You can now download the new version of the Windows Live™ ID Client 1.0 SDK, the Client Alpha Refresh. This release includes some software updates, and keeps us on our way to the final 1.0 release by the end of this year. As always, we take your feedback very seriously, so please let us know what you want to see in future releases by posting to our forum.

With the Alpha refresh release, we introduce the Windows Live ID Client 1.0 SDK (more briefly referred to as Client Auth) sample application Shoe Buddy that premiered at the MIX conference. Shoe Buddy demos a real application that would download shoes from different online stores into a smart client, making it easier to search. By pulling together inventory from multiple sources, the shopper has a single purchasing experience (one shopping cart, one transaction) when in reality the products come from multiple vendors. Shoe Buddy also incorporates Client Auth’s functionality to interact with Windows Live Spaces. Not only can shoppers search and purchase their shoes in the application, they can also blog about the shoes directly from the smart client. The purpose of the demo is to show how adding Client Auth to the application increases the value to both the developer and the shopper. By letting the shopper blog about their shoes from within the natural flow of the smart client shopping experience, they can easily share the details of their discoveries with their friends and family. Creating an e-mail or copying the information to IM is much more involved than automatically posting both the picture and the description of the shoes to the shopper’s blog. The shopper is now, in essence, advertising the developer’s Shoe Buddy products to their social network. Both parties win.

So do you want to play around with Shoe Buddy? Live in a Box’s 0.3 Alpha now includes Client Auth and Shoe Buddy. Live in a Box is a project on CodePlex that lets you play with the different Windows Live technologies. Check out our sample application and make sure that you tell us about applications that you build with Client Auth.

- Sarah Faulkner, Program Manager