LiveSide - News blog : Wave 3

Details on the latest Windows Live Mail update

damaster — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 00:46:05 GMT

The Windows Live Mail team has posted on their blog today about what was updated and fixed in the latest release (build number 14.0.8089.0726) that came along with the new Windows Live Movie Maker. Here’s a few of the main bugs that were addressed in this update:

Windows Live Mail can now properly import Outlook Express mail account settings that were transferred from a Windows XP to a new Vista or Windows 7 system using the Windows Easy Transfer wizard.

Some users had problems launching Windows Live Mail and we have addressed this. In some cases, after you closed Windows Live Mail, the application would appear to close, but the wlmail.exe process would continue to run in the background. That process would prevent Mail from launching in the future.

On Vista and Windows 7, Windows Live Mail wouldn’t connect properly to POP email servers using SSL. In particular, this affected some users of Yahoo! Mail.

If you have had sign-in issues with Windows Live Mail previously, try this new update to see if your problems are addressed.

It is good to see that the Windows Live Mail team has been proactive and publishing the details about this update. We’ll have to wait and see whether the other teams will be posting about their latest changes. Kudos to the Windows Live Mail team!

You can grab the latest Windows Live Essentials at http://download.live.com

Windows Live Family Safety updated with greater Windows integration

damaster — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 01:14:25 GMT

Along with the latest release of Windows Live Essentials yesterday which has been covered with news about the shiny new Windows Live Movie Maker final, what went unnoticed was also a feature update to Windows Live Family Safety. Today Brandon LeBlanc on the Windows Blog posted about what’s new in the latest Windows Live Family Safety, here’s some of his words, summarised into a few dot points:

The updated version of Windows Live Family Safety offers deeper integration with Windows resulting in fewer log-in prompts and faster web surfing compared to previous versions of Family Safety while it’s running on the PC.

Windows Live Family Safety uses Windows accounts as the basis for storing settings. Parents are no longer required to have a Windows Live ID for each child who needs their own settings.

Windows Live Family Safety reads the Windows Parental Control (WPC) settings on Windows Vista and Windows 7 enabling parents to retrieve WPC activity reports from any Windows Vista or Windows 7 computer online. These reports include time spent on the computer, browsing history, and games and applications run.

Windows Live Family Safety takes advantage of the new Windows 7 APIs which allows users to access Windows Live Family Safety directly from the Windows Parental Controls Control Panel in Windows

Other great features like Windows Live contact management (on Hotmail, Messenger and Profile/Spaces) are still available, keeping your child safe while surfing Windows Live websites. The new update also let parents to monitor their child’s computer and internet activities much easier with deeper integration into Windows, with WPC activity reports now available to be accessed online. The reduction of log-in prompts and the need for child’s Windows Live accounts also makes the user experience much better. Overall it’s an useful update for those parents who needs a decent program to monitor their child’s computing activities.

You can get Windows Live Family Safety at http://download.live.com/familysafety

Windows Live Alerts gets the Wave 3 look…finally!

damaster — Mon, 25 May 2009 09:44:18 GMT

Windows Live Alerts have finally gotten a facelift and joins the rest of the Windows Live family in getting the “Wave 3” look – making it one of the last Windows Live services to make the switch (Video Messages just made the switch a month ago, and there’s ~~only~~ My.Live.com, Gallery and Silverlight Streaming left to go). Interestingly, Alerts totally skipped the “Wave 2” look and went straight from the good old Flair/Blue Vapour theme to the new one. Enough said, here’s a screenshot of the new look:

From initial testing, it doesn’t seem like it contains any new features as part of this update, besides the new “Featured Alerts Providers” homepages for each country/region. The link for website owners to sign-up and create their own alerts for their website was also removed from the homepage. The supposedly “new” feature for content owners to create custom Branded Alerts and Alert with Advertisement that was under limited beta testing previously was also not apparent in this update:

We also heard that it may become part of the new Azure Service Platform. At least this shows that Windows Live Alerts is still alive!

Thanks to Picturepan2 at LiveSino.net and BV2312 for the heads up!

Windows Live Video Messages Has Now Been Updated To Wave 3

Sunshine — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 10:06:56 GMT

Windows Live Video Messages has now been updated to Wave3, as promised nearly 2 weeks ago. As you can see it now has the Wave 3 header, so you can navigate easier between all the Windows Live services.

Besides the list of updates we already gave you, PicturePan2 spotted the storage space has also been increased from 2GB to 4GB. You may have noticed this storage meter in the screenshot:

You can display that after you’ve installed the ActiveX control for Settings (Options > Settings):

Speaking of sending video messages: If you have a LifeCam, like me, you can also install the LifeCam Video Messages Gadget, which makes it even easier to send video messages to your friends.

Windows Live Profile (April) update is here!

damaster — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:39:41 GMT

As announced one week ago, the newly updated Windows Live Profile has been rolled out to all users now! A summary of all the changes that were part of this update include:

20 new Web Activities, including Facebook, Digg, Last.fm, SmugMug and many more totalling 30 Web Activities you can add to your Profile. You can find the whole list at http://profile.live.com/WebActivities
3 new ways to add people to your Windows Live network, including importing contacts from Hi5, MySpace, and Tagged, in addition to the existing Facebook and LinkedIn contacts you may import from. You can start connecting with your friends on other networks using Windows Live at http://profile.live.com/connect
Contact search word-wheel, improved results when you’re searching for people on Windows Live from the Windows Live Home or Profile pages, as reported earlier
Photos Tagged of You, you’re now able to view all the photos that have been People Tagged of you, or your friends, on Windows Live Photos on a single page linked on your Profile
A new Windows Live Profile favicon

For more information check out Windows Live’s official announcement. You can try it out (if you haven’t done so already) at http://profile.live.com

Windows Live Home New Feature: Word-wheel Contact Search in Header Search Bar

damaster — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 12:13:24 GMT

It seems like Windows Live Home has been silently updated overnight with a few new hidden features. Sunshine already uncovered one for us a few days ago regarding the new Web Slice support for your What’s New feed. Jamie also posted on his blog about the ability to update your Personal Status Message (PSM) directly on the page without page refresh.

We have also found a new little feature in the Windows Live Wave 3 header – word-wheel contact search in the search bar. When you start typing a person’s name into the header search bar, a list of your contacts beginning with the characters you typed will start to appear under the search box, in real time! It’s very similar to the contacts word-wheel in Messenger and Hotmail. When you click on the contact’s name, it will link you directly to their Profile. Try it out yourself!

We’re guessing this feature should be coming to all services that has the header search bar reading “Search People or Web” instead of simply “Search the web” (this includes Home, Profile, Spaces, Groups and Events). However, it seems like Windows Live Home is the only service that has this feature at the moment.

On a side note, we also noticed that OneCare is no longer listed in the “All services” page on Windows Live Home, marking the beginning of an end to the OneCare service.

Have you noticed anything else new to Windows Live Home? Drop us a note in the comments section below!

More Windows Live Mobile Wave 3 Updates for Hotmail, Messenger and Home

damaster — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 03:17:49 GMT

Last time we told you about the new Windows Live Hotmail Mobile beta. Yesterday the team on Windows Live Wire announced that the new Windows Live Hotmail for mobile is now final! Together with the announcement, the team also mentioned the new updates for Windows Live Home Mobile and Messenger Mobile – finally including the new Wave 3 Mobile look for Messenger Mobile! Here’s what they announced:

Windows Live Messenger for mobile has a new look and feel and now links directly to Windows Live Home, so you can easily navigate between services.

Windows Live Home for mobile has an improved What’s new list, with ten items appearing in the list instead of five. You can also see the things your friends are doing online at places such as Twitter, WordPress, Flickr, and more. And you can always read the full text of your friends’ personal messages.

I just went to the Windows Live Messenger for Mobile website on http://mim.live.com and although I’m seeing the new pips (instead of the old buddy icons to display your contact’s status), ~~the overall theme hasn’t yet been updated to the new look~~. Update (April 23): The update has been fully released! What I really hope they’ve implemented is the support for multiple places sign-in, as currently it’s quite annoying that Messenger will sign you out as you’re logged in to the mobile web version. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Check out http://mhome.live.com on your mobile browser for the updated Windows Live Home for Mobile.

Windows Live Video Messages joins the Wave 3 family too, update coming soon! (Updated)

damaster — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 18:00:00 GMT

The Windows Live Video Messages team just announced on their blog that their website will get an update in two weeks. Included in this update will be a change in the header to match the rest of the Windows Live Wave 3 properties. Here’s a list of updates the team posted on their blog:

Easier to use and find functionality, especially creating new videos

One click access to other Windows Live services via top header

Full support for Internet Explorer 8 (you won't need to run in compatibility mode)

Bug fixes

Update: Ability to save video message to a local drive for website users (gadget users have always been able to do this)

Update: Stay tuned for more!

Windows Live Video Messages was released not long before the Wave 3 theme was revealed, and it had always been criticised for not having the same standardised header as any other Windows Live services. It’s definitely a smart move to give it a consistent look with each of the other Wave 3 services.

It seems like Video Messages isn’t the first to revamp to the standardised Wave 3 header – not long ago FrameIt and Sync were just given the facelift – and it sure looked impressive. Which makes us wonder what will come next? Perhaps My.Live.com, Gallery or even Alerts (which still has the Wave 1 header)? We sure hope Microsoft haven’t forgotten about them!

Check out Windows Live Video Messages at http://videomessages.live.com

Update: The Video Messages team just posted a sneak peek screenshot of what it’ll look like!

Facebook comes to Windows Live FrameIt, PowerToy now available for download

damaster — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 11:02:52 GMT

A few days ago we just reported that FrameIt received the latest Wave 3 update and gave you a preview of what the new FrameIt Client PowerToy will look like. Today Windows Live FrameIt just got updated with Facebook integration – now allowing you to import your albums on Facebook into your FrameIt collection. Let’s see how this works:

Firstly we can see now that FrameIt supports importing photos from a variety of online photo sharing sources: Facebook, Photobucket, Picasa, SmugMug and Microsoft’s very own Windows Live Spaces. It is frustrating to see that Windows Live Photos integration is not here yet though, but trust me, it is coming. Clicking on Facebook on this page allow you to add this source to your collection:

Integration with Facebook is done via Facebook Connect, and upon clicking the Connect button, the Facebook log-in page will pop-up and asking you to allow FrameIt to access your Facebook photos and albums:

Provided you have allowed access, you will be able to select where to source your Facebook photos from. There are two options: either select all those photos that you’ve been tagged in, or select from either one of your uploaded photo albums on Facebook.

You can then configure any of the settings provided with FrameIt, such as number of images, display order, age of images to display, and the display schedule. You can then preview what the source will look like on your computer first, and then subscribe to your Collection on any of the supported FrameIt devices. Alternatively, you can also download them locally onto your computer and share it others using Live Mesh, or even use them as your screensaver using the newly released FrameIt Client PowerToy. The best thing is, as your Facebook albums gets updated (or when people tag new photos of you), this will be automatically synced and updated! Talk about convenience! Microsoft is truly providing a seamless integrated photo sharing experience to everyone!

You can now download the new FrameIt Client PowerToy from this page.

A quick look at the new Windows Live FrameIt Client PowerToy

damaster — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 11:10:04 GMT

Yesterday we told you about the new Windows Live FrameIt and hinted at the FrameIt Client coming soon. Today we were able to get hands on with the latest FrameIt Client PowerToy. Here’s a screenshot of the client attempting to add my FrameIt collection named “LiveSide”:

So, you might ask, what is the FrameIt Client and what does it do? Here’s what the official help file says:

FrameIt Client is a PowerToy which enables you to subscribe to collections (RSS image feeds) on the Windows Live FrameIt service, and place the images in those collections into folders on your computer. FrameIt Client keeps the contents of these local collections synchronized with the collections on the Windows Live FrameIt service. This means that your local FrameIt Client collections are always up to date, and contain the same dynamic content and fresh images as your FrameIt service collection RSS feeds on the web.

Using the features provided in FrameIt Client:

You can send multiple RSS feeds to one folder, direct each RSS feed to a different folder, or send the same RSS feed to several different folders.

You can specify the size of the images (width and height) that are placed in each folder, or leave them at the native sizes in the RSS feed.

You can direct the contents of a Windows Live FrameIt service collection to a FrameIt Client plug-in, which can provide support for special devices, or perform virtually any function on the collection images. Information on how to create a FrameIt Client plug-in is provided in the FrameIt Client section of the FrameIt SDK.

So what good does it do? And why would you want to use the FrameIt Client PowerToy? Microsoft gives us the following response:

You can use FrameIt Client collections (local synchronized folders) for several useful purposes:

as the source folders for a USB-connected digital picture frame

as the source folders for a screen saver, slide show, or other image display program.

You can add the synchronized folders to your Windows Live Mesh and share the images with others.

This means that besides being a completely online service that only provides photos and images directly to internet-capable digital photo frames, with the use of the new FrameIt Client PowerToy you’ll be able to extend your FrameIt Collections (or Collections you subscribe to) locally on your computer for other uses. These extended uses include things such as automatically displaying the photos on an non-internet capable digital photo frame, or use them as your customised screensavers (and desktop background) that dynamically updates as the content of your Collection changes.

What’s also interesting to note is that Microsoft refers to “Windows Live Mesh” now instead of Live Mesh – a result of Microsoft’s recent reorg joining the Live Mesh team with Windows Live group.

Please do take note that the FrameIt Client will be a PowerToy that is designed for advanced power users only and will only be available in English. This product may not be supported by Microsoft in the future.

The new Windows Live FrameIt is here! SDK now available for download

damaster — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 15:45:40 GMT

Back in January 2009 we briefly reported that Windows Live FrameIt will be getting a Wave 3 facelift and that there will be a FrameIt client and SDK available soon. Soon after we exclusively gave everyone a sneak peek of what the new FrameIt would look like and outlined what some of the new features will be. Today, Microsoft have officially updated Windows Live FrameIt beta to the new Wave 3 look with some the changes we mentioned before. Here’s what the new version looks like:

Yes you saw it right – the new FrameIt is now able to import your photos stored on Photobucket and Picasa into your digital photo frame. Is that not enough? Don’t worry, we heard that Facebook and Windows Live Photos integration will be coming soon too! Unfortunately, we’re still seeing no signs of Flickr or Live Mesh integration.

One other new feature is the new Live Search source that you’ll be able to add to your FrameIt collection. This source basically allow users to type in a search query on Live Search Images and retrieves all the image search results as a feed into your collection. It is recommended that you choose your search query carefully as sometimes you might get irrelevant results displayed on your FrameIt feed.

We also told you last time that the Windows Live FrameIt Software Development Kit will be available soon as well. For those developers out there, it is now available for you all to download.

Click here for the download link to the SDK.

What’s even more exciting is that we’re hearing the Windows Live FrameIt Client we told you about last time will be available soon. Here’s a more detailed description of what the new Client will be able to do for you:

Windows Live FrameIt allows you to collect content from across the Web to display on Internet connected devices. Now, the Windows Live FrameIt client is available to help you display your FrameIt collections on a broader range of devices and applications. Have a keychain frame that downloads images from your PC? Want to use your FrameIt collections with your screensaver? Use the FrameIt client to synchronize images from FrameIt to your PC and voila, your devices and applications will automatically be updated with all of your aggregated content.

To check out the new Windows Live FrameIt, visit http://frameit.live.com

Stay tuned at LiveSide for the latest exciting updates coming to FrameIt!

Introducing the new Windows Live Hotmail Mobile beta

damaster — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 11:10:21 GMT

You may have noticed that the Windows Live Mobile Wave 3 upgrade previously did not include any updates to Hotmail. As part of the new Windows Live Hotmail upgrade, one thing that went unnoticed was that together with it came the new Windows Live Hotmail Mobile beta release!

This new Hotmail Mobile beta currently runs side-to-side with the existing Hotmail Mobile. There hasn’t been any official announcement as yet, however we did notice several features new to this update:

New header and theme that matches it more closely with the other Wave 3 Windows Live mobile services
First page shows the Inbox straight away
Search box for fast email searching
New collapsible Email message header
Emoticon support
Views entire email message in one page (the original one breaks a long email message into several pages)
Less images used for navigation, meaning less mobile download usage and saving cost
No ads (unsure whether this will be in the final version)
Simplified address: http://m.mail.live.com

The new version of Hotmail Mobile is looking great! To try it out visit http://m.mail.live.com on your mobile devices. If you’ve found any additional new features as part of this release, let us know in the comment below and tell us what you think!

Windows Live Photo Gallery Sync enabled for some

damaster — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 08:44:50 GMT

Today both the Windows Live Sync and the Windows Live Photos & Videos team blogs announced the news that the gallery sync feature in Windows Live Photo Gallery has been enabled for a limited number of people. Here’s the announcement:

The Windows Live Sync team has partnered up with Windows Live Photo Gallery to let you synchronize photos between two computers directly from Photo Gallery!

Although you always could synchronize photos manually on http://sync.live.com, setting Photo Gallery to do it is much more convenient. Launch Windows Live Photo Gallery on two computers and sign in on each using the same Windows Live ID. Next, on one of the two computers click Setup gallery sync… from the File Menu in Photo Gallery and follow the instructions. You’re on your way to synchronizing photos!

Another cool thing about synchronizing your photos with Sync is that your edit history is also synchronized! You can undo edits you've made to your photos and even revert back to the original photo from any of computers synchronizing with the gallery.

Keep in mind that the current Sync limits (20 synchronized folders containing up to 20,000 files each) still applies. Also if some of your folders in your gallery are already synchronized, you’ll need to visit the Sync website to modify your existing sync settings.

Has this feature been turned on for you? Leave a message here and let us know!

Meeting Invitations in Windows Live Calendar and Hotmail

damaster — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 13:51:59 GMT

When Calendar was out of beta, we saw a couple of new features when it was released back in January. We also did mention that a new “Meeting invitations” feature will be coming soon to Calendar and Hotmail, finally showing some integration between Calendar and Hotmail (as it should have been!). Here’s what was described on the Hotmail team blog:

In the next few weeks we’ll be adding the ability to send meeting invitations for an event. You’ll be able to invite others to events and users of many calendaring services and software solutions can accept them for automatic addition to their own calendars. These invitations are also a great way to organize quick dinners, dates, or any other event you can think of.

Here’s a screenshot of how it will look like, very similar to the interface in Outlook:

When you receive one of the Meeting Invitations, clicking on “Accept” and “Tentative” will save the request on your Windows Live Calendar. You may also receive a Meeting Cancellation email, and if the meeting was saved on your Calendar, upon receipt of the cancellation email the event will be removed from your Calendar.

We’re unsure whether this will come as part of the upcoming Hotmail update, but the Windows Live Hotmail promotional site is already giving us a few hints on this. Stay tuned at LiveSide for the latest updates!

Thanks to PP2 at LiveSino.net for the heads up!

Hotmail update starts rolling out for all users, POP3 coming to the US

damaster — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 01:13:22 GMT

Today the Hotmail team has finally announced the start of the roll out process for all users worldwide to the latest Wave 3 update of Hotmail and People.

The Hotmail team has been hard at work since our last release in the fall, and we’ve got a bunch of new features coming out… and we’re rolling them out now!

If you haven’t seen any changes yet, they’ll be rolling out gradually, so you should see them in the next week or two.

If you’ve been keeping track of the latest at LiveSide, we’ve previously posted what new features are to come in this update. See our previous articles on the latest features for Hotmail and People. To recap, Windows Live Wire blog posted a summary of all the new features coming in this update:

More storage in Hotmail. Start with 5 GB, and watch your storage grow, as you need it.

More themes in Hotmail (including some that change based on time of day or weather)

The top banner ad moved to the side. (You’ve been waiting for that, haven’t you?)

Quickly add maps, directions, movie times and more to e-mail messages. It makes planning a night out so much easier. (UK and US-only, for the moment)

See “what’s new” updates from people in your network on Hotmail’s Today page.

Get Hotmail on your mobile phone’s e-mail program. POP3 access is becoming available to Hotmail users in the US and Brazil, in addition to United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, France, Japan, Spain, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands.

Create e-mail signatures in HTML. Get as fancy as you want to be.

The People page has been re-organized.

I’m surprised though that there’s no mention of the new Web Messenger integration anywhere on the two blog posts. I hope they’re just keeping it as a surprise. After all from the screenshot on Windows Live People above the “Messenger” button is clearly visible, and our friend Picturepan2 from LiveSino had also been noticing that Web Messenger is starting to show up on 2 of his accounts.

Have you received the latest update to your Hotmail and People yet? Leave us a note!