There are four new Quick Applications - Retail, Team Builder, Field Manager, and Contoso Riders - all of which offer community-based Web sites integrating Windows Live services. Quick Applications are fully customizable and developed around specific Web scenarios. Quick Apps are typically developed by Microsoft Partners or customers, and occasionally in-house.

The source code has been released to Codeplex, which means anyone can download, modify, and resell the code (see MS-PL License for all the details).

What are Quick Applications used for? Angus Logan writes in his blog that

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.

Get the Quick Applications

Retail (demo) Develop an e-commerce site that uses videos to display products.

retail 

Team Builder (demo) Develop a community around a group or team. Add photos, upload videos, and start conversations with other members.

teambuilder 

Field Manager (demo) Manage fields and leagues for sporting events. Create leagues, see up-to-date weather conditions for fields, add and view notes about field conditions.
fieldmanager 

Contoso Riders (demo) Allows members to create bike rides and events. Share photos, add interactive maps, chat with other riders, and upload videos.

contosoriders