First, Nokia and Bing Maps announced the furthering of their partnership on Maps, this time with live traffic information and geocoding, powered by Nokia, now on Bing Maps.  While much of the announcement involves expanding Bing Maps’ country coverage (Bing Maps will now offer live traffic info for 24 countries already covered by Nokia Maps), the new information will also extend Bing Maps live traffic coverage in the US, bringing local traffic information on side streets to US cities that previously weren’t available through Bing Maps traffic.

While it’s great to see that Bing Maps now appears to have a powerful partner in non-US mapping, Nokia looks like it will power more and more of Bing Maps, which leads to the question, why have two mapping services at all?  Indeed, the Nokia Conversations blog points to Nokia powering more Bing Maps information, which we’ve been hearing since back when Stephen Elop said that “Nokia Maps will be a core part of Microsoft’s mapping services”

Watch this space for more ways that Nokia will become the engine powering Bing Maps on Windows Phone devices and applications.

And in another Bing related announcement, after some digging by Geekwire.com, it appears that Yahoo!s new foray into internet browsing, Axis, is using Bing to power its searches, but only “in part”.   Geekwire’s Todd Bishop quotes a Yahoo! representative who explained just how Yahoo! does, and doesn’t use Bing results in their searches on Axis, and then goes on to explain a bit further:

“We use Bing’s raw algorithmic data in part to generate our own content index that applies our own mining and ranking algorithms on top which take into account click feedback, time spent on site and more to further refine and rerank the results.”

In other words, Bing’s technology is doing some of the behind-the-scenes work for Axis, but Yahoo is adding a lot of special sauce on top — not just in the user interface but in the actual ranking of the search results.

Yahoo has always made it clear that it would attempt to innovate on top of Microsoft’s search technology, but the Yahoo Axis launch suggests that Yahoo is still in a position to leverage its own technology if it ever ends up going alone again in the search business.

Bing’s relationship with Yahoo!, with which it claims most of its search market share increases in the past year (although at the expense of Yahoo! and not Google), may well be questionable, too, as Yahoo! scrambles to pull out of a tailspin.  Carol Bartz, the CEO who brokered the Bing-Yahoo! search alliance deal, is not only long gone but two CEOs ago, and protecting Bing can’t be high on the list of priorities at Yahoo! right now.

So what is happening with Bing Maps and Nokia, and Bing with Yahoo!?  Should Bing Maps just step aside and let Nokia into the location services driver’s seat for both Nokia and Microsoft?  And is Yahoo! setting itself up to get out of its relationship with Bing, using Axis to climb back into the search game?  And through it all, is Bing’s new socially aware search enough to finally begin to chip away at Google?

Today I was tipped off to “something big” by a well known source:

Waggener Edstrom person says MSFT has Windows 8 (for x86), Windows RT (for next-gen ARM), & Windows Phone 8 (for current-gen phones).

Most of the information in that quote is already known but the most interesting part of it is that Windows Phone 8 is for current generation phones. The reason why this is interesting is that a Waggener Edstrom rep (Microsoft’s PR company) has said this, it’s not something that they are likely to get wrong. The issue of whether Microsoft is going to offer Windows Phone 8 for current devices has been rumoured back and forth for the past few months with well respected members of the community apparently being tipped off with conflicting information.

I was also provided with some additional information that states that there will be more “leaks” corroborating this information next week with an official announcement in a few weeks time. Hopefully then we wont have long to wait to see if this is just another Windows Phone 8 rumour or if this is actually something of substance; it will also be nice for Microsoft to state either way if Windows Phone 8 will work on current hardware or not.

One final piece of information I was given is that there are currently organisational changes going on within Xbox, however it is unlikely that much will be heard about this until after “the holidays”.

For instance, if you type in “dog breeds,” it organizes them for you in a grid of images that you can scroll through using a slider on the right. When you hover over a particular image, it enters the name of that dog breed in the search box. And you can re-order the image results by size, breed, exercise needs, and Bing popularity.

Then in December of 2010, we wrote about some improvements to Visual Search, moving from Silverlight to HTML5, and promoting 111 different Visual Searches, including all 4426 Windows Phone 7 apps at the time (Windows Phone apps just passed the 90,000 mark, and are expected to reach 100k apps by early June – my how time flies!).  At that time, the Bing Visual Search Featured Galleries included everything from Bing Home Page Images to “Oprah’s past favorite things.  But no more.   www.bing.com/visualsearch no longer resolves, nor do any of the links to individual Visual Searches we’ve highlighted in the past (nor, surprisingly, does a link to a Visual Search announcement on the Bing Search blog, which should be archived, in our opinion).

To be honest, we’re not quite sure when Visual Search was turned off, apparently it has been being “decommissioned” for quite some time, according to a Microsoft spokesperson we reached out to:

Last fall, we began the process of removing Visual Search galleries on Bing. Like all of our betas, Visual Search was part of an on-going effort to better understand how we can offer the best search experience possible. We learned a lot from the Visual Search beta and we’ll apply that knowledge to Bing as part of our continuing effort to help users ‘do’ more, while keeping our offerings visually appealing. This does not affect nor should be confused with Image Search, which will remain a key feature for us.

So at least one of the features that Bing at one time had rolled out to great fanfare is gone, or at least quietly integrated into other parts of the service.  Have you noticed any other Bing services gone missing?

According to Paul Thurrott from WinSupersite:

The three new Metro-style apps that Microsoft is providing in this release include News, Sports, and Travel… suffice to say that these new apps are nothing special. They look and work exactly like the Finance app, providing what are essentially beautiful frontends to RSS feeds from trusted sources.

And indeed, these new apps are quite beautiful, and greatly resembles the other Metro style apps from the Bing team such as Weather and Finance. WithinWindows managed to post some screenshots of the News app, showing just how beautiful it is:

According to WithinWindows, the News app features multiple sections, including Bing Daily (as shown above), My News, Trends, and Sources, which lets you pick between the many information sources used by the app. Unfortunately, this is no RSS app and won’t allow you to pick your own sources:

It’d be interesting to see what the other two apps look like, but rest assured that it’ll probably look just as good. Let’s hope their functionality could match its beauty.

Since then, with the introduction of Windows Live Wave 4, Microsoft improved upon these “web activities”, and created what they called “connected services”. These are limited to a few social networks only, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and MySpace. Whilst “web activities” only pulled the user’s own content on these networks and fanned them out to other Windows Live users, “connected services” allowed users to pull in all their contacts from these social networks into Windows Live, and view their friend’s social updates all in one place – Messenger Social. Contacts from different networks are automatically de-duplicated, so you can learn about all of your contact’s updates across the web all in one place. This formed the basis behind Windows Phone’s “Putting People First” experience, and soon also Windows 8’s People experience.

Microsoft has realised the potential of the newer “connected services” experience, and realised that instead of creating another social network, users preferred simply “connecting” their social networks to Windows Live (or Windows Phone), without having to manage yet another Profile. As such, Microsoft has recently made some changes to its Messenger Social and Windows Live Profile services, re-focussing the purpose of these services. These changes include:

• Discontinuing “web activities”, which simply shared updates to other Messenger friends, while retaining and continuously improving the “connected services” (such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google, and more). Users are now presented with the following message:

  

  In fact, Microsoft has already removed all the “web activities” from Windows Live Profile’s Services page. All you see left is the below services, which gives you a good indication of which services will be improved upon in the near future (i.e. YouTube/Google, Sina Weibo):

  

• Removing unnecessary profile information such as “Favorite things”, General profile info, Education info, and Social info, whilst retaining core contact information. Users visiting the Favorite things page are now greeted with the following message:

  

What do you think about this move by Microsoft? Do you think they’re doing the right thing with this refocus of Messenger Social? Let us know in the comments below.

• We’ve shortened our regular URLs by 40%. Our previous URLs didn’t even fit inside a Tweet! Oh the shame!

  

• You can shorten them even further thanks to our new partnership with bitly and the new domain for shortened SkyDrive URLs: http://sdrv.ms

  

• We’ve added OpenGraph support to our URLs so that when you paste them into places like Facebook, a nice thumbnail preview gets generated

  

• Since bitly powers the shortener, you also get great power features. For example, you can add a ‘+’ to the end of any short URL to see statistics. You can also generate a QR code for that URL by appending ’.qrcode’ to that URL.

  

It’s great to see that Microsoft is constantly adding new features to SkyDrive, and is listening to customer’s feedback on what areas to improve on. Here we’re hoping Microsoft is busy working on the next update, and as part of it SkyDrive will address some of the suggestions that we, and many of our readers, made.

Thanks to a tip from Robin van Veghel, users are now receiving a notification from the Windows Live team indicating that the SMS alerts feature will be discontinued on May 31st. See the contents of the notification email below:

Dear Windows Live customer,

We’re contacting you because we are making a change to the Windows Live alerts feature for Microsoft Hotmail, Microsoft SkyDrive and Windows Live Messenger.

You might be using the alerts feature to have text messages sent to your phone when a new mail, Messenger social or SkyDrive comment arrives. The Windows Live mobile alert feature is being discontinued as of May 31st. This means you will not receive text messages on your phone when a new mail, Messenger social or SkyDrive comment arrives.

Please remember Hotmail, Messenger and SkyDrive may be accessed directly from your phone or phone’s web browser. For more info, see Get mail on your phone, Get Messenger on your phone, and Get SkyDrive on your phone.

We remain focused on making Hotmail, Messenger, SkyDrive and your Windows PC the best that they can be. Note that this change has no impact on your ability to access Hotmail, Messenger, and Skydrive.

Thanks for your understanding and patience as we update our services.

Sincerely,
The Windows Live Team

It makes sense for Microsoft to discontinue the SMS mobile alerts, given their focus is now on creating mobile apps for the iOS, Android, and Windows Phone platform. And for those without a smartphone, mobile browser version of Hotmail, SkyDrive, and Messenger social is also available (as long as you have a data plan and a mobile browser).

This didn’t go over too well with a number of developers of hobbyist-type applications, including Long Zheng of istartedsomething.com and the developer of an app experiment called “Real Live Search”.  Long posted his frustrations on his blog, asking:

For a company that has a reputation for embracing and supporting developers like no other, the changes Bing has and will be rolling out for its developer program is pretty much a slap to the face. And for what? Just a few bucks here and there from hobbyist developers?

Well today, in a Bing Search blog post, Microsoft has announced that not only are the APIs officially available via the Azure Marketplace, they’ve changed their pricing strategy, offering a free tier:

• For up to 5,000 queries per month, developers can access the API for free on the Windows Azure Marketplace. At this level, the large majority of our existing developers – including non-profits, educational institutions, and smaller scale applications– can continue using the service for free.
• For greater than 5,000 queries per month, developers can purchase a subscription on the Windows Azure Marketplace. Developers interested in using only web results can also sign up for a lower cost offering.

In addition, for a limited time, all Bing Search API subscriptions for any tier are available for free, to help in the transition process”.

• Photos – Besides the new home screen, the updated version will also allow you to access photos and videos stored PCs that you’ve connected through the SkyDrive app. In addition, the app will also allow you to quickly import photos and videos from a camera.
• Mail – As revealed previously, the new Mail app will feature a new teal accent color (instead of green). Attachments can also now be added to new messages without selecting the body of the message first. The Mail app will also support notifications, much like how the Messaging app’s notification works in the Consumer Preview.
• Calendar – The Calendar also gets a new purple accent color (instead of green). The new Calendar app will also now allow the ability to turn on or off individual calendars, as well as customise a specific color for each calendar, much like it’s Windows Phone counterpart. The Calendar will also support Windows 8’s notification system.
• People – The People app retains its orange accent color from Consumer Preview, however as mentioned previously, its Live Tile is actually “live” now showing a grid of contact’s display pictures much like its Windows Phone counterpart.Perhaps one of the most-improved app out of the ones listed here, the updated People app’s What’s New module will also feature an improved layout for easier navigation. A highly requested feature – Contact linking – will also be available, allowing you to link contacts if they are not already automatically de-duplicated (possibly due to having different names on different social networks). Furthermore, the People app also now supports the Share contract, allowing you to share information through supported social networking services.
• Messaging – The Messaging also gets a new magenta accent color (instead of purple). Not much is revealed, except the fact that the app now supports offline messages to both Facebook Chat and Messenger contacts. There’s no mention of file transfer support, or audio/video conversations.

We expect changes coming to other bundled apps too, such as Music, Video, Xbox LIVE Games, and more. Paul Thurrott also mentioned that there will be new bundled Metro-style apps coming in the Release Preview too, in addition to Weather, Finance, and Maps. We understand one of these will be the News app as revealed in previous screenshots. With only 3 weeks to go, we can’t wait to see what else is in store. What other improvements would you like to see before the final version ships? Let us know in the comments below.

As you can see the new Microsoft account website features a much cleaner look, with a slim Metro-style header on the top, as well as navigation items on the left bar. Elements such as text boxes and buttons have also been optimised for touch, and is consistent with Windows 8’s Metro design elements. The navigation has also been re-categorised into five sections:

• Overview – where you can edit your name, email address, personal information, password, security info, or close your account
• Profile – brings you to your profile page at http://profile.live.com
• Notifications – allows you to manage email preferences and marketing preferences
• Permissions – manage your linked accounts, parental permissions, and connect your Microsoft account to other services and accounts (such as Facebook, Twitter…etc.)
• Billing – brings you to your billing page at http://billing.microsoft.com

We understand that the new Metro-styled theme will be applied across all existing Windows Live web services, including Hotmail and SkyDrive. As shown in the screenshot above, the Windows Live branding will be removed from the header. Each service will also have its own unique accent color, for example, SkyDrive’s will have a blue color theme consistent with its Windows 8 app’s Live Tile. You can still navigate between the various web services by pulling down the header navigation menu, as shown below:

The new header is also expected to have web IM integrated, much like the current Windows Live web services. We’re not sure exactly when the new Metro-styled web services will roll out, but in the mean time stay tuned to LiveSide as we’ll have more news coming for the next version of Hotmail, SkyDrive, and other (ex)-Windows Live services.