Microsoft CES 2009 Windows Experience video

Microsoft CES 2009 Windows Experience (in high quality)

 

Video highlighting offerings from original equipment manufacturers featured during Steve Ballmer’s keynote address.

 

 

Enjoy the video.

 

- Albert

Kiev Search? Microsoft’s new search brand?

LiveSide.net user “ma574ch33f117” performed a little interesting search over at Live Search and found something quite intriguing. In his comment, he states that he went to Live.com and searched “site:kumo.com” to see what results would come up with the domain. I went ahead and repeated that query and found other little details.

 

When you perform the search, you get a result titled “Kiev Search - Get to know Kiev Search” which contains a description:

“Get to know Kiev Search. Web. Search the web. cashback. Get money back when you shop at the online stores you know and trust. Images. Find the pictures that you've been looking for…”

 

 

Additionally, Live Search even provided a cashed version of the site, which looks a lot like a current Live Search site.

Current “Kiev Search” (kumo.com) cached site on Live.com servers

 

Current “Live Search” (similar site)

 

 

I don’t know…you be the judge. But, “Kiev” is such a random brand name. Kumo at least had some meaning behind it (which means either “cloud” or “spider” in Japanese, depending on which Kanji characters are used, via Mary-Jo Foley). I don’t honestly know what to think anymore. After the resurfacing possible Yahoo search deal, multiple rebranding possibilities, and now “Kiev,” I just hope some Softie knows what they’re doing.

 

- Albert

Live Search: Search Suggestions

Apologies for the lack of posting recently; still getting used to the college life :)

But anyway, for a while now I had been running into a feature not quite given much attention to. This could be because the feature comes and goes, and only until today did I notice that it seemed a bit more permanent. However, this might change within a few hours. I am talking about Live Search “Search Suggestions.”

 

Originally I had noticed it when using my sister’s computer well more than a month ago. It obviously went a way for a while, or it shows up only to certain users (at the time, I would try it on my laptop and it wouldn’t show up, while it would on my sister’s). But as an active Live Search user, I have now seen it re-surface, and this time I think it might be here to stay. I think so because it is now well implemented into the Live Search options page, so if you can’t see the drop-down list, go there and enable them.

 

While Google has it on its home search page as well, Live.com currently seems to lack it. At the moment, the drop-down Search Suggestions only seem to appear when in a search results page. It will be interesting to see what Microsoft also decides to do with this tool to make it unique to that of other search engines, including Google and Ask.

 

- Albert

Windows Live for Windows Mobile

OK, first let's get the naming clear. Microsoft seems to be using 3 different names for this service as of right now: "Hotmail for Windows Mobile," "Windows Live Hotmail for Windows Mobile," and finally "Windows Live for Windows Mobile." I am yet to find out which name has been used for the most recent publishing of the application, but I would go with "Windows Live for Windows Mobile" because of the "About" screen for the actual application.

 

The application (which includes Hotmail and Spaces features, but not Messenger) has been available since June of this year, but until recently have I begun to notice links to it across Windows sites. In my case, I spotted it on the Windows Mobile "Total Access" site and here's the link story.

 

First noticed it on the "Download for Windows Mobile" page on the "Total Access" site.

 

So that takes us to "Windows Live Hotmail for Windows Mobile" page (already we note a name difference).

 

There we find the link to wl.windowsmobile.com (to download via the device) which really forwards us here and gives us two options of the software: Pro and Standard.

 

After downloading and installing it, we get the "About" screen, which might point us to Microsoft's real naming of the application as "Windows Live for Windows Mobile."

 

I'm currently going to test it out on my Windows Mobile 6.0 (6.1 is going to be available to us soon, yay!) powered AT&T Tilt and I will get back to you guys with my take on it.

- Albert