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The team behind the creation of our demo applications, Windows Live Platform Quick Applications has been going super hard to get some more apps out the door.

What are the Quick Apps? They are end to end demo applications which can be used a demos, technical reference, starting points or for community development (open source license)

We've added more applications: Retail, Contoso Riders, Team Builder and Field Manager and made lots of enhancements to the others.

Retail is one of the slickest user experiences we’ve created, it uses Silverlight 2 to deliver a wall of videos, check out the demo.

retail1.png retail2.png

These apps are typically developed by Microsoft Partners or customers (and occasionally inhouse). Below is a video the guys from the Habanero Consulting Group in Canada - they are all crazy mountain biking enthusiasts and built Contoso Riders.


Open video in new window

The Quick Apps have 3 purposes

  1. Examples of what is possible – use them, play with them, get ideas!
  2. Technical reference – if you want to use a Live Platform API, there is a good chance it will be in a Quick App, check out the code to see how it was implemented.
  3. Starting point – these end-to-end applications are licensed under a fairly liberal (OSI approved) license, you can use them as starting points for your own applications.

Developers - All of these applications are available for community development, you can sign into Codeplex, become a developer on the project and hack away!

If you have ideas or find bugs, please log them and we’ll triage and hopefully implement.

Success Story - I got an email from the people at http://www.myconditioningcoach.com/ who took one of the apps, customized it and implemented it, now they have a rocking site!

VisitPlanner.png VisitPlanner1.pngUniversity_News.png University_DelegateContacts.png University_ListContacts.png University_SetLocation.pngVideoShow.jpgBicycle Club.jpgSocial_Home.png Social_IM.png Social_Media.png Social_WhatsNew.pngISV_Big.png ISV_SL_Fullscreen.png ISV_Messenger_2.png ISV_Alert.pngTafiti Search Visualization.png Tafiti Search Visualization (tree).pngContosoRiders_Home.png ContosoRiders_RideInfo.pngFM_Home.png FM_CreateField.png FM_SearchFields.pngTeamBuilder_Home.png TeamBuilder_Photos.png TeamBuilder_video.png TeamBuilder_InviteFriends.png

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I’m at f8 and i’ll be updating this post with info as I write more throughout the day.

1. Zuck

1.1 Zuck's opening was amusing, I think he may be running for president.

1.2 he talked about the movement

1.3 Facebook's mission

1.3.1 give people the power to share and make the worl more open and connected.

1.4 giving people the power to share - making the world more transparent.

1.5 we want the community and the ecosystem to be aligned with us.

1.6 Metrics

1.6.1 f8 07 had 24m

half in Us and half outside US

1.6.2 f8 08 had 90m

68% international

now over 400k developers building on top of the platform

more than half the developers are outside the US

helping developers put on garage events

1.7 talked about localization

1.7.1 open for translation in 60 languages

1.7.2 already avail in 15 languages

1.7.3 spanish took 2weeks (I THINK)

1.7.4 french took 24h

1.7.5 community based translation

1.7.6 Platform applications can use the translation foundation to allow their applications to be available in many different languages.

1.8 Awesome thing at the show.

1.8.1 running 4 concurrent events

1.8.2 if you go to the hackathon you can communicate with these people from the venue

1.9 funding for developers

1.9.1 there are 30 developers who have received funding to build on top of Facebook

1.9.2 Zynga raised $29M

1.9.3 over $200M invested in the ecosystem

1.10 expalined the social graph

1.10.1 where social graph came from

1.10.2 expained the virtuous cycle of sharing

1.10.3 sharing drives views drives sharing

1.10.4 most powerful feed is the newsfeed

1.10.5 The day they launched newsfeed, shortly after traffic went up 50%, after that the amount of content produced went up too.

1.10.6 ilike example

within 4 days of launching ilike had 1M people using the application.

1.11 Learned a lot of lessons

1.11.1 need to work more closely with developers

1.12 Announcing a new feed

1.12.1 The Wall feed

1.12.2 You can create full stories in the wall – things you have built, or pictures etc. can be easily visible.

1.12.3 A publisher, iwrite notes, add photos, video, share links.

1.12.4 Remove the concept of adding an application, free to browse around and use anything and you opt in if information or publishing is required.

1.13 Funny video “we’ll do it live”

2 Flipped over to a demo

2.1 The product placement payment from Apple Inc. musn’t have happened, because the mac they were demo’ing on had the apple logo covered with an F8 logo…

2.2 Demo’d the new application model

2.2.1 Wen t to a friend’s profile

2.2.2 Commented on an application without needing to add it

2.2.3 Prompted how to publish it and couldchoose the level of detail.

2.2.4 Whe nyou intereact with anapplication, it gets added to your publisher (if done recently) you can easily add items using the publisher.

3 Outside of facebook

3.1 Expect that less of this movement will be about facebook.com but more about what other people are building and FB is the platform.

3.2 The slide listed:

3.2.1 Twitter

3.2.2 Citysearch

3.2.3 Sixapart

3.2.4 Digg

3.2.5 CBS

3.3 Will push for parity in what applications can do in facebook or outside facebook.

3.4 Facebook connect

3.4.1 Build same kinds of apps across the web

3.4.2 Share information across the web

3.4.3 Control your information

3.4.4 Bringing out the demo partners

(1)  Digg

(a)  When you digg something on digg it automatically goes into your newsfeed;

(b)  You don’t need to worry about the authentication

(c)   You can see what your friends do

(d)  Thanks everybody “Digg On”

(2)  SixApart – David Recordon – I love this guy.

(a)  Commenting on blogs hasn’t evolved at the same rate as blogging has

(b)  With FB connect they hope to change it;

(c)   Created a publin for moveable type which allows you to integrate FB connect auth into your blog

(d)  Yo ucan post and leave a comment and your photo/name pulled from your FB profile

(e)  Takes advantage of Dynamic privacy – if oyu don’t want to share your picture, whatever your settings on FB are the yare reflected elsewhere.

(f)    You can sign in to moveable type using FB authentication

(g)  It knows who your friends are on the third party;

(h)  The hidden elements like your friends photos appear

(i)    Took 1.5 days to implement – Recordon can live demo.

(3)  Citysearch

(a)  Will be launching a new site w/ some consumer improvements (sharing info is a big piece)

(b)  They are very excited to participate J

(c)   What could be more trusted/useful than recommendations from your firneds/network.

(d)  Lower the barrier to registration

(i)    Allow you to take your facbeook identity and port it over to your citysearch account.

(ii) Added a facebook my friends tab.

(iii)                       You can see the things your friends have recommended

1 Ben Ling (Director Product Management)

1.1 Talked about platform ecosystem

1.1.1 Venture capital = 30 different companies

1.1.2 Adnetworks = 13 different adnetworks

1.1.3 Application dev

1.1.4 Academics = studying and teaching about fb.

1.2 Principals

1.2.1 Meaningful

(1)  Social – social apps make use of the osicla graph.

(2)  Useful – carpool application, 1/5th of cornell’s students use the carpool application.

(3)  Expressive – sharing and expressing yourself, e.g. sports teams or a sketch.

(a)  In 1 week alone the graffiti app go 10k submissions

(4)  Engage

(a)  In the last month alone FB users using playfish applications have played over 900M minutes of games.

(b)  A huge amount of engagement

(c)   Every day 1M users spend 30mins a day on playfish apps

1.2.2 Trustworthy

(1)  As more users join the ecosystem, users and developers get value

(2)  “safe and trusted ecosystem”

(3)  Secure -

(4)  Respectful – respectful of the data and time.

(5)  Transparent – clearly explain features –

1.2.3 Well designed

(1)  Cleanly designed – new users can quickly and easily pick them up

(a)  Usability testing is as simple as grabbing a few friends and getting feedback

(2)  Fast

(a)  Users want everything now.

(3)  Robust

(a)  The application should be available when and where;

(b)  Scaling from 5 users to 5M users

1.3 We’re listening

1.3.1 Parner more closely with developers

(1)  Had ~ 70 developer garages

(2)  Haven’t done as gooder job on the online forums – expect more

(3)  Incorporating feedback from developers so all stakeholders are represented

(4)  Staffing up a fulltime partner and community management organization, and will communicate roadmap.

1.3.2 Keep the ecosystem safe for user sand fair for developers

(1)  Last year took a handsoff approach distribution becaome overwhelming.

1.3.3 Help you create more, better apps

1.4 Building platform together

1.4.1 Getting Started

(1)  ANNOUNCING:  getting you started quickly

(a)  Tools and partnerships.

(b)  Launchign a new and improved developer website, will provide all getting started information;

(c)   Will give you the events happening re. platform

(d)  Recent news.

(2)  Facebook fund – have given out 10M funding

(3)  Kicking off a new competition

(a)  2M over 2mths

(b)  New companies, new ideas, FB will select 25 finalists, each will get 25K, users can vote, 5 finalists will receive 250k and mentorship.

1.4.2 Advancing common interests

(1)  Facebook verification program

(a)  Applications can apply for certification – will be displayed in the application directory and the about page

(b)  For users they’ll trust apps more

(c)   For developers  - get more trust, more visibility, resulting in more users

(2)  Facebook great apps program

(a)  For high end applications

(b)  Embody the principals

(c)   Advance the FB mission “give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected”

(d)  Will have a minimum userbase and a strong history.

(e)  Users

(i)    More integrated experience, more content from apps

(ii) Increased vibility, early features, facebook feedback.

(f)    OPINION: There is a bit of a disconnect here; they talked about previously the mission was to make Platform apps as powerful as the native apps; now they are saying there is still a gap….

(g)  Launch partners – iLike & Causes

1.4.3 Making the web more social

(1)  Fb connect

(a)  Authentication

(b)  Identity

(c)   Friends access

(d)  Dynamic privacy

(e)  Social distribution

(2)  Desktop

(3)  Mobile

(a)  Announcing FB connect for the iPhone –  announcing this call

1.4.4 Announcincing the open web founcation

(1)  Talked about dataportability

(2)  And open web founcation “supporting and will make contributions

I really need to stop learning about things from Livemeshside. Picturepan2 from Livesino hit me on IM this afternoon to ask about the new feature our Messenger server engineers mentioned on their blog.

Some feedback we got from customers was I’d love to know which site the IM Control conversations are coming from. We aren’t passing through the site URI to the client but we do allow you to set the default visitor name (appears in the conversation with you).

Just tweak the inviterDisplayName parameter.

All you need to do is:

  • go here and enable your account for IM control
  • go here and copy the iframe tag

<iframe src="http://settings.messenger.live.com/Conversation/IMMe.aspx?invitee=dcc7f76fcd6c161a@apps.messenger.live.com&mkt=en-US" width="300" height="300" style="border: solid 1px black; width: 300px; height: 300px;" frameborder="0"></iframe>

  • add the following parameter &inviterDisplayName=Reading Your Blog (you should URL encode this – space is %20)

<iframe src=”http://settings.messenger.live.com/Conversation/IMMe.aspx?invitee=dcc7f76fcd6c161a@apps.messenger.live.com&mkt=en-US&inviterDisplayName=Reading%20Your%20Blog width="300" height="300" style="border: solid 1px black; width: 300px; height: 300px;" frameborder="0"></iframe>

  • Now when they chat, the default name will be Reading Your Blog

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[read this post on the Live Mesh blog (feed)]

We mentioned in the Mesh forum that the Live Mesh technology preview is being opened up for US Live IDs to join up – many bloggers quickly picked up on this thanks to Liveside (go Sunshine!).

One clarification is we aren’t quite opening up to the 303 million people on the internet in the US YET… but we have doubled the number of participants who can sign up for the technology preview and are going to open more slots in the next couple of months.

To make signup for the preview easier, we cut the requirement of going to connect.microsoft.com.

Get your Mesh on

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Firstly – I’ve gone on record saying “Maps are sooo 2001” – because they are.  This is just something I found interesting - I was riding the subway in New York today. When I looked up I saw an ad for the new www.mta.info site which gives better directions on how to use the subway and busses.

They actually printed a powered by Microsoft Virtual Earth on the in-train ad!

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The site itself is somewhat slick, I’d love for all of that data to get exposed so developers could easily pull into your own apps.

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The Live Mesh crew have announced a few updates to their CTP – the features I really are about are:

  • You don’t need to sync to the cloud now – you can do peer-to-peer only – this is awesome because it means you keep the cloud storage for things you need anywhere access to.
  • Conflict management on the Live Desktop
  • Additional news events for New Live Mesh and Deleted Live Mesh

Check it out (or check out the Liveside post)

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The WPC is a huge event for MSFT – there will be 10k+ people there – lots of fun;

I’m not here for the crowds though – I just want to meet some cool MSFT partners doing great stuff on the web;

Or… if you are in Houston and you aren’t even attending WPC – drop me a line.

SMS me +1 425 753 7987 or email or twitter direct message me @anguslogan

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Over at identi.ca  there was a status update saying How do I find friends?

That’s easy – someone should update the laconi.ca source to use the Windows Live Contact API. So when you are the first person on the scene, your contacts could be stored (in accordance with the privacy statement) – then when your friends show up, it asks if they want to friend you – bam! you look cool for already being there; you get the friend relationships and everything is groovy.

Relationships delivered – and when it comes to Microblogging sites, its all about the people.

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image Travel is both a passion and a necessity for me, anything which can make it easier is something I’m interested in.

TechCrunch just posted about ExpertFlyer – this site looks like it has the most potential of any travel site I’ve seen – definitely subscribing to their blog (feed).

When I was booking my travel on point with Qantas back to Australia in August it was a real pain – flights not being available, tricks like changing destination and planning to jump off the plane in a lay-over, etc. – booking international flights on points is a massive time drain – but you are happy to spend the time as its a cheap flight.

Few thought about biz model:

  • I’m guessing ExpertFlyer is betting on the free trial being such a benefit you’ll subscribe next time – and they have great verification of who you are as you’d give them your Frequent Flyer number so duplicate accounts may be hard.
  • The service is so compelling that paying $foo is something you would do.
  • I’m not sure 250 is enough queries as running a query to find 0 results would burn through the queries a little fast I think, but if you do go through the $4.95 i’m assuming you’d just pay the 9.95 to get unlimited.
  • Booking flights on points isn’t something you’d always do, so having a subscription model is probably the best approach – unless the advertising is super high value – if you look at the home page there are 0 external ads.
  • you can buy gift certificates for your friends – great idea – if you know someone with lots of points saved up its an easy way for you to get indirect benefit from the joy they get from their trip

security - Do airlines expose Delegated Authentication end points? probably not, its bad to share your credentials.

help/sales - Finally the interactive tour is an awesome feature if you are going to have a subscription only model.

On travel sites in general

ExpertFlyer definitely gets up there in my must have travel utilities: TripIt and Dopplr in my travel utilities bag ;

I am wondering when there will be massive consolidation of the travel utility market; with so many great focused portals like Kayak/FareChase/FareCast/ExpertFlyer, TripIt/Dopplr, SeatGuru and then destination information portals like Lonely Planet.

How does this relate to Windows Live Platform? There are lots of services which can be used such as Alerts (for sale notifications), Virtual Earth for geographic visualization, Agents for an alternative input source instead of just via the web, and Messenger Library for collaborative planning.

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At TechEd 2008 in Orlando Dan Fernandez (the Non-Pro Developer product management guy who quit to become a Tv show host) interviewed me about the Windows Live Platform.

Aside from clearly having a [coffee] buzz on, I talked about:

  • The APIs we are exposing
  • tooling and what we are doing for all Microsoft centric developers
  • how non Microsoft centric developers can use WL Platform services;
  • I try to dodge a question on Live Mesh
  • Silverlight Streaming;
  • general social networking space.

Check it out here


TechEd: Angus Logan on Windows Live

Debra Chrapaty runs global foundation services (i.e. our data centers – but so much more than just data centers)

Om Malik interviewed Debra after Structure 08 conference – great video to watch;

Read Om's post here

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Scott Lovegrove is the outside/community the god of writer plugins; the inside god is Charles Teague;

Catherine Heller interviewed him about writer plugins and its now posted on the c9 site – watch below.

Catherine Heller interviews Charles Teague on Windows Live Writer, a free and extensible desktop blogging applicatoin that can work with practically every blogging service available.

Charles discusses the Windows Live Writer SDK which includes a managed API for extending Live Writer. He demonstrates the Polaroid Picture Plug-in and also shows how to build a "Hello World" plug-in in Visual Studio. You can find more information including SDK updates on the Windows Live Writer blog.


Charles Teague: Building Windows Live Writer Plug-ins

A long time ago I posted about PIFEM – its called Pay it forward because it will save your life, and after you learn how to use it, you need to tell someone else how to use it.

A massive part of my job is email, talking w/ engineers on many different campuses or dealing with our WW marketing teams; or 100% email when I work from Australia :)

The biggest email month I’ve had this year is February with 3800 out going emails.

Over at techmeme there is an interesting thread start