Microsoft announces new SkyDrive features

Sean Bradford on 14 April 2009 - 21:58 · 21 comments & 7463 views

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Today the Windows Live SkyDrive team has two announced new features. While today's update isn't anything compared to what we will be seeing in Wave 4 in the coming months, the update is focused on delivering a smooth intuitive experience for sharing photos.

If you have Silverlight installed you can now arrange your photos by simply dragging them into the order you want. You can also sort your photos and files by name, size, date, or type. This includes arranging photos in your slide shows.

Another feature that was announced but won't be available for a few more days is the ability to view your friend's tagged photos. An interesting point to mention here is that if you have your photos set to be viewed by your network only, this feature will become redundant.

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(5 replies) #1 darkmanx21 on 14 Apr 2009 - 22:08

How many "waves" (everybody throw your hands in the air) are there going to be?

#1.1 +Xerxes on 14 Apr 2009 - 22:14

As many as MS damn well pleases, that's how many

On a more serious note, isn't this "wave" business just fancy marketing talk for release of new versions anyway? and in any case, it will be endless till something better comes along I'd say.

#1.2 Calum on 14 Apr 2009 - 22:56

Yes, 'waves' are just new full releases, similar to have Mozilla release Firefox 1, Firefox 2, Firefox 3 etc. Microsoft release their Windows Live software and services in waves. Wave 1, Wave 2, Wave 3 etc. They tend to release a new 'wave' every year

#1.3 GP007 on 14 Apr 2009 - 23:15

Which is very good, updating fast and often is one of the upsides to services compared to old standalone offline software.

#1.4 FoxieFoxie on 15 Apr 2009 - 08:49

Still no gDrive feature?

#1.5 +statm1 on 15 Apr 2009 - 20:10

Waves are just what they call versions darkman..

(1 reply) #2 skynetXrules on 14 Apr 2009 - 22:24

i hope it doesn't have "forget file arrangement bug " feature !

#2.1 M_Lyons10 on 14 Apr 2009 - 22:28

HAHAHA, wouldn't that suck... I hope they've thought of that already...

(6 replies) #3 marleyuk on 14 Apr 2009 - 22:44

I wish they would just hurry up and let us mount the drive on our desktop.

#3.1 Calum on 14 Apr 2009 - 22:59

That would be so handy! We have 25GB of space on SkyDrive... perfect for backing up all of my music, videos etc. The only problem is, we can only upload one file at a time

Live Mesh is no use as that has only 5 GB of storage (for most of us users) at the moment in it's current developmental stage...

#3.2 darkmanx21 on 14 Apr 2009 - 23:13

You CAN do more than one file at a time. You just drag them onto the screen space after clicking add files and it will start uploading automatically. The limit is a 1000 files per upload, I think.

#3.3 GP007 on 14 Apr 2009 - 23:17

I really don't get why Live Mesh and the new WinMo online storage services don't just use SkyDrive and have their own?

MS needs to just use SkyDrive for all of these services and toss the stuff into different folders.

#3.4 chanvw on 14 Apr 2009 - 23:20

You can mount the drive using software called Gladinet Cloud Desktop (it lets you mount other online drives like Google Docs too)

#3.5 _Wintermute_ on 15 Apr 2009 - 00:07

Like with MobileMe/iDisk?

Last edited by _Wintermute_ on 15 Apr 2009 - 00:14

#3.6 Jayayess1190 on 15 Apr 2009 - 19:11

Calum said,

That would be so handy! We have 25GB of space on SkyDrive... perfect for backing up all of my music, videos etc. The only problem is, we can only upload one file at a time

Live Mesh is no use as that has only 5 GB of storage (for most of us users) at the moment in it's current developmental stage...

Use IE, there is a plugin that you download that allows you to download as many files at one time as you want.

(2 replies) #4 babyHacker on 14 Apr 2009 - 23:27

Skydrive is cool and all but the fact that this thing down scales images to 1600x1200 and makes the quality terrible will keep me away from ever using it for photos. I use and do not mind paying $25 a year for Flickr, a service which does not ruin the pictures.

#4.1 Nazgulled on 15 Apr 2009 - 00:13

That's not true... I just uploaded a photo with 10000px wide through Windows Live Photo Gallery and it worked. When uploading a photo album I have the choice to resize the photos to 1600px wide or not (uploading them in their original resolution).

I just wish they fixed some bugs with the service first... The fact that my friends have to change the interface language to English just so they can download all the photos from an album in a nice .zip package is unacceptable. This feature needs to be made available for every country, not just for some...

#4.2 babyHacker on 15 Apr 2009 - 05:18

Nazgulled said,

Thanks, I have never tried uploading with Live Photo Gallery but I did and you are correct in that you get an option. I have always used the browser plugin which uploads to your documents folder (photo gallery uploads to your photos folder) and always down samples your pictures to terrible quality. Now I can quit writing off Skydrive for backing up and sharing jpeg pictures.

#5 Cryton on 15 Apr 2009 - 10:57

The only feature of the SkyDrive i would like to see is for the f**king thing to work properly. I've uploaded 5 or 6 larges files to my public space and it's extremely rare for anyone to be able to download them. You have to keep doing Right Click, Save As, and after about 40 tries the Save File dialog will appear and the download will start.

#6 _dandy_ on 15 Apr 2009 - 15:56

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong...if I have a 5GB TrueCrypt file and want it on SkyDrive, and I change a 1KB file it contains, I still have to re-synch the whole 5GB...?

Even if someone could assure me that everything's encrypted on their end, there's no way I'd use something like SkyDrive to host my files "in the clear".

#7 dcoaster on 15 Apr 2009 - 21:58

I'll start using SkyDrive when they actually allow us to upload FOLDERS and not just files!

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