Download Free Update to Windows Desktop Search
There’s a major update to the search infrastructure used in Windows Vista, and it’s being released as the Windows Search 4.0 Preview. It doesn’t just install on Vista, it works on Windows Server 2008, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003. Download the Vista SP1 32-bit version here.
A great addition to the new Windows Search is the Sidebar Gadget by Brandon Paddock that lets you see your indexing status and pause or speed up indexing.
Xbox 360 Coming To A Hospital Near You
Microsoft is talking about some Xbox 360 kiosks it will be sending to children’s hospitals, as part of a partnership with the Companions in Courage Foundation. The kiosks will be pre-loaded with Y-rated TV shows, G-rated movies, E and E10+ games, and be networked and have a connected headset and Live Vision camera.
Live Search News Launches
Microsoft has launched Live Search News, a Techmeme style news site that covers all the usual topics, showing the stories getting the most traction. It’s a style that has worked very well for technology news, and seems to make for a very good overall news site at search.live.com/news
Spiral Vista Sidebar Gadget
Check out this Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget; it displays a continuously moving spiral on your desktop. Click on it to cycle through six different types of spirals, letting your computer hypnotize you.
Xbox 360 Posts Another Profit
Microsoft has successfully turned the Xbox division into a profitable, healthy division, resulting in its first-ever profit in a quarter that did not feature the release of a Halo game or holiday shopping season. Its a proud achievement for the company, one that was more than half a decade coming, thanks to an 85% jump in revenue, resulting in an operating profit of $89 million.
Top Japan XNA Games
Check out these Japanese XNA games that won some sort of Spring 2008 best of XNA contest. They look pretty good.
April 28th, 2008
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Xbox Live, Developers, Sidebar, XNA, Live, Vista, Windows, Xbox, Xbox 360, Search |
no comments
Vista Feature Pack Released
Microsoft has released the first “Feature Pack” for Windows Vista, adding some wireless features that, while nothing huge, could represent a growing series of feature packs that improve the operating system over the coming months and years. Feature Pack 1 adds support for Bluetooth 2.1 to Vista, as well as a Unified Pairing user interface and updates to Windows Connect Now. Get it here.
Download Windows Live for Windows Mobile
Microsoft has released a free download of the Windows Live for Windows Mobile 6 software that comes pre-loaded on some (but not all) Windows Mobile 6 phones. Pick up the download and get Push Hotmail, synchronized Live Contacts, a Live Search bar for the Home screen and one-click photo uploading to Live Spaces.
Microsoft Fastest To Deploy Patches
A Symantec report on malware discovered in the second half of last year shows that Microsoft was the fastest to respond to discovered software vulnerabilities. On average, Microsoft deployed patches within six days, compared to Apple, which took an average of 79 days, as well as faster than HP, Red Hat or Sun. There’s a lot detail in the article about the type of security vulnerabilities (most are caused by ActiveX), and let’s see how fast you can spot the Rent reference.
Turn Webslices into Vista Sidebar Gadgets
Webslices is a new feature in Internet Explorer 8, which allows you to add specifically selected portions of webpages to the menubar of IE, and have them automatically push updates to you. Sean Lyndersay has taken the Webslice out of the browser, and has designed a Vista Sidebar Gadget that lets you add any Webslice to your desktop. It works well, and Webslices as Gadgets are actually more useful than they are in the browser.
By the by, I learned that the reason the Facebook Webslice doesn’t work is that it needs to be installed while you are running IE as an administrator. That’s really a broken feature, and needs to be fixed for final IE8 release, or developers need to design their Webslices to not work that way.
Free Ford Sync and April Fools Xbox Live Downloads
Two Ford Sync picture packs and a Ford Sync-related dashboard theme have been released free on Xbox Live in the U.S. These are kid-themed, so get ‘em for your kid (or yourself, if you’re cute enough). There are also some April Fools-related pics, available for a limited time.
Secret Confessions Vista Sidebar Gadget
This Gadget lets you leave confessions anonymously for random others to read and to read confessions from other users. It has the annoying “feature” of reading the confession out loud with Vista’s text-to-speech system, and no way to turn it off, and the confessions thus far are mostly homophobic or racist, but it’s a great idea that could become something.
April 23rd, 2008
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Vista, Apple, Live, Xbox Live, Sidebar, Hotmail, Xbox, Security, Windows, Spaces, Internet Explorer, Applications |
2 comments
Do you really have any idea how big Yahoo is, or hell, how big MSN is? There’s a lot of overlap between the two, and Long Zheng & Josh Philips have been kind enough to generate a nice chart to show the two. The chart is reproduced below, with some notes added by me regarding what I think about which service will be rolled into the other.
| Service |
Yahoo Equivalent |
Microsoft Equivalent |
Nathan’s notes |
| Content Portals |
Yahoo.com
Yahoo Auto
Yahoo Finances
Etc… |
Msn.com
MSN Auto
MSN Finances
Etc… |
Both sides have some great, well-developed portal sites. There’s no need for both, so the only way sites like Yahoo Autos and MSN Autos survive is if the companies waffle and keep both Yahoo and MSN alive, competing with each other. |
| Country-specific Content Portals |
ex. Yahoo7.com.au |
ex. Ninemsn.com |
Here’s part of the beauty of the acquisition. Yahoo and MSN have many international portals. In some countries, Yahoo is king, in others, MSN. Together, they combine to have #1 market share in almost every single market. |
| Account Management |
Yahoo ID |
Live ID |
Yahoo’s ID system, while good, is nowhere near as powerful or versatile as Microsoft’s. Microsoft’s multi-account switching and Windows Live Sign-In assistant would win anyday. Either way, Microsoft sticks with its own technology, so Yahoo IDs are dead. |
| Personal Homepage |
My Yahoo! |
Live.com |
MyYahoo is bigger and has more users, and a big history. The technology developed for Live.com will likely be rolled into MyYahoo, or exist as a more advanced option for MyYahoo users, but MyYahoo is king here. |
| Search |
Yahoo Search |
Live Search |
Both are big dogs, and both are struggling to catch Google. Both will survive, at least for a while, with Microsoft trying to find a way to combine the market share of the two eventually. Most likely, the search engine will fall under the Yahoo brand, but itcould go either way. |
| Casual gaming |
Yahoo Games |
MSN Games |
Both sites are strong, could be better, and will certainly be combined into one, possibly under the Yahoo brand. |
| Mapping |
Yahoo Maps |
Live Maps |
Not even a question. Microsoft loves Live Maps, and has invested heavily in it. Yahoo Maps is dead, but its engineers and some of its code may work for Live in the future. |
| Instant Messenger |
Yahoo Messenger |
Live Messenger |
Yahoo Messenger and Live Messenger already work together, making the path for the future easier. Live Messenger is more popular, and will almost definitely be the only client in the future, with added support for the Yahoo services and features it can take over from the Yahoo client. |
| Mail |
Yahoo Mail |
Live Hotmail |
Live Hotmail is one of Microsoft’s most important, strongest projects. Microsoft will avoid killing Yahoo at first, but development on Yahoo Mail will cease. Microsoft will offer Yahoo users the option to migrate their accounts to the ever-improving Hotmail, and eventually Yahoo Mail will phase out and die. |
| Community Help Service |
Yahoo Answers |
Live QnA |
Yahoo Answers is the amazing success story of 2007, while Live QnA never got enough traction. Live QnA is dead, and there’s even a chance Microsoft will not bother to integrate. |
| Photo Sharing |
Flickr |
Live Spaces |
Flickr will become tied to Live Spaces, with the millions of Live Spaces photos becoming part of Flickr. The two will thrive on each other and grow exponentially more successful. This will be the immediate crown jewel of the acquisition. |
| Blogging |
360° |
Live Spaces |
Yahoo 360 is a failure. If Microsoft is nice, it may offer to transition accounts over, but 360 is dead. |
| Widgets |
Yahoo Widgets |
Windows Sidebar |
Yahoo Widgets is strong and has a nice library of Gadgets. The first post-acquisition release of Sidebar will add support for Yahoo Widgets, which will live side-by-side in Windows Vista. |
| Search Advertising |
Yahoo Search Marketing |
Microsoft adCenter |
The hardest part of the acquisition. It took Yahoo years to integrate Overture into its own ad systems, and if that happens to Microsoft, this entire acquisition will have been a waste. Luckily, Microsoft is very talented at integrating, at least when compared to Yahoo. Expect hundreds of employees to work on combining the two products, with a deadline of under 12 months, maybe even six months. |
| Mobile |
Yahoo Mobile |
Live Mobile |
Live Mobile isn’t fully developed, but an important part of Microsoft’s mobile strategy. Yahoo Go for Mobile is a great piece of software. There will be a fight inside Microsoft, but if the company is smart, it will continue to develop Yahoo Go as the iPhone-killer content browser. |
| Web Development |
Yahoo Developer Network |
Dev.Live.com |
Both will continue, as long as they continue to help developers with their platforms. No reason to worry here. |
| Web Mashup Tools |
Yahoo Pipes |
Popfly |
Yahoo Pipes is dead, but the engineers and code will try to live on at Microsoft. Popfly is too important to Microsoft to not win this one. |
| Website Services |
Yahoo Small Business |
Office Live |
Yahoo’s offering is dead. Office Live is much better, and important to Microsoft’s Office division. Yahoo’s customers will hopefully like Microsoft’s technology, which has been well invested in and is cheaper (or free). |
| Geocities |
| Social Events |
Upcoming |
Live Events |
Tough call. Live Events is really knew, and we don’t know how important it is to Microsoft. If they aren’t desperately attached to it, Upcoming could win. |
| Social Bookmarking |
del.icio.us |
(Advertising deal with Digg) |
Everybody wins. Microsoft keeps dealing with Digg, and puts development resources into del.icio.us. |
| eCommerce |
alibaba |
|
|
| Music Service |
Y! Music/MusicMatch |
Zune Marketplace, MSN Music |
Microsoft killed MSN Music for Zune, and it will kill Yahoo Music, too. Microsoft will integrate or transition, and kill it off. Hopefully, Launchcast will survive, but don’t count on it. |
| Music Software |
Music Jukebox |
Windows Media Player |
Ditto. |
What do you think? What is missing from the table?
February 4th, 2008
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Windows Mobile, Office Live, Live, Windows Media, Mail, Zune, Yahoo Acquisition, Sidebar, Maps, Vista, Hotmail, MSN, Media Player, Applications, Search, Windows, Messenger, Yahoo, Spaces, General |
8 comments
With the Republican presidential nomination all but sewn up, and the Democrats with hopefully no more than another week to go, the next president, whomever he or she may be, is on the way. Whether that excites or horrifies you, I’ll bet that a lot of people are looking forward to the end of George W. Bush’s presidency. I’m no Bush hater, but I will be glad to see this country move on, hopefully with someone bolder and smarter in charge.
If you would like to count down the days, might I suggest this Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget that does all the math for you? Download it here.
January 30th, 2008
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Sidebar, Vista, Windows |
4 comments
Microsoft has released an update for Windows Vista’s Sidebar that improves the security of the platform. The update generates unique identifiers for every single Sidebar Gadget and allows the Sidebar to block the installation of known malicious Gadgets. Additionally, it will now warn you if a Gadget you already have installed or in your Gadget Gallery is marked as malicious. Once Microsoft marks a Gadget as a bad boy, it will be cleaned off all systems running the update, making it easy to prevent Gadgets from hurting your system.
Download the update here, read more about it here.
January 10th, 2008
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Sidebar, Vista, Windows |
no comments
There’s a new Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget, and this one is designed to simplify the process of finding Vista Sidebar Gadgets. The Gadget checks Windows Live Gallery every 30 seconds and displays a new, random Gadget, with a thumbnail image of the Gadget and the star rating, so you’re always seeing new Gadgets you might want to download. If you constantly need new Gadgets to fill that Gadget-shaped hole in your heart, then this is one for you.
On a side not, could Microsoft please start letting Gadget developers upload considerably larger and more detailed images of the Gadget? This isn’t 1998 anymore, and there’s no reason to have 100×100 images as the only visual advertisement for a product. Who is trying to save bandwidth here?
December 6th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Sidebar, Vista, Windows |
no comments
Here’s everything that’s built up over the weekend, so we aren’t still talking old news on Wednesday:
For one week, the Xbox 360 was actually bigger in Japan than Sony’s PS3, with the 360 outselling the PS3 as sales increased from the previous week by about 500%. It’s not Wii-level (and the low-selling PS3 isn’t that hard to catch), but it’s a start towards gaining a real foothold in Japan. On the other hand, PS3 sales in the US are up double so far this month after the console’s price dropped to $400.
Even with the Wii outselling the 360, Microsoft makes more money than either Sony or Nintendo, due to higher priced consoles and much higher game sales. Halo has sold 3.7 million copies so far.
Another Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget: Wedding Tip of the Day, the perfect Gadget if you’re planning for a wedding. Every day, tips and ideas for planning your big day, with eight different styles to customize the look.
The PS3 now has support for DivX files. According to a slip-up in the press conference, negotiations are underway to bring it to the Xbox 360 real soon.
Zumobi, a company spun out of Microsoft Research, has announced that its new UI for mobile devices will be released December 14. Zumobi works by displaying up to 16 “tiles” in a grid of web services and content on a single screen, allowing users to choose quickly from the available sites. It’s a complicated but supposedly genius idea, one we’ll have to play around with to fully understand.
Windows Live Search’s link command, disabled to keep spammers away, is now working again.
Apple finally admitted that porting its UI over to Windows is stupid, and has fixed a lot of the Mac problems in the Windows version of Safari. Windows can now be resized from all edges, not just a little thing in the corner, and ClearType font rendering can be used instead of Apple’s patented EyeStrain technology, among other fixes.
A new version of Office Accounting Express is out, the 2008 edition. And yes, it’s still free.
New deal: If you have an original Xbox with Xbox Live and purchase an Xbox 360 between tomorrow and December 21, you get a free copy of Halo 3.
November 19th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Sidebar, Sony, Vista, Xbox 360, Xbox, Windows |
no comments
There’s a new Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget that should make you happy in a silly way. It’s that gaming classic, Whack-A-Mole! Any time you get a hankerin’ fer some mole-whackin’, just head over the Sidebar and click to start a new game. A bit of advice: It’s hard to work with the smaller docked version, so you might want to drag it off the Sidebar.
Download it now.
November 15th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Sidebar, Vista, Windows |
no comments
Adam Kinney has created an Xbox Live Gamer Tag Gadget, which lets you enter a bunch of Gamer Tags and see who’s online, and click one to see what games their playing and other stats. It’s a fairly useful and well-designed Gadget, but what makes it so good is that the whole thing is built on Silverlight. So, now that we know Silverlight Gadgets work, and work well, imagine how much cooler-looking Gadgets we could be getting in the future.
There’s a demo of it on Channel 9, and you can download it at this link. Make sure you have Silverlight 1.0 installed.
October 31st, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Silverlight, Sidebar, Developers, Vista, Windows |
one comment
With Microsoft buying a portion of Facebook, it’s only appropriate that tonight’s Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget is a Facebook one. This Gadget, MyFacebook, shows you if you have new messages in your inbox, pokes, pending friend requests, lets you see your friends albums, friend lists and events in a popout, shows your status and a scrolling display of your friends’ statuses, and even lets you update your status right from the Gadget.
Getting it to work is tricky. After you’ve installed the Gadget, click the Facebook logo to login to your Facebook account. You’ll get a prompt to authenticate the Gadget, and entering your username and password should launch Internet Explorer. If it doesn’t work, you’ll need to open Internet Explorer (not your default browser, it has to be IE) and add https://login.facebook.com, http://login.facebook.com and https://facebook.com to your trusted sites list. To do so, click Tools>Internet Options, the Security tab, click Trusted Sites, then Sites, then add the sites. Start with the first site, then if it doesn’t work, add the next, and so on, until you can log in.
After you’ve logged in the Gadget, click its settings icon and add the feeds it requests. Do not select the option to show your friends’ albums, because it really does take forever to load. You can have multiple instances of this Gadget, so you can keep tabs on more than one Facebook account at the same time, as you can see in my screenshot.
There’s a lot going on in this Gadget, so take the time to figure it all out. It’s worth it. It may have some flaws, but this Gadget is already one of the best I’ve installed, and I’ve installed hundreds. Check out the Gadget page on Facebook to discuss with other users, and go to the Gadget author’s blog for more information and answers to your questions.
October 25th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Sidebar, Vista, Windows |
3 comments
Continuing my quest to bring you the most unique and useful Windows Vista Sidebar Gadgets, today’s Gadget is a Pregnancy Calendar. Colored in the brightest of bright pinks, this Gadget lets you select a due date or the end of your last period and tells you how far in you are, and how much time is left before you have a baby. Not only that, but if you click it, it has fun facts about what’s going on right now with your fetus.
October 24th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Sidebar, Vista, Windows |
one comment
Another Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget from Wikio, this one shows you news about video games. You can get general industry news, or select from the drop-down to get news about specific consoles (like the Xbox 360 or Wii) or popular games (like Grand Theft Auto, Halo, or Second Life).
October 23rd, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Sidebar, Vista, Windows |
no comments
With Football season well underway, you probably can’t wait to hear the latest news about your favorite teams*. To help you keep up with things, there’s a few Windows Vista Sidebar Gadgets you can install.
The NFL news Gadget gives you the latest headlines on the entire league, or you can select to just see news about your team.
The NFL scores Gadget shows you the score in the current or recent game your team played, or it shows you who they’re playing next and when.
Also, the Sports news Gadget delivers general sports news, or you can click to have it show news on any specific sport you like, including baseball, basketball, hockey, or 13 others sports.
* - Unless you’re a Rams fan
October 19th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Sidebar, Vista, Windows |
3 comments
Because you can never have enough Vista Sidebar Gadgets*, here’s another one you might want, if you’ve got your own website (or just really, really like one): The isAlive Gadget checks if your favorite website is online or not. You can set it to any website, tell it how often you want it to check, and have it play a sound when the website goes down (and when it comes back).
* - Not true! The limit for the number of Gadgets you can safely install is 347. After that, your computer eats you in your sleep.
October 18th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Sidebar, Vista, Windows |
no comments
Here’s another useful Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget for you to try out: The Microsoft Office Tips & Tricks Gadget gives you a new tip every day for using Microsoft Office. Click the Gadget and read the whole tip, which should hopefully make your day a little bit easier.
October 17th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Sidebar, Vista, Office, Windows, Applications |
one comment
Here’s a fun new Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget: Coming Up looks at your Outlook Calendar and pulls out your All-Day events, giving you a heads-up on upcoming birthdays, anniversaries, holidays and whatnot. Very useful for keeping track of that stuff.
October 16th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Sidebar, Vista, Windows |
no comments
If you’re thinking of nothing but Christmas, install this Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget that will count down the days, hours, minutes and seconds until midnight Christmas Eve arrives. Enjoy!
October 10th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Sidebar, Vista, Windows |
no comments
If the one thing your Windows Vista Sidebar isn’t giving you are enough pictures of hotties, then you need to install the Hot Or Not Sidebar Gadget for Vista. It shows you a new picture of either a guy or girl every 5/10/20/30/60/120 seconds. Click the photo to see the member’s profile at HotOrNot.com.
September 7th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Sidebar, Vista, Windows |
no comments
