Live Search Maps Improves Internationally
Another big day for Virtual Earth in the portal space. Granted, it’s our own search portals but it’s great to see the platform getting more use and exposure worldwide. Live Search Maps China has expanded it’s offering (just in time for the Olympics). Live Search Maps Australia just launched (shortly after we added Bird’s Eye coverage for Australia).
The Live Search Maps China site (or DITU) has the following additions and improvements:
- Real-time Traffic in Beijing
- Send-to-Mobile for free for local search and transit routing result
- Transit data refresh for existing 11 cities including 3 new subway in Beijing (No.10, Airport and Olympic).
- Expanded coverage from 11 to 31 cities.
- Geocoding and Local Search
- Data refresh for existing 114 cities including Olympic Venues.
- Support city and county name geocoding for areas outside of 114-city coverage.
- Olympic query relevance improvement
- Local search category refinement
- Map refresh for 10 existing major cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou etc.
- Expanded tile coverage for 30 more cities, totally 289 cities now.
The Live Search Maps Australia site is new and includes data from Virtual Earth, NineMSN and Yellow (Pages). If you get redirected to Live Search Maps (US) you can access the Australian site via Ninemsn.com.au, click "maps" above the search box and search for an Australian city or place.
Source- MSDN blog
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Take the Energy Star Pledge!
MSN Green has signed up to be an official pledge driver for Energy Star to help fight global warming. “Change the World, Start with ENERGY STAR” is a national campaign encouraging all Americans to join with millions of others and take small, individual steps that make a big difference in the fight against global warming. We have an initial goal of 1,000 pledges. We’re promoting it on MSN Green, and would love to see Microsoft employees get involved as well. You can take the pledge and help us reach our goal here: http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?fuseaction=cal.showpledge&cpd_id=13379
Source- Microsoft Environment Blog
Network Monitor Beta
The networks monitoring team announcement the new beta of netmon. I use this tool frequently when troubleshooting dcrefresh issues and streaming problems that customers have. So when I saw the new beta, Just had to let you all know. Plus using the PID you can really identify the useful traffic!!!
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Network Monitor 3.2 Beta is available!
We are our proud and excited to announce the release of NM3.2 Beta, available at http://connect.microsoft.com. Please visit the Network Monitor Project on Microsoft Connect and download the Network Monitor 3.2 Beta. You can also view the FAQ from the home page for more information about the latest version.
Also remember that you can visit our blog for continued updates about using NM3 and network troubleshooting in general: http://blogs.technet.com/netmon.
What’s New since Network Monitor 3.1
- Process Tracking: View all the processes on your machine generating network traffic (process name and PID). Use the conversation tree to view frames associated with each process.
- Find conversations: Quickly isolate frames in the same network conversation. Isolate TCP streams, HTTP flows etc.
- PCAP capture file support*
- Capture engine re-architecture to improve capture rate in high-speed networks. NM 3.2 drops significantly fewer frames that NM 3.1
· Extensive parser set: Parsers for over 300 protocols! Parsers for the protocols covered by the Windows Open Protocol Specifications (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc216517.aspx).
· NM API: Create your own applications that capture, parser and analyze network traffic!
- Better parser management: By default only a subset of parsers are loaded. You can load the full parser set by changing the parser search order in Tools>Options>Parser
- Support for frame truncation. Go to Tools>Options and limit the number of bytes captured per frame to improve performance.
- More extensive documentation of the NPL which includes documentation on the new NMAPI. Access the documentation from Help > NPL and API Documentation
- Enhanced filtering on items within NPL while loops or arrays. You can specify an index into the array or while loop to filter on
- IA64 version now available.
- ContainsBin Plug-in: Search frames for arbitrary byte sequences or strings. For example, ContainsBin(FrameData, ASCII, "msn").
- More UI indications of conversation status, dropped frames and the number of frames in the capture buffer.
- . and more. See our Release Notes in the NM3.2 installation directory for a complete list of new features and known issues with the Beta.
- Source- Technet Blog
Network Monitor 3.2 Beta has released!!!
I’m excited to announce that the Network Monitor 3.2 Beta has released. There are some exiting new features listed below of which many I have already spoken about in this blog:
http://blogs.technet.com/netmon/archive/2007/12/28/santa-s-bag-was-full.aspx
One feature I didn’t mention is our new capture buffer to avoid dropping frames. After adding our drop frames counter, we found out under certain busy situations it would go above zero and we just couldn’t have that. We now buffer the frames before parsing and displaying them. While this does add some complexities to capturing, it insures that packets are more reliably captured which is obviously very important. I will blog about this feature specifically, but I wanted to call it out here.
Where are the bits?
As usual we are hosting our beta at http://connect.microsoft.com under the Network Monitor 3 Project. If you are already signed up, you should have it listed on the main page. If not, look for the project and join up with us to help us find bugs. There is also a web page forum front end to our newsgroup if you need to get support or ask general questions.
What’s New since Netmon 3.1
- Process Tracking: View all the processes on your machine generating network traffic (process name and PID). Use the conversation tree to view frames associated with each process.
- Find conversations: Quickly isolate frames in the same network conversation. Isolate TCP streams, HTTP flows etc.
- PCAP capture file support*
- Capture engine re-architecture to improve capture rate in high-speed networks. Network Monitor 3.2 drops significantly fewer frames that NM3.1
- Extensive parser set: Parsers for over 300 protocols! Parsers for the protocols covered by the Windows Open Protocol Specifications (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc216517.aspx).
- NM API: Create your own applications that capture, parser and analyze network traffic!
- Better parser management: By default only a subset of parsers are loaded. You can load the full parser set by changing the parser search order in Tools>Options>Parser
- Support for frame truncation. Go to Tools>Options and limit the number of bytes captured per frame to improve performance.
- More extensive documentation of the NPL which includes documentation on the new NMAPI. Access the documentation from Help > NPL and API Documentation
- Enhanced filtering on items within NPL while loops or arrays. You can specify an index into the array or while loop to filter on
- IA64 version now available.
- ContainsBin Plug-in: Search frames for arbitrary byte sequences or strings. For example, ContainsBin(FrameData, ASCII, “msn”).
- More UI indications of conversation status, dropped frames and the number of frames in the capture buffer.
- … and more. See our Release Notes in the NM3.2 installation directory for a complete list of new features and known issues with the Beta.
You’ll have to join Connect Site ID 216 before you can download it.
Source- Network Monitor Blog
Windows Live Writer Technical Preview Now Available for Download
Today the Windows Live Writer team released a Technical Preview of Windows Live Writer that includes new and improved features.
This release is largely about updates to the Writer SDK, which now includes hooks for pre- and post-publish events. These updates are still experimental and these APIs are not stable–we may make changes based on your feedback that break plug-ins that use these new methods. However, we’re really excited about the new set of scenarios have been unlocked and look forward to hearing feedback from all of you Writer plug-in developers out there.
For more details about the SDK, please see the blog post on Windows Live Dev.
New Features
You’ll also get an early look at some improvements and new features we’ve been working on:
Video and Image Publishing Enhancements
- Upload videos to Soapbox
- Image cropping and tilting
- Additional border styles
- Support for LightBox and other image previewing effects (like Slimbox, Smoothbox, and others)
- Support for centering images
Editing Enhancements
- Auto Linking
- Smart quotes/typographic characters
- Word count
UI Improvements
- Revised main toolbar
- Tabs for view switching
- Improved category control with search/filtering
Source- Windows Live Writer Blog
Microsoft Live Search Toolbar to Be Distributed on 2009 HP Consumer PCs
Microsoft Corp. today announced that it has won a key distribution deal with HP, the world’s largest PC manufacturer, to install a Live Search-enabled toolbar on all HP consumer PCs planned to ship in the United States and Canada, beginning in January 2009. As part of this deal, the default search engine setting in the browser on all HP consumer PCs will also be set to Microsoft Live Search.
“This agreement with HP is a strategic indicator of our increased focus on securing broad-scale distribution for Live Search,” said Kevin Johnson, president of the Platforms & Services Division at Microsoft. “This is the most significant distribution deal for Live Search that Microsoft has ever done, and we are very pleased to be partnering with HP to help bring Live Search to millions of consumers across North America.”
Microsoft is building a custom, Live Search-enabled toolbar for HP customers that takes advantage of the exceptional user experience capabilities of Microsoft Silverlight. The toolbar will provide HP with customization capabilities within the buttons on the toolbar, providing quick and easy access to a variety of online services and tools, such as Snapfish by HP, the company’s online photo service, and HP customer support.
“This agreement provides HP customers with an outstanding search product in Live Search, as well as a user-friendly, fully customizable way to access their favorite online services,” said Ulf Claesson, vice president of Worldwide Attach at HP. “Microsoft shares HP’s passion for delivering world-class technology to consumers in meaningful ways, and today’s announcement will help to provide an even more personal computing experience for HP customers.”
Source- Microsoft Press Release
Windows Live for Nokia now available in 33 different countries
We are continuing our work with Nokia and I’m pleased to announce that today we are making available the Windows Live services to an additional seven different countries for Nokia phone customers. The Windows Live for Nokia service provides Hotmail, Messenger, Live Contacts and Spaces access to our customers that use the popular S60 mobile phone range. The application is downloaded and installed on the device and once you sign in with your Live ID you have full access to your email, messenger, contacts, etc.
The service was first announced last August and was initially available in 11 different markets and on 5 different mobile S60 handsets. Last year we added an additional 15 new markets while adding a few new handsets. Now today we are adding an additional 7 different markets for a total of 33. On the device side we now support 16 different S60 handset models. As before, the service initially will be a free trial and at some stage we will turn on billing, dates pending.
The new markets being announced today are Hungary, Iceland, India, Israel, Poland, Romania and the USA. This add to the existing list of Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Thailand, UAE, UK and Vietnam
In terms of handsets the following S60 handsets are compatible with Windows Live for Nokia today - the Nokia N73, N80 Internet Edition, N95, N95 8GB, N76, N81, N82, N93i, E90, E65, E61i, E51, 6120*, 5700*, 6110*
* Note that users with these handsets must first download a software pack at www.nokia.com/windowslive
Source- Phil’s blog
Microsoft PDC 2008 is coming!
PDC 2008 registrations are now open.You could expect a lot of fantastic announcements this year about Windows 7, Windows Mobile, Silverlight, Live Mesh…
Topics include software + services, Windows 7, a deep dive on Silverlight graphics pipelines, Windows Mobile, extensible BitmapEffects and Pixel Shaders in WPF, how we use Team Foundation Server for our huge Microsoft projects, a new technology that makes it easy to build business applications in Silverlight, how to develop for Live Mesh, and more.Show your PDC2008 spirit! Grab some of the blog bling and wallpaper.
Dates of the conference are: 27-30 October 2008
Pre-conference on 26 October 2008
Just register now for the conference and save $200
More info about PDC 2008 can be found here: http://www.microsoftpdc.com or you can take a look at Mike’s Blog
