I got an invitation to Yahoo’s new Fire Eagle location-sharing service this morning. While it’s still not fleshed out yet (the only function appears to be updating your location from the website directly). It’s somewhat hard to see what use the service will provide, but I don’t care about that. The polish on the Inferno Pigeon site is so well-executed, I want to use it regardless of what it does.

This screen is so human, so soft, so downright fucking cuddly, I just love it. Props should also be given to whomever on the Fuego Sparrow team came up with this privacy ping function. As the default is for the site to email you monthly to check that it’s still OK for them to share your location data, this is a great way to protect against irrate users. Nice work team Flame Heron; now just tell me what I’m supposed to use this Backdraft Canary thing to do.

PS - Yea, I think the name is funny, and I would’ve loved to be in the room bouncing those ideas off the walls.

Steve Caravaial points out the existence of a sweet and free little add-on for Outlook that enables Live Mail accounts to be managed within your big, burly enterprise mail client:

For those that want to manage their Hotmail account (now known as Windows Live Hotmail) from Outlook 2003 or 2007, you can download the Microsoft Office Outlook Connector free of charge. You can also view your Windows Live Hotmail contacts in Outlook with the connector. So go check out all the benefits. I just installed it and it works great.

For those of us who have swallowed the blue pill and accepted Facebook as our online social aggregator, Adam Ostrow writes up a new IE Facebook toolbar for Mashable:

 

…Some third-party developers have built My FB Toolbar, a toolbar with much the same capabilities as the official one from Facebook for Firefox. With the toolbar, you receive alerts of new messages, wall posts, friend requests, and other notifications you would typically receive via email. There is also a Yahoo search box, which I presume is how the developers hope to make a little money from their endeavor.

(My FB Toolbar - Mashable)

In the future I imagine we’ll have impossibly affordable teams of virtual architects and coders and testers to construct our flippant software ideas into living, breathing wetware. Until that warm and shiny Tuesday though, we have Angus.

I’m lucky enough to have quite a few developers at my disposal (yay!).

If you have a killer idea and want it built out in the form of a Windows Live Quick App (either new or enhancement to the existing ones) tell me!

Should the feature request make the grade; my developers can built it out and the code will be available in the Windows Live Platform Quick Apps in Codeplex.

Either log a job in Codeplex or leave a comment!

(Angus Logan)

Getting a shot at the GDC spotlight certainly sounds exciting. Unleashing the citizens of the Interweb on console gaming is going to be very interesting.

My man Michael Klucher ( who was up all night incidentally, as was Dean) has more of the info you need to know on the release of XNA Game Studio 2.0: http://blogs.msdn.com/xna/archive/2007/12/13/xna-game-studio-2-0-released.aspx

And once you’ve absorbed the new features of the framework and tools, put them to great use in the Dream Build Play contest! Finalists get cash, the chance to intern at Microsoft Research, Lionhead or Rare Game studios, the chance to show off your game at the Game Developers Conference (GDC).

I was so stoked to see the last finalists’ games. Even if you don’t want money, glory, or a new job related to games, make this little pm happy over here in the blogosphere. I loved what people came up with that no one ever expected. They were very addicting. :)_

Live it vivid!

(Betsy Aoki)

If the launch of Office 2007 was a new day at the office, is today only your second day on the job?

Here’s the official blurb…

“Wehave managed to complete the engineering work slightly earlier than we anticipated and are making the download available from OfficeOnline.

What can you expect in Service Pack 1?

SP1 focuses on the issues that matter most to our customers based on direct customer feedback and error reporting tools. You can expect:

• Stability.Using data from the Dr. Watson bug-reporting system, we’ve fixed the top software issues for each application in the 2007 Office system. The 2007 Office system SP1 also improves the stability of server components in the 2007 Office system and delivers compatibility with Windows Server® 2008, so you can confidently plan for future upgrades.
• Performance. The 2007 Office system SP1 improves performance in applications and servers. Performance improvements can be found in Microsoft Office Excel® 2007, Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007, Microsoft Office PowerPoint® 2007, and Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007.
• Security. By incorporating incremental advances in security and results from application testing, the 2007 Office system SP1 offers home and office users better protection against malicious software and potential threats to privacy.

Fora full list of improvements in SP1, download the Service Pack 1 whitepaper.

What does SP1 mean for you?

Service Pack 1 eliminates distractions and performance issues that disrupt workflow, allowing employees to be more productive in the work that they do. SP1 is also an important milestone for deploying the 2007 Office system, making it easy to deploy the most secure and reliable version of Office to date.

How do you get it?

Initially, SP1 will be available as a free download from OfficeOnline. SP1 will be made available via Automatic Update in the next 3-6 months, and we’ll issue 30 day advance notice prior to delivering SP1 via automatic update.”

(Mark Bower)

The XNA team will make their Game Studio 2.0 beta available for download soon, and according to the team’s blog post last week, feature complete. One of the more exciting features coming is support for network games between Xbox 360 consoles and Windows machines. Live Anywhere, as this ability was originally dubbed at E3 last year, is an architecture to allow games to interact across any platform available (desktops, consoles, and mobile devices).

The first game to ship that supported Live Anywhere was Shadowrun, which PC Gamer felt wasn’t all it could be. It seems clear that development of the game was focused primarily on proving the cross-platform concept, and hopefully future implementations of Live Anywhere won’t sacrifice sheer entertainment.

Enter the soon-to-be released XNA 2.0 beta. By providing game developers of every stripe the ability to provide network gaming between my friend Dan at his desk, and myself on the couch, we each will be able to have our preferred experience. A brief word to developers: might I recommend starting small? Build a port of Drug Wars that I can play with a couple mates, then worry about the flashy graphics.

(Network Gaming with XNA - Ed Dunhill’s Blog)

(XNA Team Blog)

This week the WIndows Live team announced the availability of an API for Windows Live Spaces Photos (don’t get me started on the name). Those of you who write software can now exert some control over the photos kept in a Live account. More interesting though to the rest of us who can’t code is the Live Data Interactive SDK, which shows off the functionality of this new API. Giving the human beings a view into what developers work with is very educational, and more than a little bit entertaining.

(Windows Live Spaces Photo API (Alpha) - Angus Logan)

If anyone would like, I have a few invites to Pownce that I’m happy to give away. I’ll pick three people who leave a comment at random and get y’all sharing links and videos and little quips in no time.

No assurances as to how useful you may ultimately find the service obviously. Web 2.0 and useful don’t always play peanut butter and jelly…

They’ve certainly outdone themselves this time. The new Adobe CS3 apps are live, and they would be available for preorder from Adobe, if their online store weren’t temporarily down (probably from overwhelming traffic). To give you some idea of where the price ceiling is, Amazon is listing the CS3 Master Collection for US$ 2473.99.

Sure the software revisions will be exciting and useful, but I just can’t get over how gorgeous the box art is. If Adobe sold each application with a large-format poster, I’d probably pay the extra and buy all of the pieces individually.