Welcome to “Rob Dolin’s Space.” This is an archive of content that originally appeared on the MSN Spaces page that I started in March of 2006 when I joined the MSN Spaces team.
You can find my latest blog by visiting http://blog.RobDolin.com/ and you can generally connect with me via http://www.RobDolin.com/.
I like how Windows Live Messenger has a dialog showing how you can comment on people’s social updates.
(When you post a comment via Messenger, it calls an API that I worked on.)
Try it today. 
I’ve written in the past about Recommendations for a Clean PC (2008) and What I installed on my home Windows 7 PC (2009.) However, there is some fabulous new software available so below are my latest recommendations:
Being an amateur web developer, I also have a few tools I recommend:
Thanks very much for reading. I hope you find all of the recommendations to be useful for you. Take care–
—Rob Dolin
As previously announced, the Windows Live Essentials beta will be available later today. (link)
I’m stupendously excited for the public availability of this re-invention of Messenger. The IM / chat experience continues to evolve to be richer and richer including sharing documents and photos. And Messenger gets social with the new integration with social sharing activities from Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Pandora, WordPress, Blogger, and more. Even though Messenger may not be available for download yet (as of 6:00am PDT), you can start connecting social services at http://profile.live.com/services/. And, I LOVE the new Messenger for iPhone that released a few days ago. It’s downloadable from the iPhone app store by searching for “Windows Live Messenger.” As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, I can take pictures on my iPhone and share these to Facebook, Messenger, MySpace, and Twitter.
As my colleague Ye Gu mentioned, “Don’t have an iPhone? No worries.” Fear not Verizon and T-Mobile subscribers, there are ways you can experience Messenger Social too.
Enjoy–
—Rob
I’ve been thinking about ways to make the Activity Streams specification more accessible or approach-able. I’ve drafted the below thoughts describing basic components of an Activity Entry. I’d welcome your feedback via blog comments or via tweets @RobDolin. Thanks very much–
—Rob
P.S. The latest spec, links to the wiki and discussion group, and other materials can be found at http://ActivityStrea.ms/. Some contributors also tweet with the #ActivityStreams hashtag.
Activity Streams describes a set of wire formats for serializing common user activities on social sharing websites.
Each activity entry must have three component elements and may have additional optional activity entry component elements:
To help readers better understand, here are some examples:
The activity “John Smith posted Home Movie” would include component elements:
Author: John Smith; Verb: Post; Object: Home Movie
The activity “Jane Doe saved Toolbox to Wishlist would include component elements:
Author: Jane Done; Verb: Save; Object: Toolbox; Target: Wishlist
Each activity entry component MUST have a uniquely identifying URI.
Each activity entry component MAY also include additional optional information
To give specific examples, in the case of an Author/Actor:
And another example, In the case of a post Verb:
And finally, an example for a photo Object:
Continue learning about Activity Streams at http://ActivityStrea.ms/.
With this morning’s launch of the Messenger for iPhone application and the launch of improved Facebook and MySpace integrations with Windows Live, you can now update your status once and have it shared with your friends on a host of popular social services.
Here’s how to set it up:
Now when you update your status in Messenger (whether from PC, Web, iPhone, mobile web, or SMS) it will cross-publish to all of your friends on the various services.
Enjoy–
—Rob
P.S. You can read more about Messenger for iPhone from my colleague Ye Gu on the Windows Live team blog.
P.P.S Here’s what it looks like for a simple text-only update written once with the Messenger for iPhone app and posted to all four services:
Messenger (as shown on my web profile):
Facebook:
MySpace:
Twitter:
I haven’t been actively blogging lately and I thought I should put together a brief summary of some of the projects I’ve been working on:
Re-inviting Messenger – My team at work has been focused on re-inventing Windows Live Messenger. Our work will be available later this year, but in the interim, you can check-out this great video summary at http://www.MessengerPreview.com/. And, if you want to try the current Messenger, you can get it from http://download.live.com/.
CivicCal – From my volunteer activities, I tend to get invited to a bunch of interesting events. I’ve started compiling a calendar of these at: http://seattle.CivicCal.org/ as well as made a companion rudimentary Facebook app: http://apps.facebook.com/CivicCal/.
Mother-in-law’s campaign website – My mother-in-law is running for re-election as a Justice and being the family computer geek, I volunteered to build the campaign website. You can check it out at http://www.ChiefJusticeMadsen.org/ She’s also on Facebook, and Twitter and we’re using Windows Live Groups and Windows Live SkyDrive for sharing documents and lists. 😉
Thanks very much for stopping by. ‘All the best–
–Rob
My partner, H is the Chair of a volunteer organization that maintains a relatively active website and she is often called-upon to post meeting agendas or other announcements. I set-up the organization with a Windows Live Spaces blog as their content management system. While the web interface was functional, once we set-up Windows Live Writer on H’s computer, she has been so happy that she describes it as “Magic” whenever she writs a post, clicks “Publish” and it immediately shows-up on the website.
Now the organization has an awesome communications team and they’ve decided to migrate to the more complex (but in many ways more powerful and customizable) Drupal system for the organizations’ website. I was a bit concerned about this as the alpha geek in the family who would now be called-upon to muddle through Drupals (improving but still) complex interface to post new agendas and announcements.
Then, to my absolute delight, my Microsoft colleague, JD Leonard, forwarded a blog entry he wrote about how to use Windows Live Writer with Drupal.
Setting-up Drupal 6 to Work Really Well with Windows Live Writer
I am IMMENSELY thankful for JD’s tutorial and I look forward to continued domestic harmony thanks to JD’s tutorial and Windows Live Writer.
‘All the best–
—Rob
Rob Dolin's space 