Windows Live ID Channel9 - Lynn Ayres interviewed by Catherine Heller

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Windows Live ID (formerly known as Passport) is the identity and authentication system for Microsoft online services. Currently, over 380 million users have credentials that work with Windows Live ID. Windows Live ID Web Authentication is a new offering that enables you to add Windows Live ID authentication to your own Web site (details can be found here).

A while back, Catherine sat down with Lynn Ayres to discuss Windows Live ID developer offerings. The conversation starts out with Lynn describing how she got into software (turns out Lynn is an avid online gamer J), and then transitions to Windows Live ID around 00:03:17 and how it relates to Passport (00:04:19). Windows Live ID scenarios are discussed around 00:07:00.

Demos start at 00:08:32, and include other Windows Live developer offerings – like the Windows Live Contacts control and the Windows Live Spaces Photo control; the specific code that uses the new Web Authentication (an HTML iframe element) can be seen around 00:13:24; the Windows Live ID Client SDK is demonstrated around 00:16:05.

A few notes regarding changes that have occurred since this video was recorded:

• Windows Live ID Web Authentication has been released, and the documentation can be found here.
• The Windows Live ID Client SDK is still in alpha (you can learn more about the alpha refresh here) and will be released later this summer.
• In the Web Authentication demo (around 00:13:37), Lynn was accessing our integration/test environment (http://login.live-int.com). This functionality is now available in the production service and the URL should be modified accordingly (remove “-int” from the domain name: http://login.live.com)
• You can get an application ID for Web Authentication here. The connect.microsoft.com site Lynn referred to (around 00:14:13) was for the beta.

Lynn Ayres is a Program Manager on the Windows Live ID team (see their blog).

The interview was conducted by Catherine Heller, Windows Live Technical Evangelist.