IE 8 Beta 2 just came out today, and one of the interesting new features comes in the search bar, in the form of Auto Suggest.  We’ve seen these types of suggestions to searches before, most commonly included in toolbars such as the Windows Live Toolbar, but this new feature, built in to IE 8 Beta 2, not only is built in and makes for a seamless experience, but has some great cross Search provider features as well.  To start, type something into the search bar at the top right of Internet Explorer:

A list of suggestions drops down, including most popular suggestions and also a list of suggestions stemming from your browsing history.  But to get the full effects of the feature, add in some other Search Providers:

and then run a comparison between search providers, or narrow your search to Wikipedia (or eBay, or Amazon, etc).  This way you can leave your default at Live Search but check results in other browsers, for example.  A really nice little feature, now built in to IE 8 Beta 2.  You can learn more about Search Providers on the IE website

And it looks like this same functionality may soon be coming to Live.com.  Currently in limited testing (and leave us a comment if you’ve seen it), Live.com may soon feature the same drop down auto-suggest functionality, depending on the feedback they receive from their limited flights of this new feature:

I’ve always liked these auto suggest features, but never liked having to install a toolbar to get them, so I’m looking forward to trying it out in IE 8, and looking for it on Live.com.

One additional note on IE 8 (thanks for the tip, Chuck!), this from the XP download release notes:

Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 and Windows Live Mail are currently incompatible. If you install Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2, Windows Live Mail will crash when you create or reply to an e-mail message. No workaround is currently available.

Not good news for XP/Live Mail/IE users.  The note is not included in the Vista version of the release notes.

The IE team blog has just posted that IE8b2 is now out. Lots of goodness in this new build:

We focused our work around three themes: everyday browsing (the things that real people do all the time), safety (the term most people use for what we’ve called ‘trustworthy’ in previous posts), and the platform (the focus of Beta 1, how developers around the world will build the next billion web pages and the next waves of great services).

Check out the IE team blog post as they go into so much more detail about what’s new.

Download links: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/beta/worldwide-sites.aspx

SL

On Facebook there are some applications about making use of Windows Live Services. I’d like to take a moment to highlight some of them.

Windows Live Messenger
With over a million users just 4 months after its launch, probably the most known of all. This one recently got a big upgrade. One of the most exiting new features is the possibility to update your Facebook status message from Windows Live Messenger! You can now set your Facebook status with your Messenger personal message. All you have to do for that is to allow this in the Messenger application's setting page:

I seem to have some problems with this feature, as in it’s not working on the new Facebook….could be just me, let me know your experiences with it….

The chat box, so people can chat with you from your Facebook profile, isn’t added automatically in the new Facebook either. To get the box (in “Boxes” tab by default) you will have to navigate to Applications > Edit All Applications, click All Applications in the left pane, then click the pencil icon behind the Messenger application an choose “Edit Settings” and on the Profile tab click “add”:

Quite some workaround…..Facebook hasn’t gotten any easier with it’s new lay-out :(

Photozoom
Make your Photo Albums Zoom. PhotoZoom creates zooming albums from your photos, using Microsoft Silverlight Deep Zoom technology. PhotoZoom automatically imports your Facebook photo albums each time you visit the settings page. On this settings page you can also tell the application which albums you would like to show on Facebook. You can create additional albums, upload high resolution pictures, import your photos from other photo sites and more at the PhotoZoom website or you can be in control of the layout and create your album with the Deep Zoom Composer (which also uploads to the Photozoom website).

MapMate
MapMate utilizes Virtual Earth and allows you to see where your friends are based on where they say they are, right down to street level! In order for this to work your friends, who also have Mapmate, will need to specify where they are. So no, it doesn’t use reverse IP or anything of that sort. How to specify your location: on the map navigate to where you are and right click on your location, a red pin with a pop up will then ask you if you wish to update your status. Click save and that’s it, all done..now your friends can find you! Don’t forget to update your location when you move again, else your friends might just turn up there and find you are not there anymore…. Beware of stalkers!

Aerobis, Train social
Another app that makes use of Virtual Earth, this time to organize and analyze your sport. With a route planner, a Sport-log and a Sport-Report. The sport profile uses the metric system (kilograms, centimeters), so that might take some calculation. An easy way to do this is to use an online converter such as Common Lenght and Distance Converter and Common Weight and Mass Converter. Even without the profile you can upload a route (KML or GPX) or create one by clicking on the map and have the application draw the route and calculate the distance for you. You can also allow others to see your routes and search routes that have been published by others. More info at the Aerobis web site.

More read of interest:
Windows Live Messenger Developer Blog
Matt Augustine Tech Blog (Photozoom)
Virtual Earth Blog - Virtual Earth Applications on Facebook

For all previous LiveSide posts about these subjects and more, take a look at The List.

Have you noticed we are also on Facebook?

Thanks to some great work by tophtucker and then BV2312, we managed to catch the new Windows Live Hotmail promotion site as soon as it popped up today. What we love about this site is that it has gone public with some of the changes for Windows Live Hotmail that are coming up in the Wave 3 beta. Here's the summary:

Speed: The coming soon page says that for broadband users, the new Hotmail will be up to 70% faster on sign in (50% for non-broadband users). That's a pretty big claim, and one which should provide for some interesting testing once the beta is open to the public.

Ever-increasing storage: Microsoft have carefully avoided using the phrase "unlimited storage", as Yahoo has done, but in a sense this is what is being offered. The figures we last heard for this were the the existing 5GB free accounts would be getting growth of 250MB per month, but this is pre-beta and could have changed and so our usual disclaimer applies. Obviously the PR definitely looks better leaving the figures out, but a free inbox of 8GB by the end of year 1 gives us a warm feeling. (For comparison, Gmail is currently on 7GB and still growing.)

New UI: Along with the new Wave 3 UI, in particular the new header and themes available shown below, the new promotion site suggests that the classic and full versions of Hotmail will be combined together. This potentially means that full functionality could be available across all browsers. Also worth mentioning here are improvements around deadling with spam.

In terms of Hotmail integrating with other Windows Live services, there's also some details on that:

WebIM built-in: This feature doesn't really need much explaining and should be a popular addition. From what we've heard it'll support most of the basic needs such as presence, notifications and chat via the WebMessenger dogfood. Yes its been a while since we've spoken about that!

Integrated Calendar: No surprise if you're on the new Windows Live Calendar beta to hear there will be integration between the two services.

Easier to send group emails: Thanks to the new Windows Live Groups service (go ABCH!) it'll be easier to email all those contacts in one go

And of course there is stuff not on the PR site that we've head about, including the long-rumoured POP support for other mail clients and using Skydrive for storing photos sent in via Photo Mail.

Unfortunately if you're now excited about giving the new Hotmail a try, we haven't seen any links to sign up for a public beta. As soon as we do though, we'll let you know. Keep those tips coming, either in the comments or via email.

The 2008 Olympics has been a source of pride for the athletes, for China, and also for Live Search, who posted a very nice series of background images here in the United States, at a rate of about 2 per day.  Even though our friend and ultra Windows Live enthusiast Picturepan2 lives in China (in Shanghai), he still was enamored enough of the Olympics and Live Search to collect every Live Search Olympics background, including the Birds Nest one that ran in China, and gather them in a SkyDrive folder for your viewing enjoyment:

He took the time to save the jpg, and not just grab a screenshot, so these images, while they include the Live Search logo, do not include the search bar itself – although that was part of the fun of these pics, to see how well the search bar fit in with the image.

Now that the Olympics are over it will be most interesting to see where Live Search takes this whole background image concept.  Hopefully nobody on the Vista Ultimate Extras team is anywhere near this project ;).

Picturepan2 has all 32 US images, plus the Birds Nest, plus a convenient zip file of the whole set included in the SkyDrive.  Very diligent work by a dedicated enthusiast, deserving of his own Gold Medal.  Oh and let’s not forget the Live Search team who put this all together, we can’t wait to see what comes next!

The Set:

The Zip File:

An early version of an interim build of the new wave 3 messenger is spreading across the web, having been posted by JCXP.net, WinXperts.com and others.  As Chris said in our review of this build on August 11, after screenshots were posted on Mess.be,

“as this is only a first milestone, there’ll be other internal updates before a version gets released to the public”

Quite funny, actually to read through all the comments and complaints on UI, etc as if this were a final release.  It’s not, although there are some hints at what’s to come.  The build includes support for Groups, which will be a new feature of Wave 3, some new photo sharing abilities, the removal of Sharing Folders (yay!), and more.  You can read Chris’ review for some more.

You could probably hunt down a version of this old incomplete build if you wanted (and haven’t already), but word is out that the Wave 3 betas will be starting soon, and given Microsoft’s recent penchant for public betas, it shouldn’t be hard to get your hands on a build that’s much further along soon.

Oh and btw if you’re confused by the build numbers, which seemed to have skipped from 9.x to 14.x, they’re real.  You need only to check the current build number of Foldershare (14.0.1383.0530).  An educated guess says that this is to get the Windows Live products in line, build number wise,  with Office 14.  Which is an interesting development, if it is indeed the case.

We told you about our server issues a month or so ago, and ever since then we've been working behind the scenes to make a move over to our brand new server.  You can see all the specs in the new about page, in LiveSide Central.  We still have a few issues to work out, and will be making some changes as we go, but welcome to our new site!  We'll have more about our new site and some other new changes soon, so stay tuned.

Notes: We are redirecting traffic to our new IP address while the dns servers around the world catch up (that usually takes 48 hours or less).  In the meantime, a couple of things won't appear to work, probably most noticably Live ID authentication (which is set to go to LiveSide.net and not the IP address), and the translator.  This should all "resolve" itself in the next few hours or so, thanks for your patience.  In the meantime, you can still sign in to LiveSide the old fashioned way.

Ah its almost that time of the year, when we start posting 5 times a day with more screenshots than you can shake a stick at. Just to wet the appetite, the url for the Windows Live People service now works (people.live.com). Unfortunately if you’re not on the Hotmail dogfood servers, all you’ll see is your Hotmail inbox. Yes there is a Wave 3 Hotmail update, which should please a lot of people :)

Also of note is that profile.live.com now redirects to Spaces (photos.live.com has done for a few releases now).

One final point to make, is that if you signed into Windows Live Video Messages to try it out, you’ll have broken your Windows Live Calendar. If you try and sign in now, you’ll see an error message: “Windows Live Calendar wasn’t able to complete this request.” We’ve heard that it is a known issue, so it should get fixed in the near future. Maybe at the same time as a Wave 3 calendar update? ;)

Anyway, if you have any tips over the next month or so remember we have a dedicated tips line: tips [at] liveside dot net.

Fun times ahead!

Posted on behalf of Nate Keyes, Technical Writer

Okay, so your class has divided up in teams of three to organize your own election campaigns. You need a campaign timeline, to-do lists, campaign brochures, a press release, a budget, and an essay detailing what you, the candidate, stand for. You found out that using Microsoft Office Live beta to get it all done would be as simple as 1-2-3. First, you created a workspace; second, you invited your friends to have access to it (which includes, by the way, any documents you create in that workspace); and third, your friends accepted the invitation.

With all of that set up, now the three of you are under way, working on the documents. Of course,  you can work on the documents together during class, and at any other times you decide to meet. But sometimes you can’t work together because of schedule conflicts—soccer practice, hip-hop club, interpretive mandolin decorating. Whatever. And it’s at those times that having direct links  to each other’s documents can really come in handy.

A direct link is sort of the Web equivalent of saying, “Hey, check this out.” When you’re ready to have your friends look at something you’ve put together, you can create a direct link to it and send that direct link to them. Then they can click the link, and voila! They’re instantly whisked to what you wanted them to see (provided that, like I said, you have given them access to your shared workspace or document… oh yeah, AND they are connected to the Internet!)

Most likely, you’ll send that direct link in either an e-mail message or an instant message. Most browsers have a built-in way to send a direct link in an e-mail message, making it really easy. And to send a direct link in a way other than e-mail, just copy and paste it, like this:

1. Click in the address bar at the top of your Web browser window and then press CTRL+A to select the entire address.

2. Press CTRL+C to copy the selected link.

3. Now click in the location you want to paste the direct link to, and then press CTRL+V.  The direct link is now pasted where you wanted it.

No-hassle collaboration. How cool is that?

Nate Keyes

Technical Writer, Volt

Office Live

Microsoft and the state of Iowa have announced the location of the newest Microsoft data center, in West Des Moines, Iowa.  Located “southwest of the intersection of Booneville Road and South 88th Street (also known as Xavier Place)” (see map), the data center will be focused on online services:

The data center, described as the place “where the internet lives,” is expected to house large-scale, worldwide Web services for Microsoft's online services business. With the growth of audio and video applications, social Web sites, mobile devices and other Internet demands, data centers are becoming increasingly important as companies strive to increase online computing support centers to provide users with enhanced Web services.

(click on the image to go to Live Search Maps – the marked area is an approximation of the 42 acre size of the property)

While Microsoft couldn’t quite knock Iowan Shawn Johnson off the front page of the Des Moines Register, it’s still big news.  The Register reported:

The "next generation" data center will employ 50-75 workers who will earn about $70,000 annually, said Michael Manos, Microsoft¹s general manager of data center services. The project will be located on 42 acres southwest of the Booneville Road at the intersection of Xavier Road.

…(Iowa Governor Chet) Culver called it the most "modern facility in the world" with its focus on energy efficiency.

We’re checking now on whether or not that means the new data center will use Microsoft’s container system.

Posted on behalf of Vani Mandava, Program Manager, Office Live Workspace

Are you using the Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) browser to access Office Live workspace? Over the past few months we’ve received feedback from some users regarding performance issues when using Office Live Workspace on IE6. Thanks to all of you who provided this feedback! From what we heard in the forums and elsewhere, we learned customers were experiencing extremely slow performance loading Office Live Workspace in IE6 and, in some cases, IE6 would hang. This is obviously an unacceptable experience so we have been working hard to find a solution.

Note: For you technically adroit dll-savvy programmer types out there, read on to hear the fascinating things we uncovered as we tackled this issue.  The bottom line for everyone else:  Upgrade to IE7 (free, by the way) for the easiest way to solve the issue.

The glorious details

We had been looking at this issue for some time, but it was difficult to reproduce.  Saurabh, one of our developers (formerly on the IE team) finally succeeded. The issue boils down to a problem with how IE6 handles the display of transparent images–specifically the kind of images used in the “Getting Started” panel in OLW.  The technical explanation is that there are sporadic deadlocking issues with the IE6 AlphaImageLoader CSS filter used to render transparent PNG images on the page.

Analysis of the problem was slippery was because the slowness was not evident for any of the following conditions:

•  If the images in question were being retrieved from the user’s browser cache
• If the Getting Started area on the page was closed
• If the user’s machine was using an Internet connection that was relatively fast

If the user was coming to the service from a fast connection, the file downloaded quickly enough for the filter to be applied without deadlocking. Similarly if the images were already cached, they rendered fast enough to avoid this problem.

The solution

Once we determined the steps, we were quite appalled at how poor the performance was. Within a day, our site management team updated all the images to GIF and PNG8 format to prevent this from affecting any more users. We noticed, however, that on some IE6 machines the performance was still poor and the browser process utilization would periodically spike up to 100%.  Further investigation led to identifying the culprit as the older version (5.6) of jscript.dll that shipped with IE6 in 2001. Installing the newer 5.7 version of this dll made the process a lot faster.

If you are still noticing performance issues using IE6 browser, here are a couple of options to boost your Office Live experience:

Option 1) Upgrade to Internet Explorer 7  

Thanks for using Office Live Workspace and keep those comments coming–we always look forward to hearing from you!

Vani Mandava

Program Manager, Office Live Workspace

As Kip mentioned in his post about the Photosynth release, i’ve been playing about with Photosynth. I was that is, till it decided it won’t publish any more of my Synths. I made two, deleted one and then it’s seems to get stuck on publishing with every next one I’ve tried. I'm not the only one with this issue either, an employee just answered it has to do with the writing to the back-end which can take some time especially if the server load is high…I’ll leave the current try open then and be patient (fingers crossed). Hope it’s just start-up issues, just as PhotoZoom took ages to render at the beginning too.

Anyway, what can I tell you about it so far? Let’s start by showing you a video from the Photosynth Team on how to make a Synth:

Now you have some impression, on to my personal experience with it....

Photosynth, which was initially released as a Microsoft Live Labs Technology Preview, is being released as a new free service, to become part of MSN.  The new product, available at www.photosynth.net, combines a 20gb online storage and presentation piece, an add-in to Internet Explorer or FireFox, and a downloadable 8mb installation to create one of the first true “Software + Services” offerings coming out of Ray Ozzie’s Microsoft Live Labs.

We’re going to stick with the announcement, here, and strongly encourage you to sign up and play with PhotoSynth.  It is available immediately worldwide, for free, but in English only at this time.  There are some computer restrictions:

­ A Web browser (Windows Internet Explorer 7 is recommended; Internet Explorer 6 and Firefox 2 and 3 also are supported, but not all features have been tested in all browsers); a small, 7MB plug-in available free at http://www.Photosynth.net; a broadband connection; and the Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista operating system.

Our ace reporter Sunshine is busy playing with Photosynth, and she’ll have a much more in depth review of it soon, but you really need to head to the website, download the app (I installed it in in something less than a minute), and check out the SeaDragon seamless zoom, the PhotoSynth viewer, and the ease with which this whole experience comes together.

Currently stocked with some preview “synths” from the likes of National Geographic and some Microsoft employees, users will be able to log in with a Windows Live ID, download the app, and begin immediately to create, upload and share “synths” of their own.  I talked today to Alex Daley, General Product Manager of Live Labs, about the process.  “In about the time it takes to upload the photos”, the client app will create relationships between the photos, and upload them to your catalog on Photosynth.net.  If you have been following along, you may remember Robert Scoble and others showing off early versions of PhotoSynth, and commenting on how it at that time took about a day and a half to create a “synth”.  With this new version, creating a synth may take just a few minutes.

The PhotoSynth site recommends using between 20 and 300 pictures (which can be from any camera at any resolution, from camera phone to DSLR, in any combination), but really there is no limit on the number of photos except for the processing power of your local client computer, on which all the relationship processing is done, and the 20gb limit of a Live ID account.

Daley also explained the ease at which one could get the best experience from PhotoSynth: for example the site will know which photos you have already uploaded, so if you create a new similar synth, or revamp an old one, even from a different computer, PhotoSynth will only upload the photos it needs.  PhotoSynth will also grade your “synthiness”, that is give you a score on how many of your photos are related by the calculations.  You could then, for example, create a synth, see that you had some holes, go back and take some more photos, and create a new version.  The best way to do this, Daley said, is to keep a folder containing your synth files, as you won’t actually edit a synth, but create a new one.

The site also mentions what Daley referred to as “crowd-sourcing”, that is taking photos from a number of users and combining them into a “synth”.  Currently that can only be accomplished by gathering photos together manually and creating a synth on a single account, but Daley said that long term, more “crowd-sourching” options were definitely being considered.

With this release, PhotoSynth moves out of Microsoft Live Labs and joins MSN as part of the Virtual Earth team:

Photosynth will begin to become a key part of the experience for MSN’s 550 million monthly visitors worldwide. Synths will be prominently featured on MSN.com. To create a more absorbing experience for its visitors, MSN will use synths of popular destinations and notable events in many of the places where static images are used on the site today.

We’ll have a lot more on this new fun technology soon, but for now, head right over to www.photosynth.net, and make your own synth now!

We’re pleased to announce the first full release of Photosynth, available now at photosynth.com.  Photosynth takes a collection of regular photographs and reconstructs the scene or object in a 3-D environment.  For those of you who have seen the videos or tried our tech preview, you could experience synths that we made in the lab and get a feel for what Photosynth is and how it works.  But now, for the first time ever you can create synths from your own pictures and share them with your friends.  Explore great synths from others or create a few of your own.

Don’t know where to start?  Check out these great synths available today:

• National Geographic did an a great synth of Stonehenge.  Normally you are not allowed inside the center ring of Stonehenge, but their photographers got special permission so you can experience it here.  Can you find the rabbit living at the base of one of the stones?
• Ever wanted to check out a Ferrari 575 Superamerica up close?  We snuck into the local dealership and shot a synth just for you.
• You don’t need to go to all the way to London to see the London skyline—you can see it right here at Legoland
• Imagine stumbling across a guy proposing to his girlfriend right in the middle of Seattle’s Pike Place Market. Now imagine making a synth of it.

While there are plenty of interesting synths to check out already, the best ones will come from you.  If you need help creating a killer synth, check out our photography guide for some tips.  Or just watch our short how to synth video which gives you a quick overview of the best way to take pictures that will make a good synth.

Because Photosynth is so new, you will probably run into an occasional bug or hiccup.  Whether you have a brilliant idea or find a bug, please let us know.  We’ll do our best to address them.

And be sure to check out the Photosynth team blog, where we’ll share what we’ve learned about making great synths, talk with some members of the Photosynth team, provide synthing suggestions for advanced users and point you to some of the cooler synths that people are building.

Former New York Jets Quarterback Joe Namath once said “When you have fun, you can do amazing things.”   We sure hope you have as much fun using Photosynth as we’ve had building it.

Microsoft plans to use the tools it acquired in Powerset to “gain an edge against Google” according to a report coming out of the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose on Tuesday.  Senior Vice President Satya Nadella believe that gaining, and then using, a better understanding of user intent will help Microsoft to stop spinning its wheels in search market share.  According to Nadella:

"I believe this notion of understanding user intent--being able to analyze (search queries) and come up with search patterns and use them to shape the search experience--is one of the most important areas for us"

Microsoft continues to languish behind the search leader, with another round of bad news coming from Neilsen Online, showing Google continuing to gain, and Microsoft continuing to slip in US search market share.

However the news isn’t all bleak, as Microsoft believes strongly in the potential advantages provided by Powerset.  And they’ve got another ally, too: Bill Gate.  Scott Prevost, Powerset’s general manager, was quoted as saying that "Bill has definitely not retired for us".  Gates, who has stepped down from day to day operations, has said that he planned to continue to work on search.

Nadella also discussed plans to provide more directed experiences in subcategories such as travel, health, images, and video, according to the CNET Webware article by Stephen Shankland.  Indeed Live Search seems to provide a better user experience in these areas already, although it has not seemed to help their cause much, yet.

Thanks for the comments in the last post, it appears that Windows Live Video Messages is up and running, at http://videomessages.live.com/Portal/default.aspx?lc=1033.  Sign in with a Live ID, and give it a try (you may have to back out of the screen saying it will be up on 09/09.

lc=1033 is the location code for US, so of course the usual non US issues may apply.  A very quick first glance shows a simple but interesting new service, if you’re into webcams and video messages.  I’ll let the webcam pros give a more detailed review, but for now you can try it out.

Live Labs' own Blaise Agüera y Arcas has been recognized by Technology Review magazine as one of the world’s top innovators under the age of 35 for his work developing Seadragon and co-creating Photosynth. The TR35 is an elite group of accomplished young innovators. We at Live Labs would like to congratulate all of the winners on their accomplishments.

Blaise and the other TR35 winners for 2008 will be featured in the September issue of Technology Review and honored at the EmTech08 Conference to be held at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., Sept. 23–25, 2008.  

You kill one service, and another one springs up to take its place. The Windows Live Support and Feedback sites helpfully spilled the beans on Windows Live Video Messages, a new beta service that ties in with the LifeCam range of webcams.

As we mentioned in our recent post on the new upcoming LifeCams, the VX5500 and the LifeCam Show, the new devices are compatible with a a Windows Vista sidebar gadget. Turns out this gadget is part of the new Video Messages service, along with a to-be-released web portal.

The Video Messages service allows all webcam users to send video messages to friends and family, even if they are offline. The bonus is that if you are using a LifeCam, you can do this direct from your desktop using the sidebar gadget.

Thought the website says the tech preview is coming to the public on 9th September, if you say you’re a member of the press you get presented with the gadget download link immediately. Groovy. No 64-bit version we could find though I’m afraid. Warning, we tested this without LifeCams installed and the entire sidebar disappeared. Let us know if you have any luck though.

So, 1.5 years after the launch of Windows Vista, we finally have our first official Windows Live sidebar gadget, not counting the Live Search (Maps) ones of course. Looks like things are on the up!

Totally off-topic, we heard whisperings of a contractor developed Messenger sidebar gadget about a year ago. I wonder what rabbit-hole that disappeared down…

Via PP2

Just up on the Live Mesh blog is news that the Live Mesh Technology Preview has been expanded, so if you’re one of our many readers in the newly added countries, or if you haven’t been able to get in from one of the four previously available countries (US, UK, Australia, New Zealand), you can sign up now at www.mesh.com

You should be able to get in right away, according to Amit Mital in a blog post:

We do still have a maximum limit on the number of users we’ll allow into the Technology Preview, but as long as we’re below the limit, anyone in the countries above can sign-up today with no delays or wait list.

Hopefully we’ll be hearing more about scenarios like Server, Mobile and Mac soon, but for now, if you’re not in the Live Mesh Technology Preview, you need to be!

Amit Mital posts on the Live Mesh blog that the CTP has now been expanded to include Canada, India and Ireland. One thing Amit does point out though is:

We do still have a maximum limit on the number of users we’ll allow into the Technology Preview, but as long as we’re below the limit, anyone in the countries above can sign-up today with no delays or wait list.

So make sure you sign up quickly.

SL

There has been several debates raging today about the Olympics coverage from various media outlets thus far, and in particular regarding NBC in the US, who Microsoft have partnered with (see NBC doesn’t feature Bolt, has Silverlight take-up really done that well). While its still to early to judge the success of Silverlight, I’ve been focusing so far on following the progress of Live Search. At the start of the Olympics much was made about the tailoring of Live Search for this global event, and it was some of the comments on our original post that got me thinking about the strategies Microsoft is employing with Search.

Localisation is a topic we’ve mentioned consistently over the past few years and this was a key opportunity for Live Search to step-up and show itself as a global search engine. Alas it didn’t happen. This isn’t just a case of a few missing homepage images though, nearly all of the Olympic Instant Answers (medal tables, athlete profiles, stats on athlete searches from XRank, etc) are entirely US only. Note that some markets do have limited Olympics features, GB has medal tables for instance. For comparisons, Google appears to be running its features across all markets.

Today’s USA homepage image features Michael Phelps, which was up almost immediately after his win last night, showing just how relevant Live Search can be. (Good job Venkat!)

One other region has featured Olympics imagery so far, and that has been China, with the Bird’s Nest stadium showing throughout the competition. The fact that homepage imagery is showing in another market reinforces that this is not down to technological limitations, but is a business decision.

Who makes the decision to focus on 300million users, when you have another 6.4 billion in markets around the world?

Search, guesstimated value at $1billion for 1% of search queries, is an extremely lucrative market.  If the decision to deploy key features is down to insufficient resources, namely people to do the translations and update the content, then you have to question intent and desire to succeed.

On a side note, Steve Clayton discusses assumptions with regards to product launch and localisation, based on some recent IM stats. Broadband penetration isn’t an issue in this regards, Search is a platform independent, device independent, connection independent, browser independent service. No excuses here I’m afraid.

Incidentally, the Michael Phelps adorned page has a link to the latest Olympics news coverage on Live Search. Here’s the page while I was writing my post. In my mind this shows just how far Live Search still has to go for relevance.

(Note: I use both Live Search and Google in day to day use.)

Just thought I’d do a little promotion for one of our old friends, Steven Sinofsky, who is now blogging with John DeVaan over at Engineering Windows 7 (or e7 for short). There’s a welcome post up already, which leaves you in no doubt as to their intentions for the blog.

“We strongly believe that success for Windows 7 includes an open and honest, and two-way, discussion about how we balance all of these interests and deliver software on the scale of Windows. We promise and will deliver such a dialog with this blog.”

Steven you already started off by setting expectations too high, and inevitably you will now disappoint. Maybe someone could be open, honest and two-way about Ultimate Extras though while you’re at it – you know, that small little thing we all paid $100 for.

“In leading up to this blog we have seen a lot of discussion in blogs about what Microsoft might be trying to accomplish by maintaining a little bit more control over the communication around Windows 7 (some might say that this is a significant understatement).”

…and Windows Live too. See Long Zheng. I’d go out on a limb here and say this was approved disclosure.

“Our intent is to post “regularly”. We’ll watch the comments and we will definitely participate both in comments and potentially in follow-up posts as required.”

Why the quotemarks? Ohh, that’s right, its going to be a press-release style, information posted when approved by PR type of blog. Maybe just move the blog to MS Presspass to make it easier for those mainstream journalists to find and quote?

“We will make sure that members of the Windows 7 development team represent themselves as such as well.”

So the Disclosure Director is now tasked with beating employees into commenting on the blog. Oh fun times in Redmond for the next 2 years!

Community vehicle, no. PR vehicle, most likely. PR is good, just don’t pretend this blog is something it is not going to be. Full credit goes to the real community efforts.

PS: Steven, if you want some more stickers just let us know. Maybe throw us a link in your sidebar?

The potential is limitless, but just how many folders and files can you put in Live Mesh today? What’s the maximum file size and how many people can you invite into a folder? Is there a limit to the number of devices you can add? The Live Mesh Team answered as follows:

• Size of all contents in a single Live Folder: 10GB (of course there’s still the 5GB quota which limits how much you can synchronize with the Live Desktop)
• Individual file size: 2GB
• Items (file or folders) per Live Folder: 100,000
• Members per Live Folder: 200
• Number of Live Folders per user: 200
• Number of devices per user: 100

The Team expects these numbers to go up with subsequent service updates. Now we’ve not seen an update since their post (yesterday), but either they wrote it down wrong or the numbers have gone up already as Paul Thurrott managed to synchronize one folder that has about 20 GB of content in P2P mode…

Speaking about limits, there are also some limits on the file/folder type you can share or synchronize. You cannot synchronize or share the following with Live Mesh:

• Files whose names begin with a tilde (~)
• desktop.ini
• thumbs.db
• Hidden files
• Windows Systems folders
• Your Desktop directory folder (for example, C:\users\[myusername]\Desktop on Windows Vista or C:\Documents and Settings\[myusername]\Desktop on Windows XP)
• Files and folders stored on removable media (such as an external hard drive, flash drive, or USB drive)

Live Mesh also blocks files that have the following file extensions: .bak, .gfs, .lnk, .pst, .sav, .tmp and .wlx

You are also not allowed/supposed to share files containing obscene or copyrighted material. Copying or sharing unauthorized materials, including materials that you did not create or you do not have the rights necessary for use, is a violation of the Windows Live terms of use. See the Microsoft Copyright Notice and FAQ.

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Its true, nobody is perfect. In fact during the May 22nd update to Skydrive, we missed the addition of Favourites support to Windows Live Skydrive (hey pp2 missed it until recently too!). Interestingly enough the team blog post didn’t point out the change either. (and nobody tipped us? Guess you’re all using Mesh too…)

Check out the not-so-new Favourites folder that now exists by default on http://skydrive.live.com.

So what does this mean for the existing Windows Live Favourites service? We’ve heard that by the end of Wave 3, favourites.live.com will redirect to this new Skydrive folder.

Obviously nobody will want to manually enter in their 100 favourite websites into Skydrive, which is why we’re expecting to see a new Windows Live Toolbar add-in for Wave 3. For those who have good memories, an add-in for the old service was rolled out 2 years ago - those who beta tested it will remember it with some fondness. This ability to synchronise favourites and thereby provide a compelling user experience with Internet Explorer 8, is something that Mary Jo Foley keeps referring to. She did so again today, quoting one of the “Big Bets” made by Chris Jones in a certain Wave 3 planning memo:

“Our experiences will be designed so when they are connected to Windows 7 they seamlessly extend the Windows experience, and we will work to follow the Windows 7 style guidelines for applications.  We will work with the Internet Explorer 8 team to make sure we deliver an experience that seamlessly extends the browser with our toolbar and other offerings.Search and MSN.”

Lets not get ahead of ourselves here, we don’t even have the favourites synching yet, but the ability to synchronise RSS feeds from the Windows feedstore to Skydrive is something that definitely appeals.

The move to Skydrive is a welcome update, and potentially offers the ability to share bookmarks with your friends and thereby allow other users to comment on them. At the moment though, its all privately stored, with the comment form rendered somewhat useless for the time being. The old/existing stand-alone service has a top-favourite and also sharing options, suggesting that this move is less about developing the service, and more about taking Windows Live Favourites to a mainstream audience as part of Skydrive.

Make Skydrive the one-stop shop for sharing with your friends, and then there is less user confusion around which service to use. This makes sense when you consider that Skydrive could be used to share more than just files and favourites; photos as well, maybe even videos? Following the closure of Expo, we like the idea of deadpooling Favourites as a separate service -  Mini-MSFT be proud!

(Note: We don’t fully understand either why Microsoft is putting so much time into Skydrive given the huge potential of Mesh as a platform, beyond the fact that Skydrive is a short-term solution for now, and Mesh has a much longer timeframe for development. That said, hopefully somebody will start clarifying these differences – why build 2 products that do the same thing?)