Windows Live Channel Blog

Microsoft’s Windows Live Spaces has featured in a recent study of social networking websites.

The study was carried out by a team of Cambridge researchers and measured the time taken for photographs to be removed from the network after the user had marked them for deletion.

Spaces came top in the list, 16 websites were tested. Of these the photographs could still be found on seven.

You can read the full story at the BBC

Windows Live allows you to share your activity from across the web with your network of friends. If you add Web Activities from partner websites to your profile, when you make updates on those websites, they are shared across Windows Live automatically, including Hotmail and Messenger.

20 New Web Activities

Windows Live has now extended the list of partner websites to more than 30, meaning you have greater choice about the activities you decide to share. The new partners include Facebook, Digg, Last.fm, and SmugMug. Now when you update your status or share pictures on Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket, or SmugMug, you can choose to have that update automatically added to your “What’s new” feed, reflected throughout Windows Live.

Try bringing your networks together

As well as inviting your friends on Linked In and Facebook to join your Windows Live network, we are now extending this to 3 other networks: MySpace, Hi5, and Tagged. Rather than starting from scratch and building up an entirely new contact list, now you can safely and securely invite your contacts directly to Windows Live from one of these five social networks, and vice versa. Start importing new contacts now at http://profile.live.com/connect/.

And here are a few other recent improvements that you may notice:

• RSS feeds are now easier to find for blogs and lists.
• You’ll start to notice improved results when searching for people on Windows Live from the Windows Live Home or People pages.
• On Windows Live Home, you can now update your personal message inline, without going to a separate message editing page.

For those developers among you, the folks behind Internet Explorer have thrown down the gauntlet and challenge you to create web slices, accelerators and visual search add-ons.

There are 4 Xbox Elites to be given away, one for each of:

• Best accelerator
• Best web slice
• Best visual search provider
• The accelerator, web slice or visual search provider that is just the funniest / coolest / quirkiest of the lot

And there’s more! Future Publishing will be selecting 5 accelerators, 5 web slices and 5 visual search providers from the IE Add-ons Gallery in early June so you have a great opportunity to be picked. Future will be asking their readers to vote for their favourites and will reveal the winners of each category in August (note that the Future Publishing activity is not directly linked to our Xbox competition)

To get the skinny on this competition head over to Mike Ormond’s blog post.

This is a message from the Messenger product team (Ed)

On 07 April 2009 Messenger customers may have received an instant message that looked like this:

We sincerely apologize, but this was accidentally sent out.  If you received this notification today, please ignore it.  You will be able to continue to use your current e-mail address, and there is no reason to make any changes. 

If you have already clicked the link, there is no harm to you.  You should have been told that your “Windows Live ID can’t be changed at this time” because there is no need for the change.

These service notifications are only used for urgent issues but unfortunately, somebody made a mistake that caused this message to be sent out.  We will definitely be reviewing our process to make sure we avoid such mistakes in the future.

Again, we’re very sorry for any confusion that may have been caused.

What is SPIM? SPIM refers to unsolicited messages sent over instant messaging networks, including Windows Live Messenger. Although SPIM messages appear to be sent from a friend, they are often sent by organisations that have violated a user’s account and usually contain links to dubious websites.

If this sounds familiar, and you were the one to receive the message, then your friend’s account is probably compromised. Likewise, if your friends have received messages like these, apparently from you, then your account is likely to have been breached. Read on to find out what to do next.

How to identify SPIM?

1. A SPIM message looks just like any other IM conversation and will be from someone on your buddy list.
2. The first message often contains a link. Only click this if you were expecting it or have verified with the sender that they intentionally meant to send it to you.
3. Look at the content of the message - common topics of SPIM are diet pills, photo sharing and pornography. Is your friend likely to be sending you a message about diet pills?
4. Be especially suspicious if the sender is shown as offline. SPIM can be sent even when a computer is turned off.

What to do if you receive SPIM

1. Close the message window without clicking the link.
2. Tell the sender that you received SPIM from them and suggest they follow the steps outlined in ‘What to do if people have received SPIM from you’ below.
3. It’s also good practise to:
   Change your Windows Live password, also be sure to run an anti-virus and malware scan to ensure your PC is free of viruses.

What to do if people have received SPIM from you

1. Change your windows live password immediately.
2. Run an anti-virus and malware scan to ensure your PC is free of viruses.
3. Warn friends that your account may have sent SPIM and they should not click on the links in these messages.

Tips to help protect against being a victim of SPIM

• Change your Windows Live password to a new strong password as well as your secret question and answer regularly.
• Always ensure that your anti-virus software is up to date. Learn more about protecting your PC.
• Don't share your password with anyone even if they claim that they are a person of authority. 
• Properly log out of your account after your session by clicking the "Sign Out" button.
• If you're using a public terminal, clear your temporary Internet files (cache) and close the browser that you're using when you're ready to end your Internet session.
• Be sure not to click "Remember my password" if you're using a public computer or if there are other people using your computer.
• Download Internet Explorer 8 for free, which includes a phishing filter that should help protect you from dubious websites.
• Download the latest version of Windows Live Messenger.
• Visit http://windowslivehelp.com for more Support around this issue.

Please let us know if your Messenger account received or sent SPIM.

To coincide with the launch of the latest series of Skins, skinsmessenger@e4.com is a Messenger Agent (bot) developed to give you access to background information about the program, both during and in-between broadcasts of the show on TV (E4).

What does the agent do?

• Synchronises to the live transmission of the show on E4.
• Sends relevant, timely information to those who have opted-in for notifications. E.g. if a new character enters the scene, the Agent will send background information about the actor; if there’s music playing, the Agent will tell you which artist and track.
• Encourages thousands of people to connect at the same time to interact, ask questions and give live feedback during transmission.

Read more about the skinsmessenger agent on e4.com or add it now as a Messenger contact and tune in for the next Skins episode: skinsmessenger@e4.com.

A new update for Windows Live Messenger and the other Windows Live Essentials programs is now available for free download.

Over the next four weeks, whether you’re still running Messenger 2008 (versions 8.1 or 8.5), or you just installed Messenger 2009 in the last few months, you’ll see a prompt encouraging you to upgrade to the latest version of Messenger.

Here’s what the prompt will look like.

After clicking the prompt, you’ll be asked
if you want to upgrade.

For those who have not yet tried Messenger 2009, this update brings you improved video and audio calls, a new way to see your favourite people at the top of the list, display pictures that can change with your mood, and a fast and easy new way to share photos, among other things. PC Magazine gave Messenger 2009 their Editor’s Choice Award!

If you already have versions of any of these programs (Windows Live Mail, Photo Gallery, Family Safety, Writer, Movie Maker (beta), or Toolbar), they’ll be automatically upgraded to their latest versions along with Messenger, so that all the Essentials can work together properly.

Upgrade today, and let us know what you think, either here in comments, or through our feedback site at http://feedback.live.com.

-  The Windows Live team

P.S. If you need help with Messenger sign-in or other errors, please visit http://messenger-support.spaces.live.com/. For help with webcam connectivity in Messenger, see this blog post: http://messenger-support.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!8B3F39C76A8B853F!14323.entry

Virtual Earth has just been updated with a mammoth 37TB (tera-byte) imagery release. If you’re easily confused by numbers, lets just leave it at ‘big’.

All of the imagery is available across the Multimap and Live Maps platforms.

The following imagery collections and views are included in this release:

Obliques (Bird’s Eye, International): France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Romania, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom.

High Resolution Orthos (International): Great Britain, Greece, Japan, Norway, Portugal, Spain.

Obliques (Bird’s Eye, United States): Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin.

High Resolution Orthos (United States): CA, FL, CO, MO, NJ, NV, TX.

For all the completist’s out there the full list of new imagery can be found on the LiveSide blog.

The following message was recently circulated by the Windows Live team. It will clear up any issues caused by installing the new version of Messenger.

“We’ve heard that a small number of you are experiencing audio and video problems with your webcam after installing the latest version of Windows Live Messenger. After looking into this, we found that for users who are seeing error code 0x8AC70013 or 0x8AC70202, this may be caused by an incompatibility with McAfee Site Advisor.

McAfee is working on a patch to fix this, but until it becomes available, if you’re having audio or video problems with the new version of Messenger and are running McAfee, McAfee has posted a workaround on its website at: http://service.mcafee.com/faqdocument.aspx?id=TS100601.”

The world will change on January 20th when Barack Obama, the President-elect takes the oath of office and becomes the 44th President of the United States.

"I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."

If you are going to be among the millions attending, you can be part of history by helping create the most immersive and detailed experience of a single moment ever created.

What is a Synth?

To discover more about Photosynth, read the Windows Live primer on everything synthy.

Capturing the Moment of Transition

Photosynth is partnering with CNN to gather thousands of your photographs to create an immersive experience of the moment when President Obama takes the Oath of Office. From the vast sweep of the crowd to a close-up on the President’s hand on the Bible, every part of this historic scene will be frozen in time and presented in 3-D as only Photosynth can.

Well placed CNN photographers will capture lots of detailed shots for this synth, and if you’re there you can help make this an even more amazing experience by adding your perspective with your digital camera or camera phone.

Check out CNN’s page dedicated to this collaboration: http://cnn.com/themoment.

Matt