For years now I have had my own personal website. In fact, many people have their own “personal space” on the web. Having your own homepage was one of those rights of passage that every Internet-savvy user took part in.
However, times have changed. Today we live in the Web 2.0 world (watch a great video of what Web 2.0 is on Youtube) of interactive content, blogging, photo sharing, social networking – the list goes on and on. Personal homepages are nice, but they are mostly static and non-interactive. It’s true you can make them interactive if you want to invest in the technical stuff behind the scenes – perhaps setting up some blogging software or installing a content management system.
But, as I discovered, why do all of that when technologies such as Windows Live exist?
So the other day I made the jump. After almost 10 years of having my own personal website. I decommissioned it and switched my domain (robertstinnett.com) to utilize Windows Live technologies 100%. So far the only thought I’ve had about this is, why didn’t I do this sooner?
Here’s a chart of how I use Windows Live technologies and how they help me. I’ll go into a bit more detail below, but this will give you a quick and dirty comparison of the “old way” versus the “Windows Live way”.
| The “Old Way” | The “Windows Live” Way | |
| Ran my own Exchange server on Windows 2003. |
Switched my domain to use Windows Live Mail hosted mail services.
| |
| Website | Rented server space to host webpages that I rarely updated and mostly pointed people to my “Web 2.0” content elsewhere. |
Utilizing Windows Live Custom Domains, pointed www.robertstinnett.com to my Windows Live Spaces page.
|
| Video Sharing | Put video files on my website, tried to scale them down best I could, and tried to remember to link to them. |
Using MSN Soapbox (not a Live product – yet!) posted the videos and let Spaces do the rest of the work!
|
| Photo Sharing | Linked to a RSS feed from Flickr that was text based. |
Use Windows Live Photo Gallery (in addition to Flickr as well) to help manage my photos and videos both locally and online.
|
| Document Sharing | Various documents I wrote I would upload in PDF format, link to and try to remember to update the links if I moved the files. | Using SkyDrive I upload the file and forget it! People can find all my public documents with just a few clicks. |
Wow! I think to myself again, “Why didn’t I do this sooner?”
I’ve posted it before, and I’ll say it again – everyone should have their own domain for their name. It’s your identity and it helps people not only find you, but interact with you. Unfortunately, for those of you with common names it may be a bit difficult. For the rest, I encourage you to think about it and act. Be ready for the Web 3.0 world! Working with Windows Live Domains, you can create your own online world that gives you the power and technology you need to take your digital identity of who you are beyond tomorrow.
The world in which we live and work is changing – and so is the technology we use. The web of today looks little like it did back in the early 90s when it exploded onto our computers. Using Windows Live, I feel that I am positioned to take advantage of new technologies as they become available without having to worry about the technical details behind them to get it going.
In short, I am answering the old Microsoft slogan of, “Where do you want to go today?” – My answer is everywhere and beyond. With Windows Live, I think I am going to enjoy the ride.
