January, 2008

I've been trying to plug back into the tech blogs so I can keep my knowledge up.

Vertigo has one of the most impressive blogs in terms of quality & depth.

check out this post.

The blog isn't much to look at (vanilla WSS or MOSS 2007) but the content in an aggregator is awesome.

I wonder if the guys writing these posts are ex-ScottGu blog writers :)

Kevin just announced on dev.live.com Microsoft is joining DataPortbility.org who's mission is:

put all existing technologies and initiatives in context to create a reference design for end-to-end Data Portability. To promote that design to the developer, vendor and end-user community.

Check out the full post here.

For some background on what the Windows Live platform has from a data & delegation point of view check out http://dev.live.com/spaces/photos and http://dev.live.com/Contacts or see one of my presentation (PDF / PPT / PPTX).

Yesterday at a team offsite we all (did Myers-Briggs Type Indicators) (fun I know!)

I was pleasantly surprised how fun / informative it was.

If you are into this stuff I'm an ENTP.

From Wikipedia notable ENTPs:

U.S. Presidents

John Adams^[8] James A. Garfield^[8] Rutherford B. Hayes^[8] Theodore Roosevelt^[8]

Mortals

Alexander the Great^[8] John Candy^[8] George Carlin^[8] Jim Carrey^[9] Lewis Carrol^[8] Julia Child^[8] Winston Churchill^[10] Rodney Dangerfield^[8] Céline Dion^[8] Walt Disney^[4] Thomas Edison^[4][8] Richard Feynman^[4] Buckminster Fuller^[4] Benjamin Franklin^[4] Tom Hanks^[8] Valerie Harper^[8] Alfred Hitchcock^[8] Steven Jobs^[11] Raymond Kurzweil^[4] Camille Paglia^[4] Matthew Perry^[8] Suzanne Pleshette^[8] Sir Walter Raleigh^[8] Andy Rooney^[11] David Spade^[8]  Ryan Stiles^[9] J. E. B. Stuart^[8] John Sununu^[8] Marilyn Vos Savant^[8] Nicola Tesla^[4] Meg Whitman^[12] "Weird Al" Yankovic^[8][9]

ProgrammableWeb is one of my favorite websites for web 2.0 info, it haqs a huge collection of APIs and also Mashups built using those APIs.

Recently I added all the APIs from dev.live.com to ProgrammableWeb and all of the Windows Live Quick Apps too.

Check it out & download the code from here.

You can see all the APIs we have listed on Programmable Web

Windows Live Contacts
Contacts database

Windows Live Contacts Control
Contacts control

Windows Live Admin Center
Web site administration services

Windows Live Data
Service for users to control data access

Windows Live Expo
Online classifieds service

Windows Live Gadgets
Online gadgets service

Windows Live ID Client SDK
Windows SDK for Windows Live sign-in authentication

Windows Live Search
Internet search

Windows Live Spaces
Blog services

Windows Live Spaces Photo
Photo management services

Windows Live Spaces Photo Control
Programmable widget for blog photos
Photos

Case closed = grab the source code, otherwise it will be in the 6.0 release

BTW = the 6.0 release has a MASSIVE amount of work done on it - I had to make IE 30% zoom setting just to see all the items.

Marc Mercuri gets more press than I do, he's interviewed by cheller on Channel9.msdn.com.

Catherine Heller sat down with Marc Mercuri, Architect on the platform incubation team, to discuss one of Marc’s recent incubation projects, Tafiti, and how it evolved into a Windows Live Quick Application.

 
Tafiti is an experimental search front-end from Microsoft that uses Silverlight and Live Search to provide a rich Web experience and specialization of search. (Here are some previous interviews on Tafiti, in case you missed them: First Look: Microsoft Tafiti, Marc Mercuri on platform incubation and Tafiti)

Windows Live Quick Applications are customizable out-of-the box solutions for specific Web scenarios. Each Quick App is built on Windows Live services and is offered as a source code download. The Tafiti Quick App illustrates search visualization.

At around 00:26:44, Marc announces a contest! Do you have an interesting specialized search experience in mind? Something you might build by repurposing the Tafiti Quick App source code? Marc is going to give away limited edition Tafiti t-shirts to the top-5 coolest submissions . So send your submission to tafiti@tafiti.com before February 15th, 2008 to be considered!

---

Love being on the homepage of channel9.msdn.com - I'll be watching the download numbers - get the source code now.

check out the work in progress code on http://codeplex.com/wlquickapps

Ever wonder who reads the messages you send to tafiti@microsoft.com? Well wonder no more; it's Marc!

Not only does he read your messages, but he has listened to you all and has made available the code behind the Tafiti search engine leveraging Microsoft Silverlight and Live.com. If you’re a heavy coder, dive into the JS and ASP files… or if you prefer to tweak the skin and stay on the design side of the spectrum, you can do that too.

Best of all, the top 5 designs you guys make could get you a limited edition t-shirt directly from Mr. Tafiti himself! So download the code at CodePlex and see what you can come up with.

Watch it here.

It is targetedz at 6-18 year olds and the content is contributed by students and then moderated by teaching professionals.

From a technical point of view it uses:

• Silverlight with Silverlight Streaming by Windows Live
• Telligent's Community Server (powered by ASP.NET & SQL Server)
• Windows Live ID Web Authentication

And the part I like the most, it is built on the foundation of the Video.Show (get the bits) Windows Live Quick App.

Read more here https://seattle.codecamp.us/sessions.aspx 

Windows Live Development

In this session, we'll take a look at the Windows Live development platform, which enables 3rd party applications to integrate with Live ID, Contacts, Spaces, Messenger, Alerts, Silverlight Streaming, Virtual Earth, and Expo.
Track: ASP.NET
Speaker: Ed Kaim