Met with this team yesterday...believe me it is a nice surprise.  = ]

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shhhh - it's a surprise!

 posted by Marty

 

Shhhhh - I don't want anyone to know, but today is Marty's birthday! A special gift will be forethcoming very soon now... but I can't tell you just yet. Just hang in there and another one of our crack bloggers will let the perverbial cat out of the bag.  Don't tell anyone I told you ;-)

 

• Incredible progress being made...
  
• Live.com has 3M unique users and the second highest Net Promoter score (how likely you would recommend the service to another user)
  
• Windows Live Mail is now hosting 750,000 users; with a goal to hit 20M by June.  (roughly double the size of Gmail)
  
• Windows Live Saftey Centre has completed 2M free scans!
  
• Windows Live Messenger has 1.5M users!
  
• "Over the next 3-6 months, we'll ship more innovative technology into the marketplace than during our entire 10-year history." (much of which has been years in the making...as MSN worked hard behind the scenes to develop massively-scaled backends to support the vision)
  
• Windows Live Free Call (aka Windows Live Local Search Free Call *ugh*) is launching on March 13th.

...stay tuned to LiveSide.net for more information as all this sweet innovation begins to slam the net!

 I'm going to be so dead today...must...sleep!

But first; here is the first post on the brand new 'morethanmail' blog talking about the new unified messaging consumer mail client from MSN & Windows Live!

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The Rebirth of Our Consumer Email Client

The last time you saw a free email client from Microsoft was Outlook Express 6, released with Windows XP. That was in October of 2001 and I was still in college. I used email to contact my professors, browsed the campus newsgroups for event updates, and even received a few spam messages here and there. For my needs nothing fit better than OE6 and I was happy. That was almost 5 years ago. The troubles of yesteryear are now distant memories. As I’ve moved forward so have the technologies around us. Words like Blogging and phishing were only uttered in small circles back then and TLA (three-letter acronyms) like RSS were in their infancy. Not anymore. Blogging and RSS looks like they’re here to stay and phishing is more dangerous than ever. Now is the time to add life back into my favorite free email client and we’re injecting a large dose of adrenaline to kick things back up.

There’s a ton of new features, a new face, and a fresh new start for our newly dubbed Windows Live Mail Desktop Beta (WLMDB). Those of us on the team have been working heads down on this for a long while now and you can’t imagine how eager we are to finally talk directly to you about it. Let’s start off with a small list of our features:

• Integration with Windows Live Mail and Messenger – Get direct access to your Windows Live Mail e-mails without having to configure any server settings. Plus integrated Messenger contacts directly in the email client. (In case you’re confused by our new name just think Hotmail when you read Windows Live Mail and think of us when you read Windows Live Mail Desktop Beta. The Desktop part makes us special. )
  
  
• Photo Mail – Photo Mail will let you send your favorite vacation pictures as thumbnails to all of your friends and family then automatically upload a larger version to MSN. Each thumbnail received will have a link to a much higher quality large image. This is a great feature that is only found in the MSN Premium e-mail client for paying MSN members. We’ve now taken this component and integrated it into WLMDB.
  
  
• RSS Feeds – Our program managers, developers, and tester have worked hard with the IE7 team to integrate RSS feeds directly into Windows Live Mail Desktop Beta. You can now view and forward them as if they were regular emails. We will explore this feature more in upcoming blogs.
  
  
• Anti-Phishing –WLMDB will warn you of malicious emails that try to steal your identity. We understand the threats lurking out there and we’re going to do out best to protect you.
  
  
• Word Wheel – The feature with the weird name you won’t be able to live without. Search all of your emails in split-second times from any folder. I started using it a few months ago and now I can’t believe how I was able to search through thousands of emails without it.
  
  
• Multiple accounts - We designed this to work with Windows Live Mail, but you can download any POP or IMAP e-mails into WLMDB. This way you can see all your accounts and e-mails from one organized place.
  
  
• And there’s more! – This is just a short random list of some of our new features and no where close to covering all of the new stuff.
  

We're going to go into a small, managed beta with WLMDB in the coming weeks and when we're ready for more people to play with it we'll put up info on ideas.live.com so you can sign up for the beta.

Stay tuned in the next few days and weeks as different members of t

"This new feature provides a vivid flythrough experience for the user, especially in the downtown areas that the technical preview focuses on. The user appears seated at ground level, as if they were driving around the map themselves. The preview version aims to provide the team with feedback on the new feature and imagery, which supports the existing road, aerial and birds-eye views that the Live Local service already offers. The small rollout is mainly due to the vast number of images that are needed, reportedly over 10million for Seattle alone."

• http://spaces.msn.com
• http://spaces.msn.com/mike/  ()
  
• http://www.liveside.net

Welp - the holidays have past...and once again I'm off to Sin City for the Consumer Electronics Show...

Bill Gates Keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2006

January 4, 2006

For the tenth year in a row, Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates returns to kick off CES with his vision of the year ahead in consumer electronics. Bill will deliver the opening keynote on Wednesday, January 4 at 6:30 P.M. Pacific in the Las Vegas Hilton Theater.

In his keynote, Gates will share Microsoft’s vision for the future of consumer technology, highlighting the important role of software in developing and delivering innovation that benefits the industry, our partners, and people everywhere. If the past is any indication, expect the unexpected. Bill has used his keynote address at CES in the past to unveil new products ranging from Xbox and Tablet PC to Smartphones. And with Microsoft’s strong lineup of innovative new products scheduled to launch in 2006, including Windows Vista, this year’s keynote will provide a glimpse at the important new technologies that will be shaping the industry.

Somehow I missed this bit of news over the holidays...altho it seems Microsoft never actually released this news. 

Stay tuned for more at CES...

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GeoTango

Microsoft Corporation Acquires GeoTango International Corp.

December 23, 2005 - Microsoft today announced that it has acquired Toronto-based GeoTango International Corp.

The acquisition furthers MSN’s rapid push into creating an immersive mapping and local search framework that enables users to easily find, explore, discover and share information and content for anywhere on earth.

GeoTango’s technology assets and expertise enhance MSN’s ability to deliver this experience in the areas ranging from rich real-world visualization to location-centric community content.

GeoTango’s product suite will be integrated over time into MSN’s product and service offerings assets.

I've been out and about so much these last three weeks...I forgot all about the Santa Tracking festivites that commenced today!  Pretty cool, MSNBC.com has a Santa Tracking blog up and running, detailing Santa sightings around the world.  Reports seem to indicate Santa was recently sighted swooping from the sky in the vicinity of St. Louis!  I had better put out my milk n cookies...  hehe

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You can check Santa’s progress on a Windows Live Local map on NORAD’s Santa Tracker site http://www.noradsanta.org/en/map/.

Brought to you by MSNBC.com, Windows Live Local powered by Virtual Earth, and NORAD.