SSIS Junkie : SkyDrive

Skydrive: Poor communication doesn't bode well for the future.

jamie.thomson — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 16:45:00 GMT

A few days ago I wrote about Skydrive and was critical of the fact that existing links no longer worked post-upgrade.

I registered this bug at connect.microsoft.com where I said:

The new interface looks great but I'm pretty angry that old links no longer work. If you want it proved to you then hit the links on this page:
http://blogs.conchango.com/jamiethomson/archive/2007/06/19/SSIS_3A00_--Consuming-web-services-in-SSIS-2008.aspx
I accept that this is a beta service but surely you have to maintain links.
Is it going to change again?

I received this reply:

Unfortunately, this is by design because of our name change.
Sorry for the inconvenience.

Now, I can just about accept that given Skydrive is still a beta service (that word "beta" seems to be a handy "Get out of jail free" card) but I don't accept the poor communication that surrounds it. Why were we not warned at the outset that links we create might not work in the future? Why were we not told about the problem here after the upgrade? Why has the question that I posed been ignored?

I have been generous with my praise of Windows Live initiatives over the past few months but when the teams need calling to task over their actions then I will criticise as well. Here is such a case.

I hope this improves in the future but given the apathetic approach that the Windows Live teams take towards their customers (more of that in another post) I fear it won't.

-Jamie

Windows Live: Folders becomes SkyDrive

jamie.thomson — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 17:47:00 GMT

I've spoken about Live Folders quite alot on here lately and some big news from that product team today is that they have dropped their working name and adopted "Windows Live Skydrive" as their name. Read about it directly from the SkyDrive team here and read more comment here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here (is that enough?).

The new interface is better and includes the new Live Wave 2 UI, the uploading tool is very very cool (drag and drop files that you want to upload directly into the browser), I like the provided embed links, and there is a pretty heavy nod to personalisation too. All is not great though, any existing links no longer work which I happen to think is pretty shocking even for a beta service. Just to verify that they don't work, go and check out these three previous blog entries of mine where I have had to update the links:

Come on guys. Think about these things huh?

-Jamie

Live Folders cometh!

jamie.thomson — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 16:35:00 GMT

For those of you that don't read the same RSS feeds as me, Live Folders is now available as a limited beta to the first 5000 people to apply. This means that 5000 people can upload files but anyone in the world can download the public-facing ones. Luckily for me I managed to get in as one of the 5000 and my first use of it has been to make available the video from my blog entry "Consuming Web Services in SSIS 2008" from a couple of weeks ago. Here's a screenshot of that publicly available file:

I previously made some predictions about how the Live Folders service would evolve and now that I have used the service I have some suggestions about how they could improve it:

The most requested feature so far is the ability to sync this cloud storage service with conventional storage on our own hardware and I would put that top of my list too. Given Microsoft's push for software+services I can safely say this will definately happen and I'm virtually certain that a rebadged and updated version of FolderShare will be part of it. This should enable seamless dragging and dropping between local folders and live folders using the tools we are all familiar with (e.g. Windows Explorer).
The interface is still a little clunky (for want of a better word). I am surprised that they haven't leveraged AJAX to give us a right-click menu identical to that in Windows and I would expect that functionality to come soon.
More on copying the Windows interface. Vista allows us to view the contents of folders as tiles, in a list, details, thumbnails, small icons, medium icons, large icons or extra large icons. I'd like the same in Live Folders.
I'm surprised that when we are uploading a file we're not able to do anything else (such as uploading another file). Compare this to YouTube and SoapBox which both allow you to do other activity while a file is uploading.
There is no search mechanism for public folders. I'd like there to be one.
Give us a web gadget that enables us to view the contents of our Live Folders from our Live Space, Live.com homepage or iGoogle homepage. Perhaps even give us a Pageflakes widget.
Allow for tagging of files to enable easier searching of public folders for alike files.
Live Messenger/Live Contacts allows us to define groups into which we can group our contacts. I want the ability to specify that one of these groups could have access to a shared folder rather than having to list every person individually. If you think about it, this is exactly how groups and users work in Active Directory.
People that work for the same company should have access to a set of live folders via the Office Live service.
I want to see statistics on my folders/files that are shared or public. Statistics such as how many people have looked at the file/folder and how many people have downloaded the file.In the case of shared folders I would like to know who those people are.
As you can see from the screenshot above Microsoft will be displaying advertisments on Live Folders. As I see it, it is the user that is driving people to the page therefore there should be an option for the user to receive revenue via the Microsoft Affiliates Network.
Users may want to move files to different locations in their Live Folders but this will be a problem if links already exist in emails or out on the internet that point to the old location. Hence, I'd like to have a mechanism for redirection.
Navigate folders using a treeview

Live Folders beta was announced in concert with Live Photo Gallery beta and is talked about in this announcement from Chris Jones. I heard Chris speak during the MVP Summit in March 2007 about the future of Windows Live and he roused my interest to such a point that I have been talking voraciously on this blog about Windows Live ever since. Perennial Microsoft observer Joe Wilcox also read the announcement and commented on the Live Folders beta and Live Photo Gallery beta in his blog entry Live Lives, But How Well?. In that post he makes an interesting point about how Microsoft should leverage other web APIs (he uses Flickr as an example) in addition to rolling their own to try and compete. Its an interesting perspective and one that I am undecided on but it leads me to talk about the main reason why I am so enthusisatic about Windows Live services.

Specifically, it is the Windows Live ID in conjunction with Microsoft's sheer scale and breadth of services. I hate having to go to different online services that require me to login, and thus remember different username/password combinations, in order to get all the services that I am interested in. I just want to use a single login. Thus, the fact that the Windows Live ID unlocks more services than any other username/password in the world means that it is an obvious choice for me to use it. This is why (even given recent problems) I will use Soapbox rather than Youtube, Hotmail rather than GMail, Live Q&A rather than Yahoo Answers, Live Messenger rather than Yahoo Messenger and Live.com rather than iGoogle. And don't forget its not just Microsoft-badged services; Expedia for example allows me to login using my Windows Live ID as well. I love Flickr's service (as I have said before) but if Microsoft provide a comparable service then I will undoubtedly migrate to it - that means one less username/password to maintain (plus Flickr costs me money). Oh, and did I mention that my Windows Live ID gets me into all the online services that I need for my day job such as the MSDN Forums and SQL Server Connect?

I know I'm probably in the minority with my desire to get all my online services using a single username/password but y'know, that's just me. I know most others will be different.

-Jamie

Posted to Windows Live (RSS feed), Live Folders (RSS feed)

UPDATE: You could do worse than read Windows Live Program Manager Yaron Goland's blog entry here where he talks about Windows Live services interoperating with everything else. He says "...for us to succeed we have to convince users to keep some of their data/services with us and then make it brain dead easy to connect the data/services they keep with us to all the other data/services they keep in lots of other places."

Ever thought you'd hear those words coming from the keyboard of a Microsoft employee?

UPDATE 2: Mike Torres has an interesting perspective on Joe Wilcox's criticism's of Windows Live not supporting other web APIs like Flickr. Read it here.

UPDATE 3: There's a really good 7minute video here that emphasizes the point about Windows Live ID being the key to al of this. Its good to finally hear this coming from a Microsoft employee.

Windows Live: Live Folders predictions

jamie.thomson — Mon, 14 May 2007 20:48:00 GMT

Yesterday I posted a blog entry talking about the imminent announcement of Windows Live Folders.

Microsoft will be hoping that this offering starts to drive heavy adoption of other Windows Live services - it could be their make or break. Hence, I've been thinking about what offerings they will have around this and also how other Windows Live Services will leverage it. Here are some predictions:

I think you can virtually guarantee that everyone will get some space for free and then they'll offer more space for a subscription fee. If they have any sense they will offer premium packages as well - I envisage Office Live customers going for that in a big way.
Disk space is cheap and getting cheaper so the subscription model will be driven by bandwidth, not by space used (this is the model that Flickr uses). The more you use your stored content, the more you pay.
Photos on Live Spaces will get stored in your Live Folders.
Shared folders in Live Messenger will migrate to Live Folders.
There will be a Live Spaces gadget for viewing your Live Folders.
Windows Explorer will be your desktop client for accessing Live Folders. You will be able to effortlessly drag-and-drop between your local folders and your Windows Live Folders. This should mean that you will also be able to access your Live Folders from your existing software such as Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Adobe etc... And of course, because this is a cross-platform service you will be able to store those documents on Live Folders then access and edit them from (e.g.) a Mac.
Pictures/photos stored in public Live Folders will be indexed by Live Search Images.
Soapbox videos will be migrated to be stored in your Live Folders.
Music and film distributers will start to come down hard on Microsoft when people start making copyrighted material available to the public on their Live Folders.
Favorites will be stored in Live Folders
Before long all web-based access to your Live Folders will be done using a Silverlight interface.
There will be an API to enable 3rd party apps to use Live Folders.
There will be Live Folders offerings bundled with Windows Home Server.

All this will be tied together by your Windows Live ID. Microsoft will be hoping that their investment in Microsoft Passport all those years ago is now gonna pay off huge.

Like I said, these are only my predictions. Don't expect that any of this will actually happen.

-Jamie

Posted to Windows Live (RSS feed) & Live Folders (RSS feed)

Windows Live: Live Drive is coming!

jamie.thomson — Mon, 14 May 2007 02:16:00 GMT

The much-vaunted storage-in-the-cloud service from Microsoft's Windows Live is soon to see the light of day. Oft referred to as Live Drive, it seems as tho Sky Drive or Windows Live Folders is the more likely moniker. Shame - I kinda liked Live Drive.

As usual Liveside were first with the scoop:

Click-through on the links to read all the juicy details.

Chris at Liveside mentioned that a client app will doubtless appear at some point. Well in my opinion a client already exists. If Microsoft are serious about software-and-a-service -which means that Live Services will complement existing software- then Windows Explorer should be the client. That way its a seamless transition to using Sky Drive - people might not even know that they're using a new service. As far as they are concerned its just an extension of Windows and that means that people can access their online storage from within all of their existing software and not just from a single client tool. Plus there doesn't have to be more naming fiascos - Windows Explorer has already got the right name.

Granted - they'll need a client for non-Windows op systems. There's an interesting thought - Windows Explorer running on a Mac.

-Jamie

Posted to Windows Live (RSS feed) & Live Folders (RSS feed)