Archive for March 2008
Lebron on Live Spaces
Building a clone of MySpace obviously didn’t help Live Spaces catch its competitor in the same way that Facebook has done but I guess if packing features in doesn’t help then good ol’ star power will have to do instead.
Check out Lebron James’ first blog entry on his Live Space http://lebron-blog.spaces.live.com/.
Expect more Lebron branded stuff on MSN/Windows Live before too long in addition to this. At the time of writing he’s got 296 friends; seeing if that number increases dramatically or not might be a useful portent as to the success of Lebron-icising MSN/Windows Live.
What’s with Windows Live URLs?
In my day job as a software developer nerd one discipline that I constantly strive to drill into my teammates is the value of consistency. When products or services look and behave like their related products and services that users have experienced before then it makes those services simpler, easier to understand, it engenders a sense of cohesiveness and generally makes for a better user experience. Consistency generally makes software development easier as well as it promotes reuse of code and processes.
Microsoft Office is a good example of this. Great pains are obviously taken in ensuring that menu options are consistent across all products in all products in the Office suite. Windows Live services are another good example. All of the online services (well, nearly all) leverage a consistent look and feel through the use of the Windows Live header.
Consistency in URLs is very very important because it makes them easier to remember. With that in mind then I wonder why the same discipline that I talked about above isn’t fully employed across the domains of the various Windows Live services. Sure they all end with "Live.com" but that’s generally where consistency ends. Let me try and explain what I mean by that.
Live Spaces
My main touchpoint with Windows Live services is that which you are reading from right now; my Live Space. Let’s take a look at its domain part of my Live Space URLs:
I like that. You know instantly that this is someone’s Live Space and the "jamiethomson" part of it (which I chose) uniquely identifies whose space it is. [N.B. I could have chosen some cryptic, some might say cooler, identifier than a simple concatenation of my first name and last name but I’m a fan of being as descriptive and explicit as possible.] I like that the URL follows a self-explanatory convention of http://unique-identifier.service-name.live.com; I’m not sure if self-explanatory URLs is a tenet of the RESTful movement but if it isn’t it should be.
Zune Social
OK, moving on. On Zune Social the URL of my profile is:
Again, I quite like this. I have been given the option of choosing my Zune tag (I picked the same identifier as I already used for my Live Space) and from looking at the URL you instantly know that "jamiethomson" is a member of Zune Social (whatever that may be). Again, its self-explanatory. Its not exactly consistent with my Live Space (if it was then http://jamiethomson.member.zunesocial.live.com would have made more sense) but given that Zune Social isn’t a Windows Live service I have no quibble here.
It would have been nice if my Zune tag (which is actually the same as an XBox Live gamer tag) were automatically the same as the identifier in my Live Space (or vice versa) but again given that Zune Social/XBox Live is not a Windows Live service I’ll let that one slide.
Live Events
The URL for any event is:
Good, it follows the same convention (http://unique-identifier.service-name.live.com) as my Live Space domain. Its easy to remember and its self-explanatory.
Live Calendar
When I began writing this blog entry I was preparing to be rather critical about Live Calendar’s URL because whenever I signed-in to it I end up at:
Not only does that not contain anything that identifies me it also contains the word "calendar" three times and that seemed utterly pointless to me. However, whilst writing this blog entry I discovered that the following:
takes me to my Live Calendar as well. This is consistent with my Live Space and Live Events, excellent stuff. I’d prefer that this were the default URL for Live Calendar but I won’t complain about that given that this service is still in beta.
Its not all good news with Live Calendar though. I keep a few publicly available calendars at:
- Leeds United fixtures – http://jamie.calendar.live.com/calendar/Leeds+United+fixtures/index.html
- Events in Sunbury-on-Thames (my home village) – http://jamie.calendar.live.com/calendar/Sunbury-on-Thames/index.html
The URLs shown here contain "jamie". Why is that? Its not relevant information and its not something I picked either – if an identifier for me were to be used then it should be "jamiethomson" as per my Live Space. What is the domain going to be for calendars created by someone else called Jamie? This seems a very strange choice of URL convention to me and I don’t even understand why my name even has to be present. Surely http://leeds+united+fixtures.calendar.live.com/ and http://Sunbury-on-Thames.calendar.live.com/ would be better wouldn’t they?
Skydrive
Its getting even worse now. My Skydrive domain is:
What on earth is that meant to be? What’s wrong with http://jamiethomson.skydrive.live.com? At least I’d be able to remember that. In practice its not so much of a problem for me because http://skydrive.live.com will redirect me to the above URL but its a huge problem for anyone that I am sharing files with because they have to store the URL of the file in order to access it rather than just remembering it. That’s BAD. And Skydrive doesn’t have the excuse of being a beta service anymore either.
Windows Live Groups
Domain names for the forthcoming Windows Live Groups service are unknown at this time but I will be disappointed if they are not http://group-name.groups.live.com (or http://group-name.jamiethomson.groups.live.com for private groups).
After the domain name
OK, that’s tackled some of the various domains of the Windows Live services, now let’s examine the URLs of the sub-domain resources.
I have a blog category on my Live Space called "Zune". Given that http://jamiethomson.spaces.live.com/blog takes you to all of my blog entries would it not make sense for the URL of that category to be http://jamiethomson.spaces.live.com/blog/category/zune or something similar? Of course it would, instead its this:
WTF!!! Am I supposed to be able to remember that? Does it even tell me what content actually resides at that URL? The answer to both of those questions is a resounding "No". This is really bad, as are these:
- http://jamiethomson.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!550F681DAD532637!4361.entry – A blog entry apparently. If I want to know anything about this blog entry I need to actually go and read it.
- http://by134w.bay134.mail.live.com/mail/mail.aspx?rru=inbox&n=477908188 – Hotmail home page. Would http://jamiethomson.mail.live.com be so bad?
Credit where credit is due I suppose, some URLs on Live Spaces do make some sense:
- http://jamiethomson.spaces.live.com/profile/
- http://jamiethomson.spaces.live.com/photos/
- http://jamiethomson.home.services.spaces.live.com/messages/
- http://jamiethomson.spaces.live.com/guestbook/
- http://jamiethomson.spaces.live.com/friends/?filter=Family+and+friends (I’d prefer http://jamiethomson.spaces.live.com/friends/Family+and+friends but never mind)
Conclusion
While there has clearly been some effort to try and unify URL conventions across all of the Windows Live properties there is still some way to go. Live Calendar URLs need to be reviewed before that service comes out of beta and Skydrive needs to be completely overhauled, without breaking existing links of course. I also hope that the Live Spaces people give some thought to URLs for their fine-grained resources such as blog entries and blog categories.
-Jamie
Going home (a personal blog entry)
Zune ideas still spewing forth
I’m still throwing ideas for Zune Social up onto the Zune Forums. My latest few are below, let me know what you think.
How about when we browse to an artist on ZMP or the Social you show information from their XRank profile.
XRank is a vertical search offering from Live Search that ranks celebrities based on how often they’ve been in the news lately. For example, here is John Lennon’s XRank: http://search.live.com/xrank/results.aspx?q=John+Lennon and the XRank for my favourite all time band, The Stone Roses http://search.live.com/xrank/results.aspx?q=the+stone+roses
There’s a lot of information on there that could be leveraged in Zune Social/ZMP. If nothing else just show their XRank on the artist profile page in Zune Social.
RSS feeds for my plays and other data
I’d like to see RSS feeds provided that pass out all my information. Something like the following might work:
- My plays: http://social.zune.net/member/jamiethomson/plays.rss
- My favourites: http://social.zune.net/member/jamiethomson/favourites.rss
- Most played songs: http://social.zune.net/member/jamiethomson/mostplayedsongs.rss
- Most played artists: http://social.zune.net/member/jamiethomson/mostplayedartists.rss
- My friends’ plays: http://social.zune.net/member/jamiethomson/friendplays.rss
- My recently posted forum entries: http://social.zune.net/member/jamiethomson/forumposts.rss
- You get the idea….
That way I’d be able to choose which information I want on my Zune profile or I’d be able to show it on other sites such as http://friendfeed.com/jamiet
Obviously I would have the option of whether to make this data available or not.
You could also make site-scoped info available as well:
- http://social.zune.net/mostplayedsongs.rss
- http://social.zune.net/mostplayedartists.rss
- http://social.zune.net/mostplayedalbums.rss
- http://social.zune.net/newforumthreads.rss
Or artist-scoped info:
-Jamie |
-Jamie
Loving photo stitch in Windows Live Photo Gallery
The view from my office window in downtown Houston.
Windows Live service bites the dust
I don’t prefer Windows Live Spaces to Facebook
Brandon LeBlanc just posted a blog entry entitled I prefer Windows Live Spaces to Facebook. Well Brandon, I can’t agree I’m afraid. When compared as pure social-networking offerings Facebook wins hands down for 2 main reasons:
- I am associated with MUCH more of my "real-life" friends on Facebook than I am on Live Spaces
- Facebook is feature rich compared to Live Spaces. e.g. Live Spaces’ newsfeed (currently) contains only 6 different types of information, Facebook’s contains much more than that.
I should post a disclaimer at this point. On an earlier post of Brandon’s I left a comment saying "I couldn’t give a toss that none of my friends are on [Live Spaces] cos I don’t want to waste my time on "social networking". I don’t do Facebook for the same reason." I have to admit that’s no longer true – of late I have gotten the bug and have been drawn inexorably into regularly visiting Facebook.
So, you may ask, why do I use Live Spaces so much? Well the answer is pretty simple, and its something I alluded to in the first line of this blog entry. Facebook is a social-networking platform and in my opinion its the best one there is … but that is ALL it is. My Windows Live ID (which gets me into Live Spaces) gives me access to a plethora of things that you don’t get with Facebook such as:
- Online email with offline syncing that works better than any other sync method out there (with a choice of any email address on the planet)
- Online file storage
- Personalised news content
- Blogging
- Document collaboration
- Music-based social network
- Geo-Collections
- Instant Messaging (actually, you could argue that because I have more contacts on Live Messenger than on Facebook then my Windows-Live-based social network is actually larger, but given that this is in reply to a post comparing Facebook with Windows Live Spaces I’ll let them one slide)
- Video hosting
- Hi-def video hosting
- Calendar
- Contacts shared across email, instant messaging, mobile phone and social networking
- Everything working on my phone too
- 3rd party sites (example)
- List-keeping
In summary the reason I align myself with Windows Live is simply because it provides access to so much more services than any other online ID. There aren’t many of the Windows Live services that could be considered best-of-breed but collectively they form the best integrated overall offering out there. People who read my blog regularly are probably sick of me saying that but its true so I’m going to keep saying it.
-Jamie
Falling in love with Friendfeed
My mate andybrit got me to try out Friendfeed last week. I was a bit skeptical at first but thought I’d give it a go and I’m glad I did. For those that don’t know what Friendfeed is, it basically aggregates all of your blog entries, twitter tweets, Flickr photos, Google Reader shared items and loads of other stuff. The real beauty of it is that once you’ve set it up you don’t have to revisit it and through the use of a Facebook app everything you do ends up in your friends’ Facebook news feeds. Without me having to do anything. That’s cool. I’ve even got all comments from my Live Space appearing on there thanks to Scott’s Live Spaces comment aggregator. I love the fact there’s all these services out there working together, I just wish that http://twittermsn.com was still working so that I could post to Twitter from Live Messenger and automatically have it show up in Facebook via Friendfeed.
Is it a good idea for all my non-geek mates to know about all the crap I post on here and on my work blog? Probably not but I’ll soon find out for sure if I start getting ridiculed for it.
If anyone else out there happens to use Friendfeed you can befriend me here: http://friendfeed.com/jamiet
-Jamie
Speculating about Horizon
- Given that Ray Ozzie talked about a way of connecting all of your PCs I’m wondering if Horizon will incorporate some sort of web-based remote access to your various PCs, a little bit like GoToMyPC.com, maybe through the form of a web-based RDP client. Terminal Services for the masses if you will.
- Horizon seems to promise anytime access to your personal data hence I am wondering if Skydrive synchronisation will be incorporated into Foldershare. I hope so.
- Windows Live Favorites already allows us to synchronise our web favorites to the cloud and across different PCs so I would assume that there would be some sort of interface to view those Favorites from within Horizon as well. And why stop at Favorites? Why not make ALL of your desktop settings such as menubar setup, IE and Windows security settings, and word lists sync across all computers as well.
- Microsoft make money from building software that acts as a platform so I would assume that Horizon will also be a platform of sorts. In other words I would expect that there will be a way for 3rd party vendors to build Horizon add-ins; for example, Salesforce might provide an add-in to display your sales leads on Horizon. Of course, in the web world add-ins are known as "widgets" or "gadgets" so Microsoft are going to have to make a much better stab at this than the largely ignored Live.com and Live Gallery.
- Let’s not forget Chris Jones’ memo from summer 2007:
“Windows Live Wave 3 will be designed so it feels like a natural extension of the Windows experience. … We will ‘light up’ the Windows experience with Windows Live. … What’s the relationship between a Windows account and a Windows Live ID (Microsoft’s Web-authentication technology)? Should we have a LiveID connected to account settings?”
Reading between the lines I would guess that "Horizon" is the brand name for Windows Live wave 3.
-
As Joe Wilcox says the key to Microsoft’s software+services strategy is synchronisation and he’s spot on. Ozzie built a synchronization platform prior to Microsoft with Groove and since he joined Microsoft he’s built another one with Feedsync. No wonder Microsoft are effectively open-sourcing Feedsync, its going to be the standard that powers Horizon and they want everyone to join the party.
What do you think?
-Jamie
UPDATE: Wouldn’t you know it….30 minutes after I publish this and George Moore publishes this blog entry on the Windows Live dev blog. Here’s my big takeaway:
Area Product, Library or Protocol 4: Synchronization infrastructure: "Astoria Offline" Microsoft Sync Framework Feedsync AtomPub extensions 3: Developer tools: ADO.NET Data Services .NET WCF Syndication libraries AtomPub URI namespace conventions 2: Protocols: AtomPub Atom 1: Underlying Products and Services: On-premise: SQL Server Structured Cloud Storage: SQL Server Data Services Live services: Spaces Photos and Application Data Storage While all of the above code is available for initial use, this stack is not complete – there is more to come at even higher levels of abstraction. I’ll leave you with an additional foreshadowed reference to future announcements in this space, again quoting from Ray Ozzie’s MIX08 keynote:
Before you know it, you in this audience are going to have the option of being the first to try out an early technology preview of this simple but incredibly useful new software and service. As this product emerges just over the horizon, I think you’ll find it to be quite intriguing and key in delivering upon a compelling vision of a personal device mesh and of connected devices.
Quite obviously Horizon/Mesh is the "higher level of abstraction" being mentioned here. But enough of dripfeeding us information….show us the goods. Please.
Exploring Foldershare
As you may know by now, Windows Live Foldershare got released in beta today. Its been a long time coming, Microsoft bought Foldershare back in November 2005. Let’s take a little look at the new version.
Logging into the service online has a rather familiar feel to it:
I’ve definitely seen that look-and-feel somewhere before. Oh yeah, I know where, on Skydrive.
So that’s good news. Clearly there’s some synergy between the two so let’s hope that one day soon we will be able to synchronise files to our Skydrive as well.
I also like the fact that I can now access my various machines’ hard drive from wherever I am in the world in real-time using the remote-access feature.
Of course, that’s assuming that the machines are turned on. If they’re not turned on then I’m a bit stuck which is why synchronisation with Skydrive is so important. Still, I do think this is very cool and the fact that I can setup libraries on remote machines just from the website is commendable. It will be especially useful when I get round to purchasing a Windows Home Server machine. Software+services? You betcha.
If nothing else this ability to remotely access my machines means that I can access my music collection from anywhere in the world which is definitely a good thing. Actually, no I can’t. Apparently there’s a limit on the number of files that can be stored in a library which means that my music collection is off-limits for now.
That’s a downside however. I’m very disappointed to learn that you can’t yet login to Foldershare using your Windows Live ID. As I’ve said many a time before the main reason that I’m such a fan of Windows Live isn’t because any of the services or products are necessarily the best available, its because I can access this plethora of services using the same login. Until today that is, Foldershare is off limits to my Windows Live ID it seems. I’d love to know why this strange decision has been made but in the meantime I have submitted the appropriate feedback on this point. A side issue of not using the Windows Live ID to login to Foldershare is that I can’t choose which of my contacts to share my Foldershare libraries with. Like I said, very very disappointing.
Its actually quite significant that this has been released so recently after MIX08 because as I said last week, I don’t think Windows Live Horizon is too far away. Horizon seems be all about syncing your resources over multiple computers and multiple devices so Foldershare would seem to dovetail quite nicely with that particular offering.
-Jamie
Jamie Thomson 