SANAZ says...: September, 2006

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September 18

coming zune

as announced last week:

REDMOND, Wash. — Sept. 14, 2006 — Marking the next big milestone for its Connected Entertainment vision, Microsoft Corp. today unveiled details of the first products to be released under its Zune™ brand. Designed around the principles of sharing, discovery and community, Zune will create new ways for consumers to connect and share entertainment experiences. The Zune experience centers around connection — connection to your library, connection to friends, connection to community and connection to other devices.

“The digital music entertainment revolution is just beginning,” said J Allard, vice president, design and development, at Microsoft, who is leading the charge for building the family of Zune products. “With Zune, we are not simply delivering a portable device, we are introducing a new platform that helps bring artists closer to their audiences and helps people find new music and develop new social connections.”

Zune is indeed coming soon. I got a chance to play with one a few weeks ago (thanks to Justin), and yes it was the brown one! I was rather impressed (although it's a bit too thick) - everything from the look, to the headphones, to the packaging to the UI was nicely done. the best part, it has it's own identity - it didn't feel like an ipod. I own 2 ipods a nano and mini, and i love my nano but i can definitely see myself buying a brown Zune.

September 13

LUKAS ROSSI!!! woohooo

I'm going to at least one supernova concert now! may the best man win... Lukas Rossi is going to front SUPERNOVA.... wooohooo.. go Canada :)

I must admit I voted 20 times for Lukas last night, that is until my laptop died on me. I have been completely hooked on rockstar, it actually makes American Idol look bad, in my opinion. Last night, when Lukas perfomed his toned down version of 'headspin' (LOVE that song) I got the chills for the first time while watching supernova. He is so amazingly talented and unique... although his insanely glittery eye shadow was bugging me a little yesterday. Toby was a very close second favorite, EVS :)

Talking about Live.com officially out of Beta

yes a bit delayed on the post :) we are indeed out of Beta... Mike and I were looking at screenshots from our different releases. a little walk down memory lane... we've come a long way! when you're so heads down with things and what needs to get done next, you forget to look at the big picture and how far you've come.

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Live.com officially out of Beta

As a few of you have you noticed (here, here, here and others) live.com is officially out of Beta!

We officially released our V1 a couple of days ago. We've been catching up on sleep the past few days and forgot to hit the publish button for our blog entry :) As of a few minutes ago our last piece of rollout is underway and http://search.msn.com has begun to redirect to Live Search.

We have come a long way together, since our release on 11/1/05. We owe our many revisions and improvements to your feedback... check out the pictures to see how far we've come (11/1, 3/7, 3/30, 6/15 and 9/12).

So what's next? some more sleep, a ship party... oh and a ton of cool features we have planned!

September 08

Talking about live.com update

We rolled out a significant update last night! We've fixed a TON of bugs... and yes, this why i've been losing sleep :) our sole focus this release has been quality. Sometimes it's necessary to take a break from adding features and just focus on solidifying what we already have. enjoy!

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live.com update

Last night we released an update. The key focus of this release has been quality and addressing our top customer pain points, not new features... we've fixed hundreds of bugs, so it's not reasonable to enumerate all of them :) Here are some of the most significant improvements:

Responsiveness

We have done a lot of work around responsiveness; interacting with the app, clicking on different pages, rss rendering, navigating away from live.com and memory leaks have all been significantly improved.

User flow changes

Let's start with some definitions:

Anonymous - users that have never signed in

Identified - users that have signed in at least once, but are currently not signed in

Anonymous users are now prompted to sign in after a certain number of changes enabling them to roam their settings.

For identified users, we now better protect user data from unauthorized changes. Users can view their data without signing in, but will need to sign in to make changes.

Search page changes

First, the page is much faster. The search box is wider and we're including messaging for key new features. You'll also notice that the Jewel (the drop down in the upper left hand corner) is now available on this page.

New gadgets

Our partner teams have built some very cool new gadgets that are now included in our directory. Some include:

- Windows Live Expo: look for listings on Expo using this gadget (click here to add it)

- Team scores & news by FOX: keep track of your favorite team scores and news (click here to add it)

- Auto listings: looking for car? find it using the MSN Auto listings gadget (click here to add it)

Direct URLs to personalized page and search

This has been a popular request by many users. Now you can type beta.search.live.com (soon search.live.com) and go directly to the search page. Similiarly you can type my.live.com and home.live.com and go directly to the personalized page.

Accessibility

live.com is now accessible including screen reader mode which can be enabled via the 'Options' dialog.

Other

many many other bug fixes and under hood changes to improve robustness and reliability.

Enjoy! let us know what you think.

September 02

quote of the month: august

yeah, it's september but i love this so much it deserves a post.

from my favorite show: rockstar supernova by the man himself: tommy lee...

'sauteed with wrong sauce' this was his comment on Storm's not so hot rendition of 'i will survive'.... i can't wait to use this line. btw, if you watch rockstar vote for Lukas Rossi:)