Kylie’s a PC, too
Cute video of Kylie, 4 1/2, using Window Live Photo Gallery to send a digital photo off a camera, enhance it, and then email it to her family. Was wondering when we’d see the next installment of the “I’m a PC” campaign.
This clip is particularly interesting to me for a couple reasons. First, it takes the campaign in a new direction – she’s not just identifying with a PC, she’s actually showing us how easy it is to use one.
Second, the clip features Windows Live Photo Gallery as the specific bit she is using. Windows Live Photo Gallery is part of the Windows Live Essentials pack – a collection of “essential” software that are designed by the Windows Live team. Among the others:
- Windows Live Messenger (IM, VoIP voice and video calls)
- Windows Live Writer (how I’m writing this post)
- Windows Live Mail (one rich mail client for all your email, including hotmail, gmail, yahoo, and other web mail or ISP email services)
- Windows Live OneCare (virus scanning, firewall, online backup… this one is reportedly going away later this year. I don’t have any inside information on this, but I’m hoping it will be replaced by a Windows 7 companion service.)
BTW, If you haven’t heard, the Windows Live team was recently folded into the Windows team here at Microsoft so it will be interesting to see what that means for the future of these apps, as well as for their more rudimentary cousins, Windows Mail and Windows Photo Gallery.
Also of note: the Windows Live applications tend to have an extensibility models (and SDKs). For Windows Live Photo Gallery, this means you can publish your pics or send them for printing to lots of different places.
While you would expect a first class experience for publishing to Windows Live (and there is), you might be surprised to learn there’s also a first class experience for publishing to Facebook, Yahoo’s Flickr, SmugMug, Google’s Picasa, and more. See list of publishing plugins here. Or better yet, within WL Photo Gallery, select “Publish/More Services”.
I’m a huge fan of the Windows Live Essentials apps, and WL Photo Gallery, in particular. For most folks it’s the only photo organizing, editing, and publishing software they’ll need – powerful enough to be useful, but also simple enough to be quick and easy.
John Mullinax is a Platform Strategy Advisor with Microsoft's DPE Team. Before joining Microsoft in 2006, John held a vartiety of positions at Ford Motor Company, most recently leading IT services strategy to support explosive business growth in China. Other positions included: Enterprise Architect, Application Portfolio Management, Technology Governance, and Product Manager. Prior to joining Ford, John earned his MBA at the University of Washington. Before that, he was Director of Elections for Douglas County, Washington, where he conducted the first Federal mail-ballot election in the USA. Subsequently, he joined the Secretary of State's office as a consultant working with county election officials in Washington state to improve operational effectiveness, integrity, and security (aka, to prevent the kind of debacle we saw in Florida in 2000).
