In Day 2 of Mix ’07 Brian Arbogast announced new Windows Live API which are now easy to use, simpler licensing and ready to go.
(My photo with Brian Arbogast here has nothing to do
with Mix ’07 – it was taken on 22/Oct/2004 in Gurgaon)
Microsoft is certainly late to the game, but can they pull it off from behind this time, let us wait and see.
- Videos Support – SilverLight Streaming
- Spaces Photos – Currently Read-only, soon to be Write-Read
- Windows Live Contacts – Access to Hotmail
- Virtual Earth Maps
- Add Live Search to your site
They are introducing a new concept – User Controlled Privacy Model. By this Users can limit access of their data to a particular domain. I think this is good from a business and long-term sustainability stand-point.
All the services are free up to a limit and then a predictable annual charge.
Windows Live Platform Terms of Use
There were demos about a mashup by Microsoft on blog and Virtual Earth and by Match.com using Windows Live APIs. I was surprised to learn about the scale of Match.com is responsible for 10% of all marriages that happen in USA, 60K customers every day, 55 Million emails every month. It was interesting they are also an 100% Microsoft Shop (IIS/SQL Server/.NET) and push a giga-bit of traffic every second. Their mash-up with Live Search especially the anonymous Messenger Chat using Live Alerts was cool (see the second image below).
Photo blog and Virtual Earth Mashup
Match.com and Live Messenger