this is the personal blog of brandon quintana.

As most of you know since I’m such a big advocate in open source, I’m not the biggest fan of Microsoft. In any case, I have been following their project Windows Live. It really is a good project similar to Google’s IG homepage. I suppose web site fall under the Web 2.0 moniker and makes it easy for people to customize their own home page. To be honest, sites like these have been around as web portals when MSN and Yahoo user pages were created. The difference now is these sites are much easier for people to use and customize.

A lot of that has to do with the more widely accepted use of AJAX and variations of AJAX. Customization seems to happen quickly, more real-time. This eliminates much of the Internet lag and people can do what they intended to do as if it were an actual application running on their system. People tend to lose interest in the Internet if they have to wait long periods of time or there are tons of errors on the page. Myspace.com falls into this situation just due to the fact that they have so many users on their site, that it’s hard to maintain a stable platform. Myspace.com has gotten a lot better, but from time to time still seems to slow down and sometimes error out. Larger companies can handle that sort of user base, but even then two large companies Microsoft and Google are moving toward this AJAX model.

So now back to Windows Live. I’ve been following the site as it’s grown through its beta stages. I have to stay it’s improved quite a bit. Adding content seems to appear in more real-time. Dragging content around the page is much improved. Most likely more efficient code has lead to a better experience for the user. Public betas are always fun because you can see new technology, but at the same time you are still aware that the software is in beta and still could use some work until they reach a final version.

The interface is much nicer on Windows Live than it is on Google. Google has always tended to be simplistic in all of its products and I think that is good. On the other hand, I think I’ve just gotten so used to that interface that something clean and refreshing is a good change.

Overall, I think Microsoft has come a long way with this product. People will just have to catch on to the product, which I don’t see being too big of a problem because it’s easy to use and Microsoft’s a big enough company to promote their product. Next generation web applications will use similar techniques in displaying their content and I think this product is a good example of what Web 2.0 is all about. As always leave your comments and questions.