LiveSide - News blog : Essentials

Windows Live Essentials & Services Book

Sunshine — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:03:21 GMT

For everyone who wants to get the most out of Windows Live: The Windows Live Essentials and Services Book.

This book by MVP Brad Jones and Marcus Schmidt is a full-color, step-by-step guide for using Microsoft's new Windows Live Essentials series of free applications.

Step-by-step instructions show you how to use not only these applications, but also associated Windows Live on-line services. As an example, you'll learn just how easy it is to create panoramic pictures in seconds or how to create movies from pictures in just a few minutes. Then you'll get the inside scoop on how to communicate and share using Messenger, SkyDrive, Spaces, and Groups.

With this book, you'll quickly be on your way to accessing these useful applications in an effort to making your life easier.

Learn how to get Live Essentials Applications free and install them on your computer
Chat with Live Messenger, keep in touch with Live Mail, and set up and create your own blog with Live Writer
Get creative with Photo Gallery and Movie Maker, which let you manage and enhance your photos and turn them into movies
Socialize with the help of Live Spaces
Organize appointments and special days with Live Calendar
Use SkyDrive to store files and documents online for easy access from anywhere
Explore additional apps and services such as Live Contacts, Live Groups, Bing Maps, Bing Search, and more

You can purchase the book at amazon.com.

Spotting the Changes in Essentials

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 19:56:25 GMT

Our eagle-eye reporter Sunshine was on top of the Essentials beta update, and so we’ve had a few minutes to take a look around. As reader Deathseeker noted in a comment to Sunshine’s post, there’s now quite a list of peripherals installed with the Essentials beta:

Windows Imaging Component Hotfix
SQL Server CE 3.1
Search Enhacement Pack
Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime
Microsoft Sync Framework Services
Microsoft Visual Studio Runtime
Direct3D 9
Junk Mail filter update
Microsoft Application Error Reporting
Windows Live Communications Platform
Windows Live Call
Windows Live Sync

We agree that’s a lot of “stuff” to watch go by when you’re not expecting it. As wary computer users, we’re conditioned to raise our hackles to anything unusual being installed. Far from being crapware, however, these additional programs offer some nice enhancements to the Windows Live experience.

The Direct3D 9 enhancements, for example, are really adding some nice touches to Messenger and Mail, among others. Really loving the new toast:

(Hi Brian!)

So far we’ve spotted (or confirmed what we were expecting), along with the visual improvements (including the new icons), the ability to insert albums in Live Writer, to save shared photos in Messenger, and What’s new messages in the Messenger header:

Since you all are so good at spotting new stuff, what have you noticed that’s different? Leave us a comment….

Windows Live Essentials Beta Released!

Sunshine — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:19:00 GMT

I know we told you the Windows Live Essentials would be released last week, it really was planned like that, but sometimes things just don’t work out as planned. You had to wait a little longer, but now it’s finally here! Now you can complete the Windows Live experience: services and applications working seamlessly together.

Download Windows Live Essentials Beta

The Windows Live Essentials are Messenger, Mail, Writer, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Toolbar and Family Safety. Additional programs that can be installed are Microsoft Office Outlook Connector, Office Live Add-in and Microsoft Silverlight. The installer will let you choose which ones you want to install, nobody forces you to install them all. Dependencies will be installed automatically and only for those applications you choose. Like if you choose to install Photo Gallery, Windows Live Sync will be installed along with it. Of course you can uninstall this manually later but that will mean you won’t have the full features.

Requirements and Release notes

Windows Live Announcements recap: What a week we’re having!

Kip Kniskern — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 20:24:13 GMT

This week marked the unveiling of Windows Live Internet Services, news of a refreshed Windows Live Essentials beta coming soon, some new features (and some old ones) from Live Search, and lots of mobile news as well. Let’s recap:

Windows Live Internet Services
On Wednesday evening, Microsoft unveiled the online portion of Windows Live, which should be rolling out to users in the next “couple of weeks”. Lots and lots of changes and new stuff:

Home.Live.com – The starting place for Windows Live online
What’s New Feed – A totally new feature, aggregating news about your network and what they’re doing, including news from a variety of third-party sources (Twitter, Flickr, PhotoBucket, Yelp, Amazon.com, etc., etc.).
Windows Live Profile – A single place to manage your profile information. Was part of Spaces, now stand-alone and expanded.
Windows Live People – Again, a single place to manage your “Network”, combining Hotmail contacts, Messenger contacts, and Spaces Friends.
Windows Live Photos – Like Profile, Photos no longer a part of Spaces, but available on its own or across Windows Live. Greatly enhanced viewing experience.
Windows Live Groups – A new service to create an online Group, including an email address and url for the group, and including a Group specific What’s New feed, membership list, Calendar, SkyDrive, and a discussion list.
Windows Live SkyDrive – Soon to include 25gb of storage, with new features like saving to a .zip file, and move or copy to another SkyDrive folder.
Windows Live Hotmail – Will soon add ever increasing storage, POP access both in and out for free, and Web Messenger integration.

Recap: LiveSide posts on Windows Live Internet Services:

Windows Live internet services: Major release announced
Windows Live Feature Complete
Windows Live People Review
SkyDrive - What's to come
Hotmail, and early look

Our interview with Brian Hall Part 1
Our interview with Brian Hall Part 2: Demo

Selected posts on Windows Live Internet Services:

www.windowslive.com

MS PressPass: Microsoft Introduces Updated Windows Live Services
Windows Live Virtual Press Kit

Brian Hall: Windows Live keeps your life in sync
Kara Swisher: MS “Facebooks” WL services
Omar Shahine: WL People and the past 12 months
SkyDrive team blog - “Our Next Update”

Windows Live Essentials
With the online services announcement on Wednesday, official word also came of an upcoming refresh to the Essentials suite, which we should also see in the “next couple of weeks”

Recap: LiveSide posts on Windows Live Essentials

Messenger, a sneak peak

Windows Live Mobile
With the new Windows Live services come a number of improvements to Windows Live on mobile

damaster and Sunshine gave us a great overview:

Recap: LiveSide posts on Windows Live Mobile

New Mobile Search release
Windows Live for mobile Wave 3

Selected posts on Windows Live mobile

Phil Holden: Live Search for mobile

Live Search

Live Search made some announcements of their own this week: touting the success of Live Search cashback, and unveiling Live Search for Video: TV shows. (In my attempt to follow the PubCon keynote via Twitter, I posted that Birds Eye imagery for an Image Search on places was new. While this was demoed at PubCon, it isn’t actually new, as my colleagues were quick to point out to me :-| ).

Oh and by the way, if you’re in Canada, Live Search has a Big Ticket promotion for you:

Microsoft Live Search 'Big Ticket' promotion

Big Ticket Search will run from October 31st through December 31st. Every time our users search at bigticketsearch.com, they have a chance to win awesome prizes every hour, 24 hours a day. We'll be giving away tons of prizes including 2 new Mitsubishi Lancers, Raptors VIP package, Home Entertainment Systems, Laptops, $10,000 cash, Ticketmaster Gift Cards, Zunes, Xboxes, Raptors Season Tickets and Raptors Memorabilia.

(Thanks to Windows Live Chronicles)

Recap: LiveSide posts on Live Search

Live Search: cashback traction
Silk Road: new Live Search API v 2.0beta
TV Show Search

Our previous post on Bird's Eye in Image Search

Selected posts on Live Search

Search Engine RoundTable post on PubCon keynote with Satya Nadella

Live Search blog: TV show search
Live Search blog: new Live Search APIs

Windows Live Essentials strikes back – completing the Windows 7 experience

damaster — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 14:03:00 GMT

Remember Windows Live Essentials, the service that went through its early beta stages back in 2006 and never made it out of beta, that’s meant to “offer integrated and bundled e-mail, instant messaging, photo-sharing, blog publishing, security services and other Windows Live entities into a seamless whole”? Today Brandon LeBlanc at the Windows Experience Blog talked about how Windows 7 + Windows Live will “complete the Windows Experience” together – once again through the suite named “Windows Live Essentials”. The reasoning behind this, as explained by Brandon, is that:

Microsoft has learned that many end-user experiences need to be updated more frequently. Instead of waiting for the next Windows release, we began delivering updated versions of the Windows Live applications to improve those end-user experiences. While this was a great way to improve the Windows experience for users, many of these updates in Windows Live Wave 2 seemed duplicative of applications already in Windows.

To address this, Microsoft will now only ship these applications (which include Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Photo Gallery, Windows Live Writer and now Windows Live Movie Maker) as part of the Windows Live Essentials suite.

Although branded with a new (or should I say “old”) name, “Windows Live Essentials” in simply the installer that we’ve been seeing since wave 2 that installs the entire suite (or selected applications) of Windows Live products, with the Wave 3 installer available at http://download.live.com. What’s interesting about Brandon’s post is that it showed us a few screenshots of the internal builds of Wave 3 applications, or the “Windows Live Essentials” suite, currently being tested inside Microsoft:

We notice there’s minor updates to all these applications, such as:

• Integration with Windows Live Photos in the Messenger conversation window
• Personal Status Message comes back in the Messenger conversation window
• Removal of the “said:” part in the Messenger conversation history
• A nice shade of blue in the background for Mail
• A new “Edit” submenu in Movie Maker
• Removal of more icons from the programs, especially in Messenger and Mail, to align with "Windows 7” design principles

The one major change that caught our eyes is the new icons for Messenger, Mail, Calendar, Photo Gallery and Movie Maker. It seems like Microsoft icon designers are obsessed with the “yellow ribbon” around their icons. Here’s a close up view of the new icons and also a close-up shot of a photo taken from the Windows 7 keynote at PDC2008:

Do these icon change and the “yellow ribbon” signify anything? Are they in any way related to the “yellow ribbon” around the Internet Explorer icon? Perhaps we’ll have to find out later. Stay tuned with us as we keep you updated on the latest Windows Live news.

Leaked Windows Live Messenger 8.5 turns up more surprises

Chris — Wed, 30 May 2007 01:10:00 GMT

For those of you who haven't seen it at mess.be, the leaked Messenger 8.5 build contained some hidden but basic Windows Live Folders integration/promotion. While the infobar isn't earth-shattering, remember this isn't a beta build so it'll be interesting to see if this changes come the official beta program.

Screenshot (Click to enlarge):

And for those of you wondering where Windows Live Essentials and Dashboard went, there's a new Dashboard application installed to Windows Live\Installer. This directory also includes a new Shared Setup application with the name Windows Live Wave 2 Suite. ("Wave" refers to the group or wave of products to be released.)

Roll on those betas!

Taking a look at Windows Live Essentials and Dashboard

Harrison Hoffman — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 11:39:00 GMT

Last week, Chris talked about a new pair of Windows Live services called Essentials and Dashboard. Since then, we have investigated the Essentials service along with the Dashboard client and we're ready to share more along with, of course, screenshots...(read more)