It's all mobile: Blog

Tour the new mobile Spaces!

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 17:53:02 GMT

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.

Live Search for mobile Launches at 3GSM

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 23:23:48 GMT

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.

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

Sat, 02 Dec 2006 00:32:32 GMT

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

Got mobile? Searching on your mobile just got easier

Mon, 20 Nov 2006 20:47:48 GMT

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

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

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 22:54:00 GMT

---------------------------------------------

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

Windows Live Mobile Updated

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

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).

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.

Portal	Mail	News	Directions	Search	Personal Home Page	PIM Features
Live	5	2	5	4	4	2
Yahoo	4	5	4	2	3	5
Google	4	4	n/a	5	5	n/a

Windows Live Mobile Portal: xhtml-mp/wml

Features: Usability:

Related Wap Review Links:

Mobile Portals (Wap Review Mobile Site Directory)
The Web's Big 3 Do Mobile

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Live.com Beta for Mobile is available now!

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 01:37:47 GMT

I’m a ‘real-time junkie.’ I use Live.com (blog) on my PC to keep track of the news, blogs, and gadget data (like weather) that I care about – but that only keeps me informed when I’m at my computer, where I usually don’t have a lot of down time.

As of today, I can get the same news and blogs I read on Live.com on my mobile device with the new Live.com Beta for mobile. I can even view mobile versions of a few of my gadgets (weather, stocks, and horoscope)! Not only can I now get my real-time fix wherever I am, I am able to do it by taking advantage of my down time – on a bus, in a waiting room, at my flight’s departure gate…anywhere!

When I’m deciding whether to grab a jacket or some sunscreen, I can check the weather on my mobile device – no need to boot up my laptop, find where the dog hid my newspaper, or flip through the TV channels looking for the local weather update.

Live.com Beta for mobile also keeps me connected with easy access to the other Windows Live services available on my mobile. One click lands me in my Windows Live Mail inbox, or I can jump right to my friend’s updated Windows Live Spaces blogs (just by following the icons below the search bar).

When I’m reading my news and blogs, Live.com Beta for mobile gives me the ability to read not just the content provided in a news feed – I can also follow the entries title link to browse a mobile-friendly version of the entry linked page. Images are made smaller for my mobile device’s small screen, and articles are broken up into smartly sized portions my device can handle.

In addition to all this information at my fingertips, I can search the web, local results, map results, Windows Live Spaces, and news (to name a ‘few’) right from the search box at the top of my page – and browse my results (from directions to web pages) as mobile-friendly pages.

This all just scratches the surface of what Live.com Beta for Mobile has given me wherever and whenever I want – discover more for yourself here:

First: Sign in at Live.com on your PC and set up all the things you care about.

Then: Sign in at Live.com Beta for mobile (http://mobile.live.com, follow the “Live.com beta” link) to see your personal news, blogs, and gadgets on the go!

-Kyle Von Haden

Search updates

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 01:37:08 GMT

Here are some sample screenshots of the new interface. Release is imminent so you'll be able to try it yourself real soon.

Follow this link from the home page to enter the updated search experience.

Having used this new search service over the last several months as we worked on this update, I think you'll like it a lot :) If you've been using one of our competitors recently, now is the time to switch!

Some of the major improvements are: a newly redesigned interface, one-click 'all search', brand new news and map searches, and a brand new mobile rendering experience to read the news stories and web pages that you find (details in separate post).

The newly redesigned interface uses softer blue and black colors - dark black and stark blue are so last year, the spiffy new logos look great and we've optimized it for the things you do a lot. You'll always know where you are because we've made sure that the top of each page always shows you where you are. We've even thought about how the site looks in your browser history, you'll be able to jump to exactly which page you want.

See the word 'All' ? Gone is the requirement to always choose what type of information to search for. Now you can just search All available information types at once! If you want to search a specific type, just choose it instead of All. We've optimized search to always use your last location yet made it simple to choose a different location. If you feel more comfortable seeing the location and doing a local search, you will enjoy the Windows Live Local page (detailed post coming soon).

Tip: You can use the numbers on your phone keypad to activate links at the bottom of the page, we call them menu items. These will jump to other pages or to specific places within the page you are on. Just look for the key to use in []. In this screenshot you can use [4] to jump over to the Windows Live Local home page. On all pages [0] will return Home, [*] and [#] will jump to the top and bottom of the page.

Now that this project's just about done, I'm ready to go on a vacation without my cats. Looks like there are a couple sitters near by, a national association of professional pet sitters and Ms. Sherry Bolte has just reached an important milestone in her life, and taghome1193 might have some info on his space.

Notice the search details at the top of the page. The refine link is an easy way to change up the search. There are a couple of results from all the information sources and a more link to get to the rest from that source. Hopefully most of the time you'll find what you're looking for right here, if not hit more. News stories are new in this release! The time since the article was published and the source help choose the stories to read. There aren't any cities or landmarks called pet sitters but when if there were you'd see them in the map section.

Near: sometimes you want to use one of your last 5 locations, sometimes you want to type a new one in - both are available.

Tip: the [1] next to the information type is a shortcut key too, just press it to zoom to the type of information you want to look at.

Hope you try it and like it. Tell me what you think, we're always improving it and your ideas will shape the future.

Windows Live Mail for Mobile (new improvements)

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 00:17:06 GMT

One of the most requested features in our recent Windows Live Mail for mobile beta was the ability to delete multiple emails at once. Now you can. Starting today you’ll see checkboxes next to email headers in your inbox. You can select multiple emails and then delete or move them with one button press. As always, we have shortcuts assigned to the most common actions, so in order to delete emails just mark them and press 7. Thanks to all the beta testers who participated in the beta and provided their valuable feedback!

To get to Windows Live Mail for mobile please browse to http://mobile.live.com from your mobile phone browser and select the Windows Live Mail link.

Michael Smuga

Windows Live Spaces for mobile

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 00:05:23 GMT

We recently launched Windows Live Spaces for mobile. Here’s a quick recap of available features:

When you navigate to Windows Live Spaces for mobile and you sign in you’ll see a list of your friends spaces that have been recently updated
You can view blog entries and photo albums from any space, no matter whether it was created/updated from a mobile device or on the PC
You can view and post comments to blog entries and photo albums
You can search for other spaces
If you don’t have a space you can create one from your device
If you have a space you can post new blog entries
You can view statistics for your space
You can change settings for your space

To get to Windows Live Spaces for mobile please browse to http://mobile.live.com from your mobile phone browser and select the Windows Live Spaces link (alternatively you can navigate directly to http://mobile.spaces.live.com).

Here are a couple of screenshots:

Space view:

Michael Smuga

Send to mobile

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 17:07:36 GMT

You have to check this out (it's cool, trust me):

Go to http://search.msn.com/local/results.aspx?q=bouchee+cr%C3%AAperie+and+caf%C3%A9&w=Seattle%2C+WA&FORM=QBXR (it's a Local search for Bouchee Crêperie and Café Fremont from the point of view of someone sitting in Seattle)
Click on "Send to Mobile"
Enter your cell phone's number - assuming it can get an SMS message
Go to your cellphone and check out the SMS message, which will contain the restaurant's phone number, address, and a URL to a map of where it is located

That's my experience using a Windows Mobile 5.0 device anyway, but any device that can get an SMS message should be almost as good.

Very, very cool. I now have the details of the restaurant where some friends and I will be going to dinner on Friday. Yes, I used to live on a houseboat very close to it and the owners are friends of ours, but still, it's really cool technology - and usefull!

[Originally published on March 30, 2006]

Power up Your Mobile Device with a Data Plan

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 17:06:48 GMT

What’s the big deal about having a data plan?

Surf the Web. Read and send e-mail. Check the weather and latest sports scores. Search for your favorite restaurant—all from your cell phone. Now that’s cool. Mobile versions of your favorite services make it fast, easy and convenient to get things done. And having a data plan helps get you all the information you want, when you want it—without breaking your bank account.

What kinds of data plans are available?

The tough part of getting a data plan is figuring out what type and size you need, so you don’t end up wasting money. Data plans come in all sizes and price points, just like regular cell phone plans. Check your mobile carrier’s web site to find out more about what they offer, and how they charge for their data plans. Some offer “all you can use” plans, plans based on the number of minutes used, or the amount of data used by your phone (such as file size that is sent to your phone).

Advantages of paying by minutes—some mobile carriers allow data usage to be part of unlimited evening/weekend minutes. If your plan allows you rollover minutes, or if you have a sufficient cushion of minutes in your existing plan, you may not need to commit to an extra plan.

Advantages of paying by megabytes—if you spend 20 minutes reading an article, you only pay for the data consumed, not the minutes spent. Additionally, a number of mobile carriers are starting to offer unlimited usage megabyte plans on their networks. On such plans, they provide you an unlimited amount of data usage for one monthly fixed fee, often for a low monthly rate.

Get the data plan that works for you

Figuring out the best data plan for you based on your usage and budget is akin to shopping for the right gear for your favorite sport. Everyday sneakers will get you around town in style and comfort, but you will probably want to invest in great-fitting athletic shoes for performance sports. Same goes for your data plan.

How often do you read your e-mail on your phone, or conduct a local or Web search? For instance, how many e-mails can you read with a 1 MB plan? To view one e-mail using Windows Live Mail for Mobile you will use up approximately 25 kb of data. That’s 17kb to open the inbox view and another 8kb to open an average-size e-mail. Doing the math, factoring in that one megabyte is equal to 1,024 kilobytes, and then you should be able to read nearly 40 e-mails (if you read only about one email every time you access your inbox), or up to 90 emails (if you read about 5 emails every time you access your inbox) on a 1MB plan, at an estimated cost ranging from $10-20 a month.

How many searches can you execute before you exceed 1MB? Well, if you want to find the closest coffee shop using the Windows Live Local Search, you’ll use up about 29kb of data. That’s 4kb to open the Local Search page, 6kb to get to the results page, 9kb to view details of the location (which includes a map), and 10kb to view detailed driving directions. That means you can do about 35 searches for 1MB (more if you don’t always need a map but rather just the phone #), at an estimated cost ranging from $10-20 a month. Ask your carrier for more details on the various bundled packages of voice and data plans that they offer

So if you purchase a 1MB data plan assuming that on average you view 5 e-mails every time you go to the mailbox, you’ll be able to read about between 90 e-mails, or find about 35 locations, including driving directions to each of the locations. Of course these numbers can vary, depending on your browser. Some browsers are better in caching content and the above numbers can be slightly better (you'll be able to get more out of your 1MB data plan) and some browsers don't do as good job caching, and the numbers above can be slightly worse (you'll be able to get less out of your 1MB data plan).

TIP to save money: If you are on a limited data plan – you can conserve by disabling the icons in Windows Live Mail and thus allowing for less data needing to be transferred back and forth –this will save you on time it takes to display the browser page on your phone and the data used.

[Originally published on February 7, 2006]

Making the most of Windows Live Mail: Using Contacts

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 17:06:03 GMT

As Michael Smuga said last week, now when you compose an email, you can just use a few letters of your friend's name in the To line, and it'll search your contact list for that name and prompt you with its best guesses as to which of your friends you meant:

...except it didn't quite work that way. Why not? Because Michael Smuga isn't one of my contacts. The feature only works for you if you have contacts in your contact list.

How do you add contacts? Well, there's a few different ways:

Enter contacts manually.
You could go to the PC website to do this, but you can also do it from your phone. Go back to the Inbox, and then type 6 for Contacts, then scroll off the search box and type 4 for New Contact - then fill in the form and click OK:

Now if we go back to compose, like we did above, and type "Smuga" in the To line:

Voila! The mail form knows who my buddy is now.

Add a contact from an email message.
If your buddy has already sent you an email message, you can add them directly to your contact list. Notice how there's a contact-list icon next to the From name in the message?

Selecting this link will take you to the contact card for this sender in your contact list. If you don't already have the sender in your contact list, it'll automatically pre-fill the 'Contact Add Form' from the data in the message. Once the data is pre-filled, you can simply select the Ok button to save the sender as a new Contact in your list.

It's that simple!

Import your contacts from Outlook or Outlook Express.
If you've already got contacts set up in Outlook or Outlook Express, you can import them into your online contact list. You can get instructions here:
http://www.imagine-msn.com/Hotmail/Post/Manage/ImportContacts.aspx

Remember, the more of your buddies that you have in your contact list, the easier it is to send them a mail from your mobile browser. We know how hard it is to type anything on a phone, and this is one of the ways we help you type as little as possible to do what you need to do. Let us know if there are any other ways we can make it easier to send mail from your phone!

Mike Agney

[Originally published on December 19, 2005]

Windows Live Search for Mobile Launches!

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 17:05:15 GMT

We just launched a beta of Windows Live Search for mobile devices. This beta is available for WAP 2.0 and HTML capable phones. You can access it from the mobile home deck (navigate to mobile.msn.com on your phone) or by entering the following URL directly: http://mobile.msn.com/search

This beta includes a brand new web search feature. This makes it easy to get details on a breaking news story, to answer bar trivia without needing to whip out your laptop; it helps you quickly find and read information you want without typing full URLs using your phone keypad. Hopefully you’ll add this as a favorite on your mobile phone and use it every day. Here’s a summary of what’s available:

Web search uses the latest algorithmic search from MSN Search and presents the results in a mobile friendly way so you see as many results as possible on each screen.

There are two viewing options for the results: adaptive mobile rendering and the original page. If we detect that your phone supports HTML we link you directly to the original page. On WAP 2.0 browsers, we link you to the adaptive mobile rendered version. If you want to see the other version of the site, say to check this out on your desktop browser right now, you can click the Mobile or Original link provided in the search result.

Our Windows Live adaptive mobile rendering is a brand new web viewing option for mobile phones. It is novel in that it uses a table of contents collapsed view. I hope you like it. It is designed to provide a balance between short download times and making it easy to find the elements of the page that you are looking for. We automatically group related content on the page into what we call panels. All panels are ranked using the query terms you provided and relevant panels are notated with a red star. The highest ranking panel is chosen as the default open panel. The page is then presented as a table of contents of the panels, plus one open panel. We provide a Jump to Content link at the top of the page and hook it up to the 2 key on your phone pad to jump directly to the open panel; in fact most browsers jump there automatically. Clicking on a table of contents link opens that panel and closes the current panel. This makes it easier to navigate large pages which otherwise would be split across several pages without any way to know if the paragraph you are looking for is on the next page or not.

Large images are resized on our servers to fit the phone screen reducing data transfer size a great deal.

There is a really simple way to provide us feedback on how well the pages you view are rendered on your phone. Just click on the ‘Feedback: problem with page’ link and we will capture the description of your phone type (the UAString) and the page you are looking at (the URL). This provides us with a prioritized list of sites that you, our users, want us to focus our improvement efforts on.

There are some aspects of the HTML pages which this version of mobile adaptive rendering does not support. But we’ve gone the extra step to clearly explain this by showing static text in its place. For example we show [unsupported content] when we had to remove something like a flash animation that doesn’t currently have a mobile equivalent.

I hope you’ll enjoy our new web search with adaptive mobile rendering, and please leave comments if you have any feedback.

Timothy Sharpe

[Originally published on December 8, 2005]

Windows Live Mail for Mobile Launches!

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 17:04:22 GMT

We just launched a beta of Windows Live Mail for mobile devices. You can access it from the mobile home deck (navigate to http://mobile.live.com your phone). It’s a brand new web application that runs in all mobile browsers that can render either xHTML, cHTML or HTML (that pretty much includes all browsers running on wireless devices with color screens and which can display images).

The goal for the mobile beta version of Windows Live Mail is to provide a clean, easy to use and fast experience. Here’s a summary of what’s now available for you to explore and provide feedback to us about:

First, we used some very light graphics to make everything look nice for readability but also fast to download even on a slow connection (and if you have a very small data plan you can hide all icons altogether).

To make it easy to remember and to use, our navigation is consistent throughout the whole application and the same key shortcuts are shared with Windows Live Search (Mobile). We also have two special shortcuts: # will take you to the menu section of the page and * will take you to the top of the page. These two shortcuts are a great way to avoid manual scrolling and to speed your use.

Second, interaction with your contacts will be much easier. If you select a contact name while reading email we’ll try to find that contact in your address book, and if the contact is not in the address book you can add him or her with a single click (we’ll even pre-fill some fields for you).

Composing emails is also much easier and faster. You no longer have to memorize email addresses or open the address book and search for your contacts. You can simply enter several letters of the contact’s name in the To/Cc/Bcc fields when composing a new email and we’ll find all contacts that match what you entered in your address book. If there are multiple matches, you’ll see a list from which you can select the exact contact that you intended to email.

A significant number of our users complained about unnecessary confirmation dialogs, so we eliminated nearly all of them; if an action is reversible we no longer ask you to confirm it (so now you can delete emails without having to confirm each deletion, since you can always recover deleted emails from the trash folder).

And you no longer have to CC yourself on emails - if you want to save a copy. We’ll save a copy of each email that you send automatically in the sent emails folder.

You can find contacts quickly in the address book by using our new search functionality.

And you can even call your contacts directly from the address book by selecting “Call”

Everything else that used to be in the old MSN Hotmail application is still there: you can view folders, move emails between folders, create/edit/delete contacts and now you can do even more.

I hope you’ll enjoy the new design, and please leave comments if you have any feedback.

Michael Smuga

[Originally published on December 7, 2005]