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A message from this feed's publisher:Welcome to LiveSide! This is an XML content feed. It is intended to be viewed in a newsreader or syndicated to another site, subject to copyright and fair use.
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LiveSide is retiring, thanks for all your support!
Posted:Mon, 24 Nov 2014 15:19:41 +0000
All good things must come to an end, and this blog is no exception. When Chris Overd, Matthew Weyer, and Harrison Hoffman founded LiveSide.net back in December of 2005 (LiveSide’s first post was on January 3rd, 2006, and my first post was 9 days later, on January 12th), Windows Live had just been announced, and our posts were all about Office Live, Windows Live Expo, OneCare, and emerging details about something called the “Windows Live Messenger Phone“. Since then, we’ve covered the birth and death of OneCare and Live Mesh and Windows Live itself, followed MSN Search and Live Search and Windows Live Search and Bing (and even Kumo!), attended Mix-es and PDCs and Builds and more, got to meet Bill Gates and interview Satya Nadella, and break some news along the way.But times change and people move on, and for the past year LiveSide has been mostly me. I still enjoy following the antics and still have something to say, but blogging has changed, too, and where LiveSide used to be the go-to source for anything Windows Live related, the competition has stiffened considerably. It requires an army of bloggers to keep up, not just one. So when an opportunity arose earlier this month to join WinBeta.org as an editor, I knew it was time to move on.
Right now I’m in the process of moving LiveSide over to an archival home, which will happen by the end of the month. LiveSide will live on in archive form, but this is our last post.
We had a great 9 year run at LiveSide, and I’m honored to have been a part of it. Thank you so much for being there, our readers are what have made it all worthwhile. Hopefully you’ll follow me over to WinBeta.org, where I officially start on December 1st. I’ve been lurking at WinBeta for a week or so, and they’re a good lot, really similar in a lot of ways to LiveSide. I’m looking forward to continuing the journey.
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The long, promising (and frustrating) history of Microsoft’s consumer file sync services
Posted:Fri, 21 Nov 2014 16:29:11 +0000
Live Drive, SDrive, Project M, Folders, FolderShare, Windows Live Sync, Live Mesh, SkyDrive, OneDrive. Yes, Microsoft has been at this file syncing game for a long time. The company bought FolderShare back in November of 2005, and has been trying to get file syncing right ever since. This past week users were all in a huff because the latest build of Windows 10 Tech Preview changed the way OneDrive works on Windows 10, so much so that Microsoft took the time to respond publicly. Ed Bott posted on the issue late last week, documenting the flurry that’s been happening on UserVoice:In a response to that same UserVoice page, OneDrive group program manager Jason Moore says:
“We hear the feedback on placeholders, and we agree that there many great things about the model – for example, being able to see all your files in the cloud even if they are not all sync’ed to your PC. However, we were not happy with how we built placeholders, and we got clear feedback that some customers were confused (for example, with files not being available when offline), and that some applications didn’t work well with placeholders and that sync reliability was not where we needed it to be.
So, we stepped back to take a fresh look at OneDrive in Windows. The changes we made are significant. We didn’t just “turn off” placeholders – we’re making fundamental improvements to how Sync works, focusing on reliability in all scenarios…”
In other words: “Sorry, we’re still working on this feature.”
While the changes have upset a number of users, it’s still early on in Windows 10’s development, and from the sounds of it some, if not all of the features missing from build 9879 may be back. But for longtime Microsoft enthusiasts, this isn’t anything new. In fact, it would be far more surprising if Microsoft *didn’t* change its file syncing services than if it did. It’s been an interesting journey, this wavering path toward file syncing Nirvana, and as one user back in 2008 said, “the grand vision of (Microsoft’s file syncing services) are unfortunately more vision than grand”.
Microsoft’s first well known foray into file syncing probably came to them when they acquired Ray Ozzie’s Groove Networks in March of 2005, and then FolderShare later that year. After rewriting FolderShare to work on Windows Server from its Linux roots, Microsoft released Windows Live FolderShare in 2008. About the same time, Microsoft also released a technology preview of Live Mesh. Live Mesh, a Ray Ozzie project, was based on FeedSync technology, a superset of RSS, allowing file syncing across devices and a cloud client. We posted on the history and naming gyrations of Live Mesh, back in 2010.
But Live Mesh, like the recent builds of OneDrive, had its problems. Shortly after our incantation of the history of Live Mesh, Ray Ozzie left Microsoft. Live Mesh was combined with Foldershare and released as “Windows Live Sync”, a beta, in June of 2010, and shortly after that was renamed again, to Windows Live Mesh, in August of 2010. But then in 2012, Microsoft consolidated Live Mesh with SkyDrive, another file syncing service that had been around since 2007. Just like with the recent OneDrive snafu, users lost much of the peripheral functionality of Live Mesh, including PC to PC (with no cloud interaction) sync, remote desktop, and settings sync for IE and Office. They weren’t happy then, either.
And now Microsoft is pulling back on features, again. Makes you wonder why they don’t just buy Dropbox and be done with it! What do you think, are you hopeful for OneDrive in Windows 10? Will Microsoft finally get file syncing right?
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Yahoo! / Mozilla search partnership: What’s Marissa Mayer up to?
Posted:Thu, 20 Nov 2014 18:48:51 +0000
Yesterday Yahoo! and Mozilla announced a new 5 year partnership to make “Yahoo the default search experience for Firefox in the United States on mobile and desktop”. The deal will make Yahoo! the default search experience on Firefox in the United States, replacing Google. Google and others (including Bing) will still be available as alternate choices, and Firefox will use various other search products around the globe, including Yandex in Russia, Baidu in China, and Google (yes, Google) in Europe.
Yahoo! press release does a lot to champion Mozilla’s newfound relationship with Yahoo!, and the possibilities for future innovations. What the press release doesn’t do is even mention Bing or Microsoft. In fact, quoted in the press release, Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer says:
“At Yahoo, we believe deeply in search – it’s an area of investment, opportunity and growth for us. This partnership helps to expand our reach in search and also gives us an opportunity to work closely with Mozilla to find ways to innovate more broadly in search, communications, and digital content.”
Mayer, who came to Yahoo! after Microsoft CEO forged the Yahoo! / Bing search alliance with former Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz, and she’s made it clear that she’s not a fan of the 10 year deal. Earlier this year, in a post at Re/Code that laid out Mayer’s plans for Yahoo!, known as the “Three S’s” internally: Stream, Shopping, and Search. It’s pretty apparent that Mayer has big plans for search, and a low opinion of the Bing search alliance. From the Re/Code post, quoting a Yahoo! insider:
“The minute Marissa finds a way out of that deal without committing suicide, she will. She hates it.”
There’s nothing in the new Mozilla announcement to give you the idea that things are any different, or that Mayer is continuing to fight for ways to end the Yahoo! Bing search alliance. In the Mozilla press release, in fact, it’s revealed that Yahoo! will be building a new search experience specifically for Firefox users in the US:
The deal represents the most significant partnership for Yahoo in five years. As part of this partnership, Yahoo will introduce an enhanced search experience for U.S. Firefox users which is scheduled to launch in December 2014. It features a clean, modern and immersive design that reflects input from the Mozilla team.
And while there’s nothing concrete to suggest that Yahoo! has found a way out of the Microsoft deal, Mayer is clearly setting Yahoo! up for life after Bing. On Microsoft’s part, the search alliance may be of somewhat less importance to the company now that Bing is being built in to Windows in a deeply integrated way. Microsoft may have gotten what it needed out of the deal: a leg up and a quick boost in search market share, giving it time to revamp its strategy on search and what it means to Microsoft and especially to Windows.
Can Marissa Mayer wriggle out of the Yahoo! Bing search alliance? Will it help save her job? Does Microsoft even need the search alliance anymore? What do you think?
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Has Microsoft given up on eReading?
Posted:Tue, 11 Nov 2014 18:09:59 +0000
Microsoft has a long, and not very successful, history with eReaders, going all the way back to Microsoft Reader, which debuted in 2000, but never made it beyond Windows Mobile and was shuttered in 2012. Since then, Microsoft hasn’t delved into the 1st party eReader market, although it has seemingly been ready to make the jump a number of times, establishing a partnership with Barnes and Noble and its Nook reading device in 2012, and for a time letting slip that there was an “Xbox Music, Video, and Reading” team. Nothing has ever come out of either of these forays, however, and a death knell may have been sounded for Microsoft’s eReader ambitions today.While Microsoft hasn’t had an eReader, Nokia did. Nokia’s Reading app was released in early 2012, but hasn’t been updated in the two years since then. The app came along with Microsoft’s Nokia acquisition and is now part of Microsoft Mobile, but today, according to WPCentral, Microsoft has sent emails to the users of that app that it will be shutting down at the end of the year:
In its emails, Microsoft said that Nokia Reading users should download their already purchased ebooks to their device before December 31 so they don’t lose them. After that date, the app won’t be able to be used to purchase or download ebooks. If users delete the app from their smartphone, any ebooks that have been downloaded will be lost. The email added, “Data specific to Nokia Reading will be deleted. Your Nokia Account will remain active however, and data associated with this – including your credit card information – will continue to be stored securely by Nokia.”
What’s possibly most interesting is a line at the end of the email, where Microsoft admits “that there are many other eReading apps, such as Kindle and Audible available in the Microsoft Store”. That doesn’t sound like Microsoft is planning on launching its own eReader anytime soon. A quick check on Microsoft Careers returns a number of hits for “Xbox Music and Video”, but none that include Reading (well, unless you count Reading, UK, where Microsoft has offices). Is Microsoft done with eReading?
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Microsoft announces the Lumia 535 and 535 Dual Sim
Posted:Tue, 11 Nov 2014 05:29:09 +0000
Microsoft unveiled its first Microsoft branded Lumia phones tonight, the Lumia 535 and a dual SIM equivalent, the Lumia 535 Dual SIM. The phones follow along with Lumia’s attraction to the lower end of the market, offering an affordable phone with an “estimated retail price will be around 110 euros before taxes and subsidies”. There is no word at this point where Microsoft plans to sell the phones, it’s only saying in the press release that it will “begin rolling out to key markets in November”. Microsoft teased the release on the Lumia Conversations blog late last week, and there was speculation that we may be seeing a successor to the Lumia 1320 as well, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. On to the particulars of the first real “Microsoft Lumia”:The Lumia 535 features a 5″ display (qHD – 960 x 540 px) with IPS LCD technology, a 5MP main camera and another 5MP wide angle (“selfie”) front-facing camera, a quad-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon 200 processor, 1GB RAM, 8GB onboard memory with a MicroSD card for up to 128GB more, a 1905mAh battery with 11 hours talk time, and is running Windows Phone 8.1 “Denim” (full specs). There is no wireless charging.
Microsoft is promoting the phones with a “5x5x5” tagline, according to the press release:
“Lumia 535 comes with our ‘5x5x5’ proposition,” said Jo Harlow, corporate vice president for Phones at Microsoft. “Innovation should be available to everyone, and we are doing this through the very best integrated Microsoft services included and out of the box, a 5MP wide-angle front-facing camera, and a spacious 5-inch qHD screen — all at an affordable price.”
Microsoft is also touting its 5 services: Skype, Office, OneDrive, Cortana, and OneNote as part of the 5x5x5 equation, although all Lumias come with those services and you can get everything but Cortana (so far) on iOS or Android. Still, it’s good to see Microsoft promote its ecosystem as something of a coherent whole, even if it isn’t behind a walled garden.
You can learn more about the Microsoft Lumia 535 from these sources:
Hands On Video from Lumia Conversations blog
Official Microsoft Lumia 535 page
All in all, while it’s not the flagship some of us have been hoping for, this is a well featured phone for a good price, and we’ll be interested to see how Microsoft markets it, and how it sells. Would you buy one?
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The Microsoft Work and Play Bundle: good deal if you can get it
Posted:Tue, 11 Nov 2014 00:13:56 +0000
Microsoft just went live with what looks to be a pretty good deal it’s calling the “Microsoft Work and Play Bundle“, which includes one year subscriptions to Office 365 Home, Xbox Live Gold, Xbox Music Pass, and Skype Unlimited World + WiFi, all for $199. Of course there’s a catch or two: the bundle is for sale only in physical Microsoft Stores in the US, and the offer is valid only from November 10th (today) until January 4th of 2015. If you can get yourself to a Microsoft Store, it’s a pretty good deal, that is if you can make use of all four of the services included in the bundle. Here’s a breakdown:Skype Unlimited World + WiFi – $13.99/mo X 11 mo (1 mo free) = 153.89
Xbox Music Pass – $9.99 mo X 11 mo (1 mo free) = 109.89
So that’s $423.76 retail value of services for $199, quite a savings. And while this offer is limited in a number of ways, it’s encouraging to see Microsoft experiment with bundling services, and actually rewarding their most loyal customers for a change. You can find a store and get your Work and Play Bundle beginning today, or learn more in the FAQ
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Back to the future: Windows Phone to be called Windows Mobile?
Posted:Mon, 10 Nov 2014 23:01:22 +0000
Maybe that forced change from SkyDrive to OneDrive got things rolling, or perhaps new CEO Satya Nadella really is shaking things up at Microsoft, but there seems to be a newfound interest in beginning anew. That apparently includes name changes, from all over the company. The latest tidbit, coming from the sharp eyes of Surur over at WMPowerUser.com, notes the name “Windows Mobile” has been popping up in Microsoft Careers postings. Surur posts two examples, both referring to the new/old moniker, one for an account executive:With a portfolio including MSN, Microsoft Media Network, Windows Mobile, Xbox and Bing, our range of deeply targeted channels span the entire digital lifestyle.
And another for a Senior Program Manager:
Are you passionate about working with partners to help them build and bring to market differentiating device experiences on Windows and Windows Mobile?
A quick Careers search on the term revealed a number of near-hits, and one more example, this for a Business Intelligence Developer/Analyst:
Think Windows, Windows Server, Azure and Visual Studio. Online services such as Bing and MSN. Business solutions like Office and Exchange. And devices like Surface, Xbox, Kinect, Windows Mobile, and more. We’re passionate about what we do.
Now these references don’t prove anything, no matter how much “Windows Mobile Power User” would like them to (and for the record, no, we’re not holding our breath for a return to Windows Live, and yes, we should be thinking about a name change of our own), but Microsoft is faced with some decisions about naming as it moves forward with its “one OS across devices” Windows 10 strategy (do you run Windows Phone 10 on a tablet, for example?).
There are hints that Microsoft may be thinking about other naming changes, too. This summer, in a Reddit AMA, some members of the Internet Explorer team fielded a question about rebranding, according to a post on CNNMoney:
“It’s been suggested internally,” the team commented. “Plenty of ideas get kicked around about how we can separate ourselves from negative perceptions that no longer reflect our product today.”
As recently as “a few weeks ago,” the Internet Explorer team said there was “a particularly long email thread where numerous people were passionately debating it.”
Of course the most recent example of Microsoft’s penchant for renaming comes with Windows 10 itself, which by all rights should be called Windows 9 (or even more correctly Windows 8.2, when you get right down to it). Maybe Microsoft is thinking wistfully back to the days before the iPhone, when Windows Mobile only had Blackberry to contend with, or maybe Satya just likes renaming things. What do you think, should Microsoft go back to Windows Mobile?
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What’s your perfect Windows Phone?
Posted:Sun, 09 Nov 2014 17:13:22 +0000
Microsoft is set to announce at least one, and possibly two new phones this week, a successor to the most popular Windows Phone ever made, the Lumia 520, and if rumors are correct, a successor to the 1320, the 6″ behemoth. In addition, Nokia’s last Windows Phone, the 830, has just gone on sale in the US along with the Windows Phone powered HTC One M8, and who knows, maybe there’s another last minute surprise in the works.While its good news that there are at least some new phones ready for holiday purchase, none of these phones quite meets the criteria for a true “flagship” Windows Phone, at least in our opinion. Try as we might, a 6″ phone is just too dang big, and although the HTC One M8 is intriguing, the camera is lacking compared to the best Nokia Lumia cameras. So what makes the “perfect” Windows Phone?
We would start with a nice pocketable yet large enough to read form factor. Our Lumia 925 could be just a bit bigger, maybe in the 4.7 to 5″ range instead of 4.5″, but no bigger. Our perfect phone needs to fit in a jeans pocket, be hold-able/click-able/type-able with one hand, and not make you look like a dork when holding it up to your head for making a phone call or listening to Cortana in a loud space. Of course it should have the latest specs: quad-core, hi-res, a great camera, and plenty of storage. Ideally, it should have a mini-SD slot, but with 32GB+ that becomes optional, although still nice to have.
We’ve given up on the idea of a replaceable battery, but remember those good ol’ days when you could just carry around an extra battery and not worry about running out of juice right at the wrong time? Still, our perfect phone needs to have great battery life.
We loved our Lumia 920 until the flash and the microphone stopped working, but it was heavy as heck. Our new perfect phone needs to be light and airy, and easy to hold. Our current phone, a Nokia Lumia 925, fits the bill nicely. We don’t mind a bit of heft, a good solid feel, but no bricks, please.
No matter what, our next Windows Phone will be running “Windows Phone 10” and all the goodness to come from a Spartan browser, Cortana v.Next, and a range of the latest Windows 10-ish apps, so that’s a given, but we’d love to see some real progress made in Windows Phone apps, too. New apps and the “next big thing” should come from Windows Phone, if not first, then right alongside Apple and Android.
This is all not to say that we’re not tempted by the phones coming out for the holidays, but as our 2 year contract from the day-one purchase of the Nokia Lumia 920 is set to expire next week, we’re not about to get tied into a new contract for a not-quite-good-enough phone, especially as the Lumia 925 is, for the most part, good enough for now.
So what are you doing? Will you be buying a new Windows Phone this holiday season, or will you wait to see what the new year (and MWC, and then the Windows 10 release) brings? How long will you wait for your perfect phone, and what does “perfect” mean to you?
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Will the first Microsoft Lumia come in time for the holidays?
Posted:Fri, 07 Nov 2014 08:39:10 +0000
When Microsoft announced it was rebranding its phone hardware as “Microsoft Lumia”, it hinted that there might be a new phone on the way, with the Nokia Conversations blog post quoting Senior VP Tuula Rytilä as saying “we are looking forward to unveiling a Microsoft Lumia device soon”. Then tonight, a new post on the blog hinted even more strongly that a new Lumia is coming, this time giving us a date – November 11th.The blog post, in its entirety, simply says:
Want to see #MoreLumia?
Microsoft is delivering the power of everyday mobile technology to everyone.
Come back on November 11, to find out more!
#MoreLumia
While there’s not much to go on from the few words of text and the teaser image, a number of sites noted similarities in the image to a recent post by Chinese site Tenaa, showing images and specs for a low end phone they call the RM-1090. Those specs describe a phone with a 5″ screen, a 1.2GHz Snapdragon 200 chip, dual sim, 1GB RAM/8GBROM, a 5MP camera and a 1900mAh battery. Not exactly flagship specs, to be sure, but probably better than nothing as many of us have given up the thought of Microsoft releasing anything in time for this holiday season. VentureBeat among others also notes that this new phone may well be christened the Microsoft Lumia 525, although that seems to be pure speculation at this point.
We also don’t know what markets the new device will debut in, or even if it will make it to market in time for the holidays. Next year seems to be gearing up to be much more of a make or break year for Windows Phone, with a new OS in the pipeline, the convergence of app models between Windows 10 and the phone, a bit of a down cycle for new Apple phones, and what will have to be a major marketing push for Windows 10 and Windows Phones.
Still, Microsoft needs to be in the market in at least some capacity, and a new phone, any new phone, is welcome news. We’ll find out more next week!
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Office updates iOS, Android apps – Windows 10 apps coming soon
Posted:Thu, 06 Nov 2014 17:54:16 +0000
Since Microsoft first introduced Office for the iPad last March, it’s been downloaded some 40 million times, even with the restrictions of needing an Office 365 subscription to use it. Today, Microsoft announced that Office will soon be coming to Android tablets, too, and that the iOS apps for both iPhone and iPad are being updated. Along with that, Microsoft is promising “new, touch-optimized Office apps for Windows 10”.In addition, Microsoft is dropping the requirement for an Office 365 subscription for most use cases on iOS and Android. Up until now, users on those competing platforms were required to have an Office 365 subscription to do all but the most basic operations like viewing documents and cut and paste between them. Now, users will be able to use Office 365 on these devices essentially free, with the ability to create, edit documents, and even save them to Dropbox using the recently announced Dropbox integration. You’ll still need an Office 365 subscription to use these devices with OneDrive, or OneDrive for Business storage. Of course the over 7 million users with Office 365 subscriptions will still get the full benefits of Office on iOS or Android.
Microsoft initially required an existing Office 365 subscription to use Office on iOS as perhaps the only way around Apple’s strict requirements for access into its Store, otherwise Apple would have required a 30% cut of each Office 365 subscription sold to potential iOS users. Now it appears that it is more important for Microsoft to get and keep as many users on Office as they can, regardless of whether they pay or not.
The Office Blog also promises more news soon about a more touch friendly Office coming to Windows 10. Microsoft released a version of Office, “Office 2013 RT”, built in to Windows RT tablets like the Surface RT and Surface 2, but has yet to release a fully touch enabled Office. Now it looks like Microsoft may finally be ready to talk about what’s coming next for Office on Windows.
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