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Microsoft buys FolderShare
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November 1, 2005
Of the eight or so services that Microsoft showed off Tuesday at the launch of Windows Live, its new Web-based consumer tools, the vast majority are reincarnations of products that the company had either released or tested under the MSN brand.
"A lot of the Windows Live services are things that had already been in development by MSN," Directions on Microsoft analyst Matt Rosoff said.
The main Live.com Web page is similar to the Start.com page that has been in testing since earlier this year. Windows Live Mail is a long-planned update to Hotmail designed to make the service more like desktop e-mail software. Other existing products, like Microsoft's MSN Spaces and its OneCare security service, are also joining the Windows Live party.
Windows Live is most certainly not an online version of Microsoft's venerable operating system, as the name might imply. But the company insists the move is more than a name change.
Indeed, some of the technology that Microsoft demonstrated goes beyond not only what MSN has done, but also what Google and Yahoo have covered in their personalization efforts.
The most striking examples were ways of tying Windows Live to the desktop. On stage, Microsoft showed how people could share file folders with instant-messaging buddies and use the Live.com page to view not only Web content, but also things like recently opened documents or a corporate SharePoint portal.
Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li said that some of what Microsoft outlined represented an improvement over the personalization features offered by Yahoo and Google's services. But she also chided Microsoft over the Live.com site's complexity.
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Moreover, adding small applications, known as "gadgets," is no easy task. At the moment, people must go to microsoftgadgets.com, copy a special URL, then go back to Live.com and follow a series of "advanced options."
"Sorry for the inconvenience," Microsoft notes on its gadget site. "We will provide a more seamless experience very soon."
Gadgets are important for Microsoft, because it plans to use them throughout both Windows Vista (the upcoming update to its operating system) and Windows Live. The same types of traffic maps and photo viewers that can be dropped onto a Live.com page will also be able to exist on a permanent sidebar within Vista.
Microsoft also plans to use gadgets as the way to add locally stored information, such as recently opened documents, onto the Live.com Web page.
Eventually, Microsoft hopes to make using gadgets as easy as dragging and dropping the desired application onto either Live.com or the Vista sidebar.
Bulked-up Messenger coming
Some of the biggest new things that Microsoft demonstrated as part of Windows Live are coming in an update to Messenger. Although the instant-messaging engine exists today, the Windows Live incarnation will include a number of new features, including social networking and Internet telephony.
In the demo on Tuesday, Microsoft showed how the service would let someone call a contact's phone as easily as sending a text instant message. That seemed to be a shot across the bow of companies like Skype and Vonage, which provide voice over Internet Protocol calling.
However, Microsoft has now clarified the pricing of the Internet calling service, saying PC-to-phone calling will be a paid service, even during public beta testing. The company also said it will work with a yet-unnamed partner to provide the VoIP calling, rather than get in the telecommunications business itself.
See more CNET content tagged:
Microsoft Windows Live,
MSN Spaces,
MSN,
Microsoft Windows Live Mail,
Microsoft Windows Live Spaces
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'.
- Windows Live is DOA...
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by Earl Benser
November 5, 2005 1:08 PM PST
- ... as far as I am concerned. Nothing offered is new. and most if not
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Reply to this comment
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See all 41 Comments >>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!!!