Reigning ideas down

Just throwing this out there.

 

Here’s a few ideas I’ve posted for Zune and Office Live Workspaces over the past few days. I’ve provided the links so you can go in and read the ensuing discussions.

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Zune

 

1. Zunervision. (http://forums.zune.net/168928/ShowPost.aspx)

   One of the coolest mashups I saw last year was TwitterVision. That’s where various Tweets from around the world are displayed on a map and you can actually watch the world is saying.

   Popfly actually made it possible for non-programmers to build the same mashup themselves just using drag-and-drop.

   Would’t it be cool if you could do the same thing with "the last song that someone listened to on their Zune" or "the last podcast someone listened to on their Zune" or "the last video that someone watched on their Zune"? Throw that stuff onto a map along with wherever that person happens to be located and watch what people around the world are listening to or watching.

2. Gig-going (http://forums.zune.net/170108/ShowPost.aspx)

   Zune is a social network to do with music, right?

   Well, what’s the most social thing you can do in regard to music? Easy…going to gigs, that’s what. I’ve got lots of friends that I know just from being fans of the same band and we actually met online in chat rooms and such like back in the mid 90s (god I’m old).

   So that’s got me thinking. How could Zune Social be the chat room of today where you can meet people, become friends and go gigging with them. Some ideas:

   • Put a discussion forum on each artist’s page. This is a no-brainer and one I’ve suggested before
   • Have some sort of chat room, possibly on each artist’s page. This is more immediate than a message forum. It would be great if you could interact with the chat room using Live Messenger
   • Use Messenger Presence API and Messenger IM Control so that everyone on Zune Social can show if they’re online or not (I’ve suggested this one ad nauseum as well) so that you can get an immediate discussion going with someone.
   • Publish tour dates on an artist’s page
   • Sponsor tours (I know you do this already)
   • Gig newsletters
   • Ticket booking service (partner with Ticketmaster for this)
   • Have volunteers from this community who organise meet-ups at gigs.
   • Provide a Windows Live Event template that can be used to organise the meet-ups.

   There’s is one huge drawback to this. Because its called Zune Social people are going to assume that you need a Zune to come and interact on here and that aint the case. So, how are you going to get the message out that Zune Social is a place for music lovers everywhere, not just Zune owners? Difficult one that!

3. Show songs that are being played right now (http://forums.zune.net/168937/ShowPost.aspx)

   The front page of the Zune Social shows most played songs/artists/albums. That’s fairly interesting but its VERY static (i’ve barely seen the top 5 change yet) so its incredibly boring content. How about show which songs are being listened to RIGHT NOW based on the most recently uploaded play data. At least that would change now and again.

4. Show listening trends (http://forums.zune.net/168939/ShowPost.aspx)

   If we go to an artist page we get to see how many times someone has listened to that artist. Why not break that down a little bit? Why not show a trend over time when they are being listened to. If nothing else it would be interesting to see if the number of plays goes up when a new album is released or if someone is in the news a lot (e.g. Britney). Or break it down demographically. You know how old we are and our gender. Why not break plays down by those demographic attributes? This would be really interesting to see. Or, if someone listens to bandX, which band are they most likely to listen to next? You’ve got reams and reams of this play data…let us delve into it and see what interesting trends are in there!

5. Zune blog (http://forums.zune.net/165382/ShowPost.aspx)

   I write a lot of posts about Zune on my blog (http://jamiethomson.spaces.live.com). It would be cool if all my blog posts in my Zune category automatically appeared on my Zune profile page (http://social.zune.net/member/jamiethomson)  

6. Sync photos and videos from RSS feeds (http://forums.zune.net/162009/ShowPost.aspx) 

   Currently in order to get photos/videos onto our devices we have to manually put that media into a place where Zune software will see it. Wouldn’t it be better if we could subscribe to RSS feeds of photos/videos from sites like Flickr, Live Spaces, YouTube, MSN Video and have them automatically appear in our Zune media collection? After all, this is pretty much the model that you follow with podcasts. An added bonus: If the photos/videos were on Live Spaces/MSN Video then they wouldn’t have to be publicly accessible videos because we log onto those services using the same Live ID that we use to log onto Zune. 

   
   
    

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Office Live Workspaces

1. Permalinks (https://officeliveworkspacecommunity.com/forums/t/438.aspx)

   Delighted to see document permalinks introduced today (i.e. 28th Feb 2008). Top work, thanks.

   The permalinks aren’t very readable though. Can’t it be more like http://workspace.office.live.com/workspace-owner/workspace-name/document-name? That would be even more useful.

2. Outlook Web Access (OWA) & Office Live Workspaces (OLW)

   It sems to me that there is an overlap between Outlook Web Access and OLW. Both are online services that support "fat" clients.

   Can we expect to see further integration in the future? For example, our Exchange mailboxes become synced to some service in the cloud that can then be viewed through OLW. I know that our Outlook calendars can already get synced to the cloud (http://jamiethomson.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!550F681DAD532637!2934.entry) so it would be great to be able to view that through OLW rather than Office Online.

3. View different Excel sheets in OWA (https://officeliveworkspacecommunity.com/forums/t/409.aspx)

   I have been a little disappointed to learn that its not possible to view different sheets seperately in an Excel workbook from within OLW. Sure, they appear "stacked" on top of each other but I’d appreciate a way to navigate through the sheets, similar to being within Excel.

4. Sync with Listas  (https://officeliveworkspacecommunity.com/forums/t/233.aspx)

   Please could you provide the ability to sync my OLW lists with Listas (http://listas.labs.live.com)

5. Notification of updates   (https://officeliveworkspacecommunity.com/forums/t/408.aspx)  

   I was using OLW recently to share a document with my fiance who just happened to be on the other side of the world at the time using Firefox on a Mac. We were talking on Skype, I had the document open in Word and was making changes, and my fiance was able to see those changes whenever I hit CTRL-S by simply hitting refresh on her browser. This was a really great experience and it was enlightening to me just how useful this is going to prove to be in the future.

   I have one bit of feedback though. It would be nice if, whenever I hit CTRL-S, there were some sort of notification to tell her that the document had been updated. Ideally this would be a little toast pop-up just like you get in Outlook Web Access (OWA) whenever a new email arrives.

 

 

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Any more ideas?

-Jamie

Office Live Workspaces Community

I hadn’t realised until today but the Office Live Workspaces (OLW) team are attempting to build a fledgling social network around their product called Office Live Workspace Community. They have the notion of friends, sharing of RSS feeds, personal bio, private messages and avatars. You can see my public profile here: http://officeliveworkspacecommunity.com/user/Profile.aspx?UserID=3415

Similar to Zune Social, you log in with your Windows Live ID. This is good news, it means that we can expect to see integration with Windows Live services in the future. Here’s some ideas that I submitted on the OLW forums:

• If I give someone access to one of my Office Live Workspace (OLW) documents, I would like them to be notified on their Live Spaces "What’s New" feed.
• When I’m choosing people that I can share OLW documents with I’d like to be able to choose from my list of live contacts
• If someone edits a document in a workspace that I have access to, tell me (or at least give me the option to be told) via Live Alerts.
• Upload attachments in Hotmail/Windows Live mail directly into OLW
• If I have due dates set on my tasks, make them show up in Windows Live Calendar
• Same with event lists, make them appear in Windows Live Calendar. Conversely, let all my Live Events appear as an event list in OLW
• There’s a notion of ‘friends’ in OLW. These should show up in my Live Contacts. If that person is already in my contact list (i.e. the Live ID is already there) then there shouldn’t be a duplicate.
• Moreover, I’d like my OLW friends to automatically appear in a special group called "OLW Friends" or something.
• Provide a gadget that enables me to display the contents of a OLW on my Live Space or on http://my.live.com
• OLW has the notion of contact lists. I don’t think you should do this given that Live Contacts exists but if you ARE going to do it, allow people to import contacts from Live Contacts
• Hotmail should provide the ability to save a document to OLW
• Allow me to see if someone is online by leveraging Messenger Presence API and the Messenger IM control (http://dev.live.com/messenger/).
• If I’m on a web page somewhere that has a link to an Office document on it, provide a WL Toolbar button that enables me to upload it to OLW
• Allow me to import files that are on my skydrive

Its the usual sort of stuff that I always ask for and as usual I’m excited by the possibilities that exist by leveraging the Windows Live ID. Its not all good however, I don’t like the fact that I’m asked to supply information that I’ve supplied elsewhere.

Microsoft already know my name, location, friends, birthday, avatar and interests because its in my Live Profile. Isn’t one of the benefits of Live Services supposed to be the fact you only have to supply this information once? Admittedly Windows Live Data doesn’t yet expose much of this information – this needs to change as soon as possible. Are you listening Angus?

-Jamie

Windows Live Tags: clubhouse, story, office live workspaces