webDotWiz talks Windows Live

A daily list of links to interesting sites

Monthly Archives: July 2007

Sites for 31-Jul-2007 – Origin of words, transformers, Paint.NET, Facebook, BBC iPlayer

Today’s list:

Live image search – facial recognition, b&w, portrait

You can now search for images using three new filters:
 

For the time being, we ve got to manually enter the filter: bit of the search but apparently that’s going to change.

When you’ve done a search, remember to look over on the right-hand side to the list of people related to your search. You can spend a fair amount of time cross-searching…Surprised

See Dare’s post and the Live Search team’s post for more info.

Sites for 30-Jul-2007 – free clipart and photos, stay in touch, why own a pet

Today’s list of varied sites for you to browse:

Sites for 29-Jul-2007 – Clocks, webDotTrainSim updated, XBox

Today’s the day when webDotWiz gets a chance to look through what LifeHacker and BoingBoing have on their sites… so there are some links from these two sites that caught webDotWiz’s eye.

Sites for 28-Jul-2007 – Silverlight updated, Messenger emoticons, Live Search Images

Today’s list.

For those testing Silverlight, note Silverlight 1.0 has been updated to Release Candidate status (direct download link) and Silverlight V1.1 Alpha has some of its bits updated too (direct download link).

Sites for 26-Jul-2007 and 27-Jul-2007 – Visual Studio 2008 beta, Live Spaces updates, high-definition photos, learning

Doing catchup so the list is somewhat longer than other days this week.

Those readers who have their own Live Space(s) – yes, there are those with more than one Live Space site – and those who haven’t yet made their own Live Space (get started – it’s free and a great way to stay connected and share with family and friends), there are a comments by Mike Torres and Dare, both of whom work on the Live Spaces project, that you should read (marked with **).

Here are today’s sites:

Sites for 24-Jul-2007 and 25-Jul-2007 – Office clip art, good answers on Live QnA, Microsoft Surface

Today’s sites for you to browse away some time – and hopefully give you some good info:

Sites for 23-Jul-2007 – Word 2007 mail merge, TimeTicker, Messenger’s 8th birthday

Today’s sites (with some help from Lifehacker and Boingboing):

Sites for 21-Jul-2007 and 22-Jul-2007 – Channel 8, U.K. floods, open library, email reading, trolls

Some more sites for you to browse:

Updates to Windows Live Spaces

There have been a large number of updates made to Windows Live Spaces over the past couple of days.

Changes have been made to the homepage – now called the What’s new page – and the main page on your Live Space especially in how the links are organised to make it easier to navigate and customise. As well, it’s now easier for visitors to your Space to view your photos and download any photo they want.

If you go to your Live Space from the button on Live Messenger, you’ll immediately see the changes (all screenshots are taken from webDotWiz’s Waranga Basin Live Space):

spaces_updates_jul07_01

In the above screenshot we’re on our Spaces homepage (as indicated by the What’s new button being highlighted) and there’s a list of contacts which shows who has updated their Space recently. Notice that the Windows Live banner is thinner to give more screen realestate.

Over on the right-hand side of the page, there are links to the usual sorts of jobs you want to do on your Space, as well as a tip for enhancing your Space and a search box to find people with interests similar to your own:

spaces_updates_jul07_02

If you load your Live Space from the Windows Live Toolbar or enter your Space’s web address by hand into your browser, you’re taken immediately to your Space’s main page.

Note that the Windows Live orb at the top left is "live" and a click gives you links to other Windows Live services (this works on any Windows Live site):

spaces_updates_jul07_03

The navigation at the top left of the main page has been made more meaningful by providing a link back to your Space’s homepage, the Your space button is indented to indicate you’re at your main page and the name of your Space is alongside. As well, there’s a More button which provides another way to easily get to different sections of your Space. If you’re the owner of the Space, you get a list of some modules you can add:

spaces_updates_jul07_04

Over on the right-hand side, there’s no longer a link that switches between being in or out of edit mode – the Customize button handles any type of editing you want to do on your Space. Note a new item, Apply a template – more about that one later:

spaces_updates_jul07_05

Choosing one of the customise options brings up the choices again, this time listed against the familiar warning background with the Save and Cancel buttons:

spaces_updates_jul07_06

The Templates customise option does the job of Themes, Layout and Modules in one step and there are plenty of choices to suit your needs:

spaces_updates_jul07_07

After choosing a template, you see that you can get back to Customize to make other changes.

There are a couple of handy features to make it easier for visitors to see our photos and download them. We’re already used to the seeing the button alongside the photo album on the front page that gives a full page view of the photos in that particular album:

spaces_updates_jul07_08

Once in the album full page view, visitors now get two more options: to view your photos full screen and there’s a link to enable them to download any of your photos:

spaces_updates_jul07_09

Conclusion

Well, that’s the list of main features webDotWiz has explored thus far.

One smaller feature is that visitors can click on a title of a blog entry to open it in a page of its own (and thus get the web address, for example, rather than clicking on Permalink at the end of the post).

Via The Space Craft and Livside.