Topic: Windows Live services launched

[Clive]

Microsoft has officially released some online services that were previously only available in beta form.

Windows Live Hotmail, boasting 5GB of storage space, and Windows Live Photo Gallery, an image editing and storage facility, are just two elements of the Windows Live offering.

"The suite combines serious communication with a great deal of fun - sending videos, sharing photos, planning events, flirting, chatting, sharing stories and more," said Sharon Baylay of Microsoft UK.

"We are offering a rich set of software plus web services covering communications, community and entertainment that our customers can use on their desktop or on the move," she continued.

Other services include Windows Live Search, Windows Live Events, which is an event-planning service, and Windows Live Writer, which allows you to publish content to a blog.

"Five years from now we expect every software product to have a companion online service to support it ? customers will come to think of this as standard. It is our software plus services approach that allows us to deliver this and we are one of very few companies that can execute this at scale," said Baylay.

Analyst Annelise Berendt said that the launch was part of a push into the social networking arena by Microsoft.

"It has often been said that Microsoft is missing a trick in the social networking arena, rarely attracting the kind of publicity that social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook get. This launch is very much about enhancing those social networking capabilities and raising the association of Windows Live Spaces in particular, as a community in the minds of its users and indeed more widely," Berendt said.

Microsoft recently bought a stake in social networking site Facebook.


http://get.live.com
www.facebook.com

[GillE]

..."Five years from now we expect every software product to have a companion online service to support it ? customers will come to think of this as standard. It is our software plus services approach that allows us to deliver this and we are one of very few companies that can execute this at scale," said Baylay...

Scary - they're telling us how they're going to make us think.

I've heard that this is how software companies intend to counter piracy.  Future software releases will be little more than gateways to online program repositories hosted by the copyright holder.

[Simon]

I've heard that this is how software companies intend to counter piracy.  Future software releases will be little more than gateways to online program repositories hosted by the copyright holder.

Oh, that sounds really secure!   

[Rik]

Microsoft imitates Google - noe there's a change in the world order!

[Reno]

I don't feel secure using online apps. I mean who wants to trust some conglomerate who's main revenue comes from ads. If I have a business letter to type up I don't plan on using an online word processor. People like to own their software and have it on their computer. What's the first thing someone says when they find out they have a virus? "Can you save all my programs?" It's human nature to be territorial.