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MSN Spaces BookShare Your Story
Another glimpse...I found a link to Windows Live Spaces (they are a supporter of the BlogHer Conference in San Jose beginning July 28) and clicked it--and found this "coming soon" site. I can't wait to see the new release. It's going to be awesome. Curiouser and curiouser...The excitement is building...can you feel it? Did you notice this new graphical box in the Help panel on the right side of your MSN Space today?
The new release is going to be great! Get ready to be wowwed. :) Check this out! Microsoft LifeCamHave you see the new Microsoft webcams that are optimized for Windows Live Messenger? These are truly awesome. The Microsoft LifeCam VX-3000 is available right now, retails for $49, and plugs seamlessly into Windows Live Messenger and includes face tracking technology, with pan, tilt, and zoom controls.
But here's the one I'm really excited about. The Microsoft LifeCam VX-6000 (which hasn't been released yet), will be $99, offers high-definition video with 1.3 megapixel video resolution (amazing), a 3x digital zoom, a powerful built-in micrrophone, a Windows Live Call button that enables you to push a button, choose a contact, and start a video conversation (actually the Windows Live Call button is available on both cameras).
My favorite feature is available in both models: One-Touch Blogging! The product description for the LifeCam VX-6000 on amazon.com says, "with One-Touch Blogging, a single click allows you to upload to Windows Live Spaces, an "online scrapbook" that lets you easily post blogs, photo albums, and personal music lists." Before you know it, video posting will be as easy as pushing a button!
Talking about Spaces updates!Some updates to spaces available today! Here are some details below from my (Mike's) blog. Talking about Spaces updates! Custom Made AvatarsI had a chat recently with Linda Criddle the online child safety expert at MSN. We were talking about personal photos on the Internet, and maybe it isn't such a good idea for so many people to know what you and your family look like. There are some safe ways to do a photo-- I have been noticing some folks on MSN Spaces have some great ways of posting a photo that obscures part of their face.
But I really like this idea--custom avatars. I read about this on springwise trendwatchers.com.
From springwise:
"Based in Brooklyn, graphic artist Lina Chin creates digitally illustrated portraits. Working from photographs, her black and white images are stylized likenesses of their subjects. The finished product is a digital file, delivered as a vector image, which lets customers enlarge their portrait without losing image quality. In a small size, digi-portraits make excellent avatars or buddy icons. Prices depend on a portrait's complexity."
--Juliana Are you using RSS?Hello again! I hope you're all taking advantage of the great RSS capability in MSN Spaces. Enabling RSS (Really Simple Syndication) makes it possible for people to subscribe to your MSN Space and have your content delivered directly to their RSS readers (and here's a tip: receiving RSS feeds is going to get a whole lot easier with the 2007 Office release and Windows Vista!).
If you haven't yet set up your MSN Space to be distributed via RSS, it's simple. Click Edit Your Space and choose Settings. In the Space Settings tab, scroll down to the Syndicate this space using RSS 2.0 area, and click the Syndicate checkbox. When the checkmark appears in the box, you know your site will support RSS. Scroll down to the Save button and click it; then go back and add entries to your heart's content.
Others who visit your space and like what they see can subscribe to your MSN Space and have the content delivered to their RSS Reader (or directly to their Office Outlook 2007 Inbox! Or to their desktop in IE7!) by simply clicking the Subscribe to RSS feed link at the top of your space (to the left of the Sign In button).
[When I first began using RSS I was concerned that if the content was distributed from my space automatically, people would never actually come to my MSN Space to see what was going on, which means my site statistics would suffer. (And I love seeing the numbers on my Statistics page increase!) But what I discovered is that your MSN Space statistics reflect it when an RSS reader requests the information from your page--so it's still a site visit. Pretty slick.] Change the language display of MSN SpacesHere's a cool tip I wouldn't have found if one of you hadn't left the question in the Comments area, so thanks! I know that MSN Spaces is huge all over the world and that you don't have to go far to find MSN Spaces in other languages (which I love), but I didn't know how to change the language display of MSN Spaces. So when one of you asked how to display your space in Spanish, I went looking for it. And here's what I found in MSN Spaces help:
You can change the language display by going to the Web site of the language you want to use and logging in as usual. Here are the links for a few languages:
To review the whole list, click in the Search Help box (scroll down in the right margin of your space) and type "change language"; then click the Search Help arrow. Fascinating--and who knows? You might find you have a talent for picking up new languages. :) New book excerpt on Microsoft At Home and At WorkHi everyone! Microsoft At Home and At Work has published a new article from our book. This one is called, "Mobile Blogging Made Easy," and it covers the steps for setting up your space to receive blog posts and photos from your cell phone. I take a lot of photos with my cell phone and post them to my space; I like capturing what's going on in the world and sending it back to share online. :)
You can view the article by clicking the link on the left or by going to the Microsoft At Home page. While you're there, you might want to sign up for their newsletter. It always has a fun and interesting mix of articles and tips.
MSN Spaces PossibilitiesThis is really cool. I saw this on your space, Mike, and thought I'd share it here because it's exciting. :)
The Xbox team called on MSN Spaces users who are also Xbox Live® members to blog about their experiences at E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Exposition in Los Angeles, California, May 9-11). The expo boasts the introduction of thousands of new games; plus Xbox 360 will be there en force (there were some hints about Halo 3 in the press yesterday) in addition to the other major contenders (Sony and Nintendo, obviously).
Visit the Xbox site to get the list of MSN Spaces users who are the official E3 bloggers. How cool is that? Use your MSN Space to share what fascinates you and you never know who might come knocking at your door! And we'll help you with the practicalities along the way. :) MSN Spaces for Mother's Day :)Are you at a loss for what to give your mom for Mother's Day this year? Here's an idea: Create a family MSN Space! You and your siblings (and your dad, if he's game) can put together a tribute space for Mom, with your favorite stories, photos, music, and more. Here are just a few ideas, off the top of my head, for items you could include on your Mother's Day MSN Space:
Here are a couple of ideas for unwrappable gifts to go along with the MSN Space you create:
There are lots of things you can create once you get that creative vibe going! There's nothing that will make mom's face light up more than knowing you remember and care about the family moments you've shared together--and MSN Spaces can help you show her that in a special way. Happy Mother's Day! :) [kathy]
Juliana's Top Five SinglesI just posted a list of my five current favorite songs in Music.
What are yours?
--Juliana Looking forward to Montage view :)Hi everyone! Thanks for all your comments and interest. We really enjoy hearing from you. :)
As we've previously posted, we wrote Share Your Story: Blogging with MSN Spaces based on beta software, which means several of the features were in development while we were writing about them. (It's really fascinating, btw, to be able to see software go through various stages of development--but it's also a bit like trying to capture and describe a moving target!)
One of the features we wrote about that is still on the horizon is Montage view. On pages 73-74 and 79-81, I talked about different ways to view the photos you add to your space--and Montage view is a really cool feature that lets you view small thumbnails of your images and then "pop out" a selected photo by positioning the mouse pointer on it. I had a blast working with this while I was writing about it. On your space (or any space, for that matter) if you click the Views control (the down triangle on the right side of the photo album below the options), you'll currently see two view choices: Slideshow and Full view. This is where you'll find the Montage view choice when it's available. Very cool feature--and worth waiting for, I think.
[One other note: I'm curious--are you using the Description and Add a comment items for individual photos in your photo albums? I thought these features would get a lot of use, but so far, I don't notice a lot of people using them. Would having some examples help? Just let us know. :) Kathy] Creating a Guestbook on MSN SpacesFrom Chapter 6. Check out the book on Microsoft.com!
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One of the missing features in MSN Spaces is the ability to leave a comment on a space itself. Comments on blog entries and photo albums are commonplace, but many times people just want to say hello—or they want to comment on your space, not necessarily on something you’ve said or photographs you’ve taken.
The easiest way to enable a guest book in MSN Spaces is to create a blog entry titled “Guest Book.” The content of the entry could just contain something like this:
After you post this entry, it will appear as a standard blog entry. Now, create a custom list called “My Guest Book,” and add just one entry to the list called “Leave a Comment!” The URL of this list item should be the Permalink of the blog entry you just posted to your space. Now you have a guest book!
- Mike Thanks for the great review!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. :) Chapter 3: A Little Bit of History on ProfileFrom Chapter 3 on the new Profile in MSN Spaces. Check out the book on Microsoft.com!
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For years, MSN users have had access to a user profile as part of MSN Member Directory (previously available at http://members.msn.com). MSN Member Directory was a public listing service of profile information for more than 100 million MSN users and a one-stop shop for finding people and learning more about them. MSN Member Directory had fixed categories where users could list themselves—everything from Romance to Hobbies & Crafts—and it provided a way to search for users by the information they entered into their profiles. But MSN Member Directory, is no more; it has been replaced by the new MSN Profile and the search capabilities covered in Chapter 8, “Connecting Spaces and Creating Community.” Now you may be asking yourself, if MSN Member Directory had all this cool functionality, why was it replaced? Good question. Here are some reasons why the new MSN Profile is light years better than its predecessor:
* You can share a greater number of fields with others; before, you were limited to just a handful.
* You can secure information entered into the profile so only people you know and trust will be able to see it. The permissions available range from the most basic (“everyone on the Internet can see my information”) to incredibly advanced (“only my mother and people on my MSN Messenger list can see my information”).
* The new profile includes the ability to subscribe to other people’s contact information as a way to stay up-to-date on changes (we’ll discuss Active Contacts soon!) [Note: feature is no longer called Active Contacts, but it's still there!]
* The profile information is integrated into MSN Spaces Search (see Chapter 8, “Connecting Spaces and Creating Community”), so you still have access to basic and advanced searches.
* The user interface is more closely aligned with MSN Spaces. In the past, if you wanted to associate your profile information with your space, you had to bounce around between MSN Spaces and MSN Member Directory. Now, you can do it all from MSN Spaces.
* The new profile is now integrated into the “gleam” and contact card used in MSN Messenger/Windows Live Messenger, MSN Spaces, and Windows Live Maill (and also described in Chapter 8, “Connecting Spaces and Creating Community”). This way, your profile isn’t an island of information—when you change it, the people you care about will know almost immediately.
Tip: A number of other profile services exist on the Web, although MSN Profile is the only one that can be added to your space. Each profile is a little different from the next, but cumulatively they’re used by a large percentage of Internet users. Here are some of the other popular profile services: Friendster (http://www.friendster.com), Orkut (http://www.orkut.com), Yahoo Member Directory (http://members.yahoo.com), Yahoo 360 (http://360.yahoo.com), and LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com). [Note: last summer when we wrote this chapter, MySpace.com wasn't too well known - but they are now!]
Sidebar: MY INFORMATION IS ALREADY THERE!
As part of the switch from the old profile in MSN Member Directory to the new MSN Profile, if you were an MSN Member Directory user, your information was automatically “moved” from the old to the new service…saving you the trouble of having to enter it again. Of course, your new profile has far more fields for you to use. So, if your information was previously in MSN Member Directory, the only information that will be added to your new profile is information you had there. This means if you had an old profile containing your location (City, State), your city and state will automatically be added to your new profile. But a field such as Places Lived, which is available only in the new profile, will be blank (since this field wasn’t included in your old profile).
- Mike
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