Microsoft Office Outlook Connector 12.1 out of beta
Microsoft Office Outook Connector 12.1 is finally out of beta and is available for download here though it’s also available in the Windows Live essentials pack
With Microsoft Office Outlook Connector, you can use Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 or Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to access and manage your Microsoft Windows Live Hotmail or Microsoft Office Live Mail accounts, including e-mail messages, contacts and calendars for free!
Outlook Connector enables you to use your Live Hotmail accounts within Outlook:
- Read and send your Office Live Mail/Windows Live Hotmail e-mail messages.
- Manage your contacts in Windows Live Hotmail.
- Use advanced options for blocking junk e-mail messages.
- Manage multiple e-mail accounts in one place.
- Manage, and synchronize multiple calendars, including shared calendars to Windows Live Calendar from Outlook.
Note to Premium Subscribers:If you are currently using MSN Calendar service, the Outlook Connector 12.1 will automatically migrate your calendar to the new Windows Live Calendar service. Once upgraded to Windows Live Calendar, you will be able to synchronize multiple calendars, including shared calendars to Outlook! However you will no longer be able to access MSN Calendar through Microsoft Office Outlook.
In order to make sure that all of your calendar items on the MSN Calendar service are correctly migrated to the Windows Live Calendar, you should follow these steps:
- With Outlook Connector 12.0 installed, synchronize your calendar in Microsoft Office Outlook with the MSN Calendar service one last time.
- After synchronization is complete, do not create new items on the MSN Calendar site. If you do, you will have to synchronize again using Outlook Connector 12.0 before migrating to Outlook Connector 12.1.
- Install Outlook Connector 12.1.
- Start Outlook. At this point, the Outlook Connector 12.1 will upload all of your appointments and meetings to your new Windows Live Calendar.
Live Search testing another web crawler
Live Search is committed to continuing to improve how we discover and crawl your content. In the coming weeks, we will be testing an update to MSNBot, which may show up as a new crawler name in your referrer logs. The new crawler user agent string will appear as:
msnbot/2.0b (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)
You’ll still see the current version msnbot/1.1 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm) as Live Search’s primary user agent. We intend to ensure that any robots exclusion protocol you are using is respected. As such, you don’t need to update your Robots.txt file. We plan on crawling at a slow speed during the tests with the updated version.
Source- Live search webmaster blog
Windows Live spaces Coming soon: cleaner, better looking spaces
As promised last week, we’re going to talk in more detail about the exciting changes coming to Windows Live, and we figured we should start with the product you’re using right now, Windows Live Spaces.
More freedom to do what you want
Let’s start off with the most visible change: we’re removing the horizontal ad from your space!
Your space is all about your content, the way you want to show it, so we’re reducing the amount of clutter and giving you more freedom by:
- Removing the horizontal ad from the top of your space
- Making all of the modules optional (even the Title and Tagline module, which previously couldn’t be removed)
- Using a simpler header that has less text than other pages in Windows Live
- Letting you change themes, fonts, colors, and background images on your space using the customize menu
- Letting you rename or not show the title of each module on your space by using the settings menu for each module in customize mode
- Letting you select exactly which photo albums to show in your photos module – you can even customize what parts of the photos interface to display
(These last three are features that we’ve already implemented and are available today in Spaces)
Better looking pages
We’re also making some additional small changes to make your space look even better. One of the things we’ve done is to improve the typography on your space by using a larger, more readable default font, Segoe UI. It’s a subtle change, but it really helps make your content easier to read.
We’re also doing a better job of differentiating titles from normal text by using different size text instead of relying on bold versus plain text. Of course, if you prefer the old font you can customize your space to use the old font (when we release the new update, we won’t override any font selections you’ve already made).
There’ll also be a couple of theme changes, mainly to the header and background images, that make things look a bit simpler, cleaner, and more attractive. The most obvious of these is that we’re getting rid of the 3D “bevel” in the header and moving to solid colors or unobstructed background images.
Don’t worry, these theme changes won’t break your layout or change the way your modules look – they’ll only affect the header and background images.
Improved blogging experience (especially with photos)
Blogging with photos will get even better with the next update. About a year ago we fixed the Add Photos button in blogs on Internet Explorer so your photos were inserted inline in your blog entry, which let you move them around, place them exactly where you wanted, and generally make your blog entries more attractive and appealing. With this release all browsers will be able to insert images inline, and you won’t need to install our upload tool in order to insert images. If you do install the tool, however, you’ll get a rich, drag and drop upload experience that makes inserting images from your computer, or from a photo album you already have on Windows Live, a snap.
Source- Windows Live Spaces Blog
New Mobile Search Release
Phil reports that the mobile search team has been working hard, getting ready for a new release of the browser service: http://m.live.com. This service works on every mobile phone that has a browser.
So what’s in this release?
- Optimized experience for the iPhone
- Product Search (US only), compare products and prizes on the go.
- Directions: besides driving directions there’s also walking directions (US, UK, France and Italy only at the moment)
- A more personalized mobile experience: save your frequently visited locations via ZIP codes. Quickly check out the weather, traffic or find which movie to see.
- xRank (US and China): check out the latest news, and pictures, about your favorite celebrity, politician or musician.
Source- Liveside
Sun Microsystems to Distribute Microsoft Live Search-Powered Toolbar as Part of Java Runtime Environment
Microsoft Corp. today announced a search distribution deal with Sun Microsystems Inc. to offer the MSN Toolbar, powered by Microsoft Live Search, to U.S.-based Internet Explorer users when they download the Java™ Runtime Environment (JRE™), effective as of today.
Through this agreement, Internet Explorer users downloading Sun’s JRE will have the option to download the MSN Toolbar and have one-click access to Live Search features, as well as news, entertainment, sports and more from the MSN network and direct access to Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger.
“This agreement with Sun Microsystems is another important milestone in our strategy to secure broad-scale distribution for our search offering, enabling millions more people to experience the benefits of Live Search,” said Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of the Online Audience Business at Microsoft. “With the vast array of Java software-based Web applications that are downloaded every month, this deal will expose Live Search to millions more Internet users and drive increased volume for our search advertisers.”
With more than 6.5 million Java software developers around the globe, Java is one of the most widely available and popular software platforms. It is already present on 91 percent of Internet-connected PCs worldwide. The Java Runtime Environment is one of the highest-volume consumer downloads on the Web, with tens of millions of downloads each month from http://java.com.
“With over 800 million Java desktop users around the world, our goal is to provide Java users with compelling and immersive business and consumer solutions powered by Java technology and value-added solutions from world-class software partners,” said Rich Green, executive vice president of Software at Sun Microsystems. “Our customers expect top-quality products when they choose to download technology from Sun, and we are confident that they will find great value in both Microsoft’s MSN toolbar and Live Search.”
Source- Microsoft Press Release
Microsoft Taps Multiply.com as New Home for MSN Groups
In a world dominated by Facebook and MySpace, one of the best kept secrets in social networking is Multiply.com. This fast growing little social network is about to make a whole lot of new friends.
Microsoft announced today that it will soon close down its 13 year old forum site MSN Groups and it’s encouraging its users to export their conversations over to its new official partner, Multiply. It’s a big win for one of the most solid social networks online.
Source-readwriteweb
Windows Live Groups appears on MS internal sites
I was just looking through some of the sites and finally saw this page-http://groups.live-int.com/ though earlier I had posted about it but their wasn’t any confirmation.This site is probably the Windows Live team’s internal site.
Though the site doesn’t have any graphics or so but it pretty much confirms that Windows Live Groups is coming. So probably it would replace the old MSN groups.
Here is what the page reads-
Get a group going on Windows Live
Bring your team, club, or any group of people together online.
Your group’s webpage
Create a custom webpage where everyone can see the latest group activities.
Easy planning
The shared calendar makes it easy to see who’s busy when, and plan your next group event.
Staying in touch
Share photos, start discussions, send e-mail, or IM with the whole group at once.
Update:We were able to signup and look deeply in the Windows Live Group
Just sign up here- https://signup.live-int.com/ (Windows Live Wave 3 looks indeed,and thing to note the usual Windows Live mail address does not work so you have to create a new one) if you are more eager to have a look at the Windows Live Groups page
After signing up just enter the following link http://groups.live-int.com/ and you would be taken to the page as shown below
After playing a bit more with the site we were able to reach the Groups creation page(though the link in the above image doesn’t work.Here is how the page looks
The create option wasn’t working so we weren’t able to go further but one thing to note they have added some new themes.
We would be posting more info whenever available
Windows Live Messenger release date confirmed
According to an email sent out tonight to users of MSN Direct Spot watches, which will not support the new Wave 3 version, Windows Live Messenger is set to be released on February 10, “2008” (sic). The email gives the correct start date for the beta (Sept 17, 2008). Of course it remains to be seen whether or not the release schedule is met, but this gives us some indication of the timetable for Wave 3 final releases.
Source- Liveside
