RSSMicrosoft begins updated Windows Live rollout
By Tim Conneally | Published December 3, 2008, 12:32 PM
The new Windows Live profile features that were recently announced have begun to take effect, turning the formerly sterile Windows Live into a more cohesive portal for online content consumption.
New versions of Live Home, Spaces, Events, Skydrive, Groups, and Photos have been pushed out to users, joined by the Windows Live header bar. Since Microsoft is pulling together a number of disparate services, however, there is still a feeling of disconnection throughout the site.
The header bar features customizable backgrounds and information fields, for example, but when navigating away from the Live Home page, the bar frequently disappears altogether. In BetaNews tests this morning, many of the sub-directories returned error messages when attempting to navigate through the header bar. The updated Profile, for example, is still largely inaccessible.
It is currently also lacking in the customization department. In the left column of the Windows Live Home page is the user's mailbox and the "What's New with your Network" feed which provides Friendfeed or Facebook-style updates of user activity. In the right is a user profile summary, an MSN newsfeed, and the Windows Live team blog. Unlike the new Yahoo or iGoogle home pages, drag-and-drop customization of this page is not supported. Only the ability to change the vertical positioning of each item is currently present, and elements defaulted on the home page cannot be removed.
But the site is not without its merits. Photos features an intelligent slideshow app based on Silverlight, and has 25 GB of free storage in the associated SkyDrive account. Since most Windows Mobile handsets come with the ability to automatically push photos to a Windows Live account, this update gives mobile photo-takers a lot to work with.
After Microsoft announced that they were entering the cloud, we contacted them, and they sent a rep out. The rep sheepishly admitted that several of the services were not ready and weren't expected to be ready for several months, at least. It appears Microsoft jumped the gun on their announcement, at least as far as "cloud" services for businesses. Who knows about their other services. We're in wild west days here. Anything can happen.
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If my experience so far is indicative of how this roll out is going, this one will go down in history as pretty bad. I'm not able to access anything but Hotmail right now. I can't even get to my homeserver.
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i've used Windows Live Mail and Photo Gallery -- both very nice apps. i'm looking forward to the newer versions.
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Funny thing is, a few weeks ago when I learned that SkyDrive would offer 25GB I thought "hmmm, I should switch my files to a different cloud app" thinking that AOL will probably shut down their Xdrive service sooner or later (AOL is always loosing money right?) and sure enough, I go to Xdrive.com and see that they will shut down in January.
I like having a backup of some of my important files in the cloud, and for now SkyDrive is working quite nice (minus some shortcomings like no folder uploads) but for free how can you beat 25GB? Hopefully having Microsofts muscle SkyDrive wont shut down anytime soon.
It's good enough for me, and I don't care about some crazy anti-ms-privacy schemes that some people will just love to dish out
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Not commenting on SkyDrive, but I found this recently: http://www.getdropbox.com/
Seems to work pretty well. I don't know if it will remain free though.
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hmmm nice updates
now there web apps are pretty lite and fast but still Google is fastest ;)
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