This morning at the Financial Analyst’s Meeting (FAM), being held on Microsoft’s campus, Satya Nadella announced an extension of Microsoft’s U.S. relationship with Facebook to encompass search.  An email from Waggener Edstrom clarifies:

As part of the deal, Microsoft will work with Facebook to bring its customers Live Search-powered web search and search ads by the end of the calendar year. Facebook will work with Microsoft to design the best search experience for Facebook’s customers and advertisers.

While Microsoft has been in partnership with Facebook on ads already, powering search on Facebook seems to be quite a coup. 

Further details should be coming soon.  During most of the morning, Steve Ballmer was onstage, saying at one point that he would be taking over a part of the program for Kevin Johnson, who is leaving the company “in 3 weeks”, according to Ballmer.  Ballmer spent quite a bit of time on the online services businesses, taking pains to point out that Windows Live, MSN, and Microsoft Advertising are all holding their own, and that the 1.2 billion dollar shortfall in online services is almost entirely due to investments in Live Search.   Here’s a somewhat fuzzy screenshot of the powerpoint slide illustrating this:

 Digital Inspiration unveils a little bit about the face recognition in the upcoming Windows Live Photo Gallery:

Imagine this. You connect a digital camera to your PC for transferring photos and the software is able to recognize family members and friends in the photos by their faces.

Well that’s something new coming in the new release of Windows Live Photo Gallery - it will include a special "Face Recognition" feature where the software will automatically recognize different faces in in your personal pictures and will also let you add those names as tags.

Don’t know how they know but they also manage to tell that the first beta is expected sometime in September. We’ll be on the look out!

Thanks Picturepan2 from LiveSino, for tipping us on this one.

Mary Jo Foley recently reported on her blog that Windows Live Wave 3 have completed the M1 (Milestone 1) stage. Our friend Picturepan2 over at LiveSino was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to interview a manager for Windows Live chatting about the progress of Windows Live Wave 3. Although there were many interesting details that he wasn't allowed to disclose, here's a quick summary of what's currently going on in Microsoft with Windows Live:

• New Unified Header - as we've reported previously, all online Windows Live services upon release will have the brand new header that allows users to change the background and colour themes of their pages. This is aimed to reduce the branding confusion that we've had with Windows Live previously.

• Windows Live Hotmail - this has recently completed its M2 (Milestone 2) stage. The new version concentrates on extra integration with other Windows Live services such as SkyDrive and Home, as well as a new service People (will this replace Contacts? or perhaps has something to do with the C2 project at Microsoft Research?)
• Windows Live Messenger - M1 build is now complete, and is currently in development for the M2 stage. Messenger 9 will feature a new look as well as additional new features (that we're not allowed to disclose yet )
• Windows Live Mail - some minor improvements and interface changes in the M1 build. With the recent release of Outlook Connector 12.1 with Windows Live Calendar support, the new Windows Live Mail will also feature Calendar syncing.
• Windows Live Photo Gallery - the main new feature in the current M1 build is facial recognition. Photo Gallery will automatically recognise people's faces in your photos, and users will be able to add tags to each person (similar to how Facebook photos works by tagging each person). However, these added people tags will only be viewable in Photo Gallery.

Currently these are the only set of features we are allowed to disclose. There are no mentions of the new Windows Live Movie Maker application nor any details on the new Windows Live People and Windows Live Groups services. But stay tuned as we'll keep you updated with the latest news in the development of Windows Live Wave 3.

So Live Search QnA has updated, but what exactly changed? Let me recap the rather large QnA Team post:

• You now get 1 QnA point for voting again
• No more deduction of a point for abuse reports that get overturned
• NEW feature: Show violations page
  If your content gets removed/moderated you will now be able to see why. After you click "Find out why," you'll be taken to a page that shows you your recent issues.
• NEW link “Latest Questions” has been added to the menu for quick access to the latest questions
• Question titles expanded to 100 characters in list views so they won’t be cut off anymore
• Question state graphical icons returned (Open for Answers, Open for Voting, Closed)
• “Show question” page improved:
  Better use of space, more of the key content towards the top of the page. New interface for easier differentiation between “add answer” & “add comment”. Navigational links at both the top and bottom.
• Ask question experience has improved by lay out improvements:
  Better use of space, more of the key content “above the fold”, “related questions” module has been moved to the right.
• NEW: Firefox 3 support for all major functionality on the site

Besides these there are additional minor fixes and other requested improvements are under investigation. If you have feedback on this release then the team would like to hear from you in their QnA message board thread: “Your Feedback on the QnA release 7/22”

Live Search QnA

Chris Pendleton has a long post today about TrueSpace 7.6, and on his blog and also on the TrueSpace website there are some truly amazing renderings.  Check out some of the animations, along with the video on Chris’s blog.

Using Live Maps Collections, or VE Map Controls, images such as these can now be rendered in TrueSpace, and added to Live Maps or Virtual Earth.  We wrote earlier this month about 3D and how it might play out for Microsoft.  The release of TrueSpace 7.6 would seem to be one more step in the direction of an immersive 3D environment coming from Microsoft.

In an unexpected move Microsoft today announced that the Platforms & Services Devision (PSD) will be split into two groups: Windows/Windows Live and Online Services. While the PSD President Kevin Johnson will work to ensure a smooth transition he will be leaving the company after 16 years.

“Kevin has built a supremely talented organization and laid the foundation for the future success of Windows and our Online Services Business. This new structure will give us more agility and focus in two very competitive arenas,” Ballmer said. “It has been a pleasure to work with Kevin, and we wish him well in the future.”

“Microsoft is a special place and presents opportunity to so many,” Johnson said. “I have been so fortunate to have experienced 16 amazing years of building Microsoft’s business, learning from great leaders in the company and working with phenomenally talented people.”

In the new structure senior vice presidents Steven Sinofsky, Jon DeVaan and Bill Veghte will report directly to Ballmer to lead Windows/Windows Live. They are responsible for Microsoft's end user software releases with new versions of Windows Internet Explorer, Windows and the Windows Live product suite in the pipeline.

For the Online Services Business group Microsoft is looking at internal and external candidates for a newly created senior lead position.

In the meantime, Senior Vice President Satya Nadella will continue to lead Microsoft’s search, MSN and ad platform engineering efforts. Microsoft recently announced a strategy to redefine search through innovations in the user experience and business models. As an example, the company’s cashback search program, announced in May, is already generating strong momentum among online shoppers and advertisers

Additionally, senior vice president Brian McAndrews will continue to lead the Advertiser & Publisher Solutions Group (APS).

“Our Windows business is firing on all cylinders,” Ballmer said. “We see tremendous opportunity in search and advertising, and we have a clear strategy for investing in success today and growth in the future.”

Microsoft has just released a new version of the Outlook Connector, giving users access to the Windows Live services through Outlook. In what will be a popular move (judging by the comments on our last Calendar post), the latest version now adds in calendar synchronisation. This allows users of the new Calendar beta to synchronise multiple calendars to Outlook, and manage them from within the client. We’ve been tracking this release since we heard about the new version giving calendar synch to all users, which is a change from the older versions of the connector where calendar synch was only available to those with an MSN Premium subscription.

After a brief play with the new version, functionality looks good , with all calendars appearing in Outlook automatically after configuring the connector at startup. Just enter in your Live ID details during login and as with previous versions, it will download all your folders and email from Hotmail. With the new version 12.1 though, it’ll also download your calendars, which will be first noticeable when you switch to the calendar tab in Outlook.

The existing web calendars will show up in the sidebar, and the basic tasks are easy to do. From creating a new calendar, through to adding or editing an appointment, and then sending it out to other users should you wish to do so. For those who use Outlook in a corporate environment, and want to manage their personal calendar using the same tools, this is a great step forward and hopefully something that will help push for increased usage of the overall calendar service.

Download

Update: Service seems to be running fine now. Also if you add multiple Live IDs to the Outlook Connector you also get all the various WL Calendars :)

If we didn’t know better, we’d say our friend Angus Logan was jealous.  Wants us to change our name, even.  Apparently in a blatant attempt to get his name back on LiveSide, he posted on some cool improvements to the Messenger IM control – that’s the one that allows you to put a “chat box” on your website and have conversations with your readers.  The improvements now allow you get an idea of where an IM message coming from your IM control is coming from, with a default “inviterDisplayName” parameter.

Colin Brown (Hackersoft) has written some helpful how-to articles for us on setting up the IM control, and even how to use it to create a Help Desk application for your site:

Windows Live Messenger Web Controls – Part 1

Windows Live Messenger Web Controls – Part 2

Cheap and Easy Online Helpdesk

A new version of Windows Live for Windows Mobile has just been released:

Wait no more! The latest bits for Windows Live Client for your Windows Mobile are available for download. To get yours now, point your mobile browser to http://wl.windowsmobile.com

If you have Windows Live already installed on your device, you will need to uninstall it first. To do that, go to Settings->Remove Programs, select Windows Live entry from the list (if any) and click Remove. If you don’t find Windows Live on the list, then you are good to go.

With Windows Live client you will be able to:

• Synchronize Live contacts with your contacts on the device
• Synchronize your Live email (msn, hotmail, live)
• View graphics, web links and contact photos in emails
• Respond to emails with voice recordings
• Upload photos to your Windows Live Spaces

Windows Live for Windows Mobile team blog

Live Search QnA, yes it still exists and still in beta form. Beta means there is still room for improvement and as such there will be a new release on the 22nd. In this release you should see several improvements made, all because of your feedback!

Beta means, above all, that this service is still evolving.  We're exploring options to improve your experience with the service and community; your feedback is important to help us make the right choices.  As an online service, we can try out new things and respond to your ideas to try out new and interesting things.

Unfortunately, part of the fact that we’re a beta site and still testing means that not everything we try works perfectly...

You’ve definitely made that known to us, and we’re working to make things better. After all, this is our site, “our” including you, the users of QnA we hold near and dear to our hearts; we take your feedback very seriously, and we’re taking steps to address the problems you face as you use the site day by day.

Speaking of which, our next release is coming tomorrow so we’d like to give you an advance notice that the QnA site will be down for maintenance tomorrow afternoon (Tuesday, July 22nd PDT time zone).

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