The day started off with meeting the fellow bloggers, the PR people and Ian Moulster who is a Product Manager at Microsoft UK. We were given a brief for the day that included 2 challenges for us bloggers; the first was to take photos from the London Eye and then ask our Twitter followers to name the building we photo’d and from where we too the photo, the second challenge was to make a PowerPoint about the day using the photos we took.

On board the London Eye we had to take photos of:

- St Paul’s Cathedral

- The BT Tower

- The Battersea Power Station

- The Shard

These photos were then stored on SkyDrive and shared to Twitter. I was at an advantage to the bloggers who didn’t have a Windows Phone as I could share my photo to Twitter and have it automatically save it SkyDrive. People using alternative devices had to upload the photo to SkyDrive and then share it to Twitter manually.

It is very easy to share anything from SkyDrive with people via several different ways. It is possible to email someone a link to a file or folder on SkyDrive or share via a social network (so long as the user has linked their Windows Live account with their social network account) and even generate a link to share anywhere, including Twitter. This is a relatively new feature and was introduced in one of the recent SkyDrive updates.

Below are the photos I took whilst on the London Eye.

Next up we had to make a PowerPoint presentation to show the others the photos we had taken. We started the PowerPoints in the feature rich PowerPoint Web App but I decided to then continue work on the PowerPoint on the desktop version. This gave me some additional customisation options, allowing me to make a Metro theme for the presentation. Because I had started the PowerPoint in the Web App and then opened it in the desktop version all I had to do was click the “save” button to save the updated version on my desktop back to the cloud. Users don’t have to manually upload a newer version of an Office document if the start editing a document on SkyDrive and then choose to open it up in the desktop version.

Below you can view the embedded PowerPoint I quickly cobbled together during the event.

There were some interesting points made during the event about SkyDrive. One that struck me was that there is no easy way to add a photo, or indeed any file, stored on SkyDrive to an Office Web App document. This seems to be an oversight and one I hope Microsoft addresses soon, this is certainly a feature that makes a lot of sense.

I had a very enjoyable day and despite knowing most of what was talked about and shown off I think it was a very beneficial day for all those who attended. I am looking forward to what else Microsoft has planned for SkyDrive and the Web Apps. If you are interested in keeping up to date with the latest SkyDrive news then you might want to check out the official Windows Live blog and check this out to find out more about SkyDrive.

With Office Web Apps this idea makes even more sense.

If a personal dictionary was kept in the cloud via the Windows Live service then I would hope that Hotmail and Internet Explorer would also use the service for spelling and grammar correction. Sadly i fear it could be some time before we see anything like this, possibly as far away as the next version of Office.

Over the summer there appears to have been a change in the way Microsoft has operated as of late. With Windows 7 Microsoft released a beta in January, followed some months later with a Release Candidate and then with the final release in October. This annoyed some people who wanted access to more regular builds of Windows 7. I think some teams at Microsoft whilst understanding the principle of “under promise, over deliver” of the Windows 7 team didn’t fully support the idea of so few updates. That seems to have been addressed this summer.

With Windows Phone 7 Microsoft have been more frequent with the updates they released for the developer tools, with a beta refresh and final version, and even the announcement of features the new operating system will have. This approach is slightly different to how Windows 7 was developed, but that might be due to the mobile space being far more competitive than the desktop OS market. Internet Explorer 9 also received regular updates through the developer preview, I hope the beta gets a refresh in about 7 weeks.

Some of the new features coming to Windows Live

However, with Windows Live there is a notable difference. Only 3 months ago did Microsoft release the Office Web Apps, update the online Windows Live services and Windows Live Essentials. Since then there has been a steady roll out of other online services, such as Hotmail and a beta refresh of Essentials. Then yesterday Microsoft made the previously mentioned announcements of more coming features to Windows Live. I can only hope that the continuous arrival of new features/fixes will continue now on for Windows Live. With the Office Web Apps I hope the same to be true with the arrival of some new features and the ability to embed documents across the web.

Before the summer we were lucky to have received any kind of tweak to the Windows Live services with the services not getting much attention for over a year. Yet Microsoft’s online competitors were hard at work often releasing updates and new features for their services. How Microsoft planned to compete with such regular updates I don’t know, I can only assume (and hope) that they now see the need to release incremental updates throughout the year. Whether any new features are ground breaking or not is beside the point, every time Microsoft have made updates to Windows Live over the summer they have received quite widespread attention from the media which will only encourage people to use the service more.

At this point I could go off on one about how Microsoft doesn’t get enough attention from the media but I believe its in part due to its slow, yearly or longer schedule for updating its products. With the web being more real-time now than it ever has Microsoft needs to release things on a far more regular basis to keep the media’s eyes on it.

I do think we have seen a change this summer in how Microsoft plans to release products going forward, a more incremental approach. I can perhaps understand why Windows Live took so long to receive any noteworthy improvement, Microsoft were hard at work implementing a system where by major social networks would link in seamlessly with Windows Live, probably no small feat. But now that the infrastructure has been implemented for Windows Live I hope that there wont be another long wait till we next see some new features on Windows Live.

In fact some of Microsoft’s most talked/hyped about products this year are Bing and Windows Phone 7 both of which have received regular announcements and new features.

One thing to note is that both Windows Live and Internet Explorer are under the control of Steven Sinofsky who devised the plan to keep Windows 7 updates so few. Its been a year since we got a new Internet Explorer and Windows Live version. Its my belief that Sinofsky knows that the approach of keeping things unknown for so long doesn’t work and that things need frequent updates which is why we have seen this change this summer. That isn’t to say I think Windows 8 will be getting several releases and lots of feature announcements when it is near ready for launch. I expect Windows will receive only a few releases but the programs that make Windows “shine” will get more frequent updates to keep Windows 7 fresh.

What do you think? Has Microsoft shifted the way it updates its products and services or do you think this summer has just been a one off?

I know it would be useful to have quick access to Windows Live Hotmail, Photos, SkyDrive and Office Web Apps. I also think that Microsoft will be positions devices as a major part of the Windows Live service around the launch of Windows Phone 7 and so for good measure I added that to the below image.

I’d also hope to see jump lists for individual Windows Live sites, such as on Hotmail having the quick options to compose a new email, add a new contact, view social emails and flagged ones etc. There could be be similar options for each pillar of Windows Live which would allow people to treat the websites more like applications, the whole point of the new IE9 functionality.

If rumours are to be believe then some time today, or later this week, Microsoft will make public a Release Candidate version of Windows Live, if this happens I wonder if the online side of Windows Live will also be updated with such things as tweaks to the Calendar and, perhaps, jump list support too.

It would also be nice to have jump lists on Zune.net.

1. Outlook  Social Connector. Most of us spend the majority of our working day with e-mail. But we also love the connection to family, friends and colleagues that social networking sites provide. What if you could merge your inbox with your social networks?  With Outlook Social Connector, you can get a people-centric view of e-mail and see the most recent status updates, wall posts, photos, attachments and appointments for the people you care about the most. Whether you like Facebook, Windows Live, LinkedIn or MySpace, the Outlook Social Connector gives you an aggregated view into your social networking life. 
2. Linked Notes in OneNote. OneNote is the digital notebook darling that many Office users just can’t live without. Some call it the ‘hidden gem’ within Office, because it changes the way people work by capturing text, video, audio and other content types in one single location. OneNote 2010 gets even better, with Linked note-taking – which lets you ‘dock’ OneNote to the side of your computer screen, take notes on a presentation, and map those notes in the presentation you’ve just seen. Whether you’re at school, remodelling a home or simply capturing notes from a client call, OneNote is a great application with unlimited potential to help you get things done.
3. Sparklines in Excel. Excel fans love the application not for the data organization, but for what the data tells them. Charts can be great for telling a story, but the newest feature in Excel – Sparklines – can make your numbers and figures even more exciting. Sparklines are charts that fit into a single cell to show a trend at-a-glance. Eighty-three percent of Office 2010 beta users agree Sparklines make it easier to visualize and gain insight from data.
4. Photo editing in Word. Did you know one in three people include pictures in their Word documents? Office 2010 now has built-in photo editing features, which make it easier than ever to import snapshots from the Web, edit them, and add visual effects in your document.
5. Video and broadcast capabilities in PowerPoint.  People are using multimedia more than ever to communicate ideas. PowerPoint 2010 gives video a first class seat, with the option to embed video directly in presentations and add stylistic effects.  PowerPoint also has a great new broadcast feature, where you can present a slideshow with dynamic transitions and animations to an audience of one or 100, clear across the other side of the world – even if your audience doesn’t have PowerPoint.
6. Office Web Apps. Office Web Apps help you work on your documents from virtually anywhere, using Windows Live SkyDrive. Get things done when you’re away from your “workspace” by creating documents in Office 2010, save them to SkyDrive, and view and edit with Web Apps anywhere you have Internet access. Web Apps make it easy to collaborate with friends, colleagues and family.
7. A Ribbon you can personalise. The improved Ribbon in Office 2010 not only appears in all of the apps, but lets you access your favourite commands quickly, and customize or create tabs to match your individual work style.

If you find all that above a little text heavy Microsoft have been kind enough to provide several videos demoing what can be done with the new Office 2010 suite of applications. Office UK has a YouTube Channel which currently only has the below video but if more are posted I will let you know.

Below is another video from Microsoft showing off the Web Apps

There are three versions of Office for sale in the UK:

You can find out all about the new Office 2010 applications, Web Apps, Office Mobile and how to trial and buy the software at office.com, the website has a very nice design.

Don’t forget this if you are on Twitter you can add the Office 2010 Twibbon to your picture.

First up is the Word Web App with a look at the Home tab or social controls to the right.

The Insert Tab.

The View Tab.

Now on to the Excel Web App which really doesn’t have much to shown off with its Insert tab being very similar to Word’s.

And finally is the PowerPoint Web App.

And if you add you a slide you can choose from this selection.

Whilst these Web Apps are fairly limited they offer enough functionality to quickly put together a document wherever you are in the world as long as you have an internet connection and being able to share and edit documents with one’s Facebook friends should be a quite an enticing prospect for many people. I have also tried to access the service on my HD 2 and was able to sign and see a list of my docs but was unable to edit them with both IE Mobile and Opera reporting an Error “Home(s1885)”.

Its good to finally have access to the Office Web Apps seeing as I have been waiting for these since about October last year and they are pretty as I expected the to be.

If you want to know more about this or see any other pictures just let me know in the comments.

The first image shows how the conversation view appears in Hotmail preview pane with the latest email being expanded and the older, conversational, emails being shown collapse below it. It certainly seems like an elegant way to present a conversation of emails and prevents a lot of space being used up but allowing quick access to the older emails if necessary.

The second image shows some of new filters when searching for emails which include From, To, Subject, Folders, Keywords, Date ranges and With or Without attachments. These controls appear above the list of email and a preview pane for the selected email.

The final image shows how the Hotmail team have refined the Quick Add pane as it doesn’t shown by default, can be closed and is accessed alongside attachments, photos and emoticons. There is an emphasis on Bing in that anything you want to add to the email from the web is searched for via Bing which allows users to find Images, Clip art, Videos, Maps and places and Webpages. This again appears to be a much refined UI and it certainly something I am looking forward to using.

There was another image of the Word Web App, however this didn’t show if this was the stand alone app or if it was the app when accessed through Hotmail.

The interface of the header, as is expected, looks tidier and more informative; I guess the “on Hotmail” will change depending on what service the Office document is being viewed on with other options such as “on SkyDrive”.

The other options that can be seen from this image are the obvious File which I imagine will contain options to save the document locally, print it etc. Edit in Browser which will open a limited number of Office 2010 like controls and options, next is the zoom control, interesting to note this isn’t in the bottom right of the browser like on the client version. On the right side is a help, full screen and close button with the option to move through pages below.

What I am still interested to know is how ubiquitous Microsoft intends to make the Web Apps, if they want Office to be as big on the internet as it is on client PCs then I will assume it will be possible to embed “read-only” versions of the Web Apps on other websites.

I believe what we see above is an image of a received email which only says “LiveSino.net”, has no subject and a word document attachment. The Hotmail Active View appears to be a new feature that shows a true icon of the attached file rather than just a tiny paper clip.

We have seen the new features of the sidebar before with Quick Views and I assume that any email with a Office document will be shown in the Documents section and any email with photos attached be shown in Photos. However what is new is the Messenger section which is very interesting not only because it looks to emulate Gmail’s IM placement within an online email service but also because I thought the new Web Messenger would be available on all Windows Live services which would remove the need to have it feature in the sidebar. one reason I can see for this section is to effectively pin favourites within Hotmail so users don’t need to open Web Messenger but can instantly see who is online from within their inbox, likely to be the Live service they spend most of their time anyway. Hotmail certainly looks placed to be the centre piece of the Windows Live online suite.

From looking at these images I am increasingly more interested in Wave 4 will add to the online services, yes the Windows Live applications are good but the online services offer much more potential if a little less functionality. I also think the slight tweaks and refinements of the UI look great with its very tidy and clean interface.

Its not surprising that Wave 4 wont be supporting XP and its something that most people will agree is the best thing for Microsoft to do even if a fairly large percentage of people can’t use the suite. As Picturepan2 points out in the LiveSino article this follows the same tactic Microsoft are using with Internet Explorer 9 which will also be Windows 7 or Vista only. Wave 4 also looks like it will support 7 languages.

Interestingly Microsoft aren’t following this approach with products they sell to customers but so far only their free software, I wonder if other free software from Microsoft will also drop support for XP such as the Zune software which is likely to be updated by the end of the year. For any Microsoft user it’s certainly not a time that I would want to still be on XP.

The other piece of news to come from LiveSino was that Wave 4 Hotmail will feature Office Web Apps integration so users can access Word, Excel and PowerPoint within Hotmail. As LiveSide have pointed out in the latest post on Inside Windows Live it talks about 95% of the storage capacity of Hotmail being taken up with Microsoft Office documents that are attached to emails, it therefore makes sense to allow quick access to these files within Hotmail.

It makes a lot of sense to me to integrate Office Web Apps into Hotmail as if it wasn’t for Live Mesh I would probably be emailing documents to myself on a regular basis and I know that my family often do just that. I also know that my family mostly only want to print or read a document that they have received in their inbox and probably don’t need the full power of the client version of Office for most documents in their inbox.

I know that Office Web Apps are Microsoft’s way to combat other online services such as Google Apps but I have wondered how they were going to get the average consumer to use the service as most wont find it tucked away in SkyDrive and this seems to be the obvious answer. Windows Live Mail is the most used email service in the world so if there was ever a way to get online users to notice a new Microsoft service it would be to incorporate that service into the users’ inboxes. If implemented well this could tempt users away from various email and online productivity services and could quickly allow Office to dominate in the cloud as well as on desktop computers.

As always I am looking forward to the next piece of news about Wave 4 and can’t wait for the beta of the suite.

I think the reason we have heard so little about Windows Live Wave 4 is because aspects of the suite are closely related to Windows Mobile 7 and as such Microsoft are reluctant to talk about it until their new mobile OS has been announced and demonstrated. Below I discuss some of the ideas I have had in which Windows Live Wave 4 could, hopefully, integrate with Windows Mobile 7.

Windows Live Devices?

We know Microsoft will be adding a new service, Devices, to the suite when they release wave 4 which suggests to me that many different gadgets, possibly including TVs, will be able to link up to Windows Live. It is also possible that aspects of the devices can be controlled, in some way, through the service. Currently Windows Live links up well with Digital Photo Frames, through FrameIt, and I expect the devices service to incorporate them. It is also understood that Live Mesh will become part of the Windows Live family so we see a place to add computers and mobiles to the service just like in Live Mesh. Finally I both believe and hope that the Microsoft My Phone service will utilise the Live Mesh technology, therefore become a Windows Live service; which should reduce the replication of data, such as contacts (currently Windows Live and My Phone don’t use the same list of contacts). To that end Microsoft won’t want to show off Windows Live Wave 4 yet as it would show the level of integration of phone storage of future Windows Phones and Windows Live.

If Microsoft is serious about the cloud then this is something they really need to do, by combining all their online services into a single place with the ability to centrally control linked devices and their storage it will make using Windows Phones and Windows Live much simpler for consumers.

Windows Live only services on mobiles?

If we now look at Windows 7 we saw Microsoft remove many of the default applications like Mail and Calendar so the company couldn’t be sued for bundling applications with the OS. Now the only way to access similar applications from Microsoft is to download the Windows Live suite. Microsoft could well follow a similar idea with Windows Mobile, but not for fear of being sued. It makes more sense to me to have a single calendar accessible on any Microsoft platform, whether that is Windows, Windows Mobile or on the cloud; the same can be said for contacts, tasks and several other aspects of Microsoft services. Instead of Microsoft providing downloadable applications to access these services I expect they will embed them within the OS with mobile calendar being the Windows Live Calendar. Some people could be concerned with the integration then between Windows Mobile and Office Outlook, however through the merging of Office and Windows Live in the cloud, through Web Apps, I can see a closer integration between Windows Live and Office Outlook.

It makes sense for Microsoft to only provide highly integrated services on their phones which link up with the cloud services of Windows Live; for example I would love to be able to sync my Windows Live Calendar with the calendar on my Windows Phone (why this has not yet been done still amazes me).

Windows Live going Social?

From job postings we know Microsoft are aiming to make Windows Mobile social by integrating several Social Networks deep within the OS, this could indeed mean an expansion for Windows Live. Microsoft My Phone already allows sharing photos on several Social Networking Sites from within the service. If then, as I predict, My Phone becomes part of Windows Live Microsoft will be making their online suite of services even more social. It makes sense that Microsoft would use Windows Live as the platform to share content, for a start they already have a good Photo service which I expect to soon be joined by a Video service. I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if we see the launch of a URL shortening service from Microsoft, probably along the lines of WinLi.ve. Messenger is one of the most used Instant Messaging services and if Microsoft were able to leverage those social interactions through more aspects of Windows Live they could stand to gain quite a lot. Again if Microsoft were to use Windows Live as the means of consumers sharing content to Social Networks then they wouldn’t want to show parts of Windows Live before Windows Mobile.

For me it would seem Microsoft is gearing Windows Live up to be a platform for sharing content, they already have a lot of websites partnered up to allow people to keep informed of “What Is New” with their contacts; it would therefore be logical for Microsoft to provide a means of reversing the exchange of information and allowing posting of information to those services via Windows Live.

I am really looking forward to information on both products from Microsoft and would hope my ideas would only scratch the surface of what Microsoft has really been up too. I guess we shan’t be hearing much with regards either of the products for over a month until the Mobile World Congress kicks off in Barcelona on 15^th February; seems a long way off yet.