Another One Bites the Dust - Windows Live for TV

MS shifted gears to U-Verse and the IPTV architecture of that project.

Lately there has been a wonderous clean-up of the sandbox, kinda like raking the old Zen meditation garden.

Stage 1 : delete projects that aren't on the cool list

Stage 2: ....

Stage 3: PROFIT!

Another failure? At least they're working on throwing out throwing bad projects out the door, and hopefully management goes somewhere that's useful.

Besides, most Microsoft betas are a joke. In the end, they  either:

a) Come out exactly the same as they were in beta - With only minor performance fixes or whatnot. No new requested features, removing things or whatever. Case in point : Toolbar, Live Gallery, Favorites, etc.

b) Come out completely different  from their beta form - As in they weren't in the beta, but was added when it was released, making the beta completely useless. Case in point : MSN Video (Soapbox?), MSN Silverlight Toolbar, Live Search Shopping, Live Hotmail, Live Spaces, etc.

c) Get killed off - Live TV, Live Barcode, WiFi Center, etc.

Most betas are pointless. For some reason, I don't think MS always takes the feedback seriously. If they did, the A, B, and C shouldn't be happening. There's rarely ever any betas where user suggestions actually make it.

Only one I am fussed about is WL Messenger for Media Center. It's badly needed, and would be a USP over the competition from other IM apps.

This is getting annoying... I was really waiting for this one to come out.  It gets really annoying when you're watching a movie in Media Center and someone sends you an IM.  This type of thing could easily fix that... well, the 360 has WLM functionality, so I guess I'll be using mine more often.

Oh, and MSN WiFi Hotspots is dead by the way.

http://hotspot.msn.com/

It conveniently redirects you to Jiwire, a much better service. They even use Virtual Earth.

Shame really.  Any idea on what's going all with the VOIP features of Messenger these days?  Verizon drops out soon don't they?

Alimaggs: Yes they do, we've got a post coming up on that hopefully this weekend (or when I find time!)

Good to know.  I went out and bought the VOIP phones (Phillips Live Messenger), but here in the UK at least, they dropped being able to charge up using Mastercard and Visa leaving only American Express and Diner Card which very few people in the UK actually have.  So it's been a bit of a dead service for me.

Hopefully, whatever takes its place will be more readily available.