Logo
PREGNANCY
Windows XP
Windows Vista
Windows 7
Windows Azure
Windows Server
Windows Phone
 
 
Windows 7

Windows Live Services That Make Windows 7 Better (part 3) - Windows Live Photos, Windows Live Spaces, Windows Live Events

11/27/2012 6:44:03 PM

7. Windows Live Photos

Why you want it: This is a free dedicated photo organization and sharing service.

Type: Online service.

Microsoft's original approach to photo sharing was to integrate this functionality into the Windows Live Spaces blogging service (see below), because most people who want to share photos electronically do so via blogs and personal Web sites. However, Windows Live Spaces isn't an ideal photo-sharing solution for a variety of reasons, and many people simply want to share photos and nothing else. Therefore, Microsoft has created a new service, Windows Live Photos, for photo management and sharing. Windows Live Photos is shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9. Windows Live Photos

Windows Live Photos is perhaps the most deeply integrated of all the Windows Live products and services. Yes, there is, of course, a dedicated site for Windows Live Photos (photos.live.com), and yes, it works with Windows Live Photo Gallery  as expected. But you can access your online photo albums from just about anywhere in Windows Live, and that's true of both the services and the Windows Live Essentials applications. You can share photos and photo albums with friends via Windows Live Messenger, for example, and e-mail them from Windows Live Mail. On the services end, your photos are available from Hotmail (for e-mailing), accessible from Windows Live Profile, can be posted to blogs and Web sites with Windows Live Spaces, and can be shared via Windows Live Events.

Some of the functionality in Windows Live Photos is obvious but welcome: browsing the Windows Live Photos Web site, you can view photo album thumbnails and see animated slide shows. You can push albums to digital photo frames via Windows Live FrameIt (covered later in this chapter). The storage back end? It's all handled by Windows Live SkyDrive. And yes, you can browse your photos there as well.

Looking at the Windows Live Photos site specifically, you'll see mostly basic functionality, so Flickr users won't see any reason to migrate their online photo collections quite yet. You can create and view photo albums, but not subfolders of any kind, which will be problematic for people with large photo collections. You can view photos inside an album by thumbnail (one size only, unfortunately) or via List or Details view.

You can also play slide shows, like that shown in Figure 10, which are attractive enough but don't offer much in the way of options.

Figure 10. Windows Live Photos offers very simple photo slide shows.

Individual photos cannot be renamed, which is an odd omission, but you can add a caption, tag people in the photo, or add a comment. Others who have permission to do so can also add comments.

As far as protecting photos go, Windows Live Photos offers various sharing options on a per-album basis. You can choose to make albums public (available to one and all) or you can set permissions to your network (view or add, edit, delete) or your extended network. You can also filter permissions based on the groups you've set up in Windows Live People, Windows Live Messenger, and other places; for example, you might set up an album to be viewable only by family members. You can also enter specific e-mail addresses if you'd like.

8. Windows Live Spaces

Why you want it: This is a super-simple way to create a personalized home page or blog and connect with friends online.

Type: Online service.

Windows Live Spaces (spaces.live.com) is Microsoft's blogging solution—software that enables anyone to publish a personal Web site, complete with photos and interactive content, easily and without any technical knowledge. Spaces has proven quite popular—by some metrics it's actually the most popular blogging software in the world—and it certainly does provide a friendly and welcome environment, with professional-looking page design and nice integration with other Windows Live services. A typical Windows Live Spaces blog is shown in Figure 11.

Windows Live Spaces provides most of the services that typify blogs. That is, it provides a simplified, nontechnical way to post textual blog entries online, perfect for beginners. It provides syndication services, enabling content from personal Spaces to be subscribed to from news aggregators and other RSS-compatible applications and services such as Internet Explorer 8. It excels at creating lists of items, perfect for a blogroll or similar list of links; and it enables others to post comments to Spaces.

Windows Live Spaces goes beyond stock blogging features, adding functionality that many casual users and consumers are likely to find exciting. It offers a highly customizable user interface, albeit one that exists clearly within the Windows Live site "style." It includes excellent photo uploading and slide show features. It integrates Windows Live Messenger so that you are notified when your friends and other contacts update their own Spaces. In addition, in a nice nod to power users, it even enables you to post blog entries via a mobile phone or e-mail.

If Windows Live Spaces has a weak link, it's that you cannot create one at your own custom Web address, or URL. Instead, you must use Microsoft's more convoluted spaces.live.com addressing scheme. We hope that Microsoft will address this issue in a future update.

Figure 11. Windows Live Spaces enables anyone to create their own Web site.

9. Windows Live Events

Why you want it: It provides a simple way to plan a party or other event, send electronic invitations, and share memories when it's over.

Type: Online service.

Built as an offshoot of Windows Live Spaces, Windows Live Events (events.live.com) is an Evite competitor that does its inspiration one better: In addition to providing an excellent interface for planning parties and other events and sending electronic invitations to those events, Live Events adds something fairly unique: the capability to enable guests to return to the site after the event is over and share their memories. These memories can take the form of photo galleries and discussion boards. It's a surprisingly personal type of service, one that can turn a one-time event into a gift that keeps on giving.

Shown in Figure 12, Windows Live Events provides an interface for inviting guests to an event, sharing photos taken at the event, chatting online with guests both before and after the event, and customizing the event's site in various ways.

Figure 12. Windows Live Events makes it easy to plan events and reminisce about the good times later.
Other -----------------
- Microsoft Access 2010 : Getting Data from Other Access 2010 Tables
- Microsoft Access 2010 : Creating a New Table Using Application Parts, Setting a Primary Key
- Microsoft Visio 2010 : Organizing and Annotating Diagrams - Markup & Review
- Microsoft Visio 2010 : Organizing and Annotating Diagrams - Layers
- Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 : Animating Slide Content (part 5) - Animating Parts of a Chart, Animation Tips
- Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 : Animating Slide Content (part 4) - Working with Motion Paths
- Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 : Animating Slide Content (part 3) - Setting Animation Event Triggers, Associating Sounds with Animations, Making an Object Appear Differently after Animation
- Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 : Animating Slide Content (part 2) - Special Options for Text Animation
- Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 : Animating Slide Content (part 1) - Choosing an Animation Effect
- Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 : Assigning Transitions to Slides
- Microsoft Excel 2010 : Using Formulas - Entering a Formula
- Microsoft Excel 2010 : Using Formulas - The Importance of Laying Data Out Properly, Formulas Versus Values
- Microsoft Word 2010 : Viewing a Document’s Statistics, Evaluating a Document’s Readability
- Microsoft Word 2010 : Working with Outlines - Creating a Multilevel List
- Microsoft Project 2010 : Defining Project Resources - Using the Task Form View to Add Additional Resources
- Microsoft Project 2010 : Defining Project Resources - Defining Resource Costs
- Conquering Malicious Software : Using Antivirus Software
- Using Micrsosft Outlook 2010 with SharePoint and OCS : Communicating with Others from Outlook
- Using Micrsosft Outlook 2010 with SharePoint and OCS : Using the People Pane, Viewing Online Status
- Using Micrsosft Outlook 2010 with SharePoint and OCS : Using SharePoint Document Libraries in Outlook
 
 
Most view of day
- Microsoft Visio 2010 : Linking External Data to Shapes (part 2) - Preparing the Light Bulb Shape for Data Linking
- Microsoft Content Management Server : Preventing Pages with Invalid Content from Being Saved
- Managing Windows Licensing and Activation : Managing Volume License Activation (part 1) - Centralizing activation with KMS
- Maintaining Security : Restricting Content in Windows Media Center, Creating Trusted Contacts
- BizTalk 2006 : Custom Components (part 2) - Key BizTalk API Objects
- Microsoft Excel 2010 : Using Formulas - Entering a Formula
- Configuring Startup and Troubleshooting Startup Issues : Understanding the Startup Process (part 3) - Kernel Loading Phase
- Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 : Hub Transport Server Policy Compliance Features (part 1) - Transport Rules
- Microsoft Project 2010 : Fine-Tuning Task Details (part 7) - Entering Fixed Costs
- Windows Phone 8 : Configuring Basic Device Settings - Date and Time (part 1) - Setting the Date and Time
Top 10
- Microsoft Sharepoint 2013 : Understanding app patterns (part 5) - Building MVC apps - Introducing MVC4
- Microsoft Sharepoint 2013 : Understanding app patterns (part 4) - Building MVC apps - Understanding web form challenges
- Microsoft Sharepoint 2013 : Understanding app patterns (part 3) - Building MVVM apps - Utilizing promises
- Microsoft Sharepoint 2013 : Understanding app patterns (part 3) - Building MVVM apps - Utilizing promises
- Microsoft Sharepoint 2013 : Understanding app patterns (part 2) - Building MVVM apps - Introducing knockout
- Microsoft Sharepoint 2013 : Understanding app patterns (part 1) - Building MVVM apps - Understanding JavaScript challenges
- Microsoft Access 2010 : Report Properties and Why to Use Them, Basing Reports on Stored Queries or Embedded SQL Statements
- Microsoft Access 2010 : Working with Sorting and Grouping (part 2) - Sorting and Grouping Settings
- Microsoft Access 2010 : Working with Sorting and Grouping (part 1) - Add Sorting and Grouping to a Report
- Microsoft Access 2010 : Building Reports Based on More Than One Table (part 3) - Working with Subreports
 
Windows XP
Windows Vista
Windows 7
Windows Azure
Windows Server
Windows Phone
2015 Camaro