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One of the favorite features of Bing for many users is the daily image that appears on the homepage each day. Whilst not yet available in every country, this will change! According to this blogpost, international markets will also get a rich image version of the homepage...

As reported by Mary Jo Foley, the Windows Live Butterfly program, a group of beta testers who signed on to test whatever was thrown their way, is sputtering to a close.  From a statement issued by Microsoft on the subject: “The Butterfly group has been involved in beta testing MSN and Windows...

When we last came across a Microsoft Site Survey, it correctly gave us the new name for Morro - “Microsoft Security Essentials”, and we’re really beginning to like this new pipeline of information.  In a new survey, Microsoft asks about possible new names for a “suite of paid, web-based...

Hotmail users in the UK, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Japan, and Germany were already enjoying this feature: the possibility to add email accounts to their Windows Live Hotmail account, so they can read all their mail at one place...

Over on the Live Mesh Team Blog the following just got announced: Live Mesh for Windows 9.4014.7 has been released. It will automatically update. No action is required on your part. See the following sections for details, and thanks for using Live Mesh...

By all early accounts, and granted it is VERY early, Bing is doing well.  The buzz seems strong, the numbers are good, and if nothing else people are taking a look at Bing where they didn’t pay Live Search any mind at all.  But a couple of Bing related events might not be such good news for the...

Microsoft Security Essentials (Morro) Beta is now available for download, as announced earlier...

Remember the Rookies? After the US and the UK, Japan has now entered the Rookies campaign. The children in these series are the children of actual Microsoft Japan employees! Enjoy! Via Rob Margel

* (apologies to Raymond Chen) Another day, and another A-List blogger “discovers” the “launch” of a Bing feature, which of course has been in Live Search for ages.  This time it’s Jason Calacanis, who posted news of the “launch” of XRank on Twitter, which has been receiving a number...

Charles Torre and Erik Meijer spent an hour talking to Bing Maps infrastructure architect Gur Kimchi for an episode of Expert to Expert on Channel 9, and crammed a lot of information and a few juicy tidbits into the session...

Where we were wondering about what the release name of “Morro” will be before, it is now clear that “Morro” will be named Microsoft Security Essentials. New screenshots of a pre-beta build revealed this. So unless the people in Redmond change their mind, this is what it will be. Curious...

In the coming months, Microsoft plans to significantly scale back Soapbox, the user generated video site hosted on MSN Video...

On June 16 the Zune Services will be down for maintenance. So no Zune Social, Zune.net forums or Zune Marketplace at that time. At the same time Xbox Live will be off for maintenance too...

It hasn’t even been two weeks since Bing was launched, but a number of services are reporting numbers that seem to show an uptick in interest in the rebranded search product from Microsoft...

No, this doesn’t make any sense (does it?).  Yesterday we told you about a nice little blog post updating the status of Windows Live Movie Maker, which is expected to be released later this year.  So today what pops up on Microsoft Download Center but a Windows Live Movie Maker Update, dated...

The Lead Program Manager on the Windows Live Movie Maker team (and as it happens one of LiveSide’s oldest friends, from back in the MSN Spaces days), Mike Torres, posted on Windows Live Wire today with a status update for Windows Live Movie Maker...

We reported a few days back about Tbot getting its own Run time Environment. In that article it’s also mentioned that an Alpha test period would start soon. Well, that soon has come: We’re ready to start the Alpha Test program for the new prototype of the bot...

This month’s release contains 248,000+ sq. kilometers of new imagery. But not just that. You won’t get a ginormous list of locations but an experience, an experience in the form of the Bing Maps World Tour...

I don’t know what it is with the Photosynth Blog feed, but this one just turned up today, whilst the date on the post says May 21st… Anyways old news or not, to me and to most of you it will be new news so here it is: Photosynth has a Whole New Look The green Photosynth theme is still...

Microsoft has released the Windows Mobile 6.5 SDK for developers. The Windows Mobile 6.5 Developer Tool Kit adds documentation, sample code, header and library files, emulator images and tools to Visual Studio that let you build applications for Windows Mobile 6.5...

Bing launched this week, revealing the new name and “decision engine” tagline,  a new more organized layout for search results, tighter integration for verticals like Shopping (including Bing cashback), Travel (including the Farecast technology for predicting airfares and now hotel fares),...

Just been clicking around in Bing, and came across a nice fresh Bing Community site, all done up in Community Server...

Getting reports from all over that www.bing.com is live: The US is getting the Hubble telescope image that is on live.com, but for at least some other countries (we didn’t check them all), they’re getting our old friend the snow leopard: Note that in China, as well as Australia and...

Bing! The much-hyped search engine Bing was debuted today worldwide and as a Windows Live (and anything Live or used to be Live-related) enthusiast, I’ve went and tested how well the search engine, I meant, decision engine works...

If you want to watch instead of read about Bing, then join the Bing Webcast at June 1st...

We haven’t been able to get our hands on Bing until today,  and we’ll have more as we dig deeper into it, but we wanted to give you some quick first impressions.  There’s lots of promotion for “the decision engine” out there already, but we’ve noticed a few things that haven’t...

Last week we told you about Microsoft Shutting Off Windows Live Messenger IM For Users In Countries Embargoed By The US (Error 810003c1). We can tell you a little bit more about the “why” today...

In an entertaining, slightly off color, and by some accounts inspiring performance at D: the All Things Digital conference, Yahoo...

We’re having a little issue currently with our user registration as some jokers try to take advantage of our generous registration policies.  While we continue to figure out how to best deal with the problem (and clear out the hundreds of users created in the last 2 days), we’ve shut off new...

Twitter has been abuzz the last 48 hours about a new project that appeared on CodePlex: Windows Live Writer for Windows Mobile. This sounds very promising, and looks like quite a good little project (albeit a slightly iffy UI)...

Microsoft acquired Bing.com in March, and has a network all set up:   but as we reported last week, there’s that pesky little US Patent and Trademark Office to get around.  The problem is with Bing Mobile, which is just too confusing for the USPTO.  But apparently that will soon be cleared...

This is a big week or so for Microsoft, and for Live Search.  According to reports from the Wall St. Journal, the widely anticipated new version of Live Search, code named Kumo, is set to be unveiled at D: The All Things Digital conference in Carslbad, California.  And shortly after that, Dr...

It seems like Live Search Translator just got updated with a new feature – the ability to automatically detect the language you wish to translate...

Windows Live Alerts have finally gotten a facelift and joins the rest of the Windows Live family in getting the “Wave 3” look – making it one of the last Windows Live services to make the switch (Video Messages just made the switch a month ago, and there’s only My.Live.com, Gallery and...

E3 is one short week away, and speculation is rampant as to what is going to be announced. If the initial buzz is any indication, between their June 1st press briefing and their booth, Microsoft should have a strong showing this year...

A lot of people nowadays have Twitter accounts, a Facebook account etc. and if you’re reading this then I’m also assuming you have a Windows Live account and some interest in Windows Live Services...

In a document filed this morning and mailed to Microsoft, the US Patent and Trademark Office has rejected Microsoft’s filing of “Bing” as a trademark name for “computer search engine software; graphical user interface software, namely, toolbar software for use with search engine software...

In the next few weeks, we’re going to be hearing a lot about Microsoft’s new brand for search.  We pretty much know it won’t be called “Live Search” anymore, and we’re hearing again and again that it won’t be called Kumo, either.  It doesn’t take much digging to find some strong...

In our previous article about Windows Mobile Marketplace, we reported that developers outside of the US had problems signing up...

Users in Cuba, Syria, Iran, Sudan and North Korea can no longer IM with Windows Live Messenger. When trying to log in they will be left with error message: 810003c1: We were unable to sign you in to the .NET Messenger Service...

Just so you know: The My Phone service will be not be available on May 18 to enable deployment of a service upgrade. During this maintenance period, you will be unable to access the My Phone web site or to sync your phone with the service.  We apologize for any inconvenience...

Just so you know: The My Phone service will be not be available on May 18 to enable deployment of a service upgrade. During this maintenance period, you will be unable to access the My Phone web site or to sync your phone with the service.  We apologize for any inconvenience...

Thanks to our friend Robert McLaws, we’re set up here at LiveSide with a nightly backup using Jungle Disk and Amazon S3.  We’ve been pretty impressed by it, especially with the ~$1.00/mo charges we pay to have our database backed up...

As much as I like the relative anonymity that comes with being an unfamiliar face, I feel as though a brief introduction is in order.   My name is Chris Poirier...

Well it was probably only a matter of time, but GMail has introduced a new feature that makes it easier for users of other email services with POP access to migrate their accounts...

Another Laptop Hunters ad is out (this time they buy a Dell), and the ad sticks true to form – Go to Best Buy, thumb your nose at the Mac, walk away happy.  These ads were good right out of the gate, but, truthfully, aren’t they beginning to wear a little thin...

All things come to an end, same goes for the QnA beta. The team just announced the end of the beta and the closing of the QnA site: We are ending the QnA beta test and are closing the QnA site on May 21, 2009. First and foremost, we want to thank you for your participation...

A new Zune ad campaign featuring financial planner Wes Moss attempts to hit iTunes users right where it hurts: in the pocketbook.  The ad, appearing on the Zunepass.net website, calculates the costs for filling an iPod from iTunes versus using the Zune Pass: (Please visit the site to view this...

Another week, another incremental Live Mesh update, this time all the way from 0.9.3424.31 to 0.9.4014.4.  According to a blog post on the Live Mesh blog, the changes deal mostly with web browser issues: Fixes · Updated date/time stamp UI for news events · Added news events for...

Sometimes on Twitter Search  you see a bunch of re-tweets, a “twitmeme”, if you will.  Right now a big one is “Microsoft embraces Open Source Big Time for Kumo” (eh, what?, more on that later).  Another one that caught our eye was this: Just clicking on the links gives you this...

Just out is the official Facebook for Windows Mobile app, available for installation on Windows Mobile 6 phones.  Features include: Send messages to any of the people in your Friends list. Take pictures and videos on your phone, then upload them right to Facebook...

Now you can also find your favorite videos and the baseball scores for your favorite baseball team on your mobile...