By Soul Solutions on Monday, 28 January 2008

So you heard about Live Services and not sure what they are or want to hear a bit more about about the different services?

There's a series of webcasts available that i first saw here.

1. Session 1 – Windows Live Platform Technical Overview (200 Level) . Get a broad look at the Windows Live development platform and discover the various ways you can integrate Windows Live APIs and controls into your applications and deliver rich web content in exciting and innovative ways.
2. Session 2 - Read More »
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By Soul Solutions on Wednesday, 2 January 2008

2008 started well, with a nice email this morning informing me I've been made a Live Services MVP. What a great honor to be part of a pretty exclusive group. Have a look at my MVP profile here.

By Soul Solutions on Tuesday, 1 January 2008

Back in December, John did a podcast with Craig Murphy about Windows Live, Virtual Earth and the community in Australia.

Check it out on Craig's site here:  http://www.craigmurphy.com/podcasts/041-John-OBrien.mp3

By Soul Solutions on Tuesday, 1 January 2008

I blogged about a bit of a roadtrip of SQL User Groups for a presentation of SQL Spatial.  We've now added a second Hobart session to the list - Hobart .Net Usergroup. 

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. Read More »

By Soul Solutions on Monday, 31 December 2007

Being the last day of 2007 and all, I thought I'd do a recap on the ViaWindowsLive community site.  Since we launched the Beta site on September 7, we've had 27 articles sumbitted by you..keep them coming.

Article 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)
... Read More »
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By Soul Solutions on Sunday, 23 December 2007

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.

By Soul Solutions on Wednesday, 19 December 2007

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. Read More »

By Soul Solutions on Monday, 26 November 2007

Here's an update on ViaWindowsLive for November. 

Top Content

1. www.viawindowslive.com/VirtualEarth.aspx
2. http://www.viawindowslive.com/
3. www.viawindowslive.com/Articles/VirtualEarth.aspx
4. www.viawindowslive.com/Articles/Messenger/Messen ... Read More »
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By Soul Solutions on Tuesday, 13 November 2007

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:

Contoso ISV - 3 - Sharing with Friends.pptx

Read More »

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By Soul Solutions on Monday, 12 November 2007

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.

& ... Read More »