Could any MS Representative comment on what's happening with Windows Live for TV? They released a beta in march, then a release to fix some bugs in April, and now its six months later, and not a word has been said about it.

The annoying thing is that the betas were really really unusable. Of the three components of WLfTV, only Spaces was included, and it was very buggy. Live Call and Live Messenger were not included in the beta- the two programs I would actually use in Media center.

So what's happening with this project? Will there be another beta release soon? Are they planning on adding other Windows Live components, like Hotmail? If you don't know, would you be able to find out?

Can we have an answer please ?

I suspect its finished but only in next release of Windows to bump the "new" features (ie pulled messenger and reintroduced with a new feature Spaces)

Hello Jess?

 

Please, anyone?

 

We need something like this in Vista badly...

It's a product of the Windows Live team, not the Media Center team so I don't know how much Jessica would actualy know about it.  The Live guys have a blog, don't they?  Might try e-mailing them too.

Yeah....I don't even know what it is, actually. Microsoft = way too big of a company sometimes.

Here's the team blog. It's been inactive pretty much since April

http://wlfortv.spaces.live.com/

I wonder if the whole thing has been scrapped because of the darn facebook rumours!

 

What facebook rumours?

You mean that microsoft may be making a deal with facebook? I would be suprised if they scrapped Live Spaces to buy out Facebook.

The rumor is/was that Microsoft might invest $300-500 million for a 5% stake in Facebook.  If so, it might be questioned why Microsoft would continue developing the Windows Live plug-in for Media Center.

That said, corporate invests can be completely different from Microsoft's own products.  Microsoft has invested in their own competitors time and time again.  Prime examples would be Google, RealNetworks, and Apple.  All of which Microsoft has invested in and clearly you would question why from a product standpoint.

They way Ballmer has been talking smack lately, I think they are going to go on some major aquisition shopping binge.

 

I think if they end up purchasing Facebook (for way too much), it will be the death knell for spaces or will be somehow strewn together.

 

If you look at the bright side, you will eventually get hotmail and messenger integration in vista but at the expense on your privacy (facebook).

 

Just speculating of course!

 

 

Chris - Moderator:

The rumor is/was that Microsoft might invest $300-500 million for a 5% stake in Facebook.  If so, it might be questioned why Microsoft would continue developing the Windows Live plug-in for Media Center.

That said, corporate invests can be completely different from Microsoft's own products.  Microsoft has invested in their own competitors time and time again.  Prime examples would be Google, RealNetworks, and Apple.  All of which Microsoft has invested in and clearly you would question why from a product standpoint.

You can take it another way, provide multiple products that does the same thing in various forms and see what happens.

For example, messenger. how may incarnations are there that people can IM each other (all from MS).

1. MSN Live (client and webmessenger)
2. Windows Messenger
3. Office Communicator
4. NetMeeting? (old school)
5. others?

All these products compete against each other but then again, they do the same thing.

I think this whole thing is basically throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. Adding Facebook just provides another "social network" interface that MS has been providing to end users.

My take in MS strategy is basically, the flavor of the day.

I decided to ask one of the PMs to see why nothing has come of this add-in.

His response:

"The project was moved to a different organization internally in the spring of last year and will most likely not come out of beta."

 

Too bad... I was really looking forward to using this.

they are paying people to use live search - throw us a bone - we want to use this!