An Update on Messenger for Mac
I wanted to take a moment and share with you the progress we are making with Messenger for Mac. This year we successfully delivered Audio and Video (A/V) support in the corporate service (works with Office Communications Server) of Messenger for Mac 7. We are now on the path to implement A/V support in the personal service (which will work with Windows Live service), and uses the same protocol as the corporate service.
I’m glad to say that the upcoming release of Windows Live Messenger, currently in beta, delivers the new A/V protocol that enables us to deliver A/V support in Messenger for Mac. It is cross-platform compatible and will work with Windows Live Messenger. This is a huge milestone that will enable us to continue moving forward with Messenger for Mac development.
We are very excited to be able to bring A/V support to the personal service. Our plan is to deliver a beta version of A/V in 2009. We are also working on additional features in both the personal and corporate service of Messenger for Mac for the next version of Messenger. We’ll provide more updates and details in a future blog post.
Source- MAC Mojo
Windows Live Messenger for Facebook Localized to 19 New Languages
Windows Live Messenger is a service used across the globe. Part of being an international service is supporting languages around the world.
We have updated the Messenger App for Facebook to support all languages that both Facebook and Windows Live support.
That is a total of 20 languages, including English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Traditional Chinese, Portuguese (Brazilian), Spanish, Swedish, Italian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, Czech, Simplified Chinese, Russian, Turkish, Polish and Catalan. As always, keep your feedback coming!
Source- MSDN Blog
New language pair on MicrosoftTranslator.com
The Translator team is excited to announce the availability of the English to Russian language pair on MicrosoftTranslator.com. This language pair is now available across all implementations of the translator technology, including Live Search and (in the next few days) the Windows Live Messenger TBot.
You have probably noticed that the Russian to English language pair has been available for some time on our site. As always, translation quality is a top focus for our team. Sometimes reaching quality takes longer for a particular direction – this can be for many reasons. For example, if you are translating between a simple language and a complex language, the translations will be better going to the simple language than they will be going to the complex language. If you are interested in learning more about the technology behind our machine translation engine, see Will Lewis’ blog post on statistical machine translation.
While machine translation is certainly never perfect, for this new language pair we have now hit our quality bar for release. How do we determine the quality bar? In general, when the translation can be considered “useful”. We consistently receive feedback from our users that imperfect translation which is useful is better than no translation. So we have to balance user demand with translation quality. With that in mind, we test our language pairs with human evaluations, until we have reached “useful” translation.
We are always open to your constructive feedback and help – please continue to help us so that we can keep improving quality! We are always very grateful for good feedback.
Some other updates in this release you may notice:
· We have officially migrated our domain to www.microsofttranslator.com
· Improved quality across several language pairs, due to improvements in training data quality
· Improvements in Japanese to English, due to an improved method of parsing the training data
Source- MSR-MT team Blog
Microsoft LifeCams and Windows Live Messenger: The Perfect Holiday Side Dishes
With holiday-related travel costs already up 25 percent over last year,1 people are looking for alternative ways to connect with distant loved ones this holiday season. When it’s not possible to attend that family gathering in person, Microsoft LifeCams offer an easy, fun and affordable way for people to connect with friends and family all over the world — with high-quality video, crystal-clear audio and versatile designs. When users pair a LifeCam with the latest version of Windows Live Messenger, they can now experience a higher-quality video call with full-screen VGA video for clearer, sharper video.
LifeCams and Windows Live Messenger: The Price Is Right
An online survey from Zoomerang found that many people are cutting back their travel this year — in fact, almost half say the weakened U.S. economy will have an impact on their holiday travel plans.2 Now connecting across the miles with video calling is better than ever when LifeCams are paired with the new Windows Live Messenger. Users will experience true VGA video (640×480) at up to four times better resolution than the current solution in Windows Live Messenger when they switch to full screen, as well as faster connection time to initiate a video call and a new attractive user interface. Users will need a Microsoft LifeCam, the latest version of Windows Live Messenger, and a PC with a dual core processor and broadband Internet connection to experience a true VGA video call.
Microsoft Corp. offers a full line of webcams that deliver high-quality video calls at varying price points to fit consumers’ budgets, including the two newest Microsoft webcams to hit the market, LifeCam Show and LifeCam VX-5500.
Source- Microsoft Press Release
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
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
Media Center Gadgets for Windows SideShow Release Candidate announced!
Just got the mail from the Windows Sideshow team that have released the RC version of Media Center gadgets for Windows Sideshow has been released.
Here is what the mail reads-
Download the Release Candidate build of the Windows Media Center Gadgets for Windows SideShow here:
(download links removed, you would be only able to download only if you were approved earlier to test the product)
Please install this build and provide feedback. The final release will be posted to the Windows Live Gallery in the near future.
While you are there, check out some of the great new gadgets that have been uploaded including Remotebook (for Facebook), AccuWeather, Twitter, System Health and Windows Live Messenger (all available in 9 languages)!
Support for Media Center Extenders:
Extenders are now supported if you are using a SideShow device that can pre-enable the gadgets. The Ricavision Vave100 remote control is an example of a device that pre-enables the Media Center gadgets.
Try this with your Xbox 360 or other extender device and provide us with any feedback. Additional instructions have been added to the Installation Instructions page about using the gadgets with an extender.
Connect Site Links:
Installation Instructions
Gadget general information and known issues
Send Feedback
Want to write your own Gadget in Managed Code? It’s easy!
You can download and install our easy to use SDK, which includes templates for a gadget that integrate with Visual Studio (2005/2008 including express editions). You can build and run the template Gadget right out of the box giving you an easy place to start to tailor your own gadget. Download this today from Microsoft Download Center:
Windows SideShow Managed API 1.0 SDK
Have a Windows Mobile 5 or 6 phone?
Download and install Windows SideShow for Windows Mobile Developer Preview
Your feedback has greatly increased the quality of this release! Thank you so very much from our entire team for taking part in the Windows Media Center Gadgets for Windows SideShow Beta.
Thank you!
The Windows SideShow team
Translation powered by….Microsoft Translator!
Our team is celebrating a major milestone today - last week we successfully transitioned all of our translation services to technology developed right here in Microsoft Research!
As some of you may have noticed, up until last week, some of our languages were still supported by a third party technology for general domain requests. Here’s the summary of what this release means:
- Translation now fully powered by the Microsoft Translator technology is available through Live Search, as well as IE8, the Windows Live Toolbar, and Windows Live Messenger.
- All translation pairs on the site (11 English-X, 12 X-English) are powered by Microsoft Research-developed systems.
- Two transliteration pairs (chs<->cht), courtesy of the Windows International team.
- For several languages, better language quality.
- And finally, the release of TBot, a translation bot for Windows Live Messenger.
This release is the combination of all the effort that the team has put into machine translation, not only over the past months, but literally over the past years.
Source- MSDN Blog
