Microsoft Live Labs Introduces Photosynth, a Breakthrough Visual Medium
First there was the snapshot, and then came video. Now there is Microsoft Photosynth, a new service from Microsoft Live Labs that goes far beyond how you now view, experience and share photos.
You can share or relive a vacation destination or explore a distant museum or landmark; with a digital camera and your own creativity and inspiration, you can use Photosynth to transform regular digital photos into a three-dimensional, 360-degree experience. Anybody who sees your “synth” is put right in your shoes, sharing in the same sense of exhilaration and wonder that you did at the time, with detail, clarity and scope impossible to achieve in conventional photos or videos.
Following this release, the Photosynth team will join MSN — an important step in continuing to improve Photosynth and share the experience with an even wider audience. In addition to letting users create and share synths at http://photosynth.com, over the next year 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.
Source- Microsoft Press Release
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Microsoft previews 3G mobile video service for MSN Mobile
Building on our existing mobile portal the MSN Mobile team has been working hard to introduce our first mobile video service. Designed for 3G phones and 3G networks this service delivers consumer video via our MSN Video service to mobile phones. Available today in the US only this initial release is now in trial and available for use by millions of our users.
Video content will be phased over time, with more added in the coming weeks. Initially today or pretty soon you should be able to see content from MSNBC News, FOX Sports, Dilbert, New Yorker, Dish Diva celebrity interviews, Dateline NBC, Today, Hardball, MSN Money, Stupid Videos, NBC Sports, MSN Autos and a wide range of movie trailers amongst others. During the launch of our trial there are over 2,000 videos available for previewing and more will be added on a weekly basis.
Source- Live with Phil
Important Update to My.Live.com
Exciting news today as we’re pleased to annouce the release of an important update to the My.Live.com personalized pages! The biggest change that everyone will notice is the new header, along with some slight usability changes, other improvements based on user feedback, support for both IE 8.0 and FireFox 3.0, and corrections to a handful of bug. Overall, we took time out of upcoming project to address a total of 74 changes and bug fixes.
Header Change
The new header provides a cleaner, more streamlined look to the page, along with links to Hotmail, Spaces, OneCare, and other MSN services, all from your My.Live.com homepage.
Additional Windows Live services are available by clicking on the Windows Live jewel:
Usability Improvements
Based on usability studies and feedback from you, we’ve added a confirmation prompt to prevent accidental deletions of gadgets and feeds, renamed "Add Stuff" to "Add Content" and increased the visibility of the link, changed "Edit" to "Customize" in the gadget chrome and added more space between the Customize link and the delete gadget "X" icon.
IE 8.0 and FireFox 3.0 Support
My.Live.com now supports the Beta for IE 8.0 and the final version of FF 3.0. Users will now be able to access their pages and feeds using these browsers.
Add Content Directory Updates
Check out the Add Content directory for new feeds and gadgets. The updates are part of our on-going effort to ensure quality content, provide better organization, eliminate dead feeds and redundancies.
New items include the full line-up of content from Xbox.com, selections from Office Online, MSN Video, WeatherBug, and more!
Minor Bugs and Glitches Fixed
As part of our switch to My.Live.com, embarrassingly, we forgot to change some of the wording on the site to reflect our new name! That’s been fixed, along with some minor quarks and hiccups that have been reported.
Suggestions and Feedback Forum
Because you asked for it, we’ve created a My.Live.com Suggestions and Feedback forum on Microsoft.com Forums. This forum will provide users with a way to interact with our development team by telling us what you think, ask questions, and provide your suggestions for what you think will make My.Live.com better. Access the forum at http://forums.community.microsoft.com/en/MyLiveCom/threads/.
What’s Next?
We’ll start planning for our next update to My.Live.com, aiming for a minor update in the Fall. Right now, most of our time is being devoted to another project that we’ll have more information about in the coming months. Until then, we hope you like the changes, and look forward to reading your feedback in our new forum.
Source- live.com spaces
Visit NBCOlympics.com on MSN and Watch the Summer Games You Want, When You Want
NBCOlympics.com on MSN is the exclusive U.S. online destination for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. A number of Microsoft Corp. teams have worked together to create a rich and immersive experience for Olympic fans that enables them to watch the summer games they want, when they want. MSN, Silverlight, Windows Media Center, Zune and Xbox all provide unique options that let viewers experience the Olympics in a way they never have before.
What: Check out NBCOlympics.com on MSN and watch more than 3,500 hours of live and on-demand video that will let you experience the Games like never before. Now, you can conveniently watch the games you want, when you want whether you are at home, at work or on the go.
•MSN. NBCOlympics.com on MSN is the best destination to catch all the action with a 24×7 Olympics module on the MSN home page, complete with the latest news, live medal counts, statistics and videos that will make catching up on your favorite event or athlete quick and easy. Now, sports fans can keep the adrenaline pumping with non-stop action, news and videos on MSN.
•Silverlight. Silverlight 2 enables NBC to provide online viewers with Olympics content in a rich, interactive viewing experience that includes some of the highest-quality video on the Web today. Users can view up to four events at the same time with picture-in-picture controls, and customize the player to capture their favorite events. In addition, dynamic overlays will provide expert commentary, and users also will be able to access statistics, play-by-play captioning, and athlete profiles through Silverlight as they watch their favorite event.
•Windows Media Center. Olympic enthusiasts can take NBC’s coverage of Olympic events wherever they go with “NBC Olympics on the Go,” powered by Wavexpress’ TVTonic Internet video, a free service that allows sports fans to download NBC Olympics video of their favorite sports to their laptops in up-to-high-definition quality. Fans who are looking for the highlights from Beijing will be able to download these videos through “NBC Direct.”
•Xbox. During the Olympics, users will have access to a daily wrap-up of the day’s events from NBC Sports. Wrap-up content will be priced at $1.99 under the NBC Network, with a complete Olympic wrap-up available at the end of the Games.
•Zune. On Aug. 8, Zune Marketplace will kick off a series of daily 2008 Olympic Games videos from NBC Sports, giving viewers special on-the-go access to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. For approximately 99 cents–$1.99 per episode (with post-Games content TBD), footage will include memorable highlights from the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, “best of” compilations, “best match” replays and a post-Games wrap-up feature. Users will be able to download each episode onto their Zune device for viewing whenever and wherever they go.
•Live Search. Live Search will provide an xRank of Olympic athletes showing which athletes are being searched for the most on Live Search, who is on the rise and who is declining in search popularity. It will also provide detailed “instant answers” on Olympics-specific search queries performed at Live.com or via Web search on NBCOlympics.com on MSN. Queries to try include an athlete’s name or “Olympic medals,” or medals for <country> and/or <sport> e.g., “Medals for USA” or “USA medals for swimming.”
Source- Microsoft Press Release
MSN UK Launches WALL•E Portal
For fans of the Disney blockbuster, WALL•E, you have to go check out MSN UK’s new WALL•E portal. This site has a lot of downloads and other goodies for Windows Live, including Messenger Packs, Display Pictures, and Backgrounds for Windows Live Messenger as well as desktop wallpapers for your PC. You can also download an animated signature which you can use either in your email or as your forum signature. To get access to these free downloads, just visit the portal here: wall-e.msn.co.uk.
Source- Channel 10
Microsoft and NBC Deliver Groundbreaking Online Olympics Viewing Experience
Earlier this year Microsoft and NBC Universal announced plans to make NBCOlympics.com on MSN the official online home of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. The partnership is expected to result in the largest online broadcasting event in history, offering viewers a new level of choice and flexibility in Olympics coverage.
To get the story behind how Microsoft and NBC are working together, what advantages viewers will experience from this partnership, and an innovative new Web application developed for the event based on Microsoft Silverlight 2, PressPass recently spoke with Erik Jorgensen, corporate vice president of MSN, Perkins Miller, senior vice president of digital media for NBC Universal Sports & Olympics, and Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft.
Source- Microsoft Press Release
Demo: Instant Search in Windows Vista
A lot of times when the Product Team is showing off Windows Vista, the crowd is pretty impressed by all of the useful features we built into the OS. Most of these are things that will make day-to-day work quicker or easier - especially for those of us office drones. But many of our users just don’t know they exist. So we figured, why not show you some of our favorite features?
Over the next week or so, our own Esther Choi from Windows Vista Product Management will be hosting a series of short videos that don’t just cover what these features are, but also how and when to use them. We hope to make videos from the Windows Vista Product Management Team a regular thing, so let us know what you think by leaving a comment…and what you want to hear more about!
Today we’re kicking off with Instant Search, which is really cool in Windows Vista. Finding stuff can be a big pain, but the search capabilities built directly into the OS help me locate the documents, music files, photos, emails and whatever else you’re looking for quickly.
Video: Windows Vista Demo: Instant Search
Source- Windows Vista Blog
MSN Direct Enables Web Sites to Deliver Location Information to GPS Navigation Devices
Today Microsoft Corp. released an open application programming interface (API) for the MSN Direct Send to GPS feature for navigation devices. This allows any Web site to offer visitors the ability to send addresses, business listings, or other locations directly from the site to their GPS unit, eliminating the cumbersome step of re-entering or searching for the same information on their navigation device.
The API is an extension of the MSN Direct feature initially launched at International CES earlier this year. With this updated version, MSN Direct allows any Web site to send location information to navigation devices either wirelessly or via a USB connection. The wireless delivery is compatible with MSN Direct-enabled devices that have the Send to GPS feature, including several units from Garmin Ltd. such as the nüvi 780 and nüvi 880, along with nüvi 5000, nüvi 750, nüvi 760, or nüvi 2×5 series devices with the optional MSN Direct receiver. USB delivery is also compatible with the vast majority of remaining Garmin navigators.
“MSN Direct opens up opportunities for Web sites in a variety of areas — real estate, travel, event planning and food service — to make it fast and simple for visitors to have access to turn-by-turn directions on their navigation device,” said Joe Coco, product unit manager of the MSN Direct initiative at Microsoft. “MSN Direct helps consumers get the most out of their navigation device, while also helping businesses drive more customers to their locations.”
A number of MSN Direct partners, including Garmin and Alpine Electronics Inc., plan to ship or are already shipping GPS products that are compatible with the MSN Direct Send to GPS feature.
“As more and more consumers are using their PC to locate their desired destinations and then needing to find those exact locations on their GPS device, MSN Direct is making that process easier for our customers,” said Roger Jollis, Garmin’s director of OEM and mobile marketing. “Garmin was the first to offer MSN Direct on an automotive GPS, and we are pleased with MSN Direct’s newest innovation because it will be very helpful to our customers.”
For developers, the API is free, simple to integrate and uses standard Web programming techniques. In addition to latitude and longitude, Web sites can send a phone number, address, and other information. Developers can go to www.msndirect.com/developer for more information.
Source- Microsoft Press Release
