Wishing all my readers a very Happy New Year. Have a great 2009!

-Dev

With the new updates in place, spam comments have reduced but they are still persistent. Due to the lack of a 'block-user' feature on spaces, manually deleting spam comments can get tedious. You have to go to your recent comments page, scroll down to find the delete link below the ever long link filled comment and after having clicked the link, Spaces will prompt you if you want to delete. After you do that the page re-loads and you are taken to the top of the page again. This is time-consuming and multiple comments cannot be deleted.

A generic spam comment on Windows Live Spaces

You can delete multiple spam comments in less time using the mobile version of spaces which is light and loads quickly. Make sure you are using the new Internet explorer or Firefox browsers so that tab browsing is possible.

• Sign into your Windows Live Home page or Spaces.
• Go to the mobile version of your space at http://yourspacename.mobile.spaces.live.com . Replace yourspacename with the unique address of your space. In my case it is http://d3vmax.mobile.spaces.live.com.
• After you have signed into the mobile version of your space you will notice a page with shows you the recent comments made on your space. The comments on the mobile version of spaces are not loaded fully and you can see many more spam comments at a time when compared to the recent comments page on the normal Windows Live Recent comments page.
• Identify the comments you think are spam and click on the Delete comment link found under each comment. When you click this link, make sure you click it with your middle mouse button or by pushing in your scroll button. This will open each ‘Confirm deletion of comment’ page in different tabs. You can also achieve this by holding down on the Ctrl key and then clicking the Delete comment links.

• You can now quickly go through each tab window and click on the Delete comment button to confirm the deletion of the comment.

This way you can delete multiple spam comments on your space and save a lot of time. I hope this was useful to you. Your feedback is welcome.

Tip:-  You can switch through tabs more efficiently by holding down on the Ctrl key and pressing 1,2,3, etc.  while hovering your mouse over the delete button area and clicking on it after which you switch to the next tab. Repeat!

- Dev, Windows Live Spaces MVP

If you are getting some unknown errors using Windows Live or Space try to delete your temporary files, cookies, etc. Then try again. You may get unknown errors while trying to upload photos, saving links or publishing an entry / updating an entry.

Sometimes you can’t save a link in a custom list after editing it when using a Firefox browser. Try using Internet explorer. Live Spaces is 90 percent compatible with Firefox but not fully.

If you still get an unexpected error try in a few hours time or comment below.

Please use Google or Live Search to find out how you can delete temporary internet files, cookies, etc.

< When using Firefox, I was unable to save or edit the item above. It worked while using IE >

Click here to view a similar entry I posted earlier.

- Dev, Windows Live MVP.

This tutorial will show you how to reorder your Photo Album on your Live Spaces Photo Module. This is useful if you want to choose which Photo Album you want to show by default, this is the album that will be seen first by your Spaces Visitors. You will also learn how to select which albums you want to display or hide on your Live Spaces Photo module.

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Sign in to Windows Live Spaces with your Windows Live ID (The e-mail address and password that you use to sign in to Windows Live programs and services such as Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger).

• Click on the View your space link. The page will reload, your space will appear.

• Go to your Photo Module and click on the Edit module link. Page will reload again…

• You can choose if you want to display all your albums or only the one’s you want to show. If it is the latter, choose Custom album selection by selecting the radio button next to it. You can now add numbers according to the order in which you want to display the corresponding albums in the input fields found on the right hand side of the albums where it says Order. Add a title for your Photo Album module and after you are done with selecting which album you want to display and the order you want to display them in, click on Save and close. Please see the picture below, it highlights all that I have stated above.

Done!

Note: The album whose Order you put as 1 will be the default album. This is the album that will be shown first on your Photo module for your Live Space.

p.s. If anyone has found a way to reorder pictures in an album please comment below

- Dev, Windows Live Spaces MVP.

The place to find the most recent comments on your photos, blog posts, profile, files and shared favorites is http://profile.live.com/recentcomments.

If you are like me and prefer to navigate from a central place like http://home.live.com, the screen shot below shows where to find the link to recent comments on that page

I have already seen many of you adding comments with HTML and Pictures on your friend’s Guest Book. For those who want to learn how to do this, here is how you do it:

• Open a new blog entry << (Save this link in your favorites for future use)
• Write the guest book comment you want to publish in the blog entry.
• Select the entire comment by highlighting the entire content or by holding down on to the Ctrl key and then pressing A.
• Now go to your friend’s Guest Book. Click on the Add a comment link on their guestbook. Paste your comment by right clicking the empty guestbook comment field or by holding down onto the Ctrl key and then pressing V.
• After pasting your comment, click on the Add button to publish your comment.

Note:

Adding an image:

Via My[confined]Space

P.S. I am not asking you to violate any copyright laws but you can exercise your Copy Rights on the material that you have bought.

There have been a number of questions about the new version of Windows Live web services over the past two days. We really appreciate the feedback and will be taking it into account as we plan and build future versions. We’ve taken some of the most frequently asked questions and answered them here.

Top 5 questions:

Why did I have problems accessing Windows Live pages yesterday, including Spaces, Profile, and Photos?

Yesterday some users intermittently got errors when they tried to access Windows Live web pages. We tracked the problem down to a load issue with some of our DNS servers, and the problem was resolved at around 1:00 PM PST. We’re sorry that some of you had problems accessing our sites, and we want to reassure you that we take the availability of our service very seriously. We’re constantly working to improve the quality and availability of our service – we want you to be able to rely on our service.

What is the story with privacy?

• The privacy and security of your information is a top priority for us, and we want to assure you that we haven’t done anything that changes any of the privacy settings you’ve put in place. We have made changes that allow information you’ve already entered to be shared more easily across Windows Live. This means information you’ve entered is showing up in many more places and can make it look more public than it was before. But, the key thing is that the privacy settings you put in place when you first entered that information are still being honored.
• It’s important to note that your view of your own profile typically shows more information than visitors will see.  For example, you will see your last name on your profile if you’ve entered it before, but unless you’ve explicitly changed the permissions on it, then other people won’t see it when they visit your profile.  This principle holds true throughout Windows Live – people will always (and only) see the content that they have permissions to view.  See this blog post on Windows Live Wire for pictures that show how this works.
• To help address any confusion, the blog post on Windows Live Wire shows you where you can view and edit your permissions, as well as step-by-step instructions you can follow to protect your information the way you want.

How do I keep comments I make from showing up in what’s new?

One of the great things about the updated what’s new system is that it shows the comments your friends left so you can see what’s interesting in the network and join in on the conversation. If you don’t want your comments to show up in what’s new, however, you can go to this page and uncheck the items for Blog, Documents, Guestbook, Notes, Photos, and Shared Favorites. This will turn off all of the what’s new updates you generate for those services, including comments. Keep in mind, turning off the what’s new updates doesn’t prevent someone from going to the item in question and seeing the comment – anyone who can access a blog post, photo, file, etc. can see any comments left on it.

How do you get to your space?

Your Windows Live space is still at the same URL as before (for example: http://thespacecraft.spaces.live.com/).   If you forgot your web address, there are two easy ways to get there:

• Click “Profile” in the header, and then click “Space” in the left-hand navigation area.
• Or, click “More” in the header, then click “Spaces.” On the Spaces page, click the big “View your space” icon near the top. Also, you can always go directly to http://spaces.live.com/ and click “View your space” from there.

How do I get to someone else’s space?

When you are looking at the person’s display picture click on their name to go to their profile, then click on “Space” in the left hand column on their profile (if there is no listing for “Space” that means they don’t have a space). You can find someone in your network on the People page, and you can search for people outside your network.

Privacy questions:

How do I make my photo album, profile details, space, etc. completely private?

When you are editing the permissions for something you can uncheck all of the boxes or click the “Clear these settings” link and then click “Save.” This will make it so only you can access that item.

Are my private messages now visible to everyone? OR What is the Notes feature on my profile?

The private messages (previously called “Messages” in Spaces) you send and receive are NOT public – only you and the person you sent them to can see them. We have introduced a new feature called Notes that lets you leave a public message on someone’s profile. This is a separate feature from Private messages – your private messages are still just between you and the person you are talking with. You can choose who can send you private messages on this page. You can change who can view your notes and who can leave you notes by going to your notes page and clicking “Edit permissions.”

Comment questions:

How do I see recent comments on my stuff?

We’ve built a brand new Recent Comments page, which shows you up to 50 comments made in the last 30 days on your blog, guestbook, photos, and files, as well as notes left on your profile. You can reach this page from the Spaces home page, or from the Windows Live Home page (on the right hand side click the “Do more” link and choose “View recent comments”). You can filter the comments on this page to show you all of your comments, just comments on your space, just photo comments, or photo and file comments.

What have you been doing to reduce comment spam?

We recognize that comment, invitation, and private messaging spam has been a real problem recently. In this release we’ve added a number of anti-spam measures behind the scenes. We don’t want to go into detail about how these measures work, as any information we provide may help spammers out. So far we have seen a significant decrease in the amount of spam in the last 2 days since the release, but we recognize that fighting spam and abuse is an ongoing battle, and we will be continuing to invest in methods to prevent and remove spam and abuse from our network.

Why don’t I have more formatting options for my comments?

In the previous version of Spaces you could use bold, italics, underlines, and hyperlinks in all comments. In guestbook comments, if the owner of the guestbook allowed it, you had much richer formatting options including HTML editing. For regular comments we found that the usage of formatting (other than hyperlinks) was very, very low, and supporting these formatting options made all of the pages that included comments slower to load. In order to improve performance we removed the ability to use bold, italics, and underlines in regular comments. You can still add a hyperlink to your comment – just type the URL in your comment and when you submit the comment it will automatically get fixed up into a clickable URL. If you’ve enabled rich formatting in your guestbook comments we still offer the full range of formatting options, including bold, italic, and underline. If you would like to add an image to your guestbook comments, you can drag a selection over the image in another website and paste it directly into the comment field.

Why are some of the comments on my blog, guestbook, photos, or files missing?

One of the features we built in this release was the ability for you to delete your own comments (great if you notice a typo after you submit your comment and want to delete and resubmit it). We’ve seen some reports that people are “missing” comments that were actually deleted by the people that left them.

Spaces questions:

Why are the spaces statistics not updating?

As part of our release process we have to update a lot of different components. The statistics servers take longer to update than the rest of our servers, which is why you are seeing zero new page views in your statistics since we released. Once the statistics servers finish updating in the next few days your statistics will be available again. In the mean time we are still tracking page views and those page views will be included when the statistics servers are fully updated – you won’t “lose” any page views in this process.

How do I change back to the old Spaces font?

We changed the default font on Spaces to be more readable and consistent with other services on Windows Live.  If you don’t like this change, you can customize your space to use the old font.

Why does BlogIt on a Spaces blog post not quote the original post in my new post?

When we updated our APIs to make them more compliant with web standards we ended up having to reduce the number of quoted characters in the BlogIt function. When clicking BlogIt on short posts you will still have the post quoted in your post, but for longer posts we end up dropping the post body. We know that this is less than ideal, and we’re investigating ways to improve this experience in future releases.

What’s new questions:

How do I remove one of my updates from what’s new?

You can remove updates from what’s new by going to your profile, hovering on the update you want to remove, clicking the “gear” icon to the right of the update, and selecting “Remove this update”.

How do I stop receiving what’s new updates from a specific person?

You can block what’s new updates from a specific person or updates of a specific type from your Home page.  Hover on an update from the person you want to block, click the “gear” icon to the right of the update, and choose to hide updates from that person or that type of update. Or you can go to this page and add a person to your block list or uncheck a type of update that you no longer want to receive.

Miscellaneous questions:

Why can’t I reorder the photos in my albums?

Unfortunately we had to cut reordering photos in albums and reordering photo albums from our feature list. These were two of the features we wanted to have in the new photos experience, and we are considering adding these features in a future release.

Why don’t some of my friends are show up in my network?

A very small number of people are affected by this issue, which will be fixed in the near future. As part of our update we are running a migration job on everyone’s friends list. If you added someone to your friends list between November 20th and December 2nd it is possible that that person will not show up in your network. We are completing our friends list migration by December 15th,  and at that time any missing friends should be back in the list of people in your network. If there are people missing from your network that were added before November 20^th please let us know us know by leaving a comment.

How do I turn off e-mail notifications when someone sends me an invitation?

You can change your communication preferences, including who can send you an invitation and whether you get e-mail notifications on this page. You can get to this page by going to any Options page (from the options menu on every page), choosing “Windows Live” in the left hand navigation, and then clicking “Communications preferences.”

Why do some people have “No name” as their name?

If you’re seeing “No name”, it means that person hasn’t put a name into Windows Live. We’ve built a number of notifications into Windows Live that encourage people to set their name, so as time goes on you should see fewer and fewer of these “No name” people. You can change your name on this page. We also had a temporary problem (now fixed!) during the early hours of this release that made some people appear as “No name” even when they had a name. If you see others that have “No name,” encourage them to go to that link and change their name. Your name will appear on your profile and anywhere else in Windows Live where your identity is shown.

How do I delete a friend?

You can delete a friend from your People page, which you can access by clicking the People link in the header of most pages. On the main people page, select the checkbox of the person you’d like to delete and then click “Delete” from the action links at the top.

Via The Space Craft

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- Dev, Windows Live Spaces MVP

The Windows Live Team blog has posted an excellent article regarding Privacy and Permission settings on Windows Live. It covers all aspect and areas of all Windows Live services and gives you the relevant links that will help you control and set your privacy and permissions to your preferable level.

I had posted an article that showed you how to manage the 'What’s new’ updates section and permission settings in your Profile and Spaces. It has a few screenshots which could help you if you are confused. But the article by the Windows Live Team blog just about covers everything.

Most of the changes can be made via http://profile.live.com/details/ but if you want total control, keep reading….

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Via Windows Live Team Blog

• The privacy and security of your information is a top priority for us, and we want to assure you that we haven’t done anything that changes any of the privacy settings you’ve put in place. We have made changes that allow information you’ve already entered to be shared more easily across Windows Live. This means information you’ve entered is showing up in many more places and can make it look more public than it was before. But, the key thing is that the privacy settings you put in place when you first entered that information are still being honored.
• It’s important to note that your view of your own profile typically shows more information than visitors will see.  For example, you will see your last name on your profile if you’ve entered it before, but unless you’ve explicitly changed the permissions on it, then other people won’t see it when they visit your profile.  This principle holds true throughout Windows Live – people will always (and only) see the content that they have permissions to view.  See below for pictures that show how this works.
  Here is an example of Joe User’s profile, viewed by himself (left), next to the same profile viewed by a public visitor (right). 

The visitor sees much less information (right), because Joe hasn’t given them permission to see it.

How to change who can see what

To help address any confusion, we’ve pulled together the following links to where you can view and edit your permissions, as well as step-by-step instructions you can follow to protect your information the way you want.

Profile info

• Name - Choose whether to make your last name public
• Profile picture – Choose who can see your profile picture.  Note that this is separate from your Messenger picture.
• Your network– Choose who can see who is in your network (which is made up of your old Messenger contacts and your Spaces friends).
• About you – Choose who can see your basic info like your occupation, location, and interests.
• Your personal message – Choose who can see your status message.
• Contact info – Choose who can see your contact info like your email address and mobile phone number.
• Social – Choose who can see information like your favorite quote.
• Work info – Choose who can see what company you work for.
• Favorite things – Choose who can see the books, music, and movies you’ve added to your profile.

Invitations and communication preferences

• Communication preferences – Choose who can invite you to their network, and if you want to get e-mail notifications when they invite you.
• Notes – Choose who can post notes onto your profile, and who can view them.
• Photo and file comments – Choose if you want to allow comments on your photos and files.
• Blog comments – Choose if you want to allow comments on your blog posts. (See step-by-step instructions below)
• Guestbook comments – Choose how people can comment on your guestbook. (See step-by-step instructions below)
• People tagging – Choose if you want to allow your contacts to tag you and if you want to allow tagging of people in your photos.

What’s New

• What’s new with you - Choose which of your activities (like posting photos or adding to your network) that you want others to see. You can remove individual items and/or remove all future items for each type of activity. (See step-by-step instructions below)
• Web activities - Choose who will see your activities from other web services like Flickr and Twitter.

Your content

• Your space – Choose who can view your Space (including your blog).
• Your photos – Choose who can view photos in each of your albums.
• Your files – Choose who can view files in each of your folders.

Step-by-step instructions

Here are the specific steps to follow if you want to change the permissions in any of these areas:

Profile info

Name

1. http://account.live.com/editname.aspx
2. Make any changes you would like.
3. Click Save.

Profile picture

1. http://account.live.com/editpic.aspx
2. Make any changes you would like.
3. Click Save.

Your network

1. http://home.live.com/options/
2. Click Network permissions (lower left)
3. Make any changes you would like.
4. Click Save.

About you

1. http://account.live.com/editabout.aspx
2. Make any changes you would like.
3. Click Save.

Your personal message

1. http://account.live.com/editprofileaccess.aspx?pa=psm
2. Make any changes you would like.
3. Click Save.

Contact info

1. http://account.live.com/editcontact.aspx
2. Make any changes you would like.
3. Click Save.

Social

1. http://account.live.com/editinterests.aspx
2. Make any changes you would like
3. Click [Save]

Work info

1. http://account.live.com/editwork.aspx
2. Make any changes you would like.
3. Click Save.

Favorite things

1. http://profile.live.com/FavoriteThings/
2. Click Edit permissions.
3. Make any changes you would like.
4. Click Save.

Note: You can also add, delete, or edit any item in your Favorite Things from step 1.

Invitations and communication

Communication preferences

1. http://spaces.live.com/commpref.aspx
2. Make any changes you would like.
3. Click Save.

Notes

1. http://profile.live.com/notes/
2. Click Edit permissions
3. Make any changes you would like.
4. Click Save.

Note: By default, only people in your network can post notes

Note: You can delete a note posted on your profile by clicking Delete next to the note.

Photo and file comments

1. http://skydrive.live.com/commentoptions.aspx
2. Make any changes you would like.
3. Click Save.

Blog comments

1. http://spaces.live.com/
2. Click View your space (top left).
3. Click the Options menu (top right) and then click Blog.
4. Make any changes you would like.
5. Click Save.

Note: If you know the web address of your space, you can skip steps 1-3 by going to http://<your_space>.spaces.live.com/options/blog/

Guestbook comments

1. http://spaces.live.com/
2. Click View your space (top left).
3. Click the Options menu (top right) and then click Guestbook.
4. Make any changes you would like.
5. Click Save.

Note: If you know the web address of your space, you can skip 1-3 by going to http://<your_space>.spaces.live.com/options/guestbook/

People tagging

1. http://skydrive.live.com/peopleoptions.aspx
2. Make any changes you would like.
3. Click Save.

What’s New

Remove an update from What’s New with you

1. http://profile.live.com/
2. Hold your mouse pointer over the update.
3. Click the round blue gear (Settings icon) that appears at right.
4. Click Remove this update.

Remove future updates from What’s New with you

1. http://profile.live.com/whatsnewwithyousettings/
2. Make any changes you would like.
3. Click Save.

Hide updates from specific people from “What’s new with your network”

1. http://profile.live.com/whatsnewsettings/
2. Type the name or e-mail address of the person whose updates you want to hide.
3. Click Hide.
4. You should see a yellow bar at the top that says “Your changes have been saved.”

Hide updates of a specific type from “What’s New with your network”

1. http://profile.live.com/whatsnewsettings/
2. Select or clear the check boxes under Updates from Windows Live and Updates from web activities
3. Click Save.
4. You should see a yellow bar at the top that says “Your changes have been saved.”

Web activities

1. http://profile.live.com/webactivities/
2. Click Manage web activities.
3. Click Edit under the web activity that you want to change the settings for.
4. Make any changes you would like.
5. Click Save.

Note: You can also add web activities from step 1 by clicking Add under the web activity you want to add.

Your content

Your space

1. On the Home page, click More, and then click Spaces, or go to: http://spaces.live.com/.
2. Click View your space (top left).
3. Click the Options menu (top right) and then click Permissions.
4. Make any changes you would like.
5. Click Save.

Note: If you know the web address of your space, you can skip 1-3 by going to http://<your_space>.spaces.live.com/options/permissions/

Your photos

1. http://skydrive.live.com/albums.aspx
2. Click the album you want to work with.
3. At the bottom, it will say “Shared with: <who the album is shared with>”. Click whoever it is shared with currently.
4. Click Edit permissions
5. Make any changes you would like.
6. Click Save.

Note: You also set album permissions when you create a new album

Your files

1. http://skydrive.live.com/home.aspx
2. Click the folder you want to work with.
3. At the bottom, it will say “Shared with: <who the folder is shared with>”. Click whoever it is shared with currently.
4. Click Edit permissions.
5. Make any changes you would like.
6. Click Save.

Note: You also set folder permissions when you create a new folder

RSS feed of your space

1. http://spaces.live.com/
2. Click View your space (top left).
3. Click the Options menu (top right) and then click General.
4. Select or clear the check box for Syndicate this space (this will only be available if your space is public)
5. Click Save.

Note: If you know the web address of your space, you can skip 1-3 by going to http://<your_space>.spaces.live.com/options/general/

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- Dev, Windows Live Spaces MVP

Rob has posted an entry that will help Windows Live and Spaces users, dissatisfied by the updates where they feel that their privacy has gone out of the window. You can control most if not all aspects of the updates that show up on your profile and on your 'What's new with your network' page. I have added a more info to the tutorial that Rob created.

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First,

Sign in to Windows Live Home with your Windows Live ID (The e-mail address and password that you use to sign in to Windows Live programs and services such as Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger).

You can now carry out any of the following>>

How to delete any item from 'What's new with you':

• Go to your Profile
• Hover over a What’s New update
• Click the blue gear that appears at right
• Select “Remove this update” as shown below:

----------------

How to change what types of updates you’ll publish in the future:

• Go to http://profile.live.com/whatsnewwithyousettings/
• Check or un-check the update types that you want to publish and click the [Save] button

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How to change what types of updates show up on 'What's new with your network':

Note:

Both your Windows Live Home page and Spaces Home page have the 'What's new with your network' section. This section on the Windows Live Home page covers updates from all the Windows Live and 3rd party such as blogs, twitter updates, notes, photos, files, etc. The section on the Spaces Home page only covers the updates regarding spaces. But both of them have a common place where you can select what type of updates you want to receive or see from your network and the respective home pages will be updated accordingly depending on what you want have selected to receive.

Other windows Live services have their respective 'What's new with your network' sections.

Photos: http://home.live.com/whatsnew.aspx?filter=photos

Skydrive: http://home.live.com/whatsnew.aspx?filter=files

Spaces: http://home.live.com/whatsnew.aspx?filter=spaces

All: http://home.live.com/whatsnew.aspx

----------------

Setting your Profile Permissions:

All the updates types that you chose to publish from http://profile.live.com/whatsnewwithyousettings/ are only shown to whom you want to show. To change this setting...

• Go to your Profile
• Click on the 'Edit profile details' link or in the left pane, click on 'Details' (Shown below).

Go to the item that you want to change. Next to Shared with, click on the current setting, and then select who can see the information.

• To share the information with anyone on the Internet, select Everyone (public).
• To allow anyone in your network to view the information, select My network. Additionally, to allow people in your friends' networks to view the information, select My extended network.
• To restrict access to people in any of your categories, select one or more of the categories from the list.
• To share the information with certain people, under Individuals, type in the e-mail address, or select from your contact list.
• Click Save.

----------------

Setting your Spaces Permissions:

For Spaces users, You can set your permission settings from the options link which is found on the top right hand region of your space. Click on the link and select 'Permissions' from the drop down menu (shown below).

Selecting who you want to show your Space is similar to setting permission for the Profile Page as mentioned above.Once you finish setting up your permission click on the 'Save button' to save your permission settings.

----------------

Note:

Similar permission settings are available for other Windows Live services such as Photos, Sky Drive, etc. (Once signed in search for a link, 'More' from the drop down menu select, 'Edit Permissions').

I hope this tutorial covers all aspects regarding your privacy settings for Windows Live and Spaces. Your feedback is valuable.

- Dev, Windows Live Spaces MVP

Rob has written in detail about the New updates in Windows Live 'wave 3'. You might want to check out the links below. They could help you understand these changes and perhaps solve a few problems or frustrations that you might have with the updates.

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• Bringing What’s New to Windows Live Messenger

• What’s New: Friends / Joined Network

• What’s New: blog entries and blog comments

• What’s New: photos and photo comments

• New What's New update types for the upcoming Windows Live (overview)

• Windows Live “What’s New” update types: Notes

• Windows Live “What’s New”: Messenger Status and Messenger Pic

• Windows Live "What’s New" update types: Files and File Comments

• Windows Live: What's New with you, What's New with your network, and Collapsing

• How to add Twitter to Windows Live What's New

- Dev, Windows Live Spaces MVP

I can access the Spaces Home and Profile page but can't access Photos or Spaces or see the recent comments or private messages page. A network error page comes up. Anyone else facing this issue?

- Dev (Posted with Live writer)

Update: It seems to be working now :)

With the new updates out for Windows Live and Spaces I have got some feedback from you. They include some suggestions to improve the service and problems you might be facing with the services. They have been listed below>>

• The profile page does not have a meaningful URL

The Profile page while being useful in helping us integrate various Live services and keeping track of updates in our network of friends, lacks a meaningful URL. I think it was an error to have overlooked such a small but yet a significant aspect of the the WL launch which integrates many of Microsoft's online services and uses the Profile page as a hub to keep track of all the activity and updates.

If you notice all the profile pages have a random cid URL. Mine for example is,  http://cid-73af9c0f050e35d9.profile.live.com/. Should it not be http://d3vmax.profile.live.com , so that it can be easily given to your friends and family and be easy on everyone's memory cells? I spoke to Dare about this and he said they will look into it.

Update: They have taken note of this issue and are trying to resolve it. I am not aware of any time frame at the moment though. 

• Stats do not seem to be working for Live Spaces - Resolved

The statistics page for your Live Spaces, while being simple is quite handy. But it seems to be down at the moment for me and stands at 0. This has occurred many a times over the past years and can be quite frustrating for users who want to know where their incoming traffic comes from or companies using spaces as their blogging platform.

Update: Statistics will be up and running in a couple of days time. Word from a team member:

"The migration of the user stats database requires more time than the rest of the deployment. We're expecting the migration to be done in the next couple of days, and we're queuing up the incoming updates, so once the migration is done none of your traffic data will be lost."

Update 2: Stats are up and running

• Reduction in the number of Friends/People - A few isolated cases - Resolved
  

A few users have complained that after the update a few friends are missing from their Friends list on Live Spaces, while they are still on the Friend list of the person who is missing from their list. Although this problem might be affecting a very small number of people it is something that needs to be looked into.

Update: I think before the updates, deleting a non messaging contact from your MSN / Live Messenger did not affect the friends list on your Space. A few people, after adding contacts via their Space are deleting these contacts from their messenger to keep it 'clean'. As everything now is integrated and all your contacts are in one place, Iit is not wise to delete your non-messaging contacts from Live Messenger. You can easy hide these contacts by un-checking the 'Show all contacts' option which can be found by click on the up and down green arrows icon near the contact search bar. Your messenger stays 'clean' and your friends do not not go MIA.

• 'Blog it' functionality reduced / malfunctioning

The 'Blog it' feature / link found under most Live Spaces blog posts was an easy way to quote interesting articles. For example an update on The Live Spaces team blog which informs the LS users about new updates could easily be published on my space with a click of a mouse button. This facilitates in getting the word out for useful or important posts in less time. When I clicked the' blog it 'link on one of the recent posts on The Space Craft ,only the title for the article got carried over and nothing else as the text field in my blog entry was blank. Perhaps this was intentional, if not this is an issue that needs to be fixed too.

• Spam still persistent - Resolved
  

Spam comments have still not stopped. Since the update I have already got 2. If by the end of the day I don't get 80+ spam comments, I can confirm that changes have been made. and they seem to work. But reporting spammers via the report abuse link is a time consuming process and users should be given instant control over blocking a specific user even if he/she has commented and not left leave behind his/her's URL via the hover menu that comes up when you hover a mouse over a display picture.

As you need to sign into your Live ID to comment and Microsoft has the info on the comment made by a LIVE ID usere, They can block the specific spammer on the spot from commenting on the victims's space once the victim has flagged the user as a spammer. If a spammer/user gets a lot of blocks from many users, Microsoft should look into the case and evaluate whether the complaints are part of a group organized effort, to bring down an individual (Gaming the system); Or from a genuine diverse set of users blocking a spammer. If it is the latter it should block the spammer's activity from all live services and block his space. They (alleged spammer) can of course file an appeal in case innocent users are ever marked as spammers by sheer bad luck or an unexplained reason

Update: The Spam has been reduced and is insignificant in terms of numbers when compared to a week ago. Great work LS Team :)

Problems with the Photo Album and Live Photos.

A few points commented by one Live Spaces user which sums up the problems well...

1) can't re-order my photo albums unless I choose to show only 20 of them (but I got like 100 albums), frankly, the old drag-and-drop version is much much more user-friendly
2) can no longer change the order of the photos in the album
3) can no longer rotate the photos before I upload them
4) can no longer change the captions in thumbnail view
5) can no longer del. several photos in one go

---------------- .

This is all that I have for now. Please comment below if you are facing any problems with the new updates or have some suggestions to improve it. I will update the list accordingly. Over all it is a major update and it takes the service ahead in terms of integration and other things and I thank the Spaces team and the team behind Windows Live services that made this possible.

-Dev, Windows Live Spaces MVP

Jamie  has written an excellent article which highlight the enhancements in the upcoming update to Windows Live products which include Windows Live Spaces as well.

Please click here to read the full article >>

Via Marcus @ Microsoft  

I have previously stated my admiration for Common Craft and the work they do.  They recently completed a project with us to create one of their signature videos to explain some of the new things you’ll see in Windows Live.  Check it out below and let me know what you think.

Common Craft Video about Windows Live

     

As an interesting side note, Common Craft is based here in the Seattle area and I had the chance to meet Lee LeFever at a recent community roundtable gathering organized by Bill Johnston.  After we were introduced, I asked him what he did.  After he told me, I realized I should have guessed from the sound of his voice!  It was great meeting the guy behind the videos.

- Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager

Via Community Clubhouse

Last week, we held a Live Meeting event where Jamie Cannon from the Windows Live team joined us to review the new social networking features in Windows Live.  He specifically talked through what’s new in Windows Live Spaces.  The recorded video of the session is below:

     

 

 

Thanks to everyone who joined us, and a special “thank you” to Jamie for presenting.

- Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager

 

 

I have just started blogging again and was glad to see people commenting but when I signed into my account today I had around 100+ spam comments. It is really annoying and frustrating that Live Spaces which  requires people to sign in to their account(s) in order to comment can get more spam that websites/blogs that doesn't require you to sign in.

It has been over half an year since I reported this and nothing has been done to curb it. I really don't know why a few simple features which I mentioned in a post earlier and by other users cannot be implemented. I have to manually open my blog entry in which the comments were left, click on the edit link, the page reloads and then I have to manually delete around 10 comments from each blog and wait for a pop which ask me if I want to delete the comment every time. For recent blog entries I can delete multiple comments via the summary page but for older blogs which are hidden deep in the archives this is simply not possible.

I would like the Live Spaces team to fix this issue as it spoils the user experience like no other thing and it is a shame that even after 6 months nothing has been done about it. Other Blogging/ Social networks like facebook, etc. move really quickly when there is such a large user experience issue at hand.

10 bucks there will be spam comments on this post as well.

What are you thoughts? Please comment...

<Screenshot of one of my blog entries>

Update:

Microsoft ranks 5th on inglorious spam-friendly ISP list

Microsoft is the world’s fifth worst spam service ISP, according to a new list compiled by Spamhaus.org.

The software giant’s high ranking in the unsolicited email game might, it would be fair to surmise, cause a few blushes among Redmond wonks.

Not so, according to Spamhaus chief information officer Richard Cox, who claims to have repeatedly notified MS about its rise up the inglorious list, to no avail.

He told the Washington Post that the company’s live.com and livefilestore.com web properties are being abused by swindlers and scammers who are increasingly redirecting visitors to sites that sell porn, dodgy medicine and peddle Nigeria 419 scams.

Read the full article>>

p.s. I think Live Spaces is a big of part of it.