Channel 9 - Entries tagged with SoapBox

Ping 17: Microsoft sues over ClickFraud, Soapbox scales down, Project Natal & Bing on Fallon

Laura Foy — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:05:00 GMT

The shorter guy with the dark hair who has been accused of being a Zune fanboy returned this week- and while he was out exploring the world he picked up a few juicy Microsoft stories to bring back and share with us. Voila:

You don't want to be sued by Microsoft
Microsoft gets in the Reality Biz
Soapbox evolves...
Jimmy Fallon is a Microsoft FANBOY!!
Happy Birthday Dear Live Messenger...

Plus some viewer pics and a failed attempt to injure Max...good times!

New MSN Video/Soapbox Sidebar Gadget

Sarah Perez — Tue, 12 May 2009 16:05:00 GMT

There’s a new MSN Video sidebar gadget now available for download from the Windows Live Gallery. This gadget displays video from the both the MSN Video and Soapbox catalogs across 30+ countries and languages. After installing it, I was surprised by the number of options available. For example, in the settings you can configure to show videos by country, for a specific Soapbox user, or by a search term. You can change the look and feel, adjusting items like number of thumbnails, pages, scroll speed, and more. On the main interface for the gadget itself, you can sort and filter videos by category, “what’s hot,” highest rated, and a lot more. There’s even a search box within the gadget itself so you can look for a specific video.

This particular gadget is designed for Windows Vista computers, but it works on Windows 7, too. However, I wasn’t able to get the inline video player working when on 7, it instead played videos in my web browser.

Download Soapbox Videos to Your PC & Zune

Sarah Perez — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:09:00 GMT

Thanks to a new feature in Soapbox, the section of user-generated videos found here on MSN Video, you can now automatically download and sync videos to your PC and to your Zune. With this new option, you can subscribe to Soapbox videos by category, user video list, or via a search. That last option is especially helpful, as it will retrieve any videos relating to a particular search term and have them automatically sync to your PC. So, for example, if you wanted to see all the videos about Live Mesh, you could just search for the term live mesh and subscribe the results.

To see the subscribe option for the videos found via a search, click “view all results” and you’ll notice both an RSS icon for subscribing to the videos in your preferred RSS software as well as a “subscribe with Zune” button ( ) to have the videos added to your podcast subscriptions in your Zune software (which, by the way, is a free download – you don’t need to own a Zune to use it).

If you need access to the video files themselves, you’ll find them in the Zune/Podcasts folder. Michael Gannotti recently blogged about this to demonstrate how you could access his SharePoint videos from Soapbox, so we thank him for providing us with this excellent tip!

Soapbox Now on MSN Video

Sarah Perez — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 17:17:00 GMT

Soapbox is now no longer a stand-alone site, but has been fully integrated into MSN Video beta. The integration is part of a refresh of the MSN Video site that brings several new features including a Video Showcase of videos of interest & the most watched videos, quicker processing speeds, new navigation, an expandable screensize, support for more codecs & extensions, updated RSS feeds that display Soapbox videos in feeds via an embedded player, and better sort filters for narrowing down your searches.

Search has also been improved on the new MSN Video, as it now a combines results for MSN Video, Soapbox User Videos, as well as web video results, all on one page. Now that Soapbox videos are available on MSN Video, you will see that "Soapbox User Videos" has its own tab in the upper-right, right there alongside the site's premium content offerings. When you're uploading a video to MSN Video, you have the option to make the video "hidden," a feature that will hide your video from the search results.

However, uploading videos doesn't have to be done on the website itself. With the tight integration of the Windows Live services, you can manage your video library in Windows Live Photo Gallery (yes, Photo Gallery!). A new feature in the latest version of photo gallery provides you with a "Publish" button that lets you easily upload your videos to Soapbox. Once uploaded, you can post videos to your blog, websites, or Live Spaces using Windows Live Writer and its handy "Insert from Web" option. (Via the Soapbox blog)

Organize Your Media with Photo Gallery & Spaces

Sarah Perez — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 16:40:00 GMT

Windows Live Photo Gallery beta, one of Microsoft's new Windows Live Services, improves upon the built-in Photo Gallery in Windows Vista. The software, available for both Vista and XP users, offers many new features like better tagging, sorting, and image editing, including the ability to do panoramic stitches, histograms, image sharpening, cropping, exposure adjustments, color adjustments, and red eye fixes. You can add captions, turn your photos into screensavers or slideshows, and publish your photos and videos online. Videos can be easily uploaded to Soapbox (see how here).

The new Photo Import Tool automatically groups all the photos taken on your digital camera by date and time as you copy the files over to your PC. You can also select specific individual photos you want to import instead of being forced to import the entire batch of photos (like in the previous version of Windows Photo Gallery). RAW format is still supported, and additionally, Windows Live Spaces users will be pleased to find that high-res photos are now supported up to 1600x1600, if uploading from the Live Photo Gallery client.

Downloading from Spaces is easy, too. With the Photo Enthusiast Template, the integration with HP's Snapfish service for ordering prints, and the ability to point a Windows Live Domain to your Spaces page, Spaces becomes a great way to organize, manage, and showcase your digital photography. The easiest way to get the software is via the Windows Live Installer.

Part 2 of my Halstead York Interview: VC-1 and Silverlight

Ben Waggoner — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 17:39:00 GMT

Part 2 of my Halstead York interview is now up, wherein we discuss VC-1, Silverlight, frame rate unsampling, and many other things. Part 3 talking about DRM (save the most contentious for last!) will be up soon.

Windows Mobile 6.0 Things and Stuff

Rory — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 22:53:59 GMT

The Mobile and Embedded Devices Conference (MEDC) is taking place in Vegas next week, and I thought I'd post a little fun here to get things going.

Mel Sampat stopped by to demo some fancy-schmancy stuff in Windows Mobile 6.0. There's more going on now for both devs and users.

One of the nicer things about 6.0, at least from a dev standpoint, is that the .NET CF 2.0 and SQL Server Compact Edition 2.0 both ship in ROM, meaning you can deploy your nice little apps without having to deploy the runtime as well. That made me happy

In the video, you'll get to see some of what's new with Pocket Outlook, an experimental managed implementation of voice recognition APIs, and more.

It's because of stuff like that (managed voice recognition APIs?)

SoapBox: What. How. Why.

Charles — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 23:41:54 GMT

By now, you've heard of MSN's Soapbox video site where you can upload your own videos and share your creativity and message with the world, for free, etc...

Well, that sounds happy and nice, but we want to know how Soapbox actually works, how it's architected/designed for scale, and why they made it the way they did. Who better to talk to about this stuff then Soapbox development lead Rafael Sagula? Tune in.

Check out the Soapbox video on 10. You can find invites there too

MSN Soapbox Demo and Invites to the Private Beta

Laura Foy — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 17:06:00 GMT

There is more than one way to share a video online. We sat down with Rob Bennett from the MSN Soapbox Team where he answered our questions and gave us a demo of the web site and device experience.

You are most likely saying, "We’ve heard of all the online video sharing sites before, what makes Soapbox so special?” Well you can find out for yourself. Even though Soapbox is currently in a private beta, we've secured 10,000 invites just for the folks that come and visit 10. Visit our special beta registration site, supply your email address and you're in the beta.

Its time to create your own videos for 10 on Soapbox. Create your own video showing how you are using Technology to change your world, upload it to Soapbox and tag it with on10. We'll profile the most interesting videos here in the future!