Torres Talking: MSN Spaces

High-resolution photos on Windows Live Spaces (for FREE of course)

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 06:10:42 GMT

I've been waiting for this day for a couple years: we now support high-resolution photos on Windows Live Spaces... along with photo printing powered by HP Snapfish. The quality of the photos is great for full-screen slide shows (a feature we introduced earlier this year) and for ordering prints.

Curious about the quality? Check out the photo album I just uploaded from a trip to Hawaii earlier this summer. I've been using Flickr for the past few years (and people on the team have called me on it!) because I just wasn't happy with the support we had for photos. But all that changes today - I'm back to using Spaces for photos and the integration into the new Windows Live Photo Gallery is really going to make sharing photos easy.

To my RSS subscribers, I apologize in advance for the 6-10 new albums I'm going to upload over the next few days and weeks.

To read more about the high-res & printing support read The Space Craft: New photo features available today on Spaces.

Windows Live for Windows Mobile (yes, it includes Spaces!)

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 05:12:16 GMT

I know this is old news in the blogosphere... But for everyone else, this is pretty exciting news. Tomorrow at 3GSM, Microsoft is going to announce Windows Mobile 6 (aka "Crossbow") along with some serious carrier and manufacturer support. Part of the new OS is full integration with Live services including Windows Live Spaces. My favorite feature is the ability to upload photos to Spaces right from the photo gallery application. And of course, I love the one-click Spaces access from the contact list!

Check out the link below for details.

Connect and share when things happen – anyway you want.
Express yourself with e-mail, IM or even by adding photos to a blog – all from your Windows Mobile powered phone. Windows Live for Windows Mobile offers unique features, such as a single contact list with presence status, the ability to send instant messages with voice recordings, and more.

Source: Windows Live for Windows Mobile

New Spaces mobile feature: Post to an album

Sat, 10 Feb 2007 06:27:53 GMT

Smuga talks about a new feature in Live Spaces for posting photos from a mobile device (or an email program) directly to a photo album. Cool stuff.

Several days ago we made uploading photos taken with your camera phone to Spaces more powerful. In the past you could post them only to your blog. Now you can also post photos directly to photo albums. You can do it as long as your phone allows you to send e-mail. There are two ways to set up the feature: from the PC site and from the mobile site.

Source: Mike's Lounge: Sending photos to your space

New themes

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 06:23:27 GMT

It appears that we just added over a dozen new themes. Stay tuned to The Space Craft for details, or just mozy on over to Edit Mode, click Customize, and check them out for yourself. If you're a basketball fan, you might even see someone you recognize in there. I figured I would switch away from one of the "simple" themes for once with this great, Cinthya-designed theme.

New Spaces features - Video & Alerts

Thu, 25 Jan 2007 06:34:20 GMT

Some small but fun changes to Spaces were brought online - and you probably didn't even notice, it all went so smoothly ;) There were tons of behind-the-scenes improvements and performance enhancements (things will just keep getting faster until they render in the past!) but the real fun stuff:

You can finally embed videos in your blog posts. Rock on. This one was a long time coming but worth the wait. Check it out - I love this video. (Update: YouTube went down the second I posted this entry. Coincidence? You might see a blank space until it comes back...)

And we also released Windows Live Alerts for Spaces updates - something we've wanted to do for a long time. You can subscribe to blog or photo updates on any public space, or get alerts when people leave YOU comments. Cool.

There are so many cool things in the works right now too. I wish I could give details about just how much we're doing (and how many people are helping us do it now compared to just a few months ago) but I can't. Just get strapped in for a great 2007.

Learn more about the new stuff at The Space Craft

New Spaces gadgets

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 02:56:16 GMT

Some fun gadgets for Windows Live Spaces were announced today.

In order to highlight the new cool gadgets that developers are creating for Spaces, we released a Spaces Gadgets page today linked to from the the Spaces home page. The page highlights some of the top Spaces gadgets from the Windows Live Gadget Gallery.

Link to The Space Craft

The gadgets include a Soapbox video player, a Universal video player (for YouTube, Google Video, IFilm, etc.), a new Flickr gadget, and an improved custom HTML "sandbox".

My one nit with the new gadgets is that the titles are kind of corny. "RSS slideshow for Flickr", "HTML Sandbox"...? I've sent some feedback off to the folks who worked on these, so hopefully the titles will be shortened (and be less geek-oriented) at some point.

Otherwise, these gadgets rock. More ways to customize your space with a couple keypresses! Although we have nothing to announce right now, we have heard you guys (ahem, Trevin) loud and clear that you also want a way to embed things like YouTube videos and Flash controls into blog entries directly. There are some real complexities to work out with respect to the security model and performance requirements, but this is definitely something we know is important to people (myself included).

(By the way, if you STILL aren't using Windows Live Writer, what the heck are you waiting for? There isn't anything that compares to it for blogging quickly IMO)

Comscore Media Metrix: Blogs Gain Favor Worldwide

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 18:49:36 GMT

Some research conducted by Comscore Media Metrix on how pervasive blogging is in different countries (France, Canada, U.S., the UK, Italy, Spain, and Germany). Turns out the U.S. is on the low-end of blog reading while Canada was at the top. Here's a quote on different blogging services + a couple charts courtesy of Comscore.

Windows Live Spaces is the favorite blog site among the majority of countries studied, with 37 percent of all Canadians visiting the site in October 2006. Blogger.com had the highest penetration in the United States (12.4 percent) and Germany (9.7 percent), while the same was true for Skyblog in France (27.4 percent).

Source: iMedia Connection: The Score: Blogs Gain Favor Worldwide

Cingular and MySpace... Everyone and Windows Live Spaces

Mon, 18 Dec 2006 07:32:11 GMT

From CNET today:

Cingular, the largest U.S. wireless phone carrier, will offer a version of popular social-networking site MySpace.com on its phones in an expansion of their partnership, the companies plan to announce on Monday.
For an additional $2.99 a month, customers will be able to upload photos taken on cell phones, read and respond to MySpace e-mail, update blog entries and view and search for friends from their handsets.

Source: Cingular to offer MySpace on cell phones

Interesting. Not to belittle this service sight unseen, but we've been offering all of that for free for years. And it doesn't require a Java download. And it's not tied to any one carrier. They want people to pay $36/year for this? I suppose it makes sense as the MySpace demographic could probably convince their parents that they neeeeeeeeeed this or they'll, you know, like, omigod, like, die...! Color me unimpressed.

If you have a space on Windows Live and want to blog or upload photos on-the-go, or you just like to read people's blogs, leave comments, or catch-up on someone's latest photos, check out our mobile service by browsing to http://mobile.live.com on your mobile phone (or on your PC to read up on the service). You can also just navigate to someone's URL (i.e. http://mike.spaces.live.com) and you will automatically get the mobile version of the space. No matter what you end up doing, you won't need to pay any tolls, download anything, or switch carriers to do it.

Spaces tweaks & updates (more momentum!)

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 02:22:38 GMT

Check out The Space Craft for information on our latest update; the fun never stops. Snippet below - click the link to read more:

Just a couple of hours ago we released an incremental update to Windows Live Spaces. Most of the work in this release occurred under the hood – improving performance, fixing bugs, and increasing usability – but we’ve also shipped a few cool new features in this release. We’ll talk in more detail about both the “behind the scenes” improvements and these new features in future posts, but for now we wanted to give you a quick recap of the new features you can use starting today.

Source: The Space Craft: What’s new in Windows Live Spaces

All sorts of little tweaks like custom colors, a "real" Windows Media Player module, new Music Lists, Movie Lists with box cover art, improvements to gadgets (which will pay dividends for months to come), four column layout, title & tagline customization (see mine?) and massive performance gains across the board.

Update, 6:29pm: Oh, I almost forgot. We've also eradicated that annoying issue in Bloglines where Spaces photo albums were continually showing up as unread (thanks Steve!) For heavy Bloglines users like me, you know how great this is. I just added my photo albums back to my Space for the first time in probably a year or so thanks to this fix.

Learn more!

Blogging Services Driving Web Growth

Wed, 06 Sep 2006 23:20:42 GMT

It's always nice to see something like this. Emphasis is mine.

The popularity of blogging services, particularly those of Google and Microsoft, has driven an increase of more than 4 million Web sites since last month, an Internet services company said Tuesday.
The number of Web site increased more than 4 percent to 96.9 million, according to a September survey by Netcraft. The number of sites has soared by 15.5 million since June.
Two trends are responsible for the growth: the popularity of blogging services and the heated competition between Microsoft and Google. Microsoft has had "huge growth" in its Windows Live Spaces blogging/networking service, adding 1.3 million hostnames last month, Netcraft said. Google had a gain of 459,000 hostnames, primarily at Blogger. Both services are offered at no charge.

Source: Google, Microsoft Blogging Services Driving Web Growth - E-business & Business Technology News by TechWeb

Windows Live Spaces Tour

Thu, 17 Aug 2006 19:05:58 GMT

Via Moz, here's a link to Windows Live Spaces Tour for the Friends list feature. If you have an existing space and don't know how to add the Friends list to your space, add or tag friends, or how to accept invites, this one's for you. It's always fun to see features you've worked on appear in a Flash-y demo for millions of people.

Talking about minor updates

Thu, 10 Aug 2006 15:40:17 GMT

Some fixes outlined on The Space Craft below...

Quote

Windows Live Spaces Update!

Hey Windows Live Spaces Fans,

We appreciate the great feedback we have been receiving since launching Windows Live Spaces. As Greg mentioned in his last post, we are all very focused on addressing your concerns, and we are happy to report that many of the issues that recently impacted the service have been resolved, including the statistics page, emoticons in blog posts, permalink problems, and some Firefox compatibility issues with the Friends gadget.

We like hearing from you, even if the feedback is not positive, as it helps us build a better service. Please continue providing that feedback. (We like hearing the good stuff too )

We remain focused on both building additional functionality and improving the service quality for Windows Live Spaces.

Thanks again for your feedback and patience!

The Spaces Team

P.S. We have heard your suggestion of hearing from us more frequently via The Space Craft and we're working on that too.

(Updated to mention some of the specific fixes we made)

Opening new windows or not?

Thu, 03 Aug 2006 20:21:33 GMT

You may have noticed (I know some people did!) that clicking on links in Lists and some other places throughout Spaces no longer opens up a new window by default. You can blame me for this one. But before you do, let me say that I really do think it was the right thing to do for a number of reasons. Let me explain.

When we released the first version of MSN Spaces worldwide back in December 2004, we had some oddities in the user experience that kind of slipped out under people's radar. Things like not being able to easily edit your space from preview mode, having reverse comment ordering, and this one: links always opening up new windows. People grew accustomed to some of these things - so much so that when we tried to change comment ordering to be a more "standard" order like other blog providers, we quickly changed it back based on the feedback we heard from people. Even though it's "wrong" the way we are doing it, there was no harm in keeping comments sorted in reverse if people preferred it this way.

When it comes to opening links in new windows, however, users always have a choice. In almost all browsers (Safari, Firefox, IE, Opera, etc.) you can open links up in a new window via CTRL-Click or CMD-Click (on a Mac). This is how I do a lot of my browsing - I'm constantly opening new tabs in both Safari and IE7.

But if links are set to automatically open in a new window by the system, there's really no easy way to stop them. So if you're the type of person that likes to have just one browser window open at any given time, you were out of luck with MSN Spaces. You couldn't accomplish this with the way we had it before.

Additionally, it's a usability nightmare (especially for less experienced users) to have to manage dozens of windows all the time just to browse through a website. Every single time I watch a novice user on a computer, there are a few things I notice: a cluttered desktop with installation programs everywhere, a horribly configured Start menu and Favorites menu, and a bunch of browser windows open all the time. Going through and cleaning up your system - or closing all those runaway windows - is just too tedious for most people to deal with <unless you're a Type A control freak like me> But seriously, we want navigating spaces to be fun... not a bunch of overhead!

This is what Jacob Neilsen had to say about it back in 1999: "Opening up new browser windows is like a vacuum cleaner sales person who starts a visit by emptying an ash tray on the customer's carpet. Don't pollute my screen with any more windows, thanks (particularly since current operating systems have miserable window management). If I want a new window, I will open it myself!" If you want to read what other people have to say about it, check it out here.

And read the reasons why NOT to open new windows all the time from Jacob's new book, Prioritizing Web Usability:

It disrupts the expected user experience
It pollutes the user's screen with unwanted objects (sometimes causing crashes or memory errors)
It hampers the user's ability to return to visited pages
It obscures the window the user is currently working on
It can make users believe that links are inactive because they appear to have no effect, when in fact the information is rendered in an obscured window

And one of my own: the Back button becomes useless, and that's the button people use the most in a web browser.

So there you have it. Again, you can totally blame me for this little change to the way Spaces operates as I opened the bug and fought for the change. But all things considered, I do think it was the right thing to do for the service. If you still want links to open in new windows, just hold down CTRL!

CNET Review: Windows Live Spaces

Thu, 03 Aug 2006 17:44:48 GMT

Some quotes from the write-up:

"If you already chat with Windows Live Messenger and faithfully check your Hotmail or Windows Live Mail Inbox, then Windows Live Spaces can handily integrate your contacts, letting you share your blog, pictures, and fun Gadgets with them. Plus, Spaces shares links and tie-ins with other Windows Live tools, such as the Windows Live Toolbar."
"This update to MSN Spaces gets a streamlined new look and feel, which you can customize by picking colors or a template with backgrounds that show sports, puppies, hearts, and other themes. You must pay for a Premium account to remove the ad banner, which replaces the text ads from MSN Spaces."
"Microsoft wants Spaces to serve as a virtual crash pad for you and your friends, whose faces you can display on your page, à la Friendster, MySpace, and Facebook. Click a contact, and you can quickly chat by using Windows Live Messenger. The new Friends Explorer lets you check out people within your extended network. You can search for people by typing in a name, use Explore to check out people already connected to you, or look up keywords to find Spaces in an area of interest. We found 3,527 Spaces and 211 contact profiles that mentioned insects, for example."
"All kinds of Web-based services are becoming more dynamic, enabling social networking and customization. Now that Microsoft is embracing this Web 2.0 technology and serving it for free to a global user base, we're curious to see how Windows Live Spaces will evolve."
Read more -> Windows Live Spaces Review

Hack for sorting your friends

Thu, 03 Aug 2006 07:06:00 GMT

This is a sidebar from our book that I thought you would appreciate now that the Friends list has launched in all of our international markets. And of course, the book is available from Amazon! [plug]

BTW, John Kountz is the reason this little hack is possible. Just thought you should know that ;)

---

When you’re adding notes and tags to your friends, you can also choose where you’d
like your friends to appear in your friends list—near the top, near the bottom, or
“doesn’t matter.” These settings aren’t absolute; if you have 15 friends and would like
them to appear “near the top,” you won’t know exactly where they will appear in
those first 15 positions. But this does give you some basic sorting ability in case you
want to make sure a family member isn’t relegated to the fifth page!

However, you can use a little trick to make sure one of your friends appears exactly
where you’d like them to appear in your list. You do this simply by adding a special
tag to your friend to indicate their exact sort position. Give one of these a try:

Add “Sort:1” as a tag (no spaces, no quotes) to your best friend. When you
click Done on the Edit page and return to the main page, your best friend
should appear first in your list!

Add “Sort:1000” as a tag to the person on your list you rarely talk to anymore.
When you click Done on the Edit page and return to the main page,
this person should appear in the last position on the list.

These tags don’t show up as viewable tags applied to your friends; the system
automatically hides them. If you’d like to change the sort position of one of your
friends, all you have to do is add the tag again with the new value. For example,
if the person you placed at the end of the list gets you a really great gift for your
birthday, you can promote them to the second position just by adding “Sort:2”
as a tag.

Note that if you mistakenly tag two friends with the same position (say, “Sort:1”),
the system will randomly make a determination as to whom should appear first,
but their relative position in the list will be maintained. In other words, your
friends would randomly appear as first and second if they were both tagged with
“Sort:1.”

Windows Live Spaces Tour, Part 2: Gadgets

Thu, 03 Aug 2006 06:48:40 GMT

Part two of the LiveSide interview, this time on gadgets with Jay:

LiveSide - Windows Live Spaces Tour, Part 2: Gadgets

I just wrote this in the comments in The Space Craft but it's worth repeating for those who didn't see Jay's post on gadgets earlier. A bunch of gadgets on Windows Live Gallery will have an "Add to Space" button soon. Now that we're out in the marketplace, people can expect these to be turned on shortly. It was sort of a chicken & egg problem; we had to be out with Windows Live Spaces before gadgets could be certified to work with Spaces. So there are now a bunch of people working to certify gadgets... and we'll let you know as they come online.

So again, things will get VERY interesting over the next few weeks with the ability to add just about ANYTHING to your space. Trust me, this is some big stuff.

Jay covers a bunch of stuff in this interview. It's seriously worth listening to if you want to understand what's up with gadgets!

<I really need to be able to rename my MSN Spaces category to Windows Live Spaces... Karen!>

More on gadgets

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 23:20:18 GMT

Folks: thanks for all the feedback, both here and on The Space Craft. We read it all. A lot of it is sort of rude, but that's OK ;) We're adults and we can take it.

We're working hard on a few minor fix-ups right now including the statistics page and a few other things. In the meantime, Jay posted some information about gadgets to The Space Craft that's worth reading. Click the links to go to the full posts.

These will help answer the questions people have been asking: 1) How do we add gadgets? and 2) How do we BUILD gadgets?

The Space Craft
Check Gallery every day for new gadgets - they have RSS feeds for everything and you can add each feed directly to Live.com. Both teams have been burning the midnight oil to get our Windows Live services out there and gadget developers have already starting cranking away. There's no doubt there will be a ton of great gadgets you can add to your space in no time.
Gadget devs, come out and play!
Thanks to the great work done on Gadgets to date, you can now write a gadget that works both in Live.com (personalized portal) and Spaces (online expression/identity). And, it only takes one person adding it to their space for your gadget to become popular -- visitors to that space can choose "Add to your space" or "Add to Live.com" right from the header of the gadget, then visitors to that space can add to their spaces, and it's off to the races!

Click on the 10

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 01:55:19 GMT

Want to see a fun little video about Windows Live Spaces? Click the 10.

MSN Spaces has evolved and will now be known as Windows Live Spaces. This is not just a simple name change but a feature packed update, including gadgets, games, photos, feeds and a friends list. Everything is customizable to your heart’s desire.

Windows Live Spaces - It’s Here!

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 01:19:13 GMT

The falcon has landed. Now I have to change bazillions of blog entry categories from MSN Spaces to Windows Live Spaces ;) Details from The Space Craft below.

Quote

Windows Live Spaces - It’s Here!

Hey Spaces Fans!

We’re thrilled to announce that Windows Live Spaces has just released and we hope you’re loving it! We’ve talked about some of the cool new features of Windows Live Spaces, but if you’re not sure where to start, here are a couple of tips:

1. Set-up your friends list. Simply add the new Friends Module to your space, or click here to automatically add it to your space, and start inviting your friends. Once your friends accept your invitation, they will appear to visitors of your space. You can also explore your contacts’ friends (and their friends too) directly from Windows Live Messenger. Simply click on your contact’s Messenger icon to view their contact card, and then click on the “View this contact’s Friends list” icon on the bottom right hand corner of the contact card. This will launch the cool new Friends Explorer feature that will allow you to easily navigate through lists of friends.

2. Add gadgets. Jazz up your space by adding cool new gadgets. All you need to do is click on the “Customize” link in your Space when you are in the editor mode, and then click on the link titled “Add gadgets from Windows Live Gallery” to be taken to the Windows Live Gallery where you can select gadgets you want to add to your space. Check out the “Updated Spaces” gadget we just added to The Spacecraft! You can add this gadget automatically to your space too by simply clicking here.

You will also notice that we heard your feedback on photo navigation features and have brought back the filmstrip as a result!

To find out more of the cool new features of Windows Live Spaces, check out http://discoverspaces.live.com/. You can also check out spaces guru Mike Torres’ video, where he demos how easy it is to use the new Windows Live Spaces here.

Have fun and let us know what you think of the new Windows Live Spaces!

The Spaces Team

Windows Live Spaces Audio Tour, Part One: Social Networking

Mon, 31 Jul 2006 17:39:42 GMT

Moz and Jay field questions from the LiveSide.net crew on Windows Live Spaces here:

Windows Live Spaces Audio Tour Part One: Social Networking

I listened to this interview in the car this morning to prepare for an on10.net interview (airing soon) and actually learned a bunch of stuff <insert embarassed smirk>. If you're interested in hearing about the positioning of Windows Live Spaces in the marketplace (i.e.why we don't necessarily think about MySpace as competition) then this is the interview for you.

Moz and Jay clearly articulate what's different about our stuff. Share your world and discover the worlds of others. Real Friends, Real Stories. 6 million photos uploaded per day, 123 million unique users monthly, and all sorts of other fun stats about the service across the world.

You can also hear about our approach to advertising (and the ability to remove banner ads), permissions and controls, gadgets, blogging and photo sharing, our entry into social networking, the difference between Live.com and Spaces, and why Windows Live Spaces took a little while to come out.

More on Windows Live Spaces

Fri, 28 Jul 2006 01:16:38 GMT

Wow, lots of press coverage today. Again, emphasis mine. Click the link to read the whole article.

Quote

Windows Live Spaces to Take on Social Networking Services

What Microsoft is doing, essentially, is prepping a release of Windows Live Spaces that improves performance, increases integration, cobrands with other Windows Live services, and innovates social networking. Instead of users connecting to virtually anyone they find online, as is done today with most social networking services, Windows Live Spaces' users will start with access to people they know, then gain access to their friend's friends--given the right permissions--and branch out from there. "It's the way the real world works," says Moz Hussain, group product manager for MSN Spaces.
Windows Live Spaces will include several new UI features that will enable this scenario and help link the service to other Windows Live properties, such as Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Mail. A new Friends Explorer will help users discover what's new with their friends and find other users with similar interests. The MSN Spaces UI is being dramatically overhauled with a pop-up Jewel menu (similar to the Jewel menu in Office 2007), an integrated search box, and richer themes. Windows Live Spaces can be extended with drag-and-drop gadgets--similar to those used on Live.com--that can provide almost any functionality imaginable.
So far, MSN Spaces has proven to be enormously popular. The service sports 123 million unique users, with roughly 3 million users visiting MSN Spaces every second. Users upload six million photos to the service every day, requiring 1TB of additional storage every nine days. To put these numbers in perspective, it took MSN Messenger six years to reach 160 million users: MSN Spaces will reach 130 million users in only 18 months.

CNET covers Windows Live Spaces

Thu, 27 Jul 2006 20:32:26 GMT

CNET talks about Windows Live Spaces. Enjoy ;) Again, emphasis mine.

Quote

Windows Live unpacks Toolbar, invites Pac-Man to Spaces - Alpha Blog
The Web 2.0 renovation for Windows Live Spaces may make MSN Spaces--not to mention MySpace and Friendster--seem flat. Spaces pages will let you brand yourself with more than a text blog and a photo gallery, as Microsoft hopes to add even more playfulness to the pastime of social networking. You'll be able to play Pac-Man and Tetris with your contacts, for example. Those old-school games are among numerous badges and tools you'll be able to tack onto your Spaces account. Sure, you can already snag dynamic add-ins like these from all over the Web and paste them into your blog, but when Microsoft hands over Gadgets to its stated 120 million global Spaces users, more people will come to expect such AJAX-like features.

To keep you from clicking so much, Windows Live Spaces will let you hover over other users' images to pop up a thumbnail of their text profile. Paid users will be able to escape the ad banner atop the page. We'll test the next edition of Spaces next month.

PC Magazine: New Windows Live Suite is Almost Live

Thu, 27 Jul 2006 20:31:50 GMT

PC Magazine on Windows Live Spaces... emphasis mine.

Quote

News From PC Magazine: New Windows Live Suite is Almost Live
Windows Live Spaces is Microsoft's effort to get involved in social networking. The company figured that they have 12 billion contacts, they might as well build a networking site, integrating their mail and messenger clients to connect them. The site has a focus on networking within your own contacts using blogs and photo sharing.

"Our approach is different from the Wild Wild West model that others have followed to this point," said Moz Hussain, group product manager for Windows Live. "Our social networking will instead be built around your trusted circle of contacts or those contacts of others you trust." The site will allow users to learn about each other a bit faster than with MySpace, in that they don't have to visit a page and wait for video and music to load up just to decide if they want to know a given person. Hovering over a photo gives automatic profile information and users can decide from there if they want to visit someone's page. On Spaces, users can also share PC games, although only a select few games will be available in the immediate future.

More on URLs & RSS

Thu, 27 Jul 2006 18:34:29 GMT

As we've discussed both here and on The Space Craft over the last few months, we're undergoing one final URL change to the Live domain once the flip over to Windows Live Spaces happens. There shouldn't be any real impact to most of you except for the incredibly annoying feature where all the Spaces feeds you subscribe to in an RSS reader will be marked as unread again.

This should be the last time this happens... hopefully ever... barring some weird future bug.

The primary reason this happens is because the GUID/permalink is changing in the RSS items, so readers don't know that you've already seen the item associated with the old GUID/permalink.

Sorry about this in advance - it will hopefully be worth it in order to finally solidify the URL and get Live Spaces out there!

P.S. The Financial Analysts Meeting is going on right now where I think Windows Live Spaces will get a shout-out at some point. At least I hope it does!

Update: in case you were still wondering what this means for your space, this means URLs like http://mike.spaces.msn.com will become http://mike.spaces.live.com.

Talking about Windows Live Spaces is coming!

Sat, 24 Jun 2006 04:20:17 GMT

Learn a little more about Windows Live Spaces on the Space Craft!

There's even a little screenshot, although the "final final" version may look a little different from that. I'm going to reserve expanding on things for a bit and let that post on the Space Craft speak for itself. I'm sure there will be 500 comments in a week!

Enjoy ;)

Google PageRank

Tue, 20 Jun 2006 20:12:34 GMT

We've heard from a lot of people that Google PageRank for spaces has reset recently. We've been able to verify this from our side, and we've reached out to our contacts at Google for a little helping hand. We're doing things "by the book" with a 301 server side redirect (considered "permanent") for our new URLs so all indications point to this being self-corrected by Google in just a little bit of time.

We're working to verify this. If anyone knows anyone at Google - or if you yourself are at Google - it would be great to get validation that we're doing everything we can. Thanks.

Hidden "feature"

Tue, 13 Jun 2006 21:57:18 GMT

I realized one great thing about the URL changes - now when you type a space name into the browser's address bar (i.e. spacecraft.spaces.msn.com) you get the benefits of autocomplete instead of having to type http://spaces.msn.com first. So you only have to type the first couple letters of the space alias to get the entire URL to fill in.

Sure, it wasn't planned for. But it's actually kind of a nice little "feature".

Talking about Spaces updates!

Tue, 13 Jun 2006 18:44:22 GMT

Lots of updates to Spaces today; some of them are immediately apparent (i.e. support for additional modules, some usability fixes for photos, and another new URL structure) while a lot of them may not be. Here are some thoughts on this release:

Photo album usability improvements. From the Spacecraft writeup: "We listened to your feedback and have brought back the list of all your photo albums on the home page.When you edit your Space, you can use this list to re-order your albums: Just click on the up or down arrow that displays when you hover your mouse over the album title in the list box." I have to admit, I'm not the world's biggest fan of the new album picker, but it's a LOT better than what we had. Rest assured that we're going to continue making improvements as we approach the Windows Live release.
New modules and support for the Microsoft Gadget Framework. This is a MUCH bigger deal that it seems at first glance, but the short of it is that we now support gadgets in Spaces. Right now the gadgets are limited to the ones we have "approved" like weather, stock quotes, quote of the day, and the updated spaces map... but supporting the gadget platform is a HUGE step in the right direction for spaces to become more flexible, more customizable, and more FUN. Look for a LOT of coolness around this in the coming months.
IE7 Beta 2 bug fixes. We've done everything we can to squash these for all of you.
New URL. Again, not the biggest fan of this but it's something we absolutely had to do to continue to grow the service. Greg spoke about these changes here. And I'm actually starting to like it - the URLs look a little cleaner - despite months of complaining to Greg about this ;)
Potential Bloglines fix. See bug details here. We think we nipped this one too finally - please let me know if you are still seeing random unread blog entries in Bloglines (except for the ones from today; those were due to the changes to our URL)

Behind those user-facing changes, the most significant work done in this release, bar none, is our move to multiple data centers (and a bunch of performance related work) to support future growth and speedy page loads for the service. Supporting 100 million users a month is exhausting for those servers - so we've given them a bit of a break. This is some serious infrastructure work that we will be reaping the benefits of for years to come. You should see immediate performance improvements starting now.

Onward to Windows Live Spaces. For those asking about it, there is no need to continue to do so - it's soon. We said it would arrive this summer and we're still on track for that. Remember, the summer is (I think) from June 21st to September 22nd or so. So keep your eyes peeled.

Read more about this release on the Spacecraft blog.

Talking about Blog Content Transfer

Tue, 16 May 2006 21:00:09 GMT

Alex put together a cool little tool to transfer blog content into MSN Spaces. FYI: this is not Microsoft software but you are welcome to try it out below! Contact Alex directly with any problems or questions you have.

Quote

Blog Content Transfer

Apparently, my old blogging site (Blogger) and the new one (MSN Spaces) expose some APIs that can be used to play with your content (Metaweblog API for Space and Atom API for Blogger). I spent some time over the weekend and wrote a tool that helped me to transfer my data between two sites.

Posting from Word 2007

Tue, 16 May 2006 04:27:57 GMT

I’m writing this blog entry in Word 2007 with all the cool new (and old) features of Word at my fingertips. Spell-check is a beautiful thing. I’m continually amazed by just how elegant and useful the new Office suite is. And this just made it even better!

Learn more about Word 2007 blogging.

See what Dare has to say.

Yes, I know I’m a couple of days late on this one – but I didn’t have the time to install Beta 2 until now!

E3 2006 - Xbox Live Members on MSN Spaces

Mon, 08 May 2006 18:17:07 GMT

Cool, I didn't know about this one. Looks like a bunch of Xbox 360 fans are using MSN Spaces to blog E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Exposition). Check it out here. Looks like the HD-DVD USB drive has been confirmed.

PS. Kind of funny that on the page listing the various MSN Spaces that one of them has a giant Wii logo (that's the new Nintendo console with the ridiculous name). That's very... nice of us to do.

And yes, I see all of your comments asking about Windows Live Spaces :) It's coming soon but you know I can't say any more than that!

Talking about Bloglines weirdness again

Thu, 06 Apr 2006 01:04:29 GMT

I've never used the Blog It feature on my own content. But it's worth it in this case.

We're still trying to figure out what's up with Bloglines & MSN Spaces feeds but haven't been able to make much progress getting in touch with people at Bloglines/Ask Jeeves. If you use Bloglines, you can support the cause by sending feedback/bug reports through Bloglines.com. You can use this form directly: http://bloglines.com/contact

Thanks ;)

Quote

Bloglines weirdness?

Is anyone else seeing weird things happen in Bloglines?

Like items showing up as unread when they really aren't? It isn't scoped to Spaces feeds (it happens all the time with www.techcrunch.com and others) but I am seeing it on my feed pretty consistently now. Only in Bloglines; not in any other readers.

Taking a look through the RSS details, nothing is jumping out at me as the culprit. If anyone else is seeing this - or if anyone else has determined the cause - please let me know.

Note: There is a known issue with items containing photos. If you attach a photo to a blog entry, that URL refreshes every so often in the RSS item description (for authorization purposes) and Bloglines thinks the item has been modified. Determining "newness" in an RSS item isn't standardized; every reader does it a little differently.

To get around this, we introduced a new field last month (dcterms:modified) that Bloglines can check to determine if it's a user-modified entry or a server-modified entry. We (Dare Obasanjo and I) sent it over to Bloglines to evaluate using. If you would like to see this fixed in their system, please shoot them some feedback as well.

Amazon Wishlist RSS

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 19:02:24 GMT

I've kept an Amazon.com Wishlist for a looooong time. Probably since back in the day when Amazon only offered about 1,000 books. I'm a huge fan of Amazon.com.

Well, as of yesterday Amazon Wishlists support RSS - so you can now include your Amazon Wishlist on your space using our RSS Feed Module!

Watch the demo here:

http://blog.mix06.com/virtualmix/archive/2006/03/15/Amazon.aspx

Lean more about our RSS Feed Module here:

http://spaces.msn.com/mike/blog/cns!FBABF8E542F5D5DB!5944.entry

Cool. I love when this stuff all comes together.

Permissions & Friends

Sat, 11 Mar 2006 03:33:37 GMT

You may have noticed that in the Permissions drop-down for your space and profile/contact information, you now see options for "Friends" and "Friends of my Friends".

As I referred to in a previous post, the Friends list is only available in Australia at this time. But selecting these options won't hurt you if your spaces isn't in Australia. Since you technically have no Friends in this case (sorry!) giving them permission to something doesn't actually do anything.

So why are these options even there? Well, if your space has been setup in Australia the options are actually functional today. But also because those options will soon do something for non-Australian spaces as well. You'll have the ability to have a "semi-private" space, only allowing people to view your content who are friends or friends of your friends. You'll also be able to do the same thing for your general or social profile information and your contact information. Privacy and control are good things.

Charms

Sat, 11 Mar 2006 02:39:38 GMT

Anyone notice something different about your friends' photos?

There are some little charms there that weren't there before. Interesting ;)

Friends Beta (Australia)

Sat, 11 Mar 2006 02:30:41 GMT

One of our biggest and coolest features - and one that I personally worked on - is also one of our stealthiest features. That feature is the Friends list, now available to MSN Spaces created in Australia.

I'll be talking about this feature at length in coming months as it rolls out more broadly, but for now check out what Phil has to say about it (with screenshots):

Social Networking Trial
One of the reasons to be here this week has been that we were getting ready to deploy our first social networking trial, specifically within the Australian market. This new functionality is an extension to the existing Spaces service and is exposed as a module that one can add within one’s Space. Our approach to social networking is designed to enable a way for customers to communicate and connect in more meaningful way with their circle of friends and in particular their friends and their friends’ friends. We are doing this by adding this feature to our existing network – be it Messenger, Spaces or Mail rather than build a unique social network.

If you've received an invite to join and already have a space in China, the U.S., or any of our other markets that aren't named Australia, you won't be able to accept the invitation just yet. We realize (quite frankly) that this sucks... but it won't be this way forever. If you're in Australia, you're probably having some fun right now!

This is also one of the features that has changed a bit since our book went to print. On p136 there's a section on "mutual friends" which isn't applicable anymore. I'll be posting about this and other errata to the book space soon.

Moz Interview on MSN Spaces

Sat, 11 Mar 2006 02:05:44 GMT

Wow. Moz actually gave some stuff away about Spaces in this interview with LiveSide.net. If you're interested, give it a listen. I also did an interview with these guys just after our January release. You can catch that one here.

I talk to Moz everyday... yet somehow his accent still sounds cool.

Origami & Spaces?

Sat, 11 Mar 2006 01:25:12 GMT

As you probably know, I've been following the Origami hype the past few weeks. I mentioned earlier that I've seen it, like it, and feel that it has real potential. Especially for the price they're trying to offer it for. I want one!

Well, today I randomly checked out the website for the "Ultra Mobile PC" (aka Origami) and came across MSN Spaces in the app launcher!

We're everywhere these days!

Expo Listings on MSN Spaces

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 22:53:22 GMT

Check out this post from Team Expo (snippet)

Today, we’re thrilled to launch our integration with MSN Spaces. This integration allows you to post a free listing on Expo and have an abstract and thumbnail image displayed automatically on the front page of your MSN Space. Visitors to your Space can view abstracts from your different Expo listings and click directly to view more information and communicate with you via IM or anonymous messaging.

(Read more)

One of the coolest parts about this integration is this: "By posting a listing on Expo, your Space is updated, your MSN Messenger contact card is updated, and you gleam to your Messenger buddies. We hope that this automatic ‘promotion’ of your listing among those who share your interests provides the right kind of directed traffic to your listing."

This feature is only available in the U.S. right now. As Expo expands to more international markets, so will this feature... You can check it out by heading over to http://expo.live.com and posting a new entry, opting to also share it on your space. Enjoy!

Sample below (I don't have a photo of my beautiful car anymore!)

Subscriptions & stuff

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 08:43:57 GMT

I noticed something kind of interesting at the very bottom of this page...

Does anyone else see what I'm talking about? ;)

Another thing I've been waiting for has arrived (hint: you need to set something in Settings: Space Settings too)

RSS Feed Module

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 08:07:54 GMT

One of the things we like to say around here is that your MSN Space is kind of like your digital self. It's comprised of the things you're publishing and sharing... it's how you express yourselves to others... it looks and feels how you want it to. Yet until today, your MSN Space could only really have content on it from Microsoft.

Your profile, blog, photos, favorites, lists, Xbox stats... all cool features. But what if you have a blog on TypePad or Wordpress? What if you use Flickr to manage your photo albums and only use MSN Spaces to stay in touch with your friends on Messenger? Or you track your goals on 43things.com and your upcoming movies through NetFlix? Shouldn't you be able to share things from around the web on your space?

Starting tonight you can thanks to the wonders of RSS! Just follow these simple steps:

1. Enter "Edit Mode" of your space.

2. Click "Customize"

3. In the "Modules" dropdown, select "RSS Feed"

4. Save your layout

To associate a feed with that module, just click "Edit" on that module. You'll be presented with some sample feeds or you can type in any feed URL. Give it a name and the number of items you want to appear on your space and you're finished!

I just used this feature (one of my favorites) to syndicate my old del.icio.us linkblog here on my space (it's on the right-hand side). I haven't posted to it in a long time but there's some good stuff on there from last year. Of course Windows Live Favorites is giving it a run for its money, so I don't know if I'm going to be too active on it anymore... But that's the beauty of this feature, you're in charge of what you want to share... not us.

I also added some headlines from Yankees.com just because I could ;)

Here's a screenshot:

I love it!

Note: this module will only appear in "uplevel" browsers like IE6/7 and Firefox. It's a long story.

Simple List Extensions

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 07:27:25 GMT

Spaces now supports Simple List Extensions for RSS. If you use IE 7 Beta 2 (like I do!) you'll be able to do some pretty interesting things with RSS (filter by type and sort by comment count!) from within the browser starting right about now.

We also did some other fun things within our RSS feeds for you developer types to take a look at.

Mobile Spaces: updates

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 07:24:20 GMT

Smuga talks about some of the new enhancements in our mobile version.

Things like photo albums (including comments!), better access keys, and a significantly improved blog reading experience. I had been giving him a hard time that hyperlinks aren't new on the web, yet the mobile version of Spaces didn't support them in blog entries! Thankfully, that's fixed now.

I definitely believe this is the start of something pretty cool on the mobile front. If you have a capable phone, there are few things as satisfying as staying in touch with friends and family from anywhere. It's also quite cool that this update is a little more than a month later than the last one. Hmmm... Things are getting mighty quicker round these parts!

Read more -> New features in mobile spaces (photo albums and more)

More on hiring

Tue, 28 Feb 2006 06:12:48 GMT

This is worth another mention. We're hiring developers. That means you!

Interested in working on some of the coolest services on the planet? Services used by hundreds of millions of people? Just send your resume to msnsrec@microsoft.com. Our development manager, Jason, has promised to respond to every serious inquiry.

5 things I dislike about MSN Spaces (part 2)

Sun, 05 Feb 2006 21:56:42 GMT

A year ago, I posted about the 5 things I disliked about MSN Spaces (which ended up making into Shel & Robert's Naked Conversations book!)

Well, now that we're past the chaos of our recent release, I wanted to use this opportunity to tear MSN Spaces apart again. Something actually clicked last year because everything I complained about ended up getting better... so maybe with enough pushing, some of this stuff will see the light of day as well. No promises though (see disclaimer at bottom).

So, here we go... The new and improved 5 things I dislike about MSN Spaces:

I like our new URL scheme. http://spaces.msn.com/mike is much better than /members/mike. But it isn't good enough for me. I've owned about 15 domain names over the years and I want a real, honest-to-goodness, personalized domain for my space. I love MSN, and I know I will love Windows Live. But this isn't Microsoft's space; it's mine. And I want the URL to reflect that.
I want a greater number of HTML modules (three or four would be nice) with even bigger size limits. That way I can do all sorts of fun things that I can't do today.
Lack of support for anonymous comments bugs me. Requiring Passport sign-in to post a comment is great because it really limits comment spam. But it's frequently annoying because it doesn't always remember me. Plus not everyone wants to sign-in with a Passport just to say "Thanks!"
Photo navigation. Our photo albums are great fun, but there are so many things we could be doing to make it easier to navigate within a photo album. Snapfish and Flickr - while not perfect - both have a simple, easy-to-use model for choosing a photo from a large collection. We need to do better here.
I want more variety in modules (i.e.stuff I can put on my space!) Don't limit me to what Microsoft can offer. If I want to add my Netflix queue to my space, I should be able to. What about a New York Yankees sports ticker? Or my (horror) Flickr photostream? I would be one happy camper if I could pick and choose things from all over the web to add to my space.

Of course, same disclaimer as last year: I'm just one member of the MSN Spaces team. There are a bunch of us, and I can almost 100% guarantee that not a single person would have the same 5 items on their list. Additionally, just because I don't like something (or do like it) doesn't mean we're already doing it - but it doesn't mean we aren't either.

Basically what I am saying: these are just my personal thoughts. Don't read too far into them.