I originally put this list on the LiveSoapBox group in a discussion, but I thought I might put it in my blog to as others have done. A lot of my “wishes” are for more esoteric type things dealing with permissions and groupings and categories so it might be a refreshing change of scenery from the typical wish list. But that’s not to say that some of the items are the same as ones on everyone else’s list.
Anyway, they aren’t in a particular order based on priority or anything. This is more a stream of consciousness type thing just listed out them as I thought them up. And I added more since it was originally published and reworked it a little. So, here goes…
- More options with photos and albums such as adding the ability to reorder them. Make them searchable in Live by user, face, and tag, etc. Use universal comments/replies (see toward the end.) Make tags visible.
- Changes to the Home page such that modules that were designed for my.live.com would work on the Home page, i.e., ability to add numerous RSS readers, and other modules. Ability to arrange the page.
- Ability to add tabs to the Home page in as was possible in my.live.com. The first tab can remain predefined per Live team's determination of what is best for the general users look and feel. New tabs such as on my.live.com or my.msn.com with user selectable content would be nice especially RSS readers and other modules that worked on my.live.com.
- Groups need a what's new feed. This should be advertised to the group members as well as on the profile page of the group. This could be set up a number of ways such as only members of the group see the updates (i.e., the group has a network of its own - the member list). I should be able to decide if I want my updates to that group advertised throughout my personal network. I don't see this causing any more traffic than web activities such as twitter. I could, perhaps, set my group permissions while I'm in the group site?
- Groups should be classifiable as public or private by the individual member or the owners. This would direct how updates are generated and distributed and if it comes up in a search or is listed in a registry.
- RSS and alerts in groups.
- RSS and alerts on Notes. Maybe just all areas where the new universal comments (talked about below) would go?
- Groups need a proper discussion trees so replies can be made to specific entries and be nested and indented instead of just posted at the end. Other discussion features, spell check, attachments, whatever. It’s all good!
- A quote button in the rich text editor. Highlight some text, click the Quote Button to wrap the selected text in blockquote tags, and prompt for the source so the “XXX said:” appears.
- Groups need to be able to add customizable pages, and all sorts of the types of features that are present in the soon to be deprecated MSN groups. The new Live groups seem to be so weak in this area that MSN groups suggest people move their groups to Multiply instead of Live groups. I moved my MSN groups (that I have had since 2001) to both Multiply and Live, and I can see why MSN would suggest this. MSN groups should have remained active until Live groups was up to snuff. Groups should have features that all normal group software have like sticky discussion threads and topics, managing users, promoting your group, adding html custom formatted pages, etc. People coming from MSN groups are going to expect this. You don’t want them to leave Live for FaceBook or something else. But I know groups are a new thing and they will get better.
- Group Chat/live discussion within the group. I know – this will never happen, but what the hay… It’s my wish, right? It was actually taken out of MSN groups a long time ago. I miss it! I don’t want to gunk up my messenger with this duty. I already wish I could control what appears on messenger as I have groups showing, and they take up to much space, and I am not a messenger friend with people in the group. So I can never use it. Yet it takes up space anyway. I should be able to hide it. I have a gut feeling this idea of group messenger was good, but it shows on messenger for groups that have it disabled, and most people do not want to have permanent buddies on messenger with someone they really don’t know. That’s no big deal in your network on Live. So messenger chat doesn’t scale well for groups nor does it meet the real need. If I am in a group having a live discussion I don’t want to add all the people to my network or my messenger. Maybe I’m just using it wrong. Anyway, I hope this makes sense. Probably not. Oh well… Maybe when messenger is integrated into the web app it will be better for me.
- A calendar date selector control in the web app like there is in the desktop app so you can switch to year view in the web app.
- Oh yeah, the ability to add numerous instances of the same web activity. One custom blog isn’t enough as it is getting “retasked” with FriendFeed (in my case, but only if the Web Activities What’s new suggestion is taken.) Anyway, I would like to follow other blogs using this, but only have the updates shown on my profile. This could be accomplished through the additional setting for web activities shown later in this list. I would like to be able to add this web activity to its own tab on the profile. Or have RSS readers that can be added to “other tabs” on my profile. This allows others to see what I am following. Can I also do this on the Home tab?
- FaceBook Web Activity? P.S. I have two FaceBook accounts. Can I use both? Can I put them on their own profile tab? On their own Home tab?
- Open groups – anyone logged in can participate in open areas of the group. This is kind of like having a blog open to everyone so that anyone can comment. Some areas might be open such as a certain discussion thread, while others are closed like say the calendar or photos until you join.
- Some sort of group registry, again perhaps like the way MSN groups did it. We need to be able to find them. Word of mouth isn’t all that helpful, and people are just going to “invent” a group registry if you don’t provide one. I know Live team has suggested that the groups are for small to medium groups. But some groups are getting pretty huge and popular. Whatever your intent large groups are going to evolve. And they need to be findable, searchable and manageable.
- Ability to show individual categories of contacts in my network on my Profile page, and show each selectively based on permissions. For example, I might not want my family network visible to the general world. I could make family visible only to family. Since people are developing huge networks of friends. It would be nice to categorize and display them based on how you know them. Some people on my network haven’t logged in for ages. Why are they showing in my network’s eight little slots? I know this isn’t necessarily for me, but I use them all the time. I wish I had more control over what showed. I hide my whole network for these reasons.
- The ability to select which categories of contacts and in which order get displayed on the Profile page.
- The ability to order contacts displayed in my network on the profile page. This should be within category, If I were to get the above wish. Some people have hundreds of contacts and having random contacts pop up the profile is not all that helpful. I have wondered if the ones that pop up are ones with recent activity. If not, that should also be an option. They could be locked in an order (such as being favorited in messenger) so that they could be stickied in the proper order. The number of available slots should be selectable by me. The remaining unstuck slots could be ordered by recent activity or whatever.
- I liked some of the features on the pre wave 3 Spaces. I could see random updates, and things were more searchable.
- Spaces need a variety of “modernizations” as mentioned in many posts. I would like an updated method to move modules around that is more like the way it is done in my MSN. But this isn't high on my list.
- Many of the Spaces modules do not function correctly. I'm not sure why, but even simple ones break like the weather seem to be stuck on Seattle. They forget their settings. I would like this fixed.
- On the Home page, on a "What's new with my network" item, I can alter the types of notifications I get. I can currently set "Hide updates from user XXXXX", "Hide this type of update" or "more options. I would like a new option that adds to that list "Hide this type of update from this user XXXXX". (Or "Hide updates from this user XXXXX of this type.") This would allow you to continue to monitor tweets, for example, and to continue to monitor your tweet (ab)using friends, but to stop monitoring their particular twitter feeds, but still see other tweets from other non abusing friends. I don't like turning a person off completely or turning off every instance of a service so I tend to just deal with it at this point. This would probably be my number one great thing to have.
- Web activities currently have a setting "Show updates in the what's new list," and I would like to see this broken into two parts. First would be "Show updates in the what's new with my network list," and the second "Show updates in the what's new with me list." Having this would give a finer grade of control as to what appears on my Profile page and what appears on your Home page. This would allow people who would like to (ab)use twitter (or other things like FriendFeed :) ) to not advertise their updates to everyone on there network but yet still have this information on their own profile page and possibly, maybe, hopefully on its own tab. So, some of us could have our own profile filled with gazillions of tweets but not blitz our network neighbors with updates. Anyone else interested in my tweets could come to my profile to see them. And then I could turn FriendFeed back on to display on just my profile!! And Live would be so good yet again!
- When you are on the Profile Page and you click on "Network" in the upper right side the network page does not have the headers found elsewhere. I think I read somewhere that this page is going to be overhauled, but it may need some work. It is hard to find contacts here. It is hard to batch set permissions. You can't uninvite people that never responded. This is a whole topic in and of itself. The whole business with contacts is not entirely intuitive. It does work, and I have figured out how some batch operations work in People, but there isn’t anything like that in Network. Should Network be a special category in People?
- More themes - I love the dynamic ones!! More of those please!! Can these work in Spaces too or is that not possible?
- More header settings - I think I read some ideas around here, and I liked them. Like having the Home page info, time, weather, temp, etc display on the profile page too so my friends can see what the weather is like in my part of the world.
- Javascript. No javascript = weak counters, no web metrics, no really fun stuff. I know you have your reasons. But come on guys… please….
- Better management of Shared Favorites. There isn’t a way to batch delete them or any expiration mechanism. Both would be nice. Also, I would like to order them by clicking the heading or the date. I go back to find them and can’t recall what I titled them so have to read the whole list. If I clicked “Date” (which it doesn’t have currently – need that too!) then the most recent could sort to the top. Also, the ability to import and export lists. Maybe a list could be an xml file in your SkyDrive that could be downloaded to Excel or something?? Now that would be totally kewl. I can already think of things I would be doing with that! Better yet, tables, oh never mind… I’m getting carried away again.
- Need to be able to delete a comment in a group discussion.
- Need to be able to edit a comment in a blog, a note, a photo or Shared Favorite, etc. Comments/replies should be universally classed not designed specifically to a certain area. The rich text editor should be the same across the product, and the comment/reply options be the same across all also, i.e., add, edit, delete, reply and quote. In other words if there could be discussions where ever comments are allowed the whole world would be a better place!
- I know you took html out of some comments. But I like it. What can I say? It may make some things slower, but I can live with that. I would like it if all the comment/reply areas were consistant.
- RSS feed updates only seem to list the last 30 items. This should be all the items since I last time I looked (within reason, but 30 is items is FAR TO FEW). I am losing updates because my network is to large, and the updates are falling into the crack between how many updates will show on my Home page and Profile, and in my RSS feedreader (which only updates when my computer is on). I have put the What’s new feed on FriendFeed in an effort to capture more updates, but this is convoluted. I have missed updates on my own blog because they have dropped off the radar! This is a big problem for anyone with either a big network or even just one user that publishes a lot of updates (like a twitter head? :P ). Some of my other suggestions could help with this issue, but I am hoping that a much larger RSS feed queue will be implemented regardless. Perhaps something like a 24 hour minimum window of feeds.
- Microsoft should just buy FriendFeed and make it a part of Live. You guys would blow everyone else out of the water! Or you could make your own version, and make it better??? That’s a great idea! I like it. You could call it LiveFeed and it could replace Web Activities.
- Microsoft should rebrand Media Center as Live Media Center and add really great features such as Live Web Guide, what am I watching now, My Movies, what’s on my schedule, friend suggestions, etc. Try to revive MCE using Live as an exciting new conduit for using it. The synergy would awesome!
OK – I’ll stop for now. There are more suggestions like for Windows Live Movie maker which I hope is going to be at least as functional as the original. I’ll save that for the next 35 things…
Anyway, some of these “wishes” are for things I haven’t seen on other peoples’ wish lists so I thought I would post them. I admit, some are far fetched. But I hope people will post more ideas about changes they would like to see, and I hope this might stimulate some new ideas from others. I know that many of these will never happen or are impractical, but a guy can hope, right?
I think the Live team is doing a terrific job. I love Live. I’m on all the other biggie services, and I like this one the best. And I want it to become even greater as I am sure it will. Great job Live team!
Oh, and I don’t hate twitter. I read them all the time. I just like to make fun of it. Me bad!
-Jeff
