1. Windows Live
Martin Parry Developer and Platform Group Microsoft

2. Questions I’ll Answer What is the Live Platform?
Why Should I Consider It?
What Services are Available?
How Does It Work?
Specifics for VirtualEarth and Contacts
Cross-domain Communications

3. The Windows Live Platform
IE6, IE7
Server Platform
Of Your Choice
Broad Reach
Firefox + others
Client-Side Aggregation
Components for
Compelling Web
Applications
APIs
Services

4. Live Services with APIs
Live Gadgets
Live Messenger
Live Search
Live Expo
Live Spaces
Custom Domains
Virtual Earth
Contacts Control
Best indication of future direction for this platform

5. Why Consider the Live Platform?
Huge potential audience
Live Mail (Hotmail): ~240 Million
Live Messenger: ~230 Million
Live Spaces: ~130 Million
Great developer opportunity
We have a few apps, such as
Still a lot that can be done

6. Live Gadgets Web Gadgets Not hosted at live.com Can be used at
Consist of Javascript that generates HTML
Not hosted at live.com
Can be developed from
Hosted on your site, advertised on Microsoft site
Can be used at
spaces.live.com

7. Gadget API Javascript, OO-like Uses AJAX-like asynchronous patterns
Bindings
Encapsulate Javascript “classes”
Each has initialize, dispose methods
Each Gadget is a Binding
Network stack
Proxy web access via live.com domain
No worries about cross-domain access issues

8. Windows Live Gadget

9. Gadget Constituents LiveSearch.ashx *.js MyGadget.* martinparry.com
Live.com
*.js
localhost
MyGadget.*

10. Live Search SOAP API http://soap.search.msn.com/webservices.asmx?wsdl
Get application ID
developer
Add Web Reference
…and play

11. Windows Live Search API

12. Live Messenger
Messenger Add-in SDK
Messenger Activity SDK
Bots

13. Live Messenger Bot

14. Live Messenger – Building a Bot
Three Bot platforms licensed by Microsoft
Akonix® L7 Builder™ SDK
Colloquis™ BuddyScript SDK
Incesoft Bot Platform SDK
Your bot targets one of these platforms, not Live Messenger directly

15. Virtual Earth Geographic and Aerial photo database
17 Petabytes this year
Map control
Javascript SDK
MapPoint web services

16. Virtual Earth

17. Page Constituents roadshow.xml *.js Demo1.htm martinparry.com
VirtualEarth.net
*.js
localhost
Demo1.htm

18. Windows Live Contacts Control
A service in its own right
Allows a user to share data from their contacts list with a web application
Control and Privacy are paramount
User has to sign in with a Live ID
14 Billion live contact records today
List view and Tile view
Now includes presence information

19. Contacts Control

20. Client-side Aggregation
Best examples
Virtual Earth
Contacts Control
Javascript programming model
Points the way to future Live development

21. Channel API Used internally by the Contacts Control
Client-side in-browser cross-domain data transfer
iframe to iframe, different domains
In spite of browser security model!
…how does it work?

22. Channel API Secrets Base implementation now
Working on optimised versions for different browsers and their behaviour
Each iframe has a write-only src property
If sender already knows base URL of an iframe
Can write the same URL, plus data after the hash
E.g.
Never gets cached, never hits network stack

23. Services I Didn’t Detail…
Live Expo
Live Spaces
Custom Domains

24. Live Expo It’s an online marketplace
Classified listings, etc.
API via HTTP/GET, returning XML, or via SOAP
For apps that want to access listings data
Every call must send an “application key”
Associated with a Live Expo account

25. Live Spaces Uses MetaWeblog API
Very popular API for accessing blog engines
Not a Microsoft invention 
Uses XML-RPC techniques

26. Custom Domains
Register a domain and create accounts within that domain
Microsoft hosts mail server for those accounts
Each account is a Windows Live ID
Full management of accounts online
Also SOAP APIs for management of accounts

27. Summary Huge potential audience & great opportunity
Drive visitors to your site…
…and wow them when they get there
Client-side Aggregation (aka Mashups)