Everything Microsoft | Going Beyond Windows

Of all of Microsoft’s live services, Live Search could be far and away the most interesting story of 2009.  New leadership, increased pressure to perform, lingering questions about a Yahoo! search deal, the coming of age of new technologies, and quite possibly even a whole new name are all stories to watch in the coming year.

Leadership:

Dr. Qi Lu, a veteran search technologist coming from Yahoo! to lead Live Search, will have a full plate when he starts his new job as President, Online Services Group,  on January 5th. Its no secret that Live Search has gone nowhere fast in search share, and both Live Search and Yahoo! continue to suffer under the dominance of market leader Google. Lu is a distinguished technologist with a long resume, according to the press release announcing his hiring:

Before joining Yahoo! in 1998, Dr. Lu was a Research Staff Member at IBM Almaden Research Center. Before IBM, Dr. Lu worked at Carnegie Mellon University as a Research Associate, and at Fudan University in China as a faculty member. Dr. Lu holds 20 U.S. patents, and received his bachelor of science and master of science in computer science from Fudan University and his Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University.

Since Dr. Lu won’t officially begin his new job until January 5, we can only speculate what kind of direction he’ll take Online Services and Live Search, but speculating is the fun part!  With a strong technology background (and perhaps just as importantly strong ties to Yahoo!), expect Live Search to concentrate on getting better at core search, and innovating in that space.  With a power struggle involving Brian McAndrews (who came to Microsoft with AQuantive and is now leaving the company) an old guard at Microsoft who haven’t placed much importance on search, and a number of other players in and around Windows Live and Live Search now apparently settled for the time being, Dr. Lu will need to get the ship moving.  Expect a decision soon on Yahoo!, either to acquire the search business, or finally move on.  No one should be better equipped to either incorporate Yahoo! search with Live Search, or make a decision that it just won’t work, than Dr. Lu.

Yahoo!

We won’t go over the sordid details of the failed attempt by Microsoft to acquire Yahoo! early last year, except to say that walking away seems to have been the correct call.  Microsoft could still do well by a search deal with Yahoo!, however, and Yahoo! seems willing to listen, especially since a deal with Google fell through (and don’t kid yourself into thinking that Microsoft didn’t have a lot to do with that).  One way or another, we should hear an end to the speculation about a Microsoft- Yahoo! deal.  Even if a deal does get done (and it sure makes a lot of sense to us), we’ll have plenty to talk about as Microsoft sorts out how to bring the Yahoo! search business into the fold, how Yahoo! fares, and what Google does to fend off what could be a more formidable foe.

Of course if a deal doesn’t get done, still the best place for Microsoft to increase search share could be by taking it from Yahoo!, and the sharks could circle quickly around Yahoo!’s business.  With a search deal in place, Microsoft would have a vested interest in the health of Yahoo! as a company, and a search deal would reflect that.  Without a deal, all bets are off.

Google

In spite of the saber rattling coming out of Redmond, Google continues to just get stronger.  For all the problems Microsoft has with online brands, Google continues to be golden, and consumers continue to flock to Google, and away from Microsoft.  It’s been an eye opening experience to monitor Twitter Search for terms like Microsoft, Windows Live, and Hotmail.  While Twitter gets more mainstream, the passionate hatred of Microsoft doesn’t diminish (we all know what the Silcon Valley bubble thinks of Redmond, but Twitter is beginning to track a wider audience now, and the news isn’t pretty).  Even given a comparable product, Microsoft faces an uphill battle (and the truth is Live Search has quite a ways to go before it is nearly as good as Google.  Sure it’s better than it was, but so is Google!).  Microsoft won a round by quashing the Yahoo-Google search ads deal, but that was a small skirmish in a big war.

Will Google continue its runaway success?  Will the economy, or a strong run by a Dr. Lu led Live Search slow it down?  What about Google’s growing issues around anti-trust?  Microsoft’s success in search may be as much about slowing down Google as in anything Microsoft does in the space, and Google will continue to play a big role in Microsoft’s search strategy in 2009 (and well beyond, to be sure).

Innovation

About a week ago Danny Sullivan took Microsoft to task and called on them to get serious, really serious, about search.  Danny chided Microsoft for going in for the quick buck, without focusing on what really matters, which is to make search better.  In his piece, Danny quotes Bill Gates (and highlights some key phrases):

If we thought somebody was doing the best possible job that could ever be done in search and there wasn’t some big revenue out there, maybe we wouldn’t do it, but quite to the contrary. Whether it’s understanding maps or virtual worlds or document analysis, today’s search is nothing, and we’ve got the software technology that will drive it to those new levels, as well as being a very significant business.

In 2009, whether Danny gets Steve Ballmer to chant “Search Marketers, Search Marketers, Search Marketers” or not, Microsoft could well begin to drive search technology to new levels.  Last year Microsoft acquired Powerset, and we should begin to see the fruits of that acquisition come to bear.  And even though Google dropped Lively, Microsoft has continued to make significant investments in “virtual worlds”, both with the way that it processes and handles 3D imagery for Live Maps, and in acquisitions like Caligari, with TrueSpace, and partnerships like Dassault Systemes with 3DVia.  Will we see some kind of map/virtual world/immersive product come to light in 2009?

Consumer/Commercial Search

Microsoft’s strategy up to this point has been to go after a small portion of search, that while it may not show up in the search share numbers, generates a disproportionate amount of the revenue, and there are signs that marketing tricks like Live Search cashback are making an impact.  In the past year, concentration on “commercial search” has been about the only visible difference in Live Search.  How will the new leadership, now run by a technologist rather than admen like Kevin Johnson and Brian McAndrews, feel about this emphasis on marketing “gimmicks”, especially if they seem, at least up to a point, to be working?

Kumo

Ahhh, the Search Brand Question: it’s been an elephant in the room for quite some time now.  Microsoft admitted last year that it needs to “fix the brand”, and there have been a number of hints that Microsoft may turn to a new brand, Kumo, wipe the slate clean and go from there.  Certainly one failing of the non-acquisition of Yahoo! is in not getting the brand: even if Microsoft acquires the Yahoo! search business it won’t get the name.  We know there’s still a big push coming for Windows 7 (hopefully Microsoft didn’t pay $300 million for a couple of Jerry Seinfeld ads), so it might make sense to ride those coattails with a marketing push for a new search brand.  Will a new name make much of a difference?

Economic Realities

No one knows quite what to expect in this world’s economy in the new year, but everyone’s scared.  How will Microsoft react if winning at search doesn’t mean piles of cash pouring out of a robust economy?  What happens to online advertising, search marketing, and the economy in general are sure to be big stories in the coming months.

Summation

There’s no question that Search is not where Microsoft wants it to be. However its far too early to think that Microsoft is prepared to, or even thinking about, giving up.   In spite of all of the obstacles, Microsoft’s Live Search, with new leadership, quite possibly a new name and brand, some innovative technological advances, and an economy that might just stir things up a bit, stands probably in a better position to succeed than it ever has.  If nothing else, it will be fun to watch.

While 2008 took a decided turn for the worse economically, it actually was a pretty good year for Windows Live and Microsoft’s live services.  While Microsoft didn’t succeed in acquiring Yahoo! or its search business, the early part of the year was dominated by all the MSFT-YHOO drama.  Live Mesh made its first official appearance, hinted at by Ray Ozzie at Mix in March, and then officially announced at Web 2.0 Expo in May. Windows Live ushered in a new era of social networking with Wave 3, and official word that Windows Live would replace built in Windows apps (Mail, Calendar, Movie Maker) in Windows 7 all made for some big Windows Live news.

Of course not all the news was good: a number of services were shut down, or slated to close (most notably Windows Live OneCare), a new version of Hotmail got off to a rocky start, Live Search failed to make any headway in search share, and Live Search cashback failed miserably on “Black Friday”, the biggest shopping day of the year.

With all that going on, 2009 still looks to be an even bigger year for Windows Live and its cousins Live Mesh, Live Search, and Windows Mobile.  We’ve enjoyed a bit of a holiday break here at LiveSide, but the new year is upon us, lots of news will be breaking soon (as early as next week, at CES), and we’re looking forward to bringing you the best in Windows Live news and information as we start our 4th year.  Just a note of thanks to all our readers, we hope you’ve enjoyed our coverage of Windows Live as much as we’ve enjoyed bringing it to you.

In the next few days, we’ll take a look at each of these services we’ve been following to see what might lie ahead.  First up, Live Search.

There has been some housecleaning done the last 2 months with some of the Virtual Earth road network data. 

• Global vector data updates.
• Multi-lingual tile sets for all zoom levels (French, Italian, German, Spanish).
• Japan localized tile sets.
• All oblique (Bird’s Eye) photography reprocessed with new road labels (minus Japan).

As a result there’s a 48TB big December refresh/release of all tile sets where vector information is included (Road, Hybrid Aerial, and Hybrid Bird’s Eye), with new data source for Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Former Yugoslav Republic Of Macedonia, Greece, Hungary, Kaliningrad Oblast of Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Slovenia.

The latest Compete.com numbers came out just before Christmas (Dec 23, for November), and while much of it is more of the same, a couple of interesting items caught our eye.  It’s a little hard to get a gauge on any trends, as Compete changed some methodology in August, except to say that Google is still far and away the leader.

Compete has been separating out the numbers for Club Live from the Live Search numbers for some time. The set of games you play on Club Live, using Live Search as an aid, are certainly a blatant attempt to “game” the system, but what’s interesting is how much play Club Live is getting.  As Jeremy Crane points out in his Compete blog post:

Club Live contributed 2.6ppts and nearly 300 million queries to MSN/Live. (To put things in perspective, Club Live gets more queries than either Ask or AOL.) Club Live continued to grow, with query volume up 3.4% versus the prior month and 7.2% for the year.

That Club Live gets more queries per month than either Ask.com or AOL is astounding, really.  A fairly unscientific observation: people who are attracted to winning Club Live games might be interested in using Search to get deals of other kinds (think Live Search cashback), or at least that’s what Live Search seems to be counting on.  Whether or not Club Live will make much of a difference in the long run remains to be seen, but anything that generates 300 million queries per month can’t hurt.

Issues have been reported about push Hotmail not working consistently and after quite a bit of investigation the team has now found the cause and provides tips to get the correct push-email behaviour whilst they are working hard on the fix (server side). These issues only occur if you have your mail set to synchronize “As items arrive” in the “Sync schedule” settings and if you are also signed into Messenger in certain ways.

The workarounds for now:

- If you are signed in to Windows Live Messenger on your PC and your status is “Online” or “In a call” you could see interruption of push mail working on your device.  The workaround is to have Messenger on your PC in any state other than “Online” or “In a call”.

So to those of you who have disabled “Show me as Away when I’m inactive for…” and/or “Show me as Busy and block my alerts when I’m running a full-screen program…” : turn it on again (Tools > Options > Personal)!

- If you are signed in to Windows Live Messenger on your Windows Mobile phone you could see interruption of push mail working on your device.  The workaround is to sign out of Messenger on your Windows Mobile phone.

Very inconvenient for those who use messenger a lot from their mobile, but well ehhmm…it’s the only way for now. We’ll notify you once the issue has been fixed.

The team has also received reports about contacts synchronization and has already fixed that. And they made discovery of the download for Windows Live for Windows Mobile easier: when setting up Hotmail from Outlook Mobile, the wizard will take you to the download page if you don’t already have Windows Live for Mobile.

Windows Live For Windows Mobile Team Blog
Windows Live For Mobile
http://wl.windowsmobile.com (on your mobile browser)
Windows Mobile

So you’ve visited Santa’s Village, and starting midnight tonight he’ll begin his journey around the world. He has to deliver all those presents now doesn’t he? Where, when? Can we see him? Yes we can, head on over to MSNBC!

 
[Click on image to track Santa directly]

A dynamically updated Santa-tracker has been created which shows you where he is at at any time. The Santa tracker requires Virtual Earth 3D and it may take some time to load but once it is you will be prompted that Santa has been located.

Clicking on the OK button will show you where he is on a Virtual Earth map. You may want to check back frequently so you will know when to look out of that window! Hey who knows, you may catch a glimpse!

Merry Christmas!

Just found a mention of this video on an Paul Hand’s msdn blog, a nice video animation about Microsoft’s plans with container data centers.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Fun to watch, although I don’t think there have been any plans announced to build a container data center at 3rd and Atlantic (might have to check out that lot tomorrow ;) )

An admission right off the bat: I’m not a Toolbar user.  I guess I’m partial to as much browser real estate as I can get, but I don’t generally install any toolbars, from Windows Live or anywhere else.  That being said, if you have the Windows Live Toolbar installed and are having issues with syncing your Favorites across computers, John Pollard, a Senior dev on the Live Search team, thinks he’s found an answer.  From his blog post:

I had no idea what the problem was, and was going to try the trusted uninstall/reinstall route, but when I went to the uninstall control panel I realised I still had the old Favorites toolbar add-in installed:

John uninstalled the old Windows Live Favorites for Windows Live Toolbar, and his sync options re-appeared on his (new) Windows Live Toolbar.  In one case he needed to re-install the new Toolbar, but after that everything worked.

So if you’ve had problems, make sure the old Live Favorites is uninstalled.

Also, if you’ve tried to install Windows Live Sync and have been getting a network error, there is a fix for that.  From a comment (from Rachel Popkin MSFT) on the Windows Live Sync blog:

The issue you are experiencing should now have been resolved. To install Sync, please try the following steps:
1. Visit https://sync.live.com/clientdownload.aspx and select the Windows client
2. Save the program to your computer (Desktop, etc.)
3. Run the installation
4. Once the installation is done, run Sync from the Windows Live folder in the Start Menu.

Rachel also comments that there is a new Mac client, so if you’re having issues on a Mac, make sure you have the latest version.

When I found that I couldn’t open previous projects, I headed over to the Deep Zoom Composer Forum to let the team know of this problem. Kirupa was quick to respond to me and I’ve sent him one of the non-opening .dzprj files for investigation, as did others.

As a result there now is a new Deep Zoom Composer release which no longer has this problem, at least not for me. I sure hope you didn’t delete your old project files! Should you still have said problem, please send your non-opening .dzprj files to Kirupa (address can be found in their blog post), so they can look into it.

Besides this improved project support the memory handling has also been improved, the Seadragon Ajax Templates have been updated again and various other tweaks were done.

Download Deep Zoom Composer

NOTE: Please uninstall any older versions of Deep Zoom Composer prior to installing this new version.

Don’t forget to check out the updated documentation! It has become a true User Guide with topics ranging from what Deep Zoom is to how to actually use Deep Zoom Composer. You can access the User Guide inside Deep Zoom Composer by going to Help > User Guide or by pressing F1.

Feel free to post your questions or comments over at the team blog or at the Deep Zoom Composer Forum. They do listen!