LiveSide - News blog : Internet Services

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 Wave 3: Our interview with Brian Hall part 2

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 06:05:00 GMT

In our second part of the interview, Windows Live General Manager Brian Hall gives us a quick demo of some of what’s new with Windows Live In the demo, Brian shows us the What’s New feed, Photos, and Groups:

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Thanks to Brian for taking time with us, we really appreciate it – of course we could have spent all day talking about Windows Live, and if this demo seems a little rushed, well it was, as we were quickly running out of our scheduled time.

Windows Live Wave 3: our interview with Brian Hall in 2 parts

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 05:49:00 GMT

We had a chance to talk to Windows Live General Manager Brian Hall about this “major release” of Windows Live. In the first part, Brian goes over some of the major changes and new features we’ll soon see, talks about the timing of the release, introduces Windows Live Sync (coming first in Windows Live Photo Gallery), and touches on some of the issues surrounding the recent Hotmail upgrade. Here’s the video, and I’ll recap the major points below:

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Brian’s 4 main categories:

Much better Hotmail and Messenger (most of us are on the beta now, but will be seeing a beta update, what Brian calls a “release candidate” type update, in the next couple of weeks. Then we’ll see final versions in January or so.
The Best of Social Networking brought into Windows Live. Microsoft is announcing some 50 partners to be included in the “What’s New” feed, including Flickr, Twitter, Amazon.com, SmugMug, PhotoBucket, and many more. Coupled with a new Windows Live Contact List that is a combination of the Hotmail and Messenger contact list and the Spaces Friends list, Windows Live will allow for permissions control on your network of friends.
Windows Live Groups!
Windows Live Essentials gets Windows Live Sync, will be refreshed in beta “in the next couple weeks”, and released sometime in January.

Timing:

We should be seeing the Internet Services portion of Windows Live (the new home.live.com, Profile, Photos, etc.) “in the next couple of weeks”.
Same for a refresh of the beta
Partners will be rolled out, (LiveSide will have more on the extensive partners list soon).
Final Hotmail and Messenger early in the new year.

Hotmail

“We’re excited, we think it’s a good release, but we made some mistakes”
Folders bug (large font settings made folders not appear) is fixed.
Underestimated numbers of people still using 800 x 600 settings on their monitors, rapidly fixing issues
Known issue: not all of the features were released with Hotmail (Web Messenger, etc) so some of the changes didn’t seem to make sense. They do now.

Windows Live Internet Services - “Major release” announced

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 05:00:00 GMT

We’ve been waiting a long time for this: tonight Microsoft and Windows Live are announcing a major release of their Internet Services, what we’re calling the first “feature complete” version of Windows Live. This is big news for Windows Live fans, and LiveSide will have a number of posts in the next few hours detailing the many facets of the announcement, including a video interview and demo from our new favorite Windows Live guy, General Manager Brian Hall. Here is a quick overview of the highlights:

Windows Live Internet Services is being announced tonight, and will be rolling out over the next weeks, somewhat similar to the Hotmail rollout. Internet Services includes Home.Live.com, the What’s New feed, Profile, People, Photos, Web Messenger built into Hotmail, and more.
POP support for email in Hotmail will finally be freely available, starting sometime around January. This is full POP support, both into and out of Hotmail, for free.
SkyDrive will increase its storage to 25gb, and Hotmail will feature increasing storage from the 5gb it now features.
The What’s New feed will feature an extensive list of Partner participation, allowing users to include information from some 50 Partners so far, including Flickr, Amazon.com, Twitter, Yelp, Wordpress, and many more. This means that when you post pictures on Flickr, or write a review on Amazon, or twitter a message, or write a review on Yelp, for example, that information will show up on your What’s New feed, and be shown to your network.

Rather than post the press release, a reviewer’s guide, and a list of the Partner’s, we’ve gathered these documents into a SkyDrive folder. Of course we’ll be going into more depth on this major release, but these three documents contain a wealth of information on the new features and services: