Well, it's that time of the year again. It's the time where everyone does their predictions for the new year and recap of the events of the year that is on its way out. Kip is going to be covering our list of things to watch for in 2007 and that means that I'm taking the trip down memory lane. Let's take a look back at where Windows Live has come since LiveSide launched in January of this year .
You're going to have to click through to get the whole thing since this is a long one.
Hitwise Research Director Leann Prescott has posted the first real stats we've seen on question and answer site market share, and although Windows Live QnA is in third place, Yahoo! Answers is far ahead in the race with 96.1% US Market share.
While the blog entry does not detail what this means in terms of actual numbers, it's clear that QnA has a lot of ground to make up. We'll be watching how these numbers evolve.
As more Windows Live services launch out of beta in the next few months, one of the unanswered questions still remains around premium subscribers. Some good news for Hotmail Plus users comes in the form of Windows Live Mail Plus, which is currently only marketed in Holland.
Features:
- 4GB inboxes from Spring 2007 *New*
- Attachments upto 20MB
- No advertisements (across several Windows Live services, including Mail, Mail desktop and Spaces)
- Microsoft Outlook access
- No disabling of your account due to inactivity
- Yearly cost remains at €19.99, expected £14.99 and $19.99 when launched in other regions
While the addition of 4GB storage may seem like overkill for email, Gmail is currently on ~2.8GB, it makes more sense if you can share it between services. While Live Drive is not yet released, this would seem like an appropriate place for it to integrate with Windows Live.
Over the last week a new Windows Live Help Community site has rolled out, aiming to provide support for Windows Live services and products. Users can ask and answer questions, as well as sharing their experiences and feedback on the products. One nice feature is the drill-down Search menus, which would also work well on other search sites such as Live Qna.
Currently the only Windows Live service with a presence on the site is Custom Domains, which announced the addition of online community support in its December update.
While its nice to see an area for user support and feedback, there are now too many choices about where to get support: Help Community, the existing Windows Live public newsgroups, Live QnA, boards.live.com and the existing support and feedback websites. Hopefully there will be some migration of content to Help Community, in particular questions tagged with "Windows Live" on QnA and a structured support process that makes Help Community the first port of call for users.
General feedback on the help community is welcome, so let the team know what you think.
Windows Live Help Community: http://helpcommunity.live.com/
It seems as though the headlines for the monthly search engine reports are getting worse and worse for Windows Live. Last week had the Guardian technology blog proclaim Windows Live Search could be renamed Dead Search . While nobody would say that Windows Live Search is doing well, the Neilson/Netrating stats for November show yet another drop (PDF), there are signs of an improvement.
In Hong King for example, Windows Live Search has seen a doubling in search share in the last year, up from 5% in January to 12% in November*, suggesting that in some regions Live Search is doing well. It's a ray of hope, and one which will hopefully reflect a larger trend in 2007.
Have any Live Search success stories? Send them to us tips@liveside.net.
*Note: We were unable to locate the raw HitWise HK stats, just a summary reference in the post "Google search share closing in on Yahoo" - December 19th 2006 http://www.scmp.com/ (registration required)
The Map Room is reporting that 3D imagery for five new cities has been added to Virtual Earth. The new cities include the following: 
- Minneapolis - St. Paul, MN
- Tacoma, WA
- Sacramento, CA
- Various L.A. suburbs
- Irving, TX
It definitely seems like an odd choice of cities since larger ones such as Chicago, New York, and Miami have not been added. If you don't know, Virtual Earth's 3D feature was launched back in the beginning of November. It allows you to fly through 3D versions of (now 20) major cities.
The Map Room's post also noted that Virtual Earth's imagery for Italy has been significantly upgraded. They speculate that the new imagery is a result of a recent deal between Microsoft and a Norwegian pictometry company.
Via InsideMicrosoft
Update: This competition is closed. We'll have another one when Windows Live OneCare 1.5 launches in January 2007.
As its Christmas, we're giving out 5x1 year subscriptions for Windows Live OneCare 1.1, good for use on upto 3 PCs and upgradeable to Windows Live OneCare 1.5 when it is released in January. (Value $49.95 online). Although Windows Live OneCare 1.1 is supposed to be US only, we're going to open the competition up a little bit more. See the requirements below.
How to enter:
You have from now until 25th December to post on your own blog about why you'd like Santa to visit you, and then tag it with "Windows Live OneCare Competition". Only posts appearing on this technorati page or that trackback to this post will be considered as entries. From these we'll select 5 winners at random.
Many thanks to the Moderator team on the Windows Live OneCare forums who donated these subscriptions.
Requirements:
- A PC that runs Windows Live OneCare
- An English language version of Windows XP (US, UK, Canada, Australia, NZ etc)
Robert McLaws is guessing that Windows Live Drive may be announced at CES in Las Vegas in January. Basing his assumption on an ad in the CES 2007 guide, "Announcing a new way to share, protect, and store what matters most", the "All Together Now" ad does seem promising. While Robert may be going out on a limb here, as a number of Microsoft incubations would seem to fit a product that would "share, protect, and store", Live Drive is certainly one possibility.
Our own Matthew Weyer will be at CES, and will be bringing you all the Windows Live news from the Consumer Electronics Show (or from the parties, anyway)
Today the MSN Soapbox Team
have launched a new activity feature that will alow you to watch Soapbox videos on Windows Live Messenger in real-time with your friends. Which is much nicer than just sending them a link!
This is how it works:
- If at any time you would like to watch a video with one of your Messenger contacts, just click on the "share" tab under a Soapbox Video and select "IM this video."
- Which then if you are already signed into Messenger, will prompt you to choose which contact you would like to watch the video with. If you are not signed in, you will be prompted to do so.
- Then after you have choosen the contact, and once the person has accepted your invitation - boom the Messenger Activity Window will launch, with the player in full view. You can now watch the video with your friends and chat about it, all at the same time.
Happy video sharing! :)
Winds of up to 70 mph knocked out power for nearly 533,000 homes and business in Western Washington after the worst storm in more than a decade. Our very own Kip Kniskern was out of power and heat from Thursday night until Sunday at 5 PM. The power outage affected Microsoft, which asked it's employees to work from home after the brutual storm. Some Microsoft employees lost power at home and had to resort to Starbucks WiFi to work. The winds were so fierce that a Northwest Boeing 757 was filmed rocking in the crosswinds during landing on Wednesday afternoon. Thankfully the pilot aborted landing and circled around for another try.
@Matthew
19/12 Update: This has stopped working now.
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Looks like Christmas has come early for those Windows Live users who haven't got an @live.com email address yet. PicturePan2, the "unofficial LiveSide correspondent for China" has just posted a new way to register the Windows Live email address of your choice, provided you have Firefox or Opera installed. (You can use the nifty portable Firefox if you don't wish to install another browser.)
- Visit http://domains.live.com
- Choose "Get Started" then type in a domain of your choice eg "test123.com", and press "Continue"
- Choose "Create a new Windows Live ID in your domain" then press "Continue"
- In Firefox, go to "View - Page Style - No style"
- Now select the @live.com domain from the drop down menu
- Important: To be able to receive emails to this account, you must login to mail.live.com with your new email address to activate it
Pictures can be found over at source.
Update: Read the comments if you want help on how to get localised Windows Live email addresses eg @live.co.uk.
Note1: This could stop working at any time and most likely will do.
Note2: As was stated after the last hack, you risk losing your @live.com email address if you abuse the signup for spam purposes. However it was confirmed that regular users are safe.
The Windows Live Gallery got a minor update yesterday, and at the same time a new MSN Soapbox gadget was uploaded.
Make your statement on Soapbox on MSN Video – whether it’s silly, crazy or serious, it’s yours. Upload your creation to Soapbox and share it with your family and friends on Spaces. This gadge is accessible world wide excepting China due to legal reasons. The gaget allows the following:
- Publish video from any major digital video format (AVI, ASF, WMV, MOV, MPEG 1/2/4, 3GPP, DV, H.263, H.264) to Soapbox
- Watch entertaining and original videos uploaded by others
- Rate, tag and share videos in the gadget
Update: Gadget is now loading correctly
The rumoured Messenger and Mobile integration with MSN Soapbox is still to appear.
Hey Berkowitz try selling this stuff instead of bashing it, it rocks.
The Windows Live Local blog announced a new minor point release that packs in lots of new features. First, the Birds Eye navigation control has been replaced, the thumbnail grid is out and a very cool new draggable inset map is in. Much easier and much more intuitive.
Another very useful new feature: the drawing tools now report distance as you draw in a tooltip, and when you're done drawing, the distance appears on the scratchpad. Use this with in a Collection, and catalog bike trips, jogging runs or favorite drives.
In addition to the distance feature, drawing on a map will now auto-scroll in the direction you are drawing if you come to the edge of the view, and you can extend previously drawn routes.
Lots more on the VE Team Spaces blog, with promises of more info on the new drawing tools soon.
Very cool stuff guys keep up the good work!
Although there doesn't seem to be any official announcement as of yet, a new build of WLMd is available. Sign up at ideas.live.com if you haven't tried out the public beta, or if you're signed up you can download it here.
And while it's been out for a few days, this might be a good time to mention that you can provide feedback or submit bugs on WLMd through Microsoft Connect. This is a new feature for public betas, previously access to Connect was limited to "managed beta" testers.
Read more about filing bugs on the WLMd blog.