Microsoft Office Live is a set of small business services built around a Microsoft’s Sharepoint technologies. The new site combines bCentral with Sharepoint for free web hosting, e-mail, and group sharing online. Microsoft will also offer subscription plans with less or no advertising and access to over 20 additional online business applications.

Anyone can now sign up for a domain name, setup their own website, and have a professional e-mail address. You can design your site using Microsoft templates directly from their web page. You can signup for up to 5 e-mail addresses at your-domain.com with 2 GB of mail storage. You can even store files in a private corporate vault for group access.

Microsoft serves advertisements on each page aimed at small business owners. The service will be available in the United States in Q1 2006 in beta form.

How will Office Live affect web hosts? I think it will be a good introduction for small businesses and allows Microsoft to compete with Yahoo!’s existing free hosting offer for small businesses listed in its index.

Microsoft currently offers three levels of hosting ranging from $13 a month to $50 a month. It will be interesting to see what is offered as upsells.

Tags: bcentral, msoffice, sharepoint, smallbusiness, soho

Microsoft has a new collaborative editing program named Mojo. Mojo is a way to connect with other people to edit a document in real-time. Microsoft demonstrated connecting to a contractor off-site to edit some financial documents. You can initiate a connection via Messenger, e-mail, or phone and talk to the other person through your PC while you both work on the document.

Mojo is a better solution than remote desktops because you share only the open window and not everything on your computer. There is a button at the top of the window labeled “Take Control” that suggests two people cannot make changes at the same time.

I wonder if Mr. Wiki, Ward Cunningham, was involved in the Mojo project before leaving Microsoft.

Tags: mojo, wiki

MSN has been openly centered around Hotmail and Messenger for their online services strategy. Microsoft announced major upgrades to both components today with even more Web goodness.

Windows Live Messenger

Windows Live Messenger is a MSN Messenger replacement with lots of new social networking features built-in. You can now store up to 600 contacts, which is very good because Messenger now shows you all of your contacts through the program regardless of if they currently have a Messenger account.

Messenger users can share and annotate their friends list with others through Microsoft’s people search interface. You can add even add tags to people! If Bob is one of my friends I can add a short snippet about Bob such as “I’ve known Bob since high school when we used to play soccer together” and add tags “childhood” and “soccer” to describe Bob.

Search is built-in to the Messenger client. I think Microsoft will be able to generate a significant amount of search traffic as people are talking about a topic and will immediately search for more information.

Each contact has their own contact card with up-to-date contact information. Your contact data is automatically synchronized from your computer and alters the address book information of all of your friends. Microsoft calls these “Active Contacts.” Watch out Plaxo!

Voice over IP is built-in to the client. You can even dial from your computer to a standard telephone. You can also send short voice clips over IM.

You can share folders on your desktop with other Messenger users. You can create a special folder such as photographs of your daughter, and share that folder with your parents and family so they can see each new picture as she grows older. Your designated contacts will receive a new alert when the folder contains new content and can view the folder as if it was on their own hard drive.

Developers can add tabs to Messenger for constantly updated information directly in the instant messenger snapshot view.

Windows Live Mail

Windows Live Mail is a Hotmail replacement written from the ground-up to replicate a desktop application look and feel as well as speed through Ajax and other goodies. The user interface is very similar to Outlook complete with warnings against phishing and viruses. Your mail is displayed in a three-column view with a skyscraper advertisement on the right of the page. Mail, calendar, contacts, and your “Today” view are all accessible via tabs inside the Windows Live Mail interface.

You can report e-mail abuse to Microsoft directly from the mail interface. Microsoft adds some icons to let you know which e-mail messages are from a known contact, assigning a certain level of trust to that message. If ou receive a phishing attempt or spam e-mail you can click a “Report & Delete” link to flag the item as bad content to improve the system.

You can select multiple items, drag and drop, and even right-click within the browser window. Windows Live Mail has lots of details that make using a live Web application worthy of possibly ditching your desktop client.

Tags: hotmail, msn, windowsmessenger

Windows Live is a suite of Internet powered applications and services designed to run on top of the Windows platform. Microsoft unveiled a variety of services at its technology preview event today that it plans to release next year. All components of Windows Live are currently listed on the Windows Live Ideas page.

Live.com

Live.com is the center of the Windows Live experience. Users will access this personalized portal page for the latest weather, news, mail messages, and whatever else catches their interest. Live.com is similar to the Google personalized start page and My Yahoo!. Users select a content type, enter some personalization options, and are able to change the layout and configuration of the page.

Feed aggregation is built right onto the page. The last 5 titles are shown by default, with expansion options and links to the full content. Enclosures are displayed right on the page inside of their default viewing plugin. Live.com is obviously intended for people subscribing to only a few feeds and there is still a lot of opportunity to introduce users to a richer aggregation experience.

Ray Ozzie called RSS “the Unix pipe of the Internet.”

Microsoft Gadgets help add content to the Live.com homepage. Gadgets can also be used within Messenger, Windows Vista’s sidebar, and the MSN Search toolbar but I am not sure if the same code is reusable for each scenario. Pictured above is my Live.com gadget showing a two column view of my RSS feed. You can assemble your own gadget using JavaScript, CSS, and an XML file to describe your gadget’s content.

Windows Safety Center

Windows Safety Center allows a user to scan their PC for viruses, learn about current viruses, clean out unused files, and perform other maintenance tasks. The Windows Safety Center is advertising supported and provides an opportunity for on-page upsells to a full virus program, firewall, or anti-spyware program for example. There may be opportunities for other upsells throughout Windows Safety Center and I think it’s worth giving Microsoft a call if your company is in any overlapping service area.

Microsoft announced today its new strategy around live services to integrate products and services across a variety of devices to 87 journalists and analysts at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Microsoft software already powers a variety of systems including servers, desktops, mobile phones, and the Xbox.

The Microsoft Live architecture connects these devices through to allow end users to share preferences, presence data, and a digital identity whenever they access a compatible device. Microsoft has embraced the Internet as part of the desktop experience and invested in technologies to connect individuals and groups with their data and contacts.

Microsoft’s Live services will be free and supported by advertising. Microsoft has realized they exist in an era where developers bootstrap applications using advertising as their only revenue model. They also realized the opportunity to identify user behavior and preferences across its entire network to serve targeted advertisements in the right place at the right time. Small business advertisements for users participating in small business services, gaming advertisements for users it knows from Xbox Live, and local advertising based on your interaction with synchronized contact information and search behavior. Microsoft claims it only has a 10% share of the online advertising market.

Microsoft’s Live strategy is made up of a people network, a search network, and an ad network. The people network is powered by Windows Live Messenger, a new version of Windows and MSN Messenger I will cover in another post. The search network is powered by MSN Search and exposed through the Live.com portal and connected through every online property. The ad network is Microsoft’s new adCenter.

Microsoft has a lot of experience delivering live content on its existing products and services.

• 220 million online installs of Windows XP Service Pack 2.
• Windows Update does 100 petabytes of data transfer a month.
• 200 million hours of online play on Xbox Live to date.

I will cover individual pieces of the platforms in individual posts.

Tags: adcenter, windowslive