MSN Spaces Book: Books

Thanks for the great review!

Tue, 18 Apr 2006 13:11:53 GMT

A friend sent us this link yesterday to a great review of our book that was recently posted on an MSN Space (Cyberspace People Watcher). Thanks, Alfred, for reviewing our book and describing it so eloquently. We're glad you like it!

Sometimes writing and publishing books is a little like raising baby birds and then watching them fly away. [I should tell you that this is Kathy writing...I thought I'd better own up to that metaphor, Mike! :)] You're totally immersed in their development and growth; and then once they fly out of the nest (or in this case, off the shelves), you can lose touch with how they're doing. It's really great to hear what others think and be able to find out how well the book is doing its work in the world. It's kind of like a note home. :)

So thanks for the feedback! And keep it coming! We'll do our best to respond promptly to your questions, comments, and suggestions. :)

Share Your Story: Blogging with MSN Spaces is Out!

Mon, 27 Feb 2006 20:41:20 GMT

We're excited to announce that Share Your Story: Blogging with MSN Spaces is now a real, hold-in-your-hands book! As we write this, it's on its way to bookstores and Web sites near you. It's great to see the book in full, living color and relive all the examples and interviews we did while we were writing it. As a sneak preview, here's a quick list of some of the topics we cover to give you a boost into creating a space you'll love:

Set up your space in 10 minutes or less!
Write and publish your blog--no HTML needed
Create photo albums friends and family can comment on
Post to your blog using your mobile device
List your favorite music, books, movies, and more
Share your content with others by adding RSS to your space
Personalize MSN Spaces to work your way
Hear the MSN Spaces backstory from the Spaces team!

We'll be posting info in the coming weeks with ideas for tips and tricks, as well as creative ideas you can try on your space. So check back soon! And if you already have your copy, click Add a comment and let us know what you think!

Pre-order the book!

Thu, 18 Aug 2005 20:21:24 GMT

From Mike:

Just learned today that our book on MSN Spaces is available for pre-order on Amazon!

First thought: scary because we aren't finished with it.

Second thought: awesome! Everyone else is probably used to it by now, but this is a first for me.

You can pre-order it here. There aren't any details on contents or ship-date (the one they list is not final) but rest assured, it will be a great book ;)

Lists chapter - Music section

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 00:54:15 GMT

From Mike:

Below you will find a small section of Chapter 8 (Lists) from Share Your Story: Blogging with MSN Spaces. The chapter is currently a total of 25 pages in Microsoft Word and the section below is about 2 pages of that. We covered lots of fun stuff in this chapter including list "hacks", linking to other music stores, and custom lists like language translation, guestbooks, and announcements.

This text has not been edited yet, so please disregard any typos or strange sentence construction :) But if you see any blatant mistakes or missing points, definitely holler. It's pretty likely that this chapter will undergo some pretty massive change before it hits the shelves.

Let us know what you think!

Sharing your music playlists

Music on the Internet has officially arrived. The rise of MP3 players (iPod anyone?) and dozens of online music stores have turned digital music into a reality. People using music to express themselves isn’t new; it has been going on since the first caveperson learned how to whistle. However, never before has it been so easy!

With MSN Spaces, not only can you share your music playlists with your visitors, but you can do so in just a couple of clicks. You don’t have to spend thousands of grueling hours entering information off of CD sleeves… If you use Windows Media Player, any playlist you have already created (including auto-playlists like “Five Star Favorites”) can be shared on your space without any extra effort on your part.

It is important to point out that what is actually being shared on your space is the information (or “metadata”) associated with your music, not the music itself. Your visitors will see the name of the album, artist, and song – but they will not be able to copy the song from your hard drive or from MSN Spaces. That would be illegal in most countries and is not something made possible by MSN Spaces.

If you don’t use Windows Media Player but still want to share your music tastes with your friends and family, you can do so just by typing in song information.

Creating a music list

You can create a maximum of 25 music lists on your MSN Space and each music list can have up to 100 songs.

Creating a music list on your space consists of two simple steps; naming the list and adding a song to it. Let’s take a look at creating a music list from scratch. To do so, just follow these steps:

1. From “Edit mode” of your space, click the Music tab at the top of the page. This will display all of the music lists currently shared on your space. Since we haven’t added one yet, the page should be empty right now unless you have already added one or more lists on your own. See Figure 8-1 for an example.

Figure 8-1 here

Page listing all music lists

Figure 8-1

The music list view shows all of the music lists currently on your space

2. Click “Add a Music List” under Music Tasks to create a new music list.

3. Give your music list a name and click “OK”. This is a required step; if you cancel at this point, your music list won’t be created.

4. Once you have added your music list, you are now viewing that list – and a View dropdown has been added to the top of the page with all of your music lists. When you add new music lists, they will be added to this dropdown.

5. Click “Add Song”. Immediately, three boxes should appear with “Song name (Required)”, “Artist Name”, and “Album Name” (Figure 8-2). Fill in the boxes with your song information.

Figure 8-2 here

Adding a song to the Music List

Figure 8-2

To add a song to a music list, enter the song name (required), artist name, and album name

6. Click “Add” to add the song to the music list.

When you are ready to add more songs to the list, you can just repeat steps 5 and 6.

As soon as you create your music list, it is automatically available on your MSN Spaces homepage for visitors to see. If you would like to choose where the music list appears on the page, you will need to enter “Customize” mode and move it around (see Chapter 7 for more information on layout and customization.)

Removing and editing songs

What happens if you made a spelling error and want to correct it? Simple. All you have to do is click the Edit icon (pencil) to the right of the song details and edit boxes immediately appear for you. Enter your changes and click “Save”. Your changes will then be saved back to your list. Clicking “Cancel” will make the edit boxes disappear again and your changes will not be applied.

If you want to remove a song, all you have to do is click the Delete icon (black X) to the right of the Edit icon. You will be asked if you are sure (Figure 8-3) If you are, click “OK” and viola! No more song. You can always click “Cancel” at this point if you have changed your mind and want to keep the song.

Figure 8-3 here

Confirming removal of a song from a Music List

Figure 8-3

In order to remove a song from a music list, you must first say it is OK

Copying a playlist from Windows Media Player

Windows Media Player is a program available as part of Microsoft Windows for listening to music and watching DVDs and videos. MSN Spaces makes the act of adding music information as simple as uploading your existing playlists from Windows Media Player directly into your space! This is especially handy if you are a weekend DJ and create lots of playlists.

If you aren’t familiar with playlists, they are just named collections of songs (like “Driving Music”) and can be created by adding songs manually or automatically based on song characteristics (album name, tempo, rating, etc.) Playlists in Windows Media Player are pretty similar in nature to the old “mix tapes” of the 80s and 90s… or the list of songs queued up to play in the table jukebox at your favorite 24-hour diner.

Importing songs from Windows Media Player will only work in Windows Media Player version 8 or later (the latest version at the time of this printing is version 10.) If you don’t already have Windows Media Player 10 on your system, you can download it from Microsoft at the following web address:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/

To import a playlist from Windows Media Player, follow these steps:

1. From “Edit mode” of your space, click the Music tab at the top of the page. This will display all of the music lists currently shared on your space.

2. Click “Copy a playlist from Windows Media Player” under Music Tasks to import a playlist into your MSN Space.

3. You will be presented with a dialog box for security asking if you would like to grant “read access” to your music library (Figure 8-4). In plain English, this is MSN Spaces asking for permission to peak at your songs. If you are OK with this, click “Yes”. Otherwise click “No”.

Figure 8-4 here

Windows Media Player security dialog

Figure 8-4

To protect your privacy, you must first give MSN Spaces access to your playlists

4. If you have a large music library, there may be a delay while MSN Spaces reads your playlists from Windows Media Player. Once it is finished, all of your playlists (including auto-playlists like “Fresh Tracks”) will appear on the page for you to select from.

5. Once your playlists are on the screen, you can see which songs are in each playlist by clicking the plus/minus sign next to its name. When you are ready to choose a playlist, select the radio button next to the name and click “Next” to continue. (Again, if your playlist is large, there may be a delay!)

6. On the next (and final) page, you can unselect the songs from the playlist that you don’t want to copy to your space. By default, all songs will be selected. Once you are ready, click “Copy” to start the copy.

7. Once your music information is copied, you will see all the songs listed on the page (Figure 8-5). At this point, you can edit them manually, delete them, or add new songs to the list if you want to.

Figure 8-5 here

List of songs imported from Windows Media Player

Figure 8-5

All of the songs you selected will be added to your music list automatically – artist and album name included!

Writing about Lists

Sun, 22 May 2005 23:56:11 GMT

From Mike:

Writing about a product like MSN Spaces can be pretty challenging. Not only are things changing every few months but soliciting feedback from the community is tricky when half of the things you are writing about haven't been announced yet!

The first chapter I am working on is about the Lists feature. Here is a list (hah, sorry) of some of the things I plan on tackling in one way or another. Note that this outline is pretty unstructured and does not actually resemble the contents of the chapter!

Overview of Lists - adding/deleting/editing
- Reordering list items
Creating a book list
- Linking to your favorite book store (Amazon, B&N, etc.)
Generating a music list
- Choosing your favorite songs from Windows Media Player
- Rating music lists
Creating a blog list of friends and online acquaintances
Dreaming up a custom list (getting creative!)
- Linking to your favorite MSN Groups
- Fact sheets on stuff
- "Top 10" lists
- "Contact me" information
- Timelines/key dates
- Goals & Objectives
- Linking directly to photos on Spaces
- Favorite web sites, movies, TV shows, etc.
- Wishlist (or linking to an external one)
- Quotes & wise words
- Cross-linking to posts on your other MSN Space
- Copyright statements & Disclaimers
- Audio/video
- Items you are selling or interested in buying
- Linking to "Subscribe with" links for MyMSN, My Yahoo, Bloglines, Newsgator, etc.
- Linking to online translators for your space
- Enabling a Guestbook using a List
- Linking to your important entries ("Hot topics")
Arranging lists on your space
Sidebar: Creating lists others will read!

(and maybe some other stuff!)

Special thanks to my readers/visitors for these great ideas! But I know this is just scratching the surface of what a list has been used for in Spaces-land.

If you are using lists in creative ways or have other suggestions, post some comments for us!

Ramping up...

Tue, 17 May 2005 15:53:55 GMT

Juliana:

This blog will be ramping up in a short while. Right now the entire team is wrapping up a few other projects before our book gets really underway.

What does it take to get a book started? Well, I'm glad you asked. Here's the scoop on how the book process has gone so far...

As Mike mentioned in his earlier post, he submitted a proposal to me the same time that Kathy did. My job is to evaluate book ideas and proposals for Microsoft Learning and take the book through the front end of the editorial process. I took a look at both proposals and talked with both Kathy and Mike. I also started researching the blogging phenomenom.

I introduced Kathy and Mike to each other. I knew they would make a great team--Mike being the Lead Program Manager for MSN Spaces and Kathy being a fantastic author we've worked with on a number of books--including one Kathy is wrapping up right now for Microsoft Office. Sandra was instrumental in providing feedback on the proposals and working with Mike and Kathy on the table of contents. We honed the coverage for the book, who the audience will be, etc.

My next step was to convince the team here (who knew little about blogging or MSN Spaces) that we needed to do this book. I did that at an editorial board which is made up of members of my team--other planners, my publisher, Lucinda Rowley, and members of the sales, marketing and editorial team. After we passed the editorial board the book was placed on our publishing plan--the list of titles we are planning to publish this year. Loose ends are being tied up now--contracts, schedules, other projects.

Soon the writing will begin...

Sorry, we can't post the cover shot yet...

Wed, 11 May 2005 15:12:19 GMT

Rats! We had to pull the cover shot - stay tuned!! We'll post again once we have the okay from the team.

Book Cover--See What You Think

Tue, 10 May 2005 21:39:02 GMT

From Juliana:

Today our Creative Team--Patricia and Julia gave us a first peek at a possible cover for the book. I want to hear what you think. You too Kathy and Mike!

We wanted a cover that conveys all the fun things you can do with MSN Spaces. I like the green. In fact, we also asked for the green to wrap around where it is blue on the book spine. We will also take away the Windows flag, replace with the MSN butterfly.

We needed an early cover shot in order to put on the sheet that sales will need to take it out to the bookstore accounts.

Mike's Intro

Mon, 09 May 2005 22:02:28 GMT

From Mike:

Over on my personal space, I posted a little bit about how I became involved in this crazy cool project. Although I am not usually a fan of cross-posting, this time it makes sense:

A few months back I was toying with the idea of writing a book on MSN services. The timing just felt right; we had shipped MSN Spaces and the beta of MSN Messenger, the MSN Toolbar with Desktop Search was just released, and services like MSN Video and MSN Music were (and are) kicking some butt.
I received some positive feedback from people about the idea and over Christmas vacation I put together a proposal for a book on MSN; Stay in Touch! Using MSN Messenger, MSN Hotmail, and MSN Spaces to Strengthen Your Ties. As coincidence would have it, I was putting the finishing touches on the proposal to send over to my contact in Microsoft Press when I got an email from Juliana Aldous about a similar book proposal she had received from Katherine Murray! Of course, I flipped out and immediately sent Juliana my unpolished proposal in the hopes we could make something happen.
Long story short, in no time flat we were all speaking on a conference call about writing a book together about MSN Spaces! We finalized the paperwork, setup a space for the project, and we are now off and running!
I am crazy excited about this. I get to be a member of an incredibly experienced and professional team writing about a product I work with every single day. And as is the case with just about everything I am involved with nowadays, we would like to enlist your help. Please start sending us suggestions, comments, complaints, favorite spaces, least favorite spaces, etc. We have comments enabled at the book space below and would love to hear what you are thinking about the project; good or bad. We intend to make this book fun, informative, and alive! We aren't ready to announce a release date just yet, but you will be the first to know once it starts appearing on the shelves.

Within this space you will see the book unfold before your very eyes. You will have the opportunity to provide feedback, to nominate your own space for mention in the book, and to chat with the team about what you would like to see from us. This is going to be a fun ride!

Birth of A Book

Mon, 09 May 2005 18:19:14 GMT

From Juliana:

"Hello World!"

That one little old phrase used by first-time programmers everywhere really defines for me what MSN Spaces is all about. It is your chance to shout out to the whole world and share a bit about yourself and your own personal story. You can write about your life, you can post photos, you can share your music and book lists.

You also learn more about the world. Just click anytime on the Updated Spaces and you are instantly transported somewhere across the World-Thailand, Brazil, or Anywhere Town, USA, and instantly into someone's life. The world is suddenly much smaller and there are an awfully lot of nice and interesting people in it!

This particular MSN Space will be about the creation of a book, on what else? MSN Spaces. We will show you the behind the scenes story on how a book is created--from concept of idea to printed book. This Space will be a joint effort of the authors--Mike Torres and Kathy Murray, and the publishing team--myself, Sandra Haynes, and Duane Draper. You will get a chance to meet an interesting cast of characters and see how many people it really takes to make a book happen.

But this Space is not just about us! It is about you and how you use MSN Spaces. We want you to show us the fun and unique ways you are using MSN Spaces. We want to hear from you, we want to see your Space, we want to know how you use it to Share Your Story!