LiveSide - News blog : Microsoft

How big is Windows Live Messenger worldwide? Really Big

Kip Kniskern — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 18:58:00 GMT

In a press release issued today, comScore breaks down the time spent online globally by properties, with Microsoft sites leading the way with nearly 15 percent of all time spent online (out of some 27 billion hours per month!):

However in an interesting little sidelight, comScore reveals that “Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger representing nearly 70 percent of time spent on the property during the month”:

In September 2009, nearly 27 billion hours were spent on the Internet globally by a record online population of 1.2 billion Internet users age 15 and older. Microsoft Sites accounted for 14.5 percent of total minutes spent online in September, making it the most engaging global property, with Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger representing nearly 70 percent of time spent on the property during the month. Google Sites captured 9.3 percent of total minutes (2.5 billion hours), with YouTube accounting for nearly half of total time spent (1.2 billion hours) at the property. Yahoo! Sites ranked as the third most engaging Web property at 1.7 billion hours, followed by Facebook.com at 1.4 billion hours. Facebook’s share of attention reached 5.1 percent in September, an increase of 2.9 percentage points from the previous year, as its continued growth in popularity precipitated this surge in share.

So a little quick math, and 70% of 3,92 billion gives Windows Live Messenger some 2,744 billion hours of time spent online worldwide in a month: that’s more than all time spend online on Google, or Yahoo, or Facebook sites, wow!

For those of us in the US this may come as quite a surprise, as Messenger is not quite as popular as it is elsewhere, but looking at the comScore breakdown of numbers by region you can see where Microsoft (and Messenger) are most popular:

Of course these numbers do not reflect revenue generated, perhaps a far more important number than raw minutes, but we sometimes forget the vast global reach of Microsoft and Messenger online.

FY09: Windows Live loses $560 million; changes in earnings report

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 04:36:00 GMT

When Microsoft announced its 4th quarter earnings, as Todd Bishop reports in TechFlash, the company made some changes in the way it reports Windows Live income, which Microsoft detailed Sept. 22. Previously, Windows Live was included within the Online Services Business (which was renamed today to Online Services Division), and wasn’t broken out individually. (edited to correct timing)

As of today’s earnings report, however, Windows Live has moved into the Client division (think: Windows client), and a set of slides included with the earnings report breaks down Windows Live revenues and income (or lack thereof):

The slide deck goes back and breaks down Windows Live revenue and income by quarter, and not unlike many many other advertising dependent operations, Windows Live took a pretty big hit over the year, which deepened as the year progressed.

	revenue	inc (loss)
q1	150	-90
q2	160	-110
q3	110	-160
q4	100	-180
ttls	520	-540

(in millions of US dollars – rounding accounts for the discrepancies – all numbers are from the slide deck)

TechFlash quotes Tami Reller from the earnings conference call:

Windows Live generates revenue mainly through advertising. Windows executive Tami Reller told analysts this morning that Windows Live's expenses come in three major areas: Data centers; research and development and innovation; and sales and distribution. She said those types of investments will continue to be important for Windows Live, signaling that Microsoft plans to keep spending significantly in those areas.

"Windows Live is clearly strategic to the company and strategic to Windows," Reller said on the conference call. "That's true for the short term and the long term."

The earnings call, while revealing some sobering ad revenue numbers for Windows Live (yes, the economy sucks), may have been more interesting for the revelations that Windows Live is now a full fledged part of Windows, and that Mobile Services has moved from Online Services to Entertainment and Devices. This leaves MSN, Microsoft Advertising, and Bing in Online Services (which, without Windows Live and Mobile, still lost 1.6 billion dollars last year).

Bing flavored #koolaid at the company meeting

Kip Kniskern — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 06:57:00 GMT

Microsoft held its annual company meeting earlier today (Wed Sept 10) at SafeCo Field (where the Mariners play major league baseball), and from the tweets and various snippets of posts that filtered out of the stadium seemed to cast Bing and Windows Live in a positive note.

Mary Jo Foley noted several hints at an upcoming Bing 2.0, possibly as early as next week. Dr. Qi Lu continues to impress the ‘Softies, even Mini-Microsoft:

Dr. Qi Lu might be my favorite techie right now. I was impressed with what he's brought together for Bing and what's coming and how he has focused the team and adopted some of the new technology that Satya was showing. Who the hell thought we'd be feeling so good about our search decision engine? Ever?

Bing and Windows Live even got a passing grade from a Mini commenter, which is unusual considering the comments on Mini-Microsoft usually run strongly against Windows Live:

Bing, Windows Live, Natal, and Windows 7 are notable exceptions. They rock.

Amazingly, a couple of company meeting tweeters even took my advice to use #koolaid as a hashtag. Now if I could just get them to post some video using Windows Live Movie Maker (even with the audio sync issues!). Oh and speaking of that, they did show the new Windows 7 ad, featuring our old friend Kylie (now 5):

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Windows 7 - Good News

Microsoft Wave Launched

Sunshine — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:30:49 GMT

No, not Wave 4, we are still waiting for that, but Microsoft Wave.

Microsoft Wave is a new site from Microsoft’s UK team that shows off the latest developments and products to come out of Microsoft. You will come across technologies we’ve been covering here like Photosynth, Worldwide Telescope and Deepzoom, but also stuff that you haven’t seen here like project Natal and Microsoft Tag.

Need some help finding a new Windows device, be it desktop or mobile? There are selectors for both to be found on the site to help you! There is plenty to discover on Microsoft Wave, no matter where you are in the world! Don’t forget to check out the learning center, watch the videos and follow three of Microsoft's top bloggers, one of which is Steve Clayton, who, as you know, happens to be one of our favorite bloggers too.

Microsoft SQL Services Is Now Microsoft SQL Azure, More Software + Services News Next Week At WPC09

Sunshine — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:23:56 GMT

Microsoft is updating the branding for SQL Services and SQL Data Services. From now on SQL Services will be called Microsoft SQL Azure and SQL Data Services will be called Microsoft Azure Database:

This name change doesn’t reflect a change in the products themselves; we will still be providing a powerful relational database foundation to the Azure Services Platform. By standardizing our naming conventions, we’re demonstrating the tight integration between the components of the services platform. More intuitive names also help to reinforce the relationships between our on-premises and cloud solutions. Ultimately, the goal is to drive simplicity and clarity for customers as they consider on-premises and cloud computing approaches for solving their IT needs.

More news and updates related to Microsoft’s Software + Services strategy will be announced next week at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans.

Long Zheng has been digging in deeper as to what might be announced next monday: Potential announcements already on people’s minds include the announcement and subsequent availability of Windows 7 RTM code and pricing and licensing plans for Windows Azure. What also might be announced is the public release of the Microsoft Office Web application that was announced back at PDC08, Long received some information that confirms this one. Can’t wait!

We’ll keep our eyes open, that’s for sure!

Microsoft India - Windows Live Planet

Sunshine — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 14:50:12 GMT

One of our readers, nikhil_jain, pointed out Windows Live Planet. Curious me just had to investigate.

Windows live Planet is a social network from Microsoft India. It will help you find people with similar interests as you. You can also “Populate Your Planet” as they call it by importing contacts from the social networks that are connected to Windows Live (Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn, Hi5 and Tagged), just as you can on your Windows Live Profile.

The site also makes use of the Messenger Web Bar, so you can chat to your windows Live contacts without leaving the site. This social network apparently hasn’t gotten much publicity (outside of India) yet as most of the people registered there live in India. And yes, you can register there too if you are in another part of the World, just choose your country from the dropdown as you sign up.

What I wasn’t able to find out is how long this social network exists. I tried to find out yesterday, but the email I’ve sent to the Feedback address returned User Unknown. Another victim of the lay-off rounds?

Windows Live Planet - Disclaimer

In order to offer you a friend locator service and build your online profile, we will be requesting you to share demographic information, such as location, age, gender and other areas of preferences, interests and favourites. This demographic information in addition to the other profile details that we are collecting would be available for viewing by other signed in members of the friend locator service, and will be publicly available until the you delete your online profile from the friend locator. Based on your online profile, you might receive invitations from other signed in members to become friends.We urge you to be cautious about any personal contact information that you share to prevent misuse.

Two More Mega Data Centers Online In July

Sunshine — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 11:11:17 GMT

In order to fulfill the ever growing demand of data centers (Online Live and Cloud services), Microsoft is opening two more mega data centers this July.

The first one to open (July 1st) is located in Dublin (Ireland) and is the first mega data center Microsoft has built outside of the US. Currently this building covers 303,000 square feet, with 5.4 mega watts of critical power. This will be expanded in the future. Furthermore this building is very energy efficient as it uses outside air to cool the facilities and servers!

The second one is the Chicago Data Center, which will open on July 20th. This facility will be one of the largest data centers in the world measuring no less than 700,000 square feet (approximately 16 football fields)! What else is special about this one? It is the first one to utilize containers as a primary server packaging unit (each container houses 1,800 to 2,500 servers)!

More information can be found in the GFS Team blog post here.

Why Windows Live Messenger Is Shut Off For Users In Countries Embargoed By The US

Sunshine — Fri, 29 May 2009 16:55:47 GMT

Last week we told you about Microsoft Shutting Off Windows Live Messenger IM For Users In Countries Embargoed By The US (Error 810003c1). We can tell you a little bit more about the “why” today.

Let’s take a look at what can, and can’t, be banned by the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), a division of the Department of the Treasury. According to a lawyer who advises companies on OFAC compliance, offering communications services such as IM to sanctioned countries such as Iran or Cuba is not restricted by OFAC. Offering software however is. That's because software, even free apps downloadable from the Internet, are considered exportable goods, and thus can be banned by OFAC. The rules are fairly strict. "You can't even send a pen or pencil to people in those countries," he said.

So web-based services, like Windows Live Hotmail, or cloud-based services are fine, as long as they do not depend on a user download! Messenger requires a user download so yea, for that reason it’s not allowed. Not only does it rule out Windows Live Messenger, it rules out the entire Windows Live Essentials as well as other Microsoft offerings. We did not read anything about other services besides Windows Live Messenger being shut off though. By the way, Microsoft is not the only one banning IM access to U.S. enemy nations. Google Inc. and possibly AOL LLC have also cut access to their instant messaging services to citizens of countries deemed hostile to the United States. Whether Microsoft had been contacted by OFAC or voluntarily implemented the ban remains unknown.

The moves likely hurt not only local residents of those countries, but also overseas friends and relatives who rely on the IM and video chat provided by these services to stay in touch. How effective these measurements will be at preventing access remains to be seen too, as there are several workarounds available. But, as any company, Microsoft has to obey the law.

Via ComputerWorld

Microsoft Shuts Off Windows Live Messenger IM For Users In Countries Embargoed By The US (Error 810003c1) [Updated]

Sunshine — Thu, 21 May 2009 09:29:01 GMT

Users in Cuba, Syria, Iran, Sudan and North Korea can no longer IM with Windows Live Messenger.

When trying to log in they will be left with error message:
810003c1: We were unable to sign you in to the .NET Messenger Service.

Reason: Microsoft has shut off the Windows Live Messenger IM for users in the countries embargoed by the US, hence Microsoft no longer offers Windows Live Service in those countries.

Source: ~~Messenger Support Space - Error 810003c1~~

Edit: Looks like the Messenger Support space prefers to delete posts and write new instead of editing... The source article can now be found here.

The country names have been taken out and the reasoning has been reworded to:
“Microsoft has discontinued providing Instant Messenger services in certain countries subject to United States sanctions. Details of these sanctions are available from the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control.”

To be honest we don’t understand why an embargo would lead to this (and why now?), it’s not like offering a free service (Worldwide) is doing business…or is it? And why not list the countries anymore…

Webware 100 Awards 2009 – And The Winners Are…

Sunshine — Tue, 19 May 2009 22:01:38 GMT

Back in April we told you about the Windows Live and other Microsoft products nominations for the Webware 100 Awards 2009. Well, the winners just got announced. Nearly 630,000 votes were cast during the voting this year to pick the best Web 2.0 sites and services…

Here are the Windows Live and Microsoft products that won:

Category Browsing:

Internet Explorer 8 - Internet Explorer 8 is the latest version of Microsoft's Web browser. In version 8, Microsoft has added som e key features that bring it up to speed with some of the competition - Site: Microsoft.com/IE8

Category Communication:

Windows Live Messenger - Windows Live Messenger is Microsoft's instant-messaging service. Once called MSN Messenger, Windows Live Messenger is a chat client that also works with Yahoo's IM protocol. Users can text and video chat, as well as make calls and send SMS text messages to telephones. It also has a shared file storage system that lets users swap and store files - Site: Messenger.live.com

Windows Live Hotmail - Windows Live Hotmail is the latest iteration of Microsoft's free, Web-based e-mail service. The multipane interface lets you drag and drop messages into folders, or right-click messages for a menu of options. There's also a "Today" tab of news, both international and social, that loads when you sign in. Windows Live Hotmail even lets you choose a color theme in case you feel like customizing it to match your tastes - Site: Mail.live.com

Category Infrastructure & Storage:

Windows Live Skydrive - Windows Live SkyDrive is Microsoft's free Web storage service. Users get 25GB of space in the cloud where they can safely keep their files, and they can log in to access those them with their Microsoft Live ID - Site: Skydrive.live.com

Category Location Based Services:

Live Search Maps - Live Search Maps is Microsoft's online mapping service. Users can look up a location by address and get directions, complete with recent traffic reports that can change its estimation of how long it will take. It also uses a technology called ClearFlow that anticipates traffic based on past history of backups at specific times and dates - Site: Maps.live.com

Category Productivity:

Microsoft Office Live Workspace - Microsoft Office Live Workspace is Microsoft's tool for sharing Office documents and mission critical files between multiple users. Workspace users can select privacy controls for each document and get the heads up when another user is editing it. If they want to work on a shared document at the same time, Live Workspace also taps into Microsoft's SharedView to enable screen sharing and overwriting protection - Site: Workspace.officelive.com

Microsoft Office Live Small Business - Microsoft Office Live Small Business is Microsoft's business-in-a-box service. It's designed to get a small business on the Web--both publicly, with a Web site, and privately, for collaboration and back-office work. Businesses get their own domain, email, shared workspaces, Web site, and a contact manager tool - Site: Smallbusiness.officelive.com

Category Search & Reference:

Live Search - Live Search is Microsoft's free Web search tool that plugs into various Microsoft Web properties as well as general indexing for pages all over the Internet. Users can search for news stories, photos, videos, as well as Microsoft's other Web services like Live Maps and MSN - Site: Live.com

Category Editors’Choice:

- Rafe’s favorites

Windows Live Sync - Microsoft's Windows Live Sync is a file sync tool. It lets you connect any Mac or Windows computer's directories together, so that any file saved or changed in one is automatically synchronized to the others - Site: Windows Live Sync

- Best Exit

Farecast Beta - The founders of airline price forecasting site Farecast cashed out during a brief resurgence of the airline industry after the September 11 downturn and before the double whammy of the 2008 oil crises and the financial sector collapse. Farecast can be used to find and determine when to buy airline tickets for a specific trip at the best price. It tells you if the current price is a good one by predicting if the price will go up or down later on. Farecast officially launched to the public in May of 2007 with fare predictions for the United States only. Since launch it added international destinations, hotel price predictions, and price protection insurance - Site: Farecast

So out of the 13 nominated Microsoft Products 10 won! Now that’s what we call a good score! The ones that didn’t make it are Live Mesh, Microsoft Silverlight and Live Search 411. Well hey, better luck next year, those are still good products but as with any competition not everybody can win. Being nominated counts for something too!

To all the teams that won: Congratulations from us here at LiveSide! Keep up the good work!

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!

Zune HD Specs, What We Do & Don’t Know

RyanRCRea — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 20:08:00 GMT

With all the rumors flying around this week, Its been difficult to discern the fact from the fan-fiction. To help clear up some of this fog, me and Sean Bradford over at neowin.net decided to put our facts together. We came up with a confirmed list of features as well as some crazier rumors that couldn’t be proven at this time.

An overview of the confirmed Zune HD specs:

3.6 inchish OLED full touchscreen
NVIDIA Tegra powered.
4GB, 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, and 120GB versions.
HDMI Connection to stream straight to your TV.
HD Radio.
Web Browser.
WiFi compatible, with wireless marketplace.
Released, early fall.
International release of the Zune device itself.
Home AV packs, Car packs, Charge packs.

Unconfirmed rumors (A Microsoft spokesperson declined to comment or confirm):

Camera?
Company insiders tipped us off with the possibility of a limited edition dock accessory in various colors.
3D Xbox Game Support?
Windows Mobile 7 preview bits included? (Maybe these reports mean an early WinMo 7 beta?)

Good stuff, huh?

Be sure to keep it right here, for all the latest Zune news.

Why All The Zune Leaks? The Buzz Is Deafening!

RyanRCRea — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 06:20:07 GMT

I don’t know about you, but my head is spinning from all this Zune news. Well the buzz from the leaks may be deafening, the silence from Microsoft is positively ear shattering.

Trying to keep something under wraps in this day and age, is akin to plugging a leaky dike with a tissue. I have absolutely no problem with MS wanting to keep things under covers for competitive reasons. However all you have to do is look out there to see what this buzz is doing for Zune. Before the latest batch of rumors hit the interwebs , the Zune was lost in a wash of Apple news. Now that the leaks have started coming Zune is everywhere. This is the kind of exposure that MS couldn’t pay for, Yesterday the Zune HD story made it to the #2 spot on digg with 2000+ diggs. Zune has even been trending on twitter over the past few days.

Tonight the site WMpoweruser leaked the below image,

I’ve spoken to my sources and I can say the device you see above is real. However, besides Tegra the specs are still a big question mark. From what I’ve heard the UI is also different (how, I’m not sure). No confirmation on some of the crazier ideas. HDMI? Camera? Look for more Zune news in the coming weeks and months. Stay tuned to Liveside.net and Twitter for all the latest news.

How many Softies use Live Search?

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 01:20:28 GMT

In a blog post today, Ina Fried at CNET News quoted a Microsoft employee who recalled hearing some sobering statistics about Google vs. Live Search usage within Microsoft:

At a company meeting about a year ago, one Microsoft worker recalls hearing that four-fifths of the company's search traffic was going to Google. Although he uses Live Search personally, the worker, who asked not to be named, said plenty of his co-workers still use Google.

"We are still fighting that battle," the worker said. Among its full-time U.S. workers, Microsoft says that, for February, Live Search and Google had roughly equal share, at around 48 percent apiece, with little search traffic going to Yahoo or any of the other search players.

While there’s no doubt that Live Search faces quite an uphill battle both internally and externally, the stats aren’t quite so grim, according to a tweet by Live Search Community Program Manager Betsy Aoki:

Numbers, of course, are funny things, easily manipulated, especially in 140 characters or less (we’ve asked – via Twitter – for a source for the data). It would be interesting to see how much Live Search traffic internally came as a result of the Kumo testing, what the January (and March) numbers were, etc. etc, but even if Kumo has doubled internal usage of Live Search, that’s not so bad, hey?

What in the world is Tegra?

RyanRCRea — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 06:15:00 GMT

Tegra is Nvidia's 1st foray into the mobile computing realm. Nvidia is the company that makes the awesome video cards for your desktops and laptops. Most higher end machines use some type of powerful GPU made by ether Nvidia or ATI. For instance, my Gateway FX laptop uses a GeForce 8800 GTS & my desktop uses a 9800 GTX. Why are GPU’s good for computing? Once again take a look at the laptop. In most laptops the CPU does the heavy lifting for the GPU also, this is called “integrated graphics”. In the Gateway FX, a GPU handles the task of blasting pixels to the screen, allowing the CPU focus on more important stuff, like processing and cruching non visual data. A setup like this is called “discreet graphics”.

Everything above applies to phones as well, on a much smaller scale of course. Most phones and portable media players can barely handle standard-def content, much less HD. Tegra aims to change all of that with support for 720 & 1080P video, along with advanced 3D gaming capabilities. Tegra promises to revolutionize Phones, Digital Media Players and much more. In the videos posted below, you will see that Tegra has chance to change the way mobile UI's are thought of and used.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Check out some of Tegras drop dead amazing specs

Processor and Memory Subsystem

ARM11 MPCore
32-bit LP-DDR
NAND Flash support

HD AVP (High Definition Audio Video Processor)

720p H.264 Baseline Profile Encode or Decode
720p VC-1/WMV9 Simple & Main Profiles Decode
D1 MPEG-4 Simple Profile Encode or Decode
Supports multi-standard audio formats, including AAC, AMR, WMA, and MP3
JPEG Encode and Decode acceleration

ULP (Ultra Low Power) GeForce

OpenGL ES 2.0
Programmable Pixel Shader
Programmable Vertex and Lighting
Advanced 2D Graphics

Display Subsystem

True dual-display support
720p (1280x720) HDMI 1.3 support
FWVGA (864x480) LCD and SXGA (1280x1024) CRT support
Composite and S-Video TV output

Wondering how this relates to Microsoft?

Back when Nvidia launched Tegra, Microsoft was one of their “featured partners”. Tegra is also primed to launch in "mid 2009" right around the time that MS has few big launches. If everything goes according to plan, expect to see a plethora of devices running on Tegra sometime later this year. If Tegra runs as good as it looks... Sign me up!

What about you, what do you think of Tegra?