Today marks this blog’s first birthday and what a year it has been. I have been able to bring news about the first images of Bing, the Zune HD, Windows Phone 7 and Windows Home Server whilst also reporting the news about Windows 7, Xbox and Windows Live. I have enjoyed talking to many of you and listening to your ideas and thoughts. Creating the numerous wallpapers and Twibbons for various Microsoft products has been really good fun too.

Looking forward I am hoping to make some changes to the site over the coming days/weeks both in appearance and content and will be letting know as and when they occur.

I’d like to thank you all for reading this blog and then for coming back again to read some more, a tradition I hope will continue; by the way if you heard there was going to be cake to mark the 1st birthday then I am sorry to disappoint you but the cake is a lie (even Apple users can appreciate that now).

Thanks, Gilly.

You’d “like” the link on My Kind of Phone’s list of competition entries which includes my entry to the competition.

Above you can see that me and Manan have already “liked” this and it’d be great if more of you (still on Facebook) would like this too as it would greatly improve my chances of winning a holiday…I can take 3 undecided mates with me too.

The page with the link I’d appreciate if you’d “like” is http://www.facebook.com/posted.php?id=113022248732147&share_id=120613937977622 and my link is near the bottom of the page; edit you will need to “like” My Kind of Phone too. Thank you so much for all of you who “like” the link and you never know in the future I might be able to return the favour if I can get my hands on some Microsoft goodies.

The BBC have unveiled a major update to the BBC iPlayer, their online distribution service for both TV and Radio programs, in which they have made the beta service much more social linking to services such as Facebook and Twitter.

The current social network integrations.

However later in the summer it will be possible for users to sign in to the social aspect of the iPlayer using Windows Live Messenger which will also link a user’s contacts up with their “friends” on their BBC ID and allow chatting whilst watching a program.

A partnership with Microsoft allows Windows Live Messenger users to log in to their messaging service through BBC iPlayer, enabling them to invite other contacts to watch programmes at the same time and chat live. This is an experimental feature, which will be available in beta later in the Summer; if it proves successful, the BBC plans to extend it to other instant messaging services.

I expect this is part of Messenger Connect, the new service from Microsoft aiming to bring Messenger to the entire web.

I have asked Microsoft for information about this and I plan to write a full review on a new site which is coming soon.

Edit: The BBC say that the features of Windows Live Messenger integration within iPlayer are:

• Log in to Windows Live Messenger through BBC iPlayer
• Forward links to others online: watch on-demand at the same time
• Comment live on programmes as they air

Edit 2: The BBC have just published a blog post about the new features of the improved iPlayer with new images of the Messenger integration.

When watching an iPlayer program whilst signed in to Messenger on the site you can sync what you are watching with other people and watch the same program at the same time with them, allowing you to chat about it. You can also see who else is online on iPlayer but who are watching different programs.

It will also be possible to “shout” to all one’s friends on Messenger who are also signed in on iPlayer about the program one is currently watching.

The Messenger integration can be accessed easily through the “Get Started” button seen on all TV play back pages.

These features all sound great and I can’t wait to start using them, it should be rolled out to the beta version of iPlayer over the next few weeks.

Following a lot of thinking reaching a pinnacle yesterday when I had been thinking about how cool Windows Phone 7 Series could be only to have the ideas ruined by a post by Paul Thurrott, and amongst other things such as lack of copy and paste on 7 Series, I have decided that MyMicrosoftLife can’t carry on by itself.

The sister sites are to be name MyAppleLife and MyGoogleLife and I have already started blogging on them, go check them out.

Over the coming weeks you can expect me to scale back the amount of time I spend on MyMicrosoftLife with ultimately me stopping blogging within the next few months. I hope you will continue to follow my blogging in the future.

In my continued testing of the new BBC homepage design I have found a new module call Topic Tracker, this module is actually a concise version of a new site feature called Flow.

The idea of Topic Tracker and Flow is to show the reader all the latest information about a specified topic, whether it be a person, news or a TV or radio programme. In doing this the BBC have also added a new user profile system, BBC ID, so users can sign in to the service wherever they are and have all their tracked topics.

The BBC describe the Topic Tracker as

Keep up to date on topics that you’re really into. This module gives you quick and easy access to the breadth of BBC content, but tailored to your personal interests – from your favourite shows to hot topics and stories. Simply type in a subject or topic, select the best match from the list provided and you’re set to get frequent updates on your interests. For example type ‘Barack Obama’ in the Topic Tracker, choose the best link from the options provided and ‘Barack Obama’ will go into ‘Your Topics’ list. Then next time you visit the homepage you’ll see the latest BBC content about ‘Barack Obama’ in the Topic Tracker. You can add as many topics as you like.

And the BBC ID as

BBC iD is the new sign in system across the BBC. It’s already in use on new sites and services such as iPlayer message board and is currently being rolled out across all other services that require a user to register or sign in.

The intention is that by March 2010, BBC iD will be the single sign in for all BBC Online services. If you have an existing BBC membership account for blogs, message boards or other services, at some point in the next few months you will need to upgrade your account to BBC iD.

This sounds to me like the BBC ID has been around for a while but I certainly haven’t come across it and I can’t find any official mention of Flow on the BBC site, I think it could well be in pre-beta testing. There doesn’t seem to be a default link for the Flow service and I hope you can access it through http://beta.bbc.co.uk/users/Gilly2468.

This is meant to be the first page seen of the service, however it actually took me quite some time before I reached page and subsequently the home page.

This is the home page, but again it took me while to find this, and shows the latest videos and news from the tracked topic at the top and then several self explanatory columns below; the purple play icon denotes an iPlayer video.

When clicking edit in the top right corner the user is taken to a page where lots of new things can be tracked. In this screenshot I was looking at the Programmes tab where there is a list of BBC programs to follow.

When clicking on the Users tab it shows the above options of finding users on Facebook and Twitter but also Hotmail and Messenger, a service not nearly used as often as the first two. This then allow a user to follow their friends who also use Flow, unfortunately I’m not sure what information is shared between users as I know no one who has a BBC ID, you can follow me here. After linking up my BBC ID with my Twitter account @bbc_social started following me (coincidence, I’m not sure) and it currently following 324 people and has no tweets.

The BBC seem to know how to set up the default privacy settings for users (*cough* Google) where all profiles are private until made public. Once a user’s profile is public it appears that users can share they recommendations with the followers.

When digging deeper for more information I found a blog article posted today about the BBC ID and why they have created it, suffice to say their current implementation of storing user profiles is 8 years old and they needed a newer, more capable system.

There are currently quite a few issues with BBC Flow in that its not easy to navigate and some features have yet to be enabled however I think the service will make a lot of sense as the BBC has such a vast archive of information. It will be interesting to see how the social element of this service develops with hopefully the ability to recommend iPlayer programmes from within the service to both my followers on BBC Flow and other social networks.

P.S. I like the 403 page I stumbled across several times.

The BBC is perhaps the site I visit the most, its my homepage and I always have a least one tab open with the BBC all the time, so for me its exciting to see they are testing out a new home page design.

At first glance the new page seems to address some of the niggles I have had with the page with a navigation bar at the top of the page allowing easy access to the most important BBC services which “will soon appear at the top of most BBC web pages – not just the homepage”. In adding this new navigation bar the BBC have had to remove the clock, not something I used much but I am sure for some people this will be missed.

Most of the page looks very similar although after reading up about the new design the BBC are saying that they have a new Media Zone to bring together all of the BBC’s online media content. Although looking very similar to the current design the whole page has actually been rebuilt with a “brand new technical infrastructure”. The BBC don’t have a deadline for when this new design will replace the current one as they still have more features to test out but I am looking forward to trying this out for a few months.

If you want to try out the new design just click the “Try out new Beta homepage” button on the current home page or by going to http://beta.bbc.co.uk/.

Seeing as there is hardly one else to follow on Google Buzz at the moment I though I would share with you some pictures of Buzz…just in case you haven’t seen any yet.

Initial look of Buzz with a “buzz” which users can “like”, email and comment on.

When wanting to add a new “buzz” the input box expands just like another social network.

As expected this is what it looks like when wanting to see all the comments about a “buzz”.

If you want to follow more people.

Update: When people start following you the below box pops up before any “buzzes” are listed.

And I have noticed that the first “Buzz” to be shown is not the latest “Buzz” to have been posted but the one with the most recent comment, surely that is a very untidy way of showing the most recent updates, especially when it adds a message i the Gmail inbox.

I just thought I would investigate if Twitter would be providing an easy way to add Twitter Lists to a web page and as it turns out they will be. By guessing at what the address for the widget would be I found this page.

As you can see from the screenshot a security dialogue box popped up but by loggin in with my Twitter info I was able to get the code for the following Widgets, however they don’t appear to populate with tweets. Also they don’t appear to keep the specified colour scheme.

It looks about ready to launch but I would guess they are waiting for every user to have lists and to check there are no problems with it before making it official.