Microsoft's Live-branded online services don't end at the Web browser. They extend deep into Windows.
The company last week quietly showed off software for embedding its Web-based Windows Live ID authentication services within Windows applications. Windows Live ID is the successor to Microsoft Passport, a hosted service for verifying a person's name and password for logging onto Web servers.
Later this year, Microsoft will release a beta version of a software developer's kit (SDK) for making the Windows Live ID service function within a Windows application, said Lynn Ayres, programme manager on the Windows Live ID team.
Right now, Windows Live ID authentication services are designed to work with Microsoft's Web-based applications such as Windows Live Mail and Windows Live Messenger.
With the developer's kit, called Windows Live ID Client SDK, Microsoft is seeking to create closer integration between its Web-based hosted services and "rich client" Windows applications, Ayres said.
For example, a developer could write a Windows application that has a button for buying from an e-commerce site. The Windows Live ID authentication window could pop up from within the Windows application to verify an end user's security credentials.
"This SDK makes it easier to write new client applications that understand Windows Live IDs and supports the sharing of authentication state across multiple rich clients and browsers," according to a Windows Live ID white paper published earlier this year.
In addition, Microsoft is working on another development kit to connect Web site operators to Microsoft's Windows Live ID service. That SDK will use standards-based protocols, including the Simple Object Access Protocol, according to the company.
Client-server services
At the TechEd conference, Microsoft offered a few more details of its strategy to make more money from Windows Live services, in part by relying on third-party developers.
In a keynote speech, Ray Ozzie, who replaced Bill Gates as chief software architect last week, described how Microsoft-hosted services, such as Web search and network authentication, could be used by IT professionals and software developers.
These online services can be linked to create "mashups", such as a real estate listing application that uses a mapping service to display locations.
Ozzie indicated that Microsoft Live services are being designed to complement Microsoft's on-premise Windows-based software, rather than replace it with browser-based applications.
"There are always extremists who say every application will be accessed by a browser and everything will be moving to the computing cloud and that enterprise data centres will go away," he said.
"Microsoft is taking a very pragmatic approach, a seamless, blended client-server-services approach... where services complement and extend Windows and Office applications to the Internet," he said.
Over time, Microsoft will release more application programming interfaces and tools to encourage third-party developers to write Live applications that tie into Windows, company executives said.
For example, the company earlier this month released an SDK for writing mini-applications called gadgets, similar to Yahoo's widgets or the Mac OS X Dashboard.
Once developers write a gadget for aggregating an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed, for instance, the gadget can run on both the Windows Live site and on the Windows Vista Sidebar.
Talkback
Microsoft should be carefull not to trigger EU anti monopoly abuse regulations via a backdoor. Meaning that if you make it more or less mandatory (highly recommended, default compiler include option, etc) for developers to include Live services libraries into their software the end result would obviously be that plenty of third-party software (upgrades) will embed Live services into even more Windows machines. Which in turn would trigger "customer demand" to make the next security update mandatory for everyone else.
The whole thing reminds me of MSI, HH3 and such. Microsoft "introduced" a new help format. Developers included it, for reasons still unknown and beyond me, into their new compilations and not long thereafter the new help format was practically everywhere. As well as IE5 because that was "the easiest way" to get HH3 installed. And, of course, since "everyone" used it and the next batch of security patches and requested functionality improvements was so huge "customer demand" "begged" for mandatory full product installation even if only to get the next batch of security updates. Thus forcing other third-party developers to become IE5 compliant (at least at the system level) as well. Never mind the missing option to de-install it because that would break third-party applications anyway (by then). How so: full circle and self fulfilling proficy?
ooooh