November 2007 - LiveSide - News blog

Posted on the Live Wire blog earlier today, news of some new additions to the @live.xx family.  If you live in these areas, you can sign up for a country specific @live address now, by going to get.live.com/mail/overview

• India: You can now get @live.in e-mail addresses, in addition to @hotmail.com addresses.
• The Philippines: You can now get @live.com.ph e-mail addresses, in addition to @hotmail.com addresses.
• Spain: You can now get @hotmail.es addresses, in addition to @hotmail.com addresses.

Thanks to Josh at Windows Connected for pointing out a new download now available that adds in menu options to be able to open and save documents directly to Office Live Workspaces when it becomes available.  From the download details:

The Office Live Add-in will install new menu options in Microsoft Office 2007 and a toolbar in Microsoft Office XP and Microsoft Office 2003. You will be able to open documents located in Office Live Workspace directly from Microsoft Office Word, Office Excel, and Office PowerPoint. You will also be able to save files directly from Microsoft Office Word, Office Excel, and Office PowerPoint to your Microsoft Office Live Workspace.
You can pre-register for Microsoft Office Live Workspace at http://workspace.officelive.com.

Pre registration requires providing a phone number for a verification sequence, a simple process.

Office 2003 Add-In (toolbar)

Office 2007 Add-In (menu option)

According to the initial announcement of Office Live Workspaces, which will provide 500mb of free storage "in the cloud", the beta is set to begin "in December".  We would expect that to be early in December, based on the appearance of this add-in, and the crush of the holidays coming later in the month.  We'll keep you posted, but you can subscribe to the Office Live Workspaces blog for updates as they become available.

Following the launch of Windows Live Wave 2 earlier this month, its unsurprising to hear that Microsoft is gearing up for a large advertising campaign to push the new suite of services. With Windows Live aiming to be the Software and Services extension to Windows on the internet, the advertising campaign aims to promote this link and show the benefits offered by using Windows Live as part of your online experience.

The $300m advertising campaign mentioned by the New York Post is apparently still in the pitch stage, and from what we hear will cover Windows Vista + Windows Live, Live Search and also Windows Mobile. With an apparent launch date around late spring/early summer 2008, the ads are expected to run in both the USA and other key markets.

Whoever wins the campaign will have a challenging task in front of them, with a shift in consumer attitude towards the Windows brand much needed. The phrase Todd Bishop picked out is particularly key:

"They are trying to make Windows cool, relevant and Internet-centric," said one source close to the company. "They don't want to be seen as a stodgy computer company."

On top of the perceptual challenges currently surrounding the Windows brand, there are also the measurable ones - sales of Windows Vista PCs, search share, the sale of Windows Mobile devices and the number of Windows Live users. These are all key if Microsoft is to draw in more advertisers wishing to run their own campaigns on Microsoft sites. After all, Kevin Johnson has his 10/20/30/40 mantra to aim for. I guess the question is whether the $300m is best spent on advertising, or put towards buying Yahoo ;)

Blue Monster TV spots anybody?

(via Todd Bishop)

Well it didn't take long for information to start appearing about the Messenger 9 Beta - a poster over on the WinBeta Forums has posted a welcome email and some screenshots.  According to the post, the email says, in part:

Congratulations and welcome to the Windows Live Messenger 9.0 Beta!
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into the Windows Live Messenger 9.0 beta program! We're excited to hear what you think about the next version of Windows Live Messenger. As part of this select group you get an exclusive preview of Windows Live Messenger 9.0.
Here are some of the changes you'll see in 9.0:
Sign-in and messaging in multiple locations - be logged into Messenger from more than one computer at the same time!
Signature sounds - choose the sound your friends here when you log in, and customize the sounds you hear in Messenger
Animated display pictures

Here are the links to the screenshots included in the forum post:

http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/4568/signintq0.jpg

http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/3451/signin2aw7.jpg

http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/9527/signin4vf1.jpg

http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/2017/signin3gl9.jpg

In the latest Compete traffic rankings for video services released today, MSN Video shows a marked improvement in October compared to September. Visits were up 25.3% to 35m, giving it almost 9% of the video market in 2nd place. In comparison YouTube/Google has almost 54%, with Yahoo coming 3rd, 0.5% behind MSN.

So what has caused this dramatic increase? Aside from it potentially being a random blip (MSN had a 7.5% decrease for the September/August numbers) it seems that there are two possible reasons for the change.

The first is that at the end of September MSN Soapbox was migrated from a stand-alone site to part of the new MSN Video portal. This addition of user generated content to the premium content traditionally hosted by MSN Video has given a slight rise in videos per user, from 1.60 in September to 1.65 using the October numbers. It looks like MSN Video managed to succeed in attracting new users to the site, so the November numbers should show whether MSN has managed to retain them for a 2nd month.

Additionally the Live Search update was released at the end of September also, and part of this includes the new video search engine. Whereas the old Live Search had this feature tucked away as "in beta" and powered by a 3rd party, the new Live Search is promoted much more prominently. Featuring as an option on the main search homepage, switching to video search is now also available direct from regular web or image search results. The new mouseover video previews are also particularly cool, and help to engage the user with the content before they click through to view the full clip.

It'll be interesting to see if this growth can be sustained through to the end of the year - I'm not sure it will but hopefully I'll be proved wrong.

If the internet were a battleground, then datacenters would be the nuclear missile silos. (I guess that also makes developers the cannonfodder!) According to Russian news site CNews, Microsoft has announced plans to build its first Russian datacenter in Irkutsk, Siberia. While a stable power supply and good network access are important considerations in deciding where to site a new datacenter, we can't help but feel that the cold Russian winter will make cooling the facility somewhat easier and cheaper than in San Antonio, Texas.

With Skydrive and Hotmail now offering GB's of storage for millions of users, increasing datacenter space is not a surprise. However with internet users now demanding faster and more feature-complete services, speeding up the path from server to the end-user's device is critical. Localization is a key factor when it comes to reducing latency, which is why when you consider the other recently announced Microsoft datacenters being located in Dublin, Ireland and the USA, the move into Russia may also be about improving performance for the Asian users of Windows Live. Irkutsk is conveniently located just above Mongolia, only 1000 miles from Beijing. Compare this to over 6000 miles from the West Coast of the USA and suddenly it makes a lot of sense for Microsoft to be investing in this region of Russia (map).

Dan Farber from ZDNet last week questioned where Ray Ozzie is - looks like he's planning out his Software + Services moves for next year.

Read more at DataCenterKnowledge

So we took down the Messenger v9 post which we just made. If you missed it, it contained the feature list for the build which was made available to some testers earlier today, after the invites were sent out last night. As the list was posted elsewhere first, it has been removed as a courtesy to the beta team rather than a requirement.

Unfortunately for those not yet accepted into the beta, we're not allowed to give any reason or explanation for what the status of the beta is (that is still confidential). Its a holiday weekend in the USA too, so this won't change until next week. Suffice to say, confusing potential beta testers / enthusiasts by not providing them the courtesy of an update doesn't sit well with us, at all.

What makes this a pointless exercise is that if anybody really want to see the feature list, its already cached in Google's search index. 

No sooner has the Windows Live Wave 2 suite been released than the first Wave 3 beta begins - Windows Live Messenger v9. Unlike the betas that have just finished, the Messenger v9 beta is being run from Microsoft Connect as a private beta, meaning that, for the moment at least, unless you receive an invite, you won't be able to participate.

For the moment it looks like most previous Windows Live testers are getting invites, so stay tuned to your inbox. With such a popular beta like this, you better sign up quick.

So what's new? While the goodies aren't yet available, we've heard about Multiple Points Of Presence (MPOP) support, which allows you to signin from multiple devices, ie be online at two places at once.

More coming soon!

In recent weeks those using FolderShare have had much to complain about. The service has been down more than its been up, and a quick look at FolderShare newsgroup shows that for a service such as this, 99.9% uptime is the minimum that is demanded. Relief may be at hand however, as Microsoft finally starts to make progress with Windows Live FolderShare beta.

Mohammed, one of the FolderShare team members that frequents the newsgroups, has been open about where they are now:

"We’re hard at work on improvements to the service, including some great new UI enhancements you can expect to see in the coming months that we think you’re going to love. 

In the meantime, however, we’ve been facing some challenges as we begin to transition the platform behind the service from the original code FolderShare ran on when we first acquired it to a more robust offering.  And unfortunately many of you have been feeling some of these pains first hand. 

Specifically, some recent hardware failures caused a chain of events that have caused connection issues for many over the last week or so.  We are working hard to address these problems and expect things to be functioning properly again in the coming days.  And longer term, you can rest assured that we are also making significant investments in our architecture and platform to fix these issues for the long term and to prepare the service for the future."

Reading between the lines suggests that a true Windows Live FolderShare beta is on the horizon, finally updating the FolderShare website and client that have been running from before the acquisition. How FolderShare eventually ties in with the other Windows Live services we'll just have to wait and see.

So why has it taken so long for Microsoft to get this far? Mohammed alluded to it in part. As FolderShare was an acquisition, it didn't arrive in a pre-packaged box that said "plug 'n' play" compatible on the side; it was service built on (L)AMP.  As such it will have been rewritten to run on the Windows-powered servers that form the massive Windows Live datacenters.

There's also the fact that Windows Live services are used by a lot of people, so turning FolderShare into a scalable solution is no small feat. While the downtime in the last month may be above the threshold of acceptability, imagine the outcry if a few million people jumped on it and the service wasn't ready!

We just wrote about the Windows Live services we use here at LiveSide, and Windows Live is starting to make a concerted push for organizations to make use of the same services.  Harvey Sanchez, the Online Strategy Lead for Microsoft Australia, points in a blog post to a new website, Windows Live Community Builder, and provides a quick explanation:

With Windows Live Community Builder, businesses or non for profit organisations or anyone looking at creating a community service can now achieve deeper and more engaging connections with their  community through customised, branded online experiences. Whether they want branded, familiar email services for their community or a member’s only area on their web site, complete with calendaring, contacts, and mapping features; Windows Live Community Builder has what they, their administrators, and their technology partners need. It’s easy to get started and painless to maintain – and it includes the peace of mind that comes from the technology, experience, and market leadership they’d expect from Microsoft.

  The new site connects up the Windows Live Admin Center and dev.live.com to make it pretty easy to get started:

With just a couple of clicks you can sign up and either register your domain name with Windows Live or use one you already have, set up open registration for email accounts, set up SRV records, co-branding, and more.

While at this point the new site is not much more than a front end for the Admin Center (the new improved Custom Domains), expect more consolidation of marketing these Windows Live services as both developer tools and services like Office Live begin to fill out.

Andy from Messenger Stuff noticed that the Windows Live WebMessenger dogfood signin page has been updated, and now features a different screenshot of the service. The new webmessenger service started external testing back in September, but since then things have been quiet. Maybe this is a sign that a public beta is on the way.

To recap, the notable updates from MSN WebMessenger include:

• Ability to set a display picture and personal message directly from within the browser
• Contact groups are now shown - MSN Webmessenger only shows them by online/offline status
• Tabbed chatting with the open conversations stacked vertically on the right hand side
• The Windows Live Wave 2 UI

Here's a comparison of the new shot with the old:

If that's too small for your liking, Andy has blown it up and done a pretty good analysis of it.

So looking forward to Messenger v9, the odds must be favourable that it will include tabbed chatting. After all, it would look pretty bad for a supporting web service to have more functionality than the main client application don't you think?

Microsoft announced in a press release on Wednessday night the release of OneCare 2.0, the latest version of the Anti-Virus/backup/computer maintenance offering from Windows Live.  Only now it's Thursday night and http://onecare.live.com is still offering up version 1.6.  Clearly something has happened, but whether its just some miscommunication between PR and operations (hey, it happens), or some last minute glitches are holding things up, we're not sure.

We'll be keeping an eye out for the latest bits - but if you receive either an update to your retail 1.6 version or are able to download and install 2.0 from the retail site, let us know.  Leave a comment or, as always, tips and feedback are much appreciated.

Update: Thanks for the tips, guys.  Looks like OneCare 2.0 is available for download - have at it.  Anyone seeing upgrades from v. 1.6?

Microsoft is apparently following up on plans to purchase French mobile music company MusiWave from OpenWave, for $46 million in cash and assuming another $4 million in debt, according to an AP story on Yahoo Finance, via David Hunter at Microsoft Tracker.

Microsoft announced its intentions on Monday, but details of the acquisition were not announced until today.  MusiWave provides technology, marketing, and content for mobile operators and music companies.

As you may have noted, LiveSide recently added the Windows Live Translator tool (tell us what you think). 

We actually use quite a list of Windows Live products at LiveSide, some we've been using for quite a while. So here's our list, along with some notes on how the products are used, and some non Windows Live products we can't seem to do without.

On the site:

• Windows Live ID:  We were among the first to implement Live ID authentication.  A few bugs to work out, but convenient.
• Windows Live Admin Center (was Custom Domains): all of our mail is handled through the Admin Center, and we've just added redirects to our Spaces site, now at http://spaces.liveside.net.  All of our Windows Live pages (our Spaces page, Hotmail, etc) are now co-branded with LiveSide.net.
• Windows Live Spaces: we maintain a site at Spaces, mainly at this point to allow you to add LiveSide as a friend on your Space.
• Live Search: Live Search powers our search box.
• Windows Live Alerts: Get alerts when we post.
• Windows Live Translator: We added a translation tool to our website, you can add it to your site or blog.

Some more we're toying with:

• Messenger IM Control: easy technically to implement, a little harder to dedicate the time to chat - we're thinking about this.
• Windows Live Events: Should we have a LiveSide birthday party? (2 years in January).
• Windows Live Calendar: Added a Calendar, but not much on it yet.

Managing LiveSide:

• Windows Live Mail: For managing multiple Hotmail accounts so we can keep track of your tips and feedback.
• Windows Live Writer: Using it to write this blog post.
• Live Search Maps collections: 200 of our closest friends are on LiveSide Stickers Around the World!

Other tools we find useful:

• Feedburner: manages our rss feed, provides statistical information on our rss readership.  Also manages rss ads, a nice bonus.
• Google Analytics: website traffic information - we're still waiting for a Gatineau invitation.
• Community Server: We wish it was easier to maintain, and the featureset is overkill, but it has served us well.
• Federated Media ads: We don't make much money running LiveSide, but we seem to be keeping up with the bills.
• Nick of NB Development: our CS guru, simply not possible for us to run on CS without some help, and Nick has been great.
• 1and1.com:  After tipping over a few times last year, we moved to 1and1, on Windows Server 2003 and a dedicated box, and haven't had a problem since.

Today marks the launch of Windows Live OneCare 2.0, Microsoft's 2nd revision of its all-in-one home computer management offering, combining anti-virus, firewall, spyware protection and backup software all into the same application.

So what's new in this version?  According to a new OneCare 2.0 Reviewer's Guide, quite a bit:

Security and Protection Technologies

·         Wi-Fi connection security (New)

·         Real-time and scheduled anti-malware scanning

·         Two-way managed firewall with automatic policy updates

·         Internet Explorer^® 7 Phishing Filter integration

·         Microsoft Update integration

·         OneCare advisories

PC Performance Tuning and Optimization

·         Proactive fixes and recommendations for PC health (New)

·         Start-time optimizer/turn off unused programs (New)

·         Automatic disk defragmentation and hard drive cleanup

Data Backup and Restore

·         Centralized backup for multiple local networked PCs (New)

·         Online backup for photos (available at added cost) (New)

·         Full and differential backups for key file types, including music, photos and financial documents

·         Backs up to CD, DVD, external hard drive, local network drive and USB-connected devices

Network and Multi-PC Management

·         Multi-PC management and monitoring (New)

·         Automatic printer-sharing configuration (New)

·         Firewall Connection Wizard for complex connections

Reporting, Licensing and Support

·         Monthly report of service and results (New)

·         Free version upgrades over the course of the 12-month subscription

·         Telephone, chat and e-mail support

·         Freedom to install OneCare on up to three PCs

OneCare is available in 17 countries and 7 languages, at http://onecare.live.com (unlike zuneoriginals which is well, disappointing for internationals).  Finally if you have any problems with the new release don't forget the official Windows Live OneCare forums.