The Space Craft: PowerToys

CES And Windows Media Powertoy

Wed, 11 Jan 2006 19:48:32 GMT

Hi everyone, Well the crazy time of the holidays is winding down, and we just got back from the International CES Expo (to see the pictures go to the photo album). This was the largest CES to date with 2,500 exhibitors, more than 150,000 attendees from 110 countries. A great experience not only for Spaces but for Microsoft as well. So how well did Microsoft do at CES? As you can imagine the XBOX 360 booth had lines a mile long! Of course that could have been the eight XBOX 360’s they had running all day! The other cool things everyone wanted to see? Windows vista, Windows Live and the new IE 7! Very cool things that Microsoft is doing in the upcoming year!

The MSN Spaces booth was also very busy! Thank you to everyone who stopped by and asked us questions! We signed up some great new users, made some great contacts, talked with some potential new partners and of course, answered tons of questions! Mike Torres and MC also gave a great presentation all about our services at the Micrsooft Theater!

Bill Gates stopped by several of the Microsoft booths the first day, he also gave several interviews. However he wasn’t the only celebrity at CES. Snoop Dogg, xzbit, Pharrell Williams and were seen around enjoying the show, just to name a few.

All in all a great experience!

To start the new year we wanted to let answer some of your top questions about the Windows Media Powertoy! We get quite a few questions about the Powertoys, but this one in particular one definitely tops the list. So here you go, Let us know if you have more!

My Windows Media Powertoy is working perfectly on Internet explorer but not when I use Mozilla Firefox,, is there a way to fix this?

Firefox does not currently support ActiveX controls.

MY URL won’t stick.

The “URL Stick” is likely a bug introduced last month. This has been fixed in an upcoming release.

Could explain all the other available edits ( Position in secs., Rate to play (( what’s the best number)) ,Display mode choices and the difference between save and revert.
Yeah, the available fields are “techy”. The following article may help: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/wmplay10/mmp_sdk/paramtags.asp

However, the basics are as follows:

Supported means the file types currently supported. Example “MyMediaFile.wma”.
Time in seconds is the starting point where the video/audio will be cued up to when playback begins.
Rate is the speed at which the playback occurs.
Auto start tells if the media will start playing or if visitors need to hit play first.

I got the url and the media player all set up, but when I click on the play button, it shows connecting for a second and stops. The media player doesn't really play the file. Can you give me a hand? Thanks.

This could really be a number of things. First, make sure that the URL is getting saved. Set/save it, close the browser window, open a new one and return to your space as the author. Then check the URL.

But it only plays one file, does it support play list and online radio?
the windows media player can support .asx (online radio format), but MSN spaces PowerToy media player module did not support it. We need play list function, we need online radio in MSN spaces.

We will support these in an upcoming release.

I put windows media player Powertoy on my blog site but I don’t know what URL to put in the space that it asks for it, when i go to edit my space, to get it to connect my windows media player. I also don’t understand the "time in seconds" and all that stuff or what revert means. if you could comment me back about this I would appreciate it.

At present you need to have an external place to post your media files, Time in seconds is the starting point where the video/audio will be cued up to when playback begins

Is it possible to add more than one song?

In an upcoming release you will be able to use Windows Media Player play lists with multiple songs.

So where can I store my files?

The Spaces team uses several different services for this. These are just some of the many available:

http://geocities.yahoo.com/
http://www.filelodge.com/index.php?pg=p11
http://serverintellect.com/

Windows Media Player Power Toy

Fri, 23 Dec 2005 05:14:44 GMT

Many of you have been asking about the Media PowerToy. I've reposted the instructions on how to add this part to your Space below. You can also find it as a link on the left hand side of this Space.

There are quite a few places that you can host media files on your own or get access to files to play. I can't officially recommend any of these, but, that doesn't mean other members of the Spaces community can't. If you see a Space with a Media PowerToy clip (or any other feature for that matter) you like, just leave a comment on that persons Space asking them how they got it or check some of the comments with people offering help.

This is meant to be a fun hack part for now. We will bring you something that is much easier to use, but have fun with the PowerToy in meantime.

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PowerToys are here!!!

Windows Media Player PowerToy:

The Media Player Power Toy is designed to allow you to play audio and video files within your Space. While editing your Space specify the URL of a Media file located on the web in the Media Power Toy and hit Save. This will allow the people viewing your Space to watch or listen to the media file you have linked. You can customize the experience even more by altering the player settings (like auto start, times to play, and player mode) while editing your Space.

Please note that this PowerToy, like the others, is available in English ONLY for now and is UNSUPPORTED.

This feature is to be used for authorized content only. Please respect the creative efforts and intellectual property of others, and do not link to unauthorized materials. Linking to unauthorized material is a violation of the Spaces Code of Conduct and Terms of Use.

Follow these steps to add this Power Toy to your Space:

Log into Passport and Edit your Space.
In the Address bar of your web browser add the text “&powertoy=musicvideo” to the end of the displayed URL.
Click the Go button next to your web browser address bar.
Once the page has finished reloading, click on the Customize tab in your Space.
In the Modules drop down menu in the Customize tab there should be a listing for PowerToy: Windows Media Player. Click the word Add next to it and then click the Save button.

Talking about Spaces Cleanup Tool

Wed, 12 Oct 2005 22:56:01 GMT

Hi everyone, A member of the Spaces team, came up with a great tool to help cleanup comments or trackback spam! It's a great little tool but I want to let everyone know that it is completely unsupported and use at your own risk! However, we know that alot of you out there have been asking for something similar to this, so I thought it would be great to include you on this, until the spaces elves create a permanent solution!

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Spaces Cleanup Tool

I often find myself cleaning up comment or trackback spam. These are comments or trackback that are either out of scope or are attempting to drive traffic to a specific site. Currently, it is very tedious to delete multiple items. I created the Spaces Cleanup tool to help.
Before I explain the tool, I want to be clear that this tool is not endorsed or supported. I have tested this tool against my own space. Feel free to use this tool at your own risk. It is very likely this tool will be broken at some point by an update to Spaces (it is designed so I can update it if necessary), and I expect, like the original Edit It tool, will become unnecessary in the future.
What is the Spaces Cleanup Tool?
It is a button you can add to your Internet Explorer toolbar (via your favorites). When you are editing your space (either the "Home" Page or "Blog" Page, select this tool from favorites menu to convert all the individual delete options to checkboxes. You can quickly check multiple items and delete them. On the "Blog" edit page, if you expand any items, you can click the Spaces Cleanup button again to reconvert any new delete buttons.
When you are finished selecting items for deletion, click the "Permanently Delete Checked Items" button added to your web-page (immediately below the Home, Profile, etc., tabs). Once confirmed, sit back, and the selected items will be deleted. Once all the items are deleted, the page will reload.
How do I Install the Spaces Cleanup Tool?
Visit the Spaces Cleanup Tool page and follow the instructions.

MSN Alerts PowerToy

Mon, 22 Aug 2005 23:52:05 GMT

Alerts aren't available broadly yet, but you'll notice some people already have them on their Space. The instructions below show how you can hack something together yourself.

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MSN Alerts on your own Space is a great way to enable people to get instant updates whenever you update your Blog!

While it definitely requires a little more work, it's actually pretty easy to set up.

1. Install the PowerToys "HTML Container Part" - click here to learn how to do this: (http://spaces.msn.com/members/thespacecraft/Blog/cns!1pBU8QRvZvOfXG4QTjpv_GFg!127.entry)

2. Sign up for Alerts at http://signup.alerts.msn.com/brochure/index.html.

3. Receive Welcome Email - Accept Terms of Use

4. You'll receive another instruction email with HTML code for your Alerts signup button. Copy and paste that HTML code provided in the into the HTML Container Window. Here's an example of mine:

<a href="http://signup.alerts.msn.com/alerts/login.do?PINID=xxyourPINxx &returnURL=http://spaces.msn.com/members/yourname/">

<img src="http://images.alerts.msn.com/mcwebsite/graphics/blog/alert_signup_eng.gif" alt="MSN Alerts" border=0></a>

5. Click Save

6. You're all set! Users can get alerted whenever you or a friend updates your space!

How did you do that?

Fri, 05 Aug 2005 19:48:19 GMT

Tweak UI PowerToy:

The Tweak UI Power Toy is designed to allow you to customize the look of your Space. Once you add the Tweak UI Power Toy to your Space you can use it to control colors, module borders and transparency, and the background image’s placement and presence. Granular control combined with existing Spaces layout and module configuration allows for almost endless customizability and personalization.

Please note that this PowerToy, like the others, is available in English ONLY for now and is UNSUPPORTED.

Follow these steps to add this Power Toy to your Space:

Log into Passport and Edit your Space.
In the Address bar of your web browser add the text “&powertoy=tweakomatic” to the end of the displayed URL.
Click the Go button next to your web browser address bar.
Once the page has finished reloading, click on the Customize tab in your Space.
In the Modules drop down menu in the Customize tab there should be a listing for PowerToy: Tweak UI. Click the word Add next to it and then click the Save button.

Custom HTML in Spaces....You bet!

Fri, 05 Aug 2005 19:46:30 GMT

Custom HTML PowerToy:

The Custom HTML Power Toy is designed to allow you to add a sandbox module to your Space in which you can enter text, link to images, and use other HTML features. The Custom HTML Power Toy supports all of the same HTML that you can enter into a Blog entry and can be moved around your Space as a separate module, just like a list or any other Spaces module. Additionally you can control the Title of this module and whether the borders for this module are displayed or not.

Please note that this PowerToy, like the others, is available in English ONLY for now and is UNSUPPORTED.

Follow these steps to add this Power Toy to your Space:

Log into Passport and Edit your Space.
In the Address bar of your web browser add the text “&powertoy=sandbox” to the end of the displayed URL.
Click the Go button next to your web browser address bar.
Once the page has finished reloading, click on the Customize tab in your Space.
In the Modules drop down menu in the Customize tab there should be a listing for PowerToy: Custom HTML. Click the word Add next to it and then click the Save button.

PowerToys are here!!!

Fri, 05 Aug 2005 19:38:03 GMT

Windows Media Player PowerToy:

The Media Player Power Toy is designed to allow you to play audio and video files within your Space. While editing your Space specify the URL of a Media file located on the web in the Media Power Toy and hit Save. This will allow the people viewing your Space to watch or listen to the media file you have linked. You can customize the experience even more by altering the player settings (like auto start, times to play, and player mode) while editing your Space.

Please note that this PowerToy, like the others, is available in English ONLY for now and is UNSUPPORTED.

This feature is to be used for authorized content only. Please respect the creative efforts and intellectual property of others, and do not link to unauthorized materials. Linking to unauthorized material is a violation of the Spaces Code of Conduct and Terms of Use.

Follow these steps to add this Power Toy to your Space:

Log into Passport and Edit your Space.
In the Address bar of your web browser add the text “&powertoy=musicvideo” to the end of the displayed URL.
Click the Go button next to your web browser address bar.
Once the page has finished reloading, click on the Customize tab in your Space.
In the Modules drop down menu in the Customize tab there should be a listing for PowerToy: Windows Media Player. Click the word Add next to it and then click the Save button.