How To Reclaim Space Lost To Vista SP1
If you installed Windows Vista Service Pack 1, there are files sitting on your hard drive from the install that you can just go ahead and junk. Unless you’ve got a mission critical program that doesn’t work under SP1, you have absolutely no reason to want to uninstall that, so all that space should just be freed up right away. To run the SP1 cleaner, open a command prompt (you may need administrator right) and type “vsp1cln.exe”. I got back 790 megabytes, your mileage may vary.
Zune Engraving No Longer Free Microsoft has ended the roughly five month free period for buying a Zune with free engraving from ZuneOriginals.net. If you want a Zune “tattooed”, laser engraved with some pretty cool designs, it’ll cost you $10 for a simpler design or $15 for a full on “Artist Series” design (plus the cost of the actual Zune).
Gatineau Renamed adCenter Analytics
Microsoft’s Project (codename) Gatineau finally has grown up to a real product name: adCenter Analytics. The new name reflects the strong link between Analytics and adCenter, as well as the fact that Analytics was created to help adCenter advertisers do a better job getting conversions out of their ads. The beta was also refreshed, removing the $5 signup fee, adding importing of adCenter/AdWords/Yahoo data, a tree map view of site traffic, period comparisons and more.
Microsoft Fifth Biggest User Of H-1B Visas BusinessWeek has a list of the companies that have received the most petitions for H-1B visa approval, used to allow foreign professionals to stay in the United States and hold jobs. The fifth company on the list is Microsoft, with 959 petitions in 2007 alone, a number that explains exactly why Microsoft is continually petitioning the federal government to allow more visas than the current 100% full system allows for. Google is #16 with 248, IBM is #40/184, Oracle #92/113, and Yahoo is #105/108.
(via Digg)
Microsoft Produces Limited Edition GTA IV Xbox 360 Microsoft has released a very limited stock of Grand Theft Auto IV Xbox 360 Elite consoles, 500 to be exact, complete with a GTA IV design on the side panel and a briefcase full of peripherals. The consoles are individually numbered, so you know how limited of an edition it is, and the briefcase has wireless controller, ChatPad, headset, camera, remote, and charge kit.
Vista Service Pack 1 Released Microsoft has finalized the release of Windows Vista Service Pack 1, putting the major update to Vista in the hands of users. Some users are getting it pushed to them via Windows Update, and if you don’t have it yet, just go here to download the standalone 434 megabyte installer for 32-bit versions of Vista. This link will get you the 64-bit version.
If you aren’t getting Vista SP1 through Automatic Updates, and are not even getting it offered as an option, it is likely because your computer is failing a number of prerequisites. One of them is driver compatibility, and since Sigmatel audio drivers aren’t worth crap on Vista, practically anyone with one of those chips in their systems won’t get SP1 without installing it manually. Read more here.
Microsoft Launches AdCenter Community Microsoft has launched AdCenterCommunity.com, a website for its growing AdCenter advertiser base to to learn about ways to run better ad campaigns, with niche-specific blogs, user forums, and other community features. The community offers advice on the AdCenter API, Analytics, and represents an effort by Microsoft to distinguish itself from Google AdWords, which has notoriously poor communication with with its advertisers.
Mac Office 2008 Gets Updated Microsoft released a patch for Office 2008, fixing problems that could cause Office programs to crash or otherwise stop responding. It also improves security, keeps restricted users from having unauthorized access to Office program files, fixes a blank page printing problem, fixes font substitution issues, adds support for secondary displays, and many other fixes and improvements.
Microsoft’s List of Potential Yahoo Board Members
If Microsoft winds up completing its effort to buy Yahoo through a hostile takeover, they’ll need to nominate a full new board of directors. A part of that list has leaked out, naming four of the ten executives Microsoft may place on the board. They are:
Edward H. Meyer - former CEO, Grey Advertising
John Chapple - CEO, Nextel Partners
Tom Freston - former President, Viacom
Jaynie Studenmund - Former CEO of eHarmony
Yahoo is reportedly finally holding talks with Microsoft, having a meeting to let Microsoft explain its offer and put some of its vision forward. Even if Yahoo doesn’t want to give in and except Microsoft’s offer, the offer may be impossible to ignore, especially if Microsoft raises the amount it is willing to pay. With other potential buyers dropping out, it’s certainly something they should consider.
Virtual Earth Implemented in Flash
Like Windows Live Maps? Like the compatibility and ease of Flash applications? Then you’ll like that AFC Components has added the Virtual Earth API to its UMAP control. You can see Virtual Earth embedded right here:
Sony PS3 for $100 Off
If you are looking to go with a Sony PlayStation 3, you might be glad to know that the SonyStyle store is offering $100 off the purchase of a 40gb PS3 with a new Sony card, making it just $300. That’s a good enough deal even if you find Sony as evil as many do, just to get a good Blu-Ray player and a small number of decent exclusive games.
Even as it moves to add Yahoo’s to its own, Microsoft showed off new advertising technologies for its AdCenter unit. Among the technologies are an interactive multi-touch advertising display for public places, an algorithm that determines the least annoying place to insert ads in videos, a way to prevent ads from being displayed alongside objectionable content, speech recognition that automatically categorizes videos, among other things.
A few weeks back Microsoft and Dell announced they would combine efforts to create a product for the (PROJECT) RED campaign. They announced special editions of the M1330, M1530 along with the XPS ONE. The computers all come loaded with Vista Ultimate PROJECT (RED), which is pretty much Vista Ultimate with additional backgrounds, sidebar gadgets and a screen saver. But the real value comes from knowing that up to $80 of your purchase will go to the Global Fund, which helps fund the fight against Aids/HIV in Africa. Microsoft has been rumored to be working on an PROJECT (RED) Xbox 360 but has yet to confirm any solid plans.
It looks like Microsoft and Dell are eager to get the word out because the companies have announced they will begin a massive marketing push of their PROJECT (RED) products that will begin with a Super Bowl advertisement. The campaign will include both print ads and TV spots.
Currently you can only get Vista Ultimate PROJECT (RED) with the specific Dell systems.
The Microsoft Affiliate Network has added Microsoft AdCenter to its available referral programs. You can earn $35 for every account you refer to sign up with AdCenter, which should be pretty easy, given that AdCenter provides new clients with $50 of free ad clicks. Here’s one of the creatives:
They also have some holiday ad creatives (plus text links):
As Viacom strikes out with a lawsuit against YouTube, Microsoft has signed a half-billion-dollar deal with the company that bolsters its ad divisions and provides some interesting opportunities. Under the terms of the deal, Microsoft licenses Viacom’s content from properties like MTV, Paramount and Comedy Central for use on MSN and Xbox Live, and Viacom starts using Microsoft’s Atlas ad server (from aQuantive) on their websites, giving Microsoft the right to sell Viacom’s extra ad inventory.
In addition, Microsoft agrees to buy advertising on Viacom’s TV stations and websites over the next five years and work with Viacom on promotions and sponsorships. Viacom will work with Microsoft to become a preferred publishing partner on Microsoft’s casual gaming platforms. This is the sort of deal Google should have signed with Viacom to avoid its current legal problems, if Google had any media properties Viacom was actually interested in.
Microsoft winds up with a strong ad partner and more ways to promote its own properties. The deal ties the MTV and Xbox brands closer together, which can’t hurt their image, and improves Microsoft’s relationship with Comedy Central. All in all, a big win for Microsoft.
Microsoft has launched an accreditation program for AdCenter, qualifying companies people as AdCenter experts. The program, called adExcellence and available at adexcellence.com, will approve experts, list them in a membership directory and let them use an approved expert logo.
They’ve also launched a beta of an Excel add-in for AdCenter that lets you extract keywords from any website, understand keyword trends and popularity, and gain insight into the demographic and geographic information of actual search queries. The point: You can get all sorts of valuable data for running AdCenter campaigns and work on it powefully and flexibly in Excel.
Apple’s is running a pretty smart website ad, one that puts a banner atop the page and a video in the sidebar. It’s another in the series of “Get A Mac” ads (you know, “I’m a Mac” “and I’m a PC”), with the video interacting with the ad at the top, and it’s kind of funny. Here’s a video of the whole page in action:
While I kind of like the ad (even if it contains the same smugness and inaccuracy of the entire ad campaign), it isn’t working out so well for Engadget. The ad has been causing audio problems, browser crashes, and wasting system resources, which appears to have caused them to take down the ad today. Microsoft should run an ad about how Apple sits around claiming everything they make is perfect and flawless, but tends to come riddled with stupid little problems.
Sorry, just clearing my throat. What was I saying? Oh, yeah, saying everything your company does is perfect is just stupid, since no one can create perfection. Microsoft screws up, Apple screws up, but only one of them claims to be just perfect. It’s becoming a bad joke at this point.
Got an email letting me know of some new features for Microsoft’s AdCenter, Microsoft’s one-stop service for buying online advertising. The new features:
Dear Nathan,
This weekend, Microsoft adCenter will upgrade with new features. You’ll see improvements to the editorial review of your ads, increased reporting capabilities, and new campaign management features.
Upgrade highlights
Instant editorial feedback on your ads and keywords during the creation process.
Receive one editorial e-mail per account per day for your newly disapproved ads or keywords with consolidated e-mail notifications.
Improved speed means your campaign updates can go live faster.
Intuitive reporting functionalities allow you to easily analyze and optimize your reports with interactive filtering, sorting, and graphs.
Flexible budgeting for your campaigns. Now you can set a daily budget target with a maximum spend per month.
Substitute default dynamic text to be used if your inserted keyword or placeholders cause the ad to exceed the maximum character limit.
Read our adCenter Feature Release Guide to learn how to use all of the new features from this upgrade. You can also visit our adCenter Blog for detailed feature reviews.
If you have any questions, please contact our adCenter Support Team.
Sincerely,
The Microsoft adCenter Team
The editorial feedback lets you know if there’s a problem with your ads, such as you forgetting to fill in something, getting the length of the ad copy wrong, poorly formatted URLs, that sort of thing. Read more about the upgrade, with screenshots, at the AdCenter blog. You can also read the nine-page PDF explaining all the new features. The dynamic text, which lets you define parameters that can be inserted and changed within ad text, looks particularly useful.
The Microsoft Affiliate Network has added a new offer, letting you invite people to download the Windows Live Toolbar and earn a $1 commission. Here’s one of the ad units available:
They’ve also got a 200×170 button, 180×620 skyscraper, and 140×260 mini scraper.
There’s also an MSN AdCenter affiliate program, but you have to be a Microsoft partner to be eligible. This is what the banner looks like:
Search Marketing isn’t about reaching a lot of people; it’s about reaching the right people: Buyers. Through Microsoft adCenter, you can reach out to 97 million MSN users, 83% of whom have recently purchased online.1 So sign up and start using adCenter,. ¹Source: Nielsen//NetRatings, June-07, US Home/Work Combined; Nielsen//NetRatings @ Plan, Summer 2007 Release.
Reach out to 97 million potential customers with Microsoft adCenter today.1 ¹Source: Nielsen//NetRatings, June-07, US Home/Work Combined
And two others of that style. Plus a more standard text link ad (”Sign Up for a Microsoft adCenter Account”), about eight variations worth.
This is in addition to the Windows Live OneCare offer I’ve mentioned before. The OneCare offer has been reduced to 50 cents (from $1.50), so you might want to jump on the Toolbar offer in case its price goes down.
Microsoft has won the fight to be Facebook’s new investor and advertising partner, beating Google in some heated negotiations and getting a stake in the company. Microsoft has not bought Facebook, but it now owns 1.6% of the fastest rising social network, paying $240 million for the stake and setting Facebook’s value at $15 billion.
Under the terms of the deal, besides owning a portion of the company (and thus receiving stock in an IPO or payment if the company is sold), Microsoft will now sell Facebook’s international advertising, in addition to the U.S. advertising it already handles. Microsoft does not lose Facebook’s ad sales to Google, which it likely would have if it had lost to Google.
The relatively small size of the buy (considering numbers like $750 million were being tossed around) could mean that Facebook did not like the terms Google was looking to get out of the deal, and decided to instead go with Microsoft for less. Alternatively, if could mean Google was looking to value the company at far less than Microsoft did, and Facebook did not want to give away too much of the company, and instead went with Microsoft’s higher valuation but lower percentage.
TechCrunch thinks that the cost to buyout Microsoft’s U.S. ad deal, which runs through 2011, would have been too high, making the Microsoft money more profitable than Google’s money. However, we know that Microsoft’s deal with Facebook would earn the company less than $10 million if Facebook was sold to someone else. On the other hand, that payout was for the original deal, which ran through 2009, while a newer deal signed earlier this year runs through 2011, and may have pushed that number higher.
Under the $15 billion valuation, other investors in Facebook now have some idea how much their stakes are worth. The New York Times explains:
The Microsoft investment throws the value of the holdings of Facebook investors into the stratosphere. Mark Zuckerberg, the 23-year-old Facebook founder who dropped out of Harvard to build the company, owns a 20 percent share which is now valued at $3 billion. Accel Partners, the venture capital firm that invested $12.7 million in May 2005 and owns 11 percent of Facebook, now holds stock worth $1.65 billion.
Search Engine Watch reported that Microsoft has added Search Engine Marketing to the services Office Live businesses can use to help grow their websites. Customers will be able to choose from three levels of service, starting with online training and working up to full service campaign management, provided through a partnership with The Search Agency.
The first service, TSA Learn, consists of three online training modules that teach the essentials of SEM and search engine optimization (SEO). Next is TSA Launch, a selection of more than 20 one-off, a la carte SEM and SEO services. For example, a user can fill out a questionnaire about their business and get a list of potential keywords to use in their search campaign, or enter their existing keywords and get a list of expanded keywords to consider. The third offering is TSA Grow, which is a full-service option where The Search Agency manages all search marketing activities for the subscriber.
Aiming to show that the firm is now even more attractive to potential clients, Microsoft has announced that aQuantive, the online ad company it bought for $6 billion, has attracted 20 new advertising clients since the sales closed in early August. New clients include SmartBrief, Reunion.com and Entrepreneur.com, and IAC’s CollegeHumor is now using aQuantive’s Atlas AdManager.
The article also discusses a deal to use Microsoft’s ad tools in the Associated Press’s web video service, used on 1,800 major news websites.
I finally looked through Microsoft’s AdCenter Labs, a great website which shows you, to the best of their knowledge and research, the demographic data on various websites (perfect for deciding where to advertise). The information there is interesting as well as useful.
For example, Digg, a website Microsoft knows well about since it is an ad partner, has an audience that is 83% male (shocker!) and 27% of users are 25-34, with almost 2/3 of the total under the age of 34.
Meanwhile, this website is a little better. 64% of you are male, which for a tech site is probably a good distribution (more women than Microsoft Watch, Google Blogoscoped, Engadget, a little less than TechCrunch or Boing Boing, tied with LiveSide). Interestingly, InsideMicrosoft is 71% male and 29% female, while InsideGoogle is more balanced at 59/41%.
27.2% of you are 25-34 years old, another 26.8% are 18-24 and 23% are 34-49. That means that the readers of this blog are a pretty well distributed cross-section of the tech industry, unlike some blogs where the majority of readers are in a single age group, or where half the readers are still in high school. 9.8% of you are below the age of 18, but the younger readers I’ve spoken to seem pretty smart, so I’m calling that a good thing, too. 13.2% are over 50.
Ask.com is 68% female. Wow! Good for them, attracting a tough-to-reach audience.
(via Digg)
Microsoft has finished its acquisition of aQuantive, so for the low price of six billion dollars, it now owns a major internet advertising firm. Microsoft completed the acquisition well ahead of Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick, even though Google’s went through five weeks earlier, because Google is facing a pretty concerned Federal Trade Commission and Congress. Microsoft is even leading some of the lobbying efforts, saying Google’s actions are too anticompetitive, with no better evidence than its own giant, desperate purchase.
(via Tamar)
The FTC approved the acquisition only after shareholders of aQuantive voted to approve it. That vote took a real long time, all of six minutes.
The shareholder approval isn’t a surprise, considering the premium Microsoft is paying. Under the deal, Microsoft will pay $66.50 for every aQuantive share. That’s 85 percent more than the stock’s closing price before the deal was announced. As he was headed down the elevator afterward, I asked shareholder McDonald what he liked about the deal.
IAC has dumped DoubleClick as the ad provider for many of its web properties, like CitySearch, Evite and Match.com. The future Google subsidiary was replaced by future Microsoft subsidiary Atlas, itself a division of aQuantive, the ad firm Microsoft is in the process of acquiring for a bajillion dollars. As Erick Schonfeld says, Barry Diller picked his poison, deciding that if they had to use a competitor, they should help Microsoft and not market juggernaut Google.
Seriously, IAC should buy a major online ad firm. Google did, Microsoft did, Yahoo did, and IAC could stand to do the same.
Catching up: I had a crazy week, with me and my wife going on a short wedding anniversary vacation, one of my best friends getting married, and my aunt and her family moving forever to another continent. There’s a lot of stuff filling up the queue, so we’re going to go through it double time
Microsoft’s aQuantive Deal Clears Federal Review
Microsoft’s $6 billion purchase of aQuantive has passed the Federal Trade Commission’s waiting period for antitrust considerations without objections, leaving Microsoft free to continue the acquisiton without worry. Meanwhile, the U.S. House of Representatives is launching an inquiry into Google’s DoubleClick deal, meaning Microsoft will almost assuredly complete its acquisition well ahead of Google. Google’s deal is hitting some serious roadblocks, while Microsoft has been given the nod to go forward.
Live Maps July Update Adds Rendered Maps, 26 Terabytes Of New Data
The Virtual Earth team pushed out a huge update to the tech that powers Windows Live Maps, adding a new style that shows elevation in the regular road view. They call it “hill shading”, giving you an idea of hills, mountains and just plain ol’ inclines on maps you view in your browser or print out. They also added expanded aerial imagery (and in most cases, 3D buildings) to these cities:
Canada: Hamilton, Quebec, Toronto
Europe: Toulouse France, Eastbourne UK
United States: Birmingham, Huntsville, Montgomery, Mobile, Phoenix (expanded), Arden, Denver (expanded), Ft. Lauderdale, Jacksonville, West Palm Beach, Tallahassee, Fort Myers, Tampa West, St Petersburg, Coral Gables, Cape Coral West, Pembroke Pines, Orlando, Hialea, Columbus GA, Jackson, Oak Park IL, Rockford IL, Ohare IL, Baton Rouge, Shreveport New Orleans, Metarie, Jersey City, Elizabeth, East Ruth, Newark, Paterson, Brooklyn, Niagara Falls, Portland (expanded), Nashville, Chattanooga, Milwaukee
Windows Live Search Has Special Preview View
This website has details on a special view that Windows Live Search has in some countries and regions (not the U.S., far as I can tell) that shows the top six search results as thumbnail image previews of the website. A Site Owner FAQ on MSN Singapore confirms the feature, and gives instructions on how to tell the search crawler not to create a thumbnail for your site (for bandwidth concerns, I assume). You can see a screenshot of the Search Preview thumnails at the original post.
(via Digg)
Get the iPhone Keyboard on Windows Mobile Devices
Someone’s released a program that replaces the Windows Mobile on-screen keyboard with one that looks more like the iPhone’s. Besides enjoying a bolder look, it has bigger, easier-to-hit buttons, though they don’t grow in size while typing, and they use Windows Mobile’s form of predictive text input, not Apple’s. If you’re like me, and you’re still wondering how the hell Microsoft thought the current WinMobile keyboard was okay, this app is a required install.
(via jkOnTheRun)
Xbox 360 Gets Yet Another Backwards Compatibility Update
The Xbox 360 got yet another backwards compatibility update, letting it run a good number more original Xbox games. Are there any important old games that still won’t run on a 360? If you’ve got one that’s driving you nuts, leave a comment. The newly compatible games:
Kevin Rose announced yesterday that Digg was dumping Google AdSense as its ad provider, replacing it with an exclusive deal with Microsoft. The deal, which runs three years, is described by Digg’s founder as similar to the one Facebook got, which means it comes with certain revenue guarantees, and it may even come with a payout option if Digg is sold to a company other than Microsoft, just like the Facebook deal.
Digg also used John Battelle’s Federated Media, a high quality blog ad network, for many of its ad sales, and while Digg is keeping FM as an ad partner, it appears they are relying on FM only to fill unsold inventory. One of the challenges faced by a niche ad seller like FM is that sites tend to go with a bigger ad company when they get more mainstream, and FM seems to be playing it like “At least they didn’t abandon us entirely”.
Microsoft’s press release notes Digg gets 17 million monthly unique visitors. Alexa charts seem to indicate Digg peaked late last year:
Anyway, the point: Digg has low quality traffic, because of a very specific, non-diverse, advertising averse audience. I’d say Digg’s users are too “sophistocated” for ads to convert well, but the word sophistocated is unfair, since many of them are also quite young. Ads on Digg don’t perform as well as they would on a similarly trafficked site with a more diverse and older audience. Google was probably having trouble filling enough of Digg’s inventory and producing ads likely to be clicked on, forcing Digg to find an ad provider that uses a less automated approach.
Put it this way: The most common ad you’d see on Digg was for Diggnation, the site’s podcast/videoblog. That ad is a house ad, and appears when there are no ads to display. Considering that I saw that ad more often than not, obviously Google was doing a poor job. Hopefully Microsoft will do better. I hope Rose demanded to see the success of Microsoft’s work with Facebook, or he got a good revenue guarantee, before signing the three-year deal.
Either way, this is excellent for Microsoft, which claims another high profile ad partner. Even if it makes no money off Digg, the deal raises its profile in the online ad world, and could attract other popular websites to join them.
I finally looked through Microsoft’s AdCenter Labs, a great website which shows you, to the best of their knowledge and research, the demographic data on various websites (perfect for deciding where to advertise). The information there is interesting as well as useful.
