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April 25

Tour the new mobile Spaces!

The mobile Spaces experience has always been a place you could go to view blogs and photos while on the go. Very cool, right?

But it gets cooler. Last week, we rolled out a number of changes to improve the mobile spaces experience from your mobile device, and we think on-the-go users everywhere will be happy to see them.

The new design optimizes space viewing for limited screen size and slow data connections, bringing you directly to what you want to see. When you start viewing someone else’s space, we bubble up the newest stuff for you right away. The newly added “Recent updates” page shows all the latest and greatest changes on the space, from newly added friends to recently added blog entries and photos. We’ve also incorporated rich previews so you know where to look in the space for fresh and interesting new content.

When viewing your own space, you are probably already aware of the things you’ve recently done… it’s all about how other people are seeing you. That’s why we show you your friend requests, the statistics on how many people have looked at your space, and the things they are saying about you.

If, however, you know exactly what you are looking for and maybe it didn’t happen so recently, we still provide you a navigational home page that allows you to see all types of content along with little snippets from each. And with the navigational home page, we’ve also enabled you to access profile and friend list information.

That’s right, mobile spaces just joined the social networking world. You can view information about your friends, your friends’ friends, even your friends’ friends’ friends…then you can add them as friends, or link directly to their spaces!

The newest feature changes will keep you connected, up-to-date and in-the-know…what are you waiting for? Visit your space (and everyone else’s, too) at http://mobile.spaces.live.com from your mobile phone! And of course, this is only the beginning—look for more great mobile spaces changes in the coming months.

Read the Spaces blog to learn more about the other features that were included in this release and get yourself a Space, if you don't already have one.

February 13

Live Search for mobile Launches at 3GSM

The Live Search for mobile team has been hard at work since our beta release in November. You can now download the newest version at: http://wls.live.com (from your phone). Hopefully you'll like the new features in the Windows Mobile version and the polish we added to the J2ME version. Be sure to let us know what you think, or if you have any suggestions. If you need a reason to search, think about what day it is tomorrow, and hopefully things work out for you as well as the do for our friend Jim :)

Searching for Love? Or Just Love to Search?

On the bus home from work, Jim realizes it’s Valentine’s Day and he hasn’t prepared any dinner plans with his wife Katie! Instead of panicking, he pulls out his Windows Mobile device and opens Live Search for mobile.

He navigates the Categories list to Restaurants, then Ethnic Restaurants until he finds Italian Restaurants, Katie’s favorite food.

He scrolls through the results until he recognizes a place his buddy Frank recommended to him last week. Bringing up the details, he clicks one more time to call the restaurant and make reservations.

Just to be sure, he gets step-by-step driving directions to the place, and checks the traffic. By the time he gets home, he’s ready to surprise Katie with his plans for a romantic Valentine’s Day dinner!

If you’re looking for a romantic restaurant like Jim, or need to find the nearest florist on the go, download Live Search for mobile at http://wls.live.com (from your phone) and find the way to a loved one’s heart.

Version 1.0 Released

At the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, we announced the official release of our client application for Windows Mobile devices as well as compatible J2ME capable devices in the US and UK. You might have heard about the beta release back in November, but we’ve added some new features in addition to the great things you can already do.

·         Category-based local searching -Search businesses and restaurants through our category system and save your thumbs from typing.
·         Maps and Directions - Get maps of your area and directions to your destination. Hook up a GPS* unit to search around and track your current position.
·         Traffic - View real-time traffic in selected US cities to save time and help plan your routes.
·         New! Contacts list integration* – search for a contact’s address without typing it or save a business to your contacts to use again later.
·         New! SMS a friend* - Send a text message with business’ address and phone number to your friends so they know where to meet you.

If you don’t have a compatible phone, try typing mobile.live.com/search into your phone’s browser. For those without data plans, you can always send a text message to 95483 (WLIVE) with your search query.

Download at: http://wls.live.com (from your phone)

Learn more about Live Search for mobile.

Send us your feedback at: lsmobile@microsoft.com.

-Darwin and the Mobile Search team

*Feature currently only available on Windows Mobile version.

December 01

Search on the Go with Live Search for Mobile Beta- Download Now

Looking for a killer Windows Mobile application that can make your phone both fun and useful? Check out the Windows Live Search for mobile downloadable application. This is available in the US only at this time.

It's a Mobile rich client – Download an application to your phone for local search, maps, driving directions, and live traffic information in a faster, richer and more interactive user interface. It's the best way to search from your phone.

Mobile Browsing - Access maps and directions directly from your phone’s browser. Simply enter mobile.live.com/search into your phone’s address bar and select Map. Choose from the likes of Local, Web, Map, News and Spaces and get Live Search on your mobile device.

Text Messages (SMS) - If you don’t have a data plan, you can simply send a text message to 95483 (WLIVE) with a query like “Toys Chicago, IL” or “Coffee 90210” and you’ll immediately receive a text message reply with the nearest business listings with address and phone numbers.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this beta so we can continue to improve. Just send them over to wlsmbeta@microsoft.com and, check out mobile.search.live.com for more information.

- Darwin and the Windows Live for mobile Search Team

November 20

Got mobile? Searching on your mobile just got easier

Windows Live SMS Search Beta for mobile.

I love this. It’s so simple. I am not a brainiac but now I can act like one. J By getting instant answers to whatever gets thrown my way and by finding my way around town. When I am on the go and can’t remember the phone number or address of my favorite nail salon, coffee shop, or the restaurant that I want to go to. All I do is whip out my phone send a text message to 95483 (WLIVE) and plug in ‘salon rae seattle wa’ and I get the phone number and address. I can call and see if they can squeeze me for a quick fill. J

Here’s the best part. I can save this to my phone so I don’t have to look it up again and this is much more cost effective and easier (and ok safer as I am always doing this in my car) than dialing for information on my phone and being transferred to the business. In the past, if their line was busy, then I was out of luck. Now I just feel really in control of the info I want and need.

It’s so simple…You can do this. Give it a try. It’s in a Beta right now and available for a test drive to subscribers of Cingular, Verizon, Sprint Nextel and Alltel in the US only. Watch this space for details as to when it’s coming to your market!

Here’s how it works and a sneak peek at what fun you can have with this service

Easy to follow instructions

1. Send a SMS to 95483 (WLIVE) on your phone

2. To find a local business - Type in ‘salon rae seattle wa”

3. For instant Answers - Start all your queries with a ? question mark (?), like ? mothers day

So here’s the full list of what you can find out with this service and become even smarter too……

ü Local Search Queries

· Local Business & Residential Listing ( e.g. Starbucks and your zip code)

· Reverse Phone Number Lookup (‘4258828080’)

ü Instant Answer Queries (Remember to start your queries with ‘?’unless specified otherwise)

· Stock Quotes (U.S. & Int’l Exchanges)

· Area & Country Telephone Codes

· Word Definitions – use ‘D’ instead of ‘?’

· Holiday Dates

· Math (Calculations, Unit Conversions & Equation Solutions- ‘? 15% of 32.99’ or ‘? Cups in liter’ or ‘? 2y^2+5y+10=40’

· Health & General Information (e.g. ‘? Calories in Martini’ OR ‘? Tokyo Population’)

ü Auto Spell-check and Correction

ü Improved Formatting of Result Messages

We'd love to hear your feedback on this service! The mobile search team launched a new site last week- go check it out and you might learn something. Go to http://mobile.search.live.com/about

September 26

The Reviews are in... of our new Windows Live for mobile Services

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http://wapreview.com/blog/?p=160

Windows Live Mobile Updated

Published by Editor September 13th, 2006 in Site Reviews, Microsoft

Image: Wap Review Mobile Hot on the heels of Yahoo's recent mobile home page redesign comes a major upgrade to Microsoft's mobile deck. There is a new mobile.live.com URL (the old mobile.msn.com address also points to the new content). If you want to preview the site in your PC browser use mobile.live.com/wml/ as the above URL's will take you to a page about Live Mobile. The new front page has a brighter, less cluttered look with updated icons. This is not just a cosmetic update. There's a revised News section, changes to Live Mail, Spaces and Live Search, a new Driving Directions page and two alternate start pages labeled Live.com Beta and MSN.com Beta. Here's a rundown of the changes.

News, which is now labeled MSNBC News contains the full content of some of the articles on MSNBC.com - a vast improvement over the two line summaries that used to pass for news at MSN Mobile. The news page is limited to only the four top stories, unfortunately (2nd image). I discovered that there is an alternate version of Live Mobile at mobile.live.com/pocketpc/menu.aspx which is more or less identical to the standard version except that under MSNBC News there is a sub-menu listing multiple news sections - International, Local, Business, Weather and Entertainment (3rd Image). Under these sections are dozens of additional articles. I played around with Firefox's User Agent Switcher extension and it looks like devices running Windows Mobile or Palm OS get redirected to the PocketPC version. The funny thing is that although the PocketPC site has more news stories than the regular site the actual pages are still small enough to load without error even on low end phones. Incidentally, if you like MSNBC's online news, visit MSNBC.com with your mobile - there doesn't seem to be a dedicated mobile URL but the browser detection works pretty well. The mobile version of MSNBC is one of the most attractive and well designed of all the mobile news sites and carries virtually the entire content of the MSNBC PC site.
Live Mail is out of beta and seems to have completely replaced Hotmail on the mobile platform. It now supports bulk move and delete operations. There are check-boxes in front of each message in the Inbox and other folders. Check a bunch of messages and with a single click you can Delete or Move all the checked items. This is a feature that Mail2Web Mobile has had for a long time and which I find really speeds up managing my mail. Speaking of speed, Live Mail could use a speed boost. Unlike Y! Mail which has speeded up a bit since I wrote Mobile Mail Speed Test, deleting a message and loading the next one in Live Mail still takes an average of 21 seconds - six seconds slower than Y!Mail and Gmail. But at least, the login bug on Nextel handsets that I mentioned in my review of the live mail beta has been fixed.
Spaces' mobile version has several new features since the last time I looked at it. You can now create a Space, post to your Space and tweak some of your Space's settings from the mobile page. Recent updates to any of your Contact's Spaces are now listed separately on the Spaces home page if you are logged in.
Search is one of the most changed areas of Live. There are new News and Map searches in addition to the existing Spaces, Web and Local search types. You can even choose to search in all five search types at once. News and Web search results are processed through a transcoder which converts full web pages into a more mobile friendly layout. News search is similar to Google News and returned very relevant and current news articles for the queries I tried. Map search is kind of a misnomer. What it actually does is show you a map for any (US only) address you enter.
The original mobile transcoder (review) was very innovative and powerful but not particularly intuitive in operation. The latest tweak retains the power but eliminates the learning curve. When you open a transcoded page, you initially see a section of the page - either the top portion, or if the original page has a navigational menu at the top that menu will be hidden and the view will start with the page's main content. There is header at the top that will say Section (2/14) for example, indicating where you are in the page. There are accesskey enabled [1]Next and [3]Previous links so you can navigate through the page. There is also a [2]List All Sections link which shows a kind of textural thumbnail view of the full content of the original page, with each section represented by a single line of text (4th image). I found this view to help in locating specific content on large, busy pages. There is also a [5] View PC version link that takes you to the original untranscoded version of the site - a great bailout for those times when the transcoder tries to mobilize an already mobile site.
Live.com Beta (mobile.live.com/portal) is a mobile version of Live's PC home page - which on the PC is a customizable personal home page quite similar to Google's in concept. Initially Live contains just a search box but you can add RSS feeds, links and widgets like Weather, News Headlines or Stock Quotes. Mobile Live.com displays your Live feeds and some of your widgets. The Feed Reader is no substitute for a dedicated reader like Bloglines mainly because it doesn't keep track of read and unread items. But it is handy for adding a particular feed to your mobile home page. When you click a feed you see the item's titles and the first few lines of each item body. Clicking a title takes you to a transcoded version of the original item.
MSN.com beta (mobile.msn.com/portal) is another alternate start or portal page within Live mobile. If is a non-customizable view of the top stories from the MSNBC Headlines, US News, World News and Business sections plus FoxSports, MSN Money, and MSN Entertainment. Unlike the MSNBC news stories linked off of mobile.live.com many of these articles include photos.
Sports: Live/MSN doesn't seem to edit it's own sports section anymore. Instead there is now a link to Fox Sports Mobile which doesn't particularly impress me. Stories are timely and in-depth but coverage is limited to only the most popular US sports: NFL, MLB, PGA, NASCAR and college football and hoops.
Driving Directions I did a comparison of directions sites four months ago and commented that Microsoft didn't have a true driving directions page. If you did a local search you could get directions to any of the search hits but there was no way to get directions to an arbitrary address. That's fixed now. Driving directions are under Local on the Live Home page and are quite nicely done with very colorful and detailed maps (bottom image).

Image: Wap Review Mobile I'm impressed with Microsoft's recent mobile web efforts. Redmond is obviously trying very hard to be a major player in mobile . Live Mobile has some parts that are very nice indeed. I particularly like the Live.com personal homepage, the search improvements and the driving directions. Usability is generally very good in part because, unlike Yahoo which seems to be removing accesskeys from their mobile sites, the Live pages have accesskeys everywhere.

Microsoft is competing with Yahoo and Google for placement on carrier decks and as a general purpose mobile portal. Compared with that competition, the latest Microsoft offering is very competitive. Microsoft is now the quality leader in several areas. I prefer Live's driving directions over Yahoo's - I seem to get better routings with Live and the maps are nicer. Google doesn't offer mobile web based directions although they do have the excellent downloadable Java ME Google Maps which includes driving directions. I'd rate Live's local search and transcoded web search over Yahoo's and equal to Google's. Google wins overall in search by being the only one of the three to offer a search of the mobile web, which to me is far more useful than searching and viewing transcoded PC sites. Live's News search compares favorably with the search in Google News and is something Yahoo doesn't have. In the area of customization I put Live second behind Google mainly on the relative strengths of their RSS readers. Google's and Live's both let you view full items through a transcoder (Yahoo only shows titles and summaries) but only Google keeps track of and hides read items. In addition only Google lets you fully customize the content and layout of the mobile homepage independently from the PC homepage. There are also areas were Live lags the competition. Live's News and Sports sections are far weaker than Yahoo's offerings or even Google News' default view. Yahoo has an overwhelming lead in mobile web based PIM applications with a free Calendar and To Do List which are premium features on Live and don't exist (yet) with Google. Yahoo' calendar, address book, and To Do's also synchronize with Outlook and several other desktop PIM's. Finally, in mobile e-mail the three are pretty close. I find both Gmail and Live Mail easier and faster to navigate than Y!Mail but I have to downgrade Live Mail because of it's relative slowness. This table summarizes my subjective rankings of the common features of the big 3 mobile portals on a scale of 1 to 5.

Via Mike's Lounge and It's all mobile.