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Category: MSN
November 11th, 2009
Bing 2.0 debuts
Microsoft is rolling out over the next few weeks its first major release of Bing since the search engine launched in June.
(The Softies don’t like the “Bing 2.0″ moniker, but that’s how some zealous Microsoft employees who heard about the forthcoming update described it earlier this summer. When Microsoft rolled out its new visual search capability a couple months ago, officials did acknowledge a bigger refresh of Bing was on tap for this fall.)
Just to be really clear, if you go to the Bing.com page today, it doesn’t look or seem any different. It’s going to take a while for the Bing servers to be populated with the refresh.
On November 11, a Microsoft spokesperson sent the following information about the new Bing update:
“The update includes a partnership with computational knowledge engine Wolfram Alpha, which will incorporate health and nutrition-related structured data from Wolfram Alpha into Bing results.
“We’re also rolling out a number of updates to Bing. This rolling update will include new features such as localized results for weather and events and City Slideshows. It will also include updates to existing features, such as an improved Bing Shopping experience and the next generation of Hover Preview, which lets people view a snapshot of a website or search within that website before clicking through. Please note that all new features including the Wolfram Alpha integration will be rolling out to select groups and will not be fully available to our entire customer base for several weeks. “
In related news, Microsoft this week rolled out Bing Videos, a refresh of MSN Videos that incorporates the Bing search technology. Bing Videos is now the single hub for video content from MSN, Hulu, YouTube and other content sources.
Update: There’s more on the Microsoft-Wolfram partnership in a November 11 posting to the Wolfram Alpha blog. The Wolfram execs note that Microsoft is one of the first commercial customers for the recently introduced Wolfram Alpha application-programming interface (API). From that post:
“By using our API, Bing will be able to seamlessly access the tens of thousands of algorithms and trillions of pieces of data from Wolfram|Alpha, and directly incorporate the computations in its search results.”
Update 2: There are more details about the steps leading up to the bigger Bing refresh in a November 10 posting to the Bing Community blog.
“Since June we’ve released a bunch of new stuff to try and meet the demands of our users – Twitter integration, Visual Search, Twitter Search, better maps, and a host of user interface and index improvements. But being the true search geeks that we are, we knew we needed to keep our eye on the prize: we still need to help people make better decisions with more confidence. We are, after all, a Decision Engine not just a Search Engine.
“So we listened: we talked to people in small groups all across the nation, we worked with search pioneers outside the company to get their take on what we were missing, and we listened to the quiet and fleeting clues about what you want in search by analyzing reams of data.”
The results of this “listening tour” are features like more shortcuts, more visual search results, more exposure to results via “hovering” functionality, a new event search feature and more. It sounds like the team is going to trickle out more details of what’s in Bing 2.0 over the next few days.
November 4th, 2009
The long and winding road to MSN's reinvention as a social hub
It took a couple of years, but Microsoft is finally making good on some of the ideas officials had for making the company’s MSN home page more viable.
Back in 2007, former Senior Vice President of Microsoft’s Online Services Group Steve Berkowitz said Microsoft’s goal was to integrate more social-networking tools and pre-programmed content into the MSN home page. On November 4, Microsoft made public a preview of a new MSN home page that integrates Facebook and Twitter. (And Windows Live, too, the Softies note, usually as an afterthought.)
The revamped MSN home page — which execs say is the most sweeping face-lift the MSN.com site has had in close to a decade — looks less cluttered and easier to navigate. It’s also faster to load and has lost a lot of the “blue links” that dominate the current MSN.com page. Unsurprisingly, Microsoft’s Bing search technology is deeply integrated into the new design.
See Gallery: The past and future of MSN
The final version of the new MSN.com is slated to go live in early 2010.
“If there’s a hot new search term, we can put that on the page. We can surface Twitter and Facebook feeds to make real-time search available on MSN,” said Bob Visse, General Manager of MSN Product Management.
There’s also a big focus on making “local experiences” easier for MSN.com users to find and surface, Visse said. Microsoft will allow users to “interact with content in a programmable way.” Silverlight isn’t required, but if users have it installed on their PCs, it will “enhance” their video-viewing experience, Visse said. He said Microsoft will offer a list of Silverlight applications — such as gas-price indicator, for example — that users can get if they have Microsoft’s Flash competitor installed.
In 2008, Microsoft made MSN part of the combined Search, Portal and Advertising Group as part of one of the company’s regular reorgs. At that time, officials said Microsoft’s goal was to make MSN.com more of a socially networked platform. In an e-mail to employees, Senior Vice President of R&D for Online Services Satya Nadella said MSN was Microsoft’s single largest source of ad revenue. He also promised that the next version of MSN would be “a software engine that delivers the most relevant and social online content experience.”
It’s easy to forget that shortly before Microsoft decided to focus on MSN as one of its major vehicles for consumer outreach, advertising and search that the company came close to getting out of the portal business. Berkowitz was one of the main execs who helped convince management that there was value in MSN and that Microsoft should keep the platform around.
These days, Microsoft is claiming that it has the largest worldwide audience of any of the consumer-focused portals on the Web. According to the company, 100 million people in the U.S. visit MSN every single month, and MSN added over 10 million new customers in the past year.
November 2nd, 2009
Microsoft Live Labs shutters ThumbTack bookmarking project
Microsoft’s Live Labs — its MSN-Microsoft Research “mash-up” — is closing another of its incubation projects.
The latest to go is ThumbTack. ThumbTack is/was a bookmarking service (somewhat akin to Google’s Chrome bookmark sync). Microsoft describes ThumbTac on the Live Labs site this way:
“Thumbtack is an easy way to save links, photos, and anything else you can find on bunch of different Web sites to a single place. Grab the stuff you want, put it into a Thumbtack collection, then get to it from anywhere you can get online.”
I recently received a reader query about ThumbTack. The reader said he had tried to find out what was going on with the service, via customer support, to no avail.
It looks like he wasn’t the only one. Here’s a mention of the same issue on a Microsoft Live forum. And here’s a “Geeks with Blogs” blog post I found from mid-October:
“I first posted to Live Labs Customer care about not being able to generate a new link a month ago and haven’t gotten any response. Now today I can’t seem to log into Customer Care for ThumbTack.
“The Thumbtack site is just a blank page… guess shame on me for not pulling my links out of that when it started acting hinky a month ago, but the promo page is still advertising it as if it’s viable.
“I can’t find any way to contact them, so I’m throwing this blog post out in case anyone that has some knowledge can assist.”
Microsoft is confirming ThumbTack is closing. Here’s the official word, via a Live Labs spokesperson:
“It looks that Live Labs recently decided to retire the ThumbTack experiment to focus the team on some of their other projects and ideas. As you know, the team typically has a number of incubation projects in development on an ongoing basis. This is nothing out of the ordinary but just the normal course of business for the Labs as they continue to stay ahead of key trends in a changing industry.”
Earlier this year, Microsoft “restructured” Live Labs by moving half of the Live Labs team into various product groups. The Live Labs team has closed and/or put on hold a number of its other projects in recent months, including DeepFish and Volta.
Incubation project or no, it seems odd that the ThumbTack team seems not to have told its testers about its phase-out plans. I’ve asked Microsoft what testers should do in order to get any stored data out of the service. Stay tuned….
Update (November 3): A spokesperson just sent this update as to what the team’s plans are, regarding current ThumbTack testers:
“The Live Labs group has just restored http://thumbtack.livelabs.com. Any user can now log in and get their data out. The service has been re-enabled through the
end of the month so that anyone negatively affected can access the service. The project will be retired at the end of November. The group apologizes for any inconvenience caused and is working on enabling an export scenario that should be available soon.“The Live Labs website will note the retired status of this project later in the month to reflect these changes.”
October 1st, 2009
Microsoft shuffles its advertising engineering deck
Alexander Gounares, Corporate Vice President of Advertising Research and Development for Microsoft, is no longer in charge of engineering for Microsoft’s digital advertising products.
In response to my query, a Microsoft spokesperson sent on October 1 a confirmation and explanation of what Gounares will be doing:
“Alex Gounares is transitioning to a new role becoming the CTO for the Online Services Division, reporting to Satya Nadella. Alex is looking forward to taking some well-earned parental leave, before returning to play a pivotal role by driving cross-cutting strategy and future-thinking for the entire division.”
I’ve asked how long Gounares will be gone and who will be taking his place. No word back yet on either of those questions.
Update: Rajat Taneja will become the CVP of Program Management for Ad Platform. The spokesperson added: “Rajat’s charter will include partnering very closely with Scott Howe and the business team to ensure tight connection between our business strategy and technology roadmap and delivery.” Meanwhile, Don Gagne will be promoted to CVP of Development for Ad Platform. “Prior to OSD R&D in the search team a few months ago, Don led Office engineering,” the spokesperson added.
Gounares is taking a four-week leave, the spokesperson also said.
Gounares’ next boss will be Nadella, who is the Senior Vice President for Research and Development with Mcirosoft’s Online Services Division. Nadella leads engineering for Bing, MSN and Microsoft’s advertising platforms.
Gounares has been with Microsoft since 1993, and spent three years during his career as the technology assistant to Chairman Bill Gates. Prior to heading ad research and development, he was Corporate Vice President for Corporate Strategy. He also, at one point, was responsible for leading the creation of the original Microsoft Tablet PC platform. This past summer, he was one of 40-plus individual appointed to head up the review of ThinkWeek papers inside Microsoft
Products like Microsoft adCenter are central to Microsoft’s push to try to attract advertisers who want to run ads across Microsoft’s Bing search, video, gaming and mobile platforms.
October 1st, 2009
Microsoft adds consumer-friendly face to its HealthVault platform
Microsoft launched on October 1 a beta of a new MSN service aimed at helping consumers manage their own health information.
The new service, known as My Health Info, is based on Microsoft’s HealthVault. HealthVault is a software and services platform that is hosted on Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud-computing environment. The service makes use of Silverlight and allows users to search for health-related topics via Bing.
My Health Info is designed to allow consumers to store all kinds of personal health information, like childrens’ vaccination schedules, prescription records, blood sugar levels, etc. It also will allow consumers to monitor “topical areas of interest,” like swine flu. The service can be configured to maintain separate records on multiple people, so that a user could manage information on multiple family members.
At the end of August in 2009, Microsoft removed the two-year-old beta tag from HealthVault. There’s no word on when Microsoft expects to do the same with the new MSN health service.
My Health Info makes use of the same security and privacy mechanisms that HealthVault itself does. All health data is encrypted; every time data is changed or read, a log is generated; and HTTPS is the protocol via which information is passed, according to Microsoft officials.
Microsoft created the new service to serve the 83 percent of people who search for health-related information on the Web, officials said. Serving ads on health content is also a huge opportunity for the company.
September 15th, 2009
Microsoft Zune HD: Going beyond the specs
On September 15, Microsoft and its retail partners began selling the Zune HD in the U.S. Lots of sites have hands-on reviews, photos and feature details about the players and the accompanying Zune 4.0 software beyond what’s already leaked to the Web over the past few months.
I have been more curious about how the Zune fits into Microsoft’s product and services strategy. Here’s what I learned from chatting with Terry Farrell, Senior Project Manager for the Zune.
To Microsoft, the Zune is more than a media player, Farrell said. Microsoft is fully aware that, currently, the Zune is an MP3 player “with a few million, highly engaged customers,” in Farrell’s words. Microsoft execs have been saying — ever since the company split the Zune team in two and sent the software folks to work with the MediaRoom IPTV folks — that Zune’s future is all about software and services.
See also:
- Gallery: A closer look at Microsoft’s Zune 4.0 music software
- Gallery: Custom-etched designs available for Zune HD
Farrell confirmed there will be “at least” one more generation of Zune media players. Beyond that, who knows? The way the market is moving, dedicated MP3 players look to be on their way out, with users preferring to buy, play and consume their audio and video on phones and/or other devices, he said.
“The bigger story,” Farrell contended, “is about how it (the Zune) is helping us build a new entertainment brand for Microsoft. Among the core pieces of this brand are the Zune HD, MSN and Windows Media Center. The idea is to provide a set of unifying services — the same video service/same catalog — across all of these devices.
It doesn’t mean, as some have speculated, a single app store for the Zune HD and Windows Mobile. Or a common set of games offered across the Zune HD and Xbox. Yes, there will be even more integration between the Zune HD and Xbox (as well as a new $89 A/V dock for non-gamers who are still interested in streaming HD content to their HDTVs rather than onto their gaming consoles). But the handful of games and apps Microsoft is going to offer in November for free on the Zune HD are casual games (think Project Gotham Racing Ferrari Edition), a calculator, a weather app, and Facebook/Twitter clients.
Why not go the Apple route and have one big app store in the cloud?
“Mobile devices are always connected. Our device is sometimes connected to the Web,” Farrell said. That means different kinds of apps and experiences are better suited to a Zune HD than a mobile phone, he said.
Speaking of the Web, Microsoft — or, at least, the Zune team — is starting to talk about Microsoft’s entertainment future as being about four screens. Microsoft execs, from CEO Steve Ballmer to Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie, have been describing Microsoft’s long-term “three screens and a cloud” vision. Those three screens — the PC, TV and a portable device — are complemented by a fourth, Farrell said: The Web.
With the Zune HD, Microsoft is including a built-in Web browser as part of the device’s Windows CE-based operating system. (It’s “a version of IE for Windows Mobile 6.5, but highly customized for Zune HD,” a spokesperson said. The version of IE that is part of Windows Mobile 6.5 is IE 6-based.) Users can use an on-screen keyboard and Bing, unsurprisingly, is the built-in search engine on the device.
Many industry watchers cite Apple’s control of the end-to-end experience — everything from the hardware to the software — as key to what makes its products successful. But that’s not the way Microsoft is going, at least not in the media player market.
“The way to think about the Zune going forward is as a software and services layer,” Farrell said.
What’s your take: Are the Softies are thinking about this the right way?
May 20th, 2009
Microsoft's Ozzie defends Microsoft's aggressive online spending
Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie defended Microsoft’s continued heavy investments in the online-systems arena, claiming the flowing trail of red ink from Microsoft’s Online Systems Business (OSB) doesn’t tell the whole story.
Speaking at the J.P. Morgan Technology, Media and Telecom Conference on May 20, Ozzie touched on his favorite topics — software plus services, Microsoft’s “three screens and a cloud” (mobile devices, PCs and TV) vision; and the need for Microsoft to field consumer services as a way to show off its cloud-computing prowess.
But a question from one audience member on why Microsoft continues to pour so much money into its still-unprofitable online services division got Ozzie to deviate a bit from his script.
(For its FY 2009 Q3, Microsoft’s OSB lost $575 million. Its latest round of layoffs allegedly included some OSB personnel, but relatively few, according to company scuttlebutt.)
The benefit of continued research and investment in Microsoft’s consumer-facing Live services — everything from Windows Live Hotmail, to the soon-to-be-rebranded Live Search — “is bigger than the numbers indicate,” Ozzie said.
Microsoft’s growing family of enterprise-focused services — Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, etc. — have taught the company a lot about cloud requirements. Its investments in consumer services have taught the company important lessons about scale, Ozzie said.
The underlying infrastructure Microsoft has built to deploy and run its consumer services is now being extended to support other services throughout the company, he said. Ozzie pointed to “Cosmos,” the high-scale file system that is part of Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, as ultimately supporting and aiding every consumer, enterprise and developer property at Microsoft. He noted that the management systems for Microsoft’s current and existing cloud services are all derived from the learnings Microsoft has gleaned from managing its consumer online services.
May 6th, 2009
Microsoft to turn .Net Micro Framework code, support over to the community
Microsoft is turning the source code for its embedded .Net Micro Framework over to the community and slowly withdrawing from that business, company officials are confirming.
(Update on May 7: Microsoft disagrees with my characterization of this move as “withdrawing from the business.” But I’m standing by what I said, while making it clear company officials didn’t say they are withdrawing. To me, if you cut a bunch of a team and turn your source code over to external parties, you are not signaling that you’re continuing to stand firmly behind a product.
A spokesperson sent me this additional statement today: “The team views the new business model as an opportunity to accelerate the adoption of the .NET Micro Framework technology. Microsoft’s objective is to create a uniform programming model and tool chain that spans software development from very small devices to the most sophisticated servers.”)
On the rumored list of teams most heavily impacted by second wave of Microsoft layoffs announced on May 5 was the .Net Micro Framework team — as well as the related MSN Direct unit. Indeed, both groups were affected, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed on May 6.
The .Net Micro Framework is one of a number of embedded platforms Microsoft has licensed to third parties and made available to teams inside the company. Others include Windows CE and Windows XPe. The .Net Micro Framework was at the heart of the Microsoft SPOT watches, some newfangled coffee makers and other consumer devices. (MSN Direct, a wireless information service, provided real-time updates to those watches, and, more recently GPS systems and Windows Mobile devices.) The .Net Micro Framework was aimed primarily at very small, low-power devices that couldn’t accommodate the .Net Compact Framework or another operating environment.
Here’s what’s happening with the .Net Micro Framework, post yesterday’s layoff announcement, according to a company spokesperson:
“On the .NET Micro Framework, there will be changes to the business model.
1) Microsoft will eliminate the royalties from the distribution of the .NET Micro Framework product and make the porting kit available at no cost.
2) Microsoft also intends to give customers and the community access to the source code.“They will continue to support existing customers according to any agreements that they have in place with them, and will honor their lifecycle support pledge at http://support.microsoft.com/?pr=lifecycle. Forums continue to be available at MSDN. After moving to the community model, new customers will be supported by the community.
“As part of this change in business model, some members of the team were impacted by yesterday’s job eliminations. The existing group will move to the .NET Framework team.
“While the MSN Direct group was impacted by yesterday’s job eliminations, they will continue to maintain the current MSN Direct service and invest in developing a low cost receiver for multiple devices. Customers will continue to receive support as it is available today.”
An interesting side note, re: the .Net Micro Framework. Among the list of processors supported by that platform are the very low power ARM7 and ARM9. There have been questions lately as to when and whether — and how — Microsoft is planning to support the ARM processor family, given that ARM chips are showing up in some netbooks. Microsoft has declined to comment on its Windows ARM-support plans.
March 30th, 2009
Microsoft to close the book on Encarta
Microsoft is discontinuing its MSN Encarta encyclopedia software and services over the course of this year, as Ars Technica is reporting.
From the Microsoft Web site:
“On October 31, 2009, MSN Encarta Web sites worldwide will be discontinued, with the exception of Encarta Japan, which will be discontinued on December 31, 2009. Additionally, Microsoft will cease to sell Microsoft Student and Encarta Premium software products worldwide by June 2009.”
Microsoft attributed the Encarta closing to changing user preferences. From the FAQ:
“(T)he category of traditional encyclopedias and reference material has changed. People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past.”
The site doesn’t mention the fact that Microsoft has been reorganizing and rethinking the mission and strategy of its MSN team for the past several months. The company has been killing off various products and business units as part of its overall belt tightening for the past few months, as well.
Will anyone be shedding any tears over Encarta’s phase-out?
October 24th, 2008
Microsoft launches a development-tool-focused incubator
Microsoft has launched yet another hybrid product-research lab — this one focused on the development-tool arena.
The newly formed DevLabs joins Microsoft’s growing list of incubators which includes Live Labs, Office Labs, adCenter Labs and Startup Labs.
Developer Division Senior Vice President Soma Somasegar blogged about the formation of DevLabs on October 23. Somasegar noted that some, but not all, of the DevLabs projects will come from Microsoft’s Developer Division. From Somasegar’s post:
“Most of these are projects that aren’t as solid in exact deliverables yet. Some of these projects will turn into features in our existing shipping products, some we will open-source for the community, others we will decide to not pursue. You are the ones that can help us determine what best suits your needs.”
Like the other Microsoft incubators, DevLabs is about getting Microsoft devlier new technologies in a more agile way. From the DevLabs “about us” page:
“Here Microsoft teams are reaching out to broad developer audiences with new, developer-focused technologies well before they are officially released. Our goal is that many of these technologies will eventually be incorporated into Microsoft products in some form or another. Others may be retired or released into the shared-source community. Some projects highlighted here are already in a released state but they have new concepts within them that we are trying out, to see how developers react to them for possible inclusion in other Microsoft products. Some are in prototype packages that will evolve into larger, well known products.”
There are currently four projects listed on the DevLabs site:
- Popfly, Microsoft’s mash-up tool
- Small Basic, a programming language for beginners
- PEX (Program Exploration), an automated “white box” testing tool for .Net from Microsoft Research
- CHESS, the Microsoft-Research-developed concurrent-programming test tool
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