Many developers keep asking me - How do you define Windows Live? If you visit the official Live portal, you will read the following:

"Windows Live™ is a new set of services that brings your online world together. Finally, the information you need, the people you care about, and powerful protection – all at your fingertips."

That quite doesn't explain what it means to a developer. During my preparation for IndiMix'06, I got an opportunity to work with the Windows Live Platform Services Group at the Microsoft India Development Center. Gurpreet Pall, who is the director of Windows Live Platform Services, explained what Windows Live means to a hardcore developer. When I heard it the first time, I told myself that it can't get simpler than this!

Below is the graphic explaining this:

And here comes the explanation - Traditionally, Microsoft has always offered Windows as an OS and MSN as a Portal. While the end users see the Operating System services of Windows like File / Print services, security, User Interface, the developers always looked at the programmability side of Windows. Win32 API, MFC, COM, .NET and so on. Similarly, MSN has two offerings. The content portal and the network components. Content Portal is a syndication site which offers you content that you can read just the like the way you read news in your newspaper. The network components are additional services that MSN offered. These include Hotmail, Messenger, Spaces, Alerts, Passport etc. But what has been missing for a long time is the programmability or the API side of MSN. We couldn't really write code to talk to hotmail or spaces and other services (Messenger and Alerts are programmable for quite some time). When the programmability features of the Windows platform are combined with the network components of MSN, you have a brand new platform called the Windows Live Platform. This brings in the programmability feature to various services. So, simply putting it, Windows Live Platform = MSN Network Components + Windows Programmability. If you disagree with this, drop a comment and I would love to hear from you on why you disagree!


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