Hey folks,

 The wait is finally over.  The new version of Office Live is the first release that we are encouraging developers to use as a solution platform.  You can create your own custom business applications or workspaces, or start from one of our existing applications and extend them for your customers’ requirements. 

 There are lots of powerful new tools that you can use when building your apps, including:

• Galleries full of application templates
• Data Sharing to link your public-facing Web site to your workspaces and business applications
• New Web parts such as the List Rollup Web part to aggregate data of similar types from across your applications
• Powerful integration with Microsoft Office 2007 and 2003
• Workflow rules (requires SharePoint Designer 2007)
• Use of the Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 Web Services

• Office Live Developer Guide – we’ve updated the preview version and now made it available in the MSDN Library. It is full of interesting how-to articles, schemas, and information on what is and is not supported from the underlying Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 platform.  Highly recommended!!!
• Developer Forums – to accompany the platform, we’ve created a new forum/newsgroup on MSDN where you can start discussions on technical topics and problems, and chime in with your suggestions.
• Developer Video Testimonials – hear a little bit from some of our pilot partners who we can’t thank enough for helping us test the concept (and test the code!) for this new version of Office Live.
• Office Live Developer Center – tying everything together is the freshly updated Developer Center.  This site has links to our developer resources as well as other technologies that we think might help you get started on Office Live.

I’ve been talking up the platform here on this blog since last spring, and we can’t wait to see what you do with it.  Please remember to use our developer forums to send us your feedback on the solution platform and developer resources. 

 Thanks,