October 2007 - LiveSide - Interview blog

Windows Live Events, set to launch at the time of this posting, 5pm PDT (Redmond time), is a new feature of Windows Live Spaces that makes it easy to create, manage, and share events using Windows Live Spaces.  Here are some of the highlights of Events:

• Create an event with a single set up page, and customize it with more than 100 templates as well as Windows Live Spaces modules
• Invite guests to the event, using Windows Live Messenger contacts, or invite non-WL ID users by using their email address
• Live Maps integration to show location and directions to the event
• Send out customized invitation emails with links so invitees can view, collaborate, and share photos etc.
• Integrate with user calendars, using 3rd party calendar protocols, including iCal
• Manage discussion lists
• After the event, collect and share photos and comments: keep the event for posterity

While we are awaiting a peek at Events ourselves, it sounds like a promising tool.

For more on Windows Live, Events, and some changes in SkyDrive beta, including a move to 1gb of storage, and a promise that "storage in the long run is not going to be a concern for our users, I had an opportunity to talk with David Fortin, General Manager of Consumer Products for Windows Live.

The highlights

1. What is Windows Live? An overview of the "set of tools to help people connect and share anywhere"
2. Where SkyDrive fits in
3. SkyDrive and the Windows Live Platform
4. The journey starts with delivering individual benefits
5. Announcing SkyDrive 1GB storage limit: "storage in the long run is not going to be a concern for our users"
6. Large storage numbers - really needed or a marketing ploy?
7. Announcing Windows Live Events
8. A quick tour of how to set up an event

download or listen to the interview via .mp3

With 450,000 domains in use with Office Live (now Office Live Small Business), its becoming clear that there is a market for a connected set of services helping small businesses to establish, maintain, and grow a web presence.  We talked with Michael Schultz, U.S. business and marketing lead for Microsoft Office Live Small Business, about small businesses and their website presence, about SEO and SEM, and some partnerships they have developed, specifically with The Search Agency and WebSite Pros.

You can listen to the Silverlight streaming version here, with chapter markers:

1. Why change the name to Office Live Small Business?
2. Three versions: Basics, Essentials, and Premium
3. Most of the customers start out with Basics
4. The value for customers with everything (domain, website building and management, SEO and SEM) all in one place
5. Small businesses want to focus on their business more than website management
6. Search Engine Marketing described
7. Search Engine Optimization: Science and Art
8. The Search Agency and three levels of help: Do It Yourself, Get some help, and Have it done for you.
9. What's coming up?  Users want help to promote and market their business.

Interview with Michael Shultz on Office Live Small Business:

or listen to or download the mp3 8mb.

Office Live Workspaces, announced on Monday and set to go into beta in December, will provide workspace manipulation and storage from within Office products (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and integration with Outlook), and a web browser interface with a viewer for those Office files (and .pdf), and an ability to comment, along with rich list making capabilities that will synch to Outlook Tasks, Contacts, and Calendar.

Office Live Small Business (formerly Office Live) is one of the fastest growing Small Business services on the web, with over 450,00 domains registered in two years.  Office Live Workspaces is set to become a feature of the free Office Live Basic service.

I talked to Kirk Gregerson, Director of Product Management for Office for Consumers and Small Business, about the upcoming beta:

1. Introducing Kirk Gregerson, and Office Live Workspaces
2. What is Office Live Workspaces, and what is Microsoft Office Online?
3. How does it work? Kirk talks about Workspaces within Office
4. Office Live Workspaces in the browser
5. Kirk explains the commenting process
6. How collaboration works: a check-in metaphor
7. 2 different interfaces
8. Store many types of (non-Office) files
9. What's the relationship to SkyDrive?
10. Workspace size explained: 500mb limit
11. What versions of Office will work with Workspaces?
12. Integration with Office Live Small Business
13. Beta information - begins in December (sign up now)

LiveSide with Kirk Gregerson - Office Live Workspaces.mp3 (9.2mb - 19.38 minutes)

Update: We talk about being able to add comments to non-Office files, and I just got word that this is indeed possible.

POP3, a protocol for getting email from a server to a client, has been around a long time, but it hasn't been generally available for Hotmail users. With the advent of so many different devices (think iPhone), however, a POP3 story is in the process of being added so that users of Hotmail will be able to access their mail through POP3.

Omar Shahine, a Lead Program Manager for Hotmail, announced this somewhat esoteric advance recently on the Windows Live Hotmail blog, and when I was in Mountain View for Searchification, I was able to take a few minutes and talk to Omar about POP3.

With the help of Waggener Edstrom, we found the noisiest room in all of Mountain View (I think we were actually inside the air conditioning system) - just kidding, Jim!, and talked to Omar about Hotmail and POP.

• Chapter 1 - Omar introduces himself
• Chapter 2 - Why doesn't Hotmail offer POP currently, and why is it needed?
• Chapter 3 - Why DeltaSync is desirable
• Chapter 4 - Hotmail has always had a POP interface
• Chapter 5 - We want to give POP to everybody
• Chapter 6 - POP isn't a fantastic user experience
• Chapter 7 - iPhone
• Chapter 8 - IMAP
• Chapter 9 - MSN Premium

(if you don't have Silverlight, you can get the .mp3 here):

LiveSide with Omar Shahine POP.mp3