LiveSide - News blog : Silverlight Streaming

Silverlight Streaming to be discontinued: new Azure service coming

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 03:45:00 GMT

In a move that should surprise no one (in case you were wondering why we didn’t use Silverlight Streaming to host video after Soapbox closed), Silverlight Streaming, a Windows Live beta service for hosting Silverlight audio and video content, is being discontinued. A blog post today on the Silverlight Streaming blog (first post since March), summarizes the changes:

Microsoft Silverlight Streaming by Windows Live Beta is being discontinued and will eventually be taken down

A new Windows® Azure-based hosting and delivery service will be launched by the end of 2009, though this is not a direct replacement for Silverlight Streaming and will have costs associated with its use

You can access, retrieve and if desired remove your content that is currently hosted on Silverlight Streaming by following the instructions below

Key dates and information about the availability of the new Windows Azure functionality, and when the existing Silverlight Streaming beta service will be taken down, will be communicated in the coming weeks

More details on how to pull any content you may have off the service are detailed in the post.

We’re expecting to hear more about Live Services in general, and now this new Azure service in particular at PDC, which is only a month away now. Just for posterity, here’s the description of Silverlight Streaming from the website:

Microsoft® Silverlight™ Streaming by Windows Live™ is a companion service for Silverlight that makes it easier for developers and designers to deliver and scale rich media as part of their Silverlight applications. The service offers web designers and developers a free (*) and convenient solution for hosting and streaming cross-platform, cross-browser media experiences and rich interactive applications that run on Windows™ and Mac. Combined with the ability to create content with Microsoft® Expression and other 3rd party tools, web designers and content publishers wishing to integrate Silverlight applications into their online properties can enjoy complete control of the end user experience.

And yes we have some content to pull off SLS. Isn’t supporting Windows Live beta services fun?

Stream Video And Location Together With GPS-Enabled Mobile Video

Sunshine — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:20:35 GMT

Want to show off your route along with your position on a Virtual Earth map? Take people on a tour with you without them physically there? All possible if you have a Windows Live Mobile phone with GPS. Chris Pendleton, VE Evangelist, reports:

Inca Mobile is rolling out some interesting technology to simultaneously stream video from a mobile phone while leveraging the onboard GPS to track position of where a user is and is moving to and from. The software, called Live Media GPS, currently in beta, runs on Windows Mobile 5 and 6 on phones (with GPS and camera) and is available for free download. You can then watch the video in real time, tracking the position of the camera on Microsoft Virtual Earth.

The application above embeds a Silverlight Streaming video with a Virtual Earth map to show the video coming across the wire side-by-side with the camera geolocation in real time. So, while you're watching the video you can still navigate the map, switch to the aerial photo map style or even 3D. There are a couple other videos you can watch which illustrate highlighting the GPS trail of the route, positioning starting and current position points, and visualizing, rotating and navigating the map using the Virtual Earth 3D interface.

On the site there are several (YouTube) videos you can watch including this demo video:

YouTube - Live Mobile GPS tracking with Video

Hungry for more vids in Silverlight? Check out the Live Media GPS website.

Sounds cool eh? Want to give it a go? Go ahead, get your free download today!

PhotoZoom and SLS get Silverlight 2 update

Chris — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 04:36:14 GMT

Emil Protalinski just caught the Silverlight 2 Beta 2 update to Silverlight Streaming, which also effects the PhotoZoom service.

For those of you who haven’t tried PhotoZoom yet, the service allows you to implement the Silverlight DeepZoom technology on your own photos, via a web UI – Microsoft does all the processing for you. There’s already a Facebook Application that was rolled out in April, but we somehow missed mentioning the Live Clipboard integration despite taking a screenshot of it. See the nice little orange icon below, that’s the one. Maybe we’ll be seeing this more in the future, Windows Live Calendar maybe?

Microsoft Videos – Official news, demos, how-to’s and more

Chris — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 21:44:00 GMT

In case you can’t get enough of Microsoft videos, there’s now a dedicated site for them in testing: http://preview.microsoft.com/video/. Built using Silverlight, the new Microsoft Video website looks to be a great central point for finding and viewing official Microsoft videos, and includes content from other Microsoft sites such as Channels 8, 9 & 10.

Performance is great, though quality is sometimes patchy when in full-screen mode. I especially love the on-screen controls, and in particular the mouse-over transition effects. Very cool. Full marks goes for including RSS feeds for searches, for example this feed for Windows Live.

While content is US only at the moment, the About page explains that they hope to add more content from other Microsoft offices around the world. Lets just hope they stick to the informative videos and less of the viral marketing!

NASA Meets Photosynth

Ad supported Silverlight Streaming trial to begin

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 02:27:01 GMT

Microsoft Advertising is about to begin a trial where “we insert ads into the video stream as overlays, and cut you in on the revenues”, according to Ian Thomas in a blog post today. The trial will be initially available only for US residents with a Tax ID or Social Security number, and is apparently set to begin soon. You can learn more about Silverlight streaming, sign up for an account, and sign up for the trial.

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.

Get Paid For Streaming With Silverlight?

ScottIsAFool — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:56:00 GMT

Remy has just blogged on the Silverlight Streaming blog on dev.live that you will soon be able to put advertising into your Silverlight Streaming app. The pilot scheme is due to start soon this Spring.

So how will this work? The ads will be provided by the Microsoft AdCenter platform and deliver contextual ads based on the keywords associated to the Silverlight video and these ads will appear actually in the playback. To register your interest for this, head on over to http://advertising.microsoft.com/publisher/sls and provide the requested information.

Unfortunately, it is important to note that this is, as usual, only open to US participants, but as Remy is keen to highlight:

This is a real program, with revenues paid in US dollars, and it will include revenue sharing for the accounts participating in the trial.

So, if you are in the states and using SLS, good way to bring in some cash for doing nothing!

Thanks as usual to Angus for the tip.

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.

Microsoft launches FeedSync for data synchronization via feeds - previously known as SSE

Chris — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 07:33:00 GMT

Today at the Mix'n'Match conference taking place in Redmond, Microsoft announced a new Windows Live service that enables the sharing of data through standard web feeds such as RSS and Atom: FeedSync. The specification is now available to developers from http://www.feedsync.org/ under a Creative Commons License.

Previously known as Simple Sharing Extensions (or SSE), the specification has evolved, from an idea first put forward by Ray Ozzie, through discussions between Microsoft and the SSE online community. What makes the FeedSync specification useful is that it as well as enabling data inputs from multiple devices/locations at the same time, it is designed to resolve any conflicts that may come about as a result.

For example, imagine if Windows Live Calendar beta offered FeedSync capabilities. Users would then be able to subscribe to their own RSS feed, and if they so wished, ammend appointments simply by editing the feed. Of course this would require a FeedSync client, something not yet available, but it would seem like a good use of the technology.

For those wishing to test out SSE, you can do so over at Live Labs. We've got a test feed of our own, though we don't really know what to do with it at the moment - that's early adoption for you. Permission for the feed can be set based on Live IDs for both reading and editing, though at the moment there is no contacts picker, just the manual entry of email address. Other things to note are that it displays your Live ID alias in the feed, and that deleted items don't seem to get removed.

If you're wondering how we got the pictures in our feed, its because we previously played around with Windows Live PhotoZoom Alpha, and so this account has some options our other accounts don't. From this it seems as though there may be the ability to embed Silverlight Streaming applications in the future, but that may be a leap of logic too far for this v1.0 spec & demo. It is worth noting though that both PhotoZoom and FeedSync/SSE are products of the Ray Ozzie Concept Development Team.

Microsoft to launch Silverlight Streaming by Windows Live

Chris — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 23:04:00 GMT

Today at Mix07 Microsoft is set to announce a a new collaboration service between Silverlight (formerly WPF/E) and Windows Live.

Microsoft® Silverlight™ Streaming by Windows Live™ is a companion service for Silverlight that makes it easier for developers and designers to deliver and scale rich media as part of their Silverlight applications. The service offers web designers and developers a free and convenient solution for hosting and streaming cross-platform, cross-browser media experiences and rich interactive applications that run on Windows™ and Mac. Combined with the ability to create content with Microsoft® Expression Studio and other 3rd party tools, Web designers and content publishers wishing to integrate Silverlight applications into their online properties can enjoy complete control of the end user experience.

Offering 4GB of webhosting for those interested in delivering rich media applications, Silverlight Streaming is currently available in Alpha at http://silverlight.live.com. One thing to note is that while the beta service is free, the final service will offer 1million minutes of free streaming, with the remainder being monetized via advertising or subscription. Silverlight Streaming is perhaps the best example so far on how Microsoft can build a services platform that leverages both desktop applications, 3rd party developer and a services platform. Undoubtably there will be more commentary on this around the web when the announcement is made.

The Silverlight Streaming SDK will be available for download at http://dev.live.com/silverlight later today.