LiveSide - News blog : WiFi Center

MSN Wifi Hotspots launches

Chris — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 01:55:00 GMT

As if by magic Windows Live Hotspot Locator has become MSN Wifi Hotspots. My original thoughts on the branding switch still apply; it might be frustrating for those who want to see Windows Live become a "super-brand" like Google but there is a lot of logic behind the move to MSN. I just wish that someone from Microsoft was talking about these changes and it wasn't just left for the users to self-adapt. Nothing yet from the Wifi team blog about the switch,

Branding issues aside, the web product is pretty good - where is the Wifi Suite though?

Windows Live Wifi rebrands to MSN

Chris — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 01:20:00 GMT

Yet more juggling between MSN and Windows Live brands. The Windows Live Wifi Suite, including the Hotspot Locator, are soon moving over to MSN. Unlike the Windows Live Hotmail rebrand, the timing is much better, with the Wifi Suite not yet available as a public download.

Whilte the change from Windows Live to MSN WiFi Center and MSN WiFi Hotspots seems slightly bizarre, it fits in nicely with older MSN services such as MSN Internet Access. When you consider that the MSNIA team is actually developing the Wifi service, it highlights just how keen Microsoft was to brand everything Live at the beginning of 2006.

MSN Wifi Hotspots will soon be available at http://hotspot.msn.com/ featuring over 130,000 wifi hotspots (it currently loads Windows Live Hotspot Locator).

Windows Live WiFi Center Beta 4 released

Kip Kniskern — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 13:53:22 GMT

Mike Miles of the WiFi Team announces on the Un-Wired blog that the latest beta release of WiFi Center, the WiFi connection and security manager, is up on Connect.

Improvements to the beta include (from the blog entry):

Support for Vista (whew, just in time… Vista will be publically available in January)
Performance improvements
- Reduced the amount of time it takes to first load the application
- Reduced CPU usage
Quality Improvements.
- Ability to install on non EN-US operating systems.
- Several Connectivity and Managing Network issues resolved.
- Resolved some timer issues and fixed the Last Connected Time in Connection History.
- No more Splash screen. Since the load time is faster it was no longer necessary.

Read more about WiFi Center on their blog, you can request access into the beta here: BellBeta@Microsoft.com. To try out HotSpot Locator, just go to hotspot.live.com.