Hotmail Reviewed

Hotmail Reviewed: "

Nice review of the upcoming new Hotmail by Slate’s Farhad Manjoo.

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New Bing feature: website thumbnails?

New Bing feature: website thumbnails?: "

LiveSide reader Alber1690 came across an interesting find within Bing search results today (thanks for the tip!): a thumbnail view of the FAA site he was searching for (mouse over the right edge of the first result to see the pop up):

While this seems to be a nice little addition, we’re not sure whether this is an update rolling out, or just a test. Alber1690 wasn’t able to find any other sites that exhibited this behavior, have you noticed it?

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Windows Live Groups Wave 4 to get group collaboration features

Windows Live Groups Wave 4 to get group collaboration features: "

With the release of Windows Live Wave 4 imminent, Picturepan2 from LiveSino.net has provided us with some exclusive screenshots of Windows Live Groups Wave 4. We’ve previously mentioned that Windows Live Group is changing its focus to be the place where you collaborate and share documents. While Microsoft gears up the new Windows Live Office in its Wave 4 release, they are also bringing Office Web Apps to Windows Live Groups. When you first login or create a new Group, this is what you will see:

Notice that in the centre it reads “A Microsoft OneNote notebook is a great way to collaborate with your group online.” This is a brand new feature in Windows Live Groups which allows people in your group to collaborate together and work on the same “OneNote notebook”. Although it does seem like Windows Live Groups only supports collaboration in OneNote Web App at the moment, although it doesn’t stop you from sharing your Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents for collaboration with your Group members:

What’s also new in Groups is the ability to pin your notebooks to the “Recent” menu on the left, as well as the ability to view group e-mail history. In addition, Windows Live Groups now supports up to 40 people for Messenger Group conversations. Quite impressive!

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Windows 7 RTM Download Manager

Windows 7 RTM Download Manager: "

A free download manager designed to integrate seamlessly with Windows 7 is now available from Microsoft. Dubbed the Microsoft Download Manager, the utility is designed, as the label implies, to help users administer their downloads beyond the boundaries of the browser.
More often than not, downloading very large files can be problematic, especially in the [...]



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HP: no webOS netbooks, HP Slate due October 2010

HP: no webOS netbooks, HP Slate due October 2010: "

HP’s confirmation that it would be putting webOS into tablets and even printers was happily received, but anyone looking forward to a webOS-based netbook should think again. According to Monty Wong, vice president of the personal computing systems group at HP Taiwan, netbooks are too like mainstream computers to make them appropriate for webOS, and as such the company has no plans to develop them. Meanwhile he also had some news on the HP Slate.

Wong says that the HP Slate – DigiTimes have capitalised the name, which leads us to presume they (and the HP VP) are referring to the original Windows 7 based tablet, rather than a webOS based machine – will arrive on the market by the end of October 2010. He’s also predicting a “wide range of software and application support” in time for that launch.

It was rumored that the Windows 7 tablet project had been put on hold while HP rushed a webOS slate onto the market, considering the mobile OS a better challenge to Apple’s iPad. No word, meanwhile, on when we might expect to see webOS devices with the HP logo; Wong says the company will release more details after the Palm acquisition is finalized, expected to take place by the end of July 2010.

---

Relevant Entries on SlashGear

• HP Windows 7 Tablet Gets Canceled, We Hope for webOS Tablet Instead
• HP webOS “Hurricane” slate tipped with ambitious release rumors
• HP Hurricane webOS tablet leaks continue
• Courier and Slate may be dead, but the Hanvon B10 and F10 live
• Palm webOS development goes public; France’s SFR getting Pre

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Microsoft vs. Google: Kickin' It in the Cloud

Microsoft vs. Google: Kickin' It in the Cloud: "Did you really believe that Google was a cloud computing powerhouse? Think again: Google makes money on ads, sure, but it can't compete with Microsoft in the cloud computing markets that really matter."

Windows Home Server Vail

Windows Home Server Vail: "Recently the Windows Home Server team announced the beta of their next version of Home Server, codenamed Vail. This release tightens up the way you interact with Home Server. Jonas Svensson, Program Manager on Home Server Vail stopped by to show us a peek at this new release. The big features for this release include the ability to stream your media outside of your house, simplified setup, and expanded development tools.



Soon I'll be getting together with the Home Server team to talk about the Vail SDK, so if you have any questions that you'd like me to ask, add them below.



Sign up now for the Vail beta at http://connect.microsoft.com/windowshomeserver "

IE9 will support now-released, open-source VP8 video codec

IE9 will support now-released, open-source VP8 video codec: "Three weeks ago, Microsoft said Internet Explorer 9 would be supporting just one codec for HTML5 video. Apparently not, because on Wednesday Microsoft said IE9 will support another."

Hotmail: The Next Generation

Hotmail: The Next Generation: "The Windows Live team previewed the next version of Hotmail Monday. This release has a foundation on saving time. Attachments, for example, often take you away from your inbox, they require you to wait for a new application or new window to open, one at a time. Hotmail will allow you to see a Silverlight Gallery of attached images or even linked images from Flickr and SmugMug. They have made it possible to send up to 200 photos @ 50MB each in a single email using Windows Live SkyDrive. Hotmail will open Office attachments using the new Office Web Apps right in your inbox, and even links to Hulu and YouTube will play within the email.



Another new feature is the ability to sweep your email removing unwanted mail. This goes beyond spam and into 'graymail', which is mail that you requested, but you really don't care about. You can also sweep you Gmail and Yahoo! mail accounts.



There are many more features, be sure to check out the Windows Team Blog for more. Our good mate Nic Fillingham will be connecting with the Windows Live team when they get back for a video, so if you have questions please leave them here."

Windows PowerShell Quick Reference

Windows PowerShell Quick Reference: "

An updated version of Windows PowerShell Quick Reference is now available for download from Microsoft, having been released the past month. Live on the Microsoft Download Center since April 20th, 2010, the Windows PowerShell Quick Reference is, as the name implies, a free resource offered by the Redmond company to simplify the work of IT [...]



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IE9 Platform Preview 3 Comes with HTML5

IE9 Platform Preview 3 Comes with HTML5: "

In the week that preceded the launch of Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview 2, Dean Hachamovitch, Internet Explorer general manager, started a very interesting discussion about video codecs for HTML5 in the context of IE8’s successor. However, version 1.9.7.7.66.6000 of Windows Internet Explorer Platform Preview doesn’t feature support for HTML5 < video > just yet.
The [...]



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Office 2010 RTM Filter Packs for Windows 7

Office 2010 RTM Filter Packs for Windows 7: "

A small utility offered for free by Microsoft could prove immensely helpful in scenarios in which users are searching for information inside Office documents on certain platforms. The Office 2010 Filter Packs went live on the Microsoft Download Center last week, and are currently up for grabs, enabling customers to enhance the default search capabilities [...]



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Webmail: Is It Ever Too Late to Switch?

Webmail: Is It Ever Too Late to Switch?: "

The upcoming Hotmail upgrade looks like it’ll be the first Web-based mail client since Yahoo’s 2005 makeover with enough tangible benefits to make the idea of switching from another service worth contemplating, at least. Which got me to thinking: Do very many people really jump from one Webmail client to another these days?

Hotmail uses technology from TrueSwitch to import mail and contacts, so it should be possible for a Gmail user (for instance) to transition to Hotmail without too much in the way of technical challenges. Or you can use techniques such as POP access or forwarding to get e-mail from your old service into Hotmail without having to give up the old address.

But switching e-mail providers isn’t just about technology. Once you’re comfortable with one service, you can get really comfortable–even if another service offers features you’d benefit from. And the new Hotmail presents a particularly interesting dilemma: It’s got a bunch of worthwhile tools not present in Gmail…but lacks some of Gmail’s handiest features, too, such as one-click archiving of messages.

Then there’s the whole issue of the domain that sits at the end of your e-mail address. There was a time–it was way back in the 1990s–when a Hotmail e-mail address was kind of hip. Today? It’s decidedly downmarket, although perhaps the quality of the new version will help its reputation.

Me, I like the virtues of Web-based mail, but I’m not crazy about tying my online identity to any Webmail company. So for several years, I’ve used an address at harrymccracken.com for personal stuff and one at technologizer.com for work. The first one just gets forwarded to Gmail, so I could simply redirect it to a Hotmail account without much fuss. But my work account takes advantage of Google Apps’ ability to give you Gmail for your own domain–a feature that the more totally consumer-focused Hotmail lack.

And just to complicate matters further, I’ve been spending most of my time lately in the e-mail/social network aggregator Threadsy. Judged purely as an e-mail client, it’s far more basic than Gmail and Hotmail, but I like the way it weaves multiple e-mail accounts, Facebook, and Twitter together.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying that I remain intrigued by the Hotmail upgrade, but don’t have any immediate plans to pull up stakes and make it my primary e-mail provider.

And here’s a silly little poll:

View This Poll
Market Research

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Why Phaeton Automotive Chose Exchange 2010 - After Going Google

Why Phaeton Automotive Chose Exchange 2010 - After Going Google: "

At EHLO, we love customer success stories about Exchange! How Exchange, Outlook and Office make users' lives better, improve productivity, and make work fun is what excites us. Today's post is the first in a series of customer testimonials we bring you to highlight what we're hearing about Exchange 2010 from our customers. In this post, Jonathan Pisarczyk shares his thoughts about why Phaeton Automotive chose Exchange 2010 and how that decision has changed his company.

Phaeton Automotive Group operates seven successful dealerships in southern Ontario, Canada. Having excellent customer service and being able to leverage technology were key differentiators for us.

Since we have multiple locations, our employees relied heavily on email for communication. We typically used our cell phones to check voice and email messages and we knew we needed a more streamlined approach for messaging that integrated both of these functions regardless of location.

We'd been using Google Apps to manage employee messaging and collaboration needs but wanted better security and privacy. Google Apps was inadequate in meeting business needs. It didn't allow single sign-on service, user migration and couldn't help us centrally manage multiple domains.

Ultimately we determined that an in-house messaging platform would be best suited to our needs and switched to Exchange 2010. It helped us reduce communication costs while allowing staff to be more productive. It also provided greater flexibility in the way we managed our messaging environment. For example, with just a few clicks, Outlook automatically sets up a new user in a matter of minutes. This type of automation has saved our IT department a significant amount of time.

In addition to greater efficiencies we also gained significant cost savings. When we replaced Google Apps with Exchange 2010, we saved the company $18,000. Employees can now receive their voice messages in their inboxes, and manage those voice messages just as they do e-mail with Outlook and Outlook Web Access.

The ability to have employees securely access all their communications - e-mail, voice mail, instant messaging - from their PC, phone or browser is a big advantage. Now, voice mail is delivered into users' mailboxes just like email, which enables staff to use Outlook Web Access on their laptops or Outlook Voice Access through their phone to listen to voice mail when they're not in the office.

Having Exchange 2010 has enabled our IT department to support more mission critical business functions with the certainty that our employees have the tools they need to be more successful.

"

Will the new Hotmail make Outlook obsolete for consumers?

Will the new Hotmail make Outlook obsolete for consumers?: "If browser-based Office Web Apps makes the desktop Office suite less necessary for average users, Microsoft's upcoming Hotmail update might do the same for Outlook."

The story behind success of Microsoft SharePoint

The story behind success of Microsoft SharePoint: "

This story ran in Monday's Seattle Times business section and I am reposting here for the Pri0 blog readers.

NEW YORK -- If Office was the Will Ferrell of the Microsoft launch event at the 'Saturday Night Live' studio last week, then SharePoint was its Tina Fey.

Microsoft debuted 2010 versions of both for business customers on Wednesday in New York.

Like Ferrell, Office 2010 and all its cowbells and whistles overshadowed just about everything else. The hype started a year ago, when Microsoft released a mock trailer called 'Office 2010: The Movie.'

SharePoint, like Fey, may not be an attention hog, but it deserves a show of its own.

The Web collaboration software has become the little code that could at Microsoft. SharePoint is now the product that's the fastest to reach $1 billion in sales in Microsoft's history.

Starbucks uses SharePoint to train baristas how to make peppermint Frappuccinos. Ferrari uses it to run its public website. Kraft Foods and its 77,000 users just signed up. One hundred million people use SharePoint, the company says.

'We've got everything from guys doing Velveeta to guys doing 599s [Ferrari GTOs],' said Jeff Teper, corporate vice president of the SharePoint business.

Its success has bred competition. SharePoint now faces threats from upstarts Google and Salesforce.com.

Organizational tool

SharePoint is a set of software that helps people in an organization to work together via the Web. Companies use it to build and run internal websites, also known as intranets, for departments, project teams, the whole company and individual employees.

SharePoint sites makes Word, Excel and PowerPoint files shareable so different people can edit them. It also has a search engine that combs through documents and websites in the corporate network.

'The goal was to create a productivity tool centered around the Web, deliver it at low cost and make it easy to use,' Teper said. An 18-year veteran at Microsoft, Teper previously worked on a similar product called Site Server. That failed to take off because it was too difficult to use, he said. He helped launch the first version of SharePoint in 2001.

Goldman Sachs analyst Sarah Friar said SharePoint solves a headache for many companies.

'If you talk to CIOs [chief information officers]: What is your pain point? 'It's collaboration. People are coming to me constantly saying they want to collaborate better, more easily; they want to find data in a more structured fashion,' ' she said. 'SharePoint has created a great position for itself in being able to answer some of those pain points.'

Features added

Since the last release in 2007, SharePoint 2010 has added features for social networking, enterprise search and cloud computing.

The new SharePoint turns My Sites, a feature for individual employees to set up a personal website in a corporate network, into sites that look more like Facebook and LinkedIn. Workers can profess areas of expertise, update their status, follow each other, tag documents and even 'like' documents.

Windows Phone 7, the upcoming mobile-phone platform that's expected to start selling during the holidays, will have a mobile version of SharePoint 2010. The 2010 version of SharePoint has also been redesigned to include the ribbonlike toolbar that was added to Office 2007.

SharePoint's biggest competitor is IBM Lotus Notes. But other companies are launching products to both nibble away at and leapfrog past Microsoft.

Google offers Google Sites for companies to build internal websites as part of Google Apps for businesses. The search giant also built Google Buzz, a social network, into Gmail, but it drew heavy criticism over early privacy concerns.

Rival's testing

Salesforce.com is testing Chatter, a Facebook-like network for companies.

'The legacy of IBM Lotus Notes and Microsoft SharePoint is built around files and making file-sharing feasible across applications,' said Kendall Collins, chief marketing director of Salesforce.com. 'The fundamental question we started asking is, 'Why isn't enterprise software more like Facebook?' '

Chatter borrows the Facebook concepts of an individual persona and a feed. Workers can follow executives, as well as objects such as a sales deal, a price sheet or UPS shipment update. Salesforce.com expects to launch Chatter this year. The company said 500 companies are testing Chatter but has not said how many people are using it.

Kurt DelBene, senior vice president in the Microsoft Business Division, says while he does hear about Lotus Notes when he talks to customers, he doesn't hear much about Chatter.

'Socially networking strategies don't exist by themselves,' he said. 'We have a lot of people saying, 'We know social networking is important. We expect you to include it as a part of Office,' ' rather than making a separate product.

Enterasys Networks, a network and security subsidiary of Siemens in Andover, Mass., has been testing Chatter and been surprised by how quickly employees have adopted it with very little training.

'A lot of our senior executives have been using Chatter. It's really very viral,' said Benjamin Doyle, director of IT applications.

'It actually caused a problem for me because we've been very happy SharePoint users and very happy Salesforce users. There's an emerging battleground. We now have to assess whether an application or capability we're building makes more sense in SharePoint or in Salesforce.'

Company investment

Del Monte, which just signed a three-year agreement with Microsoft for its 3,000 employees in San Francisco, said it has too much invested in SharePoint to consider moving to a competitor.

The company is now on its third upgrade of SharePoint, which it uses to run internal department and project websites and share files within the company.

'It would be difficult [to switch] because of the full and complete integration with Visio and Office,' said David Glenn, director of enterprise operations with the food company. 'It's that look and feel' between SharePoint, Office and visualization software Visio that makes the Microsoft universe sticky.

Goldman Sachs' Friar said that SharePoint has a great position now. The problem is whether it can stay ahead.

'Things like Facebook and LinkedIn are taking over where SharePoint leaves off. I would worry [that] Microsoft gets left behind if they don't move quickly to embrace social media as well,' she said.

'They're trusted by enterprises, but upstarts like a Salesforce.com with Chatter can quickly come along and usurp them because they're not cool on the bleeding edge. Microsoft is always a bit slower.'

"

Caption contest: Windows 7-themed restaurant serves 64-bit grub in Taiwan

Caption contest: Windows 7-themed restaurant serves 64-bit grub in Taiwan: "

We (falsely) assumed that the Windows 7 Whopper would be the last food item ever associated with an operating system, and now we're quite literally eating our words. As the story goes, a Hot Fried 77 restaurant has opened up over in Taiwan, offering tons of 'Windows-themed meals' for NTD $77 (around $3 in Greenbacks), and judging by the cornucopia of images down there in the source, we're guessing this is no prank. We're debating whether laughing or crying is the appropriate emotion here.



Josh T.: 'While you're throwing .bak some fries and a burger, you should enjoy a .dll pickle.'

Nilay: 'This is not what we meant by Windows 7 Server.'

Chris: 'I'm a PC, and putting down a pint of Beast while installing Windows 7 was my idea.'

Richard Lai: 'This is the real Windows Genuine Advantage.'

Joe: 'We like to believe that Microsoft started with the restaurant and then reverse engineered an OS.'

Richard Lawler: 'Obviously, there's no word for Seagrams in their language.'

Darren: 'You haven't heard? Alcohol consumption by end-user is now listed in Minimum System Requirements.'

Josh F.: 'When reading 'serve it to us on a plate' in a literal sense goes horribly right.'

Joanna: 'Everything I come up with is just wrong.'

Don: 'Can you tell me where the XP Cafe is?'

Paul: 'Would you like that in 32-bit or 64-bit?'



[Thanks, Chris]

Caption contest: Windows 7-themed restaurant serves 64-bit grub in Taiwan originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 May 2010 12:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft and Citrix - Brad Anderson and Simon Crosby

Microsoft and Citrix - Brad Anderson and Simon Crosby: "

Last week Brad travelled to San Francisco, to guest speak at the annual Citrix conference ‘Synergy’. Here is an interview Brad did while there with Simon Crosby, CTO of Citrix.

Jeff Wettlaufer
Sr. Technical Product Manager
System Center

"