SuperSite Blog : Windows Live

Windows Live Gets YouTube, 18 More Content Partners

pthurrott — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:48:16 GMT

From Microsoft:

This week, 19 new third-party feed partners will be rolling out globally on Windows Live, bringing the total of feed partners up to 75 global web companies, so over 450 million Windows Live customers have even more ways to share what they're doing across the web and communicate with the people they care about. To get a better sense of how these new partners appear in the Windows Live experience, check out the brief demo video here.

Feed partners available to consumers this week at http://home.live.com include YouTube, Break.com and a host of regional web companies (full list available here.)

As of today, Windows Live now has feed partnerships with seven of the leading U.S. video sites, according to comScore – YouTube, MySpace, Hulu, Facebook, Break.com, Daily Motion and CNET – so consumers can easily see when their contacts upload a new video or leave a comment on one of these sites.

In addition to video partners, Windows Live has partnerships with leading web companies in seven different categories, including blogging, music, news, photo sites, portals, reviews and social networking.

SkyDrive Explorer

pthurrott — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:06:32 GMT

I've been hoping and looking for some kind of solution that would let people access their 25 GB of free storage space on Windows Live SkyDrive using simple, Explorer-based drag and drop. It's been kind of a tough slog all year, however, with only one solution, Gladinet, which is hard to configure and buggy in use. But now a new contender has arrived, and while it's not perfect, it's much better than Gladinet. It's called SkyDrive Explorer, and as promised, it does provide Explorer-based drag and drop access to your SkyDrive account. The only issue I've seen is that you can't drag and drop collections of folders into SkyDrive. Instead, you can only drag files (at least that I've seen), while manually creating folders on the cloud side.

Anyway, I was hoping to hold off on this one for the podcast, but I've easily gotten 100 emails about it already, so I guess the cat is out of the bag. Thanks to everyone that wrote in about this tool.

MySpace, Hulu and more on Windows Live this week

pthurrott — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:48:33 GMT

From Microsoft:

23 new third-party feed partners and 4 new contacts partners will be rolling out globally on Windows Live this week, giving 500 million+ Windows Live customers even more ways to share their online lives and communicate with the people they care about.

What's New:

Feed partners available to consumers this week at http://home.live.com include MySpace, Hulu, Goodreads and a host of regional web companies (full list available here.)

New contacts partners, including AOL, Google and Hyves, join Facebook, hi5, LinkedIn and MySpace this week in allowing Windows Live customers to securely share and exchange contacts between Windows Live and these social networks.

With more than 50 leading global and regional web companies now available on Windows Live, customers can easily share their activities from across the Web from the sites that are most important to them.

More info on the Windows Live Blog:

Last year, when we updated Windows Live services, we added a broad range of partnerships with leading web companies, to make it simpler for you to share your activities across a number of popular web sites with the people you care about the most.

We know that you have a busy life online, with multiple accounts on separate websites for sharing different things in many different contexts – from blog posts to status updates to photos, and more. That’s why we keep adding more feed and contacts partners to Windows Live – so that you have one place to visit to see what your friends are up to, and one easy way of sharing updates with your network.

Not only does this help simplify your life online, it also opens up the possibility of discovery. By adding these feeds to your profile, you can help your friends discover new things and ideas they hadn’t known, and you will get the same experience by learning about some of the things they decide to share.

In April, we rolled out even more partnerships, including some of the most popular international sites for our customers around the world

Today, we are happy to announce that 23 new feed partners are rolling out in Windows Live this week. New feed partners span a variety of online destinations like blogging sites, music and video sites, photo sites, news sites, reviews sites, portals and social networks, including Blingee, BuddyTV, Goodreads, Hulu, Judy’s Book, MySpace, Newsvine, OleOle, Qik and SlideShare. For a complete list of Windows Live partners, click here.

Adding feeds to your Windows Live Profile is easy. Simply click “Add Web activities” on the left side of your Windows Live Profile page, and select the partner sites you’d like to add. For more detailed instructions on how to add these feeds see our previous blog post.

Also, starting today, you will be able to easily invite friends from AOL Google and Hyves to Windows Live, and vice versa. These contact partners join existing contact partners like Facebook and LinkedIn. By providing you the option to bring in your contacts from different networks, Windows Live makes it simple for you to manage your contact lists from one place by consolidating them on Windows Live. For a quick tutorial on how to share contacts between Windows Live and third party sites, refer to this previous blog post by Rob Dolin.

To get started, visit your Windows Live homepage at http://www.home.live.com

Windows Live Movie Maker 1.0 is now live

pthurrott — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 20:05:18 GMT

Sorry about the confusion yesterday, but Windows Live Movie Maker 1.0 is now live. Here's the word from Microsoft:

Today, Microsoft is releasing its new Windows Live Movie Maker application globally. As the first application within the Windows Live Essentials suite optimized for Windows 7, this free download – available at http://download.live.com -- makes it easy for Windows 7 and Windows Vista users to create beautiful movies from their photos and videos and share them with friends and family.

With Windows Live Movie Maker, people can:

Use Auto Movie to create a great-looking video in under one minute that includes transitions, a title, captions and a music soundtrack.

Share movies across TV, PC and mobile device

Publish directly to YouTube – with other online sharing sites to come.

Save their creations in HD*

Import and edit content from Flip Video and iPhone*

To learn more and see real movies created by Windows Live Movie Maker, please visit www.moviemakerpreview.com or check out the Windows Live team blog post.

Or just check out my review. :)

Microsoft shutting down MSN Soapbox

pthurrott — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 09:37:48 GMT

No big surprise, since I was apparently the only non-Microsoft employee to ever use the service. (Never heard of it? You're not alone. It was Microsoft's "answer" to You Tube.) Here's an email I received this week:

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

Outlook Connector for Office 2010

pthurrott — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 22:02:47 GMT

If you're running the Outlook 2010 Technical Preview (cough), you may have noticed that the shipping version of the Outlook Connector--which enables you to use Windows Live Hotmail, contacts, and calendar with Microsoft Outlook--won't work. Well, no worries: Microsoft has quietly released a new version, in both 32-bit and 64-bit variants, for the Office 2010 Tech Preview. Here you go...

Outlook Connector for Office 2010 (x86)

Outlook Connector for Office 2010 (x64)

Thanks to Rafael via Twitter.

Microsoft integrates Bing with Hotmail

pthurrott — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:49:46 GMT

From Microsoft:

Bing – Microsoft’s decision engine – has come to Windows Live Hotmail through a new feature unique to Hotmail, called quick add. Gone are the days of shuffling between multiple windows to search for a map to email to party guests or the latest viral video to share with friends and family. Quick add – powered by Bing – puts an end to the multi-window chaos so you can accomplish tasks faster, and allows consumers to ‘Bing and decide’ from the comfort of their Hotmail inbox.

Windows Live Hotmail customers can find and share information more easily with quick add:

Search for maps, restaurants, movie times, images, videos and business listings, all within your Hotmail inbox.

Insert maps, business addresses, restaurant and business reviews and more directly into the body of an email in a few simple clicks.

Preview and insert videos and images from the web without leaving your inbox.

To try it firsthand, visit hotmail.com and check out the right-hand side of the screen when composing a new message. Or, check out this demo and this blog post for screenshots of quick add, and more information about how Hotmail’s integration with Bing makes it easier for consumers to share information via email.

Nice!

Hotmail rolls out email account aggregation

pthurrott — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:53:44 GMT

From Microsoft:

Today, Microsoft announced that Hotmail email account aggregation is rolling out in the US, Canada and Brazil. This is a feature that allows consumers to receive email from other POP-enabled email accounts (including Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and AOL) directly into their Windows Live Hotmail inbox. With this new feature, Windows Live Hotmail offers a one-stop place for managing email, making it easier for more than 400 million Windows Live customers worldwide to manage their multiple accounts from a single location.

For more info, check out the Windows Live Wire blog.

Make Bing your default search provider in IE

pthurrott — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 12:56:00 GMT

Thanks to Alan B. for this tip: You can make Bing your default search provider in Internet Explorer 7 or 8 by visiting Microsoft's Create Your Own Search Provider page and entering the following information:

URL: http://www.bing.com/search?q=TEST

Name: Bing

Then, click Install Search Provider. (And be sure to check the box to make it your default provider.) You'll even get the Bing logo in the search box. Nice!

Announcing Bing

pthurrott — Thu, 28 May 2009 15:29:06 GMT

Microsoft today will announce Bing (previously codenamed "Kumo"), it's next generation Windows Live Search service. Bing will be made available in a public beta beginning June 3. But you can read more about it in my Bing Preview, which contains a number of pre-release screenshots, all of which feature the "Kumo" logo and branding because they were taken before the Bing announcement. Here are a number of shots from Microsoft showing off the final branding.

My Bing Beta Review will be available by June 3 as well.

Bing home page

Bing health

Bing shopping results with fly-out information on mouse-over

Bing shopping experience with features filtering

Bing restaurant info with inline reviews

Bing travel experience

Facebook, MySpace and others 'Go Live' on Windows Live this week

pthurrott — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 19:54:33 GMT

From Microsoft:

Today, Microsoft announced that 20 new third-party feed partners, and 3 new contacts partners will be rolling out globally on Windows Live this week, giving 500 million+ Windows Live customers more ways to share their lives online lives and communicate with the people they care about.

What's New:

Feeds partners available to consumers this week at home.live.com include Facebook, Digg and SmugMug.

New contacts partners, MySpace, hi5, and Tagged, join Facebook and LinkedIn this week in allowing Windows Live customers to reciprocally invite contacts between Windows Live and these social networks.

In the coming months, MySpace customers will be able to share activities and updates from MySpace with their Windows Live network as MySpace joins Windows Live as a feeds partner.

With a total of over 30 leading global and regional web companies now available on Windows Live, customers can easily share their activities from across the Web.

We’re releasing an important update to Windows Live that’s really about two things ...

We’ve added 20 new third-party content partners that you can integrate with Windows Live, bringing the total number of third-party content partners to more than 30. According to the latest data from comScore, there are more than 600 million active users on the various blogging sites, social networks and photo sharing sites that Windows Live has partnered with, and many of these people also make up the 500 million users on Windows Live. This update will make it easier for Windows Live customers to connect with their activities on these other sites and share them with friends in their Windows Live network.

We’re working with three new contacts partners — MySpace, hi5 and Tagged —so you can easily invite your contacts from third-party sites into Windows Live and vice versa, rather than having a different set of friends and contacts on each site.

MSN Wallpaper

pthurrott — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:18:55 GMT

Microsoft has released what I think is a new desktop wallpaper solution through its MSN arm that looks really interesting:

MSN Wallpaper will automatically check for updates from Microsoft. You can choose whether to accept the updates at the time of download.

Choose from our amazing collection of wallpapers

From dramatic landscapes to sleeping puppies, action sports to clips from your favorite Xbox games, you'll find the wallpapers that suit you.

Crop, rotate, and resize your images

Add text and speech bubbles to create your own wallpapers.

Set your wallpaper by time or create a slide show of images as your wallpaper

Looks good, and you'll see a number of Vista/7-like scenery wallpapers in there if you're into that kind of thing. (And you know you are.)

Thanks to Antonio M. for the link.

Microsoft My Phone update

pthurrott — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 15:01:00 GMT

Microsoft updated its My Phone blog the other day with good info:

The buzz and excitement around the service has really invigorated the team both in Braga, Portugal and Seattle to continue to work very hard to ensure a stable and solid service. The feedback we have received from you all on forums and blog comments has been really useful. We are taking this feedback into account for our future plans so please continue to share your thoughts. While it is not possible to comment and respond to all the feature requests, we would like to acknowledge the most frequently discussed topics on the forums:

Tighter integration with Windows Live services: Window Live suite of services provides a fantastic user experience around Contacts, Calendar, Photos and other user needs. We too are big fans and ardent users of these services and it is natural for you all to ask for tighter integration so that all of your personal data is consolidated in one single view. The initial goal for My Phone service was to test the concept and validate that we are solving a real problem for the users. Now that we have a resounding vote of confidence for the service our future plans are moving in this direction.

Support synchronizing additional data: Your phone is a very personal device for lot of us. For some of us it is akin to having all of life in your hands and it is not fun thinking about losing all of this information. We have tried to support syncing the most frequently used data types keeping in mind the current and future trends but at the same time we have room for growth in this area for syncing additional information. There has also been active discussion around providing flexibility to select folders and files from the phone for syncing it with the service and also providing the option to sync Contacts, Calendar and Tasks even though they are managed by Exchange/ActiveSync.

Suggestions on improving the experience on the My Phone Web Site: There have also been number of suggestions on further improving the overall usability of the web site along with the phone application. These are being evaluated on case by case basis and we will be taking those into account for future updates.

Thanks again for your feedback and keep it coming.

Kumo email

pthurrott — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 14:12:14 GMT

As you may have heard, Microsoft is now internally testing a new search engine codenamed "Kumo." Here's the text of the internal email announcing this to Microsoft employees yesterday:

From: Satya Nadella

Sent: Monday, March 02, 2009 4:18 PM

To: Microsoft - All Employees (QBDG)

Subject: Announcement: Internal Search Test Experience

The Search team needs you. We've been working hard to improve our search service and want to share the progress we are making with you. We are launching a new test program called kumo.com for employees to try and provide feedback. Kumo.com exists only inside the corporate network, and in order to get enough feedback we will be redirecting internal live.com traffic over to the test site in the coming days. Kumo is the codename we have chosen for the internal test.

In spite of the progress made by search engines, 40 percent of queries go unanswered; half of queries are about searchers returning to previous tasks; and 46 percent of search sessions are longer than 20 minutes. These and many other learnings suggest that customers often don't find what they need from search today.

We believe we can provide a better and more useful search experience that helps you not just search but accomplish tasks. During the test, features will vary by country, but you'll see results organized in a way that saves you more time. An explorer pane on the left side of results pages will give you access to tools that help you with your tasks. Other features like single session history and hover preview help accomplish more in search sessions.

Your Next Search...

To get started, visit kumo.com or click one of the samples below to see how it's possible to find the right results more easily:

As employees, you are some of our most informed users and our toughest critics, and we highly value your input and feedback to help us build a better service. You have been an important voice in our efforts, and the feedback you've sent us since the company meeting has been amazing.

When you visit kumo.com, at the bottom right corner of the each page you'll see a feedback badge. We ask that each time you use the test site, click the feedback badge and take a moment to answer four quick and simple questions. Feel free to reach out to give us extra feedback directly on our blog and by mailing (an internal alias). For answers to common questions make sure to see our FAQ.

We are committed to rapid innovation and improvement. Please give the test site a try, rate the results and let us know what you think.

- Satya

CNET also has an interesting screenshot of Kumo:

The big question, of course is ... who cares? Can Microsoft ever really regain lost ground in this market? I don't think they can, to be honest. And I'm wondering if continued investment here isn't just a huge waste of time.

Microsoft discontinues Equipt

pthurrott — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:57:50 GMT

No big surprise here, but at least they're doing right by the fools that did subscribe to this service:

Microsoft recently announced that it will be offering consumers a no-cost, anti-malware-focused security solution and will discontinue Windows Live OneCare. As a result of this new offering and the discontinuation of OneCare, Microsoft Equipt, which includes a subscription to OneCare, will be discontinued after April 30, 2009.

We apologize for any inconvenience this transition may cause you. To ensure that eligible Equipt subscribers are credited for the unused portion of their subscription and will continue to have full use of Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 after April 30, we are offering them a:

Prorated refund for unused months of their Equipt subscription.

Free copy of Office Home and Student 2007.

If you are an active Equipt subscriber who paid for a one-year subscription, please complete the Equipt Refund Request Form on the Subscriber Center to request your prorated refund of Equipt and a free copy of Office Home and Student 2007.

If you purchased Equipt in the US and have not yet installed Equipt, please request your refund through the 45-day Money Back Guarantee program.

If retail copies of Equipt are ever heavily discounted, this might be an even cheaper way to get into Office Home and Student, I guess.