HailStorm Revisited?

At Mix ’06, a Microsoft-hosted conference for Web developers held in March, the company explained that some Windows Live services will be available as platform services, with public APIs on which third parties can build their own software or Web-based services. Microsoft also relaunched its MSN developer site, originally introduced in fall 2005, as Windows Live Developer Center (msdn.microsoft.com/live), where developers can find more information about these platform services.

Today, available platform services include Search (developers can incorporate search results into their sites), Virtual Earth (the back end to the Windows Live Local mapping service), and Messenger (into which third parties can add their own HTML-based applications). Microsoft has also mentioned Windows Live Contacts (a planned contacts database that will be used by the address book in Mail and by Messenger, among other services) and Windows Live ID (the next version of Passport, Microsoft’s online authentication service) as potential platform services.