December, 2007

In this screen cast I will talk about Windows Live Messenger control, and show you how to host it on your web site, I will also demonstrate the usage of the new presence API.

To find more information

• http://dev.live.com

• http://www.dotnettikihut.com/

• http://blogs.msdn.com/angus_logan/

• http://blogs.msdn.com/usisvde

Watch at Channel9 - http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=368699#368699

To view this screencast from Silverlight Streaming click here

To embed this screencast in your blog entries copy and paste this code:

   <iframe 

src=http://silverlight.services.live.com/invoke/6579/ScreencastAshishIMControl/iframe.html 

scrolling="no" 

frameborder="0" 

width="1024" 

height="508"></iframe>

The Microsoft IPG (international product group... i think) has extended Contoso ISV into Chinese - and made it easy for any other languages.

Using a mix of resource (.resx) files and new images they quickly applied the localization/globalization capabilities.

we will be deploying these bits to http://contosoisv.mslivelabs.com and http://contosoisvactivity.mslivelabs.com shortly;

the bits will be included in 6.0 of Quick Apps sometime in January, but for now you can download the source from Codeplex.

To test/simulate multiple languages in IE just go Internet Options then Language Preferences and add zh-CN

The rest of the WL services (IM Control, Contact Control, Live ID Login) recognize the market and display the appropriate language.

I was cruising Codeplex today and found this server-side (or client side... which isn't allowed by the Terms of Use) library for calling the Presence API.

Pretty cool - although we would recommend calling the JSON end point via Script Sourcing (<script src="....") this works too.'

Check it out here

---

public void GetPresence(string UserID)
{
    HttpWebRequest PresenceRequest;
    HttpWebResponse PresenceResponse = null;
    StreamReader PresenceResponseReader;

    PresenceRequest = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(String.Format("http://messenger.services.live.com/users/{0}/presence", UserID));
    PresenceResponse = (HttpWebResponse)PresenceRequest.GetResponse();
    PresenceResponseReader = new StreamReader(PresenceResponse.GetResponseStream());

    DeserializedObject = DeserializeObject(PresenceResponseReader.ReadToEnd());
    PresenceResponse.Close();

    status = DeserializedObject["status"];

    DeserializedIconObject = (Dictionary<string, object>)DeserializedObject["icon"];

    icon.height = DeserializedIconObject["height"];
    icon.width = DeserializedIconObject["width"];
    icon.url = DeserializedIconObject["url"];

    statusText = DeserializedObject["statusText"];
    id = DeserializedObject["id"];
    displayName = DeserializedObject["displayName"];

}

public Dictionary<string, object> DeserializedObject;
public Dictionary<string, object> DeserializedIconObject;

public Dictionary<string, object> DeserializeObject(string What)
{
    return new JavaScriptSerializer().Deserialize<Dictionary<String, Object>>(What);
}

Nice scoop at LiveSide - Nick Brown (Community Server guru) has created a codeplex project - www.codeplex.com/CSLive dedicated to Community Server Windows Live Addons.

This project aims to provide Community Server Controls and Add-ons to support the latest Windows Live technologies.

Check it out at http://www.codeplex.com/CSLive and subscribe to the feed here http://www.codeplex.com/CSLive/Project/ProjectRss.aspx 

Telligent (blog) should incorporate Windows Live services into their core offering like what DotNetNuke did with Windows Live ID.

Check out the other codeplex projects which are related tagged Windows Live

the dangers of working offline - 35 emails in a couple of minutes.

Ashish Jaiman from the US ISV team has done a screen-cast on Windows Live ID.

The Windows Live ID service (formerly known as the Passport Network) is an identity and authentication system that you can use with your own Web site or client application.

In this screen-cast I will show the various ways you can integrate LiveID in your applications and also a demo on how to do it.
You can find more information in the following links.

Check it out on Channel9

To view it from Silverlight Streaming just click click here - or to embed it add this to your site:

<iframe 

src=http://silverlight.services.live.com/invoke/6579/ScreencastAshishWLID/iframe.html 

scrolling="no" 

frameborder="0" 

width="1024" 

height="508"></iframe>

I went home (Brisbane) for Christmas and my sister Elea (lives in New York) was back too.

Elea has a super high quality camera and snapped quite a few photos from my apartment (level 15) and then we went to the roof (level 37) and took some city wide photos.

Level 37 - Admiralty Towers II

Dimensions: 12302x3810

Dimensions: 5859x2717

Level 15

 

Dimensions: 5468x1932

 

Dimensions: 4806x2367

To see more of the panoramas (RSS) I'm stitching together using Windows Live Photo Gallery click here or download these originals from here.

Last week we released the 5.0 package of the Windows Live Quick Apps (included Tafiti SearchVisualization).

I just pulled the latest statistics.

The developers are working on 6.0 (and possibly some hot fixes to 5.0). If you have any feature requests or would change anything LOG IT

Office Developer Conference 2008 is happening February 10-13, San Jose California and I'll be there presenting a session on the Windows Live Platform. The details of the session are:

Create new engaging experiences for Office users through Windows Live Platform Services

In this session we’ll cover the capabilities the Windows Live platform provides for you to engage with users.

We’ll take a high level look at each of the Windows Live Platform capabilities such as: Rich Media, Communicate & Stay Connected, Storage & Sharing, Find & Locate and Authentication; we’ll also look at the Windows Live Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio which allow you to leverage these services easily.

To show how at these APIs can be used we’ll deconstruct the Windows Live Quick Applications and showcase what real world customers & partners have achieved using the Windows Live Platform.

---

For some of my demos I may blow some of the dust off the MOSS 2007 VPCs I have an integrate WL Platform into MOSS... maybe :)

---

There will also be 5 technical tracks and 70+ breakouts!

Scott mentioned on his blog that v0.2 of LiveNet is released.

Grab the release here.

The big change is the Silverlight Streaming API is now wrapped.

From Scott's blog:

As part of the release, I have included a sample application that shows just how easy it is to us SLS with LiveNet, here is a sample of that code:

        LiveMedia m_livemedia;
        MediaFileSet[] sets;
        MediaFile[] files;

        private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            listBox1.Items.Clear();
            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(textBox1.Text) ||
                string.IsNullOrEmpty(textBox2.Text))
            {
                MessageBox.Show("Either you have entered no Account ID or Passkey", 
                    "Doh", MessageBoxButtons.OK, MessageBoxIcon.Error);
                return;
            }

            m_livemedia = new LiveMedia(textBox1.Text, textBox2.Text);
            sets = m_livemedia.ListFileSets();
            foreach (MediaFileSet set in sets)
            {
                listBox1.Items.Add(set.Name);
            }
        }

        private void listBox1_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            listBox2.Items.Clear();
            int i = listBox1.SelectedIndex;
            MediaFileSet set = sets[i];
            files = set.Files;
            foreach (MediaFile file in files)
            {
                listBox2.Items.Add(file.FileName);
            }
        }

And when run in the sample app, you will end up with the following: