LiveSide - News blog : Web Activities

Windows Live Rolls Out 19 New Web Activity Partnerships

Sunshine — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:27:00 GMT

We could already add quite a lot to our Windows Live Profile, but starting today there are 19 more to add!

The newest feed partners are:

4Travel (Japan), Azbuz (Turkey), Baby Kingdom (Hong Kong), Biip.no (Norway), Break.com (US), BuscaPe (Brazil), CNET (US), L’internaute Copains (France), Doctissimo Community (France), IRC-Galleria (Finland), Libimseti.cz (Czech Republic), lokalisten.de (Germany), Multiply (US), MyVIP (Hungary), Neogen (Romania), PIXNET (Taiwan), Qype (Germany), Wat.tv (France), and YouTube (US)

Note: The region listed in parentheses after each website name indicates where the site originates, but you can add these web activities to Windows Live no matter where you live.

That brings the total of partnerships to 74 sites from around the world – localized into 35 languages, with broad coverage of leading sites worldwide in social networking, video sharing, photo sharing, blogging, reviews and ratings, and more.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Windows Live is a co-author and active participant in the Activity Streams standards, an effort for safely exchanging activity feed content (with user opt-in) among sites and client applications.

So share now, and let your friends know what you do online the easy way!

Source: YouTube and 18 more new partners make it easy to share with friends on Windows Live

Tips for adding Facebook Web Activity on your Windows Live Profile

damaster — Tue, 05 May 2009 08:44:00 GMT

Windows Live Profile was just recently updated with the ability to add 20 new Web Activities, and one of which includes Facebook. Like many people (including readers on LiveSide and Windows Live Wire’s team blog), I have had problems getting my Facebook updates on to my Windows Live Profile (Note: NOT Windows Live Home, see later). It seems like there’s a few things you need to set on Facebook’s end to get it working. Here’s Windows Live team’s response when we enquired about why it wasn’t working the first time we tried it:

The types of Facebook updates that you should be seeing on your Windows Live Profile are: Status message, Photos, Videos, Links, and Notes (but not comments about those items).

If you’re still not seeing these updates, one other thing to check is your privacy settings on Facebook. If you use the default settings for status updates, “Everyone” (or “My Networks and Friends” for Status and Links ONLY), then you should be fine. If you’ve changed these to more restrictive settings, then updates will not come over to Windows Live.

What this means is that besides adding the Facebook web activity, you will also need to configure your Facebook privacy settings such that it can be fed to your Windows Live Profile. But for those who knows a bit about Facebook will realise that there’s hundreds of privacy settings across Facebook, so which one will you need to change? We at LiveSide have gone through the trouble and will show you where exactly to change your privacy settings so that it’ll show up on your Windows Live Profile. So here it is:

To share your Facebook Status or Links on Windows Live Profile

Go to http://www.facebook.com/privacy/?view=profile
Look for “Status and Links” and set that to either “My Networks and Friends” or “Everyone”
Notice that your Facebook Profile privacy settings can remain restricted to “Only Friends”
Update your Facebook Status message or post a Link
It should now show up on your own Windows Live Profile (and also your Windows Live friend’s What’s New feeds if you’ve allowed them to see it)

To share your Facebook Photos on Windows Live Profile

Go to http://www.facebook.com/privacy/?view=photos
Select the album you’re like to share with Windows Live, and set the privacy settings to “Everyone”. Alternatively, you can create a new album and set its privacy settings to “Everyone”
Upload your photos to the album you just created or edited in Step 2
The photos you just uploaded to Facebook should now appear on your own Windows Live Profile (and your friend’s Windows Live Photos)

To share your Facebook Videos on Windows Live Profile

When uploading your Video to Facebook, you’ll be able to set the privacy settings for that particular video. Make sure you set it to “Everyone”
When the video has been uploaded to Facebook, it should also now appear on your own Windows Live Profile

To share your Facebook Notes on Windows Live Profile

Go to http://www.facebook.com/privacy/?view=notes
Under “Who can see your Notes?” make sure you set it to “Everyone”
Create a new Note on Facebook
When publishing your note, double check and make sure you set the privacy setting for that particular Note to “Everyone” (it should be the default if you’ve done Step 1 and 2)
The Note you just posted should now show up on your Windows Live Profile

The Windows Live team also wrote the following in response to many users expecting to see their Facebook news feeds (or even wall posts) to show up on their Windows Live Home:

Once you add the Facebook web activity, your updates won’t appear to you on Windows Live Home, just on your Profile (and on the Home pages of people in your network on Windows Live). This is because the Facebook web activity pulls over updates about things you have done, but nothing about what your Facebook friends have done, unless they’re also Windows Live friends, and they’ve also added the Facebook web activity. You can invite all of your Facebook friends (or just the ones you want) to join your network on Windows Live by going to http://profile.live.com/connect.

Oh and also note that there might be a slight delay between when you update your Facebook and when the activity will appear on your Windows Live Profile. And for those wondering, we do believe that you shouldn’t have to share your Facebook Photos and Videos with the public to get it appearing on Windows Live (particularly if you’re restricting the Facebook Web Activity to be shown your friends only on Windows Live), it completely makes no sense to us. However, we understand that this is a limitation on Facebook’s side and Microsoft is in the talks with Facebook to work out if a solution is possible. Let’s all hope that this will be changed soon in the future!

Nevertheless, hope this clears up some confusion and solves some of your problems with the Facebook Web Activity!

Windows Live Profile (April) update is here!

damaster — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:39:41 GMT

As announced one week ago, the newly updated Windows Live Profile has been rolled out to all users now! A summary of all the changes that were part of this update include:

20 new Web Activities, including Facebook, Digg, Last.fm, SmugMug and many more totalling 30 Web Activities you can add to your Profile. You can find the whole list at http://profile.live.com/WebActivities
3 new ways to add people to your Windows Live network, including importing contacts from Hi5, MySpace, and Tagged, in addition to the existing Facebook and LinkedIn contacts you may import from. You can start connecting with your friends on other networks using Windows Live at http://profile.live.com/connect
Contact search word-wheel, improved results when you’re searching for people on Windows Live from the Windows Live Home or Profile pages, as reported earlier
Photos Tagged of You, you’re now able to view all the photos that have been People Tagged of you, or your friends, on Windows Live Photos on a single page linked on your Profile
A new Windows Live Profile favicon

For more information check out Windows Live’s official announcement. You can try it out (if you haven’t done so already) at http://profile.live.com

Coming Next Week: New Web Activities And Contact Importing From MySpace, Hi5 And Tagged

Sunshine — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:24:37 GMT

Yes, we’ve been waiting for this! In the next few days, 20 new feed partners will be added to Windows Live, so you can add all your activities on for example Facebook, Digg, Last.fm, SmugMug, and Fotolog to your profile. Every time you do something on those sites it will turn up on your profile, and of course in your friend’s “What’s New” feed. These new additions bring the grand total of third-party content partners to more than 30!

Feed Partners:

Daum, flickr, Flixter, iLike, Pandora, Photobucket, StumbleUpon, TripIt, Twitter, WordPress, Yelp

New feed partners:

Live Journal, OverBlog, Typepad, Dailymotion, Last.fm, Zune Social, Bilddagboken.se, Fotolog, SmugMug, MSN, Digg, Arto, Dada, FaceBook, Hevre, Hyves, MClub (GMedia), MetroFLOG, Yandex, Zoo.gr

But that’s not all that is coming! Soon, MySpace, Hi5, and Tagged will join Facebook and LinkedIn as sites that let you invite your friends to Windows Live (and vice versa).

All of these updates and more (as soon as we find out what the “more” is we’ll post it here on LiveSide) will go live in the next week! I can’t wait.

In the meantime you can read this QnA with Brian Hall: Windows Live: Power Through Simplicity or watch the videos about how to add web activities and inviting friends in Rob Dolin’s post on windowslivewire.

Edit: oops, forgot Twitter. Thanks CalumJR

Windows Live Profile - introducing your Web Activities, Networks and Lists

damaster — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 10:52:00 GMT

One of the new services as part of the Windows Live Wave 3 launch is Windows Live Profile. To put it simply, Profile is the place to display information about yourself to others - as opposed to Windows Live Home that delivers information about other users straight to you. You are able to choose exactly what information you'd want to display, and which contacts you want to access your Profile information.

Windows Live Profile aggregates the following information, all into one place for your convenience:

• About Me - personal and social details about yourself, such as your birthday, hometown, interests, hobbies...etc.

• Lists of favorite things - this is the "lists" originally part of Spaces, now moved into your Profile, showing your favorite movies, music, books and any other custom lists you would like to share.

• Network - this is the "friends" that was originally part of Spaces too, showing your circle of friends and allowing others connect to your "Network", or even introduce new friends to you and vice versa. This integrates tightly with Windows Live People - where you are able to manage your contacts and Networks. (Note that contacts can be in your People's address book but not part of your Network, but those whom you added on Messenger are automatically added to your Network now)

• Notes - you might've noticed the text "Post a Note" in Messenger's What's New feed, this allow other users to comment on your recent activities that appears on your Profile and What's New feed, if you allow them to do so.

• Private messages - as opposed to Notes which is available for others to see, private messages are, as the name speaks for itself, private. You're able to send short private messages to each other in Profile quickly, instead of having to send emails

• What's New feed - this is the place that display all your recent activities, on any of the Windows Live services, or on any other third-party services (called Web Activities), all in one place. You may choose what you'd like to display, and who you'd want to share these information with. Examples of what might appear here include what you've recently uploaded onto SkyDrive and Photos, which Network you've joined recently, what personal status message or display picture you've updated on Messenger, what blog posts on Spaces or any Notes you've posted recently, and also updates from any of the Web Activities you've added.

• Web Activities - Microsoft has partnered with over 50 companies for this (more details on this later), allowing you to display information about yourself on any of these third-party services, including Twitter, Yelp, iLike, WordPress, Flickr and many more. For example, any updates to your Twitter feed, any new blog updates from your WordPress-powered blog, any updates to your Flickr photos, or any new items you've added on iLike will appear in your What's New feed when you've added the Web Activities for these services respectively on your Profile.

Since its separation from Spaces, Windows Live Profile has become one of the most prominent services in the Wave 3 release. Profile takes your privacy seriously and users are able to configure almost everything that is to be displayed on their Profile. It facilitates the backend of your entire integrated social profile while introducing a new way to keep your contacts updated about yourself. Very nicely done!

Thanks to Picturepan2 for the heads up for this!