Microsoft’s Live.com portal will change significantly this evening. No longer will it be a simple search engine with a few other services bolted on. It’s now a social network, too, pulling in activity information and content from around the web. They’re also launching Windows Live Photos and Windows Live People, and other services. Check it out at Home.Live.com.
A lot of what they’ve done is… → Read More
This isn’t enough data to declare Microsoft’s much derided Live Cashback search product a winner, but the first full month after it launched (June) shows a 15% gain in search volume v. the previous month, according to Comscore. This erases the previous month’s losses, bringing Microsoft up to 9.2% overall search share. Live Search CashBack gives advertisers the option of offering… → Read More
Microsoft has quietly launched a competitor to Google Apps for your domain, Windows Live Community Builder. The service offers customized versions of the Windows Live suite, including email, photo service, messenger, writer, livedrive and more for businesses or non for profit organizations ” looking to achieve deeper and more engaging connections with their community.” The service… → Read More
In June Microsoft said that they would soon be aggregating the Windows Live services into a single downloadable installer to give users an easy way to access the suite of services. Today the New York Times is reporting that Microsoft will release the Windows Live software suite sometime this week. The applications that will be included in the installer include Windows Live Photo Gallery, Windows… → Read More
Windows Live Director Tetuya Onoda apparently showed the above and below slides as part of a presentation yesterday to Japanese press. The slide above shows what the personalized Live.com home page may look like (compare it to the current version here). Still no sign of direct integration with Vista Gadgets (promised in early 2006), but there are are links to a number of Microsoft services like… → Read More
Microsoft’s upcoming online storage product, to be called Windows Live Folders (previously known as Live Drive), takes another step towards launch. We’ve been tracking the project for about a year. When the site does launch, look for it at folders.live.com. More details, including screenshots, are at LiveSide, which somehow (briefly) got access to the site. There isn’t much to… → Read More
Microsoft Live Spaces (rebranded last summer from MSN Spaces) is rolling out some new features this morning and announcing recent usage updates. The enhancements are aimed at making Live Spaces more of a social network and less of a simple blogging/home page service. The changes should be live at 6 am PST. The main change is that the new home page when you log in shows what’s happening with… → Read More
The Windows Live team announced today that they’re rebranding their new email beta to Windows Live Hotmail. We haven’t written about the application for some time, and this is as good an excuse as any to compare the current release to Gmail and the new Yahoo mail beta. The three applications, along with AOL mail, make up the vast majority of the 500 million or so webmail users around… → Read More
Microsoft is unveiling its integration of detailed 3D imagery into its Virtual Earth this afternoon (see Live.com). US users with Vista-ready Windows computers and IE 6 or 7 will be able to navigate through an aerial view of 15 select cities with enough detail to discern the texture of buildings and read clickable billboards from the likes of Fox, Nissan and John L. Scott Real Estate. Virtual… → Read More
The best way to hear about new Microsoft product launches these days is to read their employees’ blogs. First we had Stuart Padley’s quickly deleted blog post with some additional information about the upcoming Microsoft Live Drive. Tonight we hear that Soapbox, a YouTube-like user uploaded video product that we first heard about two weeks ago, may launch as soon as tomorrow. The news… → Read More
A hefty list of new features were added to Microsoft’s Live Local Search yesterday and just tonight to Yahoo! Local. As both rivals get stronger, you can’t help but wonder what’s going to come after coupons for Google’s local search. Both Yahoo! and Live Local are looking good. Yahoo! Local Yahoo! Local now lets search users build personal collections of search results, tag… → Read More
Microsoft just put out a press release announcing the release from beta of Live Search and of Live.com in 47 markets worldwide. The release also says that Live Search will now power search on MSN. The changes don’t appear to have gone into effect yet, but they could at any time. Live is Microsoft’s key play for the future and new company leader Ray Ozzie has been a vocal advocate of… → Read More
Microsoft’s new YouTube competitor will be all about user generated videos if its name, Soapbox, is any indication (Hunterstrat calls it “personal whine”). There aren’t many details yet, but LiveSide is saying this will be a MSN, not Live.com product, and will eventually be launched at soapbox.msn.com. The feature set includes: Upload videos in almost any format—like from… → Read More
Microsoft Expo’s project leader, Garry Wiseman, wrote a blog post earlier today criticizing Sina, one of China’s largest search engines, saying “Sina.com steals our design and graphics”. The post highlights the similar look and feel of Sina’s new classifieds site to a previous release of Expo, including the identical color scheme and a pushpin image that appears to… → Read More
Windows Live.com is working on some interesting new features in their beta search service, most notably video search. It’s not on the front page yet, but on the section of the site ironically missing the word beta on its logo: beta.search.live.com. Video search is hot right now: Google gave its video search a promotion to the front page two weeks ago, AOL’s new video site is big on… → Read More
Update: Microsoft PR sent me this statement: “Windows Live is a set of services built around people. Our major goal is to unify customers’ worlds so they have access to the people and information they want anytime, anywhere from any device. We are already making major investments in roaming scenarios with our services, as well as search and sharing scenarios across PCs and devices with… → Read More
Microsoft launched Windows Live Writer today. This is a free, downloadable application that runs on your Windows PC and allows you to write blog posts. Don’t bother clicking the link if you have a Mac, this is Windows PC software only. Since most blogging tools are web based and not all allow WYSIWYG editing (where you see on screen exactly how the blog post will look), Windows Live Writer… → Read More
Tonight at 9 pm PST Microsoft will announce the launch of Windows Live Spaces, a blogging and social networking site on the Live.com platform. As Microsoft phases out the MSN brand in favor of Live.com, they’ve moved services over one at a time to the new platform. Unlike Windows Live Messenger, though, which runs in parallel with MSN Messenger, Live Spaces is taking over MSN Spaces… → Read More
Microsoft just announced that today marks the first day that interoperability between its IM client and Yahoo! Messenger with Voice is available. Microsoft says this is the first time two distinct, global consumer brands have made their IM clients interoperable. The combined user base of nearly 350 million accounts is the world’s largest, the company says. IM interoperability took so long… → Read More
The online map wars continue to escalate, as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask.com and Mapquest compete to release new features – some aimed at usability, and some designed to be just plain sexy. We compared the online maps last month and thought Yahoo was the best overall, based largely on the inclusion of traffic data and the flexibility of their APIs. This morning, Microsoft will swing back with… → Read More
The Windows Live Messenger, previously available by invitation only (sort of), is open to the public starting at 9 pm PST tonight (Monday). It is available for Windows PCs only, must be downloaded with IE (no Firefox), and is available at ideas.live.com. Karin Muskopf, the product manager for MSN and Windows Live Messenger, gave me a brief overview of the new features earlier today. Live Messenger… → Read More
More Microsoft news today: Live.com has announced the upcoming launch of QnA, and a few screen shots have been conveniently leaked as well (see end of post). QnA is a question and answer service that looks like it will be a very close copy of Yahoo Answers. Google’s comparable service, Google Answers, relies on paid experts to generate answers. Microsoft QnA and Yahoo Answers, in contrast… → Read More
Microsoft Live Products launched today at products.live.com. They’ve included retail products from 100,000 sellers. Like Froogle, Live Products is a commerce-only search engine/shopping comparison engine that will, hopefully, give users more relevant results when looking to buy items online. Like Froogle, Live Products does not take payment from merchants for appearing within search results. → Read More
Live.com Shopping launched today (official blog post), and all I see is a big message saying they don’t support Firefox. It doesn’t work with Safari or Opera either (same Firefox error message for all non IE browsers). The entire Mac audience has been shut out of Live Shopping. I’ll fire up my Windows machine to test it out later. In general, Microsoft has been good about… → Read More
Microsoft is building an online storage service, code named Live Drive, says Ray Ozzie in an interview with Fortune: Microsoft is planning to use its server farms to offer anyone huge amounts of online storage of digital data. It even has a name for that future service: Live Drive. With Live Drive, all your information – movies, music, tax information, a high-definition videoconference you… → Read More
Sometime after midnight PST academic search for Live.com will be launched at academic.live.com. The landing page is there now, although the search results actually point to normal Live.com search until the overnight change. To see what the actual results look like, see Kevin Briody’s screen shot here. Welcome to Windows Live Academic Windows Live Academic is now in beta. We currently index… → Read More
Google and Microsoft both have new search interfaces in beta. Google is testing a new “green bars” interface to the left of search results, allowing easy linking to search results for the web, images, groups, froogle and local. The green bar is an indication of what appears to be a result count. Microsoft, through Live.com, is beta testing a new search interface that includes RSS feeds… → Read More
Live.com rolled out a new toolbar and website feature today, and the site has a somewhat better look and feel. New features include the ability to have multiple pages (a good thing), enhanced search, new themes to choose from and more. Richard MacManus has more details. Search has also been significantly enhanced. Live.com clearly has the best image search on the web now (both results and UI). → Read More
Microsoft continues to roll out new Live.com services today. In addition to Street-Side, Microsoft just took the protection off of its much anticipated Expo classified listing service. See my previous posts on Expo for additional information and screen shots. Expo is centered on the idea that people will trust others within a group, and so is allowing classifieds networks within groups. Users can… → Read More
Microsoft’s Live.com is launching a preview version of a new service called Street-Side today (link will be live around 12 PST today). Street-Side will augment the Live Local service and give street level views of the entire city. Searches can be made by address or business name, and you can “drive” around the city using the arrow keys. See the screen shot below for a visual. See… → Read More
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