I attended day 1 of the Live Services Jumpstart today. Fortuitously this was also my first day working for nsquared (I’d coincidentally registered for the event separate to organising my start date).
I haven’t really been following the Live Services side of Microsoft of late, so today was a real eye opener. Although I was aware of many of the Live Services, it wasn’t until we drilled into them during the day that I started to fully appreciate just how extensive and mature this technology set is (I didn’t even know about the Live Messenger Activity SDK for example).
The course, delivered by James and Neil (my new work colleagues) was excellent (and I’m not just saying that because they’re my new work colleagues :-)
Today we covered the majority of the Live Services, then looked into the Live Framework (an abstraction layer on top of Live Services) as well as investigating a few points in detail (eg Identity – you know: Authentication and Authorisation) before finishing with Virtual Earth, Live Search and Silverlight Streaming sample walkthroughs.
To keep up to speed with all things Live, you need to be following Angus Logan. Angus is an Aussie, but based in Redmond these days. I remember being impressed with him a few years back (see half way down this post for example), so will be interested to follow what he’s up to these days.
The main site you need to tune into is dev.live.com and there’s a few blogs you should add to your list including Neil Roodyn, John O’Brien & Bronwen Zande at Soul Solutions, James Senior and the LiveSide team.
I’m back for day 2 tomorrow.
