Mark Johnston's Blog : Windows Live

Live Photo Gallery uploader to Facebook and YouTube

markjo — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:48:56 GMT

Two very useful “uploader” wizards for Windows Live Photo Gallery for Facebook and YouTube.

LiveUpload for Facebook (Beta)

LiveUpload for YouTube (Beta)

More goodness from CodePlex!

(Hat tip to Sarah)

Loving Windows Live OneCare

markjo — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 14:29:44 GMT

Video: Microsoft Windows Live OneCare

I'm only a day late for Paddy's day (disappointing for someone that heralds from Northern Ireland) so thought this was worth posting - http://www.getgreenstaygreen.com/

I've been using OneCare on my home machines for about 4 months now and love it. I've just set it up on my parents and sisters machines as well - being their IT support, this service has made my life a lot easier!

(Hat tip to Brandon over at the Windows Experience blog for this one)

Fancy staying on Necker Island?

markjo — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 18:46:55 GMT

(Credit for photo to svonog <- IC winner)

The Windows Live team are running a promotion called BigSnapSearch. Fun prizes through the game "Snap" as you search which can be anything from Virgin Experience Days through to a stay on Richard Branson's Necker Island worth £12,000.

Steve Clayton has more info

SkyDrive out of beta

markjo — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 18:41:10 GMT

I love this product! I tend not to back stuff up there much but do use it a lot to send files to friends, colleagues and customers when I need to move stuff around the web. And it's now out of beta and has 5 GB of storage!

http://skydrive.live.com

How cool are you this Christmas?

markjo — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 23:26:15 GMT

I've been involved (in the wings) in a project with the Windows Live team who used DotNet Solutions and later the Silverlight team in Seattle to produce this festive Silverlight based web site that allows users to search for the favourite and worst Christmas gift ideas and rank them on a "cool wall" (similar to that used by Top Gear on the BBC).

The technology enables users to sign in using a Windows Live ID and through Windows Live Search APIs pull down images of the desired item (themed socks or a new Xbox 360). The user then drags the preferred image onto their wall, saves it and sends it onto their friends, ideally generous friends with large bank balances.

To create your very own Cool Wall, follow these 3 easy steps:

1. Point your browser of choice at MyCoolUncool. If you haven’t installed Silverlight the page will prompt you to do that and will only take a few minutes

2. Get thinking on everything cool and un-cool and search for them using the search box at the top of the web page. Mixing ludicrously expensive items with more reasonable ones heightens the chance of getting something off that list. They should be sorted into categories of “Seriously Uncool”, “Uncool”, “Cool” and “Sub-Zero”

3. In the top right of the web page select the Options drop down list and Save the Cool Wall then forward it onto all your family and friends. And in return hopefully they will create a Christmas Coolwall to give you ideas on what to buy them!

Adam Kinney has a funny interview up on Channel 10 about the project and talks about the port from 1.1 back 1.0 Silverlight

http://www.mycooluncool.com (and for those interested my Christmas Coolwall is here :-))

Added the Instant Messenger Gadget - you can talk to me

markjo — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 00:55:05 GMT

I've now implemented a great new feature of Windows Live Messenger which enables me to embed my IM presence online so that readers can see my status and even ping me a message and start a conversation.

This may not be as bold a move as Eileen or James putting their phone number up there but I still think it's a big step in opening my connection with the wider web commnity! So please do feel free to contact me if you want to ask anything relating to my blog, my role (students + academic marketing programs), etc.

Via Windows Live has the detail

Microsoft jobs in Europe for Silverlight development and Live

markjo — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 13:31:19 GMT

Students in the UK might be interested in this post from Claire Dillon to see that Microsoft do have developer roles in product groups outside of the bubble that is Redmond.

"Few people know that Microsoft have quite a few core development centres outside Redmond - or that there is in fact one based here in Dublin, Ireland..."
www.joinmicrosofteurope.com.

And being from Belfast and having visited the offices near Leapordstown in Dublin, it wouldn't be such a bad place to work/live. I hear the Guinness is good! ;-)

Core MS tech jobs in Dublin (+ a nice Silverlight site to check out)!

Windows Live Suite

markjo — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 23:46:44 GMT

Windows Live is all starting to come together - at the software installer level at the very least :-) (And at the Software+Services but I'm not going that deep tonight, tis Sunday after all)

Windows Live is now bundled as a suite of products to help bridge the world of your OS/desktop and the web (software + services):

Windows Live Mail
Windows Live Photo Gallery
Windows Live Writer
Windows Live OneCare Family Safety
Windows Live Messenger

The installer is really small and pulls down the products you choose to install (I went for everything but OneCare for instance).

There is lots to enjoy and use and Windows Live Messenger and Mail will be the backbone of many a student's life (work and social).

Check out Brandon LeBlanc's blog (great blog, worth subscribing too!) on the Windows Live Suite including a screencast

Technorati Tags: windows live, students, student

Tafiti.com - search engine built on Silverlight

markjo — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 23:02:21 GMT

Tafiti (or "do research" in Swahili) is a great example of what can be done with Silverlight technology and how it can be applied to enhance traditional applications. You can save and share searches and spin between content (images, blogs, web results, etc):

The search engine technology, of course, is Windows Live

Go to www.tafiti.com and give it a spin

Windows Live SkyDrive

markjo — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 23:06:00 GMT

Another week another cool product with a decent name.

SkyDrive is a great new service in the cloud that will allow you to store your precious files.

Quick summary:

- 500 MB storage for free (would love to see a high capacity paid for service).

- Public, friends (Live contacts) and private settings to protect/share your files

- Drag and drop your files

- Embed your stuff anywhere (like below).

Brandon LeBlanc over on the Windows Vista blog has the details on the name change from Windows Live Folders to SkyDrive, and more importantly the new features and a shiny video demo to show it all off - Store your files in “the cloud” with Windows Live SkyDrive

Some very cool stuff right now - with the release of the Windows Home Server recently and the potential of SkyDrive with an API could lead to some very cool solutions to enable 'digital immortality' (someone important called Ray Oz-something used recently).

Mix UK is event registration is live

markjo — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 18:26:25 GMT

Ian has the scoop on Mix UK event site going live.

Great news for all web developers and designers in the UK interested in stuff like Silverlight and Expression. Sign up quick as places will go fast!!

Technorati Tags: mixuk, mix, silverlight, expression

Microsoft UK Student page goes live - built on Silverlight

markjo — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 15:32:41 GMT

I haven't been part of the development but it's good to see this finally go live. We've been hankering for a 1-stop-shop for students wanting to see what Microsoft has to offer for ages and finally have it at:

www.microsoft.com/uk/students

It highlights:

Windows Vista
Windows Media
Xbox and PC gaming
Jobs
Office 2007
Windows Mobile
Visual Studio and Expression
Security
Imagine Cup

(Warning - it can make you feel a bit queasy when the globe starts to spin to fast. All part of the fun and I'm sure we'll continue to developer over the coming months)

The Panel - Creating front end experiences

markjo — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 13:04:00 GMT

The Panel is a new site/community/buzz thing all about stuff that you look at on Windows Vista and the web. It is going to be a 'place' for Microsoft to showcase interesting applications, websites, gadgets that take advantage of all the great new stuff we have in our OS and developer platform:

- Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
- Windows Live Services
- Sidebar Gadgets
- .NET Framework 3.0

And it will show you how it was done so that you can benefit from the knowledge and best of all for us is that you can develop using these technologies in your applications!

For starters, check out UniveRSS which uses the RSS store and then provides a very intuitive and interesting way of viewing your feeds using 3D in WPF. It also deploys via OneClick which makes things a whole lot easier to use.

Now check out this for a URL: https://www.microsoft.com/emea/msdn/thepanel/default.aspx - why can't we have shorter URLs!!! :-(

So much to do, so little time...

markjo — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 01:28:10 GMT

Well, all I seem to talk about these days is that I am going away on holiday for a granduoso 3 weeks to Australia (maybe I should meet up with other DPE folks like Frank or Dave). The countdown is on now with under 2 weeks til we fly off - can't wait. But, that ain't what is interesting to blog readers out there is what is happening while I am gone or after I get back in January..loads of events and important things! Here's a little run down:

Saturday 2nd December - Developer Developer Developer Day (www.developerday.co.uk)

I think I heard today that it is 'sold' (it's free!) out with over 450 developers signed up to hear about the latest and greatest in developer technologies by the real people who use them - not pretend ones like me. There is a load of cool sessions and I will be in attendance (with camera doing some Channel9 bits and bobs) but not speaking. Instead, I'll be chatting to the speakers, attendees and community organisers and maybe getting a couple of sessions in as well. My hot picks:

Ruby on Rails for .NET developers
Developing objects in Javascript
Getting started with Enterprise Library in ASP.NET
...feel the web dev love!

4/5/6 December - Flash on the Beach (www.flashonthebeach.com)

Jon Harris, the User Experience Evangelist in our team, and John Allwright, designer tools PM, are heading to Brighton for 3 days to mix it up with design professionals, developers and Flash people. This is the one thing I'm gutted at missing as I love getting out to conferences and talking to new people, especially those that don't tend to use MS stuff in their jobs.

Jon has the detail here

19/20 January - Vista and Office Launch event for developers

I don't know if you've heard but we've shipped Vista and Office 2007 and we kind of think it's great news. So we will be telling developers all about it on the 19th with a series of presentations split into 2 tracks...you guessed it Office and Vista. I will be delivering 2 sessions:

Presentation Advances in .NET Framework 3.0: aka "why we can kiss goodbye to crappy looking WinForm apps thanks to WPF"

Data and Fileformats in Office 2007: aka "i'm not sure what this ones about yet but will do after me hols

Ian Moulster has some detail on this and a couple of very nicee (Borat style) reasons to attend.

22 - 25 January - Vista and Office events ???

We maybe doing something very cool and getting the launch material and spreading it to other cities around the country. Very early days but if we can pull it off, it will make the launch of Vista/Office to developers a big UK wide series of events

February + March - MSDN Roadshow 2007 and Devweek 2007

Windows Live, WPF and Expression for me but I think there is plenty to keep me busy above until then! :-)

Windows Presentation Foundation search engine using Windows Live Search Macros

markjo — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 17:55:43 GMT

Windows Live Search Macros enables Joe Bloggs like you and me to create our own search engines! WL Search Macros are a great way of getting more out of the default Live search engine by allowing users to create personlised search macros which modify the default experience. For instance, I am doing a lot of WPF development at the moment, expect a few MSDN UK Nuggets from me on the basics in the next week or two! Like anyone that is trying to source information I use the web and almost solely search engines to source answers. I would normally do something like this:

"WPF Animate Rectangle" or "XAML Animate Rectangle" or, because the code-name was around for so long, "Avalon XAML Animate Rectangle"

Everything to do with the subject was prefixxed with one of the key words which said to the search engine, Mark wants to see results on Animating rectangles but only around WPF/Avalon. Wouldn't it be great if I could do that without having to type "WPF" "Avalon" or "XAML". This is where Search Macros come in.

Dead easy to do....I went to the WL Search Macros site and signed in with my Windows Live ID (you don't have to do this, only if you want to save this to use at another time).

Basically what I wanted to do was filter searches which contained the words WPF or Avalon or XAML and restrict it to sites which link to the main http://msdn.microsoft.com site (because I felt this was a good indicator of relevance given MSDN is probably the most definitive source of knowledge on WPF right now)

The syntax was as follows:

wpf | avalon | xaml AND linkdomain:msdn.microsoft.com

(My plan is to improve this over time and include other prominent sites on WPF and include them as relevant on this macro)

The below search compares vanilla with my macro-ed version:

If you want to use my WPF search engine then please point your browser at http://search.live.com/macros/markjo/wpfsites (You can even add it to your search box in IE7

Technorati tags: windows live, search, macros, wpf