Confessions of a Microsoft Consultant : Windows Live

A bigger Sky

Daniel Oxley — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 13:01:00 GMT

Out of the blue the SkyDrive team have announced that they are extended the storage limit that we'll have on our SkyDrives from 5Gb to 25Gb! That's a 5-fold increase which is going to come in handy for everyone.

A few other changes being made are:

The ability to download photos direct to your Windows Live Photo Gallery
Multiple files can be downloaded as a single compressed .zip file
Moving files between folders
Copying files to multiple folder

Also, if you store lots of photos in your SkyDrive then make sure that you have Silverlight installed because you’ll be able to create slideshows of your pictures direct from your SkyDrive.

These changes aren’t available just yet, but keep an eye on the SkyDrive blog for news!

Getting your own personal translation service

Daniel Oxley — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 11:07:04 GMT

I was using Windows Live Translator the other day when I noticed that the page had been subtly updated with the introduction of a small image to the right informing me that I can also have automatic language translations made via instant messaging. By simply adding the user mtbot@hotmail.com to your contact list, you can get instant access to a personal translation service!

This is a particularly useful service to me because, no matter how long I live in Spain, I will always come across the odd word or two that I have never seen before, and sometimes it is too much hassle to go find the dictionary and look it up or go to the Windows Live Translator page to find out the translation. TBot might not get it right all the time, but it is extremely useful to have it there to translate the odd word or phrase. It works in both Windows Live Messenger and Office Communicator, so there is excuse not to add it!

My only fault with it though is that it does not have the option to translate U.S. English into proper British English ;-)

Portable Applications with Live Mesh

Daniel Oxley — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 09:58:51 GMT

I really like Live Mesh. I had been hoping/waiting a long time for Microsoft to bring out a free tool that allowed me to store all of my documents online, and have them sync automatically. I had previously tried other options like xdrive.com or box.net but never liked them because they either looked too 'clunky' and dated, or too dumbed-down and over-styled.

I use Live Mesh to store copies of my files, but something that I find really useful to do with Live Mesh is to store handy applications in a folder I have, and have that folder sync itself to all of my other machines and to the cloud. Of course, you can't just put any application into the folder because unless it is installed on each computer it won't work properly. However, if you head over to www.portableapps.com you'll see a whole bunch of applications that have been packaged up especially so that they do not require installing. Just unpack the contents of the file you download for the application to your Live Mesh folder and run the executable, simple!

There are all sorts of applications available, everything from an anti-virus scanner to a full office productivity suite! My favourite is KeePassPortable as it allows me to store all my personal information in an encrypted and always-accessible way.

Photo sharing - The Next Generation

Daniel Oxley — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 10:48:28 GMT

I have been wanting to buy a digital photo frame for a while now, mostly because I never get to regularly see any of the photos I take with my digital camera as they are stored on a computer which I don't leave permanently switched on. However, the thing that keeps putting me off about them is the time consuming task of having to manually copy photos from the computer onto a chip and then keep the chip updated with new pictures as I take them; I don't seem to get much free time lately, and the last thing I want to do when I do have time is to spend it going through photos to copy onto a photo frame.

Ideally what I want is a photo frame that could connect to my online photo album and display all the contents of the album, without any intervention from me. That way, I could plug the frame in, configure it's Internet access and then just leave it to regularly update it's contents. When I first looked at the digital photo frames it seemed that what I wanted did not exist as no frames had wireless Internet connections, only USB or card readers for photo storage.

Yesterday I received an internal email mentioning a new Windows Live service called FrameIt that is currently in beta. Basically, what it does is create a single RSS feed, the feed could be a combination of several other ones, that you can then use on a digital photo frame as the frame's main contents (it also allows you to add additional content such as weather information and news headlines). Of course, it requires an Internet-capable photo frame, which means that my ideal frame now exists!

The possibilities with this service are almost endless, but the one that instantly sprang to my mind is that, if my parents also had one of these Internet-ready photo frames, I could instantly share my pictures with them via FrameIt. Any new pictures that I added to my online gallery would almost instantly be displayed right in their front room.

Go check it out here: http://frameit.live.com, you can sign up for the beta program in just a few clicks. I have signed up already and the service looks really good, so now all I need is to buy a photo frame. My only problem now is deciding which one to buy...

SkyDrive - making the sky better

Daniel Oxley — Thu, 22 May 2008 22:43:37 GMT

The cool SkyDrive site has been upgraded with some new features. The first big feature, which to be honest about is something I am not too bothered about as I won't use it, is the ability to add captions to files. This works great if you use SkyDrive to share photos with family and friends.

The second big feature, and one that I am very pleased about, is the ability to browse through your files without having to return to the main folder window first in order to switch to a different file. This always bothered me, especially when using the site over a slow Internet connection as it took for ever to browse through files.

And finally, the feature that I have been nagging the team about for a while now is the ability to switch to a "Details" view, just like Windows Explorer. :-) Superb!

Now if only I could synchronise my files via Live Mesh into SkyDrive and vice versa... Or even better, have my SkyDrive appear as a shared folder on my Live Mesh Web Desktop, that really would be something!

Windows Live Installer - without the installer??!?!?

Daniel Oxley — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:18:27 GMT

To install a Windows Live product(s) you need to download and install the WLInstaller.exe file, which is a rolled-up package of all the Windows Live services. You run the installer and then you can choose the components that you want to install from the main screen. This is a great way to distribute the applications as it means that you only need to download one file, from one web page, to install any of the separate programs. However, you might one day want to install one of the components only to find that the installer package gives the following error:

I personally received this message recently when trying to install the excellent Windows Live Writer on my freshly installed Windows Server 2008. The first thought that when through my mind was that, by switching to a server OS as my main desktop OS, I lost the use of programs like Windows Live Messenger, and that I was now forced to blog via the web interface that our blog server has; not good. The reason that this message appears is because, when the programs where rolled up into the installer, the product team decided that it should only install on client OS's as they were the only ones supported. I don't want to get into the "why" and "who decided that" discussion as that is not what I want to focus on with this post.

Well, not to worry, because I can confirm that you can install the Windows Live components on a server OS, indeed, I am writing this blog post via Windows Live Writer so it definitely works! All you need are the separate MSI installer files for each application. With these files you can then just double-click each one to install the application that you want.

There are 2 ways that you can get a hold of the MSI files. Firstly, you could install all the components via the WLInstaller.exe program on a client OS machine, and then copy them out from the following folders:

32-bit Windows - C:\Program Files\Common Files\WindowsLiveInstaller\MsiSources
64-bit Windows - C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\WindowsLiveInstaller\MsiSources

The files you want are called:

Windows Live Sign-In Assistant 4.200.520.1: Install_{AFA4E5FD-ED70-4D92-99D0-162FD56DC986}.msi
Windows Live Messenger 8.5.1302.1018: Install_{508CE775-4BA4-4748-82DF-FE28DA9F03B0}.msi
Windows Live Writer 12.0.1366.1026: Install_{9176251A-4CC1-4DDB-B343-B487195EB397}.msi
Windows Live Mail 12.0.1606.1023: Install_{184E7118-0295-43C4-B72C-1D54AA75AAF7}.msi
Windows Live Toolbar 03.01.0000.0146: Install_{D5A145FC-D00C-4F1A-9119-EB4D9D659750}.msi
Windows Live Photo Gallery 12.0.1308.1023: Install_{257E440F-781F-459B-9A68-A0872B80C1D6}.msi

If you can't use the above method, you can go to the following SkyDrive to access a copy: Live Suite SkyDrive folder.

Out of the 2 methods mentioned above, I strongly recommend the first one for two important reasons. By using WLInstaller.exe you will always have the latest version of the files. Secondly, you know the authenticity of the files as you have downloaded them from live.com rather than the SkyDrive (not that I am saying that the files in the SkyDrive are not safe, which they are, especially as they should carry the digital signature from Microsoft).

Thanks to these guys for the heads-up: http://on10.net/blogs/sarahintampa/20879/Default.aspx