LiveSide - News blog : Support

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.

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.

LiveSide Now With Live ID Goodness

Nick — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 03:08:00 GMT

What's going on here?! Two sign in buttons?

Don't fret, you're not seeing a bug, it's the new Windows Live ID SSO addon I've built for Community Server.

You can now choose how to sign into Liveside.net, via the normal sign in page or via Windows Live ID. This is a slightly hacked way of doing it, which means you're actually associating your Liveside account with a Live ID, but once that's done, you'll be able to sign in via Windows Live ID instead.

If you haven't associated you'll be greeted with this (which explains it better):

Have a play, it should be mostly intuitive.

Notes:

1. Signing in with your Live ID at any site except LiveSide will not log you into LiveSide. Only authenticated sites can do that unfortunately, and that costs money :(

2. Signing out of Live ID anywhere will then sign you out of LiveSide. So if like us you have multiple Live IDs, this will happen quite often. You probably don't want to associate your LiveSide account with Live ID then until they allow you to link multiple Live IDs together. Of course if you don't sign out, you'll be fine.

3. There is no option to disassociate yet. If you want to change your associated Live ID, sign in via LiveSide (the link is in the top right hand corner) but this time use the new Live ID.