LiveSide - Windows Live news and interviews

Blown transformer takes out Bing Travel

Kip Kniskern — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 19:13:18 GMT

A blown transformer in the Fisher Plaza building (home to local ABC affiliate television station KOMO-TV and KOMO Radio) in downtown Seattle has affected a data center there, and Bing Travel among numerous other sites have been affected. An explanation is up at www.bing.com/travel:

Sorry, travel isn't available just now

A fire occurred at Fisher Plaza in downtown Seattle just after midnight on Friday morning. The blown transformer knocked out power to the entire building, which is home to the Bing Travel servers. This is isolated to Bing Travel only, and there is no impact to any other aspect of Bing. We're hard at work to restore service following this unexpected event.

Our current estimate for re-establishing Bing Travel functionality is 5pm PST, July 3rd. In the meantime, you may use Microsoft travel partner Orbitz for your travel needs.

The fire reportedly lasted only about 10 minutes. Todd Bishop from TechFlash is on the scene, and has updated reports.

Any guesses as to why Bing Travel is hosted at Fisher Plaza and not at one of Microsoft’s data centers?

Michael Jackson In Silverlight

Sunshine — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:16:31 GMT

MSN UK has a whole page dedicated to the recently departed Michael Jackson. Who doesn’t know what he ment for music and dance? You can find just about anything about Michael Jackson on this tribute page. Most prominent is a Silverlight application featuring hundreds of photos of Michael Jackson, his life, his work, his fans and tributes to his career as King of Pop.

You can zoom in (using the scroll wheel of your mouse, by clicking or by using the navigation buttons) and drag around (hold mouse button and move) to look at all the separate photos, varying from Michael’s childhood to more recent ones. Just make sure you have installed the latest version of Silverlight. All photos in this Silverlight gallery © Press Association.

This sure is a nice way to remember Michael Jackson, may he Rest In Peace.

Source: Deep Zoom into MJ’s Life in Pictures | Sarah In Tampa | Channel 10

A Bit Of Twitter In Bing

Sunshine — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:15:48 GMT

The Bing team is bringing a bit of Twitter to Bing search results. Not indexing all of Twitter at this time… just a small set of prominent and prolific Twitterers (a few thousand) to start. This includes Tweets from folks from Microsoft’s own search technology and business sphere like Danny Sullivan or Kara Swisher as well as those from spheres of more general consumer appeal like Al Gore or Ryan Seacrest. The choice who to add was based primarily on follower count and volume of tweets. Did your blog (or you personally) get in? Only way to find out is to try!

How? Of course we want to find out if LiveSide got added so we type in “@liveside” as search query and lookie here, our last two tweets appear in the search results:

So we got added, yay! Also notice the See more tweets link there. Another way to get these results is by typing “liveside twitter” or “liveside tweets” (don’t worry about using caps) as search query.

According to the post on Bing search blog this feature will roll out gradually, so you may not see it right away. That might explain the lil’ glitches I experienced whilst doing a search on our own, on first try only “@liveside” gave the results but after trying the other two search queries for several times those started to work too, they didn’t initially. Currently this only works if you have Bing set to United States, hopefully this will roll out to other markets as well.

Speaking about Twitter, you can follow the Bing team here and of course you were already following us, right?

Microsoft ends Windows Live Butterfly beta testers program

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:23:00 GMT

As reported by Mary Jo Foley, the Windows Live Butterfly program, a group of beta testers who signed on to test whatever was thrown their way, is sputtering to a close. From a statement issued by Microsoft on the subject:

“The Butterfly group has been involved in beta testing MSN and Windows Live products for a number of years. Rather than continue the program as something only focused on beta testing, we’re offering the group a variety of options to engage in the broader Windows Live community, including the opportunity to join the MVP (Most Valuable Professional) program and continued and future access to beta testing opportunities.”

(how one goes about “joining” the MVP program is beyond us, but hey)

In case you didn’t know, LiveSide came about largely as a result of the (then MSN Butterfly) program. We all met as beta testers, and were all original members of the MSN Butterfly program, which later changed its name (along with dang near everything else in Red West not nailed down) to Windows Live.

In 2003, during a beta test for MSN Premium 9, Wendy Stidmon, who was a contract employee managing the beta program (Wendy is full time at Microsoft now, and currently running the Windows 7 technical beta), initiated a “cafe” newsgroup as part of the tests. Modeled after the MVP “Coffeehouse”, the cafe gave beta testers a place to get to know each other and post on interests outside of the beta. At the time, Microsoft beta tests were serious affairs, populated by curmudgeonly IT professionals who sounded alarms if anyone went anywhere near “off topic”.

However the beta for MSN Premium required a different set of beta testing skills. This was a consumer product, not a technical one, and it required more than a technical beta. The cafe took off, engagement in the beta was unprecedented, and after the MSN Premium beta ended, with more products in the pipeline, Wendy and her boss Jon Beck (also still at Microsoft but long gone from the beta testing program) set up what became known as the MSN Butterfly program.

The idea was to keep a group of testers available and engaged, and when betas needed testers, well there we were all ready to go. And it worked, for a time. We tested new versions of MSN Messenger, came together in Redmond for “Butterfly Tours”, and in 2005 some 30 of us became MSN MVPs. It was at the 2005 MVP Summit, held in September in Redmond, where the three LiveSide founders (Chris Overd, Harrison Hoffman, and Matthew Weyer - I officially joined LiveSide 3 days after it was launched) first discussed joining together to start an MSN focused blog. Little did we know at the time that we were being shown most of the elements of the first wave of Windows Live, and when the Windows Live initiative was announced in November of 2005, LiveSide found a name and a purpose.

So what happened to the Butterfly program? Well of course there were some systemic problems with having non-IT pros as beta testers. While the feedback we provided (and some of it was loud and long) ultimately made the products we tested better, turns out we couldn’t really write a bug report to save our lives. In June of 2006, what became known as “the big purge” dumped testers who weren’t filing bug reports (including, ahem, me), and pared down the program by (guessing) 75% or so. Attempts were made to make the Butterfly program relevant again, but actual betas were few and far between, and it’s really no surprise that the program has finally been put out of its misery.

Beta testing in general at Microsoft has moved away from the newsgroup/bug report model, you need only to look at the large public betas of Internet Explorer 8, Windows Live, or Windows 7 to see the writing on the wall. Get the product in a large number of hands, collect crash reports and public feedback, and refine. We can’t really argue with that.

Still, we’re going to miss the Butterflys. We met not only each other, but many of our Microsoft friends through the program. Together, we built a community, which is what we thought social networking was supposed to be about in the first place. And we tried to help make better software, and better experiences, for the users of Windows Live.

We know that many of our readers have been involved in the Butterfly program in some capacity over the years, and we’d love to hear your remembrances, or feel free to correct our memories or add to the timeline. What do you remember about the Butterfly program?

Bing Homepage Photos Coming To More Markets + Photo Contest!

Sunshine — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:13:19 GMT

One of the favorite features of Bing for many users is the daily image that appears on the homepage each day. Whilst not yet available in every country, this will change! According to this blogpost, international markets will also get a rich image version of the homepage. Starting next month, a number of those markets (including Australia, Canada, China, Japan, and the UK) will begin customizing the images to suit their unique audience, as well as adding their own hotspots!

Hotspots? Yes those little squares you see when you hover over the homepage image, they tell you more about the picture.

And did you know that you can mouse over the copyright symbol in the bottom right corner to see a quick caption about the image, as well as the photographer’s name and agency?

And on top of that, that you can click the arrows to scroll through the past 7 days of homepage images? All that is required for that is that you have Silverlight installed. And what if you see a nice one you want to share it with your friends? Head on over to Bing Photo sharing App on Facebook. But that’s just for the last 7 days, what about if you want to see all images that ever appeared on Bing? Long Zheng to the rescue! He started the Bing Image Archive. Here, you can find all background images from Bing presented in a simple calendar format, appropriate to the day which the image was originally displayed on.

Photo Contest, get your photo on Bing.com

Speaking of the images, the Bing Team launched their first ever photo submission contest on Facebook. The theme is “summer travel,” and the winner will have his or her photo displayed on the Bing homepage on Monday, August 3rd.

Want to find out more about/participate in this contest? Head on over to the Bing photo contest on Facebook, read the guidelines and rules, upload your photo and who knows…

Source: Bing Community Search Blog - Get your photo on bing.com
istartedsomething - Bing Image Archive, for your viewing pleasure

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.

Get All Your Email In One Place!

Sunshine — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:42:06 GMT

Hotmail users in the UK, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Japan, and Germany were already enjoying this feature: the possibility to add email accounts to their Windows Live Hotmail account, so they can read all their mail at one place. Starting today users in the US, Canada, and Brazil can add any POP-enabled email account to their Hotmail!

Setting this up is easy:

(1) Click Add an e-mail account on the left-hand side of the Hotmail inbox.
(2) Type the email address and password for your other account, and click Next.
(3) Choose where you want the messages to go, and click Save.

Note: In order for this to work, make sure POP has been turned on in the POP-enabled email service you want to add (this could involve signing in to the service and changing your settings there).

For an extensive review of this feature, read our previous post here. If you are not in the UK, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Japan, Germany, the US, Canada, or Brazil, don’t fret! More countries will come later this year.

Survey: a new name for Office Web Apps, coming soon?

Kip Kniskern — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 16:12:40 GMT

When we last came across a Microsoft Site Survey, it correctly gave us the new name for Morro - “Microsoft Security Essentials”, and we’re really beginning to like this new pipeline of information. In a new survey, Microsoft asks about possible new names for a “suite of paid, web-based services… that will complement Microsoft Office”. Microsoft “Office Web Applications”, lightweight versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote, were first demoed last October at PDC. While the professional version will be a paid service, a consumer version is expected to be ad funded and free.

After listing a set of possible names and asking for reactions, the survey (conducted by a 3rd party marketing research firm for Microsoft) gets down to brass tacks:

Which of these names do you think does the best job describing a product that you would be more interested in trying than Google Apps, assuming both products have similar features and functionality?

Microsoft Ensemble

Microsoft Optro

Microsoft ArcLight

Microsoft Offsite

Microsoft Equipt

I am not aware of Google Apps

While the survey does not specify any availability dates, we came across the Microsoft Security Essentials survey about 6 weeks before it was announced, so we may not have to wait too long to see what we hope will be called Microsoft Ensemble out in the open.

Maybe this is why Microsoft is turning on those new data centers!

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.

Bing Toolbox

Sunshine — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 11:24:16 GMT

Are you a webmaster, a publisher, a developer or maybe an advertiser? Now you can find everything Bing you need at the Bing Toolbox.

As you can see in the screenshot above (click to enlarge), you can submit your domain URL and sitemap to Bing directly. Furthermore you can get a Bing AppID there or go to the PowerToys. Of course you can also see your managed sites and find other useful links there.

You may even want to check back regularly there as you an see the latest news and announcements are there too! So forget all about these separate URLs and go to the Bing Toolbox to find it all!

This is the team’s first effort and they will be building out the site with new content and updated tools as they become available. Got Feedback? Leave it at the forums ;)

Bing Webmaster Blog - New tools for webmasters in the Bing Toolbox

MSN Web Messenger to retire

Kip Kniskern — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 17:23:52 GMT

Joining Windows Live OneCare, Microsoft Money, and Encarta, MSN Web Messenger is slated to retire on June 30, 2009. Its replacement, Windows Live Web Messenger, accessible through Hotmail, has been available for a couple of months now, and after June 30 will be the only way to access Messenger through the web.

According to the Windows Live Hotmail team blog:

With new web-based instant messaging (IM) now available from Windows Live Hotmail worldwide, we are preparing to retire MSN Web Messenger. The old MSN Web Messenger experience will end on June 30, 2009

via Ars Technica

Live Mesh: Version Update For Windows (June 25, 2009)

Sunshine — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 21:53:44 GMT

Over on the Live Mesh Team Blog the following just got announced:

Live Mesh for Windows 9.4014.7 has been released. It will automatically update. No action is required on your part. See the following sections for details, and thanks for using Live Mesh.

Version number

· Live Mesh Desktop: 0.9.4014.7
· Live Mesh PC (x86 and AMD64): 0.9.4014.7

Included in this update

· PC – Fixes for display problems in the Resolve Conflicts dialog box on computers running Windows 7
· PC – Improved performance in memory handling
· Layout and link changes on www.mesh.com
· Server-side fixes for improved performance and stability

I’ve checked by checking for updates from the Live Mesh client but so far no update here…but maybe I’m just too hasty :P

Anyways, if you want to leave feedback for the Live Mesh team you can do so on Microsoft Connect or, anonymously, here. If you have some time the team would appreciate it if you take a few minutes to rate Live Mesh.

Kayak and the Philanthropist: Bing backlash?

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 06:49:00 GMT

By all early accounts, and granted it is VERY early, Bing is doing well. The buzz seems strong, the numbers are good, and if nothing else people are taking a look at Bing where they didn’t pay Live Search any mind at all. But a couple of Bing related events might not be such good news for the new brand, we’ll have to wait and see how they play out.

Wired Magazine is reporting tonight that Kayak.com has sent a letter to Microsoft complaining about the similarities between Bing Travel search and Kayak. We don’t know enough (read: anything) about copyright law and whether or not Microsoft has anything to worry about here, but the two pages ARE quite similar:

Kayak:

Bing:

(note: dates etc are different for the two searches, just wanted to show the UI. Bing is not returning fares 10x what Kayak returns for the same dates ;) )

The Wired article doesn’t give any particulars on the contents of the letter to Microsoft, but Kayak acknowledged that they had contacted Microsoft:

“We have contacted them through official channels about concerns about the similarities between Bing and Kayak,” Kayak’s chief marketing officer Robert Birge told Wired.com

After the article was published, Whitney Burk from Bing emailed them a response:

“We are discussing the matter with Kayak,” Burk said in emailed statement. “Bing Travel is based on independent development by Microsoft and Farecast.com, which Microsoft acquired in 2008. Any contrary allegations are without merit.”

Slightly less potentially litigious but perhaps quite a bit more annoying, a number of Twitter users were put off by the latest Bing marketing efforts which apparently took a heavy handed product placement approach to marketing in a new NBC show that aired tonight called “The Philanthropist”. Here’s a sample of some of the tweets:

These integrated Bing ads in The Philanthropist are gross and not even a little okay, okay?

Okay, I'm weepy over the philanthropist despite the stupid bing insert

I was going to try BING for future searches, but with its obnoxious product placement in the Philanthropist...I am officially boycotting!

Others weren’t quite so put off:

The Philanthropist on NBC has a new type of sponsorship by Microsoft for Bing. Blending show content with paid advertising & logo placment

Bing bringing it big with commercials as addons to the show...u don't realize at first it's a commercial on the philanthropist

Microsoft is definitely pushing the boundaries with its Bing advertising. It’s true that even the negative comments are bringing more exposure to the new brand, and maybe that’s the whole idea.

Microsoft Security Essentials Beta Full?

Sunshine — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:02:41 GMT

If you thought let’s download Microsoft Security Essentials today, you are too late! Well, at least for now if you wanted the US-EN version:

We are not sure about the availability in Israel, the People's Republic of China or Brazil but if not full already they surely will be soon. Do you know? Let us know in the comments below.

Microsoft Security Essentials Beta
Microsoft Security Essentials Forums

Previous articles about Microsoft Security Essentials

The BBC Goes Big On Bing Maps

Sunshine — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 10:23:49 GMT

The BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) sure loves Bing Maps. They didn’t publish one, not two, not three but eleven Bing map applications so far!

There’s allsorts varying from an overview of the Berkshire Floods to an Irish Language Map and a request to save the sounds of the World. Sports lovers are served very well too, no matter if you love Tennis, Rugby or Running. Film lovers scoot on over to the Cannes 2009 Map and if politics is your thing, well there’s some of that too.

A full list of all the applications, and a description of each, can be found on the Bing Maps Blog.

Microsoft Security Essentials Beta Available Now, Capped At 75,000

Sunshine — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:23:23 GMT

Microsoft Security Essentials (Morro) Beta is now available for download, as announced earlier.

However take note of the following:

The beta is only available to those in the US, Israel (English only), People's Republic of China (Simplified Chinese only) or Brazil (Brazilian Portuguese)
Downloads will be capped at 75,000 (might still be changed)
Distribution of the beta is through Microsoft Connect, so you will need to be registered there with your Windows Live ID
Before you can download you will have to fill in a nomination survey (7 questions)

The beta is available in 32- and 64 bits for Windows XP (Service Pack 2 or Service Pack 3); Windows Vista; Windows 7 (Beta or Release Candidate) and will require WGA validation.

Japanese Rookies

Sunshine — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 13:18:33 GMT

Remember the Rookies? After the US and the UK, Japan has now entered the Rookies campaign.

The children in these series are the children of actual Microsoft Japan employees!

Enjoy!

Via Rob Margel

Bing: The “Old New Thing” *

Kip Kniskern — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 04:55:00 GMT

* (apologies to Raymond Chen)

Another day, and another A-List blogger “discovers” the “launch” of a Bing feature, which of course has been in Live Search for ages. This time it’s Jason Calacanis, who posted news of the “launch” of XRank on Twitter, which has been receiving a number of ReTweets and some comments on Jason’s Friendfeed page:

Now of course getting discovered by the big boys isn’t such a bad thing, as then all the other big boys pile on:

(to be fair, TechCrunch didn’t call xRank new, and we agree xRank is better than Google Trends, but still, they did pile on ;) )

Noticing xRank wasn’t the first bit of “old news”, of course. Right at Bing’s launch, MG Siegler and Loic LeMuir discovered video highlights:

This is just too good. One of the features of Microsoft’s just launched Bing search engine is that it auto-plays videos in results when you hover over them.

This caused quite the little tempest, as you may remember, and caused Bing, to its credit, to make some changes in how it handles explicit search results.

and a slew of users were amazed by scrolling image search.

Of course none of these features are new to Bing, they’ve been in Live Search all along, which only goes to show that 1) no one paid Live Search ANY attention (or they would have discovered these features long ago), and 2) the nice shiny new brand has been having an impact. Of course we’re all for more people discovering good things about Bing, even if they have been around for a while.

And speaking of old new stuff in Bing, it looks like we’ll be getting a Bing branded Windows Mobile client sooner rather than later:

Thanks for the tease, Stefan!

Deep Zoom Composer - June 2009 Preview Available

Sunshine — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 07:52:22 GMT

The Deep Zoom Composer June 2009 Preview is now available for download. The Deep Zoom Composer now uses way less memory than it did before, so you can work with more images in your composition. Furthermore there are new ways to navigate, the possibility to link images to external URLs, updated Collection Exporting and more…

Download Deep Zoom Composer

As always, please uninstall all existing versions of Deep Zoom Composer before installing the new version. A lot of the features that were introduced are a bit rough on the edges, so the team is going to be investing heavily in the UI/styling/usability of them for upcoming releases. So feel free to comment on things you like or don’t like in comments on their post here.

Microsoft Security Essentials (Morro) public beta announced

Kip Kniskern — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 03:22:34 GMT

Microsoft has taken the wraps off of its successor to the soon to be discontinued Windows Live OneCare, announcing today that Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE), a free to download “superset” of Windows Defender will become available on June 23. Ed Bott and Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet have details, but here are some of the highlights:

First, the company line on what the new software entails:

To address consumer demand for quality anti-malware protection that’s easy to get and doesn’t slow down system performance, Microsoft Security Essentials has been designed as a no-cost anti-malware solution that provides consumers with quality protection from threats including viruses, spyware, rootkits and trojans. It will be offered directly from Microsoft and has been designed to be hassle-free and is focused on delivering quality protection that’s easy to use.

MSE will be available for download starting at 9am PDT on Tuesday June 23rd in the US, Brazil, and Israel from http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials
If those sound like a somewhat random choice of countries, well a team in Israel worked on MSE, and Brazil apparently has lots of unprotected Windows machines in use.
China will also be an early target market for MSE, with a version in Simplified Chinese expected soon.
Unlike Windows Live OneCare, MSE will not require a Windows Live ID, or any personal information. It will however, require WGA validation
Microsoft is saying that MSE will ship “before the end of the year”.

Windows Live OneCare for a time fared poorly in independent tests, but Ed Bott notes that the latest versions of OneCare have been doing much better:

A new study (May 2009) by the independent AV-Comparatives group gave Microsoft OneCare (which shares the same engine and signatures as MSE) its highest (Advanced+) rating. Only 3 of the 16 products in the test earned that rating. Microsoft’s technology scored second in the accuracy ratings, behind AVIRA but ahead of AVG, Symantec, McAfee, and a dozen other products. And on the crucial measure of delivering the fewest false positives, Microsoft stood far ahead of the pack, delivering the fewest false positives of any program tested.

However, and probably at least partly because of its poor showing in the AV-Comparatives tests, Windows Live OneCare was never a big seller. One advantage to free anti-malware solutions is that they provide a large sample set across the install base, something that OneCare wasn’t delivering and MSE may provide. Gathering info on a large sample base of malware will not only help to improve MSE, but Microsoft’s enterprise level ForeFront offerings, as well.

Bing Maps: A revealing discussion on Ch. 9

Kip Kniskern — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:46:21 GMT

Charles Torre and Erik Meijer spent an hour talking to Bing Maps infrastructure architect Gur Kimchi for an episode of Expert to Expert on Channel 9, and crammed a lot of information and a few juicy tidbits into the session.

According to Kimchi, the Bing Maps for Enterprise, what up until a few weeks ago was known as Virtual Earth, is a team of some 600, with 260 developers (of which 1/3 hold PhDs). He recalls the early days of VE, going all the way back to a Think Week paper in 2005, called “Virtual Earth”. Kimchi describes the premise of the paper:

“Imagine if you had mapping, search, and flight simulator, and what could happen”

An interesting note, as Flight Simulator has seemingly been dropped by Microsoft “to align Microsoft’s resources with our strategic priorities”. Maybe it’s reading too much into the inference, but might we see this Think Week dream come to life? Will Flight Simulator live again in Bing Maps? (or at least using Bing Maps imagery?)

The discussion then moves to the whiteboard, where Kimchi draws up some of the basic architecture, and compares the infrastructure with Google:

All of Virtual Earth, end to end is about 1900 servers…

Each drop of Google Earth in each of their 22 to 25 data centers has over 15,000 servers, literally a couple of magnitudes away in terms of efficiency

(slightly paraphrased)

Of course Google Maps is much more popular at this point than Bing Maps, but the efficiencies built into the architecture are impressive.

Kimchi then pulls out the “long tail” diagram and discusses some of the business decisions about where to commit to high resolution imagery and low latency (sorry Australia). He hints at how PhotoSynth, which is now part of the Bing Maps team and has some rudimentary integration now, might make use of user generated content to produce automated 3D models, especially in some of those long tail scenarios.

And in one last hint on what may be to come for Bing Maps, Kimchi reveals that a team is working on a “very early” project to allow for queries of map information over time. Much of the historical data from the past isn’t digitized and would be difficult and expensive to make available, but the architecture of the system does allow for versioning, so historical information once it was input could be queried, potentially.

All in all an interesting discussion. Check it out.

MSN Calendar To Windows Live Calendar Migration Starting Soon

Sunshine — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:03:03 GMT

We read before that this would happen starting March already, but the following announcement appeared on windowslivewire:

It’s almost moving time! We’ve been busy getting Windows Live Calendar ready for when we move all MSN Calendar customers over to the new and improved service on Windows Live.

Over the coming months, we will be moving all existing MSN Calendar customers over to Windows Live Calendar. The move will be gradual, that is, not everyone will see their calendars change on the same day.

So apparently the migration hadn’t started yet. In their article they also outline some features Windows Live Calendar offers over MSN Calendar and let you know that all of your MSN Calendar’s tasks and notes will be migrated into your new Windows Live to-do list. Furthermore they list what you should know for the move: If you only access your MSN Calendar through the web you need not do anything, however if you use Microsoft Office Outlook you will have to make sure you are using the latest version of Outlook Connector (version number 12.0.6414.1000 or greater).

Windows Live Calendar doesn’t support displaying attachments, hence the reminder we posted earlier to save those, or sending reminders to a secondary email address. You will also have to republish or share your calendars again in Windows Live Calendar after the move.

Cool Silverlight Uses – CMA And Photobucket

Sunshine — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:10:04 GMT

Some pretty cool Microsoft Silverlight uses emerged this week. The CMA came with a game called “Be This Close” and Photobucket released a Visual Search Tool that makes use of Silverlight and the Messenger Web Bar.

CMA, Be This Close Scavenger Hunt

The Country Music Association (CMA) and Microsoft teamed up at the CMA Music Festival in Nashville. Using Silverlight Deep Zoom, Microsoft and partner Firefly Logic built a rich and compelling user experience for CMA showcasing 850+ images of country music artists, highlighting past festivals, fan experiences and country music performances in a fun, game-oriented format called “Be This Close.”

You can check it out yourself at http://www.cmafest.com/bethisclose. The CMA will be promoting the Be This Close experience to radio stations around the country starting this week.

Photobucket Visual Search

Sarah reported that Photobucket, one of the world’s most popular photo-sharing websites, was preparing to release a new tool for finding photos on the site: a visual search engine. We can tell you now this tool has been released. Once you’ve done a search on the site you will see a link to visual search at the bottom right:

Once you click it, the Silverlight powered page with your search results will start to load.

If you place your cursor over a picture in the search results you can see that you can easily Search more like this or go to the authors library. Even more interesting is Enlarge & Share:

Not only can you browse through all the search results (by clicking arrows) but you can get everything you need to share it there too.

Whether you want to link people, embed it on your site, download the picture or….hey wait a minute, Share with Live? What does that do? Well, you might have noticed the Windows Live Messenger Web Bar at the bottom left. If you click Share with Live it will ask you to log in there. After you’ve logged in clicking Share with Live will result in your contact list popping up. Just choose the contact you wish to share this photo with and a link will be sent.

A link yes, it looks a lot like one of those SPIM messages you get, so make sure your contact knows it’s not (esp. if it’s the first message you send). Maybe in future this can be replaced by showing the picture in Messenger directly….

Morro To Be Named Microsoft Security Essentials?

Sunshine — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:20:25 GMT

Where we were wondering about what the release name of “Morro” will be before, it is now clear that “Morro” will be named Microsoft Security Essentials. New screenshots of a pre-beta build revealed this. So unless the people in Redmond change their mind, this is what it will be.

Curious? AddictiveTips already has a review up, complete with screenshots!

Chinese readers, head on over to LiveSino where Picturepan2 has been keeping up with “Morro” too.

Microsoft Security Essentials will be available for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 as standalone install packages, supporting 32 and 64 bit. Sources familiar to Microsoft’s plans revealed to Neowin that a trial version will be made available in September. September? Whatever happened to soon? Unless you call September soon…

Soapbox To Become A Forum For Bloggers And Citizen Journalists?

Sunshine — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:40:32 GMT

In the coming months, Microsoft plans to significantly scale back Soapbox, the user generated video site hosted on MSN Video. In an interview on Tuesday, Microsoft Vice President Erik Jorgensen said Soapbox is one of the areas that Microsoft is pulling back on in the wake of a tough economic environment.

He told CNET News that Microsoft hopes to transform Soapbox into a forum where bloggers and citizen journalists can post videos relevant to areas in which MSN focuses, categories like entertainment, lifestyle, and finance.

"We definitely look at it and say we want Soapbox to stand for something and add to our overall video strategy," Jorgensen said.

A video-forum eh? Will people still be able to freely upload there videos or will there be some sort of editorial selection before the uploaded videos make it onto the site? Nobody knows yet, not even Jorgensen:

"We haven't decided whether you just continue to support it or whether it is too expensive and out of our focus to do," he said.

Seattlepi reports that the Microsoft communication people walked a more cautious line saying there isn’t anything specific to announce about Soapbox at this time. We’ll just have to wait and see where this leads.