Can’t Live Without Windows Live? Join the Community!
Microsoft’s new Clubhouse is for people who want to share with others the cool things they are doing with Windows Live to make their lives easier and a lot more fun.
Core News Facts
•The Clubhouse, Microsoft Corp.’s new Windows Live Community, is expanding and looking for new members.
•Who are Clubhouse members? People who get excited about discovering the cool stuff they can do with Windows Live and want to share their experiences with others.
•What do Clubhouse members do?
•Create content about their experiences on their Windows Live Space, which is pulled from their sites and aggregated using RSS feeds
•Rank other members’ postings
•Help each other learn new stuff and useful tips
•Some of the most highly rated Clubhouse content is showcased at WindowsLive.com, visited by millions of people each month.
•Interested? This will get you started: http://www.windowslive.com/clubhouse/join.
Source- Microsoft Press Release
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Custom Domains renamed to Admin Center in V3.0
We’ve just released Version 3.0 of Custom Domains. We have decided to change the service name to Windows Live Admin Center. We’re changing the name to better reflect our features and capabilities, but don’t worry, Admin Center is still where you access the same great features you did with Custom Domains.
We’re excited to introduce the ability for you to customize services like Windows Live Hotmail® with your own logo. Now your domain users will see your organization logo every time they check their email. Just select the co-branding link in the left navigation to get started.
You can still access the service at domains.live.com though you can expect to eventually be redirected to admincenter.live.com.
We appreciate your business and look forward to continue bringing you new improvements to this service.
Thanks for your understanding as we transition to our new name.
Source- Custom Domains Blog
Windows Live OneCare 3.0 coming live to MU/WSUS
In the next few weeks, we are adding a new product family to your WSUS server – Windows Live OneCare V3.0. These product updates for Windows Live OneCare are applicable for the V3.0 release. For additional information on Windows Live OneCare see http://onecare.live.com/. The Windows Live OneCare V3.0 category will include updates for the following categories: Definition updates. These updates will be available through the Microsoft Update Site, making it available (depending on your settings ) via Automatic Update, and to Windows Server Update Services (WSUS).
These updates are currently for pre-release validation only; WSUS admins do not need to approve any content now; Windows Live OneCare V2.5 customers are not affected by these updates. Once the OneCare V3.0 public beta is released, WSUS admins may choose to approve the updates if you have the beta installed on your network. Additionally, Windows Live OneCare V3.0 updates will be available from the Microsoft Update Catalog http://catalog.update.microsoft.com.
Source- Technet Blog
Notes on the Windows 7 Demo from Today’s PDC Keynote
Just a few hours ago, Steven Sinofsky, Senior Vice President for Windows and Windows Live Engineering, did his keynote here at PDC2008 unveiling Windows 7 to the world for the first time. Steven asked Julie Larson-Green, Corporate Vice President of the Windows Experience, to come up on stage and demo specific Windows 7 features that I think you’ll find very exciting. I’d like to take a moment and share some notes I took live here from PDC from his keynote about those features that they demoed.
It’s important to note that many of these features that were demoed during the Keynote were from more recent Windows 7 build and didn’t make it into the Windows 7 build being handed out to attendees here at PDC – but we wanted to show them off to you anyway.
Ok now on to my notes on the features demoed here from PDC (not in any specific order)! I also hope to try and add a little more context to the features that were demoed.
I’d like to emphasize all of these features that were demoed ultimately showcases that Windows 7 is being designed to make the things you do today faster and easier, and new things possible.
New Windows Taskbar in Windows 7:
Check more at the Windows Experience Blog
Windows Vista Team Blog now Windows Blog
As you probably have noticed, we just re-launched our blog today as The Windows Blog sporting an all-new look and feel reflecting Windows in a broader sense instead of a single Windows release. We figured it was time to give our blog a good facelift (it’s looked the same since we originally launched in October of 2006) – especially as we start talking about Windows 7, Windows Live, and many other interesting Windows topics. Our old design focused strictly on Windows Vista. Our new design is no longer tied to a specific Windows release allowing us to talk about a wider range of topics.
With the previous site design – we essentially had 2 blogs hosted together on the same site: the Windows Vista Team Blog and Windows Experience Blog. But because of the design – not a lot of people noticed that there were actually 2 distinct blogs on our site.
We wanted to fix that.
In thinking about the design for The Windows Blog, we wanted the site to act like a community of blogs focused on talking about Windows.
Today – our new design reflects that.
As you can see in the left-hand navigation menu – The Windows Blog is currently home to 3 Windows blogs, 2 of which you already know.
Source- Windows Team Blog
Download Windows Live Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio
This CTP is an update to July 2008 CTP Release. In this CTP, we have made Windows Live Tools compatible with Windows Azure and upgraded to Silverlight 2.0. This package includes following:
ASP.NET Server Controls
• Contacts
• IDLoginStatus
• IDLoginView
• Map
• MessengerChat
• SilverlightStreamingMediaPlayer
Visual Studio Project Template
• ASP.NET Windows Live Web Site
• Windows Live Web Application
• Windows Live Web Role (template for Windows Azure Cloud Project)
Windows Live ID Becomes an OpenID Provider
Beginning today, Windows Live ID is publicly committing to support the OpenID digital identity framework with the announcement of the public availability of a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of the Windows Live ID OpenID Provider.
You will soon be able to use your Windows Live ID account to sign in to any OpenID Web site!
The Windows Live ID OpenID Provider (OP) enables anyone with a Windows Live ID account to set up an OpenID alias and to use that alias for identification at an increasing number of OpenID 2.0 relying party sites-for example: Plaxo, Pibb, StackOverflow.com and Wikispaces.
Windows Live ID OpenID Provider - October 2008 (CTP)
The initial release is a Community Technology Preview (CTP) Release in the Windows Live ID Integration (INT) environment. It is intended primarily for relying-party Web sites and developers of relying-party client libraries, to enable them to test the interoperability of their implementations against the Windows Live ID OP endpoint and flush out any bugs or incompatibilities.
Note that the Windows Live ID OP supports only the OpenID 2.0 protocol.
The Windows Live ID INT environment is separate from the main Production environment, and is for testing purposes only. If you have not already created a Windows Live ID user account for testing in INT, you can do so at http://signup.live-int.com/.
After you have your Windows Live ID account in INT, go to https://login.live-int.com/beta/ManageOpenID.srf to set up your OpenID alias on that test account.
NOTE: INT accounts are for testing purposes only and are NOT intended to be permanent user accounts. They do not allow access to Windows Live services in Production.
Source- Windows Live Dev Blog
Windows Live One Care for Servers
Windows Live OneCare for Server:
http://get.live.com/onecare/server
Items to keep in mind regarding the "One Care for Server + Site license"
If you install it on the workstations, the product will install it’s own firewall and override the group policy settings for SBS 2008. While SBS 2008 ships with a trial version (120 days) of the Server a/v, they don’t ship any workstation versions and rightly so. It’s really geared toward a "workgroup" setup and not a true domain.
While they say "a domain" .. be careful here. I’m not convinced that this is good for our domains.
Windows Live OneCare for Server small business network protection:
http://onecare.live.com/standard/en-us/server/smallbizprotect.htm
Windows Live OneCare for Server System Requirements:
http://onecare.live.com/standard/en-us/server/sysreq.htm 
Source- MSMVP’s Blog
