To those of you new to our blog, let me first say welcome! And for those of you who’ve been here before, it’s great to meet you. I’m Chris Jones and I lead the program management team for Windows Live. We’re hard at work on the next major release of Windows Live, and in the coming weeks and months we will be updating this blog with more details about the new features and design goals of our products.
Before we get to the future of Windows Live, I’d like to cover where we’ve been and where we are today. Our goal with Windows Live is to build a suite of software and services that help you get to your information from any device and keep up with the people you care about, using a variety of services. We recognized from the start that this journey would take several years to complete, and would require coordination across our products in a new way to bring them all together. As a result, we decided to plan and release updates to Windows Live in waves. A wave generally spans anywhere from a few months to more than a year and is a coordinated release of web-based services, PC software, and mobile experiences. Of course we regularly update our products throughout each wave, so you’ll often see new features show up, not just at the end of a wave.
Our first wave, completed in 2006, focused on bringing together several existing online services including Hotmail, Messenger, and Spaces – into a single Windows Live release.
Our next wave focused on creating a suite of PC software to enhance the Windows and Windows Mobile experiences, designed to work best when connected to our suite of web-based services. We brought the Photo Gallery and Mail applications for your PC into the Windows Live family and created a new blogging tool called Windows Live Writer, all part of a desktop suite. We also introduced a number of new web services including Events, SkyDrive, Calendar, and Family Safety. We released updates to Hotmail, Messenger, and Spaces and brought all of our web services together with a common header (a set of links at the top of the page) and a new home page (http://home.live.com). And finally we introduced Windows Live experiences for mobile phones including downloads for Windows Mobile devices and browser-based services for web-enabled mobile devices. This wave of releases completed in 2007.
We have spent the last year working on our next major wave of releases for Windows Live. This wave is part of our ongoing work to build a great set of communication and sharing experiences that help keep your life in sync. This wave includes significant updates to our software applications for your Windows PC, and in the next few hours, we will release public betas of the latest version of the Windows Live suite of PC applications, including Messenger, Mail, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Writer, Toolbar, and Family Safety. You’ll find new features across the products and most notably, Windows Live Messenger has been almost entirely redesigned. I’m sure many of you will have questions, and, over the coming weeks, we’ll have individuals from the engineering team share more about what we have built and why we made the investments we made. Our intent is to post regularly to this blog, and if there are topics you think we should cover, please leave a comment or send me an e-mail at chris.jones@microsoft.com.
One thing we know will be important to all of you will be the “feedback loop” – where you can offer suggestions and we take those suggestions and improve our products. We are avid users of Windows Live ourselves and we’re always combing blogs, newsgroups, and articles that are highlighting feedback and usage of Windows Live. We’ve enabled comments on these posts and our plan is to read and treat everything as input into our designs. We will also participate in the comments, but we can’t answer every single request. In addition to this blog, our products are all part of the Customer Experience Improvement Program, an anonymous, opt-in, and private mechanism whereby we can learn about how customers really use our products. We pay very close attention to this data and will talk more about it in posts in the future. You can help by opting in to share this information with us.
With that, I’ll sign off for now, and I look forward to continuing our discussion about Windows Live. I encourage you to download the new betas from http://download.live.com later today and start using them immediately so that you can enjoy the latest Windows Live enhancements. And of course, please send us your feedback as we’d love to hear what you think.
Chris
You can get translations of this blog in many languages through the Windows Live Translator service.
Still no downloads up at download.live.com? Found this on Google though:
http://www.liveside.net/main/archive/2008/09/16/windows-live-wave-3-betas-download-now.aspx
Also there is http://g.live.com/1rebeta3/en/wlsetup-web.exe
What is
Dammit, comment…half gone in space.
I was asking what is the Font that was used in the Windows Live Products UI? (the one used in Messenger, Movie Maker…etc.) is it Calibri?
Great Job! Guys, Keep it up!
It looks like http://download.live.com/ is now available.
Well, I see that the Flickr Publishing Bug is still in the latest version of Windows Live Photo Gallery nearly a year after you acknowledged it as a bug. I can\’t say I\’m particularly impressed.
Will Windows Live Movie Maker add support for WTV files (the default Windows Media Center file format for recorded TV in the 208 TV Pack)?
Extremely interesting & inspiring update. Thanx for it.
I still look forward, however, to being able better to sync my Office applications (Outlook mail & calendar especially) with Windows Live services.
Aha. Just saw the new Outlook Connector beta on your download page.
At first glance, this looks pretty much like what I had in mind. Great.
The new WLM9 beta conversation windows have a grey bottom, unlike the picture (earlier build?) on download.live.com.Please change it back, the grey is ugly.
everything is great here!
Hey Guys,
I must say that over the last 1-2 years you\’re made a serious paradigm shift in how Live was seen and it\’s great to see it move further forward.
I\’m completely hooked on Live and it\’s almost running/organising my life these days with Listas, Windows Live, Mesh, Office Live, Live Writer, Live Mail etc etc..the list goes on and seems to continue to grow.
I\’ve spoken to a few of the lucky members of your team and it\’s great to see some of the fruits of their labour be released!
Again, can\’t wait to get the new installs down at home to try things out! Good job guys!
Regards
Brian H. Madsen
Microsoft MVP Visual Developer ASP.Net
Just wondering if the Hotmail bug is going to be fixed any time soon?
What a great set of services; however, I would suggest that you allow users to make folders/contacts private in WL Mail. I would love to have WL Mail open all the time on my desktop but I can\’t because I have private emails/information that I wouldn\’t want others to see. I really think that adding some kind of privacy features to folders and contacts would make it much more accessible to many people.
On another note, I have been using IE8 for a little while now and I noticed that it doesn\’t sign me out of Hotmail correctly. I have tried to report it to Hotmail feedback but nothing comes of it. When I sign out of Hotmail, I can\’t log back in without password authentication. However, if I open a new tab on the same browser instance and type in Hotmail, it allows me back into the account with no password requirement. Who should I contact to fix this? Is this a problem with my computer or my programs???
Good stuff! Great to finally have an integrated online calendar.
I can understand that for the web interface (for speed), but I am finding it harder to find the command I want at a glance in the Mail client.
A couple of things I\’ve noticed so far:
1. All the icons in the toolbars are gone
2. When downloading my mail into Outlook 2007 using the Outlook Connector, a bunch of seemingly random mails were flagged.
Great set of tools! a few issues:Could we move up the available item on the main window, it appears after favourites and groups, a bit messy, the main thing is who you can talk to, that should be at the top, or I should be able to move it there, that way, first is what I can do and secondly is what else I can do, I choose and order accordingly (other may go by groups, fair enough, they move that to the top).Why does clicking on a contact that its either blocked or offline takes me to the MSN.com page? what happened to offline messages?Also, in the conversation window, the space to the left between avatar pictures is big and ugly, the window just looks amateurish…to the risk of sounding evil, Yahoo Vista messenger has it very nicely done…Otherwise, really a great job there, looking good
Another request – hope you are putting together a Windows Vista sidebar gadget to display upcoming events on Live Calendar. That would make it easy to glance at what\’s coming up!
@Photon I think you\’re looking for the font Segoe UI.
dwergs
Mess with Messenger
I get a crash with "Windows Live Communications Platform has encountered an error." Is anyone else seeing this? Get this when signing in with either Windows Live Messenger or Mail.
Hey guys, I have just one question regarding the picture inserting/publishing in the Live Writer. I\’m REALLY excited about the new LightBox funcionality in the Live Writer Beta, it\’s a great great help. But to be honestm I still see a (quite important) space for impovement – why it\’s not possible to put a capture, ie. a \’function\’ which apart from the rel="lightbox" would add the title attribute to the image link. I suppose it wouldn\’t be so difficult to do this modification (although I\’m not a programmer).Because I always put comment to my pistures, so I still need to go to the source code and write it manually by adding the title attribute.Aren\’t you considering to place this function to the non-beta version of Live Writer? I\’m pretty sure a lot of people would appreciate it.Or if there IS the possibility to elegantly add the title attribute and I just don\’t see it, please tell me where to find it.THANKS!!Adam
Please fix the thumbnail generator for quicktime movies. It does not need 100% CPU and a complete lock of Explorer. I found a way to disable it online but I\’d like to have it working again.
why is the background color of the gallery white now, that is not good, how to i get it black like it was befire
Why is this important link not available from the http://www.live.com home page? http://download.live.com/ I struggled finding all the Live services from the live.com home page. Shouldn\’t this be an obvious link that should be on the live.com home page, unless I am missing something here.
For us web only users…….with the new changes to hotmail, does this mean no more flash ads? I know advertising is the devil and it\’s always going to be around even when everyone knows it\’s useless but one place I don\’t need it is in my inbox – it\’s way too intrusive and completey unecessary in my email.
I\’m using Ie 8 beta 2 but skydrive upload control and hatmil & spaces live upload controller not working sometimes it\’s crashing this is not normal .
First – It woudl be great if you sould tell us where to report bugs – as this is a beta – should I be looking on Connect?
Anyhow WL Photo Gallery – craches at startup – I have Nikon Raw 1.5 and Quicktime 7.5 installed – at startup it tells me I need codecs (I am pretty sure I do not) – then it crashes. Going into Debug I am running accross this …
WLXPhotoGallery ->
NEFcodec.dll!087978ea() [Frames below may be incorrect and/or missing, no symbols loaded for NEFcodec.dll]
So until that is fixed I am reverting
While you are at it
Please add Geotagging support
Please add a way to manage tags – I had a corbis image library on my machine – WLPG found t and then found the 500 or so tags that were in those files and now I have 500 useless tags – the only way to get rid of them – AFAIK is to delete each one manually
Otherwise keep up the good work
Please get rid of the new banner ad at the top of the hotmail inbox. This takes up too much space, displays fewer of my messages at the beginning, is annoying, and unacceptable. I understand that advertising is necessary, but this one is too much. It makes me want to quit using hotmail, or find a way to pay for it so that I don\’t have to put up with this offensive banner.
I consider the Ad banners to be offensive to me, plz remove them and replace them with more family toned Ad\’s
It is noticeable that posting a comment here is pointless since not a single one so far posted seems worthy of responsive attention. Therefore I won\’t bother to mention that Live Messenger "upgraded" today without my permission.
Love your services. Great Packages. Please don\’t bundle junk
. Advertisements are ok although annoying at most times. I would also like to be able to move multiple pictures around in SkyDrive. (If this is possible someone email me HOW!).
Good Work Windows Love Team.
Oh OH OH!!..
Becareful of Memory Usage.
Live Messenger tends to eat too much and freeze my comp and I\’m on vista, 1g ram. (=O)
I think what is stopping Live from beating Google in the online space and wide adoption are those annoying graphical ads at the top of all the services – Space, Hotmail, Calendar, etc.
Google makes the most money with ads but still their online services do not have large graphical annoying ads. They have figured out the right balance to earn money from ads and at the same time not frustrate users with large ads.
This can be done for Live, as well. I wonder how many users would have to complain about those Ads before Live team listens to the feedback.
Live services are quite good and in some areas better than Google. However, one of the major factor that stops users from coming back to use it are those large graphic ads.
the whole new live experience is great!
but i\’ve only 1 BIG COMPLAINT! I want control over colours and themes here in this windows xp. all i\’ve got is silver, green and blue. i want my internet explorer 8 to light up before i go online with colours and themes i create myself. is this to much to ask for?
There\’s a simple solution to get rid of those annoying graphical ads that Microsoft/Windows Live/MSN use: Firefox with Adblock Plus and FlashBlock. Adblock Plus can block any part of a page from loading (and can even block entire advertising services\’ sites) whild FlashBlock will automatically stop any Flash from loading (even before Adblock blocks it) and instead put in the center of the "box" it\’s in the Flash logo. To display the Flash (if you want to) click on the icon.And on the topic of the beta: exactly what was removed? It was really vague in the blog post.@David: Mozilla Thunderbird is a wonderful thing, and as it\’s not in any way affiliated with Windows Live, assuming you can add a Live account, there\’s no need to make folders private. And as for the service appearing to sign you back in, what browser are you using? It makes a difference on how it handles your logging out.
@Nick K
You can report bugs through Microsoft Connect at http://connect.microsoft.com/ if you are part of our managed beta. Otherwise, feel free to submit them through our general feedback channel: http://feedback.live.com/default.aspx.
Thanks for your input,
Dharmesh
I have been trying to give my Grandaughter permision to go to her email address and windows live will not let me here email address is bryabelle@hotmail.com I don\’t know what you have done but its garbage I am her legal gaurdian everything was ok until September of 2008.
Thanks please fix
Gary Eisen
206-992-3052
what happened to the ability to Sync Favorites with Windows Live Toolbar?
Steel gathering info on whats really going on?
I too want to know where my Live Favorites sync went?
Will there a live messenger mobile app for windows mobile devices? kind of like what is the video about the possibilites….something istead of having to go on through internet explorer mobile…
overall though great product. The integration is very handy. great job so far,
1111111111111111
A little background on me (if I may); In my career I have developed infrastructure and systems for companies such as American Express and Citibank. I have received grants from the US government to develop things such as Inventory Management Systems for the Department of Forestry utilizing differential GPS and well as for large public ground works projects. At the end of my career I developed an internet company that I sold to the largest ISP in Southern Europe. I am now 53 years old and retired. After some basic observation and analysis based on my career experiences as systems analyst and entrepreneur for more than 30 years (and having been around the block more than a few times) it appears to me that Microsoft is doing nothing more than staging a major Hollywood production for young bright eyed developers. It\’s hard to BS an old BSer. At this time, I see nothing but marketing generated flowcharts, a lot of blathering, and a few buggy apps. The legal ramifications of a communal infrastructure for Microsoft are intricate from a business perspective. I see no attempt at documentation in this regard. If there were something tangible at this juncture this is the first area that would be addressed by Microsoft (believe me). The general order of things (The Universe) is decentralization and specialization in other words water does not flow up the mountain. No serious enterprise would ever contemplate the use of communal infrastructure for the same reasons I don\’t house my family at a public shelter.
So, what is the end game…more garbage "kiddy sites" generating more advertizing revenue for Microsoft. The problem is that demographics are changing and the median age in developed countries is now around 43 years old at this time. In other words they are banking on a non sustainable market worldwide. As a retired IT man and now an investor all I can say is….not interested. The Wall Street Journal will be publishing an article soon elaborating more…keep your feelers out boys and girls. The time and effort you expel now will shape the rest of your professional life.
Regarding Ray Ozzie\’s vision; I think it stems from an a arcane, Dustbowl mentality that has for some reason has come into vogue recently. Sociologically, the concept of property ownership is not blurring it is doing the exact opposite. Case in point; China and India. In the next 5 years I will invest my money (bet the bank) on emerging technologies that empower the individual and or the corporate entity not a community in the cloud. Bill Gates vision hasn\’t changed one bit. It\’s a PC now and in 5 years even more so. Are you listening Balmer? If not stand back and take a look for yourself.
I HATE IT! EVERY TIME I GET ON THE COMPUTER NOW, I END UP MAD AND CUSSING.
THIS IS NOT WHAT I GOT THIS COMPUTER FOR. WINDOWS VISTA HAS MADE EVERYTHING
HARDER. YOU SAY FASTER, EASIER TO GET IN TO E-MAIL–HA———–WHAT A FARCE
I\’M NOW AT THE POINT IN MY LIFE THAT I\’M ONLY DOING THE FUN THINGS AND THIS
AINT IT. I WANT MY OLD COMPUTER SET BACK UP.
Please I have lost all of my family history plus lots of saved important info. I can\’t access my options in the upper left corner. info like inbox, junk, drafts, sent, delete etc. Please, I need all that info back. I have talked to Dell, MSN Please help me.
For the life of me I don\’t know why you had to tamper with a simple, easy to use system. As a senior I\’m not as tech-savvy as the brilliant youngsters who\’ve come up with the new , improved look. Too bad you couldn\’t give us a choice..keep the old systm, or adapt to the new one.I\’ve spent hours just trying to find my files, figuring out how to access my hotmail, and trying to keep my patience. Change is not always better.
I finally had enough. I moved to Yahoo!, and OMG, I can actually read my emails. I can scroll down to avoid all the ads, and have practically a whole page to view instead of the half inch display at the bottom.
Yahoo is similar to what Hotmail used to be like.
SAVE YOURSELVES, switch before you go bald or get an ulcer.
So happy in Culver City,
Mary
Why are you all still miserable. Save your sanity, get a new email host. I went to Yahoo! and OMG, I can actually read my emails. They transfered my contact w/o a hitch. Their format is similar to what hotmail used to be, but better, I think!
Go with those who appreciate you. There are plenty of free email hosts.
Of course now that I\’d like to transfer my files to yahoo!, I can\’t get in them.
M. Rivera in Culver City
I\’ve been using hotmail since 2003. Since the update, I get more errors, and two days ago the majority of my contacts are now gone. I hope someone can tell me what happened and how I might recover my contact list.
thank you
This is horrible and frustrating. I cannot see my emails at all since the update, the contents of the screen just comes up blank. I have to access hotmail from another remote computer. My own laptop runs Windows 98, but this doesn\’t seem to be a problem when accessing Yahoo. The only way I can manage for now is to put on my vacation reply informing my contacts to try me at my Yahoo email address.
I didn\’t ask for this update and things were fine before. I wish there was a way to revert back to the classic, working version.
Yes, I am enjoying using msn for years, but the one thing I would like to have different is when I log into my email I would like to hear some sort of noise notifying me that I have a new email. All of my friends at work all I hear is " you got mail " or just a ding. This would help me alot at work and just to comunicate with my friends. If something doesn\’t change, then I will simply just move to one of your leading competitors, meaning AOL or even Apple.
Thank you for your listening time,
Jocelyn
Well i have had enough of windows now i have install linux ubuntu on my new pc i got yesterday i was so unhappy with vista and it\’s not stop asking questions.i need my pc for work not for doing head in.As for my msn and hotmail acounts they are all MESSED UP due to some-one messing with an update.msn keep singing out for no reason at all.hotmail has trouble doing just about anything.hotmail acount was good now it is RUBBISH and i have already moved one of my 3 accounts to yahoo. At least i can get on with my work and read my emails now.I should maybe send hotmail my morgage bill for last month and some of my other bill\’s for them to pay because i lost so much money due to there RUBBISH update.
I too hate the new and improved hotmail. I see fewer emails on a page, less of the content of each email when I open them, a complicated contact list that takes forever to load, more of your advertising that I can\’t scroll away from – thank you very much, and a slower overall program. Multiple scroll bars and about 90% of the time I can\’t reply to, or forward an email. That does me absolutely no good. I don\’t see any improvement whatsoever in this new and improved version. Leave it the way it was… or at least give us the option of the old or your allegedly new and improved version.
What we are seeing is classifiable under the broad catagory of "employment justification" combined with the programmers disease. The constant "improvement" of something is a softjob. Unfortunately when the softjob staff can\’t figure out something productive to do, they go for the showy ones. I truely wish they would print large signs and post them in the softjob crib that say "JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN DOESN\’T MEAN YOU SHOULD". I use my email as a personal and business accessory. What I want is clarity and ease and speed. Wizzy Iblings don\’t impress me. A contact list that is quick and clean and complete would be nice. The last thing I am concerned with is the colors, themes, etc.
The single issue I would like to see addressed is the contact list. When you open it you get a little pictograph of a head and the name then you swing across the screen to see a little star. Why couldn\’t the actual email address be listed with the name? I have a number of people to whom I send personal and business email to and I don\’t use their work emails for personal notes nor do I use their personal emails for business contacts. Without having the email also visible on that list I have to guess every time which one I actually want to use… As a general approach, this email has been better in the past. Maybe it\’s time for the softjob set to get in the unemployment line with the rest of us.
"Windows Live experiences for mobile phones" is both Great and Fast on my Mobile 6.1 Phone."Movie Maker" – never shows as a option during a Live install. Upload from Photo Gallery beta to SkyDrive is (again) both Great and Fast.Toolbar slows IE too far down – Wiped PC and rebuilt – never loading that thing again. Wasted time, money and effort. Before PC wipe -switch to Chrome. MS lost the battle and the War on that platform. Too Slow. I had a Blank home page… and 3sec of connecting to…. to a Blank home page. I bet the IE team voted for Obama
Yeah, what happened to Live Favorites sync? It\’s listed but IE8 rc1 won\’t let me sign in. This works on both WL toolbar for IE7 (all Vista machines, 32 and 64 bit). BUT . . . IE8 killed the sync. What a bummer. Now my work computer is out of sync with the rest. Is this a known bug?