LiveSide - News blog : Beta

Microsoft ends Windows Live Butterfly beta testers program

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:23:00 GMT

As reported by Mary Jo Foley, the Windows Live Butterfly program, a group of beta testers who signed on to test whatever was thrown their way, is sputtering to a close. From a statement issued by Microsoft on the subject:

“The Butterfly group has been involved in beta testing MSN and Windows Live products for a number of years. Rather than continue the program as something only focused on beta testing, we’re offering the group a variety of options to engage in the broader Windows Live community, including the opportunity to join the MVP (Most Valuable Professional) program and continued and future access to beta testing opportunities.”

(how one goes about “joining” the MVP program is beyond us, but hey)

In case you didn’t know, LiveSide came about largely as a result of the (then MSN Butterfly) program. We all met as beta testers, and were all original members of the MSN Butterfly program, which later changed its name (along with dang near everything else in Red West not nailed down) to Windows Live.

In 2003, during a beta test for MSN Premium 9, Wendy Stidmon, who was a contract employee managing the beta program (Wendy is full time at Microsoft now, and currently running the Windows 7 technical beta), initiated a “cafe” newsgroup as part of the tests. Modeled after the MVP “Coffeehouse”, the cafe gave beta testers a place to get to know each other and post on interests outside of the beta. At the time, Microsoft beta tests were serious affairs, populated by curmudgeonly IT professionals who sounded alarms if anyone went anywhere near “off topic”.

However the beta for MSN Premium required a different set of beta testing skills. This was a consumer product, not a technical one, and it required more than a technical beta. The cafe took off, engagement in the beta was unprecedented, and after the MSN Premium beta ended, with more products in the pipeline, Wendy and her boss Jon Beck (also still at Microsoft but long gone from the beta testing program) set up what became known as the MSN Butterfly program.

The idea was to keep a group of testers available and engaged, and when betas needed testers, well there we were all ready to go. And it worked, for a time. We tested new versions of MSN Messenger, came together in Redmond for “Butterfly Tours”, and in 2005 some 30 of us became MSN MVPs. It was at the 2005 MVP Summit, held in September in Redmond, where the three LiveSide founders (Chris Overd, Harrison Hoffman, and Matthew Weyer - I officially joined LiveSide 3 days after it was launched) first discussed joining together to start an MSN focused blog. Little did we know at the time that we were being shown most of the elements of the first wave of Windows Live, and when the Windows Live initiative was announced in November of 2005, LiveSide found a name and a purpose.

So what happened to the Butterfly program? Well of course there were some systemic problems with having non-IT pros as beta testers. While the feedback we provided (and some of it was loud and long) ultimately made the products we tested better, turns out we couldn’t really write a bug report to save our lives. In June of 2006, what became known as “the big purge” dumped testers who weren’t filing bug reports (including, ahem, me), and pared down the program by (guessing) 75% or so. Attempts were made to make the Butterfly program relevant again, but actual betas were few and far between, and it’s really no surprise that the program has finally been put out of its misery.

Beta testing in general at Microsoft has moved away from the newsgroup/bug report model, you need only to look at the large public betas of Internet Explorer 8, Windows Live, or Windows 7 to see the writing on the wall. Get the product in a large number of hands, collect crash reports and public feedback, and refine. We can’t really argue with that.

Still, we’re going to miss the Butterflys. We met not only each other, but many of our Microsoft friends through the program. Together, we built a community, which is what we thought social networking was supposed to be about in the first place. And we tried to help make better software, and better experiences, for the users of Windows Live.

We know that many of our readers have been involved in the Butterfly program in some capacity over the years, and we’d love to hear your remembrances, or feel free to correct our memories or add to the timeline. What do you remember about the Butterfly program?

MSN to launch new homepage option; testing topic focused homepages

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 17:35:00 GMT

MSN.com has just launched a new home page option, this one focused on Entertainment, and is kicking off a new phase of topic-focused homepage testing.

From the MSN Home page, you should see an option on the left hand side, “Want more entertainment content? Try our beta homepage”:

Once you’re on the beta page, you’ll see more Entertainment focused content

Some of the features (from an email announcing the new homepage):

An extra entertainment slide in the homepage slideshow every day

Enhanced navigation to entertainment properties

Additional entertainment-based videos

Direct links to Live Search and Windows Live Hotmail and Messenger

Option to share direct feedback with MSN about the new page

The new entertainment homepage is the first of many efforts that MSN will be testing around the world in the coming months, as it informs future homepage plans. The new pages will increase relevancy for MSN’s audience and tailor the experience to their interests. The basic goal behind the tests is to deepen the engagement of current and future MSN users – showing them that MSN is the place to go to be in the know.

These new homepages won’t be a replacement for the MSN.com homepage, but will be an option that users can opt in to for a more customized experience.

An early look at Live Mesh for Mobile

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 05:17:30 GMT

I actually got Live Mesh for Mobile installed during PDC, but as you may know there were some early problems with the initial build, and so I wasn’t able to get it running until literally I was just about to get on a plane and head back to Seattle.

But now that it’s running, Live Mesh for Mobile (running currently as a very limited beta, for Windows Mobile 6 devices) has the potential to be a game changer. It’s already changed the way I use my phone, and that’s having only used it for a few days with very limited testing.

Setup
Similar to setting up any app on your phone, Live Mesh requires downloading and running a .cab file on your phone. Once you’ve been accepted in the beta, log in here for US residents, or here for UK residents, and then download and install this cab file from http://m.mesh.com. Since I did all this while traversing the airport on my way to my flight home, it obviously isn’t that hard.

Once the application is installed, it initially sets up your “my pictures” folder on your phone as a “mobile pictures” live mesh folder, if you ok through the setup. And that’s about all there is to it to make taking pictures on your phone take on a whole new dimension.

Adding existing Live Mesh Folders to your phone is just a matter of clicking on “Add Existing Folder”. I’m waiting for a new 8gb micro SDHC card to really make use of the syncing ($25 on eBay!), but Live Mesh on Mobile is worth it just for the photos sync. Today I took a couple of pictures of the backyard with my phone:

and from there I did….absolutely nothing. No plugging in cables, no SD card swap, no upload to some proprietary phone company photo site. I just took the pictures, and when I came back from 20 minute worth of errands, they were on my desktop, in the mobile pictures live mesh folder. I didn’t even have to click on the “Sync Live Mesh” option (and where is that in the desktop app for when you’ve just “got to” sync now, btw?).

Of course if there was a way to “meshify” Spaces (or Flickr or Facebook), it would be even easier. But even now, I can see that I’ll be using the camera in my phone a lot more and worrying about bringing a camera along a lot less. And of course you can sync more than pictures to/from your phone:

All your Live Mesh folders show up, and you can choose which ones to sync to your phone. We’ll have more on Live Mesh for Mobile coming up (just waiting for that 8gb card).

Live Mesh Beta update – Initial review

Chris — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 21:40:00 GMT

Now that the Live Mesh team has finished rolling out their update, here’s a quick overview of the new stuff (beyond the obvious like this now being a beta with worldwide availability).

Progress meters in the Live Mesh client – this was a popular request ever since Mesh first rolled out in the CTP, as it was impossible to accurately tell how much had been uploaded or downloaded. The data was available definitely wasn’t reliable, but this appears to have changed for the better with the latest update.

Now there are both upload and download meters available for each device, and our initial tests showed they were reliable indicators of progress.

P2P Sync options in the client – While P2P synchronising has been available in the web desktop for some time, you can now set this option direct from the client. This allows you to transmit larger files direct to other machines, without using up your 5GB storage online.

Right click the Live Mesh folder you want to make p2p only, then click Live Mesh Options – Change Sync Settings

Roles – Now you can set the read / write access of users who have access to your files. Again this can be set through the Live Mesh options available in the client, or via the Web Desktop. Four roles are available, Reader, Contributor, Owner and Creator, with access controls in cumulative order being Read, Write and Delete, Manage Users, Stop Synchronising respectively.

Drag & Drop – Now you can drag and drop files from the pc desktop straight into the web desktop. You’ll need to install an activex control, which unfortunately makes this feature limited to Internet Explorer only for the moment.

Overall the feature-set of the update is good, especially with the Mac and Windows Mobile clients becoming available. See our earlier post on the pre-beta Mac client for screenshots, but Kevin Tofel confirms there is still no remote access.

A word of warning, we’ve noticed some significant performance issues since the update. This ranges from the slow loading of folders and file contents on the web desktop, through to the client rendering a PC unresponsive due to prolonged periods of heavy cpu usage, whilst uploading. While we hope its just teething problems, its yet another reminder that Software+Services still has some quirks to overcome (the first being that since upgrading to Windows Mobile 6.1, I can’t synchronise my Windows Live contacts. Helpful!)

Update: Lots of reported issues with mobile so not working just yet, oops. There should be a new build out v. soon to resolve the issues people are having. In the mean time check out the Live Mesh Mobile forums.

Live Mesh updates announced at PDC

Chris — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 17:30:41 GMT

Live Mesh is going into Beta later this week, along with support for Mac and Windows Mobile 6 clients. Other changes coming later this week (from the Live Mesh blog):

- Drag & Drop functionality in the Live Mesh Desktop

- Extending the Live Mesh roles

- Ability to sync p2p only will be available from local devices

You can check out the new Mesh site that is coming at https://developer.mesh-ctp.com/Welcome/default.aspx. It’ll roll out to mesh.com at a later date.

Interestingly enough, going forward Mesh going to be included as part of Windows Live. Not quite sure whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, I guess only time will tell.

And for developers, the Live Framework CTP available from www.azure.com available later today.

Wave 3: Windows Live Toolbar beta

Chris — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 21:03:38 GMT

So I drew the short-straw and ended up with the Toolbar beta review. In fact that was a sacrifice I was willing to make, as we’d heard about some cool stuff coming in Wave 3. Alas, none of it made this build, so I was left with a regular browser toolbar.

The WL Toolbar beta is a quick install, weighing in at only 8mb, so it won’t take you too long to try it out. Nor will it take you long to uninstall it either.

If you’re running Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2, you cannot miss the duplication of functionality that now exists. Toolbar has Windows Live Translate, Map, Blog and Email integration. So does IE8 in the form of ~~activities~~ accelerators. Toolbar has a search box (that you still can’t hide) – so does IE8. In fact both search boxes now display search suggestions and previous search history.

However credit is due to Toolbar for extending search into other locations, thanks to a new program that is installed called Search Enhancements. This allows you to search your PC from your browser, however you’ll have to accept the various security prompts (both IE and Windows Vista) that try to prevent this from taking place. These can be disabled if you require, but I probably wouldn’t recommend doing that in case malicious apps start seeing this as a way to spam your desktop. So unfortunately, that makes this somewhat of a useless feature.

Other than the above, you can install custom buttons on to Toolbar beta from the Windows Live Gallery – http://gallery.live.com.

One interesting thing we did notice was that the Toolbar beta now asks users if they’d like to opt in to a search data collection program. With web search being such a competitive arena and Microsoft making every possible effort to catch up to Google and Yahoo, its no surprise to see MS do everything it can to improve knowledge around how searches are performed.

We’re hoping there is still more to come from the Toolbar guys in the M3 release, especially with regards to improving cross-service integration (lets face it, buttons are kinda lame). Anybody else notice the Toolbar installer requires you to close down Windows Live Sync? ;) Until then, best to give this application a miss.

Remember, all the Windows Live Wave 3 betas are available from http://download.live.com

Read more on Windows Live Wave 3 betas:

Wave 3: Windows Live Photo Gallery – New Features

Wave 3: Windows Live Messenger 9 Beta – What’s New? A Comparison With 8.5

Wave 3: Windows Live Mail - Calendar, Calendar, Calendar (And More)

Wave 3: Windows Live Movie Maker Beta

Wave 3: Windows Live Writer – A First Look

Official Windows Live download site goes live

Chris — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 19:55:27 GMT

Oh Hai. Looks like http://download.live.com has now been switched on, so if you still haven’t installed the new Windows Live Wave 3 betas that we posted earlier today, now is your chance. Anybody else notice that the Wave 3 header on the public site isn’t the same Wave 3 header as on the private beta sites?

Chris Jones also made a post a few hours ago, giving some chat very similar to that which we’ve seen over on the e7 blog. Chris talks of feedback loops and impact on design, yet anybody who’s ever tested a Windows Live beta (especially Messenger) knows the beta feedback loop tends to jump over to the v.next.next release. He also talks of regular blogging, so you all better enjoy these few months of posts from the Windows Live teams, before the silence begins again!

Bonus link goes to Long for dissecting the new ribbon-UI (“Windows Scenic”) in Movie Maker and in the new Windows 7 applications such as Paint.

Here’s a quick recap of the LiveSide Windows Live beta reviews so far:

Wave 3: Windows Live Photo Gallery – New Features

Wave 3: Windows Live Messenger 9 Beta – What’s New? A Comparison With 8.5

Wave 3: Windows Live Mail - Calendar, Calendar, Calendar (And More)

Wave 3: Windows Live Movie Maker Beta

Wave 3: Windows Live Writer – A First Look

Wave 3: Windows Live Movie Maker Beta

John OBrien — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 01:48:00 GMT

Making its first appearance in the Windows Live suite, Movie Maker Beta is a solid new application lacking in basic features to make it actually useful.

I’m a huge fan Windows Movie Maker in Vista because it offers a simple application with just the features needed to make/edit videos from clips, images and audio. Windows Live Movie Maker Beta does not include many of what I consider to be essential features. What it is however is the promise of something better, a new application that can offer all of the great features of the past with additional service integration and plug-in architecture for the future.

Lets look at what features it currently does have, what features from Vista’s “Windows Movie Maker” it is missing and what the future could hold.

Features

The first striking feature is the ribbon UI. First launched for Office 2007 the ribbon promotes ease of finding features. Hot on the heals of images showing that Windows Paint will get a ribbon in Windows 7, it becomes clear we will be seeing more of this in the future. The application is purposeful and straight forward. You add videos and/or photos and their thumbnails are generated and shown in the order they will be played, simply drag and drop to change this order. Add a single sound track to be played in the background.

The Visual Effects tab and functionality feels very much like the framework has been created but the actual effects and transitions either haven’t been ported or that there was not enough time to get them in, or perhaps they are waiting to hear what effects and transitions we want to be included? Currently there is a single transition, cross fade, and two effects, black & white and Sepia tone.

Output options are either a non-configurable WMV file or uploaded to MSN Soapbox.

The application worked flawlessly for me, although I had to remove my soundtrack as Soapbox determined I was breaching copyright using the sample music from Vista.

So What’s Missing?

I’m setting Vista’s Windows Movie Maker as the benchmark, lets point out some of the feature from it missing in the Windows Live Beta. Below is an image from Vista:

No timeline. You can order the objects, but no visual timeline
No editing clips. Cropping a video clip and splitting it into multiple parts is essential.
No text overlays.
Limited effects.
Limited transitions.
No Narrate timeline.
Audio mixing is not implemented.
Limited output formats, configurations.
Limited to the Soapbox service only.

This is only a Beta, what is the future?

Clearly we are not seeing a finished product here, we have the chance to preview what could be an amazing application and provide feedback.

Amazing? This application seems to lack even basic functionality of video editing software from 10 years ago, what is so amazing?

The application is bundled in the same suite as Windows Live Writer, an application that lets developers plug-in many pieces of functionality at many stages of the process pipeline. It is already clear from the menu that plug-ins can be developed for publishing to web based services. But will we also see a plug in model for effects, transitions, post processing, and additional features? These could range from a watermark filter to complex vision research techniques to remove people from video, or provide stabilisation using object recognition. Could this be the start of an amazing application platform for consumer video editing?

Whatever is in store for us Windows Live Movie Maker is the future, just not something particular useful today in Beta form.

If you’re interested in my test video you can find Buddy on Soapbox, a special thanks to Buddy for being such a great model :)

Buddy in WL Movie Maker

Feel free to ask any questions or post any features I may have missed or you would like to see in a final release.

Read more LiveSide reviews on the new Windows Live betas:

Wave 3: Windows Live Mail - Calendar, Calendar, Calendar (and more)

Wave 3: Windows Live Writer – A First Look

Wave 3- Windows Live Messenger 9 Beta – What’s New- A Comparison With 8.5

Wave 3: Windows Live Photo Gallery – New Features

New Windows Live Betas – Download Wave 3 Now! (Updated With International Goodness)

Chris — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 21:35:00 GMT

With the Windows Live Wave 3 beta due to start today, we thought we’d provide our readers with a small headstart on the rest of the world. Here’s the download links for the new Wave 3 suite of applications, including Messenger v9, Windows Live Movie Maker, Mail with Calendar synchronisation, Writer, Photo Gallery, Family Safety and the Outlook Connector. For the paranoid amongst you, yes the files are hosted on download.microsoft.com.

http://tinyurl.com/liveside-wlwave3web (only downloads the applications you select)

http://tinyurl.com/liveside-wlwave3all (downloads all the applications, you can chose which ones to install)

Enjoy, and stay tuned for our reviews of the Windows Live Wave 3 beta application coming soon. In the meantime you can check out our previous posts tagged Wave 3 regarding the new applications or subscribe to our RSS feed to be alerted to the new posts coming later today.

Here’s some sample screenshots just to wet the appetite!

PS: If you have the Writer CTP or any other Wave 3 products installed, you should uninstall them first.

Read more LiveSide reviews on the new Windows Live betas:

Wave 3: Windows Live Movie Maker Beta

Wave 3: Windows Live Mail - Calendar, Calendar, Calendar (and more)

Wave 3: Windows Live Writer – A First Look

Wave 3- Windows Live Messenger 9 Beta – What’s New- A Comparison With 8.5

Wave 3: Windows Live Photo Gallery – New Features

Update: My Live Writer MVP cohort Stephan Walcher has managed to find the installer links for some of the other languages:

English
http://g.live.com/1rebeta3/en/wlsetup-web.exe
http://g.live.com/1rebeta3/en/wlsetup-all.exe

Italian
http://g.live.com/1rebeta3/it/wlsetup-web.exe
http://g.live.com/1rebeta3/it/wlsetup-all.exe

German
http://g.live.com/1rebeta3/de/wlsetup-web.exe
http://g.live.com/1rebeta3/de/wlsetup-all.exe

France
http://g.live.com/1rebeta3/fr/wlsetup-web.exe
http://g.live.com/1rebeta3/fr/wlsetup-all.exe

Spanish
http://g.live.com/1rebeta3/es/wlsetup-web.exe
http://g.live.com/1rebeta3/es/wlsetup-all.exe

Some more from Dwergs at mess.be

Arabian
http://g.live.com/1rebeta3/ar/wlsetup-web.exe
http://g.live.com/1rebeta3/ar/wlsetup-all.exe

Danish
http://g.live.com/1rebeta3/da/wlsetup-web.exe
http://g.live.com/1rebeta3/da/wlsetup-all.exe

Dutch
http://g.live.com/1rebeta3/nl/wlsetup-web.exe
http://g.live.com/1rebeta3/nl/wlsetup-all.exe

Finnish
http://g.live.com/1rebeta3/fi/wlsetup-web.exe
http://g.live.com/1rebeta3/fi/wlsetup-all.exe

Japanese
http://g.live.com/1rebeta3/ja/wlsetup-web.exe
http://g.live.com/1rebeta3/ja/wlsetup-all.exe

Korean
http://g.live.com/1rebeta3/ko/wlsetup-web.exe
http://g.live.com/1rebeta3/ko/wlsetup-all.exe

Norwegian
http://g.live.com/1rebeta3/nb/wlsetup-web.exe
http://g.live.com/1rebeta3/nb/wlsetup-all.exe

Swedish
http://g.live.com/1rebeta3/sv/wlsetup-web.exe
http://g.live.com/1rebeta3/sv/wlsetup-all.exe

If you find any more, please let us know in the comments.

A little LiveSide housekeeping

Kip Kniskern — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 17:42:39 GMT

As you might have noticed, we’ve made some more changes on our site – mostly to make better use of the capabilities of Community Server 2008. Included in the new version are provisions for “widgets”, which we’ve added to the sidebar, making it easy for us to add, modify, or remove sidebar content. Community Server first featured these widgets with Graffiti, and now they’ve added them into CS. We’ve included the latest Windows commercials featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld just for fun, and to check out our video capabilities. Sunshine has added a WorldMap, which she wrote about in July, featuring Virtual Earth and a lot of statistical information (although no personally identifiable info, don’t worry). Click on the WorldMap in the sidebar to see the stats.

A big addition for us here is that we fixed our Views counter. Sorry to say that we’ve lost a lot of information on the views our posts have received since we upgraded the site, but they’re working again now.

We’ve also slimmed down the look and feel a bit – this is still a work in progress but in looking at our stats we still have a significant number of visitors using IE6, which had problems with all the rounded corners, etc. We also found that a gray background didn’t work so well when placing images with any kind of a white background, so we removed it from the posts. As always happy to accept any feedback, suggestions, etc.

Most of the work we’ve been doing to move to a new web host and upgrade our software is now behind us, just in time for lots of Windows Live goodness just ahead. Like most upgrades, there were some bumps and bruises, but thanks to Nick Brown, Community Server, The Planet, and all of you, we are back hopefully better and stronger than ever.

One last note: we’ve been really proud of all of you and your sneaky genius work. But, just a reminder that as the betas for Wave 3 begin, please be mindful of any NDAs you are under as beta testers, and please do not comment (here, or anywhere else publicly) on any NDA information. If it’s public, then great. If it’s public but no one has found it yet, even better! But if you are under NDA for *any* beta, please be mindful of our Manifesto, and don’t attempt to post NDA information here. We get ourselves in enough trouble as it is ;). Thanks.

Community of sneaky geniuses – more Wave 3 teasers in our comments

Chris — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 21:53:41 GMT

You know what they say: “two heads are better than one”. The same is true for inquisitive users, as the comments to yesterday’s post on the new Windows Live Wave 3 betas showed.

First up was luisfelipe, who found an internal beta email sent to Microsoft employees. This has since been removed, except for the copy I saved – doh. Nice to see all those corpnet links floating around, but not that useful.

Then there was cleitondj, who managed to get up the Wave 3 header on this error message page. Sign-in for yourself if you want to see it in the wild, but remember there’s no access to the actual services yet.

And finally there was BV2312, who managed to get onto the new Spaces homepage, until they took that down too. Luckily PicturePan2 managed to grab some screeenshots showing some of the new default headers that run across all the Windows Live Wave 3 services. He also got linked this image showing the new status indicators that will appear around your display picture on the new Wave 3 header – not yet working though.

Check out how they are expected to look in Windows Live Wave 3 Messenger too!

Finally, and speaking of Messenger, check out this bonus link sent into our tips hotline by SSP: tips [at] liveside d0t net. It shows the French Windows Live Messenger download page, along with a “Test Soon – Messenger 2009 beta” button. The url it points to doesn’t work yet though, even with view source :(

Keep those tips coming!

Windows Live Wave 3 beta urls show up

Chris — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 22:38:11 GMT

A couple of weeks ago we started noticing an interesting referrer popping up in the stats for some of our posts. Turns out Microsoft moved their Wave 3 services from the dogfood servers onto beta servers, and as a result some MSFT employees were clicking through to us from http://home-beta.live.com. You won’t be able to sign in to any of the beta sites yet if you’re not on the approved list (the betas haven’t started yet if you’re worried), but here’s a few gems we learnt while digging around.

Note – as the new sites are locked down, these are just features we’ve spotted/inferred from looking around the existing sites that are running side-by-side. What’s great is that now new features can be tested before being rolled out to the general public, something which Spaces has needed ever since one of its updates rendered the service unusable for several weeks.

Windows Live Home Beta (http://home-beta.live.com) – As mentioned above, softies are clicking through to us from this site, thanks to the new homepage having default groups of feeds that users can subscribe to. Looks like this new homepage could have similar features to my.live.com, so it’ll be interesting to see how much functionality they duplicate.

Windows Live Profile Beta (http://profile-beta.live.com) – Sorry Jason and Sabina but you’re our demos (everybody else had personal photos up). You can see from these feeds that photo albums are now stored on Skydrive. That means you can now use your Skydrive storage across multiple services, which should please a lot of people.

Windows Live Photos Beta (http://photos-beta.live.com) – The front-end user interface to the photos stored on Skydrive, see below. This means you now start to share your 5GB of storage across Windows Live services, which hopefully is a sign of further consolidation in the storage area. Lets face it, we have too much scattered storage already (about 30GB worth!)

Windows Live Skydrive Beta (http://skydrive-beta.live.com) – With photos going to be stored on Skydrive, there’s more privacy options you can set, as shown by the new icon below. This means photos won’t necessarily be visible to the public, giving users some control over content that’s currently lacking in the existing Spaces photo albums.

And for completeness, the urls of the other beta sites:

Windows Live Groups Beta (http://groups-beta.live.com), Windows Live Spaces Beta (http://spaces-beta.live.com) and Windows Live Events Beta (http://events-beta.live.com)

Let us know if you find anything: tips [at] liveside d0t net

Microsoft Phone Data Manager Beta

Sunshine — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:45:00 GMT

One of our LiveSide readers, Pradeep, came across this Microsoft service. Thank you for notifying us Pradeep.

Microsoft^® Phone Data Manager Beta is an application that is designed to take away the worry of losing data on your phone - specifically contacts, music, pictures and videos. It does that by synchronizing your phone contacts with Microsoft's Windows Live Contacts store in the cloud, or by helping you download files from the phone to your local computer.
Contacts: Microsoft^® Phone Data Manager Beta synchronizes the contacts present in your phone with your contact store on Windows Live Contacts, which is the same store that your Hotmail contacts uses. This way, your phone contacts are always present on the internet, accessible via the contacts link on Hotmail. If you lose, or simply change your phone, all you need to do is to synchronize the contacts using Microsoft^® Phone Data Manager Beta, and all the contacts that you stored in your Windows Live Contacts store will be downloaded to your phone. You can synchronize your contacts as many times as you like so that the changes you make (edits, additions or deletions) on your phone, or on the computer on Windows Live Contacts are always reflected on both your phone and the Windows Live Contacts store.
Music, Pictures and Video: In its current form, Microsoft^® Phone Data Manager Beta will download the music, pictures and videos present in your phone to a local folder on the computer you are using this application on
Communication with your phone: Microsoft^® Phone Data Manager Beta can communicate with your phone via a wireless standard known as Bluetooth, or via a USB cable.
In order for you to synchronize contacts, you will need to have a Windows Live ID (any Hotmail ID is a valid Windows Live ID). If you do not have one, you will be prompted to create one while you use the application.

Lovely new use of Windows Live Contacts store in the cloud! So what are the requirements?

Phone requirements:
For contacts synchronization, your phone needs to support the SyncML standard, and for file download it needs to support OBEX. It also needs Bluetooth or USB connectivity. In general if your phone has a Windows Mobile OS it’ll work. On Windows Mobile phones, Microsoft Phone Data Manager Beta will work only via a USB data cable connection. You can find a list of phones they tested here.

System requirements:
Windows XP SP2 or SP3, Windows Vista 32 bits, there is no 64 bits version of the software available at this moment. 256 MB of RAM and 200 MB of available disk space. Minimum screen resolution of 800x600. Bluetooth Connectivity: inbuilt Bluetooth hardware support (e.g. most laptops have Bluetooth inbuilt), or an external USB Bluetooth dongle compatible with the Microsoft Bluetooth Stack. USB Connectivity: make sure you use a cable that works with your phone and have the latest available cable drivers installed.

Microsoft Phone Data Manager Beta
FAQ
User Guide
Free Download

Windows Live Writer expiry prompt hints at new applications to download in the next month

Chris — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:46:00 GMT

If you’re a blogger and have written a blog post today using the latest Windows Live Writer Technology Preview (Wave 3 Milestone 1), then you were probably greeted with this update prompt.

This is the first time we’ve seen any of the Windows Live teams take this approach. While the obvious conclusion is that the prompt is set to popup one month before the expiry date of 1 October 2008, it still comes as somewhat of a surprise. Great news for those people who like to know exact dates for the next set of downloads, all being well it should be within the next 30 days.

Just for completeness, the “download now” button only goes to get.live.com, but we have a feeling that’ll change very soon…

(So this post bends our Manifesto a little bit, hey its not often Microsoft starts throwing out release dates into the public arena!)

Old M1 Build of Messenger spreads across web

Kip Kniskern — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 17:00:18 GMT

An early version of an interim build of the new wave 3 messenger is spreading across the web, having been posted by JCXP.net, WinXperts.com and others. As Chris said in our review of this build on August 11, after screenshots were posted on Mess.be,

“as this is only a first milestone, there’ll be other internal updates before a version gets released to the public”

Quite funny, actually to read through all the comments and complaints on UI, etc as if this were a final release. It’s not, although there are some hints at what’s to come. The build includes support for Groups, which will be a new feature of Wave 3, some new photo sharing abilities, the removal of Sharing Folders (yay!), and more. You can read Chris’ review for some more.

You could probably hunt down a version of this old incomplete build if you wanted (and haven’t already), but word is out that the Wave 3 betas will be starting soon, and given Microsoft’s recent penchant for public betas, it shouldn’t be hard to get your hands on a build that’s much further along soon.

Oh and btw if you’re confused by the build numbers, which seemed to have skipped from 9.x to 14.x, they’re real. You need only to check the current build number of Foldershare (14.0.1383.0530). An educated guess says that this is to get the Windows Live products in line, build number wise, with Office 14. Which is an interesting development, if it is indeed the case.