Blog List

Being the last day of 2007 and all, I thought I'd do a recap on the ViaWindowsLive community site.  Since we launched the BetaArticle Contributions

John O'Brien (7) Bronwen Zande (4) Derek Chan (3) Daniel Wissa (2) Vasudev Gurumurthy (2) Beth Massi (1) Robert McGrath(1) Gfw (1) Brian Peek (1) Darren Neimke (1) Marco Anastasi (1) Mike McDougall (1) Johannes Kebek (1) Scott Lovegrove (1) Top Content

www.viawindowslive.com www.viawindowslive.com/VirtualEarth.aspx www.viawindowslive.com/Articles/VirtualEarth.aspx www.viawindowslive.com/Messenger.aspx www.viawindowslive.com/Blog.aspx Top Articles

Getting Started with VE 6 What's new in VE 6 Messenger IM Control & Presence Clustering Virtual Earth 6 Setting up Custom Domains for your Email Top Traffic Sources

google.com viavirtualearth.com forums.microsoft.com live.com blogs.msdn.com Top Keyword searches

virtual earth live spaces live id silverlight streaming account via windows live Visitor Countries

United States United Kingdom Australia Canada India...

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Came across "Agent M" today on this blog.  "Agent M" is a Windows Live Agent to help it's banking customers with enquiries, faqs etc.  If you want to have a play with it just add m.m2u@maybank.com.my to you Live Messenger friends list and start asking questions etc.

I love seeing new examples of agets.  I've played with smarterchild and encarta for a few years now..they can be very addictive...and earlier this year wrote a Live Agent for a demo.  Improving and extending the words/phrases/questions etc. can be very addictive.

Bored this Christmas and looking for something cool to play with? How about playing with some very new code that combines Silverlight and Windows Live Services. If you haven't played with it you should:

http://tafiti.mslivelabs.com/

And the big announcment today is the source code is available for you sink your teeth into:

http://codeplex.com/WLQuickApps

So if you keen to see what Silverlight and Windows Live Services are all about and have a few spare hours over the break I highly recommend checking this out. I'm sure it will generate some ideas for you in 2008.

Here's an update on ViaWindowsLive for November.  Top Content

www.viawindowslive.com/VirtualEarth.aspx http://www.viawindowslive.com/ www.viawindowslive.com/Articles/VirtualEarth.aspx www.viawindowslive.com/Articles/Messenger/MessengerIMControlPresence.aspx www.viawindowslive.com/Articles/VirtualEarth/GettingStartedwithVersion6.aspx www.viawindowslive.com/Blog.aspx Top Articles

Messenger IM Control & Presence Getting Started with Version 6 Clustering Pins in Virtual Earth 6 Whats new in Virtual Earth 6 Adding Verbs to the Virtual Earth InfoBox Top Resources

Virtual Earth Location Finder The Virtual Earth Quick Guide LiveSearch Resources Virtual Earth Resouces Silverlight Streaming Resources Top Traffic Sources

http://www.google.com/ http://www.viavirtualearth.com forums.microsoft.com blogs.msdn.com http://www.live.com/ Top Keyword searches

virtual earth live spaces live search live id messenger im control Visitor Countires

United States United Kingdom Australia Canada India...

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Head over to Angus's blog to see some goss on the new Quick App for Live Services that's about to be released. This Quick App is the demo we built for the Steve Ballmer keynote at the Worldwide Partner Conference 2007.

There's a couple of powerpoint clickthroughs if you want to see some of the highlights of the app:

I blogged about a bit of a roadtrip of SQL User Groups for a presentation of SQL Spatial.  We've now added Hobart and Melbourne to the list. 

The blurb for our talk is:

SQL Spatial with Virtual Earth

In this visually interactive talk we explore the new spatial data types, functions and indexes directly related to the real world using the interactive browser based Virtual Earth control. We focus on the new Geography data type providing an overview of the new functionality as directly applied to mapping. This includes the storage of points, polylines and polygons as well as real world tasks like effective rendering to the map, geofencing and proximity searches. We explore the power of union and buffering. Finally we examine the new index specifically built for fast spatial lookup.

The talk will inform, teach and demonstrate. You will understand what this new functionality is all about, what data types and functions are needed, how they operate and how to add an effective spatial index to your project.

So the revised schedule is:



9 January - Canberra - Register HERE10 January - Adelaide - Register HERE15 January - Melbourne 29 January - Hobart - Register HERE12 February - Sydney - Register HERE14 February - Perth 24 April - Brisbane - Register HERE...

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After playing with the Web IM Control and Presence API yesterday, I thought to myself..hey..it'd be cool for ppl to ask me questions about my articles. 

So i've put my presence next to my name on my articles on our seite e.g. http://www.soulsolutions.com.au/Articles/MessengerIMControlPresence/tabid/123/Default.aspx.  If I'm online, you can double click the icon and it will pop up the Windows IM control and you can talk to me..cool hey.

I've also put this on my articles on ViaWindowsLive see examples here: http://www.viawindowslive.com/Articles.aspx.  If anyone who has already written and article would like this added to the start of their article, please let us know.

For those interested in the new IM Control and Presence API there is a new article on ViaWindowsLive

Messenger IM Control & Presence API Introduction - This article gives a brief introduction to the Windows Live Messenger IM Control & Presence API.  It provides a walkthrough of how to setup, install and use the control from both an owner and a vistor user perspective.

Anyone wanting to contribute articles to the site should goto the Contribute Page

Many of you may have already seen Angus's blog and the introduction of a web IM/Presence control on the left side.  For those who haven't...check it outSo for anyone who uses Messenger and has thought to themself.."gee, it'd be really handy to be able to have a messenger control on my site so people can talk to me without having Messenger", your wishes have been granted.

I'll be doing an article about setting this up in the next couple of days..so watch this space...

If you want to have a play yourself here's the cutdown version of what to do:

To configure your account and get the HTML that is required for you to put it on your site goto: : http://settings.messenger.live.com/Applications/WebSettings.aspx

There are 2 controls:

Presence :  This control shows your status as an icon

And WebIM: 

 

This control allows people to start a conversation with you from the site that it is hosted on.  One of the great things about this control is that the person talking to you doesn't need to be signed into messenger to talk to you, and they don't have to be on your contact list.  Great for a site wanting to run a "Ask us a question" type service.

...

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