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November 3, 2005 1:23 PM PST
Windows Live rooted in MSN's past
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Another feature of the new Messenger presented was the ability to share folders with a buddy. The idea is that dragging a file on top of a contact would allow you to create a shared folder. That folder would exist on both members' desktop and stays up-to-date with any changes to the file. While that capability was built in-house, Microsoft said Thursday morning that it is buying another service, called FolderShare, to assist in its Windows Live efforts.
 Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft |
Gates announces Windows Live, Office LiveThe new Messenger should be available in beta form by December, Microsoft said.
On the mail side, Microsoft has been showing the improved Web mail program, code-named Kahuna, for some time. However, the name change here is a big deal given the widespread recognition of the Hotmail moniker. Still, Microsoft doesn't plan to force people to change their existing hotmail.com e-mail addresses.
Another service demonstrated, but not yet available, is Windows Live Local. In his presentation, MSN vice president Blake Irving outlined a local search service that included elements of Microsoft's Virtual Earth mapping. Eventually, the company could add tools that enable members or their buddies to create annotations, creating a personalized map of their favorite spots in the city.
Microsoft also showed off a preview of a mobile search tool as part of a mobile version of Windows Live. With the service, Microsoft is aiming to have a compact Web search page that can find a nearby restaurant or gas station. It will be viewable via both Windows Mobile devices and ordinary cell phones that have a Web browser. The tool is not yet available, but should be in beta "soon," Microsoft said in a posting on its Web site.
Channeling the spirit of Hailstorm
The whole point of launching Windows Live even with some rough edges, Microsoft insisted, is to get a sense of what it is that people want. The company is also banking on its ability to rapidly update and improve its services, following the model of MSN, Google and Yahoo.
"A lot of people are characterizing this as a response to Google, and in some ways, maybe it is," Rosoff said.
But the analyst also noted that the notion of delivering software as a service is a company approach that predates Microsoft's rivalry with Google.
"The idea of moving to online services has been kicking around Microsoft for a long time," he said. Indeed, Microsoft had a companywide meeting in the late 1990s at which top executives outlined plans to deliver all manner of software as a service.
"Like many things around the Internet that were predicted to happen quickly, they're not wrong, they're simply things that take more time," Gates said in a March interview.
Back in 2001, Microsoft developed what it called .Net My Services, better known by its code name "Hailstorm," that was intended to offer many services now on the agenda for Windows Live. For instance, Hailstorm would have created a "myDocuments" service for sharing files and personalization tools like "myProfile" and "myDevices."
In all, Hailstorm, which Microsoft shelved in 2002 due to privacy concerns and weak partner support, would have defined more than a dozen such services, according to documentation distributed at the time.
"Since then many, many things have happened," said Ray Ozzie, the Microsoft Chief Technical Officer who has been put in charge of the company's overall services push.
Rosoff said that Microsoft was, in many ways, ahead of the game when it first considered the notion. "The business model wasn't there. There were still some technology barriers as well."
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Also, the page maybe blank but there is a lot of pre-selected content available to be added to your personalized page, well-categorized at that too.
It looks like Redmond still has learned nothing from watching Apple redefine the computing experience in the last five years ... Watch out MS or you'll miss out on a seat on the couch ...
I agree Apple hardware looks slick and works great. But it is almost 30% more expensive!!
Microsoft is the couch.
Windows (un)Live doesn't seem to work with Firefox, Opera, or Netscape. Doesn't work on Widows Pocket PC 2003 SE2 either, although that release is over a year old now, and apparantly ready for the dustbin. I'm sure all this incompatability was just an oversight on the part of Microsoft Engineers, and will be rectalfied post haste.
As for how this Live thingy with gadgets, widgets, midgets, etc., is better than My Yahoo, which does work on Firefox, Opera, Netscape, and Pocket PC 2003, well, I guess I'm just missing something. I must go now, I am late for my re-education camp meeting.
Bill Gates's PowerPoint bullet charts and "cloud" diagrams were truly pathetic. Is this the best that the world's richest man and his powerful corporation can do?
This whole "new thing" appears to be a knee-jerk reaction to Google and Yahoo that has not been thought through at all. The old, failed ideas are being recycled and thrown together with existing stuff to come up with something that Microsoft hopes will get them off the bench and into the ballgame.
CNET stop reporting on redundant crap like this.
level of desperation?
Yes, they will continue to sell tons of desktop os for many more
years. But as slow as MS is to identify trends (the internet was "a
fad" in 95) they now seem to realize the days of what OS you run
is fast becoming irrelevant. And don't know what to do about it.
Apple and Google are leading the way but MS has apparently
even lost it's ability to copy someone else's ideas.
Microsoft always wanted to sell services and subscriptions rather than shrinkwrap software. There's more money in it, but it's taken them a long time to finally start moving in that direction.
I wonder how long it will take them to get it right?
Google Sidebar - Desktop Application
Google Earth - Desktop Application
Picasa - Desktop Application
The market will eventually decide the winner.
be kind, OK?!), they missed one of the most important--the idea of
keeping a product under wraps until it is WORKING, and working
well! This latest fiasco of announcing "Fill-in-the-Blank Live" and
crowing about how great it is when it is still in a half-a$$ed state
makes them appear really stupid. (I'm sorry. I meant "inept".)
I'm not sure exactly how STABILITY and APPLE go hand-in-hand. If you'd like, I can post a good 20 or 30 examples of software for OS X (that comes with the OS, such as Safari) that fail miserably and act more like beta (or even alpha) software than they do "stable" software. I'm talking about regular application crashes every couple of hours.
Of course, the reality is that all software is beta and there is no "stable". I wish consumers would realise this. Simultaneously, no, it doesn't remove responsibility from the authors of the code, but end-users need to realise that there is no such thing as a "stable" application.
So please, don't make this into an Apple vs. Microsoft thing, because Microsoft's bizarro ideas as to what "the world needs" are just as out-of-whack as Apples'.
all is already available using other software, including many non-
MS options. And since I have found no serious use for Hotmail, IM,
RSS, or other parts of MSN, It would seem that WIndows Live is
definitely not my thing.
If it's your thing, go for it!!!