Jamie Thomson's space

On 15th September I posted a blog entry entitled Is Peter Bale's music streaming service actually Zune? where I pondered about a supposedly imminent release of a music service from MSN; Mr Bale is an Executive Director at MSN UK. My interest was heightened by mention of a music streaming service and I speculated that this may well have links with the newly launched Zune music streaming service in the US, this is what I had to say back then:

However, taken in context all of this is rather interesting given that Microsoft today launched a music streaming service under the guise of Zune:

Streaming Music, On Demand

Now as Zune Pass subscribers, not only can customers enjoy access to close to 6 million songs from the Zune Marketplace catalog for $14.99, the price of one CD a month, but they can also log into Zune.net and stream full albums and tracks through a computer's browser.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/sep09/09-15zunehdsoftwarepr.mspx

I wonder if this is the service that Mr Bale mentioned. Will the Zune streaming service be offered through MSN given Mr Bale's role in the company? Will this herald the introduction of the Zune service to the UK? (note that Mr Bale is head of MSN UK) Is this a portent to Zune devices being launched in the UK?

Well today MSN UK have launched that new music download-to-own service in beta at http://downloads.music.uk.msn.com/. One million DRM-free tracks are available from all the major music labels and are delivered through the MSN UK portal. Users can discover, play and download music as well as create their own playlists.   In addition to the download service MSN UK have also launched a limited music streaming service that will be trialled over the coming weeks with a select group of testers. 

I spoke to Mr Bale earlier today and he let me in on some interesting information about this streaming service, namely that it is built on the same platform that powers the Zune music streaming service in the US just as I speculated it may do back in September. He was quick to point out that this does not represent the launch of a UK or Europe wide Zune service however it is seen as testing the water so the portents for Zune launching outside the US are definitely better today than they were yesterday!

I'll have more information on the streaming service later but in the meantime go and check out the new download service at http://downloads.music.uk.msn.com/.  

- Jamie

Data on the web

Regular readers around here will know that I am a Windows Live enthusiast however what you may not know is that in my “other” life (i.e. at my job) I spend my time working with data and databases. Storing data, querying it, moving it, changing it…these are the things I spend my days doing and moreover I enjoy it so much its kind of a hobby as well (fellow geeks will identify with this I’m sure).

One facet of my work that really fascinates me (and what I would dearly love to spend more time doing) is learning about how data is represented on the web and working with that data to do interesting things with it. You might ask “what data exists on the web?”. The answer is “humongous amounts of the stuff”, in fact in my opinion every single web page out there is a piece of data and those facets that I talked about before (storing, querying, moving, changing) apply just as much to web pages as they do to more conventional kinds of data such as your banking transactions or medical history.

Microformats

One of the most interesting disciplines in the area of data on the web is the use of microformats. You can read more about microformats at http://microformats.org/ but in their own words microformats can be described as:

Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. Instead of throwing away what works today, microformats intend to solve simpler problems first by adapting to current behaviors and usage patterns (e.g. XHTML, blogging)

http://microformats.org/about

Err…what? Ok, I’ll try and explain a different way. I suspect that everyone reading this knows that web pages are written in a language called Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), right? Well, microformats are extra pieces of information that can be added to HTML that can make the web pages understood by computers but that don’t affect how the web page appears to us humans because the extra microformat gunk that is added simply gets ignored by your browser.

Microformats have been defined for many of the most common types of data that exists on the web including:

• Calendars and events (hCalendar)
• Contacts (hCard)
• Reviews (hReview)
• Tags (hTag)   (N.B. The ”clubhouse”, ”story” & ”microformats” tags that you see at the bottom of this blog post are examples of hTags)
• Latitude and Longitude coordinates (geo)
• Cooking recipes (hRecipe)

Hopefully it becomes obvious why microformats can become useful. It is now possible to write software that understands web pages rather than just displaying the HTML to us so that we can understand it. Companies that run search engines are very excited about the possibilities of using microformats and indeed Google have embraced them wholeheartedly.

Let’s have an example of usage of a microformat. Upcoming.org is a site that allows people to advertise events that they have organised and I have come across one such listing for an event called Opencoffee at The University of Sussex on 5th November:

If we take a look at the HTML for that page we can see the following:

<span class="geo" style="visibility:hidden">
  <abbr class="latitude" title="50.8742997742">50.8742997742</abbr> 
  <abbr class="longitude" title="-0.0828099996">-0.0828099996</abbr>

</span>

Microformats and Windows Live

Ok that’s an introduction to microformats, now why am I writing this blog post? Well, I’m interested in knowing which microformats are supported by Windows Live and indeed where. Unfortunately I have to report that the answer to that question is absolutely nowhere whatsoever. I visited:

• http://people.live.com
• http://calendar.live.com
• http://profile.live.com
• http://photos.live.com
• http://spaces.live.com

and was perturbed to find that, according to Operator, not one of those sites utilises microformats. Not a single one. I had assumed that http://calendar.live.com and http://people.live.com at the very least would certainly be using microformats because hCard and hCalendar were designed specifically for the type of data that these pages contain. Sadly not!

I’m really quite demoralised about this. If ever there were a way for Windows Live to win some favour with the type of people that routinely lambast the various services then adopting open standards such as microformats would be an ideal way to do it. Sadly it seems supporting open standards isn’t high on the agenda for those in Windows Live; disappointing indeed.

This is just another example of Windows Live’s existent as what I would refer to as a poor web citizen. If you want further evidence of this then go and read about their frankly quite embarrassing URL formats on my past blog post What’s with Windows Live URLs?

I can only hope to see some uptake in the use of microformats in Windows Live wave 4 but I already know that that is a forlorn hope!

@Jamiet

Big news today about Bing surfacing Twitter and Facebook status updates in http://bing.com search results. Its pretty impressive too. Earlier today I tweeted something about SQL Server:

and sure enough I got the back the following information in the Bing-Twitter search results:

There’s some things to note about this. Firstly, the short URL from my Tweet (http://bit.ly/45bv3t) has been expanded to the full URL to which you would be redirected to (https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=499134). Second, it has recognised following retweets so not only is it finding tweets containing the phrase “sqlserver” but its correctly grouping them together as well which I’m very impressed with. Third, there is a link to more tweets related to the same subject.

All very impressive but I have one question, what about Messenger status updates as well?

If the 40million Facebook daily status updates and god-knows-how-many Twitter status updates are considered valuable then surely the same can be said of the many millions of Messenger status updates that appear every day too, right? We as Windows Live users can already opt to make our Messenger status updates public so there’s nothing stopping this public stuff from appearing in Bing.

Now I must admit this isn’t exactly an apples-to-apples comparison. Tweets from Twitter have MUCH more valuable information in them than Messenger statuses do because Twitter tracks retweets and hash tags and that makes them many many more times more valuable than Messenger statuses (although as I have said before I expect Messenger statuses to move in the direction of Tweets in the upcoming Windows Live Wave 4). Nonetheless, if there is gold in those tweets then there at least has to be some silver linings at the very least in messenger status updates.

Alas I fear us Windows Live users are again going to be frozen out of Microsoft’s own search engine, just as we are from Bing’s forthcoming Bing and Ping feature.  Sad really isn’t it?

@JamieT

Since SkyDrive launched a couple of years ago probably the most oft requested feature is the ability to save a document directly to SkyDrive from your computer. Finally, in Office 2010, that feature is coming. Someone called Manan has posted a blog entry entitled Office 2010 Beta New Features & Changes and it contains the following ditty:

a new option under Share in Backstage – Save to Skydrive! This is to help you save your documents and use them with Office Web Apps. Screenshot:

Oh and the feature is fully functional.

Save to SkyDrive … FINALLY!!! Let’s hope that a SkyDrive API is forthcoming so other teams both in and outside of Microsoft can offer the same feature!

You’ll see this feature in the next interim drop of Office 2010 which is apparently already doing the rounds on the file sharing networks.

@JamieT

I found something out about Windows Live today that I never knew and I’m wondering if anyone else knew about it either. If you head to http://profile.live.com/details/EditWork.aspx you can edit the work details part of your profile and one of the items you can edit is the name of your employer. I was surprised to find that Windows Live gives you a list of employees to choose from; as you start typing the list narrows to your potential choice:

Unsurprisingly, given that I’m self-employed, my employer wasn’t listed :)

Someone has obviously gone to quite a bit of trouble to provide this feature so I’m wondering if they plan to do anything with this information in the future. Intriguing!

@Jamiet

Anyone remember http://my.live.com? This was a service that came out of http://start.com which was the first web property put out by the team that later evolved into Windows Live. Sadly it seems http://my.live.com has been put out to pasture as it hasn’t been changed in over a year and the team’s blog hasn’t been updated for a similar length of time.

I was looking back over that blog today and came across the following intriguing clue as to their future activities in a blog post entitled Important update to My.live.com:

What's Next?
We'll start planning for our next update to My.Live.com, aiming for a minor update in the Fall.  Right now, most of our time is being devoted to another project that we'll have more information about in the coming months.  Until then, we hope you like the changes, and look forward to reading your feedback in our new forum.

That was on 7th August 2008 and there hasn’t been a sniff of news since. If anyone knows what this “other project” that we were promised some news on “in the coming months” actually is please get in touch because I would love to know!

@JamieT

I just received an email from Microsoft Billing telling me that my Hotmail Plus subscription had been renewed for the next 12 months. No issue with that, I’m an avid user of Hotmail Plus (only 14.99GBP a year) because it allows me to browse Windows Live without seeing any ads.

What struck me as strange though was the listing of benefits that Hotmail Plus provides:

• the ability to send larger attachments
• 10 Gigabytes of total Windows Live Hotmail account space
• exemption from the account expiration policy
• No third party advertising

Perhaps someone should tell whomever manages Hotmail Plus that regular Hotmail offers everyone ever-increasing storage space so their boast about 10GB of storage is a little bit shallow! Just a thought!

@Jamiet

A quick post on Office Web Apps before I pop off on holiday for a week! You may have heard that Office Web Apps was released in Tech Preview form two days ago as announced in a post Office Web Apps Coming to Windows Live on the Office Web Apps blog. I’ve been taking a look and here are some early thoughts.

Firstly, you need to get accepted into the Tech Preview. Liveside have posted a workaround that seems to be getting most people in although I suspect the number of invites is finite so get in quick. The only thing I would add to what Liveside said is that, if you are not in the US, you should point your browser at http://skydrive.live.com/?mkt=en-us rather than just http://skydrive.live.com.

Upon getting in you’ll find the interface very familiar. I have been poking around at the Excel web app as opposed to Word or Powerpoint and so far it seems as though most of the basic functions are there. Missing features that I have discovered so far include:

• CTRL+<down arrow> doesn’t move you to the bottom of a set of data like it does in the desktop flavour of Excel
• There is no fill handle

One thing that I *really* like is the fact that there is no need to hit a ‘Save’ button, everything gets saved straightaway exactly as happens with OneNote 2007. I’ve long thought that the Save button is superfluous these days so its great to see it disappear.

The other great feature is that multiple people can edit a document simultaneously and any changes that one person makes appear instantly on the screens of the other editors. Give it a try yourself by simply opening the same document in two separate browser windows – it really is a fantastic feature.

These two simple changes are paradigm shifting. For years hitting the Save button and not being able to edit documents that other people are using have been staple annoyances in offices around the world, Office Web Apps (and indeed Office 2010) will change those activities forever.

If you want to make feature requests for Office Web Apps then head to https://mscuillume.smdisp.net/Collector/Survey.ashx?Name=aTechPreXL_Req_en&loginid=null. I have already submitted a couple of requests:

1. I use CTRL+<down arrow> a lot in regular Excel to go to the end of set of data. It would be nice if it worked in Office Web Apps too.
2. (This one is a bit geeky)
   Now that Excel spreadsheets are online it would be great if we could use a URL to address a subsection of a spreadsheet.
   For example, I have a (publicly available) document here: http://cid-550f681dad532637.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/Misc/20090919Demo.Xlsx that has some data in cell range B2:C5.

Wouldn't it be great if I could access just that raw data by appending some extra parameters like this: http://cid-550f681dad532637.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/Misc/20090919Demo.Xlsx?range=B2:C5&format=csv and it returns me back the data in CSV format that I can view in the browser (formats could be raw XML, RSS, JSON etc...).

I do a lot of work that involves distributing data and I reckon this would be a great and simple way of doing exactly that in a way that is easily consumable by other applications.

What are your first impressions of Office Web Apps?

@Jamiet

Back in July some quotes from MSN UK Executive Producer Peter Bale alluded to Microsoft providing a music streaming service. He said:

"Music is an important area for Microsoft. We are looking at launching a music streaming service imminently.
"It will be a similar principle to Spotify but we are still examining how the business model will work."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/microsoft/5817049/Microsoft-is-launching-a-music-streaming-service-this-month.html

As is typical for hit-hungry online news sites various things were inferred from this that on first reading might be attributed to Mr Bale but which actually aren’t. Namely:

• It was to be ready in July (Mr Bale never said that was the case and indeed that turned out to be wrong)
• It will be offered through MSN (nothing that Mr Bale said suggested that was the case)

Never let the actual facts get in the way of a good headline eh? (Can you tell that I have a slight disdain for online journalism).

However, taken in context all of this is rather interesting given that Microsoft today launched a music streaming service under the guise of Zune:

Streaming Music, On Demand

Now as Zune Pass subscribers, not only can customers enjoy access to close to 6 million songs from the Zune Marketplace catalog for $14.99, the price of one CD a month, but they can also log into Zune.net and stream full albums and tracks through a computer’s browser.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/sep09/09-15zunehdsoftwarepr.mspx

I wonder if this is the service that Mr Bale was talking about. Will the Zune streaming service be offered through MSN given Mr Bale’s role in the company? Will this herald the introduction of the Zune service to the UK? (note that Mr Bale is head of MSN UK) Is this a portent to Zune devices being launched in the UK?

We can only hope!

UPDATE! I’ve just seen the following quote from Terry Farrell, Senior Project Manager for Zune (emphasis is mine):

“The bigger story,” Farrell contended, “is about how it (the Zune) is helping us build a new entertainment brand for Microsoft. Among the core pieces of this brand are the Zune HD, MSN and Windows Media Center. The idea is to provide a set of unifying services — the same video service/same catalog — across all of these devices.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=3960

So, it seems as though MSN is absolutely part of the bigger picture. I’m becoming more and more convinced that Zune streaming is the service that Peter Bale was talking about!

UPDATE 2: More intriguing still. The aforementioned Peter Bale has just posted the following on Twitter in reply to this blog entry:

http://twitter.com/PeterBale/status/4006211977

 @JamieT

The winners in the inaugural Clubhouse Choice awards were recently announced by the Community Manager for Windows, Marcus Schmidt, in a post on the community clubhouse space Announcing the Clubhouse Choice Award Winners:

We’ve tallied up the votes from the recent Clubhouse Choice Awards, and…(insert drum-roll here)…the winners are:

• Best Technical Direction:  Andre
• Best Story:  Michael
• Best Tip or Trick:  Vasudev
• Outstanding Art Direction:  Technogran
• Early Adopter:  Richard H.
• Rising Star: Ali
• Clubhouse All-Star:  Jamie

As you can see I was honoured and humbled to be awarded the Clubhouse All-star award; honoured because I will forever be known as the inaugural winner of this award and humbled because this was voted for by the only people that matter – people who use Windows Live products and services day-in and day-out all over the world. Just being nominated for the award was a real thrill for me but to actually win thanks to voting from my peers – words can’t really express how I feel about that. Its extremely gratifying and, as I said before, a really quite humbling experience.

My prizes turned up in the post this week and I really was quite taken aback at what I received. Here’s the run down:

• A commemorative award that I can put on my sideboard
• A laptop bag
• $25 in Amazon vouchers
• A Nikon Coolpix S220 compact digital camera
• A Flip Ultra HD video camera

Here’s a photo of them all together:

“Taken aback” doesn’t really do justice to the feeling I got when I unwrapped my prizes. This is an amazing set of gifts which I never even dreamed of receiving and I am truly grateful to Marcus and his colleagues at Microsoft both for providing such great gifts and in in doing so exhibiting their commitment to this great community of Windows, & Windows Live users that just keeps growing and growing and growing. I’m proud to be a part of it and, once again, thank you thank you thank you to Marcus, to Microsoft and most of all to those of you that voted me the Clubhouse Choice All-star 2009.

Last but not least I’d like to offer my congratulations to my fellow awardees and commiserations to those that were nominated but were pipped at the post; I’m sure the awards will be back next year bigger and better than before so get your authoring hats on, start your blogging engines, and maybe you’ll be the proud owner of the title of Clubhouse Choice All-Star 2010.

Thank you all once again.

@jamiet