Design Meme

Microsoft has a new Portal-like web service: Windows Live Beta

Windows Live will integrate with MicroSoft’s new Email and Instant Messenger software. The new Instant Messenger will offer the following features:

• users can sign up for Windows Live Call to easily call landline and mobile phones
• full-screen (640×480) video chat, with fully synchronized audio
• Sharing Folders:

Sharing Folders will be a new and simple way for you to share personal photos, documents, and files with your Messenger contacts. You will be able to create a Sharing Folder by simply dragging files onto a contact name in Messenger. This will create an exact copy of the files on both you and your contact’s computers, and create a Sharing Folder that can be accessed from Messenger, and on the desktop.

The Windows Live service also uses the same Gadgets which will be found in the next Windows OS. These will be similar to the Widgets found in Apple’s OS X and Yahoo’s Konfabulator

From O’Reilly Radar

During the Q&A, I asked specifically if this meant that data and services could be syndicated out as well as in (that is, that Microsoft software wouldn’t just be consuming services from other web providers, and allowing users to syndicate them into their experience, but also that developers on other web platforms could as easily integrate data from Microsoft applications and services into their user experience.) Bill Gates replied with puzzlement, “Of course. There’s no difference between syndicating out and syndicating in. It’s just XML.”