LiveSide - News blog : People

Windows Live Profile (April) update is here!

damaster — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:39:41 GMT

As announced one week ago, the newly updated Windows Live Profile has been rolled out to all users now! A summary of all the changes that were part of this update include:

20 new Web Activities, including Facebook, Digg, Last.fm, SmugMug and many more totalling 30 Web Activities you can add to your Profile. You can find the whole list at http://profile.live.com/WebActivities
3 new ways to add people to your Windows Live network, including importing contacts from Hi5, MySpace, and Tagged, in addition to the existing Facebook and LinkedIn contacts you may import from. You can start connecting with your friends on other networks using Windows Live at http://profile.live.com/connect
Contact search word-wheel, improved results when you’re searching for people on Windows Live from the Windows Live Home or Profile pages, as reported earlier
Photos Tagged of You, you’re now able to view all the photos that have been People Tagged of you, or your friends, on Windows Live Photos on a single page linked on your Profile
A new Windows Live Profile favicon

For more information check out Windows Live’s official announcement. You can try it out (if you haven’t done so already) at http://profile.live.com

Connect your Photo Gallery people tags with Facebook contacts: LiveUpload 2.0

damaster — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 11:35:10 GMT

When the new Windows Live Photo Gallery Wave 3 beta was first released, we gave you a review of the new features and one of those was the ability to add plug-ins for the application. One of the first 3rd party plug-in developed was the LiveUpload to Facebook plug-in, published on the Windows Live Photo & Video Blog, that allow users to directly publish their photos in Photo Gallery onto Facebook. One of the advantage of this plug-in was that it takes advantage of the people tagging feature in Photo Gallery and publishes this information onto Facebook as well. However, the first release of the plug-in had one shortfall – the people tags published from Photo Gallery had nothing to do with all the contacts you’ve already got on Facebook.

But fear not, as this is no longer a problem. The latest release of LiveUpload to Facebook 2.0 introduces the ability to link your Photo Gallery people tags with Facebook users! Better yet, these links are actually saved so the next time you upload the same people tags onto Facebook from Photo Gallery, it will automatically link that tag with the Facebook user! Here’s a screenshot:

What this means is that if all the people tags in your Photo Gallery are actually linked from your Windows Live People contact list (including those in your Messenger list or added to your Profile Network), you’re essentially linking your Windows Live contacts with your Facebook contacts – through Photo Gallery!

Although this is a 3rd party application, we’re seeing that Windows Live is having closer ties with Facebook. We’ve already seen the ability to import your contacts from Facebook into Windows Live (and vice versa), and we saw the announcement at CES 2009 that Facebook has signed on as a Windows Live feed partner, meaning that you’ll be able to get content posted on Facebook, including photos, directly in your Windows Live What’s New feed. What’s also coming in the future is that the upcoming update to FrameIt might see some integration with Facebook photos. As the two competing social networks are becoming closer together, the potential there for both Microsoft and Facebook is enormous. It’d be interesting to see how this relationship develops in the future.

Hotmail update starts rolling out for all users, POP3 coming to the US

damaster — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 01:13:22 GMT

Today the Hotmail team has finally announced the start of the roll out process for all users worldwide to the latest Wave 3 update of Hotmail and People.

The Hotmail team has been hard at work since our last release in the fall, and we’ve got a bunch of new features coming out… and we’re rolling them out now!

If you haven’t seen any changes yet, they’ll be rolling out gradually, so you should see them in the next week or two.

If you’ve been keeping track of the latest at LiveSide, we’ve previously posted what new features are to come in this update. See our previous articles on the latest features for Hotmail and People. To recap, Windows Live Wire blog posted a summary of all the new features coming in this update:

More storage in Hotmail. Start with 5 GB, and watch your storage grow, as you need it.

More themes in Hotmail (including some that change based on time of day or weather)

The top banner ad moved to the side. (You’ve been waiting for that, haven’t you?)

Quickly add maps, directions, movie times and more to e-mail messages. It makes planning a night out so much easier. (UK and US-only, for the moment)

See “what’s new” updates from people in your network on Hotmail’s Today page.

Get Hotmail on your mobile phone’s e-mail program. POP3 access is becoming available to Hotmail users in the US and Brazil, in addition to United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, France, Japan, Spain, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands.

Create e-mail signatures in HTML. Get as fancy as you want to be.

The People page has been re-organized.

I’m surprised though that there’s no mention of the new Web Messenger integration anywhere on the two blog posts. I hope they’re just keeping it as a surprise. After all from the screenshot on Windows Live People above the “Messenger” button is clearly visible, and our friend Picturepan2 from LiveSino had also been noticing that Web Messenger is starting to show up on 2 of his accounts.

Have you received the latest update to your Hotmail and People yet? Leave us a note!

An explanation about your Windows Live “Network”

damaster — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 07:53:13 GMT

Jamie over at his blog had posted a very nice entry explaining the differences between Spaces friends, Messenger buddies, and Hotmail contacts. Since the launch of the new Wave 3 Windows Live Web services with all these newly introduced concepts like People, Profiles, and your Network, you might have been asking some of the following questions (I know I have):

What's the difference between People in my Network and People on my Profile?
Are Spaces friends part of my Network?
Can someone be a Messenger buddy without being part of my Network or on my Profile?

The answer lies in the following diagram, kindly provided by one of the developers on the Windows Live team (we’ve beefed it up a little with Office 2007):

Note that the three categories: People on your Profile, Messenger contacts, and Hotmail address book contacts are not mutually exclusive. Here’s the diagram we came up with showing their relationships:

Hope this clears up some of the confusion about this whole new “Network” concept and gives you a clearer overview of how your contacts are organised in your Windows Live People page. And just a note, the existing People page does not take this whole “Network” concept to the full extent, however, with the next release of Hotmail (coming mid-December), we expect that the People page will also be changed to incorporate these new “Network” concepts. See our Windows Live People review for what the updated People page will look like.

More information on Windows Live Wave 3

damaster — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 17:29:00 GMT

Mary Jo Foley recently reported on her blog that Windows Live Wave 3 have completed the M1 (Milestone 1) stage. Our friend Picturepan2 over at LiveSino was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to interview a manager for Windows Live chatting about the progress of Windows Live Wave 3. Although there were many interesting details that he wasn't allowed to disclose, here's a quick summary of what's currently going on in Microsoft with Windows Live:

New Unified Header - as we've reported previously, all online Windows Live services upon release will have the brand new header that allows users to change the background and colour themes of their pages. This is aimed to reduce the branding confusion that we've had with Windows Live previously.

Windows Live Hotmail - this has recently completed its M2 (Milestone 2) stage. The new version concentrates on extra integration with other Windows Live services such as SkyDrive and Home, as well as a new service People (will this replace Contacts? or perhaps has something to do with the C2 project at Microsoft Research?)
Windows Live Messenger - M1 build is now complete, and is currently in development for the M2 stage. Messenger 9 will feature a new look as well as additional new features (that we're not allowed to disclose yet )
Windows Live Mail - some minor improvements and interface changes in the M1 build. With the recent release of Outlook Connector 12.1 with Windows Live Calendar support, the new Windows Live Mail will also feature Calendar syncing.
Windows Live Photo Gallery - the main new feature in the current M1 build is facial recognition. Photo Gallery will automatically recognise people's faces in your photos, and users will be able to add tags to each person (similar to how Facebook photos works by tagging each person). However, these added people tags will only be viewable in Photo Gallery.

Currently these are the only set of features we are allowed to disclose. There are no mentions of the new Windows Live Movie Maker application nor any details on the new Windows Live People and Windows Live Groups services. But stay tuned as we'll keep you updated with the latest news in the development of Windows Live Wave 3.