This week we posted some new videos on www.windows.com and www.windowslive.com . We call them demos but really they’re little stories about people using Windows to do more, connect with loved ones and share memories. I’m excited about the videos for a Read More……(read more)

This week we posted some new videos on www.windows.com and www.windowslive.com. We call them demos but really they’re little stories about people using Windows to do more, connect with loved ones and share memories. I’m excited about the videos for a couple of reasons (besides the fact that it’s always fun to have something you had a hand in producing actually Out There – in front of real people who will have real opinions about them) – naturally I’m excited about the chance to paint a picture of Windows Vista and Windows Live working together and to showcase new features and capabilities in the product, but what I’m most excited about is the opportunity to put Windows in the context of people’s lives – which is an approach we haven’t traditionally taken with product demos on the Windows website.

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I went out on a limb a bit with these videos because of this – our initial storyboards revolved around the product, just showing the UI and talking about the benefits, but I felt very passionately about the fact that we have to talk to people about stuff that’s important to them. To my knowledge, most normal people on the street don’t buy technology because it’s cool or new – they buy technology because it helps them do things they couldn’t otherwise do, or do things more easily. I strongly believe in leading with people’s lives and having the product naturally integrate. Luckily I work in a group who are serious about getting better at talking to customers and helping customers to discover the capabilities of their Windows PCs so, after arguing my case, I was given the chance to try this new approach.

·        People want time to spend with people who are important to them, and Windows can help them do that by enhancing their productivity.

·        People have good times together and want to relive those memories or share them with others, and Windows gives them choices about how they can best do that.

·        People want to stay close to people who aren’t necessarily nearby, and Windows makes that possible. 

It makes me think about those Mastercard ads – “PC with Windows Vista, webcam and internet connection: from $600; Windows Live Messenger: free download; making distant relatives not so distant: priceless…”  

Putting Windows in context of people’s lives is my passion – I love Windows Vista and Windows Live together: I love that my niece and nephew are safer on the PC and online with our products; I love that I can have a video call with my Mom in deepest Africa; I love that I can share my life with my friends in Australia on my Windows Live Space, and that I can upload pictures to Facebook directly from my site… And if I can use stories to help other people see how naturally these products fit into and enhance their lives – their digital lives – I believe that they’ll start realizing the potential sitting right there in the PC in front of them.

Do you have opinions about the new videos? Is this a valid way to talk to people – not necessarily technical, geeky super users, but everyday people on the street? I’d love your feedback so we can keep evolving how we talk to customers!

Announcing the Windows Live Suite on the same day as the new iPod touch crafted by God himself might not have been the brightest idea, but Windows Live still managed to get some attention by the usual suspects. The hype has been around this unified installer which not surprisingly does exactly what the label says and nothing more. I decided to give it a whirl but was surprised by not what it did, but how.

For those that haven’t tried already, you point your browser to http://get.live.com/WL/ and you will come across this splash screen. At first, it might look like a silly ’sign-up’ form which you must complete to gain access to the downloads, but in fact you’re asked to choose what you want to install in the suite. I thought to myself, “oh that’s neat. I’m choosing what I want to install on a web page.” Then I pondered, “how does this actually work?”

After pressing “Install”, you’re asked to download the installer’s executable. At this point, I started wondering if this executable was somehow dynamically generated or prepackaged to install only the things I selected, nevertheless I hyper-clicked all the next buttons until it eventually started installing. Not surprisingly, it only downloaded and installed the applications I chose. Whatever it did, it worked.

Unsatisfied with “it just works”, I decided to investigate further. I first analyzed the HTML to see what effect it had on the download link when I selected the different options, but no luck there, it pointed to the same “WLinstaller.exe”. To prove a point, I then downloaded the executable without going through the form to compare it with the other executable I already, it was the same. So if the executable didn’t change, then it can only be the website.

One more look at the HTML and specifically the Javascript reveals the secret, cookies. By clicking “Install”, the Javascript generated a unique cookie for me under the name of “wlxp” that contained sets of globally unique identifiers (GUID) which I now know are the references to the particular applications I selected.

document.cookie="wlxp=p="+finalList.join(",").toLowerCase()+"&t="+t+";expires="+d;

Just to make sure, I even ran Process Monitor on the process to check out its file system requests.

Even though I had already known about the cookies, it still shocked me a little to see it actually query my file system first to find any cookies for “live.com”, then start accessing those cookies to find the relevant information. Same applies for Firefox, which I was using at the time. In fact, it’s even more complicated for Firefox because it first has to find my profiles, then shift through megabytes of cookies in the single repository to find the “live.com” one.

Whilst this might seem like a lot of work just to check what I want to install, I think it’s a neat idea with a lot of indirect potential. A few that popped into my mind quickly included:

• Third party applications or bundles - assuming the installer simply downloads from the Microsoft server anything matching the supplied GUIDs, you could easily deliver additional applications or service beyond those by Microsoft without bundling them into the installer
• Universal installer - this installer will require less if any maintenance since it can be suited to download any application, any version, any bundle by simply changing GUIDs in the browser
• Special promotions - imagine if you have accessed a promotional website which offered Live Messenger freebies, by simply adding a code to the cookie, only you will be given access to download these exclusive freebies

Someone suggested to me this is not new and in fact Adobe may have done this in the past with the Acrobat download bundles, however I think they changed the download URL to a whole new package with or without the bundle depended on your decision, instead of the truly unified installer in this case.

And also if you’re wondering what happens if you don’t have the cookies or have cookies disabled, then you’ll simply be offered a different installation experience where you select which products you’d like to install (left).

P.S. If you’re running X64 and questioning the purpose of life, then check out Rafael’s hack to get Windows Live Suite working on X64.