About a week ago I read on Channel 10 that Live Mesh was available to everyone on the U.S. Sarah Perez even gave me a tip: I could try it too! I just had to change my Windows Regional Settings, to tell Live Mesh servers that I was from the U.S. Shame on me, lying in order to access Live Mesh.
I wrote about Live Mesh some time ago. Now that I am using it I can say that is just as I was expecting. You can register your devices (just Windows-based computers, for now) in Live Mesh in order to sync files between devices and remotely control devices. The screenshot bellow shows the devices list page. It includes your registered devices, a special device called “Live Desktop” and an Add Device button.
That “special device” Live Desktop to which you can connect is a simple interface where you can access your shared folders, download stored files, create folders, upload files, etc. AJAX allows a kind of user experience that resembles to a real Windows desktop, so the name “Live Desktop” is appropriate. Since you can share files/folders with other people, in order to keep track on your Mesh you have access to a “News” panel where you can stay up to date with changes that have been made.
The client software that you download from Live Mesh and install in your computers has an interface that is identical to the panel that is available on Live Desktop. This application notifies you when any change happens, and takes charge of all the syncing-related tasks. Bellow you can see a “Programs” folder on my desktop. Folders that you have in Live Mesh are fully integrated with Windows Explorer, so you can browse them as any regular folder. You can even share a regular folder in Live Mesh just by right-clicking it and choose the context-menu option “Add folder to your Live Mesh…”.
I must confess that I haven’t used the folder sync functionalities. I just tried one time after I installed Live Mesh, but one great functionality that I have been using is Remote Desktop. Using Internet Explorer you can remotely control any of your Windows devices from anywhere in the world where you have an internet connections, without any particular software, just an ActiveX control that acts as an Internet Explorer plugin.
Remote Desktop works pretty well. I can even browse in the web, check e-mail, install software, etc, in the remote device using this functionality. You can only connect to a device that isn’t currently in use and has the Live Mesh application installed, so if you are like me, and what to control your home computer from work, don’t forget to leave if locked or logged off. I have been having some issues with connectivity. When I loose my connection to the web, I get a retry connection button from Live Mesh, but it almost never works… Another issue is related with copy/paste files between your local machine and your remote device. It is way too slow… And copying text from the local clipboard to the device doesn’t always work. Well… It is just a Tech Preview, not a final version.
The mobile version of Live Mesh has became available this week, it allows you to check the news on your Mesh and download files. It is available at the address https://m.mesh.com. A Mac version of Live Mesh is on development.
So far Live Mesh is a mashup and rebranding of several “old” Microsoft products like Folder Share for file sync, the Remote Desktop connections via web browser of Windows Server 2003, and since we have 5Gb of storage that can be used not only for sync but also for sharing with other people, has a little bit of Windows Live SkyDrive. But the kind of integration that Live Mesh brings is pretty great as an user experience improvement.
Weave is an experimental prototype from Mozilla Labs that integrates online services with Firefox.
“As the Web continues to evolve and more of our lives move online, we believe that Web browsers like Firefox can and should do more to broker rich experiences while increasing user control over their data and personal information.”
Seems nice. But I’m pretty sure that I would not store all my passwords on the cloud in a service like this. But to store bookmarks, history, cookies (excluding the authentication ones) and tabs is pretty useful. I tried this service today, and it was toooo slow. I’ll way for a more efficient version of this experimental software.
I would prefer a browser independent solution, but that is too much to ask. Nevertheless it may be nice in the future. Meanwhile I’ll keep using Windows Live Favorites. If I used Internet Explorer as my main browser, it would be perfect, but it will have to do.
Recently I’ve been exploring the Windows Live Agents SDK. This framework allows you to develop interactive Windows Live Messenger bots. You may already talked to a messenger bot like encarta@conversagent.com which allows you to search information from Encarta Encyclopedia or if you are Portuguese maybe you use info@destakes.com which gives you news about topics you choose, using data from several news websites.
To start developing your Agent/Bot/Buddy you must have Visual Studio 2005/2008 installed as well as .NET Framework 3.0. More details about requirements can be found in the Installation Requirements web page.
Now you are able to start developing your first agent! Open Visual Studio and open the “New Project” window. There will be a new project template under the “BuddyScript” project type. After choosing the “Windows Live Agent” project template, and typing your project name, you will be prompted for some project settings. You can choose several languages for your Agent and define if it will be able to do some default chatting with users. The only problem I found is that a project created this way is way too complex for a beginner, and if (like me) your target language is not supported or if you want your agent being able just to respond to specific messages, it is pretty difficult to use this template.
After hours trying to find out that was really relevant, I’ve created a Simple Project Template from which I removed a lot of files and settings from the original project. It has only some usage examples in Main.ddl (main BuddyScript file). This project is testable out of the box
The examples I left on the file are pretty simple. They cover how to set an expected input and how the bot is supposed to react. It also uses a package that makes available information about the current user, like his user name. I left some comments in the code. There are a lot of possibilities that can be explored. Something I tried already and that I will share in future posts is the usage of data sources like XML, Databases, RSS, etc. If you are curious about BuddyScript capabilities take a look at the BuddyScript Language Reference.
In order to test your agents you must have a license key, which is easy to obtain from within Visual Studio. Check out How to: Install the License Key.
You can test your agents directly in Visual Studio (Menu View > Other Windows > Conversation Window) with the interface showed bellow.
Another way of testing your Agent which is much more fun, since you can ask your friends to test it too, is deploying your Agent on the Windows Live Messenger network.
Next time I will talk about using data sources, background procedure (code that runs detached from user conversations), notifications (scheduling messages) and how to create pro-active agents that starts conversations instead of responding to user requests.
Everyone that attended to the 4th Mobile Technologies Seminar by PocketPT.net won a free license of NDrive 3.1 for Pocket PC. So I left TomTom behind for a few days to try this Portuguese software. First of all I just love the user interface. The dark colors are great. In the menus you are able to scroll using your fingers, which is always nice.
The interface is pretty simple, which is normal since it has fewer functionality that TomTom. It doesn’t allow your to plan a trip and see it in images or to add pit stops to your navigation plan. But since I don’t plan pit stops very often, this isn’t a problem for me. And it has a demo version of the navigation when your GPS is off, and I am able to use to do some planning after all.
NDrive has a lot of Points of Interest (POIs) at least in the map of Portugal that I have. I really like the dynamic POIs that allow your to download information about the weather, traffic, events, pharmacies and speed cameras. I like that I don’t need to be online while driving to have access to this data. I can synchronize it before I leave home and head to my destination free of GPSR charge.
Another feature that amazed me was the amount of information about the POIs that is available. Below you can see information about Convento de Mafra (in Portuguese, thought). Address, description and even pictures. This software can be very useful if you are in some place which is not familiar to you and you want to choose a place to visit.
If you search for a restaurant, NDrive has not only the description and address but also phone numbers, e-mails and website. While reading these details you have a menu that allows you to browse to the website, call the restaurant or send the location information to a friend (ohh, and navigate to the restaurant, of course ).
Some POIs have 3D models that are shown in the map. It is nice, I don’t think that it is that useful, but it is a nice geeky feature.
The software is very responsive and easy to configure. The driving directions are great, just as TomTom. One thing that I noticed as a problem was the information about speed limits accuracy. The information available in my map almost always tells me that I can travel in a higher speed that I actually can. As a consequence the time that is shown to me as the estimated travel time is pretty wrong. Nevertheless I must say that I paid much more attention to this speed issue in NDrive than in TomTom, so this can be a common issue, who knows.
From now on I will use NDrive instead of TomTom. It fits my needs. Thanks for this software license, PocketPT.net and NDrive.
A equipa PizzaShoot continua o intrincado processo de desenvolvimento de um jogo de elevado nível!
Temos disponível mais um vídeo. Desta vez demonstramos com é possível ligar acessórios wireless da Xbox 360 ao PC através do Wireless Gaming Receiver for Windows. Demonstramos também como utilizar o Input Reporter (disponível no XNA Creators Club) para testar o input não só do gamepad wireless, como também da guitarra que acompanha o Guitar Hero 3! Isto porque a guitarra não passa de um comando com uma disposição diferente dos botões (e com um acelerómetro mapeado nos triggers do comando normal).
Os developers de jogos em XNA ficam então com um leque de possibilidades ainda mais abrangente.
Although the video is in Portuguese, I want to leave the main message to all the potential worldwide readers of this blog. If you connect your Xbox 360 guitar to your PC (a wireless or wired guitar) you can use it as a X-Box 360 gamepad. Use Input Reporter to find out the correspondence between each device buttons. Wireless Gaming Receiver for Windows it the accessory that you need to connect Xbox 360 wireless accessories to your PC.
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