LiveSide - News blog : Skydrive

Exclusive: First Look at Word Web App’s Editing View

damaster — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:04:01 GMT

Following on from yesterday’s post on OneNote Web App, we’ve got the chance to take a look the Editing View of the Word Web App, currently disabled in the recently released Office Web Apps technical preview. Here’s a screenshot of it running in Windows Live SkyDrive:

(Note: Just like the screenshot of OneNote we posted yesterday, the document contents in the screenshot above had been edited because our own contents failed to load. But the Ribbon UI and everything else comes from the actual Web App.)

The Home tab in the Word Web App Editing View looks very similar to OneNote’s, also supporting functionalities such as basic text formatting, copy and paste, styles, as well as spell-checking. This is not surprising as we’ve learnt that the Word and OneNote Web Apps were built by the same team, and the fact that both Web Apps are built on the same “editing surface”.

And just like OneNote Web App, the Word Web App also allow you to insert tables, pictures, clip arts, and hyperlinks into your documents. However, what’s different is that the Word Web App does not have co-authoring capabilities, meaning that like the PowerPoint Web App, only one person can work on the document at any given time. Whether this would change in future versions we don’t know, but we certainly hope that it’ll support simultaneous co-authoring capabilities in the future! (After all, if Word and OneNote share the same “editing surface”, surely if OneNote can do it, Word can as well.)

From the screenshot of the File menu above, we found it quite strange that there isn’t a Print option in Word Web App’s Editing View. What this means is that to print a document directly from the Web App, you’ll need to return to Reading View to access the Print options. Of course, what we’ve shown here are all subject to change when it gets released to the public, so perhaps the Print mode might make a return by then (hopefully!).

We’ve also got a screenshot of Office 2010’s revamped Backstage view, showing the screen that now allows you to save your Office documents directly to your SkyDrive folders from the Office client, very neat! Have a look:

We just can’t wait for the next release of Office Web Apps! After all, the technical preview is missing two of the most exciting and useful Web Apps (Word and OneNote), so expect more to come soon! In the mean time, you can still try out the Excel and PowerPoint Web Apps at http://skydrive.live.com!

Exclusive: First Look at the OneNote Web App Technical Preview

damaster — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 00:42:01 GMT

After tweaking around with the recently released Office Web Apps, we were able to dig up a few screenshots of the currently unavailable OneNote Web App:

(Note: The actual document contents in the screenshots above have been edited as our own contents failed to load, however, the UI frame including the Ribbon is from the actual Web Apps)

As can be seen from the screenshots above, the OneNote Web App supports basic text formatting, styles, tagging, as well as spell-checking. Going to the “Insert” tab shows that you can add tables, pictures, clip arts, and hyperlinks into your notebooks. Similar to the Excel Web App, it also allows multiple users simultaneously co-author the same notebook, while showing you which section each author is currently editing. Notice that the OneNote Web App doesn’t have a Save button, meaning that changes by each author is automatically saved in the background, and what’s unique about OneNote Web App is the “Page Versions” feature which allows you to go back to the saved histories and retrieve an older version of your document in case someone has accidently overwritten something important while editing. A very useful feature!

Unfortunately, the OneNote Web App is not fully functional for us yet (and we see why Microsoft is not release them yet). But rest assured that they’ll be ready and available for us all when they reach the beta testing stage.

In the mean time, you can still test out the Excel and PowerPoint Web Apps over at http://skydrive.live.com. Also check out our coverage for tips on how to gain access to the Office Web Apps technical preview!

SkyDrive to become the center stage of Windows Live?

damaster — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:44:00 GMT

With the recent series of updates to Windows Live’s web services (Calendar, Hotmail, Photos, SkyDrive and more), we’re seeing a tip of the iceberg of what’s to come with Windows Live Wave 4 (in fact, we know this because all of the web services have been updated to v15). However, these are no way reflective of what Wave 4 is all about and the recent updates seemed more to simply address what customers wanted with Windows Live. So if this is not it, what are we to expect for the future of Windows Live?

Recent developments seemed to demonstrate the idea that Wave 4 is all about “simplification”. One prime example of this simplification is the retirement of Events and having it replaced by Calendar. Extending this idea further, recent developments around Windows Live seems to show that SkyDrive will play a prominent role in the future of Windows Live services. We already have Photos built on top of the SkyDrive service, and earlier this year we’ve seen that Favorites has been integrated into SkyDrive. We’re even seeing that Office Live will be merged into SkyDrive with the Office Web Apps integrated well within (remember that Office Web Apps supposed to replace Office Live Workspace). With all these services built within SkyDrive, it looks like Microsoft is positioning SkyDrive to be the single destination to access, organise, share and edit all your files, photos and documents stored online.

But Microsoft’s ambition for SkyDrive is much more than that. As we’ve seen details leaking last month, Microsoft will soon be launching Windows Live Devices – its replacement for Live Mesh – in Wave 4, and SkyDrive is to play an essential role on its launch. It is expected that SkyDrive will become the storage-end of Devices, playing a similar role to the “Live Desktop” in the current Live Mesh. The next version of Windows Live Sync will also become “meshified”, so besides the original PC-to-PC synchronisation capability, Sync will also sync your files to the cloud – and you’ve guessed it, it’ll be onto SkyDrive. On this front, Microsoft is really positioning SkyDrive to become your online hard drive and an essential piece of the “Software+Services” model.

By understanding how Microsoft positions SkyDrive for the future, it’s not hard to imagine the possibilities Microsoft can achieve with Windows Live. Many existing Windows Live services can be consolidated and be built on top of SkyDrive, and we know that the first of them all could well be Windows Live FrameIt. Paul Thurrott also slipped out a few words regarding (another) possible Windows Live-oriented video service in his review of Windows Live Movie Maker:

One thing that's missing, of course, is a way to post your video creations on a Microsoft service. Since Microsoft killed the Soapbox service, there's been a void, and while the company has nothing to announce at this time, suffice to say they will be adding Windows Live-oriented publishing capability in the future.

While Microsoft already have Video Messages, that service seem to be underexposed and didn’t integrate well with other Windows Live services. Additionally, Movie Maker seems to be the only Windows Live “software” that’s missing the “services” component under the “Software+Services” model. Thus integrating Video Messages into SkyDrive seems to make strong logical sense for Microsoft. Please bear in mind though that this is purely speculation, but we’re certainly watching Microsoft to see if this comes to fruition.

Of course, with all these files to be stored on SkyDrive, the current 25GB of storage space certainly won’t be enough. It’ll be interesting what Microsoft will do regarding this, as one of SkyDrive’s competing service ADrive currently offers 50GB for each account, will Microsoft increase its storage size for SkyDrive? We at LiveSide will of course keep you posted with any updates relating to SkyDrive and the rest of Windows Live, so stay tuned!

How To Access And Try Microsoft Office Web Apps Tech Preview

Sunshine — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 09:18:00 GMT

If you are curious and eager to try out Office Web Apps, after reading our review, you have to sign up here. Then you have to wait for the invitation to come. But, (once signed up) there is another way to try.

Now this works if you are already in the Office 2010 Tech Preview, but hey you never know, it might if you aren’t too…just follow these steps...

...(read more)

A Closer Look at Office Web Apps in Windows Live

damaster — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 07:51:00 GMT

If you’ve been following the tech world lately, Office Web Apps Technical Preview is officially released to selected testers within Windows Live SkyDrive today. (And yes, that is the official name now, so much for trying to find a new “cooler” name for it before.) At the moment, it only supports English and Japanese languages, but it is expected that more languages will be available by the time it’s released. Office Web Apps make full use of the 25GB of storage space in SkyDrive, and thus makes it completely separate from Office Live Workspace. However, it is anticipated that Office Live Workspace will be replaced by Office Web Apps by the time it gets released.

One thing to note for this Technical Preview release is that testers can only create and edit files using Excel and PowerPoint Web Apps – documents can only be viewed in the Word Web App, but you won’t be able to create or edit them in this release. Additionally, OneNote files won’t be available to be viewed nor edited until a later release, despite it being available in the “New” menu in SkyDrive:

On the note of compatibility, Office Web Apps supports Internet Explorer 7.0 or above, Firefox 3.5 or above, Safari 4, and Google Chrome browsers (Opera is not supported). At the moment, Office Web Apps does not support Safari on the iPhone or iPod touch, although mobile support will be coming in later releases. In the Technical Preview release, you cannot open or save documents directly to and from Windows Live from within the applications yet, although they should be supported when the beta gets released. This release also won’t allow you to publish the files stored on SkyDrive to a blog or a website, although this feature will be turned on in the final release.

You should take note that Office Web Apps only supports editing of Office 2007/2010 documents (.pptx, .docx, .xlsx), Office 97-2003 documents (.ppt, .doc, .xls) can only be viewed by the Web Apps. When you try to edit these documents you’ll be prompted to convert to the latest format:

Now we shall take a look at the individual Web Apps:

Excel Web App

I have to say, in this Technical Preview release, the most interesting Web App have to be Excel, mainly because it’s the only Web App to support simultaneous co-authoring at the moment (OneNote to be the other Web App to support this in the future):

However, sadly the Excel Web App is also the only Web App (out of the 3 available) that still carries the old “File” menu that has the Office logo (the logo is supposed to have been replaced by the word “File” instead in the newer versions of Office 2010), and because of this, the ribbon is also missing the “View” tab (refer to this press release image that shows the newer ribbon in Excel Web App) and users cannot “pop-out” the Web App to a separate full-screen window. This should be fixed by the next release though.

Excel Web App’s ribbon currently supports only the most basic Excel functionalities, including text and cell formatting, inserting a Table, and also adding in Excel formulas and functions. It doesn’t yet support inserting charts, conditional formatting, Sparklines, data bars, scales and icons from within the Web App, however the Web App is perfectly capable of viewing these features (if you upload an Excel file that already have these) and they be updated in real-time when you change the cell data within the Web App.

The Excel Web App doesn’t have a Save button (although it has a Save As option to create a copy of the spreadsheet in your SkyDrive folder), as the spreadsheet is automatically saved in the background as you (or your co-author) are editing the document. The File menu also allow you to download a snapshot of the workbook or download the file to your computer directly from within the Web App, but too bad it doesn’t yet support printing from the Web App though:

PowerPoint Web App

In this release, PowerPoint Web App is the only other Web App that allows you to edit the file, although unlike the Excel Web App, PowerPoint Web App does not allow two or more persons to co-author the document at the same time, and doing so will return an error message stating that the file is currently locked by another person.

The PowerPoint Web App seems to have taken advantage of Silverlight to render and display the presentation slides. In viewing mode, you can click “Start Slideshow” to let it open in a full-screen window. The Web App displays the PowerPoint slides almost exactly compared to when you’re viewing them in the client application (you can see the reflections and 3D effects as shown in the screenshot below). However, it doesn’t seem to like slide transition effects much, and it seems to render all transition effects as “fade”:

When in edit mode, the PowerPoint Web App features basic text editing and formatting, and users are able to insert, duplicate, delete and hide slides from within the Web App. Users are also able to insert images as well as SmartArts, and clicking on any images or SmartArt in your slideshow brings up the contextual “Picture Tools” or “SmartArt Tools” tabs that lets you specify the layouts and styles of your images and SmartArts:

Just like the Excel Web App, the PowerPoint Web App also doesn’t have a “Save” button as the presentation is automatically saved in the background as you edit. Sadly, the PowerPoint Web App doesn’t allow you to print the slideshows either.

Word Web App

The Word Web App in this release is only a document viewer – as editing is currently in the works and will be available by the next release. The Web App also seem to take advantage of Silverlight in rendering the Word documents, allowing you to view and zoom into the documents without the loss of any details. The Word App viewer also features a “Find” button allowing you to search for specific words within the document. Just like the PowerPoint Web App, the Word Web App has a “pop-out” button on the top-right corner allowing you to view the file in a separate full-screen window.

To compensate the lack of editing in this release, the Word Web App is the only Web App that lets you print the document directly from within the Web App. It appears that as you click the “Print” button, the Web App generates a PDF file in the background and provides you with the print options dialogue just like in your PDF viewer.

Clearly this is not a full-featured release of Office Web Apps, but it does demonstrate to the world some of the capabilities these Web Apps can handle. The most impressive feature of these Web Apps must be the fidelity retained in the documents, as you pretty much don’t lose any formatting when you view them in the Web Apps. From the looks of it, Office Web Apps doesn’t intend to replace the Office desktop suite, but rather complements it such that people can now view, share and collaborate with their documents on the cloud, integrating tightly with SkyDrive and other Windows Live services (it appears in your What’s New feed too!). It’s definitely a great addition to the Office and Windows Live family and we’re excited to see what’s more coming in the future releases!

Office Web Apps coming to Windows Live

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:44:00 GMT

In a press release today, Microsoft announced that Microsoft Office Web Apps will begin a limited number invitation only Technical Preview. Office Web Apps will offer lightweight versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on the web through Windows Live SkyDrive.

Microsoft is also announcing the formal names for the Web-based applications. Together, the applications are called Office Web Apps. Individually, they include Word Web App, Excel Web App, PowerPoint Web App and OneNote Web App.

Microsoft Office Program Manager Michael Shultz takes us through Office Web Apps in a YouTube video:

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Brian Hall, Windows Live General Manager, has a post up on Windows Live Wire explaining the importance of Office Web Apps for Windows Live:

We all use a lot of different services online – e-mail, social networks, photo sites, video sites, and so on. In many cases, we use more than one service for very similar purposes, using Facebook, MySpace , StudiVZ, Mixi or many others for social networking; Hotmail, Yahoo!, or Gmail for e-mail; Flickr, SkyDrive, FotoLog, or Photobucket for sharing photos.

That said, there are certain things we really just want one of. I really just want one place for storing contact info, one personal calendar I can share with my family, one primary mail service that also allows me to check all of my e-mail accounts, one place to get updates from all of my social networks, and one place to store, share, and manage my massive and ever-growing collection of photos, documents, music, and videos.

I can get all of that at Windows Live. And now, with the addition of Office Web Apps, I’ll soon be able to go to Windows Live to create, edit, share, and collaborate on Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, OneNote digital notebooks, and Excel spreadsheets – all in high fidelity and all online regardless of which PC I’m using and whether that PC has Office on it.

Office Web Apps Press Release

Windows Live Wire post by Brian Hall

Office Web Apps blog

SkyDrive Gets Minor Update

ScottIsAFool — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 21:48:48 GMT

The SkyDrive Team Blog has just posted about an update they are rolling out. The main changes to come are sorting your files how you want them, and viewing pictures of your friends who have been tagged (using WL Photo Gallery).

From the blog entry:

Arrange your photos

Now you can arrange the photos in your albums in the order you want them to appear by clicking Sort by, and selecting Arrange photos.

If you have Silverlight, you can arrange your photos by simply dragging them into the order you want. You can also sort your photos and files by name, size, date, or type. Now you can arrange the photos in your albums and slide shows and tell stories the way you want to tell them!

…

View photos of yourself and your friends

Coming soon when you visit your friends’ profiles you can view photos they’re tagged in by selecting “Photos of <your friend’s name>” from the menu under their profile picture. You'll see this entry point in a few days!

The other update concerns the continued integration of Windows Live Favourites (yes, I’m including a “u” :P). So while this update isn’t huge, it’s nice to see that we’re not having to wait until Wave 4 before we start seeing some new features.

We’re also hearing some reports that Windows Live Sync might be having a couple of issues at the moment, so maybe they’re having some problems, or maybe they are sorting things out for an update, only time will tell I guess.

Windows Live Wave 3: SkyDrive (Updated)

ScottIsAFool — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 04:19:00 GMT

The SkyDrive team blog announced a couple of weeks back about the updates that were coming, and now they’re here.

From the announcement post:

Here are a few things you’ll find on your shiny new SkyDrive:

25 GB of free online storage

Available in 6 more regions and 13 more languages

Download entire folders as Zip files (limited release)

Gorgeous online slide show for your photos

And much, much more!

So those are some of the highlights, let’s take a closer look.

The first thing to notice is the unified banner at the top for all the Live services (Home, People, SkyDrive):

The initial layout has also changed when you first sign into SkyDrive, showing your most recent folders, as well as a What’s New section, that you will have seen on home.live.com, only this What’s New is more relevant to SkyDrive:

One of the features I have been most excited about for this update is the ability to copy and move both files and folders around which makes it so much easier to organise files without having to re-upload them!

The other really cool new feature is the ability to download a folder as a zip file, but please remember, that at the moment it’s in a limited release (hey, even I don’t have it yet!):

If you have a photo album, then these folders can be downloaded using Windows Live Photo Gallery (much like you could in Live Spaces):

Unfortunately at the moment, every time I try this, I get told that my WLID doesn’t have permissions, so hopefully this should be fixed when the Essentials programs get updated to the final release.

The other thing to note is that all your photo albums from your Live Space now appear in your SkyDrive area, which means easy access and browsing of your photos:

And speaking of browsing photos, the new update includes a very cool Silverlight photo browser which you can get to by clicking the slideshow link when you’re in a folder with photos:

All in all, this is a very pleasing update, so good job. The only main feature I think is missing from this is named links (eg, http://liveside.skydrive.live.com).

Update: I now have the "Download as .zip" option for my folders. How did I get this? Some of you I know won't like it. I changed my Windows Live ID locale to US. Once you've done that, wait a few hours for it to propogate round the various servers, then you should have download as .zip as an option.

Windows Live and SkyDrive: safe havens for spam?

Kip Kniskern — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 05:04:10 GMT

A blog post today on a Washington Post blog, Brian Kreb’s Security Fix, pointing to the Spamhaus.org Top 10 list, reports that Windows Live, through live.com and livefilestore.com domains, has vaulted to be the #5 “most spam friendly” Internet Service Provider. Spamhaus, which since 1998 has maintained block lists of known spammers that are used worldwide, had Microsoft at the #9 spot (#1 being the worst) earlier this month, but in the last few days has risen rapidly. One problem is in blocking a popular site such as microsoft.com causes its own problems, according to the blog post:

Richard Cox, Spamhaus's chief information officer, said spammers advertise the links at Microsoft's properties by the tens of thousands at a time, because they know anti-spam groups are unlikely to block Microsoft properties outright.

Spammers are using SkyDrive accounts to hold snippets of javascript code that, when run, redirect anyone led to them by an email link to various scammer websites, including gaming and online pharmacy sites.

Others have reported on problems with spam hosted on SkyDrive accounts recently as well, according to Kreb. In January, McAfee wrote about it in a blog post of their own, and last month UK security firm Marshal posted as well

Microsoft has been slow to react to the issue, according to Cox.

"It should not be difficult for a company with Microsoft's resources to identify and mitigate that abuse in-house without any external input, but so far this has not happened," Cox said. "Microsoft's live.com system has for some time been supporting an illegal drug sales operation, and Microsoft has known this."

When contacted by Security Fix, Microsoft declined to offer anyone up for an interview, although it issued a statement through John Scarrow, general manager of safety services at Microsoft. Scarrow said, in part:

We take protecting our customers' security and privacy seriously and are continually working to improve their experiences while making industry leading progress to mitigate such attacks through both oversight and technology advancements. Using Windows Live services for spam is explicitly prohibited by the terms of service, and Windows Live accounts that are found to be used by spammers are aggressively removed."

It isn’t clear to Spamhaus, or to Brian Kreb, that Microsoft is acting as aggressively as it says. Some live.com properties listed on Spamhaus.org over a month ago are still active.

A note about Hotmail, SkyDrive and Photos storage space

damaster — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 06:00:00 GMT

In our previous posts covering the upcoming features in Hotmail and SkyDrive, we seemed to have missed some hints at possible Hotmail and SkyDrive integration. People have been asking for this for a long time, and now it finally seems possible in Wave 3. In the latest Windows Live documentations, it mentioned several details about the storage spaces that are available throughout Windows Live services:

Hotmail's minimum storage space will be 25GB and this will be ever-increasing as required at the end of each month, making it basically unlimited storage (subject to abuse control)
The ability to download e-mail attachments from Hotmail into SkyDrive - allowing these attachments to be shared with others or just kept private in your online folders
SkyDrive's storage space will also be 25GB, as reported previously, in addition to Hotmail's storage space
SkyDrive will allow uploading of up to 1000 new files stored per month - note that this only applies to newly uploaded files during that particular month, so total storage can well exceed 1000 files (it is unsure whether this also applies to Photos and those Hotmail e-mail attachments downloaded into SkyDrive)
Photos will utilize SkyDrive’s ~~5GB~~ 25GB of storage space for storage of full resolution photos. ~~(However this may be subject to change - at least we certainly hope so. Perhaps someone forgot to update it in the documentations?)~~ Update: From one of the demonstration videos by Brian Hall, it was shown that Photos does have the 25GB of storage shared with SkyDrive, not the previously reported 5GB. Looks like it was a typo in the documentations after all. Thanks to CKurt for pointing it out in the comments!

For many users, these storage spaces should be well enough for us to share files and photos with our family, friends, or colleagues. ~~Although we do hope that Photos can take advantage of the entire 25GB in SkyDrive instead of the reported 5GB.~~ What are your thoughts on this?

Windows Live Toolbar – upcoming new features, Sync, SkyDrive and Favorites integration

damaster — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 05:06:31 GMT

Credits goes to Jamie Thomson for reviewing the upcoming “release candidate” version of Windows Live Toolbar. From the post we’re able to preview some of the high-resolution screenshots of what’s to come in the new Toolbar. Here’s what Jamie had to say about the new Toolbar:

Do you use toolbars? I generally don’t. Actually no, that’s not true; I didn’t, but I do now.

I’ve been using the new Windows Live Toolbar for about 6 weeks and so far so good, I’m still using it and for me that’s something of a toolbar record. The reason is the brand new toolbar buttons that allow me to see my What’s New feed and (importantly for me) my Calendar straight from within the Toolbar. In other words, without going to a website.

When the last Windows Live Essentials wave 3 suite got released into public beta, Chris reviewed the Toolbar and mentioned the lack of cross-service integration with other Windows Live services (no, “buttons” don’t count). Well, the new release addresses just that – integrating many of the upcoming Windows Live wave 3 services into one “useful” Toolbar. Instead of talking about what we already knew, we’ll focus on what’s new and updated in this upcoming release.

First, as seen across all of the new Windows Live internet services, we have the What’s New feed integration. Clicking on What’s New, Profile and Photos tabs will give you at-a-glance what your friends in your Network have been doing lately, and also instant access to your Windows Live Home, Profile and Photos web pages.

The Mail and Calendar also shows the latest emails from your Hotmail inbox and upcoming appointments in your Windows Live Calendar, with a nice little calendar to help you find out which dates you have events and appointments.

I guess what is most exciting about the new Toolbar is the new Favorites, Sync, and SkyDrive integrations. We mentioned in our last review that while installing Windows Live Toolbar it requires you to close down Windows Live Sync. We also knew that Microsoft is killing off Windows Live Favorites, but this also meant that the original Favorites syncing through the wave 2 version Windows Live Toolbar will no longer work. With the new version, we’ll see Toolbar taking advantage of Windows Live Sync and will be synchronising all your Favorites from Internet Explorer between different computers, provided you have Toolbar installed on both computers and signed in to the same Windows Live ID.

Previously we also noted that you can share favorites with SkyDrive using Windows Live Toolbar, however, exactly how Favorites, SkyDrive, Sync and Toolbar will interact together is ~~still a big question mark~~. Update: Jamie updated his blog today about how “Shared Favorites” works in Toolbar, integrating it with SkyDrive. Apparently there is a “Share” button in Toolbar which, if clicked on, allows you to add the currently viewing page as a link to the “Shared Favorites” folder on SkyDrive. This will also show up as an entry on your Profile’s What’s New feed:

However, Jamie also noted that in his build of Toolbar the “Favorites Sync” button isn’t available, so question still remains on how Windows Live Sync will play its part, and whether the Favourites stored on SkyDrive can be accessed from the Toolbar or not. Stay tuned on LiveSide as we cover the latest Wave 3 news in much more detail.

Windows Live SkyDrive – what’s to come in the next update

damaster — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 10:34:30 GMT

We saw today that there’s a major announcement about Windows Live Wave 3 to be released across all services soon, and one of the updated service is Windows Live SkyDrive. The SkyDrive team were one of the first to post about what’s to come in the next update on their team blog, here’s a summary of what they say:

Increased Storage
- Upgraded from the current 5GB to 25 GB of online storage!

File Organisation
- Download photos directly to Windows Live Photo Gallery
- Download as a .zip file Download an entire folder in one compressed file (initially available only in the United States, Denmark, and Ireland)
- Move files between folders and support for copying files to multiple folders

File Sharing
- Share files and photos without requiring others to use Windows Live ID
- Share files according to Categories or “Networks” in Windows Live People, instead of having to select individual contacts
- Integrates with the new Windows Live Toolbar to share your Favorites with others (we mentioned earlier that Windows Live Favorites is being integrated into SkyDrive)
- What’s New feed integration (more in depth about this later)

Other Updates
- Comments with HTML support, new comment options, and spam control
- More supported countries and regions: Arabia, China, Hong Kong, Israel, South Africa, Vietnam and 13 new languages: Basque, Catalan, Guajarati, Hindi, Indonesian, Kannada, Malay, Malayalam, Marathi, Serbian-Cyrillic, Tamil, Telugu, and Vietnamese

As previously mentioned, we also see Windows Live Photos taken out of Spaces and integrated into SkyDrive. We will have a more comprehensive review on this later, but here’s a teaser of what’s to come:

Windows Live Photos
- Bigger thumbnails than previous version
- Order prints of your photos right from SkyDrive
- New online slide show that works with any browser (although not required, but Silverlight is recommended to be installed for this)
- People tags similar to Windows Live Photo Gallery, allowing you to tag your contacts – online!

Excited? We sure are! Stay tuned at LiveSide as we cover more of the upcoming Wave 3 services in detail!

Windows Live Wave 3 beta urls show up

Chris — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 22:38:11 GMT

A couple of weeks ago we started noticing an interesting referrer popping up in the stats for some of our posts. Turns out Microsoft moved their Wave 3 services from the dogfood servers onto beta servers, and as a result some MSFT employees were clicking through to us from http://home-beta.live.com. You won’t be able to sign in to any of the beta sites yet if you’re not on the approved list (the betas haven’t started yet if you’re worried), but here’s a few gems we learnt while digging around.

Note – as the new sites are locked down, these are just features we’ve spotted/inferred from looking around the existing sites that are running side-by-side. What’s great is that now new features can be tested before being rolled out to the general public, something which Spaces has needed ever since one of its updates rendered the service unusable for several weeks.

Windows Live Home Beta (http://home-beta.live.com) – As mentioned above, softies are clicking through to us from this site, thanks to the new homepage having default groups of feeds that users can subscribe to. Looks like this new homepage could have similar features to my.live.com, so it’ll be interesting to see how much functionality they duplicate.

Windows Live Profile Beta (http://profile-beta.live.com) – Sorry Jason and Sabina but you’re our demos (everybody else had personal photos up). You can see from these feeds that photo albums are now stored on Skydrive. That means you can now use your Skydrive storage across multiple services, which should please a lot of people.

Windows Live Photos Beta (http://photos-beta.live.com) – The front-end user interface to the photos stored on Skydrive, see below. This means you now start to share your 5GB of storage across Windows Live services, which hopefully is a sign of further consolidation in the storage area. Lets face it, we have too much scattered storage already (about 30GB worth!)

Windows Live Skydrive Beta (http://skydrive-beta.live.com) – With photos going to be stored on Skydrive, there’s more privacy options you can set, as shown by the new icon below. This means photos won’t necessarily be visible to the public, giving users some control over content that’s currently lacking in the existing Spaces photo albums.

And for completeness, the urls of the other beta sites:

Windows Live Groups Beta (http://groups-beta.live.com), Windows Live Spaces Beta (http://spaces-beta.live.com) and Windows Live Events Beta (http://events-beta.live.com)

Let us know if you find anything: tips [at] liveside d0t net

The Live Search Olympics collection

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 00:26:09 GMT

The 2008 Olympics has been a source of pride for the athletes, for China, and also for Live Search, who posted a very nice series of background images here in the United States, at a rate of about 2 per day. Even though our friend and ultra Windows Live enthusiast Picturepan2 lives in China (in Shanghai), he still was enamored enough of the Olympics and Live Search to collect every Live Search Olympics background, including the Birds Nest one that ran in China, and gather them in a SkyDrive folder for your viewing enjoyment:

He took the time to save the jpg, and not just grab a screenshot, so these images, while they include the Live Search logo, do not include the search bar itself – although that was part of the fun of these pics, to see how well the search bar fit in with the image.

Now that the Olympics are over it will be most interesting to see where Live Search takes this whole background image concept. Hopefully nobody on the Vista Ultimate Extras team is anywhere near this project ;).

Picturepan2 has all 32 US images, plus the Birds Nest, plus a convenient zip file of the whole set included in the SkyDrive. Very diligent work by a dedicated enthusiast, deserving of his own Gold Medal. Oh and let’s not forget the Live Search team who put this all together, we can’t wait to see what comes next!

The Set:

The Zip File:

Hints on a Windows Live SkyDrive update?

damaster — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:35:00 GMT

Today while trying to retrieve my documents stored on Windows Live SkyDrive, I came across a pop-up window asking me to fill out a little survey on how to help Microsoft to "improve SkyDrive" in the future. Half-way through the survey, I came across the following questions:

Seems like Microsoft is thinking of a new way to generate revenues from SkyDrive by offering users a paid subscription service with security features like data encryption, password protection, unlimited storage (or extra storage to 50GB depending on what they decide on), and automatic data backup from your PC to the cloud for a possible $50 per year (prices subject to change, of course).

Is it possible that this will be offered along with the Wave 3 launch? Is the extra features worth the price? This is considering that Microsoft is already offering 28.63GB for free to every Windows Live ID users and you can sign up for as many IDs as you want, and the fact that Live Mesh is already allowing automatic backup to the cloud for free. Additionally, Microsoft is already offering 50GB of Photo Backup through it's OneCare service for $50/year, will this addition by SkyDrive directly compete with OneCare, or replacing it? I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Update: Just remembered that we hinted sometime last year about a possible SkyDrive desktop syncronisation, mentioning three new SkyDrive-related domains at Skydrivesync.com, Syncskydrive.com, and Messengerskydrive.com, all of which are currently redirecting to SkyDrive as well. Could this be related to the automatic back up feature?