If you’ve been reading my blog for very long you’ll probably know that I’m quite the fan of Windows Live OneCare. It’s done everything I’ve needed and asked it today and has protected me with no problems whatsoever.

I’ve installed the application on every machine I have immediate control over as well as recommending it to numerous friends, relatives and clients. Everyone that I’ve recommended it to has had no problems that I’m aware of either. Since I serve as their computer support and IT department, I’m sure I would have heard about it if they did have problems.

I guess myself and everyone else in that above list then is in the minority.

As I was catching up on some old issues of PC World I noticed a story about Microsoft discontinuing development and sales of their Windows Live OneCare product in June of 2009.

It will be replaced by a stripped down and now free version of the tool code-named "Morro". Morro will have all the same antivirus and malware protection that’s found in Windows Live OneCare, but won’t have the system maintenance and backup functionality that I’ve enjoyed since I began using the product as a beta tester.

With the cancelling of Windows Live OneCare, Microsoft’s "Equipt" package of software, which included OneCare, Office Home and Student, Office Live Workspaces, Live Mail, Messenger and Live Photo, has also bit the dust.

Other Coverage on PC World

• Microsoft Kills Equipt Subscription Offering
• Will Microsoft Corner the Desktop Security Market?
• Microsoft Kills OneCare to Offer Freebie; So Long, Norton
• Microsoft Drops OneCare Antivirus Product

Post from: EveryJoe

Microsoft Killing Windows Live OneCare

I just saw this commercial while watching TV tonight. Do you think it’s really this easy? Or, do kids just pick up things related to technology much easier and faster than us older people realize?

Who’s using Windows Live Photo Gallery. What do you think? Is it this easy?

Post from: EveryJoe

Is Windows Live Photo Gallery This Easy

Ahhh, MSN, the Microsoft Network. My first experience with it was when it was a ISP for my dial-up account after purchasing a new Compaq computer a number of years back.

Part of the community that was MSN was the MSN Groups. I never really participated in them that much, there was always another option that I was either already involved in or just nothing of interest to pull me away from something else.

Microsoft has announced recently that they will be shutting down the MSN Groups Service as of February 21, 2009. In the email I received this is the reason they shared for why Microsoft is shutting down the service.

Because we are dedicated to providing our customers with the most current and user friendly technology available today we made the difficult decision to close the MSN Groups service. This decision is part of an overall investment to update and re-align our online services with Windows Live. In the long term we believe that closing the service is the best way to continue to offer innovative and effective services that help you stay in touch with the people you care about. We plan to launch a new Groups service in the coming weeks, but unlike MSN Groups, Windows Live Groups will focus on offering a place for small groups to collaborate. Multiply is available now, making it your best option today for continuing to share and communicate together online.

It makes sense why they would close this down and just integrate it with what they’re offering on the Windows Live sites and platform. I say keep cutting some of these services and just partner with other sites providing similar features and options.

Post from: EveryJoe

Microsoft Shutting Down MSN Groups

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LAS VEGAS – JANUARY 07: Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer delivers the keynote address at the Venetian during the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show January 7, 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada. CES, the world’s largest annual consumer technology trade…

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This year at CES we saw something different from Microsoft. Some energy, new faces and exciting news. Nothing to take away from Bill Gates, he continues to impress me with his business sense and intelligence about the computing industry, but delivering engaging speeches and keynotes was not his strong suit. He was too laid back and seemingly disengaged from the audience.

That’s not the case with Steve Ballmer though. As the headline at eWeek’s Microsoft Watch stated, "Steve Ballmer Storms the CES Stage".

The article was written by Joe Wilcox and he seemed to be very impressed with the information that was shared and the way it was shared to the audience. He liked many things about the presentation, going from Ballmer’s implication of the "Apple Tax" on its hardware in these economic tough times, to even how Charlotte Jones, gave what he calls probably the best product demo he’s ever seen from Microsoft as she ran through various Windows Live products.

Other areas of good news is connections with Windows Live Spaces to Facebook and vice-versa as well as more products coming down the pike for Halo fans everywhere.

Post from: EveryJoe

Microsoft Impresses at CES

I was just doing some research on Google and noticed that "Zune" was a popular search keyword. Perhaps not too surprising given the recent news of the problems Zune users have been experiencing.

15% of all searches conducted on Google during the time period were somehow related to the Zune music player. Makes you wonder how much traffic someone is getting that may have purchased the Zune keyword.

Image: Snagit of Google Hot Trends website results

Post from: EveryJoe

Zune = Google Hot Trend

Did you know that 2008 was a dual leap year? Probably not since I made up the whole "dual leap year" tag, but what I do mean is that we had a February 29th this year and we’ll also have an extra leap second added to our clocks tomorrow night.

The problem is that Microsoft won’t really catch up with that second until later.

It turns out the deal is that Microsoft doesn’t recognize (or ignores) the alert in the atomic time codes that says a leap second is being added to the time adjustment. When the leap second is added at 12:59:59 tomorrow night, Microsoft won’t catch it and will just adjust the clock on your computer the next time it syncs after tomorrow night.

As you can see in the image above though, I can’t connect to the time.windows.com website URL to update my time anyway. Makes me wonder if their working on a fix right now maybe even though their Knowledge Base Article 909614 states otherwise.

Does anyone really care though? Are you going to stress out over it? If you’re Microsoft maybe you can smirk and know that at least for a little while you can really claim you’re a step ahead of Apple on something.

Hat Tip: Douglas Karr at Marketing Tech Blog

Image: Snagit of Windows Time and Date Properties Dialog box

Post from: EveryJoe

Hey Microsoft! Got a Sec?

I continue to be a huge fan of offline blog editors. My favorite being Windows Live Writer. I found out today from Scobleizer that there was a new version available so I immediately jumped over to the Windows Live Writer site to download the update.

Of late I’ve noticed that some of my complaints with Windows Live Writer is that it does some weird things with renaming files and adding some HTML that I’d rather they wouldn’t. Not surprising from Microsoft, but one of those things I wish they’d really thing about performing their own little cease & desist option. I was wishfully thinking of this as the update file was downloading.

Some of the features and improvements in this update include:

• “Instant photo” border treatment
• Insert multiple photos
• Insert and upload Windows Live photo albums
• Insert and publish video to YouTube
• Spell checking in: Arabic, Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, English (Australia), Estonian, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Turkish, and Ukrainian
• Server-side tagging (support coming soon to WordPress.com and BlogEngine.NET)
• Type-down filtering in the Open dialog
• Improved blog account setup
• Windows Live Spaces inline preview support
• Support for bidirectional languages
• Updated look and feel

The server-side tagging support will be really great when it happens. But no mention in this list of my wishes and desires mentioned above.

My other request would be for Windows Live Writer to be able to browse through my uploads folder and let me view all the previous images I’ve uploaded as a gallery kind of function. That would be really helpful in finding an image you know you uploaded before without having to upload another copy of it again.

Image: Screen capture from "Help" menu on Windows Live Writer

Post from: EveryJoe

New Version of Windows Live Writer

Microsoft says it has detected attacks against IE 7.0 but said the "underlying vulnerability" was present in all versions of the browser.

I don’t use IE7 that much right now, mainly just to review some sites and applications I’ve developed where the clients using them are completely contained in an IE7 user environment.

Many "experts" are suggesting that users find an alternate browser to use instead of Internet Explorer, at least until Microsoft gets the patch available. Microsoft people are saying that may be a bit drastic because there are steps you can take to protect your computer from the security hole.

Changing your security settings on IE to high, using a limited rights user account, and keeping your anti-virus and anti-spyware software up-to-date are all steps that should be taken now and every day really.

Source: Serious security flaw found in IE | BBC News | Technology

Post from: EveryJoe

Serious Security Flaw Exposed in IE Internet Explorer

Image: Microsoft and Yahoo Corporate Brand Identities

My friend Dean commented recently that he bet Yahoo was wishing they had accepted Microsoft’s offer to buy the company not so long ago. When he made the comment, Yahoo stock was at $14.50.

I just looked today and Yahoo stock is at a whopping $8.95 according to Market Watch. Microsoft’s offer was $33/share when Yahoo and Jerry Yang said no to the offer and felt rebuffed that they would be offered so low a price and would never sell to a company the likes of Microsoft.

I still think Yahoo should sell to Microsoft. I then think that Microsoft should sell-off some of the properties but then try to merge and consolidate the strong brands and increase their market share and customer base on a variety of fronts.

There are a number of online services and products that Microsoft could do some interesting things with, not to mention the load of new customers that would come with the Yahoo services. I do think there would be a number of people that would bail on their Yahoo accounts if they were purchased by Microsoft.

The question remains though, will the Yahoo and Microsoft deal ever go through? I guess that’s the question of the hour. What do you think? Should Yahoo sell now? Should Microsoft offer again now or just let it keep going lower in price?

Post from: EveryJoe

Is Yahoo Regretting Saying No to Microsoft

If you haven’t heard, Microsoft is now letting you earn money by using Microsoft Live Search instead of Google (or any other search site for that matter).

The only catch is that you also can’t be the type of person that uses Firefox (or any other browser except Internet Explorer) as their browser of choice.

To earn value for your searches and join the SearchPerks! promotion you must have Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher to participate. Copy this URL and paste it into Internet Explorer:

http://www.getsearchperks.com

Sign up for SearchPerks! and start earning tickets towards exciting prizes whenever you search the Web – up to 25 tickets per day. It’s free, easy to use, and your tickets accumulate as fast as you can search.

And because SearchPerks! is brought to you by Microsoft Live Search, you can count on rich, comprehensive search results.

Be sure to sign up before the registration deadline on December 31, 2008—the sooner you sign up, the more opportunity you have to earn tickets!

Is it just me or wouldn’t a good strategy for increasing your audience be to include absolutely everyone you can think of that’s not already using your products?

Anyone using Microsoft Live Search Perks? How much money have you made?

Image Source: Direct Email from Microsoft

Post from: EveryJoe

Microsoft Live Search Perks As Long As You’re Not Using Firefox