James Senior's Blog

Where blogging at Microsoft all began

14. July 2009 01:45 By James 114 In

Microsoft was one of the first large corporations where employees used blogs as a way to communicate with the world outside the firewall and to put a human face on a company that many regarded as faceless.

The first Microsoft employee to reach out was Joshua Allen who sits a couple of offices down from me and Scott Rosenberg, author of Say Everything, had this to say about him:

"Microsoft wasn't known as a haven of openness and cooperation. But it was a big place with a lot of smart people. At the turn of the millennium, during the company's bitter antitrust fight with the U.S. Department of Justice, many of those people found it impossible to recognize themselves in the press's portrait of the company. The first programmer at Microsoft to start blogging, Joshua Allen, set himself up with an account on Dave Winer's EditThisPage service in 2000 and started posting under the header "Better Living Through Software: Tales of Life at Microsoft." It was totally informal and unauthorized -- a lone call for a parley raised from behind the company's siege walls. Allen explained his intent: "I wanted to say that I am a Microsoft person and you can talk with me."

It’s interesting to see this openness evolve and become adopted from just about every company from Amazon to Zapos, where now you can get help from customer services by tweeting and your brand can grow a group of fans on Facebook.

Hat tip to Jon Udell.

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Live Messenger Web Toolkit in 40 Languages

10. July 2009 01:05 By James 66 In

Holy shit, the Messenger Web Toolkit team are at it again – who says Microsoft can’t iterate rapidly? The Live Messenger Web Toolkit is now available in no less than 40 languages! So now you can take the world’s most popular IM Service and get it running on your website, provide social capabilities and have it rendered in your audience’s language – nice! It even does right to left too!

There are a couple of ways you can set the language, first in the <html> tags of your web page, for example, check out these different language settings:

<html lang="nl">
<html xml:lang="de">
<html lang="he" dir="rtl">

Secondly, when you do the loader you pass in a language parameter which will get you going:

<script type="text/javascript">
   var loader = Microsoft.Live.Core.Loader;
   loader.initialize({ 'market' : 'es' });
   loader.load(['messenger.ui', 'messenger.ui.styles.core']);
</script>

You can even pass in the localization of the browser into the loader for on the fly language determination:

<script src="http://www.wlmessenger.net/api/3.1/loader.js"></script>
<script>

Microsoft.Live.Core.Loader.initialize({market: window.navigator.browserLanguage || window.navigator.language});

Microsoft.Live.Core.Loader.load(["messenger.ui", "messenger.ui.styles.core"]);

</script>

To see what you can do with the Messenger Web Toolkit, check out Photobucket – they have a nice implementation.

Useful Linkage Love:

Here is the full list of supported languages.
Here is the Product Team’s blog post on the release.
Comparing Shotguns and Lasers for killer Social Media
The Live Messenger Web Toolkit Interactive SDK

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Stargate launches new site using Microsoft Photosynth

8. July 2009 21:50 By James 150 In

For all you Stargate fans out there… MGM Studios have just launched a new website to promote their new show “Stargate Universe” and they’ve used Microsoft Photosynth technology to bring the sets to life so you get to look around and explore in wonderful Hi-def photography.

“This experience is going to offer Stargate fans just what they want to see in just the kind of detail that they like. It’s a unique opportunity for people to walk around the ship, virtually, on their computer, from home. It’s phenomenal” said Thomas Hughes, Vice President of Worldwide Digital Media at MGM.

Check it out here: http://stargate.mgm.com/photosynth/index.html#

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Comparing Shotguns and Lasers for killer Social Media

8. July 2009 17:24 By James 117 In

There’s no denying the popularity of plug and play social building blocks. Websites love to acquire new people and this is why it makes sense to use the toolkits provided by the likes of Facebook, Windows Live, JS-Kit, Disqus et al. All these kits make it easy to use “digital word of mouth” and give you a large social megaphone with which to attract new visitors and land your message or brand. In this post I’ll discuss how choice is the silver bullet and how combining the strength of Facebook Connect and Windows Live Messenger Library provides people with options they really want.

Backgrounder

One of the pioneers in this space was Facebook who launched their Facebook Connect service which gave websites the ability to tap into a visitor’s social graph on Facebook with relative ease. Once a website had access to a user’s Facebook account they could ship data to and from Facebook, pulling in things like Facebook profile picture and their name whilst also allowing a website to publish a user’s actions into their news feed on Facebook thus encouraging new user acquisition and retention. An example of Facebook Connect integration can be seen on Techcrunch.com.

The Windows Live Messenger team recently launched the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit, which provides a collection of widgets and controls that make it simple for a website to get data to and from Windows Live. This data includes profile picture, name etc. and allows people to strike up instant messenger conversations with contacts and other people on the website who are probably not on the website at the time. This behavior encourages new user acquisition and provides a more engaging experience that retains the focus of people for a longer period of time. An example of the Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit can be seen on PhotoBucket.com.

Other services like Disqus also provide ways to unify login experiences and spread content across the web but in a specific channel of feedback engines on blogs and user-generated content websites.

The Analysis

Let’s break down what Facebook Connect and Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit provide for developers:

	Facebook Connect	Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit
Authentication	Yes	Yes
Identity	Yes	Yes
Profile Information	Yes	Yes
Feed Integration	Yes
Instant Messaging Integration		Yes
Example Code that shows 1. Login button 2. Profile/Display Picture	<fb:login-button></fb:login-button> <fb:profile-picuid="516786629" linked="true" /></fb:profile-pic>	<msgr:sign-in></msgr:sign-in> <msgr:display-picturecid="$user" presence-enabled="true"></msgr:display-picture>

Both Facebook Connect and Messenger Web Toolkit provide excellent vehicles with which content publishers can reach new audiences. Facebook Connect’s strength lies in the way you can insert text and links into a feed providing a passive announcement into a user’s social circle. I liken this to a shotgun approach that relies on people to be at the right place at the right time to be hit by the information in their feed whilst they are on the Facebook website.

In contrast, the strength of Messenger Web Toolkit lies in its ability to reach out to both individuals and groups of friends from the web to a service which spans not only the web but a world of clients running on Windows, Mac, Xbox and Windows Mobile. As well as targeting communication via an application that is always running in the background, this approach is much more laser targeted because sharing of content occurs to specific groups or individuals whom the user identifies as already being interested in the shared content.

Which approach should content publishers take – Facebook or Windows Live? There is no right or wrong answer to this question, simply that it depends on what makes sense for the individual website and the kind of interaction they are trying to drive. With Facebook’s 200m active users and Windows Live Messenger’s 330m users it makes sense to hit as many people as possible with both the shotgun and the laser, or in other words using both social networks. This way you put the choice in the hands of the people and allow them to engage their friends how they see fit.

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Twitter now in World of Warcraft

2. July 2009 17:45 By James 74 In

Thanks to the uber-brainy guys in my group (hat tip Mr Fernandez) we’ve just launched an app that provides Twitter integration with World of Warcraft. The project (which is open source) allows you to keep track of what your friends are tweeting about along with pushing out to Twitter so all your buddies can keep track of what you’re up to in WoW.

Check out the trailer!

Screenshots:

Download the app here.

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Microsoft Surface SDK available for Partners

1. July 2009 03:35 By James 76 In

Arts Technica has the scoop – we’ve just launched the Microsoft Surface SDK for partners. I know that getting access to the SDK was a commonly asked question amongst our software development community and so it's great to see this finally out there in the wild. Just like any good Microsoft Partner program, there is a pyramid involved that shows the various levels of status a partner can achieve and the various benefits associated with each level.

Whether you are an existing partner or not, to get started head over to the Microsoft Surface Quickstart Program and download the SDK and the simulator!

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The Millennial Workers and their Golden Gadgets

26. June 2009 20:56 By James 88 In

Something that I’ve been acutely aware of over the last few years is the Consumerization of IT, where the use of technology – amongst those known as the “Millennials” – creates a benchmark and an expectation that causes businesses to cater and provide technology at a faster pace for an ever more demanding group of individuals. The battle for the best and brightest school leavers will be increasingly fought using golden gadgets as well as golden handshakes and golden handcuffs.

For me, job interviews are very much a two way conversation where both parties are trying to extract as much knowledge as possible from the other person. That is to say, the interview is not just about the candidate getting grilled, this is about the candidate finding out if the role is right for them, the pay is acceptable, what the benefits are going to be etc. These questions are starting to extend to technology, and candidates (I have done this in the past) are increasingly asking about the tools they are going to be provided with to do their job. Questions like, do I get a phone, what type of phone is it? Does it do email? Do I get a laptop? How many? How many computer monitors do I get? Can I access the internet at work? Can I use Facebook at work?

The list goes on – you get the picture.

The last question is a key one. When it comes to social computing, what software do we have inside the workplace that facilitates the kind of social interaction and collaboration that apps like Facebook, Windows Live, Office Live or Twitter allow? We’re starting to see these kind of experiences leaking into businesses via products like SharePoint with its Social Computing solution and I’m sure that Office 2010 will provide new ways with which to interact with colleagues, vendors and customers too. Another example is Yammer, a business version of Twitter that allows conversations to only flow between company employees. The use of Instant Messenger in the workplace through products like Office Communicator after IM was made popular by consumer products like Live Messenger and ICQ adds further weight to the argument.

For employers this means that HR departments and interviewers will need to be increasingly aware of what their company provides not only from a pay, benefit and career perspective, but also from an IT perspective. Don’t be surprised to find more conversations going on between HR and IT in future, and don’t be surprised that businesses adapt as the fight for the brightest talent is increasingly driven by technology.

This blog post was inspired by a recently recorded podcast on the Consumerization of Enterprise IT.

[Photo courtesy of alexdpx on Flickr]

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Michael Jackson is dead? Hardly Black or White.

26. June 2009 00:26 By James 107 In

What is erupting right now as I write is an unconfirmed news story that Michael Jackson has died from a heart attack after being rushed to hospital. For all the many tweets and Facebook status updates, it wasn’t clear what the truth was behind the story. Was he actually dead or was he in a serious condition in hospital.

A small online news website broke the “MJ is dead” news story first and set the whole thing on fire, but nobody in the major news outlets confirmed it. This left the many people on Facebook and Twitter contributing to the mass hysteria, effectively running around like headless chickens shouting “is he dead” which quickly turned to “he’s dead” even before it was acknowledged or confirmed but someone reputable.

This kind of online mass hysteria is interesting to observe due to the velocity at which it gets out of control. Twitter users Retweet one another, Facebook users comment and make their minds up based on their social circles. But what if the sources are wrong? You get the biggest false news story ever, thanks to the social microphone.

So I’ve been writing this post for the past 10 minutes, in between checking CNN.com, BBC.com, Twitter and Facebook and am still yet to know who is right. Here is the verdict as of (1522 PST)

Twitter: MJ is dead - (search “Michael Jackson”)
Facebook News Feed: Mixed – death/unconfirmed death
CNN.com – heart attack, unconfirmed death
BBC.con – hear attack, unconfirmed death

Let’s see what happens…

[Update]

RIP Michael Jackson

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Using Identity from a 3rd party to drive UX on your website - zero code required

25. June 2009 23:29 By James 98 In

Want to find out how passengers get the option for in-flight massages when they check in online?

Vittorio recently released a great screencast on using the identity from a third party website to drive the end user experience on your own website *all* without writing a single line of code *and* using open standards (WS-Federation) thanks to the Geneva Framework.

In the video we see how he uses the delegated authentication and authorization of a third party which provides various claims back to his website. These claims can drive different behaviors based on the information he receives back, for example in the demo he shows how to manipulate text and images using conditions and mappings based on the values received from the 3rd party. The beauty of this is that you get it all without writing any code.

The sample code from the screencast, as you would expect, is downloadable. Get it here.

For more detailed information on this topic, I would recommend you look at Vittorio’s blog post which delves into the guts of what goes on behind the scenes.

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Microsoft Hohm helps cut your energy bills

24. June 2009 17:06 By James 171 In

Looking for ways to manage your home energy a little more efficiently *and* save money in the process? Well Microsoft Hohm could be right up your street! We just launched Microsoft Hohm, a new online application that helps people understand how they can conserve energy and monitor their spending patterns across appliances and electrical devices in their house.

There’s a few nice technical details which are kind of nice like Hohm makes use of the custom Live ID sign in page (details here) and also runs on the Azure Services Platform – another example of a real live app launched on the platform.

Which online application is without an aspect of social these days? Well Hohm is no different allowing people to share energy saving tips. It’s like if Mint.com allowed me to recommend or provide feedback on a credit card.

Future plans are to provide a software development kit to utility companies so they can feed in customer bills straight into Hohm reducing the amount of information people need to enter when they start off using Hohm.

I know the marketing team for Hohm had fun creating some funny videos that are currently spreading like wildfire across Facebook and Windows Live.

Sign up for Microsoft hohm here.

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Where blogging at Microsoft all began

Live Messenger Web Toolkit in 40 Languages

Stargate launches new site using Microsoft Photosynth

Comparing Shotguns and Lasers for killer Social Media

<fb:login-button></fb:login-button>

<fb:profile-picuid="516786629" linked="true" /></fb:profile-pic>

<msgr:sign-in></msgr:sign-in>

<msgr:display-picturecid="$user" presence-enabled="true"></msgr:display-picture>

Twitter now in World of Warcraft

Microsoft Surface SDK available for Partners

The Millennial Workers and their Golden Gadgets

Michael Jackson is dead? Hardly Black or White.

Using Identity from a 3rd party to drive UX on your website - zero code required

Microsoft Hohm helps cut your energy bills

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