Moz Hussain, Group Program Manager for Spaces, and Jay Fluegel, Lead PM, Spaces, invited me to come to Redmond last Friday and get a little preview of a couple of the new aspects of Spaces; Social Networking and Gadgets. In the first half of this audio tour, Moz takes us through active contact updates, friends of friends, friends explorer, contact control, and social search.
Our friend Brandon LeBlanc has some more on Spaces, too, check out his interview with Mike Torres
Download WL Spaces Audio Tour Part One: Social Networking
We designed social networking around real friends and how it works in real life Start with who you know >> access Friends list for your Mail and Messenger contacts Explore their friends >> Friends Explorer and Contact Card Bring them closer >> Contact Control Control your world >> Permissions and Communications Preferences and Profiles
Here's the screenshots Moz references in the audio tour: Comscore on Spaces: Growth Chart
What's new in Windows Live Spaces?
The New Home Page
Friends of Friends
Friends Explorer
At Gnomedex a couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to talk to Steve Kafka, program manager for Windows Live Mail. As part of that conversation, Steve showed me around "m7", the milestone 7 beta release of Windows Live Mail. Steve talks about the new features, and some of the thinking behind the return of checkboxes, the desire for a storage meter even though 2gb with more to come should be plenty of storage (has it only been a year since Hotmail provided 2mb? - seems like ancient history), and an improved first run experience.
Now that Ellie has provided some background and some screenshots, we can post the interview.
LiveSide with Steve Kafka, an audio m7 tour
00:15 New additions: loading indicator, basic version, storage meter, recently updated Spaces
03:18 Checkboxes, drag & drop improvements, improved first run
07:09 Spell check on/off, rte for sigs
08:21 Print contacts
09:48 Contact import
12:11 More languages, you link
13:49 Search contacts, perf improvements
Total run time 15:56
mp3 file: 7.29mb
With the recent release of Windows Live Expo, we took this opportunity to sit down with Kurt Weber, Group Program Manager for Expo. In this interview, we talk about what the team learned from the Expo beta process, API's and mashups, international plans, and where Expo is going in the future. Enjoy!
:00 Introductions (Who are you and what do you do?)
1:04 The Beta Process
2:00 Where's the Flair??
2:50 API's and mashups (BlockRocker)
4:00 What's new in this release?
6:17 The differencenes between Expo, Product Search, and Shopping.Live.
7:42 International Plans
9:02 Do you want to be an eBay competitor?
9:40 Where is Expo going in the future?
Total Length: 10 minutes and 53 seconds
File Size: 9.98 MB
LiveSide with Kurt Weber
For more information on Windows Live Expo, visit their team blog: TeamExpo.spaces.msn.com
Previously:
Interview with Steve Kafka from Live Mail