The New Windows Live Messenger App

The Good

The new Windows Live Messenger application from Microsoft integrates online social networking with instant messaging. With a sleek Metro like interface the messenger application allows you to share what you’re doing right now (sort of like twitter) with your friends who are also using windows live, and stay up to date with your Facebook and Myspace profiles at the same time. To use Facebook or Myspace all you need to do is give it your credentials while you sign in for the first time.

The “Social” window allows you to sort recent “highlights” and other things just photos posted by our friends on Windows Live (MSN) or on Facebook. At the same time you can also add regular Windows Live friends like you could in older versions.

Also, the messaging service provides a way to set privacy while you sign in for the first time. You can also have custom privacy settings for every new person that you add to your friends list. It’s nice to see that Microsoft is paying close attention to the Facebook privacy debates.

While things are still in Beta, I think that Microsoft has done a good job of trying to acknowledge the fact that Windows Live is not the only social networking service out there.

Other Thoughts

As usual I’m pretty sure that all of the Windows Live apps are for Windows only, not a good thing if you use a Mac. Of course, Apple software is also Mac only, but it would be nice to see some platform independent apps for once so that more people will actually use the Windows Live service.

Twitter support would also be a cool thing. Anything you type in the status message window could be automatically posted to your twitter profile, which would make things even easier. While I don’t personally use twitter since I don’t really have the self discipline to update anything, combining status messages with twitter may be a cool idea.

Overall I think Microsoft is on the right track with their “Windows Live Messenger” app that integrates other services with Messenger , although I would be much happier with a “Live” suite that I could use on any operating system of my choice.

Snow Leopard - A highly uncritical review

The good news/features

Faster + More Space + 64 bit computing

Yup. Snow leopard is more faster and occupies less space. Plus it uses 64 bit computing. Enough said.

Little Things

Plus, I love the little things, like ability to resize icons, and to play movies and video files right form the icon. It's pretty handy, and makes Quicklook look a bit useless for media files (although it is a totally useful feature when it comes to documents).

I especially like how the circle around the play icon for music and video files indicates the information of how much music has already been played. It's great to be able to listen to music without even waiting for QuickTime to open.

I like Windows Live Writer

It's highly unusual that I praise people at Microsoft, but using Windows Live Writer for a while has changed my thinking considerably. I realize that Microsoft is a company and not one person that is working, and at first I believed them to be complete idiots, but it seems as though I'm wrong. Someone over there actually has some brains, and its a good thing they worked on the Windows Live Writer division at Redmond.

To be honest I couldn't care much for the ribbon interface that the new Office 07 has, it is merely a selling point for the majority of the people who don't realize that its the same Office 2003, except it has a more shiny appearance, which deceives people into thinking it it's a entirely different product altogether. But Windows Live Writer is what really caught my attention. It is the first time Microsoft actually has a useful tool, that is very similar to its paid rival ecto and many other similar blogging applications.

Surprisingly, Microsoft has caught on to the idea that the Internet is giving an opportunity to everyone in this world who has a computer and an Internet connection can express their opinion, communicate and try their hand at "15 minutes of fame". And as soon as they sensed this, they started working on Live Writer. A weblog authoring tool that much to my surprise, is quite good.

First of all let me describe to you the hidden superpowers of this almost idiot proof application. Idiot proof in the sense that any average computer user that knows what the term bookmark means can use this software, without learning how to do things "the right way".

Microsoft has taken into consideration Dual Booting. I guess that Microsoft realized that many people out there who actually have a blog, and would download an application solely for the purpose of writing applications to a blog most likely have dual booting operating systems also. This led them into thinking about this idea - if the same software is installed on both the operating systems, wouldn't it be great if both the installations of the same software have the same settings.

To clarity what I mean is this - I installed windows live writer on my Windows Vista partition and started writing articles and publishing them to this blog. Then I installed Windows Live Writer on my Windows XP partition. At this point I was wondering if I had to re-input all the details so that I could post to this blog, but no it was already DONE! Live Writer automatically allowed me to post to this blog! Just a quick fact I'd like to point out though - even though all the account settings had been entered for me I still had to Update the Account Configuration, however I didn't have to re-enter any blog details. Amazing... that's what I call idiot proof (well Live Writer is not completely there yet, but almost). Software that does everything on it's own without the intervention of the user. In an ideal situation the man should sit back and the machine should take control - that's the main purpose of employing machines to do work in the first place.

The screenshot at the top is that of the Windows Live Writer on XP (service pack 2 of course), and the one on the bottom is of Windows Live Writer on Windows Vista (With Aero). Notice the difference in the post editing area.

Second Factor that shows Microsoft is headed the right way - Good designing and good features. Yes, that's right, the words Microsoft and Good Design in one sentence can be considered an oxymoron - two contradictory terms. But interestingly, Windows Live Writer, and even other applications for that matter, are slowly becoming more aesthetically pleasing, and that's not it, Microsoft is finally coming to realize that providing one button is far superior than to have 5 menus.

Scroll up and take a good look at the interface - It almost looks like Microsoft Word for blogs, doesn't it? It provides all the options necessary, but at the same time it is also simple to use. If you want you can put pictures in the post and along with that also add effects to the pictures. How interesting is that? Surely, online blog editors will not offer these interesting services at your finger tips. It even has spell check in it. Note: The quality of the spell check is far from the quality of spell check in word processing applications such as Microsoft Word. Things such as place names are often underlined with red squiggly lines and repetition of words do not seemed to be picked up by the spell checker. What more can a blogging addict ask for? Indeed Microsoft is taking a step in the right direction, and if they keep heading that way I'm sure that the outcome will only be good.