Windows Live Alerts

For those of you that have followed the Windows Live Alerts service, you'll have noticed the team's evolution of the service, with new features that enable content providers to brand their notificiations and now associate advertising with content that their readers have opted into receiving through the Alerts service.

The team has referred to the evolution of this feature set as "Super Toast".  The term "toast" being our name for the little window that pops up within Messenger when a users receives a notification about content they've elected to receive.

1. Classic Alert: an IM based Alert with a small logo of the content provider (Newsweek example)
2. Branded Alert: an IM based Alert where branding is applied to  (mess.be example)
3. Alert with Advertisement: an IM based Alert where an applicable ad is associated with the notification (the MSN Weather Alert with Ford Escape example) 

While the Classic Alert (Newsweek example) has been for several years, the Branded Alert (mess.be example) is relatively recent and the Alert with Advertisement (MSN Weather with Ford Escape advertisement example) is brand new.  We're excited to release this latest improvement to the service that tens of millions of users around the world enjoy.

If you're interested in integrating Windows Live Alerts with your application or content, please evaluate the zero development solution for content published via RSS or the SDK available on MSDN that will enable more sophisticated notification scenarios, including 1:1 or personal alerts.
 

Windows Live Alerts on your blog or space is a great tool for letting people that follow your blog to instantly know when you publish updates, driving frequency of use and happy readers.  It takes a little manual configuration, but the following steps are straight forward:

1. Sign up for Alerts here
2. You'll receive an e-mail from Alerts and you need to click the link to accept the terms of use
3. You’ll receive a 2nd e-mail from Alerts once you accept the terms of use.  This contains the URL and PINID for your sign-up page.  You will want to copy this HTML into the HTML container part. 

Here's an example of the HTML that you'll want to paste into the HTML container (use your PINID and make sure it points to your blog):

<p align=center>
<a href="http://signup.alerts.msn.com/alerts/login.do?PINID=xxxxxxx&returnURL=http://spaces.msn.com/members/windowslivealerts/">
<img src="http://images.alerts.msn.com/mcwebsite/graphics/blog/alert_signup_eng.gif" alt="MSN Alerts" border=0></a>
</p>

4. Go to your space and install the spaces PowerToy “HTML container part”
   1. Log with Passport or Windows Live ID and Edit your Space.
   2. In the Address bar of your web browser add the text “&powertoy=sandbox” to the end of the displayed URL.
   3. Click the Go button next to your web browser address bar.
   4. Once the page has finished reloading, click on the Customize tab in your Space.
   5. 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.
   6. Copy the HTML described above into the container
   7. Save your updates to the container

You're done and should have a nice button on your space that lets your readers sign up to they'll instantly know when you post!

Welcome to Windows Live Alerts.   The service was originally launched as .NET Alerts but has also sported the MSN Alerts and Microsoft Alerts brands, and provides people a great way to let the information they care about find them, and businesses a powerful tool for delivering timely information to their customers.

The premise of the service is simple: let the information you care about find you. 

Through continual investments, including the acquisition of MessageCast and a very talented team in 2005, Microsoft continues to make it easier than ever to Alert enable information.  Through service any RSS feed can be Alert enabled with delivery to multiple end-points (IM, e-mail or mobile), all with zero development and in a way that provides a completely user controlled and spam free experience.

We'll be updating the site frequently with new features over the coming months (new features, updates on Windows Live branding, and a SDK).  In the meantime, we would love to hear from you at msnainfo@microsoft.com or out in the MSDN Windows Live Messenger developer forum. 

Thanks and enjoy the service!!