Windows Live Quantum Mechanics

I was recently introduced to a Google search wrapper called www.blackle.com . It's sole claim to fame is that it displays a Google-like search page, but with a background color of black. Why? Blackle.com claims that black pixels require less energy to...

Danny Thorpe joins Microsoft's Windows Live! Platform team...

I've been tinkering with Silverlight and Silverlight Streaming and thought I'd share some of my discoveries and pointers. Silverlight is designed to dovetail into a traditional HTML+JavaScript web app. Your web page loads a Silverlight.js file and...

I'm pleased to announced the beta release of a new kind of web component: the Windows Live Contacts Gadget ! What's it for? The contacts gadget is client-side JavaScript that enables end users to use their Windows Live contacts (from Windows Live...

Windows Live SkyDrive (formerly known as Folders) is now in beta, enabling end users to store arbitrary data on the web under password access control. Files can be accessed over http(s) from web pages and from stand-alone client applications (thanks to...

More than a few blog posts ago I stated my intent to publish a series of articles on cross-domain communication techniques. More time has passed than I had intended, but at last here is the start of that series of articles. The series will explore progressively...

As I've been wrapping up our 2nd generation cross-domain in-browser communication channel API, I've been nosing around and thinking about what my next project should be. There's no shortage of tasks to do in Windows Live, and I had a few leads for interesting...

Another month, another release! This month we've added incremental search to the contacts and presence controls to make it easier to find a particular contact in your haystack of hundreds of family, friends, and coworkers. Just type in a few letters of...

Last week Kevin Ledley, keeper of the dev.live.com content, asked me for a bit of help to get a Silverlight video player working. He wanted to "borrow" the cool scrolling video list and video player from our sister site, msdn2.microsoft.com and set it...

This month's rev of the Windows Live Contacts Control adds a new "tile" view that displays the photos of your Windows Live IM contacts in the control, and makes starting an IM session with them a simple one-click operation. The top part of this screenshot...

If you've been following the progress of the Windows Live Contacts Control since its launch this past summer, you may recall that in the second beta release we shifted from a programmatic constructor call style of instantiating the control on the web...

Tim Heuer laments the growing number of otherwise reputable web sites that instruct their flocks to disable popup blockers in order to complete some task within that web site. Having stumbled into popup blocker hell myself only a few months ago with the...

TMobile announced this week the addition of the Blackberry 8230 "Curve" to the list of cell phones supported by TMobile's HotSpot@Home WiFi phone service. This is a big step up in handset functionality over the minimalistic handsets that the service launched...

The promotional campaign for the new Halo 3 FPS has begun with a series of in-game and thematic live action videos. High-def 2mbps videos are here: http://halo3.msn.com/videosHD.aspx Lower bandwidth versions of the same are here: http://halo3.msn.com...

The June issue (Journal 12) of The Architecture Journal focuses on web architecture. I was delighted to be invited to contribute, and wrote "Secure Cross-Domain Communication in the Browser" for this issue. In the article I describe a somewhat bizarre...

Our next iteration on the contacts control (nee gadget) is now live and ready for you to experiment with! The snapshot of the contacts control in the online documentation is a static image. The one below is not! This a live (as in real) contacts control...

MSN just launched The Podium '08 as part of their 2008 US Presidential election coverage. The Podium '08 brings together data on presidential candidates for voters and election followers to explore by topic and compare candidates head to head on specific...

I was installing a new label printer at home a little while ago and noticed mention of a developer SDK in the readme docs. (Yes, some people actually read the readme) I know from experience that getting text to land right side up on a target as small...

When people ask what I worked on at Google and I answer "undisclosed browser technology", I think some folks think I'm just being coy or obnoxious. The truth is, I'm required to say that publicly and privately until Google publicly announces the technology...

Yesterday the Seattle Times ran an article about Penny Arcade and the overnight success of the Penny Arcade Expo . I had to laugh a little when the article used the words "imploded" and "E3" in the same sentence. I used pretty much the same pairing of...

Live & raw notes from Brian Arbogast's keynote : ( watch the video ) "Today we are announcing the Windows Live Platform Beta" Simple and consistent terms of use across the Windows Live service spectrum Predictable costs at scale - so that...

I sat down with Craig Murphy to chat about Windows Live and life in general at MIX07 UK. Craig has just posted a podcast of that conversation. I've known Craig for many years through the Delphi community. I think we first met in person in 2001 at "The...

I'm sitting next to Angus in the back row of the ReMix07 London keynote. Angus is blogging in Windows Live Writer, and the guy on the other side of him is blogging in Windows Live Writer. Everyone loves a parade, so here I am blogging in Windows Live...

Angus and I had a chat with the guys from LiveSide.Net during the MIX07 UK conference this week. Check it out!

Angus laments getting hit unusually hard by jet lag on this UK trip. This is particularly amusing considering he's recently imported to Redmond from Australia and generally has far too much energy to safely occupy one body. I suspect he owns an espresso...