Strategy and Architecture Council : Windows Live

Archstone Apartments Leverages WPF and Live Maps for Kiosks

dpeuswr — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:02:58 GMT

One of the customers that I have worked with for quite some time is Archstone. They are a top notch organization that have done a lot of interesting things with technology do set themselves apart in the apartment management space. Recently they just completed a rollout of a kiosk based solution for prospective residents that is really impressive.

Read the full article on Joe Shirey’s blog at http://www.joeshirey.com/2009/06/17/ArchstoneApartmentsLeveragesWPFAndLiveMapsForKiosks.aspx

Web Activities in Windows Live

dpeuswr — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 08:00:28 GMT

One of the brand new features in the new release of Windows Live is the ability to aggregate data from other non-Microsoft websites into your “What’s New” feed – this feature is called “web activities”. If you want people in your Windows Live network to know what stories you are Digging, what you are writing on Twitter, or what you’ve written on your (none Windows Spaces) blog? If so then you will really like web activities.

Read the full article on John Stame’s blog at http://jcstame.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/web-activities-in-windows-live/

John L. Scott Real Estate Enables Online Social Networking with Live Services and Silverlight

dpeuswr — Sat, 30 May 2009 01:55:00 GMT

John L. Scott Real Estate (JLS) is delivering a unique social networking solution, called JLSconnect, that makes it easier for buyers to shop for a home, and it will help JLS agents win new business and keep customers. By building this new solution using Microsoft software and a Software+Services approach, John L. Scott was able to deliver unique customer value quickly and cost-effectively. The company has easily repackaged existing Web functionality, combined it with new capabilities provided by Microsoft Live Services, and delivered it all through a user experience powered by Silverlight and optimized for the task at hand: collaborating with family, friends, and a John L. Scott agent when shopping for a home.

Read the full article on Sam Chenaur’s blog at http://blog.samchenaur.com/2009/05/26/john-l-scott-real-estate-enables-online-social-networking-with-live-services.aspx

AJAX, HTTP, and SOAP access to Microsoft Translator

dpeuswr — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 08:35:09 GMT

Many new and interesting developments on the Microsoft Web platform were unveiled at the MIX09 conference last week, such as Silverlight 3, Eclipse Tools for Silverlight, .NET RIA Services, Web Platform Installer, IIS Smooth Streaming, Windows Web Applications Gallery, Windows Azure enhancements, Expression Blend SketchFlow, Expression Web SuperPreview, Internet Explorer 8, etc. Here’s a innovative service that was not highlighted during the keynote presentations.

Microsoft Translator, also branded as Live Search Translator, is a free language translation service that can take any text-based content (text strings, HTML pages, XML, etc.) as input, and translate it from one language to another, such as Arabic, Chinese (both simplified and traditional), French, German, Japanese, Spanish, etc. The service has been around for a while, and is very similar to the Google Translate offering.

Read the full article on David Chou’s blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/dachou/archive/2009/03/21/ajax-http-and-soap-access-to-microsoft-translator.aspx