The Windows Live Search has gotten another overhaul now, and they’ve taken a little bit of a different slant on what their home page looks like as you can see from the screen shot.

Along with a new background, which I’ve yet to figure out if you can change it to something else you would like. If you hover over certain sections Microsoft kinds of leads you on the types of information you can search for and use with Live Search.

Most of the settings you’ve come to expect from customizing your search experience is available: filtering, language, number of results, etc.

One pretty neat feature of the new search results is that the video search results allow you to play the video preview by just hovering your mouse over the results instead of waiting to click on each video and let it load to start playing.

Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet has more information about what’s happening with Microsoft Live Search and their Live Mesh application. The article also quickly let me know that the search background picture changes and highlights more vertical search results related to the photo that was set as the background.

Post from: EveryJoe

Microsoft Live Search Gets Rebirth Design

Big news on the open document format front: Microsoft announced (press release) minutes ago (actually about 18 hours early, since someone broke their embargo) that Office SP2 will include native, “first-class citizen” support for the open source Open Document Format, as well as Adobe’s PDF and the XML Paper Specification (XPS), as well as Redmond’s own OpenXML.

Although I’m already able to save to PDF in Office with the add-on available, as well as having the ability to print literally any document into a PDF format with installed 3rd party drivers, this is a HUGE deal in my opinion.

Great news, great news!

Office to support ODF, PDF as ‘first-class citizens’ | ZDNet Government | ZDNet.com

Post from: EveryJoe

Office SP2 to Natively Support More Formats

This is one that I really thought would happen. I didn’t think it would happen easily or exactly quickly, but I thought it would eventually get approved and move forward.

Part of me thinks this could still be in the overall strategy though. The YHOO stock price has already dropped to $24 from it’s 52-week high of $34.

What do you think? Could it be that Microsoft will come back in a few weeks or a couple of months and offer a little less than their original offer, getting Yahoo! for an even greater deal through an official hostile takeover? Steve Ballmer has said no, but people change their minds frequently. Saying no strongly could help generate the drop in stock price they’re really looking for in the deal.

Here’s some other current news coverage of the deal from ZDNet:

• Why Yahoo’s ad inventory is so important to Microsoft
• Microsoft takes its ball and leaves Yahoo on the Web 2.0 playground
• Microsoft walks: Five reasons why it’s a good move

Photo Source: flickr wes4ua’s photos

Post from: EveryJoe

Is It Really Over? Microsoft Pulls Yahoo Offer

Mary Jo is probably most known for her work on Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley.

Mary Jo talks about her move personally here, Greetings, Microsoft Watchers!

Post from: EveryJoe

Mary Jo Foley Leaves ZDNet