Outlook Social Connector, Now with Facebook

Posted By: Larry Larsen | Jul 13th @ 10:06 AM | 15,172 Views | 0 Comments

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Today we announced the availability of the Facebook and Windows Live Messenger plug-ins for the Outlook Social Connector in Microsoft Office. Outlook users can now connect their Facebook accounts and their Windows Live Messenger accounts to their inboxes, making it possible for people to add Facebook and Windows Live Messenger friends from within Outlook, and view status updates and photos right next to an email.

The Outlook Social Connector is one of the new features standard in Office 2010, and new with this release is support for Office 2003 and Office 2007.

Tags: FaceBook, Office, Office 2010, Social-networking

WEI Share: Share your Windows 7 Experience Index

Posted By: Larry Larsen | Jun 10th @ 1:56 PM | 10,125 Views | 0 Comments

3 minutes, 17 seconds

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WEI Share ("We Share") is a Coding4Fun code sample that takes your Windows Experience Index score and shares it with the world (anonymously) to an Azure website with a Silverlight front end and lets you post your WEI score to Facebook for bragging rights.

Why would you want to share your WEI score with the world? First, this gives us a place to compare WEI scores across a wide range of hardware and even see how many touch points a multitouch computer may give you. Second, a computer's speed is dependent on the efficiency of the drivers. Sometimes WEI scores go up, sometimes they go down. This will allow you to judge the score that various versions of a driver may give you.

You can run WEI Share at www.WEIShare.net and download the source code at WEIShare.codeplex.com (coming later this week).[Click to read the full post

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Tags: Azure, DIY, hardware, Silverlight 3, SQL Azure, Windows 7, WPF

Windows Home Server Vail

Posted By: Larry Larsen | May 20th @ 12:25 PM | 15,988 Views | 0 Comments

10 minutes, 55 seconds

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Recently the Windows Home Server team announced the beta of their next version of Home Server, codenamed Vail. This release tightens up the way you interact with Home Server. Jonas Svensson, Program Manager on Home Server Vail stopped by to show us a peek at this new release. The big features for this release include the ability to stream your media outside of your house, simplified setup, and expanded development tools.

Soon I'll be getting together with the Home Server team to talk about the Vail SDK, so add your questions below that you'd like to have me ask.

Sign up now for the Vail beta at http://connect.microsoft.com/windowshomeserver

Tag: Windows Home Server

Nintex Harnesses Enhanced Features for Developers in SharePoint 2010

Posted By: Larry Larsen | May 11th @ 3:41 PM | 9,341 Views | 0 Comments

27 minutes, 28 seconds

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Over the past several months, we’ve shared several introductory features about new assets for developers in SharePoint 2010. As Microsoft launches Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 to businesses this week, we now bring you a real-world example of how developers can harness and capitalize upon the enhancements of the new version. This video features an interview with Mike Fitzmaurice, vice president of product technology at Nintex. Through a demo of Nintex solutions in action, Mike provides an overview of how Nintex is working with SharePoint 2010 and leveraging its capabilities. He also provides helpful tips and best practices for developers who are digging into the new, improved platform.

Tags: Office 2010, sharepoint-2010

Elevator Music While You Wait

Posted By: Larry Larsen | May 6th @ 2:15 AM | 9,599 Views | 0 Comments

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I usually don't go for the kitchy apps, but I have to admit, I have this playing right now. Instant Elevator Music is an application that will play some light elevator music while you wait for files to copy or load. There's something I like about that. Whether it passes JeffSand's 7 Day Rule is TBD.

It works with Windows Explorer while copying or moving files, IE and Firefox for downloads, Microsoft Office and Visual Studio, and several other applications. It runs in the Systray and is easy to turn off with a double click. Settings allow you to choose your own MP3 in case you have a different idea of what elevator music should sound like. It runs on XP and Windows 7, uses .NET Framework and I can confirm it works on 64-bit Win7.

Image: Gregory Szarkiewicz

Tags: 7 Day Software, windows

NAB: Silverlight Enhanced Movies (SLEM)

Posted By: Larry Larsen | May 3rd @ 2:20 PM | 10,713 Views | 0 Comments

5 minutes, 54 seconds

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Currently, you have two choices for watching a movie at home: you can either stream the movie (if available), or you can buy/rent the DVD, which allows you to experience extra features such as commentary. Here at Microsoft, we're trying to create a system that allows you to have the full DVD experience streamed through Silverlight. In this video, Ben Waggoner joins us to tell us more.

Tags: NAB, silverlight

NAB: Silverlight in 3D

Posted By: Larry Larsen | Apr 29th @ 10:43 AM | 9,087 Views | 0 Comments

7 minutes, 2 seconds

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While at NAB this year, Alex Zambelli showed us 3D streaming with Smooth Streaming. NAB this year was all about 3D and we had several announcements of our own for that. It's only a matter of time until Channel 9 is in 3D. Also announced at NAB this year was IIS Media Services 4.0 support for Smooth Streaming over multicast networks which supports transmuxing for adaptive streaming on iPhones. Apologies for how dark the video is, it was very dark on the floor this year and it looked brighter on the monitor than it does now. Smiley

Tags: 3D, Silverlight 4, Smooth Streaming

New Windows Live Wave 4 Messenger Preview

Posted By: Larry Larsen | Apr 29th @ 10:42 AM | 9,128 Views | 0 Comments

14 minutes, 9 seconds

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Today we're previewing the new Windows Live Messenger in Sao Paulo, so I stopped by Dharmesh Mehta's office to get you a look. This new Messenger has some things that we've been waiting for. Fullscreen high definition video chat is here, and for $50 on each side you can now chat in HD. Look for more HD video chats in our Channel 9 Studio with people we couldn't otherwise talk with.

Messenger includes status updates synched across other networks, a coupled yet de-dup'd contact list, social highlights from your favorite people, and apps for Windows Phone and iPhone. Timeframe is in the coming months and will be available from download.live.com. You can find more info at messengerpreview.com.

Tag: Windows Live Messenger

MSR Mobicast

Posted By: Larry Larsen | Apr 27th @ 10:41 AM | 9,619 Views | 0 Comments

5 minutes, 58 seconds

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Developed by a group of people at MSR Cairo, Mobicast is a system that allows users to sync and stream live video from a number of handheld portable devices (e.g., cell phones) and have those streams stitched together on the viewer-end, creating a single, larger image.

We don't get out to Cairo much, but Ayman Kaheel and Motaz El-Saban joined me via LifeCam Cinema to talk about the project and where they hope it will go in the future.

Tags: mobile, msr

Garibaldi Panorama on Surface

Posted By: Larry Larsen | Apr 27th @ 10:40 AM | 9,500 Views | 0 Comments

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One of the things that I think holds the most promise for Microsoft technologies liek Deep Zoom, Photosynth, and multitouch, is the deep exploration of art and artifacts. It's one thing to read about a place or device, it's another to be able to explore every facet of an object on your own.

Brown University has teamed together with Micrsoft Research and created an application for Microsoft Surface that will be used as the centerpiece in an exhibition on the future of digital scholarship. In this exhibit, a five foot tall, football field-length print can be explored, magnified, annotated, and overlaid with other images and videos. This is an unprecedented way of exploring artifacts and a big step forward for digital curation.

Tags: art, Microsoft Surface