Microsoft previews Windows Live Essentials 29 October, 2008 By Vanessa Ho

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Windows Live Essentials applications enrich a user's Internet experience by letting people access their data offline and helping them create and edit photos, videos, blogs and other content that people want to share using software that takes full advantage of the Windows operating system. Applications in Windows Live Essentials will be regularly updated to provide innovative functionality and best-of-breed integration with Windows Live and other popular web-based services.

"Windows Live completes the Windows experience for every Windows user," said Brian Hall, general manager of Microsoft's Windows Live Business group.

Hall noted that communications make up of 33 percent of all online time and Microsoft has 11 percent of that share. In terms of what people are using to communicate online, 13 percent of people are using instant messaging, nine percent are using e-mail and 10 percent are on social networking sites but Microsoft only has one percent share in this area.

Also new is Windows Live Wave 3 that includes applications such as Mail, Photo Gallery, Windows Live Writer (a blogging application that works with all major blogging solutions), Family Safety, Outlook Connector, Movie Maker and Messenger in Windows Live Essentials.

For example, Windows Live Mail will synchronize any webmail that uses POP as a protocol to Outlook so users will have work and personal e-mails side by side. In addition, it will bring all contacts and calendar together all in one view.

Windows Live Photo gallery helps users better manage and share photos. It can fix photos, auto-rotate, auto-straighten and can create panoramic photos. Users can also tag people in their photos if they are in their contact list. Windows Live Photo Gallery can be supported by other web albums like Flickr.

"We are working with leading third parties to take into account what people are using," said Hall.

He added the tenets of Windows Live Essentials is all about having the highest quality and breadth of experience; having the most open platform for third party services; and be seamless with Windows Live Services.

"Windows Live Essentials and Live Services represent a great opportunity to expand the PC experience to the web and bring it together in a software and services experience," added Steve Sinofsky, senior vice-president for the Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group with Microsoft.

In addition to Windows Live Essentials, Microsoft also demonstrated many capabilities of the Live Services platform, including how developers can build rich applications and experiences that can be extended to over 400 million users of the companys Windows Live services such as Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger. Live Services is a set of building blocks within Microsoft's recently announced Azure Services Platform for handling user data and applications resources.

Microsoft also emphasized that its Live Services platform is the means by which products such as Windows Live, Office Live and Xbox LIVE deliver experiences that span beyond the level of a single PC, mobile device or the web, and that these same capabilities are now being offered to developers through its Live Services platform.

The company demonstrated many aspects of Live Services including Live Mesh. Live Mesh is a service for synchronizing any users documents, media, files and application data across multiple PCs and devices, and is available as an open beta at http://www.mesh.com for Windows and Windows Mobile.

"Live Mesh is the key component of Live Services," said David Treadwell, corporate vice-president of Microsoft's Live Platform services.

Other Live Services include User Services, which provide facilities for managing all aspects of a users Mesh (devices, applications and data) and enabling sharing of those resources across multiple users.

Device Services provide facilities for managing the collection of heterogeneous devices within a users Mesh, including relationships, status and security services.

Synchronization Services ensure the synchronization of data and metadata between applications, devices and the cloud.

Application Services facilitate the configuration, deployment and versioning of applications that utilize the Live Framework (including Mesh Applications).

Identity Services manage person, device and application identities with the associated services such as Delegated Authentication.

Directory Services manage the association and relationships between identities, data, devices and applications.

User-Data Storage Services manage user-centric information such as contacts, files and extensible data types.

Communications and Presence Services provide transport infrastructure for transient and persistent state management between applications and devices.

Search Services provides a set of technologies for building and enhancing search on websites and applications.

Geospatial Services provide geocoding and reverse-geocoding for routing, search and road and aerial image mapping data for visualizing geospatial data.

Treadwell said access to Live Services will be via the Live Framework, which is the uniform way to program Live Services from a variety of platforms, programming languages, applications and devices. The Live Framework is composed of the Live Operating Environment, the resource model and the programming and application model. The Live Framework makes it easy to consume and combine Live Services and makes it possible to build applications that span across digital devices and the web.