The MossyBlog Times Archives 2007 - 2009 : Live.com

Live Mesh, the portable code repository.

scbarnes — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 03:40:08 GMT

The Environment.

I’ve got three machines that I’ve allocated to role based use, as typically given the nature of my role here at Microsoft I'm all to often loading/unloading software far to much (I dogfood a lot of our internal products).

I not only dogfood, but I constantly roam the hallways of Redmond campus using a couple of laptops depending on the meetings I attend. If it’s a meeting where I'm a simple listener, I'll bring my EEE 1000H PC notebook as it’s small and typically only used for notes and email.

If the meeting requires me to demo or write document length notes, then I’ll take my Macbook Pro along for the ride.

If I’m at my desk, I’ll use my iMac given I like the screen it has and secondly it takes up little room (Windows 7 on an 24” iMac is gorgeous).

Meanwhile, at home I have what I call my gaming rig, which is the primary use for it. The reality is I end up doing most of my 3D animation/modeling and 2D design on this rig.

Enter Live Mesh.

I typically have kept various documents, artwork, code, decks etc on a portable HDD i lug around. It’s got about 500gig of space on it (80% full). This has worked in the past, but it’s a pain in the butt to remember to copy files over to the HDD each time i move between machines.

That is until I discovered Live Mesh. This is by far a sweet product of ours and here’s why:

Sync Files. I’m working on a Silverlight project which has a lot of digital assets and code attached to it. Given I use different machines for the generation of such assets, I’ve found a Live Mesh Folder to compliment this. As no matter what machine I’m on, I'm able to keep all machines synchronized with my latest assets.
Invite others. I’ve already shared my Silverlight project with a few other folks, and instead of putting them in an internal sharepoint site or fire up Office Groove (which is kind of like Live Mesh), i can simply give them READ access to the files to review as I progress.
Remote in. I’ve found this to be the best of all, as at times I need to find a file i left on my portable HDD or in my home pc that i had ages ago. The fact I can remote in via Live Mesh to my machines from work etc to get the said files is a bonus. The sweet spot is once I find the said files, I just add them to my Live Mesh folders and boom, all machines get the said files there after..

Kind of like reaching into the void and grabbing what you need.

I’ve personally found Live Mesh to be something I just can’t live without now, and it’s a brilliant concept for you to share projects around with. The downside however is that it doesn’t have versioning so be aware! :)

The Prank.

I found when I fired up the “Remotely Connect” into my work computer one night that the webcam can be turned on, so I was able to view my office via home via my iMac.

As I switched it on though, I found a certain utility worker snooping around in my office, and thought that was quite odd. I then decided to have a little fun to discourage this from continuing, so I quickly fired up Zune Player on the desktop.

Loaded up a song, and hit play.. he jumped with fright and began to inspect what the hell was going on (given the iMac looks like it’s turned off).

He then walked outside of my office into the hallway, and i stopped the music. He came back in, I turned it back on and we repeated this for a good 10mins.

He then called in his other co-workers to “Check this out”. This time, I fired up an old trick, by loading the “Arnie Soundboard” and proceeded to relive a jerky boys moment.

Next thing you know all were hearing “Excuse me, I’d like to ask you a bunch of questions and I want them answered immediately” only in Arnie’s voice.

It was heaps of fun, and they got a giggle out of it, but the most important thing of all, is the utility worker knew that someone was watching the office and it discouraged him from poking around in sensitive areas.

Live Mesh is awesome! Great work Live Mesh team!

I expect to now see virtual mapping in all real estate websites, otherwise you lost my business.

scbarnes — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 12:18:52 GMT

I'm obviously not just thinking of buying a property in the US but I'm also selling property in Australia. In doing this, I've scoured all the websites I can find, that carry out listings in both regions.

The one thing that really has stuck with me are the real estate sites that don't make use of mapping technology such as Virtual Earth / Live Search Maps (oh and the other teams version heh).

Seriously, if you're in the real estate business and you're not making use of mapping technology at all, you may as well call it a day. It's the same as not having a product listing gallery or a shopping cart in an e-commerce site.

It doesn't necessarily end with "look this is where the house is" it's more to do with "look this is where the house is, here are some others around it too".

I've gotten into the habit of expecting this to occur as I know my current location really well, but I know little about my destination. So I'm looking for visual queue to make this process easier for me, in return I'll happily contact whom ever you put in either the form or phone details within the house I click on.

A lot of sites do this today. If you know a company that's not, encourage them to do so!

This is now even more critical with economies around the world going through some stabilisation pains, folks are either looking to sell or buy and are more interested in figuring out financial benchmarks more so than ever and virtual maps are the perfect starting point to visually representing this.

Check out Virtual Earth SDK, especially some of the new changes that have been made.

http://maps.live.com/

Bronwen and John from Soul Solutions (two friends & MVP's) have done a lot in this space, ask them for the heads up on all this mapping buzz - should you not have caught it yet.

WalkScore, very useful for a international house hunter.

scbarnes — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 09:29:40 GMT

I'm currently browsing the interweb, checking out houses to either buy or lease in the Seattle area. I came across this site via colleague and I must say, it's quite a great concept and technically well executed.

WalkScore.com simply rates the walking distance on a given location and lets you know what kind of various businesses etc that are around your location.

The only thing that bugs the heck out of me about this solution, is it's not using Live Maps (bleh to Google Maps). I love Virtual Earth at the moment, given it's using PhotoSynth which is hyper cool.

I wish it was in Virtual Earth! :)

http://www.walkscore.com/get-score.php?street=1+Eagle+Street+Brisbane+QLD

What if you could combine RIA with tomorrows multi touch innovation

scbarnes — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 06:42:26 GMT

I was mucking about in YouTube today (smacks for me and not doing work) and I came across a project being built at MIT. This project allows folks to draw a physics based diagram which then comes to life on what appears to be a homemade (MIT style) "Smart Board".

Watch the YouTube video below to see how it happens.

I then also came across another video (next in the play list) where a teacher was instructing his students on various laws around what appears to be electronic circuits (I could barely keep up with it - I'm dumb though). I thought to myself what a great contrast the two illustrate.

I say this as when you watch the teacher instruct the students on the lesson, he is using chalk to outline various points in his lecture. In that he'd use arrows to illustrate the flow of a current in a electric circuit. He'd also then add variables to the equation which would in return produce different results.

What if he used a similar technology as the one produced by MIT? What if he was able to draw his electronic circuit in a way that visually came to life, allowing the slow ones (like me) to suddenly see how it's all coming together.

How does RIA play a role you maybe asking (well you are now)?

It gets better, as the picture below indicates; the teacher has just run out of room on his blackboard. Thankfully he has cascading boards which he then makes use of, but what if he continues to grow and grow and needs more room as he decomposes the situation further.

How does the students keep track or have the ability to refer to previous "boards"?

What if that person was to have a device, one that uses some of the RIA technology of today? What if they were able to communicate with the friend next to them - silently - with a Live messenger style query "..I have no idea wtf this means, show me.." their study friend could then overlay some drawing(s) etc on top and since he/she may know their friends learning habits find a better way to illustrate the lesson in terms that the friend understands.

RIA is a concept; it's not really a Flash, Silverlight, WPF or any one thing. It's merely a place in time where technology is able to aggregate data and present in different ways that reduces a footprint on any one person’s nominated platform. A friend once said, "Aggregated View of Disparate Systems".

We at Microsoft are building a UX Platform that is looking to keep these concepts all in perspective and that's essentially what a Platform is all about. Providing a foundation for tomorrows innovation.

In this case, take all of the above technology and look at how it could fit into tomorrow’s learning institutes. Who knows our ramp up to learning a topic maybe shorter?

I once had a great debate with Frank Arrigo's replacement, man at the helm Roger Lawrence about technology makes us smarter. I thought it did, but Roger put it to me that we aren't smarter but technology does help ramp up faster than normal. Our intelligence doesn't grow, simply our understanding.

I love this industry.

LiveNet 0.2 Released..

scbarnes — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 17:23:04 GMT

I stumbled upon this blog entry over at spaces.live.com, where Scott Lovegrove (MVP) has put together a pretty sweet little application. This application enables you to view your uploaded Silverlight Live Streaming apps in a simplified way.

It's something we should have done in a web based format, and I'm sure there are some "I want for 2008.." style emails floating in the Silverlight Live Streaming folks inboxes.

None the less, Scott & Luke have done a pretty sweet job at this and I for one will be using it.

LiveNet 0.2 Released- Silverlight Streaming Added

Feel like abusing or praising me direct?

scbarnes — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 09:26:55 GMT

This month I dub thee "Live.com" month, as clearly there is a lot of new toys coming out around this space (keep an eye on it and some other things on the horizon).

One thing you'll now note about my blog is the fact that you can IM me direct should you have a burning desire - this can be done via the right Messenger Panel.

Next, I'd love to see Messenger + Comments integrated as that would be more fun and relevant to tomorrows blogger's.

Off to enter that as a wishlist for the Live.com team...

Angus Logan has been uploaded to the mothership.

scbarnes — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 09:54:08 GMT

Angus Logan (aka Oz Sharepoint Demi-God) has been targeted for upgrades, and thus has been uploaded to Redmond.

Geeky words aside, Angus has been I guess promoted, to becoming the new Technical Product Manager for Windows Live Platform Team. This is good news for Microsoft, as Angus is quite passionate about the platform itself and has the skill sets to match, so it should be a great fit for one and all.

I hope he can every now and then slip me some inside goss on where Live Platform is heading before most of the mainstream internals as after all, I did wing a Silverlight + Sharepoint demo for him (whilst the Internet gave out half-way heheh).

All the best Angus and good luck in Sunny Seattle - hah!

MIX07 - Day 1 - Keynote notes.

scbarnes — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 20:23:09 GMT

Expression Studio was just announced as being public today by Ray Ozzie. Silverlight story was told, and overall the kids are happy so far (few cheers).
Windows Live Platform Group are going to make some announcements tomorrow as well.
Silverlight + Photosynth Zoom capabilities are also now in the room.
Silverlight Streaming announced. It's a companion services to Silverlight, and taps into Microsoft online cloud. Silverlight will be picking up the tab in empowering users to post Silverlight centric content onto Microsoft servers to then be streamed out to the world-wide-web (aka interweb).
Ray Ozzie's keywords "Experience First" which is the key ingredient behind our new toys.
Silverlight now has a x-platform version of the .NET framework and installed under 20 secs (install time).
There is now a Silverlight preview version on the web with both design and developer tools made available! (which is uber cool).
700,000 sites today have ASP.NET AJAX keeping the RIA concept flowing.
Silverlight media can stream to XBOX 360.
Our streaming service is 3-4 times cheaper then any other on the market today.
More later...

Microsoft AIRLIFT 07 (Live.com Debrief)

scbarnes — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 03:30:14 GMT

I can't say much about much about what took place in an internal debrief around Live.com and Spaces.com. I have to watch my wording here as I could get into trouble for letting things slip, suffice to say I can talk about what's public today.

Live.com exists, it's got a lot of already established goodness on the table and what most of you see via dev.live.com has gotten better, and one day in the near future you'll see more and more additions to this approach taken by Microsoft.

At first when I heard Microsoft was heading into Web 2.0 space with Live.com, I must admit I rolled my eyes and simply "nodded" and smiled. I was an idiot, as once you look at ASP.NET + AJAX Toolkit and then think some more around Web 2.0, you don't have to be smart before you realize that these folks may know a thing or two about empowering users of all walks of life (coders, designers etc) to create their own Web 2.0 pieces.

I urge you all, whom play with the Web 2.0 concepts and AJAX for that matter, to take a look at dev.live.com and download Visual Studio Web Express (Free, as in Beer) with ASP AJAX Toolkit and start learning now.

As from what I just saw in the past three days, I can only give a strong thumbs up.

So far these are some of the pieces available today around Live.com

Windows Live Call for Free

Windows Live Custom Domains

Windows Live Dev

Windows Live Expo

Windows Live Favorites

Windows Live Mail desktop

Windows Live Mail for mobile

Windows Live Messenger

Windows Live Messenger for mobile

Windows Live Mobile

Windows Live OneCare

Windows Live OneCare Family Safety

Windows Live OneCare Safety Scanner

Windows Live Product Upload

Windows Live Publishing Portal

Windows Live Shopping

Windows Live Spaces

Windows Live Toolbar and Desktop Search

Windows Live Web Search

Windows Live Writer

I also have uploaded some Photos of my AIRLIFT07 Seattle adventures, so if you have time to kill check them out. Also keep http://blogs.msdn.com/klevy/ blog in your RSS watch list as he has the inside scoop around what MIX07 will have in stock.

I went to an Internal Microsoft mashup tonight.

scbarnes — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 11:12:46 GMT

As some would know, I'm currently in Seattle, Microsoft HQ getting to know some of the various product folks and the upcoming offerings post MIX07. At any rate, tonight Michael and I went to see some Microsoftonians put together some Web 2.0 mashups. My initial reaction at first was uncertainty, in that "Do Microsoft really get Web 2.0" (It does float around in my head from time to time).

Tonight though, I have to say "Yes" to that as watching some of the mashups being put together in rapid succession was actually quite impressive. I'm looking forward to seeing others reactions at the public mashup @ MIX07 next week as there's some talent in the room that's for sure (go figure).

Anyway, Christophe Lauer fellow Microsoftee has put together a video of the night (around 1min 30sec) and I was going to do a preso on a mashup I have, but sadly I got to tired (big day).

Mashup Day on Microsoft Campus