The Connected Home Blog

Windows Live Calendar has got to be one of the most anticipated of the Windows Live services, and forms an important part of a successful Connected Home setup.

But whilst important, it has also been talked about for quite some time now and has been under threat of being regarded as some sort of myth or vapor-ware. So what makes us think that it is finally going to arrive?

Liveside.net reported that Windows Live Calendar had gone in to dog food (internal Microsoft testing) in mid August and we now see that the Windows Live Calendar support and feedback pages are up and running, so the beta must be about to land.

So what can you expect from Windows Live Calendar when it arrives over the next couple of weeks?

From what we hear it will include Calendar sharing through iCal and RSS and will be linked to Windows Live ID like other Live services. We also expect the calendar to be accessible both as a online service live Live Hotmail. and as a desktop application embeded witihin Live Mail, although whether those will both be available at the launch of the beta we will have to wait and see.

We don’t expect Live Calendar to be reliant upon the home network, but available to share using Live ID and an Internet connection, regardless of location.

We have been keeping an eye on the development of Live Calendar as we see the ability to share calendars as an increasingly important service within the connected home.

The ability for all the family to keep an eye on each others movements and post appointments to each others diaries is something that I’m sure will prove of benefit to in the majority of increasingly hectic homes, and whilst it is something that is common in the workplace there are few solutions which prove effective in the home environment. Google Calendar does address this problem to some extent but without an off-line option  easily available, or integration into a host of other services except Gmail, this is not a element that can be considered part of a truly connected and joined up home solution.

Matt S

Coming soon we hope to provide info about Windows Home Server add-ins,  Windows Live services and some how-to guides and tutorials about how to make the connected home work for you using some of our recommended hardware software.

I also hope to post some reviews of the recently published Windows Home Server guide books and provide links to but them directly from online suppliers.

What do you think of the new name and theme? I’m particularly interested to hear if you think I should distribute this WordPress theme, having spent quite some time to extract, and then combine the best bits of a few themes that are freely available.

Feedback very welcome.

Matt S

Lots has been going on over the last two or three weeks. There have been a couple of books launched for the Windows Home Server, more on those to come.

There have been rumors about a new Xbox Media Hub as reported on We Got Served - just the sort of stuff that we are in to here, the new Windows Home Server web site has been launched  at Microsoft.com, and there have been a load of new add-ins for Windows Home Server, not to mention some great new releases within the Windows Live suite of programmes and services. More to come on the site about these as well in the coming days.

Matt S

We are back! Following the last post when I reported that I was hoping to move the Joined Up Thinking blog over to a Word Press installation hosted at AN Hosting, I am now glad to report that more than three weeks later, I have a the blog hosted, with a new name, at a new URL (www.theconnectedhomeblog.com), with a new template, with the Blue Host hosting service. So a bit of a change from the original plan.

The last three weeks have been interesting, and frustrating. Originally I moved to AN Hosting as planned, but yesterday canceled that account, taking advantage of their 30 day money back guarantee - thank you very much.

I have had a lot of fun as well though. I have learned how to build a Word Press template and have constructed this, which I have to say I am really, really pleased with. Basically, I liked the old blog template, but didn’t like the main navigation or the color scheme, and a few other bits and pieces I found restrictive. In the mean time I found another template I really liked in terms of colour scheme and sidebar detail, but didn’t like the general layout. So… I spent a couple of weeks getting a Word Press education and combining the two. I need to give credit to the original authors at some point, but as I’m not planning on distributing, and have not really left anything original in place, changing all the images and the majority of code, I think I am okay to take some credit for what I have achieved with here.

The new name has come about to try to better represent what I am trying to do here. Whilst JOINED UP THINKING described what I wanted to see from future developments within the home network and digital media markets, THE CONNECTED HOME BLOG better describes what this site is about.

I’m not going to waste time explaining the many reasons for the change from AN Hosting to Blue Host, other than to say that if you are looking for a hosting service, then I would recommend Blue Host every time.

So  we are back, and there has been lots going on in the connected home market for us to report, more coming soon.

Matt S