LiveSide - Windows Live news and interviews

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.

Upgrade From Windows Live Messenger 8.5

Sunshine — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:03:00 GMT

The Windows Live Messenger Team notifies Messenger users in a blogpost that the mandatory update for version 8.5, as announced back in August, has begun. Users on Windows XP will need to ensure that they have installed Service Pack 2 (SP2) or higher, otherwise the upgrade will not work.

Incase you have issues or questions during this upgrade process, the team provides the following resources:

Troubleshooting Login Issues
This post from the support team provides some guidance into how to determine what error you are getting and steps to resolve many of these.
Online Help
You can also try the online help pages. On the left hand side, you can select ‘Table of Contents’ (near the bottom) and get information on troubleshooting and error codes.
Contact the Support Team
If you have already tried the going through the online help suggestions and still having difficulties then you should consider contacting the Messenger support team and providing them with more information about the problems that you are encountering.

Users on Messenger 2009 (version 14) will have to upgrade too starting November 9th, unless they already installed the latest version (Build: 14.0.8089.726).

Wondering which version you have? You can find out by going to Help > About in the menu. Don’t want to wait? Go get the current version from http://download.live.com/messenger

Favorites sync temporarily turned off on Windows Live Toolbar

damaster — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 01:17:53 GMT

Due to some glitches with Windows Live Toolbar’s favorites syncing, several users reported that their browser’s favorites have disappeared as a result. The Toolbar team has responded by posting the following announcement:

We’ve heard from some customers in the last 24 hours that in some cases, favorites have been removed from the Toolbar when they synced from one or more of their PCs. We have investigated, and we want to assure you, that if this is occurring for you, your favorites are still available on SkyDrive. We apologize for this inconvenience and are diligently working on a fix to restore favorites from SkyDrive to your PC.

In order to prevent any further issues with favorites sync from Toolbar, we have temporarily disabled syncing of favorites for ALL Toolbar customers until we have a fix ready.

In the mean time, you can still access all your favorites on Windows Live SkyDrive by accessing http://favorites.live.com. Alternatively, you can also recover your favorites from the Recycle Bin on the PC where they were removed.

We’ll keep you updated when this issue has been fixed!

Happy(?) Holidays from Bing: the new commercial

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:10:00 GMT

The first of what will probably be a bunch of new holiday themed Bing commercials just popped up, a variation on the "all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth" theme, with a poor kid just wanting (go figure) an Xbox 360:

(Please visit the site to view this media)
Bing Holiday video on YouTube

There are a number of little insider jokes in this one, with the "teen jeans" Mom making an appearance, a reference to "cougar Moms", and more. OK so they're a little annoying (aren't tv commercials SUPPOSED to be a little annoying?), but these Bing search overload commercials are taking on a life of their own, and they're sure to be a part of the holiday festivities this season.

NBC Prepared For Winter Olympics, Adds Silverlight Player And Facebook Connect

Sunshine — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:40:17 GMT

Are you ready for the Winter Olympics? With the Olympics still 100 days away, NBC sure is. They made some changes to their site, NBCOlympics.com, for that.

Just as last year with the Summer Olympics there will be a Video Player based on Microsoft Silverlight which will deliver full HD videos. But that’s not all! This year the video player will have DVR-like functionality, with the ability to rewind the video, highlight clips and save them. How awesome is that? But wait, that’s still not all, the video player also incorporates Facebook Connect, so you can immediately share your favorite videos with your friends.

More share options are: Windows Live, Twitter, Digg, De.licio.us and Reddit.

As you may have noticed in the screenshot above, International users may be disappointed as due to Olympic broadcasting regulations, NBC is only allowed to show Olympic competition video on the internet to users in the United States and U.S. Territories (including Puerto Rico). Users outside of those locations will still have access to an extensive set of non-event video content on NBCOlympics.com though.

The site, according to TechCrunch, will also include Deep Zoom photo galleries and slideshows, so you can zoom in to every detail you’d like to see. I have yet to find out where those are, found pictures and slideshows yep, but zoomable ones…nope. Maybe that part hasn’t been updated yet? What I see sure differs from the screenshot at TechCrunch.

Also on site are Medal Counts, TV listings, headlines etc. etc. So yea, even without the competition vids there’s enough to see for international users too. Go on, have a look, the site went live today! Oohh, and ehh if you do find those zoomable pictures, let us know in the comments below.

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.

Bing Maps Imagery Release, October 2009

Sunshine — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:54:59 GMT

Another 9,460 square kilometers of imagery has been released onto Bing Maps. This month’s release showcases high precision imagery for the USA, Canada and the United Kingdom. The biggest drop by far was Greater Vancouver Metro…

Check out the full details of the release on the Bing Maps World Tour application.

A refresh of the mobile tile set for vector (road) maps has also been released.

Bing Maps Imagery Release, October 2009 - Bing Maps Blog

Windows Live Sync for Snow Leopard is here!

damaster — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:24:00 GMT

Following a bumpy upgrade for the Windows client last week, the Windows Live Sync team had been hard at work on their Mac client to add support for Snow Leopard. Today the team is proud to announce that it is now available for download:

We’re happy to announce that Windows Live Sync for Mac now supports Snow Leopard! Thanks so much for your continued interest in Sync, and for your patience while we worked out some stubborn compatibility issues we had with Snow Leopard.

If you’re a Snow Leopard user, you can get the new Sync software for Snow Leopard here. Mac users currently not using Snow Leopard do not require this update.

The Windows Live Wave 4 rumor mill

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:33:00 GMT

Microsoft is keeping very quiet about the upcoming release of Windows Live Wave 4, and it’s driving us crazy. Obviously we were hoping for a release to coincide with the launch of Windows 7, but that deadline has come and gone. We’re hearing now that Microsoft is keeping the release dates very close to the vest, even within Microsoft, but that the release dates have been changing. Remember back when Windows Live first started, and those cheeky kids at Red West were going to teach Windows how to ship every 2 months? Well now Windows Live has moved out of Red West, and they haven’t shipped anything of consequence in over a year. Well we can hope for a nice big blockbuster new version that will make it all worthwhile, but this wait is killing us.

So while we wait for someone to push Windows Live out the door, we still have wild rumors, Twitter posts, and some sneak peeks to fall back on. Let’s take a look at what might be coming:

Messenger:

Will this be the release that finally gets tabbed conversations? A commenter on LiveSino.net claims to have seen just that:

# November 2009 on Tuesday, February 10: 14 pm
I have used M1 version, there is already a tab chat features

Now we’ve seen hints about tabs in previous versions, as the LiveSino post points out, so we’re not getting our hopes up. Tabbed chatting has to be the #1 feature request for Messenger, though, so we’ll hold out hope.

Windows Live Writer:

News of Writer’s demise may be exaggerated, at least in the short term. One Twitter user was quite impressed with what he saw:

The new internal Windows Live build is so awesome that I skipped a beat as I launched Writer.

Documents and Devices:

We told you before about a couple of new tabs we spotted, and it looks like Wave 4 will at least begin to bring Live Mesh and Office Web Apps more firmly into the Windows Live experience.

We’re not expecting to see a full Live Mesh experience in Windows Live this release, but at least some integration is coming

SkyDrive, “Flix”, and a return (of sorts) of Soapbox?

Ok this one is from the TOTALLY WILD RUMOR department, but as it sits right with where we think Windows Live should be heading with user-generated video, we’ll go ahead and leave you with this to mull over:

"Flix" is not intended to compete with YouTube. Will offer granular sharing controls a la WL Photos. Meant for family-sharing etc. Will be powered by Silverlight, and surfaced under the Windows Live Photos brand, WLMM plugin coming soon.
CSP is @Skydrive for all this of course and Skydrive is now managed over a Azure fabric controller. The roadmap right now apparently, is not to officially increase the 25GB cap, but up the per-file upload limit to 100 MB over the web & WLPG, 500 MB through WLMM, while LOE will use delta-sync. When the average usage level goes above a certain percentage of 25GB, Microsoft will bump it up to 50 GB, which is already provisioned but not officially marketed. And yes, ever-increasing storage is free.

Now we checked, and not only is Flix a trademarked name for computer video software, but Google bought the company that owns the trademark, so we doubt even if there is a grain of truth to this that we’ll be seeing the Flix name anytime soon. That doesn’t rule out Flix as a code name, of course. We’re planning on hearing a lot more about Azure at PDC in a couple of weeks, and will be snooping around for how Windows Live and Azure fit together. We’re being told there won’t be much Windows Live news, but you never know (and hey it’s a week in LA for a sun-starved Seattleite!).

Hopefully we’ll have a bit more than wild rumors and speculation soon. In the meantime, have you heard anything new about Wave 4?

What’s coming for Live.com?

damaster — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 01:54:00 GMT

If you’ve recently visited Bing by typing http://www.live.com into the address bar, you would’ve noticed the following notice across the top of the page:

When Bing first launched, this Q&A post over at the Bing & adCenter Community told us the following:

Q: What will happen to Live.com?
A: The Live.com URL will redirect to Bing.com for 45 days after launch. After this period it becomes the front door for all Live services including Office Live and Windows Live.

It’s now way past 45 days since Bing first launched in June, and this is the first sign indicating that Live.com will no longer redirect to Bing. After all, Microsoft should make good use of the easy-to-remember domain name for their “Live” offerings (did we mention Start.com too?). The question is, what will take the place for Live.com? Possible candidates are:

Windows Live Home (currently at http://home.live.com)
The good old Windows Live Personalized Experience (currently at http://my.live.com)
The current marketing website for Windows Live (currently at http://www.windowslive.com/Explore)
A brand new homepage linking to both Windows Live and Office Live?

Which one do you think will take the place of Live.com? And most important of all, what would you want to be placed there?

New Bing ad: Oooooooh scary!

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 04:54:00 GMT

Looks like the avalanche of pre Christmas Windows and Bing ads are about upon us, as Microsoft unveiled the latest “Decision Engine” ad on their YouTube channel today:

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Bing: the Vampire Engine, on YouTube

Apparently vampires prefer Portland, Oregon to our own prince of darkness lair in Forks, Wa (probably because there’s only like 2 restaurants in Forks, not much need for an engine for that decision).

So while Google is rolling out Music Search, Maps Navigation for Android, Similar Images, Contextual Search for Wikipedia, and more (all within the last 3 days), we get new ads. Ooooooh scary, indeed.

MSN Direct service to shut down Jan. 1, 2012

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 03:56:00 GMT

Citing a decreasing demand, and advances in other technologies offering similar services, MSN is set to discontinue all MSN Direct service on January 1st, 2012, according to a notice on the MSN Direct homepage.

MSN Direct service will be available only until January 1, 2012.

Customers can continue to enjoy the full benefits of MSN Direct, along with service and support, up until that date. Pro-rated refunds for unused portions of existing One-Time Payment and other subscription plans will be automatically credited after January 1, 2012. Customers may cancel service at any point prior to that date and receive a pro-rated refund for any unused portion of their subscription. Microsoft customer support is available to answer any questions about existing subscriptions or refund eligibility at 1-866-658-7032.

More information and a FAQ are posted on the site.

MSN Direct, which launched in 2004, started with “Spot” watches, and then branched out to navigation devices and even coffeemakers. When stocks of those watches ran out in 2008, Microsoft chose not to replenish the supplies, but you can still buy navigation devices from Garmin, Pioneer, Alpine, and others.

At least MSN Direct has a Facebook page where users can complain ;).

(via the LA Times Tech Blog)

Long Zheng watches TV: finds Bing ads

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 07:32:00 GMT

Our good friend Long Zheng just posted a series of Australian TV ads for Bing.com.au, one of which he spotted while taking a rare break from reading patent applications and Microsoft Careers posts:

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Bing on Aussie TV

Long notes that in contrast to the original US Bing ads, these locally (to Australia, that is) produced ads actually feature Bing, the product:

The other six Bing ads in the series of seven are 15 second spots entirely dedicated to showing off unique features of the Bing search engine – including hover preview, hot spots, instant answers, infinite scroll, video previews and related searches. These ads are a stark contrast to the US-based Bing ads which I had originally criticized for not showing enough of the product.

Long has 6 additional 15 second ads posted on istartedsomething.com, check them out.

Windows Live Sync forced upgrade

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 04:25:00 GMT

Last week Windows Live Sync was taken offline to fix a “serious problem in Windows Live Sync that could cause problems in rare cases for people who used Windows Easy Transfer”, according to Eric Doerr on the Windows Live Sync blog. Even though it’s caused some users to get a little grumpy about having to reconfigure, the upgrade and the resulting reconfiguration are necessary:

If your computer was already running Windows 7 before this update, you’ll have to go to the Sync website to add your computer back to all the folders you’re syncing. We know this is a hassle and we apologize for this inconvenience. You’ll also see that your computer shows up on the Sync website with a new name—you can safely go ahead and delete the old computer from the website. Rest assured that your files and folders are safe.

We found this problem in Sync through internal testing, and although it was very rare, keeping your data safe is our highest priority. We wanted to be absolutely sure that this problem wouldn’t happen to anyone.

Windows Live Sync should force an upgrade before you are able to use it, or you can try it out at http://sync.live.com. After logging in with a Windows Live ID, you’ll be able to download the latest version (14.0.8089.0726), or install it on your Mac (although we’re pretty sure it still doesn’t work with Snow Leopard, judging by the comments on the blog post).

It’s Windows 7 Day!

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 05:12:00 GMT

Just wanted to say congratulations to Microsoft, Windows, and Windows Live on the launch of Windows 7. We’ve been using Windows 7 since PDC last year (well since Longhorn 4051, really), are truly excited both about the stability and quality of Windows 7 and about the opportunities it presents for Windows Live, now firmly a part of Windows, and firmly entrenched on the right side of the freeway in Building 88.

We have a number of friends at the launch party in New York in the morning (Hi Chris P., Tom W., Sean, Rich, Bryant, Paul, Ed, Mary Jo!), and will be a little sorry not to be there. Thanks to another friend, Brandon LeBlanc, we’ll be able to watch the festivities live, starting at 8am Pacific. We’ll be there in spirit! (By the way if you’re looking for a good deal on Windows 7 hardware, sounds like now is a good time to shop!)

We’ll be watching the Windows 7 Bing.com/Twitter feed, too

Anyway, congratulations, Microsoft! From the opening bell on, it should be a great day!

LiveSide: the latest on Link Spam

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 01:23:00 GMT

If you’d been watching our membership counter in the past week or so, you would have noticed that we’ve gained about 300 users this past week, with more coming in all the time. Normally you might think this was a good thing, but most if not all of those new users are only here hoping to use this site to create backlinks to their sites, or sites they are “promoting”. From what we can gather, these people are getting paid to create backlinks in places like our user profile.

In addition, we blocked and then deleted about 1,000 more before we had controls in place to try to keep this site from becoming a quagmire. Of course we’re not alone in having to deal with link spam - Danny Sullivan, who runs a business based on search engine optimization, recently ranted about link spam on his personal blog:

No, the core problem is that the web has people who think nothing of vandalizing other web sites. That’s what link spamming is. You’re not adding value to a site. You’re simply spray painting garbage on someone else’s property, for your own personal benefit. You have no manners. You have no morals. You ought to be ashamed.

We thought we could get these people to go away by creating a provisional user profile that didn’t allow any html, and then allowing more access after a period of time. Well that’s not going to work, as we simply can’t take the time to go back and check on these hundreds of users to see if they came back after a month to “spray paint garbage” on our site.

So for now (in addition to adding “NoFollow” tags to all user links, including links in comments), we’re shutting down any ability to create html in user profiles. Sorry but it’s just not worth the trouble. You’ll still be able to choose or upload an avatar, etc., just no linkable bio entries. If you already had a bio you now need to edit, email us at feedback *at* liveside *dot* net, and put Edit Bio in the subject. Apologies for any inconvenience, this has been a big pain for us, too.

As for all those new users, while we wish they were actually visiting the site enough to make a difference in our traffic (or rss feeds or twitter followers), they’re not. Go figure.

Twitter on Bing: live today in the US; trends, links, and more

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 23:09:00 GMT

Well Microsoft did indeed announce partnerships with Twitter and Facebook today (and shortly after, Marissa Mayer over at Google followed suit, announcing their own partnership with Twitter). As quoted by MG Siegler at TechCrunch, here’s what Dr. Qi Lu said today at the Web 2.0 Summit:

This is what we call “Bing Wave 2.” One big thing is visual search which we showed off last month. Visual search helps a lot for things you that regular search queries may not help with, like shopping for a camera. And top iPhone apps.

But the real big part of Bing Wave 2 is about real-time information. Today we’re making two announcements. We’re going live with a beta shortly after this announcement. First is a strategic announcement with Twitter. We have access to all the Twitter information in real-time. Ev Williams and Dick Costolo have been great partners. The other partner will be Facebook – that’s coming at a later date.

…

But this isn’t just about the most recent tweets, we also have “best match” to search the tweets. We do de-duping, to get rid of repeats. Then we focus on the quality of the results, based on relevancy. One way to to see how many people follow a user. We also look for context, maybe they have a link in the tweet that is relevant. And if a tweet is being retweeted a lot, we look at that.

We also filter out spam and adult items that shouldn’t be in results. We also have the “hottest topics on Twitter,” which is a tag cloud that you can click on to dive in. A real key is to look at the links. We look at what’s buzzy and show those to you.

And with Bit.ly URLs we will show you the domain of where you’re going to land, so you aren’t tricked.

(we emphasized some of the key points in bold, specifically de-emphasizing “Wave 2”, oh my)

Twitter on Bing is live now (in the U.S.), you can try it at www.bing.com/twitter:

Danny Sullivan has a good breakdown of Twitter on Bing, and while he’s right to point out some issues, Bing.com/Twitter has been live (in beta), only a few hours. It will be interesting to see how the Bing experience evolves, and what Google does to differentiate once they get their version of Twitter search up and running (sometime in “the coming months”). For now, we’ll give Bing a shot, as we spend quite a bit of time on Twitter search, and can’t wait to compare.

Bing poised to announce deals with Twitter, Facebook: All Things Digital

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:12:00 GMT

In an exclusive, Kara Swisher from All Things Digital is reporting that Microsoft is set to announce deals with both Twitter and Facebook that will incorporate both Twitter feeds and Facebook status updates into Bing. Details are sketchy at this point, but Dr. Qi Lu, President of Online Services at Microsoft, is set to announce the deals at the Web 2.0 Summit, according to Swisher:

In a stunning one-two punch, Microsoft will announce separate deals with both Facebook and Twitter to integrate their real-time feed of status updates into the Bing search service.

…

Twitter has been talking to Google about a similar arrangement, and, according to sources, so has Facebook.

But the deal is a definite blow to the dominant search engine, since–for the first time–data will be available on Bing that is not on Google.

We’ll check in with Qi Lu’s interview onstage with Tim O’Reilly at the Web 2.0 Summit, set to begin at 11:30 pacific time. It will be fun to try and catch up with the Twitter news…on Twitter

Which Windows Live service is next to go?

Kip Kniskern — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:01:00 GMT

We haven’t had the heart to start our own little Windows Live Deadpool, but the hits just keep on coming. Windows Live OneCare was probably the first shocker, and then Soapbox (ok not a Windows Live service, but it almost was and should have been), and Silverlight Streaming, to name a few, have all been recently slated for the slag heap. Jamie’s not too sure about My.Live.com, either.

Now a new nasty little rumor has popped up on Mini-Microsoft’s blog:

Windows Live is supposed to help with building value via rich applications. Live has been broken out of Windows to free it from the consent decree and all ('cept for sneaking a Win7 component out early, wink-wink). Messenger, Mail, Photos, Movies, and an awkward online service. And Live Writer (though rumored a dead-man walking per comments).

(Emphasis (in bold) is ours, and we’re not quite sure which comments he’s talking about)

Now it seems unlikely that Windows Live Writer would go through all the trouble of gaining a ribbon just to cut the product, although a number of key members of the Writer team have left Microsoft recently, so who knows.

Anyway, what do you think is up with Windows Live? Will we see more products cut? We’ve put up a poll on the home page, feel free to cast your vote.

Windows Live Sync update coming this week, update for Snow Leopard coming soon

damaster — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:32:57 GMT

The Windows Live Sync team blog posted the following announcement today:

Soon [This Thursday], when you sign in to Windows Live Sync on your computers running Windows, you’ll see that you need to go to the Sync website to install an update. You won’t be able to use Sync until you install the update.

In case you’re wondering, this update fixes a serious compatibility problem with Windows Easy Transfer.

Similar to Live Mesh, Apple’s recent update of their OS to Snow Leopard also broke Windows Live Sync for Mac. However, based on the comments from Rachel Popkin from the Windows Live Sync team, “a version of Windows Live Sync for Mac that is compatible with Snow Leopard is coming very soon.”

Still no words on when Sync will support synchronisation to the cloud with SkyDrive, similar to how Live Mesh syncs your files onto Live Desktop.

Live Mesh for Snow Leopard: fixed, now works :)

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 21:54:00 GMT

When Apple released its latest version of the Mac OS X operating system, dubbed Snow Leopard, last August, an unfortunate side effect was that Live Mesh for Mac no longer worked. After rewriting a lot of code, the Live Mesh team is reporting today that Live Mesh for Mac has been updated and is ready to work with OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard:

To upgrade to this new release, you will need to reinstall Live Mesh for Mac. To do so, please go to http://www.mesh.com, sign in with your Live ID, and download the Mac client software from the “Devices” page.

Version number

• Live Mesh Mac: 0.9.4501.0

Included in this update

• Mac – Repairs client use for OS X Snow Leopard (10.6)

Feedback

We appreciate your patience as we worked on this fix for you and thank you for using Live Mesh. We’re working hard to create the best experience and appreciate any comments you have. Please send your feedback on how Live Mesh can be improved, or send anonymous feedback in our forums here. Also, if you have a moment, please rate Live Mesh

The new version will work with Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), too, but it’s not required. However users of the newest Live Mesh for Mac version should notice some performance, stability, and sync enhancements.

Silverlight Streaming to be discontinued: new Azure service coming

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 03:45:00 GMT

In a move that should surprise no one (in case you were wondering why we didn’t use Silverlight Streaming to host video after Soapbox closed), Silverlight Streaming, a Windows Live beta service for hosting Silverlight audio and video content, is being discontinued. A blog post today on the Silverlight Streaming blog (first post since March), summarizes the changes:

Microsoft Silverlight Streaming by Windows Live Beta is being discontinued and will eventually be taken down

A new Windows® Azure-based hosting and delivery service will be launched by the end of 2009, though this is not a direct replacement for Silverlight Streaming and will have costs associated with its use

You can access, retrieve and if desired remove your content that is currently hosted on Silverlight Streaming by following the instructions below

Key dates and information about the availability of the new Windows Azure functionality, and when the existing Silverlight Streaming beta service will be taken down, will be communicated in the coming weeks

More details on how to pull any content you may have off the service are detailed in the post.

We’re expecting to hear more about Live Services in general, and now this new Azure service in particular at PDC, which is only a month away now. Just for posterity, here’s the description of Silverlight Streaming from the website:

Microsoft® Silverlight™ Streaming by Windows Live™ is a companion service for Silverlight that makes it easier for developers and designers to deliver and scale rich media as part of their Silverlight applications. The service offers web designers and developers a free (*) and convenient solution for hosting and streaming cross-platform, cross-browser media experiences and rich interactive applications that run on Windows™ and Mac. Combined with the ability to create content with Microsoft® Expression and other 3rd party tools, web designers and content publishers wishing to integrate Silverlight applications into their online properties can enjoy complete control of the end user experience.

And yes we have some content to pull off SLS. Isn’t supporting Windows Live beta services fun?

MSE after one week: 1.5 mil downloads, 535k infected machines

Kip Kniskern — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 06:32:00 GMT

A post on Thursday on the Microsoft Malware Protection Center blog reports that not only were there 1.5 million downloads of MSE, but almost 4 million malware detections from 535,752 machines were encountered!

According to the blog post:

Microsoft Security Essentials is available in 8 languages and 19 markets at RTM, which covers a lot of the PC using world. The geographic distribution of detections so far still closely follows the Microsoft Security Essentials Beta countries, and is ramping up in other countries that use the 8 languages.

Just as interesting is the tidbit that some 44% of installs were on Windows 7 machines (some 3 weeks before being released to General Availability, even!):

Check out the blog post for more on what kind of malware is being detected in what markets, very interesting.

You can download Microsoft Security Essentials (requires Windows Genuine validation) and try it out yourself, provided you’re in one of the 19 current markets.

Adding Photos To Hotmail Messages Possible Again

Sunshine — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 08:16:57 GMT

Back in August, the Hotmail team temporarily removed adding photos to the body of Windows Live Hotmail messages due to a security issue in the upload tool. They have been building an updated version of the tool and now you can add Photos again! Yes, that’s right, the Tool is back!

Instead of adding pictures as attachments to your Hotmail messages by clicking Attach and then File and then selecting the pictures you would like to include, Hotmail brings you a tool so you can more efficiently select and add multiple photos to a Hotmail message in Internet Explorer in a couple clicks: select Attach and then Photo.

Source: Adding photos to Hotmail messages – an anticipated return - Windows Live

Office Web Applications: we talk with Chris Bryant about consumer use

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:29:00 GMT

We had a chance this week to sit down and talk with Chris Bryant, Director, Office Product Management at Microsoft, to talk a little bit more about Office Web Applications and specifically how Windows Live and consumer users will benefit from these new web based Office apps. Chris was kind enough to give us an overview demo of the web apps, which we’ll get to, but we talked to Chris about what users want from web applications:

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Chris Bryant on Office Web Applications (Vimeo)

Office Web Applications is in Technical Preview now, slated for a Spring 2010 release. As Chris says in the video, all of the apps aren’t fully functional (and OneNote isn’t available at all, yet), but Microsoft wanted to get some feedback on the apps as well as getting an idea of how running Office “in the cloud” would work. The Office 2010 Technical Preview is now closed, but you can sign up to receive early notification of new information on Office Web Apps, and possibly still get in:

Office Web Apps Technical Beta early notification

Office Web Apps Press Release, Sept 17, 2009

Office Web Apps Fact Sheet