When we talked to Bill Gates last November at Mix n Mash, he described Windows Live:

All those consumer services are basically big, big volume. They’re tiny businesses in a sense, but they’re very important for the population of users

Office Live Small Business, the beta for small businesses to establish an online presence with a free website, domain name, and 100 email addresses, has reached 1 million subscribers, according to a Microsoft press release.  Currently up and …

A Google Maps Street View car was spotted on the Microsoft campus the other day, according to a post over on Gizmodo.  Apparently the “GooCar”, as Gizmodo calls it, got a little too close to Building 116, where Live Maps …

A new version of FolderShare for Windows (there’s a Mac client available too, but that apparently hasn’t been updated as of yet) is now available.  From the FolderShare team blog:

There’s a new version of FolderShare for Windows available

Today is Bill Gates’ last full day at Microsoft, as he transitions from Microsoft to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  I’ve had a good time this past week or so watching some of the retrospectives, and thinking about how …

Microsoft has just announced that it plans to acquire MobiComp.  MobiComp is, according to the press release:

…a company that helped pioneer technologies allowing the backup and restoration of mobile data and mobile posting of social content to Web

Another big data update over at Virtual Earth, over 20 TB, including Microsoft UltraCam images of Iowa City in drier times:

(a more recent picture from the Des Moines Register, below)…

…and other non-Ultra-cam imagery of lots of …

Apologies for the downtime, we’ve been down the last 17 hours or so, due to problems at our webhost.  Pretty frustrating, really, and we’re exploring our options (know a good web host? – leave a comment).  Glad to be back …

Microsoft has been having some good success with the (US only) i’m Initiative, having raised $1.5 million for charities, and at the same time pushing new downloads of Windows Live Messenger (and more recently, Hotmail sign-ups):

New customer acquisition

Thanks to LiveSide member derviskemal for noticing that the Live Maps header has changed.  Here’s the new look:

…and what we were seeing up until a few days ago:

Much more in keeping with the overall new look of Live …