LiveSide - News blog : Feedback

Email to livewish@? Oops, use feedback.live.com (Update)

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:06:11 GMT

We reported this week on a product planner’s attempt to get feedback, asking for ideas sent to an email address he established. Well now he’s updated the post, after apparently being deluged with mail:

My original post below has been updated in a few places (denoted via the red font). I never anticipated my simple blog post would get picked up so far and wide (I feel like Scoble <grin>). THANK YOU to those of you who have already sent in your suggestions.

...

I chose this email address because its easy to remember and it allows several of us (starting with me) to read the email and then forward the email onto the appropriate planner in Windows Live. However, the email address’s backend process (me!) simply won’t scale to meet the number of suggestions its receiving.

So keep the feedback coming, but just send it to feedback.live.com, mmkay?

What Would You Like Changed/Improved In Windows Live? Email Your Suggestions To Kent Compton

Sunshine — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 11:04:34 GMT

The proper way to give Microsoft feedback isn’t always easy to find, especially when it’s an idea you have. In order to make this easier, Kent Compton, a product planner for Windows Live Essentials, created an email address for you to send your ideas regarding Windows Live to.

If you have an idea, for example about Windows Live Messenger or Windows Live Mail, please submit them to the address below:

We’ve put it here as an image, just as Kent has, in order to prevent spam bots from grabbing the address. We wouldn’t want our ideas buried by spam now would we? ;)

Don’t get upset if you don’t see your suggestion in the next version of said program or the one after that. Not every suggestion will make it into the program due to a process called prioritization (limited time of the developers, target audience etc.). However they are always looking for ideas that will benefit a large amount of people. Like for example AutoCorrect, which Kent mentions as one of the things he would like to see implemented in more of the Windows Live Products.

So go on, send your idea and who knows, maybe we’ll see it turn up in Wave 4 of Windows Live Essentials.

Via Ars Technica

Hotmail scrolling returns: negative feedback spurs changes

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 21:55:37 GMT

After thousands of comments and negative feedback about changes made last month to Hotmail, and after “reviewing how users at various monitor sizes and resolutions were using our product”, Windows Live Wire is reporting that the Hotmail has updated the new Hotmail to scroll like the old one did. According to the post:

To make your Hotmail scroll like classic Hotmail, you’ll need to turn the reading pane off:

Click the Inbox folder.

Click Options (upper-right, below the sign-out link).

Under Reading pane settings, click Off.

We’re also including other fixes. Here are a few highlights, and thanks for suggesting them:

When you’re done choosing contacts to send your message to, click anywhere outside the contact picker window to close it and go back to typing your message.

We fixed an issue where some users couldn’t select the last contact in the list.

Holding down the Shift key and clicking a message in the inbox now opens that message in a new window, as it did in the past.

We’ve changed the links in the header at the top to match the rest of Windows Live and point to more great Windows Live services.

Hotmail users are being greeted with a notice when they log on to alert them to the changes, if you haven’t seen it already, you should be seeing it soon.

Update to Windows Live Account enables Linked IDs

Gregor — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 21:52:00 GMT

Microsoft has silently updated its Windows Live Account pages. They are now featuring the new Wave 2 look. In addition to the visual make-over the update brings a long requested and hinted at feature: Linked IDs.

When you sign in to Windows Live Account the new option to link Windows Live IDs is presented right on the first screen. In order to link IDs you will need to click on the link, enter the password of the account you are currently logged in with and the ID and password of the account you want to link it with. That's all...

You can link several IDs together. We haven't tried what the max is but four worked fine for us. You do have to pay attention to security though. Access to all accounts is now secured by the lowest-level password of all IDs linked. Also you should not link an ID that several users have access to with your personal account ID. The user that has access to the shared ID would get access to all your personal stuff doing so.

Ok, linking is done - but what would you link the IDs for? When you have linked IDs together you will only need to sign in to Windows Live once and can then switch easily between the accounts. If you are on Windows Live Hotmail for example you can check your email on one account and then simply click the dropdown arrow next to your login in the upper right corner and choose one of your linked IDs that are listed their. Without the need to enter a password again you will get to access that accounts emails. Pretty convenient. Unfortunately this only works on the new Wave 2 products, so you are out of luck on WL Favorites, Gallery or the personalized homepage for now - we guess that at least some these properties will be updated to Wave 2 soon though.

Another change the update to Windows Live Account brings is an overview of Windows Live Services you are using. Hotmail, Spaces, Custom Domains, OneCare and so on will be listed there if you do use them (beta products and desktop applications won't).

In addition to the update of Windows Live Accounts (and the needed backend update to Windows Live ID to support the Linked IDs) the new Wave 2 look has also been implemented on Windows Live Feedback and Windows Live Support - unfortunately not full blown though meaning that the orb does not have a dropdown menu, links to WL Hotmail, Spaces, etc are missing and you cannot use easily switch accounts using Linked IDs there.

LiveSide Now With Live ID Goodness

Nick — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 03:08:00 GMT

What's going on here?! Two sign in buttons?

Don't fret, you're not seeing a bug, it's the new Windows Live ID SSO addon I've built for Community Server.

You can now choose how to sign into Liveside.net, via the normal sign in page or via Windows Live ID. This is a slightly hacked way of doing it, which means you're actually associating your Liveside account with a Live ID, but once that's done, you'll be able to sign in via Windows Live ID instead.

If you haven't associated you'll be greeted with this (which explains it better):

Have a play, it should be mostly intuitive.

Notes:

1. Signing in with your Live ID at any site except LiveSide will not log you into LiveSide. Only authenticated sites can do that unfortunately, and that costs money :(

2. Signing out of Live ID anywhere will then sign you out of LiveSide. So if like us you have multiple Live IDs, this will happen quite often. You probably don't want to associate your LiveSide account with Live ID then until they allow you to link multiple Live IDs together. Of course if you don't sign out, you'll be fine.

3. There is no option to disassociate yet. If you want to change your associated Live ID, sign in via LiveSide (the link is in the top right hand corner) but this time use the new Live ID.