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Inside Windows Live

Dec. 22, 2009 Paul Thurrott | Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows

Last week, Microsoft told me it was starting a new blog about Windows Live internals called Inside Windows Live. So, I promptly forgot to post about it for some reason. (I'll blame the holidays and not my early-onset dementia.) Ahem. Anyway, here's the good word:

Inside Windows Live is intended to complement the Windows Live team blog, which provides Windows Live customers with essential news and information about our products and services.

The new blog, on the other hand, will be dedicated to software engineers, web industry insiders, and to our most passionate Windows Live customers who want to dig a little deeper into Windows Live services.  The blog will include posts from Chris Jones, Corporate VP of Engineering for Windows Live, and the Windows Live engineering team, among others.

If currently subscribe to The Windows Blog’s *main* RSS feed – you will automatically receive feeds from Inside Windows Live.  If you'd like to subscribe to the main RSS feed or the RSS feed for the new Windows Live Blog please following the following links: 

The first two posts are up now, both from Chris Jones, who is a great guy and a long-time Windows guy to boot. In the first post, he describes the idea behind the blog:

Over the last year, we’ve consolidated our blogging efforts for all of the different Windows Live teams into a single blog, Windows Live team blog (or “Windows Live Wire”), so you wouldn't have to chase all over the web find out what we’re up to and what’s new in our products. But as we’ve brought the different blogs together, some of you let us know that you wanted to see more details about not only what we’re building, but why and how.

This blog, Inside Windows Live, is where we’ll do that.

One gets the idea that it's modeled after the Windows 7 Engineering blog, which was/is a horribly overly verbose exercise in beating simple ideas to death. But my guess is that Jones won't succumb to that. I'll be tuning in regardless.

Discuss this Article 23

tayme
on Dec 22, 2009
Paul - As a good liberal and the father of a "special needs child", you should be one of the last to make light of dementia. The families of many, mine included, ache as they watch a loved one suffer from this terrible affliction. --tayme
Grannyville
on Dec 22, 2009
Thanks for the link, Paul. I will certainly bookmark the RSS for this : )
rr0de74@live.com
on Dec 22, 2009
Maybe they will address the duplication of efforts (sky drive or mesh?), or the lack of integration between stuff. @tayme is your post serious? Everyone dies....everyone and usually from the body breaking down. I wont be here in 50 years, sooner if I am lucky. Do we need to talk about that here, on a Microsoft tech blog? Do you really think he meant anything by his comment? You need to spike your eggnog...heavily... and sit by the fire and chill.
Grannyville
on Dec 22, 2009
@rr0de I agree. SkyDrive is something I use on a daily basis as a secondary backup service for files which I need access to from any computer. I would love to see some Windows Explorer integration sometime soon.
DopplerEFX
on Dec 22, 2009
@tayme - As someone who has suffered the debilitating aftermath of ECC (extra-cranial combustion) - I find your avatar deeply disturbing. - I'm sure given your apparent hyper-sensitivity, you will quickly find a new avatar and end the terrible affliction of your presence here.
tayme
on Dec 22, 2009
@rrode74 - Says the iCabalist that blindly supports Apple and everything they do and will argue in support of them to the end with the WinJihadists on this very site...also the one that did not realize that people do, indeed, still use IM. @DopplerEFX - Nice! Hopefully you got what I was saying here. Everyone on Paul's board is hypersensitive and will ague for the platform of their preference like a scorned lover! --tayme
NoNameAtAll
on Dec 22, 2009
I'm hypersensitive? I don't typically take a side. Also, the blog sounds interesting.
Waethorn
on Dec 22, 2009
@tayme: filling in for losta, are we? I thought you left. @Grannyville: check your PM inbox on this site, re: where to check Mac PCI Express speeds. @relevance: I wonder how feasible it would be to create an entire Windows Live "console" that aggregates all the service-based tasks together into one unified application. You see, all of Windows Live services can be grouped off into two distinct categories: communication, and storage. People, Home, Profile, Messenger, Hotmail, Spaces, Groups and even Calendar and Events could fall under a more broad categorization of communication experiences. Skydrive is all storage. Photos is just a subset of Skydrive, as is Favorites. I'd like to see some cohesiveness to all of this. A central communication application, like Outlook, would be ideal to mitigate all of the tasks into one UI. File storage would become a natural extension as users need to transfer and share stored data back and forth between other contacts. These types of applications have been attempted before: Groove and Netmeeting come to mind, but they still needed additional applications for full functionality. I think a more modular approach is a better fit. I'm sure there are people that would sit and "work" in such an application all day, just as there are business workers that work in Outlook from 9-5. "Windows Live OS" perhaps? Still, most of the communication services need to consolidated into a single UI, not just a single OS or application. Remember those WinFS tech videos from a few years back, or the Office 2019 vids from not that long ago? I could see XML and SQL taking Windows Live services to that level some day.
tayme
on Dec 22, 2009
@Waethorn - I figured that if Paul and/or Penton won't delete my account at my request that I might as well use it for entertainment purposes...and you are certainly entertaining! Are you denying that you post more extraneous and useless "information" here than most of the other readers? You really should get lotsa to go down on you more often than he has lately...you need it. --tayme
Waethorn
on Dec 22, 2009
"I'm hypersensitive?" There's a pill for that. Speaking of which, tayme needs one too. "Are you denying that you post more extraneous and useless "information" here than most of the other readers? " Well, I'm not the one trying to convince others that I'm totally unbiased and objective about everything. "You really should get lotsa to go down on you more often than he has lately...you need it." "I figured that if Paul and/or Penton won't delete my account at my request that I might as well use it for entertainment purposes" I figure it'll be entertaining to see your account get banned for that comment.
tayme
on Dec 22, 2009
"Well, I'm not the one trying to convince others that I'm totally unbiased and objective about everything." Not sure who you are describing here...its not me, though. I am not un-biased about a lot of things...but the level of bias that you and many others here show about something as simple as an OS is amazing...especially when there are much more important things to be biased about. "I figure it'll be entertaining to see your account get banned for that comment." I figure that the language used by you and your adversarial man-crush in the past that have gone "un-punished" should get this one a pass. If not, oh well. --tayme
rr0de74@live.com
on Dec 22, 2009
Blindly supports Apple? Blindly supports no one, uses what is best. My day job is a Windows System Engineer, that and VMware. I get news feeds from here (and many other places) to keep up on Microsoft stuff. Sorry I just dont know anyone that uses IM anymore. Been banned for security reasons at any corporation that knows what its doing for 7+ years easily. Replaced with non-stop cell texting for 28 year old's and under. That leaves you and 5 other old people that leave work and go home and sit in front of a Windows desktop and use Live messenger. I bet you have messenger setup to show what Debbie Gibson tracks you are playing in your Zune software.....oh wait Microsoft does not make that software work together...bummer I bet, switch to Yahoo IM.
tayme
on Dec 22, 2009
@rr0de - Wrong...many large corporations us IM internally as a collaborative tool. It is faster and easier than a phonecall and less expensive than a trip across the country for a face to face. Heck, even my 3 Macs have an IM client bundled with the OS.
tayme
on Dec 22, 2009
@rr0de - Wrong...many large corporations us IM internally as a collaborative tool. It is faster and easier than a phonecall and less expensive than a trip across the country for a face to face. Heck, even my 3 Macs have an IM client bundled with the OS.
whiplash55
on Dec 22, 2009
Good info, thanks.
Backup77
on Dec 22, 2009
Thanks for the post Paul. Will be very interested to see how Windows LIve develops over the coming year.
rr0de74@live.com
on Dec 22, 2009
Yeah they use Internal IM, LCS from MS would be the fanboy choice on this site. However I bet they CANT access IM clients outside of the corporate network as in MS, Yahoo, AIM or Gtalk. That client also needs VPN access to work when not on the corporate network and only to IM people at work. So its useful at work, but worthless otherwise. Useful is relative, we have Cisco Presence that includes IM that only works....at work. I use it when I join a meeting from my office. Its off otherwise, because its EFFing annoying. I bet there are more "lets go to break" or "what are you doing for lunch" IM's than business IM's.
rr0de74@live.com
on Dec 22, 2009
Besides when I asked the question about anyone still using IM, it was in a blog post about a consumer IM product.
rr0de74@live.com
on Dec 22, 2009
Also your IM client on your Mac, only works with Mobileme, GTalk or AIM...or another Mac on the same network. I have Macs and MobileMe accounts and never use iChat.
Grannyville
on Dec 22, 2009
@Waethron Cheers for the little message. I looked up the information on my MacBook Pro regrading the graphics chip. Bus: FPCI - I do not actually know what that means. Could somebody help me there? :) My laptop is running the GeForce 9400M chip with driver version 195.62, which is the most up to date driver for it.
lotsamystuff
on Dec 22, 2009
"Paul - As a good liberal and the father of a 'special needs child', you should be one of the last to make light of dementia." Please. This is the same guy that refers to Apple as "retarded" in one of his reviews. Paul has all the class of a fart in church.
tayme
on Dec 22, 2009
Here is a pretty good representation of the regulars here: http://imgur.com/gallery/YRoqC --tayme
runner7775
on Dec 22, 2009
@tayme, I got a good laugh at the picture. @Wae Looked up my macbook graphics. Says the bus is PCI. I wonder if a lot of integrated graphics run over PCI.

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