The address books today are stored in the cloud but they are also synchronized between your computer and your account. If this app is supposed to be cloud-powered address book service, that will be great. And what’s even easier is that you can import your contacts from other services straight to your account such as social networking sites for instance. On the What’s New tab, you can check out what’s going on from your friends as if this tab is like the homepage of social networking sites which may be also similar to using Windows Live Messenger. I don’t know if this should be in Messaging app but this being in People App makes half a sense as the social networking app that came with Developer Preview version is likely to be third-party app. If there are Facebook and Twitter official apps on Windows 8, at least it can make more sense. Also, you can notice the Windows Live homepage with your account signed in to Windows Live in which you can also check out what’s going on from your friends. Lastly, like Windows Live, you can get connected to multiple social networking services in People App including your Hotmail and Exchange accounts.
This may be where modern devices come with modern contact list because the users we communicate and share with are so important to how we use them. These may consist of email, messaging, phone calls, social updates and comments, video communication and so on. The People app is a modern take on the flat contact lists of the past, it’s built for the way you communicate today and like other services, it’s connected to the cloud you already use. Modern devices require the modern address book that’s crafted around a few principles:
- Complete and Connected – All your personal, work and social contact are there, alive with their social activities, photos, videos and other social media stuffs depending on the social networking sites that let you instantly engage and react to them. The social data syncs from your email and social networking accounts rather than getting this info from a one-time import and you get a simple unified contact card for each user, regardless of how many versions of their contact info you have from different accounts. What about the merged contacts and contact info by then? Do we have the time to re-manage the contact lists like checking for duplicate contacts?
- Cloud powered – Your contacts and settings are effortlessly backed up so they just work when you sign in from the web or the new device.
- In control – You can decide on what you want to share with whom across your home, work and social networks. And of course, those networks decide what information is shared and connected, respecting their policies and customer privacy. Hopefully, this should be driving you good social networking at work, not those Anti-Facebook type policies we had already seen on the online news. If that’s the case in getting around the problem because of those bad policies, you can be better off with using Twitter or other social networking sites no one else has known of.
You can easily import the contacts from your social accounts and other accounts of yours without having to invite your friends whatsoever so that there’s no reason for the apps like this to spam your friends with invitations like hell. Yesterday, some friend of mine had the guts to chat with me with the use of Windows Live Messenger just because I was active in Windows Live Messenger. The truth is that, my account is completely active in Windows 8 but who knows if that is true or not. Also, there’s no reason to transfer contacts between devices like that but imagine using the non-modern mobile phones where you have to re-make the contact list based on the modern device you’re using. So, the People App is assumed to be using the Exchange ActiveSync technology as well as the secure standards-based APIs exposed by social networking sites to sync a copy of your contact list from the cloud. It’s always up to date with new friends you add, edit and remove so you don’t have the problems of a brittle one-time import.
What’s new to Consumer Preview is that People app now supports the Share contract, allowing you to post to share stuff on social networking sites from any Metro style app including Internet Explorer Metro version. What about the desktop apps? Another great feature is the People picker contract. With this, any Metro app can speed up simple tasks like sending a package from the website or emailing a list of friends by letting you quickly select contacts from the People app. You can also use the Share charm to share stuffs on the blogs but it won’t be the case as if the entire article is exactly copied like hell or some sort without major modification.
So for desktops and laptops, the People App may seem to be optional but with third-party tools that allow you to customize Windows Live Messenger skin including the latest version of WLM, it may be the fact that you’re better off with WLM instead of this Metro app as the People App is likely to be optimized for tablets. What’s not touch-friendly though is the Windows Live website which is still looking like it is for desktops and laptops. However, there’s also Mobile version of Windows Live website that you can get the around the problem in case the site is not touch-friendly on the tablets. So, there will be the upcoming Metro version of Hotmail that can be easily used for smartphone and tablets in the future.
