Microsoft’s suite includes the first public beta of Windows Live Photo Gallery…
Seattle — Microsoft Corp introduced on Wednesday a suite of “Windows Live” online services bundled into a single download in its latest effort to compete with Google Inc’s growing array of applications delivered over the Web, including the global betas of several of its desktop products.
“Among the suite of applications included in the first public beta are Windows Live Photo Gallery, as well as Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Messenger 8.5, the Windows Live Writer blogging tool, Windows Live OneCare Family Safety, and the Windows Live Toolbar.”
“Microsoft also will deliver a new unified installer that customers can use to download all of these applications.”
“We are adding a bunch of stuff to a number of different services. But what is new is the unified installer, as well as a host of new and different features that have been added to the betas already out there, some of which are becoming public, rather than closed, betas,” Adam Sohn, director of Microsoft’s Online Services Business, said in a statement.
Once the beta of the Unified Installer for the Windows Live suite is downloaded, customers’ Windows Live services automatically will be kept up to date.
Evidence that Microsoft was preparing to make a major push with its Windows Live services first appeared on Tuesday, with the New York Times reporting that the unified application was close to reality.
“These applications bridge the gap between the Windows Vista PC and the Windows Live web services,” Brandon LeBlanc wrote for the official Windows Vista blog. “Overall, the Windows Live suite is designed to extend your Windows experience by tapping into Windows Live. Of course choice comes with the Windows Live Suite as well.”
“This is the first time we are making the installer available for download, and the idea here is that when customers click on a link to get Windows Live, the installer will be downloaded to their PC and they will then be able to pick any of the Windows Live applications they want,” Sohn said.
These applications would then be downloaded and installed at the same time, based on the options the user has chosen, and the product will then also keep these updated going forward, he said.
With Windows Live Mail users can check any POP or IMAP account, LeBlanc added, along with using Windows Live Writer for a variety of blogging services.
The service will also provide many of the features currently provided by other photo and video services, allowing users to import photos from their digital cameras, which will be automatically organized into events based on date and time. Other features include automatic stitching of panoramic photos, improved photo editing tools, and the ability to view Quicktime files in the Gallery viewer.
Windows Live Writer will now be available in English worldwide, as well as in 32 languages and 52 countries. Enhancements include easy ways to insert video from various video services into a blog entry, with an enhanced experience for Soapbox on MSN Video, as well as HTML markup and justified text alignment; image upload for Blogger, which allows publishing images to PicasaWeb; and the ability to print out blog posts.
Windows Live OneCare Family Safety will now also include family safety support in Mail, Messenger and Spaces, which “enables us to provide a safety net for folks who are doing lots of cool stuff online,” Sohn said.
Microsoft had promised to make some major announcements surrounding its Live platform during the summer, however they never materialized. The Redmond Company is still playing catch-up to other Internet giants like Google and Yahoo, which so far have been the standard-bearers for the so-called Web 2.0 movement.
The Windows Live bundle will clearly be seen as a rival to the Google Pack, which as well as including several own-brand Google products, includes third-party applications such as StarOffice and Firefox. There is no suggestion that Microsoft’s compendium will include any third party products.
“We are taking the communications and sharing components and creating a set of services that become what we believe is the one suite of services and applications for personal and community use across the PC, the web and the phone,” Brian Hall, general manager for Microsoft’s Windows Live services tells the New York Times.
The suite of Web services — available at http://get.live.com/wl/all — will also automatically update with improvements or new versions of those applications.
Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft said this lays the foundation for other integrated Windows Live services due out in the “coming months.”
Asked about Microsoft’s plans for the enterprise market with Windows Live, Sohn said the company is investigating this, with chief software architect Ray Ozzie doing a lot of deep thinking about the platform and infrastructure that was needed to enable all this in the enterprise.
There is a lot of opportunity here, and you will definitely hear a lot more from us over the next year about how we do the right thing for businesses in a way that preserves and control IT needs, and also gives them the reliability, security and integrity they need before they will allow anyone to manage anything for them, Sohn said.
“It is super important over the long term to take the software-plus-services approach and see where it can really add value across all of our audience segments. That is something we are really focused on,” he said.
“Together with our web services, we have a complete suite that combines the best of the Web and the best of Windows, and works the way you want,” Windows Live Team vice president Chris Jones said in a Web log post.