Microsoft is "LIVE" in Higher Education..

By Don Burnett

In case you haven't noticed it in all the Microsoft Yahoo news online, Microsoft's Live services has been making some serious in-roads into education.. They now have a website that brings this together.. it's called My Live@EDU. Besides being a great example of a website UI done completely in Silverlight, the site details a plethora of services Microsoft offers both individuals and schools in  higher education.

 

 

Without paraphrasing the site, Microsoft is offering students, staff, and faculty things like

• 1 Gigabyte of online storage for free (that's like over 1000 free files of online storage), using web accessed SkyDrive that works on Mac, Linux, and Windows.
• Office Live online collaboration, for both faculty, staff, and student projects requiring group collaboration (again completely cross platform). I can't say how exciting this really is because you can also preview just about any document online in the browser, including Word, Excel, etc. and share it with others and collaborate right there online.
• 5 gigabyte Hotmail accounts (including university domain branding), with special functionality for Staffing, students, and even Alumni.
• Free PC to PC calling services with Windows Live Messenger
• Mobile access to Live Services on your cellular phone.
• Live Spaces (create your own home page and blog)
• Live Photo Gallery for photos and video storage import and catalog (along with some cool photo manipulation including creating panoramic shots).
• Live Writer for writing blog entries

Is anybody really using these? Wow they are! Even close to home!

Well check this out, there are colleges and universities out there already using these services campus-wide and Microsoft has profiled some of these great institutions on the site, folks like Ball State, and Indiana University.. Wow this is pretty cool, check it out..

Away at College and Need Extra Cash? Microsoft is putting money back in students pockets with contests and affiliate deals and Student Film Contest..

Beyond this Microsoft is offering a couple of really cool contests to promote these new capabilities.  One of these is the Microsoft Mashup contest.. Create a great web based mashup  application and you could win CASH or an XBOX, both things people want on campus. I have never heard of a poor college student turning down MONEY, or a great game console like the XBOX 360. All the tools required are a free download including web hosting..

Microsoft's Online Campus Film Festival

Not a web developer guy? More into performance arts?  Microsoft is offering a very cool contest for the budding film student in all of us, put your own short film online and win up to $12,500.. Now, that's a bit more than a semester of lunch and dinner money at the student center..

 

Now if all of that doesn't really get you excited, you should check the deal through on Microsoft Office that they have for students through April 30th, get Office Ultimate (yes that's every single Office Application out there (not just the home and teacher edition) for just $59.95. That's like over 90% off the purchase price. Also if you sign up for their affiliate program and you sell your friends on buying Office at that deal you can make money back off of it yourself. Now that's some dough at the end of semester when money is tight.

 

 

Say it with a SMILE! and put some dough back in other needy pockets!

Microsoft also is promoting "Operation Smile" a charity program that donates money for every picture with a smile you send them. Microsoft has received over 613,000 smiling photos to date.. go to the page and put your smiling picture up and help someone out today..

Windows Live Smile Page and if you like to use instant messaging, then

IM it and support your charity with Windows Live Messenger.. Each instant message is a donation to a charity that you choose..

TOO BAD SO SAD! They'll never do it on My Campus..

So you say to yourself this all cool but my school won't go for it? Never say never, Start your own campaign at the LIVE@EDU site today.. Get you and your friends to send email to your IT Administrator and start a campaign to get this, that will convince them that you want this all available on campus. Including on your cellular phone.

 

Technorati tags: Windows Live, On Campus

Windows Live Explodes

by Don Burnett

Wow it's been a wild week for new technology. Microsoft's Live initiatives is seeing some impressive results.. Let's get to these...

First look at this beautiful web browser, in of course the Apple iPhone... What's really cool about it is it's usability.. Content scrolls and zooms at your fingertips..

"42 Wallaby Way, Sidney.."

No it's not Finding Pixar/Disney's Nemo 2, but Microsoft Live Labs new Mobile web browser for Windows Mobile 5 and Above... DEEPFISH...

The nice thing about Windows Mobile based products is that you can just install new programs and upgrade your Windows Mobile's Installation. Unlike the Apple iPhone which Apple locks you out of installing new applications from third parties. Applications for the iPhone require web browser access at the moment for 3rd party content. Granted some Windows Mobile providers do the same thing, as a matter of security (which very few end users agree with) but the majority of Windows Mobile devices let you install new updates and 3rd party applications.

When the iPhone was released just about everyone agreed it has great web browser with scaling and zooming of web pages. Windows Mobile users felt left behind, until now.

Deepfish enhances existing mobile browsing technologies by displaying content in a view that is closer to the desktop experience. The zoom-able interface and cue map allow you to quickly access the information you care about over the web without ever losing track of where you are. Right now it's still in development, and they have been doing community technology previews, so keep an eye out for the next set of invites to betas if it interests you..

The scaling technology is pretty advanced and amazing. If you have looked at Microsoft's Photosynth you will see a familiar imaging engine, called SeaDragon. It also supports things like dynamic overlays, so you'll see some very exciting things in the future with content integration..

On10.net has some exclusive video if you are interested in seeing this cool new technology. Between this and Windows Mobile Live Search, my iPhone interest is beginning to wain. I will say I would think the design of the iPhone is cool, if they just supported more than AT&T as a carrier now and opened it truly up to 3rd party NON-WEB applications..

You say Taffy, I say Tafiti !

One of the coolest interfaces ever... Tafiti means "To Research.." Many other people have blogged about it here, but I am just going to say that this is the coolest interface to a search engine ever. It's done in Silverlight and gives you not only access to searching thru images, RSS feeds and the Web, as well as books and news. If you want to know what the web you work with will look like in the next few years, check out the richness of this application. I bet they have even Google salivating with such a great user experience.

Most search engines just display content and you have to capture the data yourself. With Tafiti everything is just like working with the physical content. You can pick up content (of any type) and drag and drop content on stacks while labeling it and storing it. The user experience value of this application is phenomenal and should revolutionize how we work with content when we research things on the web. The correlation between the User Interface and what you actually do when you research and organize that research is almost exactly one-to-one.. Another nice feature (but not sure how people will end up using it is a tree view). You can also store and return to individual searches as well as merging them.

This is a UI tour-de-force, and it's only a "demonstration"

Look up in the sky! It's Windows Live SkyDrive!

The competition for online storage of your files is heating up. Microsoft has a new release of Windows SkyDrive for online storage. If you use Windows Live for storage you'll find the great for situations where you want to share files over multiple computers.

SkyDrive is also giving Windows Live Writer an assist! There is a new plug-in that you can download to allow you to link content to your blogs/writing consumers to also access content saved to your SkyDrive folders inside of Windows Live Writer. Yeah file based content embedding finally! It even lets you put it in an iframe, just in case your provider doesn't like you linking up due to server restrictions.

Technorati tags: Windows Live, Silverlight, Rich Internet Application, Search, Google, Tafiti, SkyDrive, Web 2.0, iPhone, DeepFISH