SSIS Junkie : Windows Live

Windows Live Dev announcements

jamie.thomson — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 18:47:00 GMT

There's some big announcements (in my opinion anyway) from Windows Live today. Read here:

David Treadwell on New and Updated Windows Live Platform Services

http://dev.live.com/blogs/devlive/archive/2008/02/27/213.aspx

The highlights are:

Messenger API that enables you to build your own Messenger client
Contacts API moves to beta (no more screen-scraping required if you want to share your contacts)
Silverlight Streaming moves to beta
WLID Delegated Auth - You can now choose how long a third party can access your personal data for witout having to surrender your password

But the biggest news (IMO):

Microsoft is making a large investment in unifying our developer platform protocols for services on the open, standards-based Atom format (RFC 4287) and the Atom Publishing Protocol (RFC 5023). At MIX we are enabling several new Live services with AtomPub endpoints which enable any HTTP-aware application to easily consume Atom feeds of photos and for unstructured application storage (see below for more details). Or you can use any Atom-aware public tools or libraries, such as .NET WCF Syndication to read or write these cloud service-based feeds.
In addition, these same protocols and the same services are now ADO.NET Data Services (formerly known as “ Project Astoria”) compatible.

So, Microsoft are standardising on ADO.Net Data Services/Astoria which kind of answers some of the questions I posed when I wrote Astoria and Web3S converge. Standardisation is of obviously good and the side benefit is that the Astoria team already ship client libraries for AJAX & Silverlight (see Mike Taulty's blog for demo videos- http://mtaulty.com/CommunityServer/blogs/mike_taultys_blog/archive/2008/01/17/10130.aspx). I also have some Astoria related material here: http://blogs.conchango.com/jamiethomson/archive/tags/Astoria/default.aspx

One other thing:

Application Based Storage

Application Based storage is an experimental API which allows application developers to store a small amount of state/configuration data in the Windows Live data centers on behalf of a user. This API has an AtomPub service end point so developers will be able to call this using ADO.NET data services or other AtomPub compatible tools. The real value kicks in here if an application was to have hundreds of thousands of users as the storage is offloaded to Windows Live infrastructure.

That sounds to me like a first foray into competing with Amazon S3 & EC2. Watch this space.

-Jamie

[crossposted to http://jamiethomson.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!550F681DAD532637!3649.entry]

Astoria and Web3S converge

jamie.thomson — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 22:40:00 GMT

Three weeks ago I wrote this blog entry that raised a question mark over why Microsoft were coming out with two seemingly contradictory RESTful APIs (Astoria and Live Data) for exposing data. I linked to this forum posting where Federico Raggi from Microsoft stated that rather than being contradictory they were actually complementary. I questioned if that was actually the case and asked for clarification on this point.

Well since then a few things have come to light. Firstly that I was wrong to refer to Live Data as a RESTful API. Yaron Goland corrected me by stating that Web3S is the technology (which has come out of the Live Data team) that I should probably be comparing to Astoria. Actually it turned out that that would be wrong as well because I was wrong to mention the two in the same breath. Astoria is a toolkit for exposing data, Web3S is a data access protocol that can be used for exposing data.

Confused? I was a little so I was thankful to the god of Astoria (namely Pablo Castro) for posting a blog entry entitled "Astoria Design: payload formats". In this entry Pablo explains how an Astoria data service will expose data in a number of different formats, one of which will be Web3S. The Astoria and Live Data teams (i.e. those headed by Pablo and Yaron respectively) were clear from the start that their technologies were complementary and they were dead right. Clearly Web3S is a basket into which Microsoft will be placing lots of their eggs and it will be interesting to see whether this will prove beneficial or whether Yaron's decsion to not leverage the more industry-standard protocol APP will harm them.

Either way, its good to see that two completely separate teams within Microsoft are in sync with each other and are building complementary products. I wonder if the European Commission will decide that that is against the law as well?

-Jamie

cross-posted to here

UPDATE, 2008-03-01: You should probably read this blog entry in the context of the updated information provided here: Windows Live Dev announcements

Explore The Space

jamie.thomson — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 03:09:00 GMT

Over the past year I've posted alot of content on this blog that is nothing to do with its main raison d'etre, that being Data Integration and all associated technologies. I've strayed into talking about things that have no interest to the people that may read my blog on a regular basis. Things such as Windows Live, Popfly, Zune. These are all things that interest me but I expect that isn't an interest that is shared by the majority of people reading and hence from now on you will not find me talking about these things ever again on this blog (unless there is some relevance to the things that I DO want to talk about). I make no apology for writing about things that interest me but I realise that if I don't want to alienate the people that read this blog regularly I need to stop doing it. On here anyway.

That is why I will continue to talk about these "other" things on my new Live Spaces blog at http://jamiethomson.spaces.live.com/ (RSS feed). I hope there's enough of you out there that ARE interested in reading this new blog, if so, let me know by replying to my first blog entry: http://jamiethomson.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!550F681DAD532637!1628.entry. And don't forget to subscribe.

Thanks for reading!

-Jamie

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

Will blogging tools become more than blogging tools?

jamie.thomson — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 16:07:00 GMT

I am currently writing this blog entry on a flight somewhere over the USA using Windows Live Writer as my offline blogging tool. Anyone that has used it will tell you what a great tool it is for doing this.

Currently Live Writer allows rich offline editing of blog posts. I think the fact that blogging tools such as Live Writer are not tied to only one online blogging service is a revolutionary concept - I really do. Supporting other platforms is certainly a bold new direction for Microsoft if nothing else. In my every day life though I don't only publish stuff to my blog. I write questions (and the odd answer) on discussion forums, post the occasional video to Youtube/Soapbox, write posts on newsgroups, publish photos to Flickr, write mindless rubbish on Twitter and Facebook, etc... you get the idea. I "publish" myself all over the place. If you think about it, most of us do to some extent.

So now I'm wondering, will blogging tools one day enable me to publish to all of those mediums? After all, the tool I'm using right now is called "Live Writer", not "Live Blogger". Why should it only be a blogging tool?

This also raises the question of whether these publishing tools will one day become tools for consuming content as well as creating it. A "21st century NNTP client" if you will.

What do you think?

-Jamie

P.S. Leg room on American Airlines sucks and they've already told me that not all the baggage made it onto the plane at JFK. Gotta love 'em!

P.P.S. Updating later. Sure enough my baggage never left JFK.

Virtual Earth, calling Side Street. Come in SideStreet. Over...

jamie.thomson — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 12:36:00 GMT

Perhaps it really is over!!

There was an interesting internal email thread within Conchango today which began with an email from Simon Knightley saying this:

I recently came across Microsoft’s response to Google Earth, Microsoft Virtual Earth at http://maps.live.com/
If you select the 3D option and install the active X control, you get all the functionality of Google Earth without leaving your browser, with an easy to navigate interface.
Microsoft may not be product innovators, but they certainly know how to roll up their corporate sleeves and respond to the market.

Whilst I'm sure this is nice to hear for those at Virtual Earth it begs the question why it has taken such a long time for Simon (who happens to be a very smart, clued-up guy, by the way) to become aware of it. After all, it was released at least 9 months ago. Yet again Microsoft seem to be doing a very poor job of telling people about their Windows Live offerings although I heard on the QT today from someone internal at Microsoft that now they are into fiscal 2008 the marketing heat is going to be turned up.

In response to Simon's email I forwarded a link to a collection I built recently that included this 3D view of Las Vegas that caused Rob Grigg to comment "This looks like flight sim online". The more interesting reply though came from Ciaran Hanway who had this to say:

Google Earth has Google Street view, which I think is infintely better for the voyeuristic among us:
http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/
The Geek in the video explains it all very well. You can zoom down to specially-photographed streets and have a rotating view of the street level. Only a few major cities have been photographed, but apparently, there are a lot of Google vans being spotted doing the rounds and taking photos.

Ciaran raises a great point. The viral mouth-to-mouth that accompanied Google StreetView's release has helped to make it far more well-known and far more well-received than Virtual Earth 3D. That then got me thinking; what has happened to Microsoft's like-for-like offering Sidestreet which they first brought to an unsuspecting public (wait for it) EIGHTEEN MONTHS ago. I suspect they are still planning to bring this but since Google beat them to the punch and released StreetView the game has changed a little and Microsoft need to do something even better or they might as well not bother. Hence, I suspect that when Sidestreet does finally get released it will look a lot different than it did 18 months ago and will probably include some aspects of one or more of the fantastic photo technologies Photosynth, Seadragon and HDView.

-Jamie

P.S. If driving around city streets takes your fancy then check out http://www.livederby2007.com/. Perfect Friday lunchtime filler if you happen to be somewhere other than in the pub. If you liked Pacman back in the 80s then you'll love this.

Mobile search clients reviewed

jamie.thomson — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 23:12:00 GMT

One month ago I published a review of Google Maps for Mobile and Windows Live Search for Mobile which you can read here. Today Gear Digest have published their own, much more detailed, comparison of the two as well as Yahoo's similar offering. Unlike myself who just did a feature-by-feature comparison Gear Digest make a firm recommendation (if you can be bothered to read that far - its 8 pages in). If you think about whose blog you are reading right now and the fact that I'm pointing it out then you can probably guess what they recommended.

Read Gear Digest's review here.

Thanks for the tip.

-Jamie

Windows Live: v2 of Windows Live Search for Mobile hits the shelves

jamie.thomson — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 19:40:00 GMT

Version 2 of Windows Live Search for Mobile (WLS) has been released. Read the announcement here which contains screenshots and in this case a picture really does tell a thousand words.

Here's the list of new features:

Get movie times
Search for restaurants and see ratings
WLS will now cache onto your storage card if you have one installed (thank god, the biggest problem in v1 was it taking up all my storage space)
Auto re-route of directions if you get lost (only works if you have GPS along for the ride)

Some other announcements:

A beta of WLS is now available for Blackberry phones.
Microsoft are also touting their mobile search portal at http://m.live.com. Search the web, images, news, local listings and instant answers (including from Encarta) right from your mobile phone. Its actually worth checking it out on a normal browser (i.e. not on a mobile device) as well, you might prefer it to your regular search engine.

If you want to know more about WLS then read my comparison of it with Google Maps for Mobile here. With this release Microsoft have nudged themselves ahead in the mobile search space, what can Google counter with (one would hope it will be something pretty good)?

Its also now plainly obvious why "Windows Live Search for Mobile" is so-called rather than "Windows Live Maps for Mobile".

-Jamie

UPDATE: See a video of this in action here.

Will Windows one day be free?

jamie.thomson — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 21:16:00 GMT

That's a question I started asking myself yesterday as I read this post from Yaron Goland. Here's a sprinkling from that entry:

Sigh…. I know… I know… Microsoft… evil… proprietary… no cross platform… Windows über alles… etc. Whatever. Look folks, this is really easy. I work for Windows Live and my mission as handed to me by my boss, his boss and his boss's boss is simple - Make money on services.
That's it. It's not 'make money on services and sell Windows' or 'only make money on services running on Windows'. Bzzz…. it's 'make money on services', full stop. This distinction from Windows isn't new to Microsoft. Office, from what I can tell, has run itself as a separate company for years. Nevertheless, there is this expectation that everyone in Windows Live is spending their time thinking deep thoughts about how to sell Windows. Um.. no. I know, with a name like Windows Live you would think Windows Live is all about Windows but 1) I don't do our branding and 2) See the previous mission statement from the first three levels of my management chain.
So with this in mind let's get a few things out of the way. Do you like OS X? Great. Are you a FireFox user? Outstanding. Does Java make you Joyous? Wonderful! I don't care. Seriously, I don't. What I care about is making Windows Live's services successful and for the short and probably medium term that means ads.

Compare this with a quote from about two years ago from someone who shall remain nameless (but whom I have utmost respect for):

"My job is to sell [productX]. It is the job of [productX] to sell SQL Server licenses. It is the job of SQL Server to sell Windows licenses."

Pretty clear distinction there isn't there? Windows is Microsoft's number one moneyspinner and yet here is someone who carries a lot of favour and is playing a large part in driving Microsoft's future saying "I don't care about Windows - that's nothing to do with me". It made me wonder how far Microsoft's ambitions with Windows Live actually go - do they foresee a time when the bulk of their revenue is not from Windows but actually online services? In that scenario its not hard to envisage Windows being given away free in order to drive people to the monetised live services.

Just a thought.

By the way, Yaron gives a fascinating perspective on machinations at Microsoft/Windows Live due to his non-Microsoft pedigree. His blog is well worth a read.

-Jamie