もしかして, XBLのゲームでも買えるかもしれない.
試しに私のLive IDにクレジットカードの番号を入ります. そして, 問題なしで受けました. もしかしたら, 日本のリージョンの確認システムは米国のより厳しくない? 私はちゃんと払うだからマイクロソフトの皆も文句言わないでね.
[Update]
マイクロソフトからのメールが来ました. はい, 買えられますよ.
では, Windows Phone Marketplaceの無い国の皆さん, アメリカに住まなくてもクレジットカードがあればアプリ買えられるよ. 確かにアメリカのカードを入力するつもりなら確認が厳しい(たとえば, 住所チェック). でもそれ以外のマイナーなマーケットはたぶんそれほど厳しくない.
で, 何故これは日本語で書きましたか? 英語で書けばいろんなサイトに載った可能性が高いだから. マイクロソフトからそれを注目されたらすぐ秘密の穴を埋めるじゃない?
Previously when importing Windows Live Space to WordPress, there is option for Messenger connect setup to publish updates to Windows Live Profile’s activity stream. This seems like a one way street and screw once you’re done type of setup. But today when looking for information about how to automatically cross-post to Facebook (Live Space used to have it) I stumbled upon this page in the Help.
http://en.support.wordpress.com/publicize/
Hasn’t tested the behaviour especially with multiple blog, but hope this is working.
Phone numbers, like any long row of numbers like Pi numbers, are not so easy to remember. Unlike alphabets that either linked into a word or a jumble of nonsense, numbers always have a meaning any way you chain it. That’s why there’s phone book, from the era of pencil and paper to the current electronic address book in phones.
Usually, the system should understand that plain row of numbers, or numbers formatted for easier readability is the same right ? Meaning all
and so on, should mean the same right? At least all the phones I’ve used if they allow writing space, dash or bracket would just ignore any other non-numeric characters other than probably the plus sign for country code.
The problem, which I just realized this morning is that Windows Live Contacts seems to have small limit on the mobile phone number field. I usually write the phone number in more readable format, to make it easier to read the number to someone else. Without noticing it, Windows Live crop away probably the last three digits from that information!
Luckily most of my contacts are either easy enough to ask, or I never actually have to make a phone call to them. But still, this is kind of fatal isn’t it? Especially for business contacts. I’ve sent several SMS to that cut-off number and wonder why I don’t get any reply for more than a week.
Anybody want to try and confirm this ?
Although I hasn’t confirmed this with some scientifically acceptable experiments, it seems like commenting systems in blog such as WordPress based sites are rejecting Windows Live Profile URL as spam. I used to post comments using the Live Profile ID (cut and paste of course, because I’m not the type that enjoy memorizing pi number outside my head).
http://cid-280a1538334a1cb9.profile.live.com/ <== my Live Profile URL
Well… understandable. Normally, peoples don’t make ID with 16 digit seemingly random hexadecimal value for their URL. The only thing that use e-mail address or domain name with random characters are spam bots. So logically, they’re rejected as spam until moderated.
Flickr had feature to blog pictures. I usually use it for posting picture to Twitter, but it can also post to many other blog platforms. LiveJournal, TypePad, Blogger, WordPress, well, the platform you can share in Windows Live web activities plus many else for self-hosted blogs. Windows Live Space, although unlisted and losing it’s relevance day by day, is also supported.
Windows Live Space support Meta Weblog API (used by Windows Live Writer). To give credit to the rightful, here’s the article on how to setup the informations from MSDN. Not too complicated, promise.
More difficult on the receiving side.
It’s nice for those concerned about privacy that their profile is set to limited by default.
But there seems to be an inconvenient side effect from it when receiving invitation. When getting an invitation, my first rule of thumb is to check their profile and see how active they are. Space hasn’t been so popular so there’s another way in assessing their activity by web activities. If the activities are empty, or only filled with so many contact adding without any sharing, that means reject the invitation.
The new privacy option hide all those to strangers. For peoples invited, there’s no difference between profile of someone who’s activity hidden behind privacy wall, and a dead profile without any activities, all empty.
There’s a simple way to balance it though, like used in Twitter and FriendFeed. In the invite mail, include some of the latest activities from the person, so we can see if that person is active or just in a contact adding frenzy. Leaking privacy? Well, if that person is sending invites to join his network, he should be ready to share it with the person he invites anyway, so I don’t think there’s something wrong with it.
Yesterday, Windows Marketplace for Windows Mobile said there’s an upgrade for Windows Live for Windows Mobile. New update, but seems like it still wouldn’t give Calendar & Tasks synch which will be a great free replacement for Exchange for the mass.
Also another issue is the messenger. I think it’s being too sensitive. When going online through my phone, I can’t send offline message (to person I’m sure is just hiding behind Appear Offline veil all the time) and also I can’t seem to send reply (maybe because the client think it’s sending offline message, something it can’t do).
Well, peoples had their need for privacy. I just hope the team would fix this soon.
Sometime last week, just realized the easiest way of persuading friend to add Web Activities to Windows Live. Might not be the most convenient way, but if you know the person in person, it’ll be easier.
Borrow their account and set it up for them (on the same computer). Of course this means a lot of trust is needed, and some setup like Facebook (and Twitter if MS finally implement oAuth to read private timeline) will still need them to login again. But it’s a lot easier, especially for friends that doesn’t adapt quick to new products and able to find their way (and willing) to do so.
Another way might be to use Remote Assistance tool in Live Messenger, but you’ll need a reliable internet connection and the other side would most likely be paranoid about someone controlling their computer.
So I think the best way is for Windows Live to provide a one-click solution to invite friends to use it. Had to create the content (value) first before things roll out.
Live Space, for me, is never MySpace. It’s a blog. Well, there’s friends list, there’s also widgets, but the important thing is the blog for me. Because the blog is the important part… that means it has lots of challenges either. From other blogging platform I used (LiveJournal, WordPress, Hatena, Ameba, Tumblr, TypePad) this is the worst. The culprit is mainly the slow interface, for the publisher (me) and the consumer (when opening the site). Even for standard below speed freaks like G, Live Space is a heavy load.
With Web Activities, the last reason for me to like Live Space is because it has comments integrated into the What’s New Feed. Even in that situation, there’s no quick way to reply to Spaces through the feed, so I’m moving away from it for day-to-day blogging.
One of the idea I had earlier is… outsource the commenting system in Live Space to another company, Disqus for example, which seems to be quite popular among bloggers who could choose their own commenting system. Or, JS-Kit. Both system had more advanced spam filtering, alternate login, threaded comments.
Or, have a partnership with Backtype, the service that crawl the internet and index comments from various systems (as much as it could). They had API that would receive information of new comments from a partner and then index it to be claimed by user. For now, they also had OpenID login using Windows Live ID, through ClickPass. But for now, Backtype can’t index comments in Live Space.
After that, add a web activity to go with it. That way not only comments made in Live Space, users could share comments they made in other sites as well.
By the way, for Backtype, there is a huge problem in implementing that here. My Space is not ranked highly in search engines, so I don’t get so much spam. But if more popular peoples who gets dozens of spam comment included, it will surely put load to the API.
One of the new features on Bing Maps beta is Streetside view, although just like Google’s street view, unless you’re in the select few countries, it wouldn’t be available.
But there’s a way you could do a favour for fellow of the same city as you. Bing Maps also place geo-tagged Photosynth composition on the map. Although not as complete as the streetside view, the virtual tour feature would be available too.
Now, it’s been months since I last made a Synth, and there’s some surprise too. Photosynth has been updated for some time to integrate with maps service.
Although, from several recent tries, seems like Bing Maps need some time before the Synth shows up in the map.
Centrilitia 