The Windows Live Wave 3 comes ashore
Dec 11 2008
Beginning last Wednesday Dec 3, the long-promised Wav 3 updates to the Windows Live Internet Services began appearing as people signed in to their Windows Live ID:
- a new home page (home.live.com) to catch up on any new mail, see what others in your network have been doing (such as posting new photos), access your Office Live Workspace documents, edit your profile – in a word, the home page is the jump-off page to other Live online services you’re using
- a separate profile page (profile.live.com) to change your online appearance, e.g., your Messenger display picture, and, most importantly, where you can allow or disallow what people in your network can see about you
- a new peoples page (people.live.com) with all the members of your Messenger contact list, Live Spaces friends and other contacts from your Hotmail contact list all in one place
- a photos page (photos.live.com) where all your photos are in one place that works with Live Skydrive to give you 25,000 megabytes of free online storage for your photo albums.
- a groups page (groups.live.com), for example a family group, to see which groups you’re a member of, and, if you’re a group owner, you can invite others to join the group, begin a discussion, and access the group calendar and a group’s Live Space website.
What’s an easy way to get to these pages?
The answer to this question depends on what you want to find out. For example, your Aunt Maud mentioned the other day that she’s going to upload photos from her trip to the outback. So you want to know if she’s done that. The quick way to find out is to go to your What’s New page and browse through what people on your network have been doing. To do this the simple way,, sign in to Live Messenger and click the What’s New link. This is the method that webDotWiz has been advising the webDotWizards to use over the past couple of years.
** s/shot of my what’s new page **
Because all the new Windows Live pages have easily recognisable links to the other pages at the top of the page (e.g., Mail, People, Profile, Photos, Spaces), you might prefer to make your Windows Live Home page (home.live.com) your browser homepage. Then you’ll see some of the mail in your inbox and a list of what people in your network have done lately (under What’s new with your network).
As well there are links to other pages on Windows Live to share photos, add people to your network, read news headlines, and access documents on your Office Live Workspace (phew, at last an easy way to get there).
** s/shot of my home page **
Note that under the day and date there’s the weather forecast and other items – each of these is a link. The painted-out item is a reminder from the owner’s calendar so clicking that link would have taken the owner to his/her calendar to read more details (e.g., location and appointment time).
Permissions and your Profile page
About four years ago when the webDotWizards were first setting up their Live Space, webDotWiz guided everybody through all the different permissions that could be allocated to the different pieces of information that other people could view. A similar process has taken place since whenever a new webDotWizard sets up their Live Space.
Permissions range from who you allow to see your surname to viewing your email address to who can view your photo albums and photos.
Now that there’s a separate profile page (profile.live.com) we’re all in a bit of a shock to see our details all in one place. However, note that all permissions have been preserved from those early days. It’s worth looking through your profile page permissions from time to time to remind yourself of what information you’re allowing (or disallowing) others to view about you.
Remember that the amount of information others see on your profile page is not as much as you see on your profile page because of the level of permissions you set.
By the way, you might wonder why there’s a What’s new with <yourname> section. From experience it’ll be a great help when uploading lots of photos, for example, or checking your memory if you’ve published that really important item on your Live Space website.