Author Archive

Gold Star your Favorites!

3:12 pm - May 23, 2006 in Inside Windows Live Messenger:

Everyone has their favorite websites they love to check out daily, monthly or maybe only yearly. But how do you keep track of them?

Windows Live Favorites!

Check out the Gold Star in the Messenger Tab list

note: if you have tabs turned off you can turn them on by going to Tools -> Options -> Tabs

note: this is currently available in US english - it will be coming to your market soon.

Save your favorites. You can access them when you sign into Messenger anywhere.

But wait there's more - you can also share your favorites through your Space

You can go say "Hi" to the team at the Windows Live Favorites Blog.

You can also access favorites through the website, Windows Live Favorites.

Want another Gold Star?

You can now sign up for AMBER Alerts through Messenger. AMBER Alerts provide information about missing childern in your area through out the United States. This program has led to the successful recovery of more that 260 childern.

You can sign up here.

More information on Amber Alerts.

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Sharing Folders: Not Supported?

1:44 am - June 1, 2006 in Inside Windows Live Messenger:

Posted by Ines.

If you are running the latest Messenger Beta (which you should be since it is now open to everybody ), you have access to a new feature we introduced in this 8.0 release: Sharing Folders.

But, there is one caveat : Sharing Folders is only supported on computers where the primary partition is formatted with the NTFS file system.

Why you ask ? In order to provide the best “Sharing” experience possible, we decided to rely on the NTFS file system’s rich set of functionality (I won’t bore you with the gory details ).

So, what can you do if you realize that Sharing Folders is disabled because your system is FAT32? No need to worry; here are a few steps that will help you get up and sharing quickly by converting your hard drive :

Click Start, and then click Run.
Type cmd, and then click OK.
Type convert c: /FS:NTFS.
Restart your computer.

Now your system should be ready to start Sharing!

For more on Sharing Folders, select "Help->Help Topics" from Messenger, and then type "Sharing Folders" in Windows Live Help's Search bar.

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Sharing Folders: Not Supported?

1:44 am - June 1, 2006 in Inside Windows Live Messenger:

Posted by Ines.

If you are running the latest Messenger Beta (which you should be since it is now open to everybody ), you have access to a new feature we introduced in this 8.0 release: Sharing Folders.

But, there is one caveat : Sharing Folders is only supported on computers where the primary partition is formatted with the NTFS file system.

Why you ask ? In order to provide the best “Sharing” experience possible, we decided to rely on the NTFS file system’s rich set of functionality (I won’t bore you with the gory details ).

So, what can you do if you realize that Sharing Folders is disabled because your system is FAT32? No need to worry; here are a few steps that will help you get up and sharing quickly by converting your hard drive :

Click Start, and then click Run.
Type cmd, and then click OK.
Type convert c: /FS:NTFS.
Restart your computer.

Now your system should be ready to start Sharing!

For more on Sharing Folders, select "Help->Help Topics" from Messenger, and then type "Sharing Folders" in Windows Live Help's Search bar.

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Not Yet, But Soon: Windows Live + Yahoo!

5:22 am - June 5, 2006 in Inside Windows Live Messenger:

posted by Leah

Do you know that feeling of excitement when your favorite band announces its making a new album? Do you also know the painful anticipation that follows, while you wait for the album to reach stores?

It’s been a long time since we announced the deal which would allow Windows Live Messenger people and Yahoo! Messenger peope to IM one another. The project was so top secret that many of us (myself included) found out the same day you did. And that day was SO exciting, but next came the wait… I know you’re feeling the pain too, because of the number of times I’ve read something like:

“The Betas are pretty cool, Messenger Team, but WHEN CAN I IM MY YAHOO FRIENDS?”

Well, I wanted to let you know –we haven’t forgotten! As it turns out, it’s been a hard problem to solve, and the team has been working hard, I still don’t know exactly when you’re going to be able to start adding those Yahoo! Buddies to your WL Messenger, but it can’t be much longer. Last week I got to check out a fully functional version of WL Messenger which could exchange IMs with a fully functional version of Yahoo!

They’ve still got some work to do – specifically final testing. But soon, Windows Live people will be IMing with Yahoo! people and the world will be that much closer to universal love, peace, and harmony! ….

….right?

*Shout out to the guys at Liveside. They heard about this news elsewhere and suggested it for a blog topic. I obviously liked the suggestion.

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Not Yet, But Soon: Windows Live + Yahoo!

5:22 am - June 5, 2006 in Inside Windows Live Messenger:

posted by Leah

Do you know that feeling of excitement when your favorite band announces its making a new album? Do you also know the painful anticipation that follows, while you wait for the album to reach stores?

It’s been a long time since we announced the deal which would allow Windows Live Messenger people and Yahoo! Messenger peope to IM one another. The project was so top secret that many of us (myself included) found out the same day you did. And that day was SO exciting, but next came the wait… I know you’re feeling the pain too, because of the number of times I’ve read something like:

“The Betas are pretty cool, Messenger Team, but WHEN CAN I IM MY YAHOO FRIENDS?”

Well, I wanted to let you know –we haven’t forgotten! As it turns out, it’s been a hard problem to solve, and the team has been working hard, I still don’t know exactly when you’re going to be able to start adding those Yahoo! Buddies to your WL Messenger, but it can’t be much longer. Last week I got to check out a fully functional version of WL Messenger which could exchange IMs with a fully functional version of Yahoo!

They’ve still got some work to do – specifically final testing. But soon, Windows Live people will be IMing with Yahoo! people and the world will be that much closer to universal love, peace, and harmony! ….

….right?

*Shout out to the guys at Liveside. They heard about this news elsewhere and suggested it for a blog topic. I obviously liked the suggestion.

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Windows Live Mail Desktop Beta Announced

2:25 pm - June 8, 2006 in Inside Windows Live Messenger:

Posted by Daniel

Windows Live Mail Desktop Beta is the new sibling in our large Window Live family. And as any family member it shares a lot of the "DNA" that made Messenger such a popular kid. They share the same user interface infrastructure like the new look, colorization, some of the controls and in general the whole look and feel. On top of that pretty face they also share some of the "brains" like the same contacts store and replication, and also the same sign in engine. They even share the same goal which is to enable people to communicate with each other. I'm very proud to say that I was part of a small team of people from Messenger and Windows Live Mail that made that possible.

If you want to give it a try then go to http://ideas.live.com and sign up to be a part of the beta team. Also check out the WLMDB blog here: http://spaces.msn.com/MoreThanMail and the Channel 9 video interview with some of the team members.

Oh, and BTW the "Windows Live Mail Desktop Beta" name will change :)

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Windows Live Mail Desktop Beta Announced

2:25 pm - June 8, 2006 in Inside Windows Live Messenger:

Posted by Daniel

Windows Live Mail Desktop Beta is the new sibling in our large Window Live family. And as any family member it shares a lot of the "DNA" that made Messenger such a popular kid. They share the same user interface infrastructure like the new look, colorization, some of the controls and in general the whole look and feel. On top of that pretty face they also share some of the "brains" like the same contacts store and replication, and also the same sign in engine. They even share the same goal which is to enable people to communicate with each other. I'm very proud to say that I was part of a small team of people from Messenger and Windows Live Mail that made that possible.

If you want to give it a try then go to http://ideas.live.com and sign up to be a part of the beta team. Also check out the WLMDB blog here: http://spaces.msn.com/MoreThanMail and the Channel 9 video interview with some of the team members.

Oh, and BTW the "Windows Live Mail Desktop Beta" name will change :)

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Messenger Hearts Developers

7:01 pm - June 12, 2006 in Inside Windows Live Messenger:

guest posted by Katie (standing)*

Do you like to tinker and build things? Are you tired of waiting around for some developer in Redmond to add your feature idea to Messenger?

I’m Katie, a developer working on the extensibility features of Messenger. Here’s a rollup of all the cool stuff happening around here that developers might be interested in…

New developer website – here, with a special section for Messenger here.

Forum for developers to post questions and get answers - here

SDK for Messenger Add-ins on MSDN - here

Channel 9 video – to be posted soon.

And even if you don’t know what a compiler is or what ‘SDK’ stands for…you might still want to keep an eye on what’s going on over at http://dev.live.com/ . One of our goals is to make it as easy as possible for any coder out there to extend our products, and folks who don’t code to use the things coders build. You can also use the forums to get help from other developers if you get stuck or don’t know how to get started. Or, if you don’t want to get your hands dirty, just post your ideas and convince somebody else to make it a reality J

(Wendy, who tests extensibility features is also pictured, seated)

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Messenger Hearts Developers

7:01 pm - June 12, 2006 in Inside Windows Live Messenger:

guest posted by Katie (standing)*

Do you like to tinker and build things? Are you tired of waiting around for some developer in Redmond to add your feature idea to Messenger?

I’m Katie, a developer working on the extensibility features of Messenger. Here’s a rollup of all the cool stuff happening around here that developers might be interested in…

New developer website – here, with a special section for Messenger here.

Forum for developers to post questions and get answers - here

SDK for Messenger Add-ins on MSDN - here

Channel 9 video – to be posted soon.

And even if you don’t know what a compiler is or what ‘SDK’ stands for…you might still want to keep an eye on what’s going on over at http://dev.live.com/ . One of our goals is to make it as easy as possible for any coder out there to extend our products, and folks who don’t code to use the things coders build. You can also use the forums to get help from other developers if you get stuck or don’t know how to get started. Or, if you don’t want to get your hands dirty, just post your ideas and convince somebody else to make it a reality J

(Wendy, who tests extensibility features is also pictured, seated)