LiveSide - News blog : Developer

An update for OpenID support in Windows Live ID

damaster — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 02:36:43 GMT

Those who remember back in last year’s PDC 2008 Microsoft announced that they will officially support OpenID in their Windows Live ID service. Almost 10 months later of testing with the CTP, the Windows Live ID team has finally updated their blog, and here’s the quick update:

The Production release of Windows Live ID's OpenID Provider support will look significantly different from the CTP version, so we are in the process of closing the OpenID CTP endpoints to avoid any confusion.

Currently, we do not have a schedule that I can publicly share for when we will release full Production support of OpenID for Windows Live ID users, but rest assured that we are working actively to provide OpenID functionality to all of our 500+ million Windows Live ID users!

The team also announced that in the Production release users will no longer have to pre-create an OpenID alias for their Windows Live ID. Users will be able to use their existing Windows Live ID account credentials to sign in to OpenID sites directly. For more details, have a read of their blog post here!

Live Framework CTP to shut down September 8th

Kip Kniskern — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 17:55:06 GMT

Back in January, the Live Services Platform, along with Live Mesh, moved under the umbrella of a unified Windows Live organization, as part of Windows and Windows Live Engineering. David Treadwell, the Corporate Vice President for the Live Services Platform moved to report to Steven Sinofsky, President.

Today, as a part of that re-organization, Microsoft is announcing they will shutting down the Live Framework Community Technology Preview (CTP). Developers will have until September 8th to download any data/code from the CTP, remove their devices from the service, and remove any CTP controls from websites.

The Live Framework CTP was running under the Azure umbrella, but moving to Windows Live does not mean that it won’t be available to the Azure Platform, according to information in an email from Angus Logan, Senior Technical Product Manager for the Windows Live Platform:

We launched a CTP of the Windows Azure platform at PDC in October 2008 to collect feedback and input from the community. One of the strongest and most consistent pieces of feedback we’ve received from the community has been around the scope of the Windows Azure platform. Customers and Partners have indicated that they would like clarity around the composition of the platform, and that it should offer operating system, database and connectivity capabilities. We’re acting on this feedback: At this time, the Windows Azure platform comprises Windows Azure, SQL Azure and .NET Services.

Live Services are an integral part of Microsoft’s Software + Services story. While Live Services are not a part of the Windows Azure platform, developers can continue to use Live Services in building rich and compelling solutions on the Windows Azure platform. The same also holds true for SharePoint Services and CRM Services. Customers and partners will continue to have the opportunity to utilize these services, plus the Windows Azure Platform, to meet their business objectives.

Note that this only affects developers.mesh-ctp.com, the javascript contacts control, and the CTP tools. Live Mesh (that is the consumer facing www.mesh.com) will not be affected, although we expect that it too will evolve as Windows Live moves into Wave 4 and beyond.

So what happens next? At PDC in November (and yes we’ll be there), Microsoft will begin to talk about how the Live Framework will be integrated into the next release of Windows Live.

While this move may be a bit painful for the developers who have been using the Live Framework (although it IS a CTP and not production bits), unifying a Live Services framework under Windows Live may ultimately lead to a better all-around experience.

Playing with Bing APIs: Long Zheng’s latest project (cool and fun!)

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 16:40:00 GMT

Our good friend Long Zheng is at it again, after collecting the Bing home pages and taking on Microsoft over changes in the UAC in Windows 7. This time he’s taken the Bing APIs, worked some JSON and JQuery magic, and come up with a very cool search page he’s calling “The Real Live Search”

Long explains:

Inspired by the realtime-ness of Google Wave, I wanted to build a prototype search engine that did away with a search button and page loads. Instead, search queries are sent character-by-character to the lightning fast Bing AJAX APIs which returned JSON results easily processed and formatted by Javascript on the page. The UI experience is driven solely by the browser

The screenshot above doesn’t do justice to how cool this is – every letter you type returns almost-instant results. Of course this may be quite distracting if you’re doing serious searches, with the page changing at every letter typed, but the cool factor is way high on Long’s little experiment, it’s just very fun!

www.istartedsomething.com – Long’s website
www.istartedsomething.com/bingimages/ Bing Home Page image archive
Long’s post introducing The Real Live Search
www.istartedsomething.com/livesearch The Real Live Search
http://www.bing.com/developers Bing Developer Center

Race To Market Developer Challenge

Sunshine — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 12:42:00 GMT

Are you a (Windows Live Mobile) developer? Now is the time to submit your applications to the Windows Marketplace for Mobile. Not only will your app be one of the first available in the marketplace when it launches, but you also have a chance of winning one of the following prizes:

A Microsoft Surface table (30-inch) and developer kit

Online marketing and promotion

A one-of-a-kind trophy

The Contest Entry Period consists of a Submission Period during which applications are accepted in the Marketplace, and a Download Period during which entries are counted for the purpose of this Contest as follows:

Submission Period
Begins at 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time (PT) on July 27, 2009, and ends at 11:59 p.m. PT on Dec. 31, 2009
Download Period
Begins at 12:01 a.m. Pacific Time (PT) on the date that the Marketplace opens to the public and ends at 11:59 p.m. PT on Dec. 31, 2009

You are eligible to enter the Race to Market Challenge if you are an ISV or application developer residing in a country/region where Microsoft Marketplace for Mobile is available*, have met the criteria for the Marketplace application certification process and have agreed to the terms of the Marketplace.

Entries will be divided into four pools based on geographic region as follows:

USA/Canada
Southeast Asia
Europe / Middle East / Asia
Latin America

and will be judged on:

Most downloads of a free app
Most valuable app (downloads x price)
Most useful (as judged by Microsoft panel)
Most playful (as judged by Microsoft panel)

The names of the winners will be posted online at http://mobilethisdeveloper.com. This list will remain posted until February 1, 2010. Further details are available at http://mobilethisdeveloper.com and in the announcement post.

Good Luck!

* Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong SAR, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, United Kingdom, and the United States

Bing Toolbox

Sunshine — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 11:24:16 GMT

Are you a webmaster, a publisher, a developer or maybe an advertiser? Now you can find everything Bing you need at the Bing Toolbox.

As you can see in the screenshot above (click to enlarge), you can submit your domain URL and sitemap to Bing directly. Furthermore you can get a Bing AppID there or go to the PowerToys. Of course you can also see your managed sites and find other useful links there.

You may even want to check back regularly there as you an see the latest news and announcements are there too! So forget all about these separate URLs and go to the Bing Toolbox to find it all!

This is the team’s first effort and they will be building out the site with new content and updated tools as they become available. Got Feedback? Leave it at the forums ;)

Bing Webmaster Blog - New tools for webmasters in the Bing Toolbox

Windows Mobile Marketplace Update

Sunshine — Thu, 21 May 2009 10:10:37 GMT

In our previous article about Windows Mobile Marketplace, we reported that developers outside of the US had problems signing up. Today we can tell you that, at this point, registration is open to English language markets (en-*) in the following countries: US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Singapore and India. Registration in other markets will be enabled over the next few months.

Developers with an existing billing relationship are asked to go through these steps to ensure all the information in their commerce profile is correct:

1. Go to http://billing.microsoft.com

2. Sign in with your Live ID that is associated with your credit card information

3. Under "Billing account overview", click on hyperlink "Go to personal information"

4. In the next page, under "Your personal information" make sure every item is correctly filled and is accurate. If there is any piece of information that's missing or is inaccurate, please click on "Edit personal Information", add/modify the missing piece (including phone number) and save.

5. Try to sign up for Windows Marketplace for Mobile again.

In this Tech Ed Online video about Windows Mobile Application Development, John Bruno chats a bit about the Marketplace registration launch and the subsequent phases. He also mentions that submission of applications is scheduled for later this summer.

Windows Mobile Marketplace Registration Now Open!

Sunshine — Tue, 12 May 2009 11:06:49 GMT

Windows Mobile Marketplace, announced at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona by Steve Ballmer, is opening the doors for developers as promised. The Windows Mobile Team announced it on their blog as follows:

In the latest update to http://developer.windowsmobile.com, developers can now Register to participate in Windows Marketplace for Mobile. This marks another milestone in providing Windows Mobile Developers a clear path to develop, test, certify and distribute their Windows Mobile applications via the Windows® Marketplace for Mobile.

Microsoft plans to charge developers $99 a year, plus $99 per application, to submit applications to Windows Marketplace for Mobile, though this year, developers are being allowed to submit up to five applications free of charge for that $99 yearly fee. Developers will receive 70% of the net price of the application (not including taxes) that Microsoft collects when your application is purchased.

So what are the steps for developers?

· REGISTER NOW. Developers can submit their complete profile information and take the first step in registration.

· Follow the Windows Mobile Developer team on Twitter @wmdev, Facebook and YouTube.

· Keep up to date via the Windows Mobile Team blog.

· And, stay informed with the latest development tools on the Windows Mobile Developer Center on MSDN.

And, if after reading the FAQ, you still have questions for the team you can comment on their post. According to the comments there are some problems with the registration, like the payment step repeatedly failing and international users being blocked. Apparently you may only sign up if you are in the US, as the credit card address entry automatically fills in "USA" as country which you cannot alter. However there is no mention at all of the registering only being open to US residents on either the blog or the FAQ! Hopefully these issues will be solved soon.

Previously (at CTIA) Microsoft announced that they have already signed up 27 big name-partners for their mobile Marketplace, including Facebook, Sling, EA, AP and CNBC. Want to know what the Windows Mobile Marketplace will look like? Head on over to Geoffrey Emery's for some screenshots, or to Long Zheng’s for the promotional video.

NewCloudApp() Azure Developer Contest: Win $5000

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 04 May 2009 22:09:09 GMT

Just announced today, NewCloudApp(), The Azure Services Platform Developer Challenge, offers US based Azure developers a couple of chances to win exposure via Azure.com and major Microsoft events, Channel 9, the Structure Azure conference, and a $5000 Visa Gift Card. Judging the contest, which has both .Net and PHP categories, are Om Malik of GigaOM, and Michael Cote of RedMonk. In addition, a community winner will be chosen, based on voting to take place between June 19th and June 29th. Some details from www.NewCloudApp.com:

Contest Categories

.NET Applications

Create a .NET application running on Windows Azure. Use your creativity to incorporate additional Azure services such as .NET Services and Live Services. Or incorporate any other Microsoft or 3rd party services. A compelling user interface is key to a great application - use ASP.NET or Silverlight to author a unique web experience, or create a .NET desktop or mobile application interacting with services in the cloud.

PHP Applications

Build a PHP application running on Windows Azure. Take your application to the next level by integrating with other Azure services or 3rd party services and push the boundaries of interoperability.

Increase Your Chances of Winning!

Tell the world about your experience and the application you built through your blog and Twitter!

Please come back Wednesday 06th May 2009 to start registering applications.

More details at the website

Virtual Earth API, 3D updates

Kip Kniskern — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 18:09:14 GMT

Last fall Virtual Earth released version 6.2 of their API, including the Virtual Earth AJAX control, and late yesterday it has been updated, according to a blog post on Chris Pendleton’s Virtual Earth Evangelist’s blog.

Today we released updates to the Microsoft Virtual Earth AJAX control and a new version of the Virtual Earth 3D map control. We’ve added a couple new methods for adding and removing pins (and DIVs) in the AJAX control; added performance improvements for AJAX and 3D; enhanced geocoding and parsing across the board (AJAX and Virtual Earth Web Service) and fixed a few bugs in the AJAX and 3D controls. There are lots of architectural changes behind the scenes that you won’t appreciate unless you’re inside Microsoft, so I will spare you the details of those. Now, that being said, for the AJAX map control we just upgraded Version 6.2, so you already have access to the new features and can start using them today without changing your link to Virtual Earth. Everyone is on 6.2 because we’ve either auto-upgraded you or you made the switch yourself. The Virtual Earth 3D control will require an update! Download the latest bits by going to your favorite Virtual Earth-powered web site (such as Live Search Maps) and click 3D and you will be prompted to install the latest bits.

For those of you (like me) who have been bouncing around between Windows 7 installs and haven’t gotten back to Live Search Maps in 3D, it’s well worth a second look. The install was quick and simple (like Chris says, just click on 3D on a Live Search Map and you’ll be taken through the install, just takes a few minutes). If you already have 3D installed, you’ll be prompted to upgrade.

(afraid this view of Seattle might be a little TOO realistic – we can’t even catch the sun in Virtual Earth!)

The updates include increased performance by compression to the 1.4 million buildings rendered in 3D (!!), addition of anistropic filtering to reduce blur and preserve detail at extreme viewing angles, the addition of a stylized Celestial Sky, and lots of goodies for developers. Much more on Chris’s blog, with links to even more detail, check it out.

Microsoft DreamSpark - FREE Software For University And Now High-School Students Worldwide!

Sunshine — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:03:36 GMT

Microsoft DreamSpark, launched February 2008, is now also available to High-school students. This was announced by Bill Gates at the Government Leaders Forum in Washington DC.

“Today, despite the economic crisis, it’s as important as ever to focus on investing in innovation so we can continue to make real progress in solving big problems and creating social and economic opportunity,” said Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft. “In particular, I believe investment in education is essential. Education is the starting point for success for individuals and the prerequisite for economic growth and prosperity for communities. It’s vital that we support efforts to provide children with access to a high-quality education and adults with access to ongoing technology skills training.”

Microsoft DreamSpark is a program that provides no-cost access to Microsoft designer and development tools and training for verified high school and university students around the world, to support and advance their learning and skills through technical design, technology, math, science and engineering activities. Originally Microsoft DreamSpark was only available to University students, there have been nearly 2 million downloads from students around the world since its release.

Unlike University students, High School students do not sign up for DreamSpark themselves, the School Administrator does and receives product keys to hand out to the students. Next the students can sign in with their Live ID on the DreamSpark site and download the software.

The following software is available:

Amazing, and who knows, maybe we’ll see some great Windows Live apps coming from these young developers (to be).

Microsoft DreamSpark
BlogMS - Official Microsoft Team Blogs : Microsoft DreamSpark - FREE software for University and now High-School students
Official press announcement

MIX09: Silverlight 3 Beta, Tools And More…

Sunshine — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:57:16 GMT

More news from today’s keynote at MIX09:

Silverlight 3 Beta

Silverlight 3 Beta was unveiled at MIX09. This is a preview release which introduces more than 50 new features, including support for running Silverlight applications out of the browser, dramatic video performance and quality improvements.

New features in Silverlight 3 include:

Support for Higher Quality Video & Audio. With support for native H.264/Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) Audio, live and on-demand IIS7 Smooth Streaming, full HD (720p+) playback, and an extensible decoder pipeline, Silverlight 3 brings rich, full-screen, stutter-free media experiences to the desktop.
New and enhanced media features in Silverlight 3 include: Live and on-demand true HD (720p+) Smooth Streaming, more format choice. True HD playback in full-screen. Extensible media format support.Industry leading content protection.
Empowering Richer Experiences. Silverlight 3 contains new 3D graphics, animation features, hardware accelerated effects and text improvements that enable designers and developers to create next generation Web visuals.
Additional features include: Perspective 3D Graphics. Pixel Shader effects. Bitmap Caching. New Bitmap API.Themed application support. Animation Effects. Enhanced control skinning. Improved text rendering & font support.
Improving Rich Internet Application Productivity.
New features include: 60+ controls with source code. Deep Linking. Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Enhanced Data Support. Improved performance through: Application library caching, Enhanced Deep Zoom, Binary XML, Local Connection.
Advanced Accessibility Features. Silverlight 3 is the first browser plug-in to provide access to all system colors, allowing partially-sighted people to make changes such as high contrast color schemes for ease of readability by using familiar operating system controls.
Out of Browser Capabilities. The new out of browser experience in Silverlight 3 enables users to place their favorite Silverlight applications directly onto their PC and Mac, with links on the desktop and start menu—all without the need to download an additional runtime or browser plug-in. Further, the new experience enables Silverlight applications to work whether the computer is connected to the Internet or not—a radical improvement to the traditional Web experience.

Along with this beta release new tools got released too:

Silverlight 3 Beta Tools for Visual Studio – this will install the developer runtime of Silverlight 3 Beta, the Visual Studio project templates and the Silverlight 3 Beta SDK.
Silverlight 3 Beta developer runtimes: Windows or Mac. If you installed the tools above, you will get the developer runtime and there is no need to install it again. These downloads are being made available for test machines for the Windows and Mac platforms for your applications.
Microsoft Expression Blend 3 Preview – this is the preview version of Expression Blend that will enable authoring of Silverlight 3 Beta applications.
Silverlight Toolkit – the toolkit has been updated to provide an update to Silverlight 2 controls, a new release for Silverlight 3 Beta controls, and a new themes gallery. All of these can be downloaded at the Silverlight Toolkit CodePlex project site.
.NET RIA Services – Microsoft .NET RIA Services simplifies the traditional n-tier application pattern by bringing together the ASP.NET and Silverlight platforms. The RIA Services provides a pattern to write application logic that runs on the mid-tier and controls access to data for queries, changes and custom operations.
Silverlight 3 Beta Documentation – view documentation online or download an offline CHM help file.

Even more information can be found here and at the MIX09 session site.

Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio

Also announced at MIX09 today is the availability of Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio March 2009 CTP. Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio extend Visual Studio to enable the creation, building, debugging, running and packaging of scalable services on Windows Azure. Please note that this is a CTP release and should not be used on production systems.

Microsoft Expression Web SuperPreview

On the subject of web developing, another interesting tool got released by the Expression Web Team today: SuperPreview. This tool enables developers to see how their sites look in different browsers without the need of a VM. Not with all the browsers they showed in the keynote at MIX09 today, it’s limited to IE6 and IE versions already installed on your computer, but still a handy tool. It will install on Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista SP1, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008, be it that on Windows 7 you will not have IE6 in the browser list. The release expires on October 1, 2009. The full and final version of this product will be bundled together with Expression Web 3, sometime later this year and will run as a separate standalone application. Long Zheng has more detailed information and screenshots of this new tool.

PressPass - Microsoft Web Technologies Unveiled at MIX09 Help Businesses Deliver Return on Experience

P.S. Today’s keynote will be available on demand at http://live.visitmix.com/ later.

Live Framework SDK And Tools Updated

Sunshine — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 15:08:47 GMT

The Live Framework Team announced the April CTP update of the Live Framework SDK and Tools.

This update includes:

Support for side-by-side installation of the www.mesh.com local client and the developer.mesh-ctp.com local client. This means that you can use the production Mesh.com to sync data across all your devices, and develop applications for the Mesh Developer Sandbox that uses the local client—all on the same machine. For instructions on setting up side-by-side, please see this forum post.
Support for Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 8
Single installer for the Live Framework SDK and the Live Framework Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio.
Resource Scripts are now supported in Silverlight applications and with the local Live Operating Environment
Public availability of the SDK and Tools on the Microsoft.com Download Center.
Improved stability in the client and the cloud Live Operating Environment.
Design and performance improvements to the API toolkits
Simplified workflow for setting up an account and a Live Framework project on the Azure Developer Portal.

More details and downloads

Via: Angus Logan

Windows Marketplace For Mobile Developer Strategy Announced!

Sunshine — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:02:49 GMT

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Steve Ballmer announced Windows Marketplace for Mobile. Not much said back then, but now we have some more information. Microsoft announced the developer strategy for the next generation of Windows® Phones (Windows Mobile 6.5) yesterday.

The Windows Mobile Team blog explains this in greater detail:

What is the revenue and distribution opportunity for developers?

Developers will earn 70% of the revenue generated from sales of their applications.

Applications can be priced and sold in 29 markets using targeted pricing strategies to maximize revenues. This is a great opportunity to tap into a broad international customer base.

Applications can also be distributed through the Marketplace for free.

Tell me more about how to participate…

In the spring, we will release the registration process for you to sign up. Application submissions will be accepted beginning this summer.

Developers will be able to submit up to 5 applications to the Marketplace for the annual registration price of $99. Each additional application within the annual period will have a cost of $99.

For students enrolled in the DreamSpark program, the registration fee will be waived.

How do I get my applications into the Marketplace?

We want developers to focus on their core competency of developing innovative applications. At the same time we will work with developers to ensure that their applications run optimally on Windows phones. We will accomplish this by running a rigorous certification and testing process before applications go to market.

Developers will be able to see detailed feedback during and after the certification process of their applications on the Windows Marketplace for Mobile developer portal.

What do I need to get started?

You can utilize familiar tools and technologies like Visual Studio and the .NET Compact Framework 3.5 to build great applications.

Get the Windows Mobile 6 SDK and everything you need to get started at http://developer.windowsmobile.com

Besides these details the team also posted an interview with Marketplace Product Manager Inigo Lopez. You can watch that on their blog post or on YouTube.

Windows Mobile Team Blog
Windows Mobile Developers

Coming at Mix 09: Adding Messenger to your site gets better and (much) easier

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 04:57:00 GMT

Mix 09, Microsoft’s annual web developer conference held around this time in Las Vegas, is next week. Last year we went down to listen to the Ray Ozzie keynote, and learn a bunch about the soon to be announced “Horizon”, or Live Mesh. While we’re not going this year, we’ll be paying close attention to the keynotes and the sessions.

In looking through the session announcements (check out “Live Services”), we spotted a couple of mentions of a “Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit”. Now we’ve had some experience with adding Windows Live Messenger functionality to websites; we had it running here ourselves (and will soon again, stay tuned), and our good friend Colin Brown wrote a deep dive series for us on building out a custom implementation of Messenger.

However truthfully it was a bit of an undertaking to build your own web Messenger, even though the Messenger Library offers a full set of tools. Looks like the Messenger platform guys took that to heart, and next week at Mix they will unveil their new Web Toolkit and the Web Bar, which makes the whole process quite a bit easier.

Of course we wouldn’t want you to wait all the way until next week, so we poked around a bit and came up with a couple of screenshots and a bit of early news on these new tools.

In these early pre-production screenshots, we get an idea of the ready to use features of the web toolkit:

With the Web Bar control installed, visitors to the site will be able to initiate conversations through an interface familiar to Windows Live Messenger users. This allows users to interact via Messenger while visiting your site, but by opting in, users can chat with people without them needing to be on their buddy list, and can reach them in the client if they’ve opted in:

Nothing will be taken away from the Messenger Library: site owners will be able to use the web bar as one control, but the Web Toolkit controls will be fully extensible, and skinnable via CSS, giving a wide range of options from the easiest (web bar) to most flexible (Messenger Library).

So what does this mean? We’ll have to wait for Mix to find out the whole story, but adding Messenger to your site to acquire users and bring them back, and to engage them to stick around longer, will soon become much easier for web developers and site owners. We’ll have more soon, and will be looking forward to getting it up and running on LiveSide! Can’t wait :).

Automatic “Add to Windows Live Calendar” from your Web Content

Sunshine — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 12:24:38 GMT

Ever wanted to offer your readers the possibility to add a specific event to their Windows Live Calendar? Evan of Windows Live Hotmail team tells you just how to do that.

All it takes for this to work is a single link in your Web page. Here’s what the URL looks like:

http://calendar.live.com/calendar/calendar.aspx?rru=addevent&dtstart=20090106T190000Z&dtend=20090106T200000Z&summary=title&location=location

When users click that link, they will go right to Windows Live Calendar with an “Add Event” dialog pre-filled with your data (see below). All they have to do is click Save. If they’d like, they can also customize reminders, write remarks in the Details, or make any other changes they’d like before saving it. Nifty eh?

So, what is all this gobbledygook in the URL and how do you make it work for you?

Looking at the url we first see rru=addevent. This is required and means the first thing to do after logging in is to bring up the “add new event” form. The additional parameters specify your data:

dtstart Start date and time

dtend End date and time

summary The title of the event

location The location of the event

description The detailed description of the event

So all you need to do is complete the URL with your event’s information in these parameters, making sure it is URL-encoded properly , and you’re ready to go!

Now go ye forth and – no, wait, there’s still one trick here. What about those dates? How do you format the date text? Well, since this was primarily intended for automated use by businesses and developers the date parsing isn’t very forgiving. It accepts dates in a format that you might normally only see buried in a .ics file, something called an ISO8601 date. The format for this is:

YYYYMMDDTHHMMSSZ

YYYY is the 4 digit year, MM is the 2 digit month, DD is the 2 digit day. T is literally the letter T (must be upper case). HHMMSS are hour, minute, and second in 24-hour time. The Z also has to be upper case and it means the entire string is a UTC time. So yes, to use this API you have to first convert your start (and end) time into UTC before you can use this API. You can also omit the Z and leave the time in local time, but this means the event is in “floating” time. A “floating” event at 2pm will happen at 2pm in each and every time zone. It is good if all the visitors are local or if you want an event to occur at midnight no matter where users are located, but not so good for coordinating worldwide events.

Let’s try to make one for MIX09:

1. Convert times to UTC.
How can we do this the easy way? Let’s use an online time converter. First question which time zone to convert from? PST? No no not PST, Daylight Savings Time starts on Sunday, March 8 so we’ll have to use PDT, which is UTC-7:
Start keynote on Day 1 (March 18): 9.00am DST = 16:00 UTC
End Conference, March 20: 3:15pm DST = 22:15 UTC
2. Other needed parameters:
title = MIX09
location = Las Vegas
3. Put everything in the URL:
<a href=http://calendar.live.com/calendar/calendar.aspx?rru=addevent&dtstart=20090318T160000Z&dtend=20090320T221500Z&summary=MIX09&location=Las%20Vegas target="_blank">Add MIX09 to Windows Live Calendar</a>
4. End result
Add MIX09 to Windows Live Calendar

As you can see it gets converted to my time zone when I add this Event to my Windows Live Calendar by clicking the URL.

Some tips for best usage from Evan:

Set the target of the link to be “_new” or “_top”. Calendar uses the entire browser window to avoid layout issues and cross site scripting bugs. So you should plan for that up front – this target will remind you that this link is going to break users out of your UI entirely. And when the user is finished we leave her in the Calendar UI rather than returning her to your site, you may wish to target “_new” to maintain site continuity in the original window/tab.

For the same reason, don’t try to load the link in just one part of your UI if you are using frames. We’ll break out of the frame and take over your whole UI.

Thanks Evan, I’m sure this will come in handy for many of us.

dtstart	Start date and time
dtend	End date and time
summary	The title of the event
location	The location of the event
description	The detailed description of the event