Microsoft said on Thursday that it is introducing a new social API that allows new ways for partners and developers to connect with Messenger.
John Richards and Angus Logan took the stage at The Next Web Conference in Amsterdam to announce Messenger Connect. The new API brings together several existing APIs (Windows Live ID, Contacts API, Messenger Web Toolkit) into one single API.
For developers and partners this means it’s even easier to integrate Windows Live contacts into their technical environments. For end users, think Facebook Connect. This means you can now easily share your friends list from messenger and profile information with third party applications or websites.
Microsoft is taking the security aspect of sharing Windows Live contacts very seriously. “We believe that the privacy of a customers’ data is a critical element of a secure web and the customer should be in control,” said Ori Amiga, program manager for Windows Live. Websites cannot access any of a user’s non-public information from Windows Live without prior consent from the customer. The consent form is shown below.
Messenger Connect is currently under a private beta with a small number of companies. Microsoft is planning on opening up a new developer portal more broadly in the coming months.
Mozilla Firefox is ready to release their next big update to their browser, version 3.6. The update will drop on Thursday, January 21 at 9:30 PST. The next big version of Firefox is promised to be faster than any previous version available and focus on improving user experience.
Some of the new features in Firefox 3.6 are:
New Personas
Outdated Plugin Detection
Full Screen Open Video support
Web open Font Format
CSS Gradients and Backgrounds for Developers
File API
Drag and Drop
Desktop Orientation Sensors
Improved Speed
Mozilla Firefox currently has over 6,000 add-ons available to help customize your interface and tweak your browser. Mozilla is adding in “Personas”, allowing users to preview how a theme looks before applying it. Mozilla has also updated their plug-in detection, bringing you to a page with all the latest and out of date applications.
Firefox 3.6 will be 20% faster than version 3.5, reducing their overall speed to just under a second. Web designers will receive a CSS gradient and background and an updated file API for web application developers, to work just like desktop apps. Firefox will also add drag and drop support, and even detect your computer orientation.
When a new phone is released, a company would generally make an SDK available for it before the public can purchase one. This wasn’t the case with the Nexus One, as it’s been out for almost a week now, and Google has just released the new development tools.
Whilst you may be thinking that the new SDK would pack some nice changes to accommodate the new phone, you’d be wrong. Google has described the new Android 2.1 development kit as follows: “Android 2.1 is a minor platform release deployable to Android-powered handsets starting in January 2010. This release includes new API changes and bug fixes.” According to Engadget, the real change for developers is the ability to produce your own active wallpapers, and everything else is simply aimed at patching up any issues.
If you’re an Android developer, you can find information about the 2.1 SDK release here, plus the official release notes here.
The job posting, spotted by enthusiast site CodenameWindows, hints at third-party application updating, updating virtual machines while they’re turned off and delivering full applications, among others. Microsoft admits in the posting that updating virtual machines whilst they are off “turns out this is pretty hard!.” The job is for a role on the Windows Update Client team, responsible for delivering software updates to over 600 million machines.
“As part of this team, you will help shape Windows 8. Components of our code include a core agent that runs as an NT service, an API layer and a UI application. We talk to the update servers using web services and we have special protocols in place to deal with the massive scale of the system” notes the job listing.
