Murray Gordon's Space

Yes you can…

The wave of software + services is starting to pick up momentum.

It’s amazing the level of integration that can happen when you start thinking about what your customers need or better yet, what they want.

Don’t even need to leave your couch or put down your TiVo remote to order your pizza now.

I’m guessing you will be able to do the same soon on XBox Live.

I love it!

Thanks for checking out this post!

Cheers,

Murray Gordon ISV Architect Evangelist Microsoft Corporation       http://blogs.msdn.com/MurrayG US ISV Team Blog  My GeeksWithBlogs Blog

If you haven’t been to Live Search yet today to do a search, take a second and check it out.

There’s some great hotspots on the Live Search landing page.

Great picture and awesome info!

Here’s the landing page (http://www.live.com/)

Here’s the hotspots you can check out:

Hats off to the folks on the Live Search team. Great info and a powerful picture.

Thanks for checking out this post!

Cheers,

Murray Gordon ISV Architect Evangelist Microsoft Corporation       http://blogs.msdn.com/MurrayG US ISV Team Blog  My GeeksWithBlogs Blog

I’ve always been a big fan of Windows Live OneCare for all my personal machines. That’s why I was surprised to hear that Microsoft Windows Live OneCare is going away in the 2009.

Fortunately the key piece I used it for is being replaced by Morro, basic protection from malware—including viruses, spyware, rootkits, and Trojans.

Here’s some more detail on the announcement from Michael Cherry at Directions on Microsoft:

“In order to increase the number of Windows computers with basic protection from malware—including viruses, spyware, rootkits, and Trojans—Microsoft will release a free antimalware product, code-named Morro, in the second half of 2009. Once Morro is generally available, Microsoft will discontinue Windows Live OneCare, its all-in-one solution for systems health management, performance improvement, data protection, and security. Morro could enhance overall security by making antimalware software more widely used. However, OEMs who ship OneCare will have to turn to suites from other providers, who may find that Morro eliminates demand for bare-bones antimalware products.

Promoting Free Antivirus

The planned Morro antivirus software will be free, but will not be included in the Windows OS. Design goals for Morro call for a smaller footprint that uses fewer computing resources, so that it will work over low bandwidth or with less powerful PCs. The free availability and low hardware requirements are particularly meant to increase malware protection in developing countries with high PC growth, such as Brazil, where Microsoft says many consumers lack a credit card or the resources to pay for antimalware software, and where the company says malware infestations are rampant.

Some Microsoft partners already offer free basic antimalware utilities, and others charge between US$20 and US$40 for an entry-level antimalware product. If Microsoft offers Morro for free from its download center or Windows Update, it could become widely used. Although this may mean that there could be fewer infected computers wreaking havoc on the Internet, it also means that some Microsoft partners that offer entry-level antimalware products may be forced to offer their entry-level products for free, or abandon the base-level product category in favor of suites combining a number of utilities, including antimalware, backup, disk imaging and defragmentation, Registry cleaning, and general PC health and monitoring capabilities, many of which OneCare included but that Morro will not.

OneCare, Equipt Discontinued

OneCare will continue to be sold at retail through June 30, 2009, and online sales from Microsoft will be phased out when Morro becomes available. The latest version of OneCare (version 2.5 was released in July 2008) provides virus and malware protection as well as remote management and centralized backup of PCs on home networks. The product also provides online backup of photos. OneCare is sold as a subscription at US$49.95 a year for up to three computers, with 10GB of online backup for an additional US$50 per year.

Windows Small Business Server 2008 includes a specialized edition of OneCare for protecting Windows Server 2008. This edition of OneCare will eventually be removed from Small Business Server. Microsoft Equipt, a solution that includes OneCare and subscription-based versions of several Office applications, will be removed from the retail channel in the first half of 2009.

Microsoft will ensure that all current OneCare customers remain protected through the life of their subscriptions—that is, new signature files will be available and serious bugs will be fixed, but no enhancements will be made. Microsoft also indicates that current online backup subscribers can continue to back up copies of photos using the Online Backup feature, although this feature might eventually be migrated to another service, such as Windows Live SkyDrive, which offers 25GB of free storage.

The Windows Live OneCare Team Blog, which contains more information about the decision to discontinue the product, is located at windowsonecare.spaces.live.com.”

Thanks for checking out this post!

Cheers,

Murray Gordon ISV Architect Evangelist Microsoft Corporation       http://blogs.msdn.com/MurrayG US ISV Team Blog  My GeeksWithBlogs Blog

What a Scathing review from Newsweek about MacWorld. Wow. Never thought I would see that from MacWorld.

An opening quote like this is a rough as it gets:

“At the annual Macworld trade show in San Francisco today, Apple put on an excruciating 90-minute keynote that may go down in history as the worst Apple event of all time. In brief: for the first time in recent memory, Apple has nothing interesting to sell. And the company's remarkable decadelong run as the hottest company in consumer electronics may be drawing to a close.”

Check out the article yourself: MacWorld MacDull: Is Apple's Innovative Era Over? | Newsweek Daniel Lyons | Techtonic Shifts | Newsweek.com

Thanks for checking out this post!

Cheers,

Murray Gordon ISV Architect Evangelist Microsoft Corporation       http://blogs.msdn.com/MurrayG US ISV Team Blog  My GeeksWithBlogs Blog

Very interesting article on SOA and Services from Anne Thomas Manes.

I’m guessing there will be a lot more articles like this in the near future.

Also thought the image was great:

Here’s the link to the original article: Application Platform Strategies Blog: SOA is Dead; Long Live Services

Thanks for checking out this post!

Cheers,

Murray Gordon ISV Architect Evangelist Microsoft Corporation       http://blogs.msdn.com/MurrayG US ISV Team Blog  My GeeksWithBlogs Blog

Just read a great post from Doug Ware on how to use Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) on Amazon EC2.

This is a very compelling and cost effective solution.

Once SharePoint Services are publically available in the Windows Azure Platform, I’m guessing Doug will consider a move.

Awesome how-to Doug!

Here’s the link to Doug’s original post: Windows SharePoint Services on Amazon EC2

Windows SharePoint Services on Amazon EC2 - eLumenotion Blog

Thanks for checking out this post!

Cheers,

Murray Gordon ISV Architect Evangelist Microsoft Corporation       http://blogs.msdn.com/MurrayG US ISV Team Blog  My GeeksWithBlogs Blog

Ever felt like it would be cool to upload photos straight from Photo Gallery?

Well I definitely have. I almost downloaded Google's Picasa 3 just to be able to do this. The upload tool that's provided on Facebook.com always fails on me, so creating albums in Facebook was just too much of a pain to mess with.

Fortunately Will Duff, a developer intern this past summer at Microsoft created a plug-ins for both Photo Gallery and Movie Maker. Awesome news!!!

Here's the info:

Do you share photos on Facebook? What about sharing sharing videos on YouTube? Well thanks to Will Duff, one of our developer interns this past summer, there are now a couple of brand new publish plug-ins for Facebook and YouTube available for download.  Both plug-ins enable you to easily share your photos or videos with just a few clicks!

LiveUpload to Facebook is a plug-in for Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta that makes it easy for anyone to upload their photos to Facebook. The plug-in takes advantage of the new people tagging in Photo Gallery, too!  This means that when you tag your friends in Photo Gallery, if you’re also Facebook friends with those people, those tags will automatically appear on the published photos on Facebook. Pretty cool, huh? 

Some of the LiveUpload to Facebook plug-in features:

• Add multiple Facebook accounts.
• Quickly and easily upload your photos to Facebook, including any people tags added in Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta.
• Upload your pictures to an existing album or create a new one.

LiveUpload to YouTube is a plug-in for Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta and Windows Live Movie Maker Beta that makes it easy for anyone to upload their videos straight to YouTube.  For example, once you’ve quickly created that exciting new video using Movie Maker, simply click the Publish button and choose LiveUpload to YouTube to share it!

(Note for developers out there… The people tags, along with other metadata, are exposed as part of the new Publish API. Please see the SDK for more information. Plus, Will was also super kind enough to share his approach with the community by posting the source to both of these plug-ins on CodePlex.)

You can check out other plug-ins at the plug-ins download page.

Thanks to Michael Palermiti, Program Manager for his original post (http://blogs.msdn.com/pix/archive/2008/11/17/new-publish-plug-ins-available-for-photo-gallery-and-movie-maker.aspx)

Thanks for checking out this post!

Cheers,

Murray Gordon ISV Architect Evangelist Microsoft Corporation       http://blogs.msdn.com/MurrayG US ISV Team Blog  My GeeksWithBlogs Blog