LiveSide - News blog : MSN

MSN.com gets new look in US

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:13:00 GMT

MSN.com is about to unveil a new look based on cleaner lines, a focus on select verticals, and easier user configuration. Along with a new logo, the home page will feature inline access to Windows Live, Twitter, and Facebook, with abilities to update them right from the home page. An uplevel Silverlight experience is coming, too, with additional added features. Video will receive prominent placement on the home page, and an uplevel Silverlight experience there will feature full screen HD video viewing.

We talked to Bob Visse, the MSN Product Management Group General Manager, about the changes, including the US and worldwide aspects of the changes. He said that “different pages work differently across the world”, with for example Eastern Europeans not being nearly so interested in entertainment gossip as we are here in the US. Additionally, a number of markets have received recent updates of their own, so in the case of for example Canada, which was just updated, it may be a while before they see something similar to the changes occurring in the US.

Visse had some interesting statistics to pass along, saying that MSN is the top global info site with over 600 million unique visitors a month, the number one site in 25 markets, and that 45% of Bing traffic comes from MSN. MSN plans to focus on some key growing trends: local, video, social networking, and search:

Microsoft announced the new MSN in a press release tonite, and you can take a look at the new site at MSN.com/preview while it rolls out across the country.

MSN takes Health Vault mainstream, releases “My Health Info”

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 07:01:00 GMT

Today MSN is debuting a US only (so far) beta of “My Health Info”, a new online service to help people manage their health information on the web. The new service, along with a specialized swine flu information center, is available on the MSN Health home page at health.msn.com.

The new service, running on Silverlight, connects up with Microsoft Health Vault, Microsoft’s online, open platform for gathering, storing, and sharing health information (Health Vault FAQ here, from June 2009). My Health Info will provide secure storage of health information available anywhere on the web. With My Health Info, users will be able to:

· Customize their page with tools such as allergy, medicine and blood pressure trackers, a lab results bank, body mass index calculators, vaccination information and more

· Use information from personal health devices such as heart-rate monitors and pedometers

· Access profiles of multiple family members at one time, allowing caregivers to more easily manage not only their information, but their family’s as well

· Stay informed by receiving the latest in health news from sources they trust

My Health Info, at least in this beta, looks like it still needs work in terms of look and feel, but coupling the secure features of Health Vault with the reach of MSN (Health.MSN.com receives some 85 million page views/month, according to MSN Director Lisa Gurry, who I spoke with this morning) makes a lot of sense.

MSN and Bell Canada to close Sympatico.MSN.ca on Tuesday: creating own separate sites

Kip Kniskern — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 04:11:47 GMT

Microsoft and BCE Inc., owner of Bell Canada, will shut down Canada’s most popular portal site, sympatico.msn.ca, on Tuesday. Each company will then launch their own Canadian sites, MSN.ca, and sympatico.ca. The two have been in partnership on sympatico.msn.ca since 2003, and although the websites will separate, a partnership will continue on, according to an article in The Globe Investor:

Bell and Microsoft have signed a new, three-year arrangement that will see the two sharing Web traffic and some services. Microsoft, for example, will let Bell sell some of the ads on its Hotmail and Messenger services. And Bell has agreed to make Microsoft's new search engine, Bing, the exclusive search tool on Sympatico.

Microsoft plans to add global content to MSN.ca that it already has licensing deals for, such as content from the BBC, and has already added about 60 staff to prepare for the launch.

“We are going to step up our game in the Canadian market and bring [the MSN portal] up to the level we have had in the rest of the world.”

said Owen Sagness, VP of Microsoft Canada's consumer and online group, as quoted in the Globe article.

Oh snap. MSN to discontinue Soapbox (we’re screwed)

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 05:03:00 GMT

Here’s one from the “saw this coming from a mile away” department. After “scaling back” the user uploaded video service last month, today an email confirmed that the other shoe has dropped, and that MSN Soapbox will be closing. Users will not be able to upload video to Soapbox beginning July 29, with all content unavailable (read: gone) after August 31, 2009. Here’s the full text of an email sent out to Soapbox users today:

Attention Soapbox Users,

MSN will no longer offer Soapbox, the user generated video service within MSN Video, as of August 31, 2009. Beginning on July 29, you will no longer be able to upload videos to Soapbox. People who have uploaded videos to Soapbox will have until August 31, 2009 to download them. Please make sure you download your videos by this date if you would like to keep them. We will have a notice running in the Soapbox service to remind you to download your videos. It is our goal that you download and keep all of the videos you uploaded that are important to you. Online video is a key part of the MSN experience and we will continue to offer a rich experience on MSN Video. We will also continue to invest in delivering great customer experiences, while keeping a keen eye on our business objectives during this tough economic climate. Thank you for your support of MSN Video. More details and download instructions are available at: http://video.msn.com/shutdown.html

Thank you for using Soapbox.

The MSN Video Team

Since LiveSide has tried to “eat the dogfood” and use Microsoft and Windows Live products wherever we can, what this means for us is an enjoyable month of downloading (at some agonizingly slow speed, we’re sure) the video interviews we’ve had hosted on Soapbox, and setting them up to be hosted on our own server. We have the space and the bandwidth (not really a problem as old interviews aren’t in high demand), so we’re only out the time this will take us, and the annoyance. A lot of work just to maintain our old content, but hey if we didn’t like pain we wouldn’t deal with Microsoft to begin with! After that, we’ll probably follow Bing’s lead and open a YouTube channel (Warning: clicking on that link may subject you to that awful Bing Jingle contest, be forewarned).

UPDATE: Just to clarify (and to make this whole mess even more enjoyable), you can't actually download MSN Soapbox videos until July 29th. From the FAQ:

Q: Can I recover the videos I’ve uploaded to Soapbox?
A: Yes, on July 29, 2009 log into your personal profile, roll over the thumbnail of the video you want to keep and click on the download link that appears.

MSN Calendar To Windows Live Calendar Migration Starting Soon

Sunshine — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:03:03 GMT

We read before that this would happen starting March already, but the following announcement appeared on windowslivewire:

It’s almost moving time! We’ve been busy getting Windows Live Calendar ready for when we move all MSN Calendar customers over to the new and improved service on Windows Live.

Over the coming months, we will be moving all existing MSN Calendar customers over to Windows Live Calendar. The move will be gradual, that is, not everyone will see their calendars change on the same day.

So apparently the migration hadn’t started yet. In their article they also outline some features Windows Live Calendar offers over MSN Calendar and let you know that all of your MSN Calendar’s tasks and notes will be migrated into your new Windows Live to-do list. Furthermore they list what you should know for the move: If you only access your MSN Calendar through the web you need not do anything, however if you use Microsoft Office Outlook you will have to make sure you are using the latest version of Outlook Connector (version number 12.0.6414.1000 or greater).

Windows Live Calendar doesn’t support displaying attachments, hence the reminder we posted earlier to save those, or sending reminders to a secondary email address. You will also have to republish or share your calendars again in Windows Live Calendar after the move.

MSN QnA Beta Is Closing On May 21st

Sunshine — Mon, 11 May 2009 18:28:04 GMT

All things come to an end, same goes for the QnA beta. The team just announced the end of the beta and the closing of the QnA site:

We are ending the QnA beta test and are closing the QnA site on May 21, 2009.

First and foremost, we want to thank you for your participation. Since we introduced QnA, we’ve learned a lot about this new way of communicating and creating valuable content. At this time, we are closing the QnA site, but the experience of running QnA and gathering all of the great feedback you’ve shared with us will certainly influence future product direction.

When QnA moved from the Live Search organization into MSN we announced that we'd be looking for new ways to share questions and answers across MSN and provide new opportunities for you to engage with each other and share your opinions, ideas, and knowledge. That mission has not changed. Questions and answers are still important to MSN and your feedback has been very valuable for our future product strategy. You’ll see more ways of how MSN will empower people to connect and communicate over the coming months.

QnA has been a wonderful opportunity for us to learn from you, and closing the site is a sad occasion for those of us who worked hard to create this site and build this community. Again, we thank all of our wonderful contributors for your participation. It’s been a pleasure and a privilege to be a part of the community that we all created together. See you on MSN!

-QnA Team

In their blog post you can find information on how to stay in touch with your QnA friends. Furthermore they point out that you can ask questions, get answers, and have discussions on a variety of topics in the message boards throughout MSN; Airfares & Travel, Autos, City Guides, Games, Health & Fitness, Lifestyle, Money, Movies, Music, Real Estate, Tech & Gadgets and TV. You can do so with the same account you used for the QnA message boards. Windows 7 Beta and RC users can now ask their questions on Microsoft Answers.

Previous articles about QnA

MSN revamps City Guides

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:06:00 GMT

MSN is rolling out a new version of City Guides (http://cityguides.msn.com/), “one step in MSN’s long term plan for Local”, for 30 US cities to start (Edit: 30 cities will receive customized pages; all US cities will get a new look, but not the customized themes). Some of the key enhancements:

Modern Site Design: Features an entirely new look with in-line video and customized themes for the top 30 U.S. markets.

Live Search and Live Maps Integration: Live Search and Live Search Maps integration throughout the site, making it easy for people to explore any location in the U.S. and get easy one-click directions.

Personalization: Option to create a profile page, using Windows Live ID, allowing users to plan trips, tracks favorites, store Live Search Maps collections and photos and the option to share it all with friends.

Learning and Sharing: Access to a rich community for users to learn from and share with, including expert sources and reviews from Yelp and Citysearch and the option to share reviews with Facebook friends.

Planning: Integrated Activity Finder that makes it easy to locate the best a city has to offer, make plans and share them with friends.

Microsoft recently re-hired Cyrus Krohn, who helped start Slate Magazine to lead the programming strategy for future MSN Local efforts. Krohn was at Microsoft from 1996-2005 under Scott Moore, and then left to follow Moore to Yahoo!. Krohn was and most recently was eCampaign Director for the Republican National Committee, but left to again follow Moore back to Microsoft.

Happy Earth Day!

Sunshine — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 22:23:51 GMT

Today is Earth Day, a day designated nearly 40 years ago to inspire awareness of and appreciation for our environment. But it isn’t easy to be green, according to this study from MSN. Nearly 70 percent of people said that they would never limit toilet flushes to conserve water or use a kitchen compost. What Earth Day does do, is rise awareness of all-things-environmental.

Over on Microsoft's Environmental Sustainability Blog we read about why Earth Day Matters to Microsoft:

Effectively managing our scarce energy resources while addressing climate change - even as the world's population steadily rises - will be one of the great challenges of the 21^st century. Microsoft is working hard with our partners, customers and suppliers, as well as with governments and leading environmental organizations, to help address this critical environmental challenge. This Earth Day, I want to share the latest information on our Environmental Sustainability Strategy, which focuses on three core areas:

Using information technology to dramatically improve energy efficiency. Information and communications technology (ICT) products are responsible for around 2% of global carbon emissions, according to the analyst firm Gartner. Microsoft is working to create new technologies and improve industry best practices to reduce the energy use of information technology devices.

Accelerating research breakthroughs. Scientific research into the impact that human behavior has on complex environmental and biological systems provides the insights needed for effective policy change and increased environmental awareness. Microsoft Research is working with leading scientists to expand the boundaries of our knowledge by creating tools, technologies and models to enhance scientific understanding on a global scale.

Demonstrating responsible environmental leadership at home. Microsoft is committed to reducing our global carbon emissions per unit of revenue by at least 30% by 2012 (compared with 2007 levels). We have undertaken several initiatives to decrease our environmental impact, from green-building-designs to the introduction of food composting on all our campuses. We operate one of the world's largest company-owned fleets of buses to reduce congestion, emissions and employee commuting miles at our Puget Sound headquarters.

For more information on Microsoft's sustainability work please visit http://www.microsoft.com/environment

To celebrate Earth Day and help you create a more energy efficient IT infrastructure, TechNet Magazine is publishing a special online-only edition dedicated to Green IT.

Live Search is helping you go green by answering the following questions:

- What is my carbon footprint?
- What hybrid car is best?
- Where can I find stylish reusable shopping bags?
- How do I kitchen compost?

More tips and tricks for going green are offered on MSN Green.

Virtual Earth:

Los Angeles County just announced their Solar Map project which leverages Virtual Earth to allow homeowners and businesses to go online to determine if their properties are good candidates for solar power.

The Microsoft Research Team launched a new search engine called SciScope which is focused exclusively on rich environmental information presented on a Microsoft Virtual Earth map. The site facilitates data discovery and retrieval from millions of sensors that monitor the quality of the environment.

More information about the Solar Map and SciScope can be found on Chris Pendleton’s blog.

Photographers around the world can contribute to an ambitious project that will attempt to create a photo-composite of the world on Earth Day. The Earth Mosaic project started out as a wild idea to do something truly significant, involving photography. Something world-wide. More info over at the Microsoft Professional Photography Blog.

Happy Earth Day!

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.

Microsoft lands Deadliest Catch, beats YouTube and Yahoo to 7 figure deal

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 07:22:47 GMT

In its first ad campaign to simultaneously combine Internet, mobile, and video game ads, Microsoft beat out Google’s YouTube and Yahoo! for an ad deal with Discovery Communications, Inc. to promote the upcoming 5th season of “The Deadliest Catch”, according to a report on Bloomberg.com.

To promote Discovery Channel’s fifth season of the crab fishing documentary “Deadliest Catch,” Microsoft came up with a package of ideas it has never tried before. Ads will take over the MSN.com and MSN mobile homepages and 90 percent of ad space on MSNBC and Fox Sports sites. Microsoft will run sweepstakes in video-games like ‘Shaun White Snowboarding’ and send text- message reminders to phones to watch or record the show.

“Microsoft just came in like rock stars on this,” Donna Murphy, the Discovery Channel’s vice president of marketing strategy, said in an interview. “They were the first ones to really blow it out in every direction.”

…

To promote the premiere of “Deadliest Catch” tomorrow night, Discovery will take over MSN.com, MSNBC and Fox Sports, the first time those sites have devoted so much space to a single advertiser. A mobile-phone contest will give away points that can be used to purchase video-games and movies from Microsoft’s Xbox online service.

The Bloomberg report calls the deal a victory for Microsoft in a slow display ad market, one that is expected to grow only 1.5%, compared with 37% growth in 2007.

The report goes on to describe changes to Microsoft’s ad business that helped to land the campaign, and to point out problems with Microsoft’s programs to track ad viewers:

Microsoft may be having a hard time partially because competitors offer software with more advanced features for tracking ad viewers closely and measuring the effectiveness of ads, Microsoft and clients say. It’s been too hard to mount a campaign across different Microsoft sites, phones and video- games. Clients who do manage it can receive four different bills, (Microsoft Corporate Vice President Scott) Howe said.

Microsoft has been reportedly talking again to Yahoo! about an ad deal, and according to Kara Swisher at All Things D, that deal might include a swap that would see the display advertising business go to Yahoo!, with Microsoft acquiring Search:

Thus, sources said, the talks include many scenarios, such as one in which the companies swap online advertising assets and deliver services to each other.

In that interesting plan, Yahoo might take over all of Microsoft’s display and premium advertising business to sell along with its own, while Microsoft would run the search advertising business for the pair.

Such a deal, which plays to each company’s strengths, would bind the two closely together, even though they still compete on many other fronts in the Internet space.

What will this latest deal means to Microsoft’s willingness to part with the display ad business? We can only stay tuned for the next exciting episode…

Don’t Miss Out On Cashback Offers With MSN Toolbar

Sunshine — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 23:36:15 GMT

Afraid to miss out on a Live Search Cashback offer? You won’t if you use the MSN Toolbar, which now contains a Cashback-offer-detecting mechanism. If there is Cashback available for the item you were searching for the icon on the toolbar will gleam. Clicking the gleam will bring you to the page where the Cashback offer is available. So you will never find yourself in a situation like this one:

“I bought a Wii online; and then found out the next day that I could have saved almost $100 had I used Live Search Cashback!! I was so mad.”

Best thing of it all is that it doesn’t matter where you search, be it on Live Search, Google, Yahoo or Craigslist.

This version of MSN Toolbar was released May last year and is powered by Microsoft Silverlight.

Live Search : Your everyday online cash detector
Previous articles on Live Search Cashback

Edit: Live Search Cashback is still only available for US residents, 18 years of age or older - FAQ

Reminder: Migration From MSN Calendar To Windows Live Calendar - Save Attachments Before March 1

Sunshine — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 13:26:41 GMT

We already mentioned in January that MSN Calendar users will be moved to the Windows Live Calendar service. This migration of existing MSN Calendar users to the Windows Live Calendar service will start in March. Windows Live Calendar does not support attachments to meetings and appointments. These will be removed from all meetings and appointments during the move. The Windows Live team recommends you save the attachments prior to March 1^st, 2009. If you have been using Outlook Connector 12.0 to synchronize Outlook with your MSN Calendar, you may also be able to retrieve/download a copy of the attachment from the event in your Outlook calendar.

Speaking of Outlook Connector: 12.0 users will be required to upgrade to the 12.1 version, which connects to Windows Live Calendar, starting February 24^th. Starting that date, if you haven’t upgraded already, you will be prompted to upgrade when you boot Outlook and try to sync your Hotmail account. Of course you can upgrade now too if you want, but make sure your calendar is synchronized with the MSN Calendar service before you do so. Whichever way you choose, please restart Outlook after you upgrade so the add-in will be installed correctly.

More information about this move and how to make sure everything migrates smoothly can be found in this blog post and the FAQ.

Reminder: MSN Groups closing on Monday, February 23

Sunshine — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 23:34:00 GMT

In October we reported that MSN Groups would be closed. The original plan was to close MSN Groups on February 21, but that has been extended to February 23. The team just posted a reminder that you’ll need to migrate your groups to the Multiply service, or save data from those groups locally before Monday, February 23. After that you will no longer be able to access your Group and any of the data in it.

Besides this reminder the team also answers some of the most frequent questions they received about this.

Why are you closing MSN Groups ?

It is our goal to always provide the most current and user-friendly technology to our users, and over the past few years our research and user feedback indicate that MSN Groups fell short of that goal. At the same time, we have been making huge investments in the Windows Live suite of services. In the long term, closing MSN Groups helps us move users to new group experiences that over time will give them more ways to stay in touch with the people they care about. In December we released a brand new service for groups on Windows Live, building it from the ground up to provide great value for our customers.

Since the new Windows Live Groups service was built on a new platform with a different mix of features, we weren’t able to retrofit it to use the data contained in MSN Groups. However, it is very important to us that you can keep the data you’ve created using MSN Groups and can continue to enjoy those experiences. So we have partnered with Multiply to provide you with a way to transfer all of your MSN Groups data and keep your groups going into the future on Multiply.

Why Multiply?

Multiply is an online group and media sharing service that PCWorld recently called one of the ten most underrated tech products. Multiply has worked diligently with us to understand all the ways our customers use MSN Groups, and has prepared its service to receive and host MSN Groups and their data. Multiply prepared a special opt-in migration method that puts group managers in control of moving a group to Multiply and inviting members to rejoin the group in its new location.

Why not allow current MSN Groups to migrate to Windows Live Groups?

Windows Live Groups was built on a new platform with a different mix of features from MSN Groups. The features in Windows Live Groups are optimized for smaller groups of up to 20 people, like clubs or families, whereas MSN Groups caters to a wide variety of group sizes and types, including large public groups. Because the two services differ in their intent and features, they were built using different technologies, and a direct migration from MSN Groups to Windows Live Groups wasn’t possible. Multiply offers a similar set of features to MSN Groups and therefore can more effectively receive all of the MSN Groups data at this time.

You can read the full post here.

MSN Groups

MSN UK trials new MSN v13 UI with Silverlight enhancements

Chris — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:35:00 GMT

Over at MSN UK Entertainment, they are trialing the new MSN v13 UI, complete with Silverlight enhancements. The test site at http://entertainment.next.uk.msn.com/ follows on from the testing of a Silverlight homepage design, http://viewer.uk.msn.com/.

As Peter Bale, Executive Producer for MSN UK mentions when discussing the trial, the addition of Silverlight allows for an improved multimedia experience when using MSN, in particular through embedded videos and images. In addition, once you have signed into MSN, you're giving the option to share you MSN activities through Windows Live, using the MSN Web Application. This is currently hidden in the standard web applications directory, so you'll need to enable it via your MSN profile page, or click this link. Note that the MSN Profile is actually using the information from your Windows Live profile, so apart from setting a nickname and avatar, there is no need to enter it twice!

For those interested in where MSN UK is going, Peter Bale gave an interview recently to Jemima Kiss, talking about the launch of MSN Next and how they plan to push original content.

Expect to see more on what MSN is doing in the new year.

Looking at the past – a vision for Messenger four years ago

damaster — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 13:10:54 GMT

Looking through my files today, I came across a set of “MSN Wave 11” (v7) concept images that were released back in December 2004, when Windows Live wasn’t even around yet (according to Wikipedia, Windows Live was first announced on November 11, 2005). That was almost four years ago, when MSN Messenger 6 just got released into final. Nevertheless, it surprised me how similar looking the concept was compared to what we have now in Messenger Wave 3. Digging through Live Search archives, here’s what was said about the vision for the future of (MSN) Messenger/Hotmail/Spaces:

The key parts of MSN Wave 11 are:
• Me (My Identity)    [Windows Live Profile?]
• My Relationships (My Social Network)     [Windows Live People?]
• Catch up     [Windows Live Home, What’s New feed?]
• Publish & Archive     [Windows Live Spaces?]
• Communicate     [Windows Live Messenger]
• E-mail, IM, & SMS    [Windows Live Hotmail]
• Voice & Video    [Windows Live Messenger, Call]
• Share     [Windows Live SkyDrive, Photos?]
• Fun (Play Together)    [Windows Live Groups?]

MSN Spaces - MSN are planning to create "Group Spaces", although like the recently launched Blogging service these will allow you to create a place to share ideas, to do lists, notes, calendars, etc. with your family and friends. On the IM side of things, Messenger is likely to integrate by allowing people to create a group of friends, with the possible addition of "Circles" in MSN Messenger. Although in very early stages of development it's likely "Circles" will integrate fully with MSN Group Spaces.

MSN Hotmail - Although there are little details on how the new wave will effect Hotmail, it's likely that the tight integration of MSN Group Spaces will change Hotmail’s current contact features.

MSN Messenger - The Messenger main window is due to take on a Client dashboard paradigm with…user-customizable layout and multiple bar parts available. Other additions include RSS/Subscription info, file sharing info [of contacts]…

Sounds interestingly familiar? Wait until you see the comparison of the main contact list window from Windows Live Messenger (Wave 3) and the prototype concept image of “MSN Wave 11” created four years ago:

Coincidence? I think not. What you see in Wave 3 was not something that came out of the blue. As mentioned in the interview with the Messenger team previously, some of the new features we see in Messenger Wave 3 took years of planning to finally get into this release. Well, it seems like it took Microsoft a good four years to finally transform this “vision” into real products. At least we could say that they’ve been sticking to their plan pretty well all these years!