In Orbit: December, 2006

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December 27

Welcome to the Windows Live for TV "Orbit" team blog

This blog is a good place to find more information on Windows Live for TV "Orbit" applications.

Windows Live for TV is an early beta 3D browser application that makes it easy to connect to your social network as well as friends and family from within Vista Media Center or IE7.0. You'll be able to view the best of Windows Live Spaces and communicate with Friends and Family over Windows Live Messenger 8.1 with voice & text chat as well as make a phone call.

Media Center has brought the PC to heart of the home, adding Windows Live services to Media Center will make it easier to stay in touch with your social network. Our goal in creating Orbit is to bring social networking to a new form factor that is both intuitive and fun to use. We built the application in Windows Presentation Framework (.NET 3.0) and it will run within Vista Media Center or directly in Vista hosted IE7.0 browser.

We appreciate you letting us know what you think of our early beta. We have lots of features which we hope add to make for a better browsing experience.

Please use the Feedback form on our Product Page to send your feedback or add feature suggestions to our blog entry below.

Learn more about Orbit...

Tip #01 - Shortcut to Go to a particular Space

Want to go directly to a Space that doesn't appear in your friends list without using our Spaces Search option?

1) If you have a keyboard, simply press "Ctrl+G" to open a "Goto Space" dialog:

2) Simply triple tap or type the space name and press "OK".

Note: Orbit was optimized for MCE remote control and limited keyboard use, but as you can see we still have some shortcuts that you can use. We'll post more shortcuts soon...

Tip #02 - Quick way to find Phone Contact

If you're like we are, you're address book could be jammed with 50 or more contacts. Finding a phone contact in our app can be done easier by simply opening up your own Contact Card on the lower bar and selecting "Make a phone call" option.

1) Selecting your Contact Card in the lower right corner of the app, opens your Contact Card with handy options:

2) Select "Make a phone call" on your Contact Card brings up the Phone Call screen:

3) Selecting "Contacts" button on top left, brings up Phone Contact screen that will let you see all contacts with phone numbers in your addressbook:

4) Selecting one these contacts will immediately return you to the "Make a phone call" screen, with they contacts phone number highlighted and ready to dial.