live platform.

On an aside, Bebo search is currently powered by Yahoo. It'll be interesting to see if that changes anytime soon.

CardSpace (InfoCard) and Live ID

Chris — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 03:41:00 GMT

Running Windows Vista? Noticed the Windows CardSpace applet in the Vista control panel but not sure what its for? That may soon change if Windows Live ID provides CardSpace integration.

Formerly called InfoCard, CardSpace integration with Windows Live was discussed back in March 2006 when Live ID was first emerging as the updated Microsoft Passport. To put it as simply as possible, CardSpace allows you to securely store multiple identies on your PC, and use them online when required. This eliminates the need to enter a password when you want to identify yourself to a web service - instead you choose the identity you wish to send from your PC. This helps protect the user from phishing scams and keyloggers, which for more important services like online banking, helps reduce the risk of identity theft.

So how would this work for Live ID? Testers of the in-beta Windows Live ID authentication services SDK (which allows users to log into 3rd party sites with their Live ID) are currently able to create a custom signin page on the Windows Live ID test servers. This login page presents the user with the existing option to sign in with a Live ID, or the alternative - to sign in using CardSpace.

After selecting the CardSpace option, users are prompted to login to Live ID with their password, after which they are able to select an identity from Windows CardSpace to link to their Live ID. Once confirmed, this CardSpace identity then becomes the login credential you need, replacing the password you used previously. Of couse if you wish to remove or change your CardSpace identity from your Live ID, you can do so using your password.

If you haven't yet started looking at the Windows Live ID authentication services SDK, this is yet another reason why you should do. Part 1 of Colin's tutorial on how to add Live ID to your website is already available. Our favourite CS developer Nick is already working on this so you might see CardSpace integration over here at some point :)

Live. hole patched, according to Bink

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 23:17:42 GMT

Bink.nu has the news that the land grab for Live addresses is apparently over for a time:

"Microsoft have patched a loophole in the Windows Live Signup program that allowed users to register any iteration of live.<countrytld>, e.g. live.co.uk, live.com etc. Now only live.nl is allowed as this is the only country where Windows Live Mail is currently available.
Congratulations to those who managed to secure their early-bird name@live.com address, comiserations to those who missed out... you'll have to wait for the world-wide launch of Windows Live Mail!"

If you've been reading LiveSide you should have a brand new email address to play with. If not, make sure to stay tuned to LiveSide (subscribe in RSS!) - we'll have the latest on the new addresses and lots more.

Windows Live ID upgrade - New UI and more

Chris — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 23:57:00 GMT

The rollout of Windows Live ID continues, this time with the new sign-in UI. From the Live ID blog : Today we are rolling out a new sign-in experience for Windows Live sites like Live.com, Ideas, Mail, Expo, Favorites and Custom Domains. This is the next...(read more)