Windows Live = Active Desktop 2.0?

So Mike Arrington and several others today blogged about the Windows Live announcement yesterday. Way back in 1997, there was something called Internet Explorer 4 that was just being finished, with a little feature called Active Desktop, that was, slightly ahead of its time. Most people didn't have the bandwidth to adopt it then, I personally quite liked it, and it goes down in my book as one of the most innovative things ever to come out of Microsoft.

Unfortunately, it was not a market success, despite the fact that some of the smartest people I know (Hadi Partovi, Mark Hammond, several others) were working on it. I see Windows Live, heck even RSS to a degree, is almost like a new implementation of the vision that old IE4 team had back in 1997. Talk about ahead of its time. Who says Microsoft doesn't innovate? They started as a platform and programming tools company, and always have shined in that arena.

Windows Live says something very politely: We're still a platform company. And, we're going to make a damn good one!

I am personally quite pleased to see that Microsoft found its mojo again!
I'd love to hear everyone's opinion on Windows Live as an extension to the old Active Desktop dream!

2 Comments

  • Yes, there are some similar concepts to Active Desktop. Although the content integration is more than with just the desktop (which probably wasn't the right place for it), but more deeply in the applications written for Windows.



    This also appears to be a revival of Hailstorm, but in a more friendly form. It's about services on the web that can be integrated into sites and client applications. It's not as ominous in trying to get all user data on Microsoft servers and wants to provide a revenue sharing model through ads. But, philosophically, it seems to be similar.

  • Pedro, definitely! Hailstorm was one of the best things out of MS EVER, IMHO. The base idea was wrong and MS learned the hard way, but it definitely seems like Live has its roots from hailstorm and definitely heading down the right path this time. (y)

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