LiveSide - News blog : Deadpool

Microsoft stops Windows Live VOIP services from July

Chris — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 00:30:00 GMT

Last year Microsoft announced that the existing VOIP partnership with Verizon would be terminating in 2008. Currently this service allows Windows Live Messenger users to call friends and family using regular landlines and mobile phones, but this functionality is set to expire over the next few months.

According to a Microsoft spokesperson, this service will terminate on the following dates:

EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) - July 15th 2008,
USA - August 31st 2008.

They confirmed that so far, no replacement service has been identified.

“Microsoft is actively investigating a successor to Verizon Web Calling in Windows Live Messenger in EMEA and the U.S. and hopes to offer the service again in the coming months. We apologize for the inconvenience to our customers.”

So what does this mean for Microsoft’s VOIP strategy? Its been disjointed, lacked development and made no visible progress over the past 2 years, and now we have the prospect of the service being discontinued indefinitely. However there is some hope on the horizon.

At the end of last month, Mary Jo Foley talked about a service codenamed Echoes. She explains how the different aspects of this project are expected to function with the help of network operators, in particular regarding the synchronising of contacts to and from all mobile devices, and enabling text message (SMS) to IM conversations. In addition parts of Echoes throw light on Microsoft’s own VOIP platform plans:

Step 1: “Echoes will assign a local mobile number to each Windows Live contact”
…
Step 5: “Voice calls can be connected through Echoes directly from the mobile to the Windows Live Messenger user’s PC”

Mary Jo mentioned this new functionality shipping with Windows Live Messenger v9 betas, following on from the TAP trials being undertaken in Europe and Asia over this summer. Swisscom and TeleNor are allegedly some of the EMEA partners, with trials in Asia rumoured to be using Starhub (#2) and M1 (#3). Anybody in these countries heard anything about the testing going on? If so drop us an email, we’d be interested to hear how what’s going on.

Given the expected v9 ship date of Q4 2008 however, it seems like a somewhat tall order for Microsoft to ship a working VOIP platform and cross-partner systems integration in just a few months. Echoes seems to be perhaps a more realistic aim for Windows Live Wave 4, which would mean Microsoft needs a stop-gap VOIP provider for the next 18 months. With only 1 month left to run in EMEA, anybody care to guess when the service comes back online?

(I couldn’t find any user stats for VOIP services except Skype, so its difficult to tell how many users will be affected by this.)

Another One Bites the Dust - Windows Live for TV

Gregor — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 05:53:00 GMT

With all the news about Windows Live/Live Search products being dropped for good lately we almost forgot to add another one to the list - one that never made it out of beta. After the first drop of Codename Orbit hit the web back in December 2006 and a little update released the following April it got silent around the promising Windows Live for TV project.

Two weeks ago Chris Lanier spotted a post on TGB that sets an endpoint to this uncertainty for now. Windows Live for TV is dead. The product team has been moved around to a different part of Microsoft and we will most likely not see the product come out of beta - at least that is what a program manager been quoted to say as a source.

At best this could mean that the team has been merged into the Media Center Edition team and that some parts of the software will eventually show up in an upcoming Media Center update (but there have not been any hints about this happening with Fiji for now) - at worst we wont ever hear about any of the features again...

Thanks to Andy for reminding us to post about this....

UPDATE: Now we have an even more official confirmation of this - the beta service is being shut down for good on June 24th according to a post on the team blog.

Windows Live Expo joins the Windows Live deadpool

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 13:56:53 GMT

Windows Live Expo, the Craigslist wannabe classified ads product, is heading for what TechCrunch likes to call the “deadpool”. This follows closely on the heels of announcements shutting down Live Search Books and Academic. A notice on the site appeared today, informing users that the site will cease operations on July 31:

Some aspects of Expo have already been closed down, and users are no longer able to:

Create a new account
Post a new listing
Extend a listing
Upgrade a listing to a premium listing

All items currently on Expo will remain until they expire (or until July 31, whichever comes first).

Expo began on February 28, 2006 with a Hello World post on their blog (which hasn’t been updated since last September).

Thanks to Josh Jacob (Tegument) for the heads up.