Windows Live Chronicles

I’m happy to announce the launch of our Canadian version of the new Sympatico / MSN Toolbar today.    This is a new toolbar that the dev team help to build from scratch: it combines great content from our portal with our rich search experience and showcase our exciting Silver Light technology.

http://toolbar.msn.com/overview.aspx?loc=en-ca

http://toolbar.msn.com/overview.aspx?loc=fr-ca

http://blogs.msdn.com/officeoffline/

As I’m sure you know, Microsoft’s fiscal year starts in July and what that means is that we’ve to start our planning, budget allocation, marketing campaign planning, product investigation before July comes.  From a strategic perspective it seems fun and entertaining that we got to see and learn on all the new products coming down, all the positioning and messaging and plan out the local execution, but seriously, from an execution perspective it’s tons of work and coordination and it’s no fun.

While I’m glad that it’s all done, I just want to share a set of comic strips that I came across accidentally…  OfficeOffline.

My favourite is this..

And this…

Today, SkyDrive is now live in 24 additional locations, bringing our grand total to 62 countries and regions!

We welcome new users in Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Thailand, Ukraine, and Venezuela.

Updates with this release>

· Comments. You can leave comments on any file in SkyDrive and see all of the recent comments people have left for you.

· Captions. A picture's worth a thousand words, but sometimes you need a few more. Now you can add captions and descriptions to your files and photos

· Browsing widget.  When you click on any file, you can speed through all the files in the folder:

· Larger photo previews - we've made the photo previews even bigger.

· This release also has some other features like Details view and Photo Thumbnails view incorporated from the other teams, plus more bug fixes. So spread the good news to your family and friends. 

Thanks to the work of the Live Search Selection Team we now have full access to all the Fodor’s Travel Guides through our Book Search & new Travel Instant Answer.

Fodor’s books are now available in the Live Book Search.  There are approximately 120 titles in the series, covering most high-interest destinations.

- Tx, Maggie, Product Manager, Windows Live

So, where are you heading next? :)

http://www.live.com

This update is mainly a UI change.  Features are reorganized to enhance usability and at the same time, I notice a quite dramatic improvement in PLT1/2 load times.. maybe it's my perception :)?

I'll edit this post if I get more update from the search team,

virtualawrence, thanks for the reminder and I owe you one:)  I actually missed a few updates/announcements on the Live Maps front as I was swarmed by the signinandwin campaign.  My apologies to Maggie, PM for Maps, who has been feeding me updates continually. 

April 1st - Wordpress plug-in to Virtual Earth (yes I've been missing updates for Maps THAT far)

I’m very excited to announce a new plug-in for Wordpress blog sites which allow bloggers to insert Virtual Earth maps inside a Wordpress Blog (Beta).

This plug-in is compatible with Windows Live Writer (when you use Writer to insert a post in Wordpress) , it’s mean when you insert a maps from Writer to a Wordpress post, the plug-in become the maps to a Virtual Earth Map instead of a static picture.

You can download plug-in from :

www.vivelive.com/wordpress/wp_livemaps_2_11_2_3.zip

www.vivelive.com/wordpress/wp_livemaps_2_5.zip  (wordpress new version)

-  Juan Antonio Roncero Martín - LIVE product Manager | Microsoft Spain

April 23rd  - Bird Eye View Launched!

Our Local experience on Live Maps has just launched today,  when you go to Live Maps and do a business search – click on any results and you’ll see the new Local Search experience.  This is a pretty cool user experience and we are now able to give user more in depth information about the business that they are searching for.  Feel free to try it out and let me know if there is any question!

An example:

http://maps.live.com/localsearch/Default.aspx?what=pizza&where=Toronto%2C%20Ontario%2C%20Canada&mkt=en-ca&FORM=LLDP

As a separate note – the long waited Bird’s Eye imagery is also launched.  !reas included are ~

Canada:

Calgary, Toronto, Montreal, Victoria, Edmonton,Vancouver.

- Maggie, Windows Live Product Manager, Canada

I’m pleased to announce that the WL platform team has just released another application to help our users communicate in the online world.  This latest release is a instant messaging application on Facebook that leverage our Windows Live Messenger IM Control SDK.  All Facebook users could take advantage of this Microsoft branded application for free today, allowing them to connect with their Facebook friends on Windows Live Messenger. 

How does this work?

After you add the application to your facebook profile, you will see the following on your profile page.  When your friends go into your facebook profile, they could start an IM conversation with you by simply clicking onto the chat window, sign in using their WL ID, and their message will be delivered to your actual messenger client. 

Communication is limited between the two parties within the session and other people who visit chris’s profile would not be able to see our chat history.  Conversation is limited to text-only and no emoticons, no video, nor any other interactions such as winks, games, etc.  As you can see below as well, you’ll be able to add the profile owner to you Windows Live Messenger contact list directly from the app. 

Add it today! Be a fan! Spread the words! Start IM-ing!

These days have been crazy for me.  I just finished my master degree, began our 2009 planning process, finishing up on the sign in and win promos, prepping for energizeIT...  anyway, I'm glad that the first post after a month is to announce the 1st set of winners for signinandwin.

The bad thing about contest is that it's very hard to find the right person to claim the prize!  Call them up, get them to believe in you that it is not a scam, get them to sign the contest release form...  that's why it takes so long to release the winners.  Anyway, check it out at http://signinandwin.ca or go to the messenger tab and click on the "winners" link at the bottom!  Hopefully your name is on it!  More winners coming soon!

This is authentic, not a spoof, not a scam, not a spam (I hope).  Canada has launched a campaign that Windows Live Messenger users could win $1000 a day.  I'm not a lawyer so don't pick on my wordings, but you can learn more from here, http://www.signinandwin.ca.

The idea is simple, log into Messenger, click on the tab, and you are eligible for the draw. 

This is real, we will send you the prize.  What are you waiting for, click on the tab and sign up :)

Tell your friends about it too!

Invite2Messenger has come to Canada!

What is it?

A portal that allows users to access all their contact lists from different social networking sites, and invite them to join Messenger or add them to their contact lists.  You can try it out today at http://www.invite2messenger.net .  Currently we support Facebook only, but our plan is to expand this list to Hotmail, bebo, LinkedIn, Hi5 and Tagged. 

Sample Invitation

Start inviting! :)