For those of you that have been waiting on the new social networking features of the Xbox 360 to arrive, you’ll want to check out the hands-on overview of the new apps over at News.com. The new features are due to arrive on the Xbox 360 at some point in November and will feature integrations with Facebook, Twitter, and Last.fm. Expect the Xbox Live Video Marketplace to also receive a slight overhaul as it will be called the Zune Marketplace. According to News.com, this follows Microsoft’s desire to make “Zune” their music and video brand.

Of the three social-networking features due to arrive on the Xbox 360, I have to say that the Last.fm one is the app with most functional appeal. Have a social function to hold at home or need some music playing in the background? Seems that Last.fm would be the perfect solution for those needs – simply start it up and let the music stream through to your Xbox 360 from the Net.

Don’t get me wrong of course – the Twitter and Facebook integrations are certainly interesting.. but if I want to check on my friend’s status, I’m more likely to do so on my iPhone or PC than on the Xbox 360. And yes.. Twitter/FB folks – expect many more useless status updates to hit the web once the Xbox 360 integration rolls out because clearly we all need to know that so-and-so is playing Call of Duty 4 right now on some particular map.

Joy..

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Xbox 360, Social Networking, News.com

Although not quite the merger nor acquisition that some folks were clamming for in years past, Microsoft and Yahoo! have finally come to terms on an agreement that will hopefully position both companies for a better fight against search king Google. The basics of the agreement boils down to the following: Microsoft will now power Yahoo! search while Yahoo! will become the “exclusive” worldwide sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.

Want more of the nitty gritty? Here ya go:

• This is a 10 year agreement
• Microsoft will acquire an exclusive 10 year license to Yahoo!’s core search technologies – with Microsoft having the ability to integrate Yahoo! search technologies into existing web search platforms
• It’s all about Microsoft Bing when it comes to search for both companies. Bing will power Yahoo! search and sites. Yahoo! will continue to use its own technology in other areas of business like enhancing display advertising technology
• Each company will maintain separate display advertising business and sales force
• Yahoo! will maintain their look and feel on their sites
• Yahoo! will focus on a core business or web content and products for its users
• Yahoo! and Microsoft search marketplaces will be combined making it easier for advertisers
• Microsoft will compensate Yahoo via revenue sharing agreement on traffic generated on Yahoo!’s network of sites
• Microsoft will pay traffic acquisition costs (TAC) to Yahoo at an initial rate of 88% of search revenue generated on Yahoo owned and operated sites during the first 5 yrs of the agreement

Yahoo estimates that at “full implementation”, this agreement will:

• improve annual GAAP operating income of approximately $500 million
• save capital expenditure by $200 million
• improve operating cash flow by approximately $275 million

The Microsoft-Yahoo agreement does not cover other areas of their respective businesses including email, IM, display advertising etc. Both companies are hopeful that the deal will close by early 2010. You’ll be able to read more about this on a site the two companies have established over at http://www.choicevalueinnovation.com/

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Yahoo

Those of you into making videos for YouTube might like this one. Starting today, HP and YouTube are running a project/contest called “HP You on You” which invites all of you to create and share videos that express who you are. The tagline – “Declare Your Story” – says it all. The contest challenges all of you to tell something about yourself (hopefully not everything about yourself) or your story (whatever that might be) in the context of a YouTube video. There’s only one catch – you can’t show your face in the videos.

Contestants will be able to use new video creation tools on YouTube which include video remixing and webcam video tools to help them create their shared videos.

The contest will be open globally and localized for 21 YouTube English and non-English countries. Each week, a panel of experts will select the top 20 videos as semifinalists. YouTube users will then vote to select the top four videos from the 20 weekly semifinalists – all of whom will be in the running for the grand prize of $40,000 along with some YouTube recognition. After six weeks, each of the 100 semifinalists selected by YouTube will receive a new HP Artist Edition notebook PC and the 20 finalists selected by YouTube viewers will each receive $2500 dollars. First place will get $40,000, second place will get $20,000 and third place will get $15,000. There will be other prizes available as well

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: HP, You On You Project

For what seems like an eternity now, the Taco Truck has been a mainstay of your typical Los Angeles neighborhood. Ask locals of a good truck to check out, and chances are they could tell you of at least one if not two in the area simply because these trucks never really moved.

 Well, times are changing and not surprisingly, technology is at the forefront of this change. A growing number of Asian-themed taco trucks are popping up sporadically through the streets of LA with legions of foodies tracking their every movement thanks to of all things – Twitter. These web-savvy mobile businesses are using Twitter both as a means to communicate with customers as well as an inexpensive way to market and spread their brand name. The phenomenon arguably started with the Kogi BBQ Taco Truck late last year and now, more and more Asian-themed trucks are joining the Twitter craze.

I had the opportunity to check out one such Taco Truck this Friday, which also happens to be run by two of my friends. The truck name? Don Chow Tacos. Their website? None other than http://www.donchowtacos.com/. Don Chow Tacos specializes in a mixture of traditional Mexican and Asian influenced meats – in both tacos and burritos. In an effort to differentiate themselves from the roving competition, Don Chow tends to specialize in Chinese-inspired recipes such as Kung Pao Chicken, Chinese BBQ Pork, Soy-Ginger Tofu, and Soy-Ginger Shrimp.

Here’s a glimpse of their menu – yes.. it’s a simple but effective menu:

So how was the food you ask? Pretty darn good – the near-perfect meal to have after a long night of hanging out at a club or a bar. I had a taste of their BBQ Pork Taco, their Kung Pao Chicken, and their more traditional Carne Asada Taco.. and YUM is all I have to say. My personal favorite – the BBQ Pork Taco which had a nice short zing to it.

Yet ordering and eating the food really is only a portion of the overall experience of eating at trucks like Don Chows. The real fun comes in trying to locate the trucks at any given point in time and this is where Twitter comes into play. All of these food trucks post their status and location updates via Twitter (as well as their respective websites). Customers get to “follow” and interact with business owners and there’s a real sense of community – even if it’s partially virtual. Just think about it.. if you’re curious as to where your favorite food truck is tonight – simply check out their twitter feed and find them. For the record, Don Chow Taco’s Twitter feed can be found at http://twitter.com/donchowtacos.

So to recap, all you need to do is find yourself a food/taco truck online – look up their website/twitter feed, find it on a map, and then hop in your car and drive off to it. Yes, it’s a bit more of an adventure than say driving to McDonalds or Jack in the Box but go with a group of friends and it can be down right fun. I had a blast navigating the streets of Venice looking for Don Chow Tacos myself! And let’s face it – there’s nothing like hanging out with crowds of slightly inebriated individuals on a Friday night in Venice.  As of now, Don Chow Tacos plans on being available Friday and Saturday nights – Friday nights in the westside and Saturday nights generally somewhere in Hollywood (by Area I believe).

None of this would ultimately matter of course if the food itself wasn’t worth traveling to and clearly from the popularity and buzz these trucks are generating, there’s something definitely to this.

If you haven’t had a chance to check out one of these food trucks then do yourself a favor and make sure to find one for yourself. Heck – check out Don Chow Tacos if you happen to be in Venice or Hollywood this coming weekend. And of course, if you’re particularly hungry and you feel like traveling, why not travel to as many Asian food trucks in you can handle in a single night?. Our next stop? Kogi BBQ Tacos followed by Yuri Truck and then Calbi Korean BBQ.

Oh and BTW – who thinks a Taco Truck Turf War will start up?  I’m kidding..

Here are more shots of our Friday night visit to Don Chow Tacos:

Technorati Tags: Don Chow Tacos, Asian Food Trucks, Taco Trucks, Los Angeles, Kogi Tacos,

[Check it out via Mobile Burn]

Read this in Chinese Simplified and in French

Technorati Tags: Hulu, Apple iPhone

In a blog posting over at longreply.com, Time Warner Cable’s CEO Glenn Britt stated the following:

“It is clear from the public response over the last two weeks that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about our plans to roll out additional tests on consumption based billing. As a result, we will not proceed with implementation of additional tests until further consultation with our customers and other interested parties, ensuring that community needs are being met. While we continue to believe that consumption based billing may be the best pricing plan for consumers, we want to do everything we can to inform our customers of our plans and have the benefit of their views as part of our testing process.”

I love how Time Warner Cable is attempting to shift the focus of this debacle away from their plans to do tiered pricing to the “customer education process.”

Clearly, we the customer are not away of their plans and how they believe these new price plans will actually help us save money (but in reality we won’t.. because the overall cable bill is still going up – at least it is in LA). I digress..

sorry TWC – we understand what you’re trying to say but we clearly don’t agree with it. Instead of trying to segment the bandwidth market – why not simply make it easy. 150GB a month for a price and then unlimited for the rest? Why not make it somewhat affordable too? And while you’re at it – take some of the money you’re earning and actually use it to improve that infrastructure of yours. I could care less about Science HD if it meant that I could actually get 6 mbps download speeds any time of the day. Afterall – I am paying for turbo download speeds aren’t I?

Ultimately it doesn’t matter for me. I’ve made my decision to switch away from TWC cable modem already… As for cable service – I’ve got no choice but to stay with them thanks to my building mgmt (although that’s technically illegal to do in LA). Sigh.. I just don’t have the time to fight these things…

But at least customers of TWC have won one small fight… for now. Don’t think this is the last of it folks.

[Check it out via PC Magazine]

Read this in Chinese Simplified and in French

Technorati Tags: Time Warner Cable, Broadband Caps Protest

Just a little news note – looks like Gmail is having issues again. I tried to access my mail account some time ago and received an HTTP 500 temporary error instead.  A quick check on twitter (via Twitscoop) revealed similar issues all over the net. What’s up Google? Gmail’s been problematic recently!!

BTW – not a great week for email eh? BlackBerry outage a few days ago and now this. Bet you that Google will never reveal why Gmail went down.

Read this in Chinese Simplified and in French

Technorati Tags: gmail outage

[Check it out via Boing Boing]

Technorati Tags: Time Warner Cable, Broadband Caps Protest

As you’ve probably guessed, folks on the net went in an uproar when they heard about these new bandwidth cap limitations – so much so that Landel Hobbs, COO of Time Warner Cable, even wrote a blog posting in response.

Yes, I can somewhat understand TWC’s predicament.. bandwidth usage is increasing and thus to keep up with the times, the company needs to charge more to make sure the customer’s experience is still pleasant. Plus another argument used in the past  – only a small percentage of the public will be affected by this since the majority out there don’t consume much bandwidth… right?

Hm.. I’m not so sure about that. With the proliferation of digital content via devices such as the Xbox 360, Sony PS3, and Apple TV, you have to figure that more and more families will be consuming more bandwidth per month – not just P2P users. As more devices become network-enabled, it’s inevitable that broadband usage will rise for the majority of Internet connected households. Just consider how much online video content you watch in a given month at home!

So what this ultimately means is – much in the way we watch how many minutes are left on our mobile phone, we’re going to have to watch how much broadband we’re consuming in a given month. Great. (Oh.. and this will really suck for those of you with infected PCs)

I can accept occasional price increases to accommodate for inflation .. and I can accept price increases if I actually witnessed better overall service. However aside from a few more HD channels here in LA, I can’t say that TWC has improved in any real way over the last few years. In fact, I’ve had several cable outages this past year – not to mention some super flaky DNS service which caused me to switch to OpenDNS.

So I should trust TWC that they’ll do the right thing with the price increases? That the higher prices won’t simply pad their bottom line and make their investors happy? Yeah.. I probably won’t stick around to find out. I was a DSL subscriber for nearly five years before switching to TWC a few years back. I might have to check out DSL again.

[Check it out via SlashGear]

Technorati Tags: Time Warner Cable, cable modem

Because we clearly don’t have enough choices when it comes to watching digital content such as movies and television shows, there needs to be yet another vendor coming into this ever crowded space (yes, I’m being sarcastic here). That vendor would be ZillionTV Corporation and the new service is aptly called the ZillionTV service. The concept is pretty simple. Get the ZillionTV set-top box (which will be offered through ISPs – not cable companies mind you), connect it to your high speed Internet connection and to your TV set, and stream personalized digital content direct to your television set.

According to Mitchell Berman, CEO of ZillionTV Corporation, “ZillionTV is building a new television ecosystem grounded in partnerships spanning from powerhouse TV networks and Hollywood studios, to Visa, and major advertisers.” What does this exactly mean? ZillionTV is trying to develop a platform that will make everyone happy – and we really do mean everyone – from content providers (studio houses etc) to advertisers to end users. For content providers, ZillionTV gives them the opportunity to tailor their content to the end users out there. Content providers will be able to fine tune or tailor their content offerings based on information such as geography, demographics and psychographics. This very same information is also particularly useful for advertisers. Let’s face it, advertisers often take risks when they buy ads for specific time slots or TV shows. They never really if consumer they’re trying to target is indeed the one watching the show and advertisement. Plus they never really know what the exact interests are of the viewer. With ZillionTV, advertisers will be able to tap into rich collections of tracking information such as geographic locations, demographics, consumer spending habits, and consumer preferences. Finally, ZillionTV benefits to consumers are in the area of choice. Consumers can choose what they want to watch, when they want to watch it, and how they want to watch it.

The first two make sense of course, but what exactly do I mean by “how they want to watch it?”.

Consumers will have several means to access content on ZillionTV. If you’re cheap like myself, then you can opt for free television content that’s ad-supported (think Hulu.com except probably more ads). Of course, don’t expect all of the content to be available through this medium. If you can’t find the show you want via the ad-supported channel or if you’re not a fan of ads, then you can opt to rent or buy to own the content.  Their major point – you don’t need a subscription for accessing online video content (a little poke at providers such as Netflix but.. then again, Netfix’s Watch Instantly service was an add-on to their existing DVD rental subscription service. You don’t actually pay for the Watch Instantly service per se).

Two major dings for me – All content will be streamed to the ZillionTV set-top box – there’s no concept of saving content to your local drive. This also means you better have a good broadband connection at home. The other ding? Content will be available initially in standard definition only. Come on.. how can you launch a new service not in HD?

Perhaps the most interesting feature of the service/set-top box is actually the Wii-like motion-sensing remote control. Users can wave the remote to navigate the user interface thanks to motion-sensing technology from Hillcrest Labs.

According to PC Magazine, ZillionTV hopes to have 15,000 pieces of content available through the service.  Prices will apparently be comparable with what you’d get via iTunes – $1.99 to $3.99 to rent a TV show or movie and prices around $7.99 to own a show. If you rent something, you’ll have a month to view it but once you do, you have 24 hours to finish.

There are still many unanswered questions of course. Which ISPs will offer the set-top box? How much will the box cost from these vendors (although ZillionTV does mention the box might be free to end users)? What content will be available in the ad-supported model?

Finally, I think ZillionTV is a wait and see service for now. There are just too many existing services and devices that offer similar if not identical services.

About the only interesting feature is the ad-supported content – but one has to wonder how many content providers will opt for this. Our guess is you’ll find a lot of older content available in the ad-supported model (which will be great if you’re into viewing older content). 

If the ad-supported model doesn’t appeal to you and you’re OK with renting or buying content, then one can’t help but wonder why anyone would do this on ZillionTV when they could easily do this on Apple TV, or the Xbox 360. I rent movies on both platforms and I definitely purchase TV shows on both platforms from time to time and I can’t think of a good reason to use ZillionTV or the existing devices. In addition, I can also transfer content purchased on Apple TV to my iPod/iPhone – something that just isn’t possible with ZillionTV.

Don’t get me wrong – I’d love to see ZillionTV succeed – especially with the ad-supported model. Yet, I can’t help but think that ZillionTV isn’t compelling enough of a service right now.

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: ZillionTV

Here’s a little bit of hilarity for your Friday.  Go to Google and type:

“I am extremely”

Don’t press enter or click on any button. Just look at the suggestions provided by Google – especially the last one.

via http://failblog.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/fail-owned-suggest-fail.jpg

Technorati Tags: Google, I am extremely, Google Search Suggestions

First off – the big news of the day has to be the upcoming new version of Windows Mobile known as Windows Mobile 6.5. Central to the new version are user interface improvements aimed at improving the touch-screen experience of Windows smartphones. Let’s face it – Windows Mobile’s user interface isn’t exactly the most intuitive and it’s optimized for stylus pens which is soo.. 2000 of the platform. Alas.. the world has changed over the last two years as the iPhone innovative user interface has completely changed user expectations for smartphones.

Other notable improvements include a new today screen and an updated version of Internet Explorer Mobile Browser. Here are snapshots of Windows Mobile 6.5 provided by Microsoft:

Below is the new Lock screen for Windows Mobile 6.5. You can still respond to interactive user interface elements with a simple PIN even if the device is locked. Notice the icons for voicemail, missed call, and text-messages.

Next, we have the new Start screen which now utilizes a honeycomb interface layout designed for finger usage.

Finally, here’s the new Internet Explorer Mobile browser with support for Adobe Flash Lite.

Next up, we have the new (and free) Microsoft My Phone service allowing Windows Mobile users the ability to access, manage, and back up the personal information on their mobile devices to the cloud. The service offers automatic synching and backup of data stored on Windows Mobile devices and consumers will also be able to upload photos and videos taken with their devices directly to My Phone.

Here are screenshots provided by Microsoft of the My Phone Service.

Here are contacts stored on the web service:

Here’s a screenshot of photos uploaded to the service:

Here’s a screenshot of the My Phone app on a Windows Mobile device:

Finally here are screenshots of the website:

The service is currently available in a limited invitation-only beta.

New to Windows Mobile 6.5 is also the Windows Marketplace for Mobile (couldn’t they just called it Windows Mobile Marketplace or something like that???). With the Marketplace, users will be able to search, browse, and purchase mobile apps from their Windows Mobile devices or PCs using a Windows Live ID. According to Microsoft, developers will be able to offer apps to customers through the marketplace using a simple security and compatibility check from Microsoft. The new Marketplace will be included with all Windows Mobile phones running Windows Mobile 6.5.

Microsoft announced one other interesting service for Windows Mobile devices – Microsoft Recite. Recite is Microsoft’s own voice search technology for Windows phones version 6.0 or higher allowing users to use their voice to capture, search, and retrieve spoken notes and reminders. You can try out the technology preview at http://recite.microsoft.com/download/

Moving on to the partner front, Microsoft and LG Electronics announced a major expansion of their alliance which will create a “tenfold increase in the volume of Windows phones available from LG in 2009 and bring up to 26 new Windows phones to market in 2012 alone.” All told, this new alliance can result in a total of 50 new LG Windows phones. The agreement also calls for both companies to create joint teams for research and development – focusing on developing products that have tighter integration between hardware and software.

In addition to this announcement, LG introduced the new LG-GM730 Windows phone which features:

• LG’s advanced 3D S-Class cube user interface with four customizable home screens
• Flick of a finger turns the cube from one side to the next
• Simplified email setup requiring one click
• Incorporates LG signature style with “slim, seamless profile”
• Measures 11.9 mm thick

The handset will be coming out in the first half of this year with Windows Mobile 6.1 and will be upgraded to 6.5 during the second half of this year.

We have of course mentioned the two new HTC handsets – the Touch Diamond2 and the Touch Pro2..

Yes.. a busy day for Microsoft but will all this be enough to keep the Windows Mobile OS competitive against the increased competition from Symbian, Android, and of course the Apple iPhone? Time will only tell.

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Windows Mobile Smartphones, Windows Mobile 6.5, LG Electronics, Windows Mobile, My Phone Service, Windows Marketplace for Mobile

The service synchronizes a variety of information between your mobile phone and your online web account. According to the My Phone beta information page, you’ll be able to sync the following types of data:

• Contacts, calendar appointments, tasks, photos, videos, text messages, music, and documents. It will not sync data stored on It will sync Windows Live contacts if you have Windows Live installed on your phone.

There are a couple of caveats:

• External memory card and SIM card information will not be synced
• Data stored outside of “My Documents” will not be synced to the service

As you might expect, you can view and edit information on the website which can then be synced back to the mobile phone at a later date. The service by default will sync with your Windows Mobile handset once a date. As for storage limits, you’ll get 200MB of free online space for each My Phone account.

It’s about time Microsoft announced a service like this – Apple announced a similar service back in July of last year called MobileMe. Of course if you’re not interested in web access and backup, you can always sync your desktop PC or notebook using Windows Mobile Device Center.

Expect additional details to emerge at the upcoming Mobile World Congress to be held in Barcelona.

[Check it out via Computer World]

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, My Phone Service, Windows Mobile Smartphones

Shaq – http://twitter.com/THE_REAL_SHAQ

Ashton Kutcher – http://twitter.com/aplusk

Kevin Rose – http://twitter.com/kevinrose

Demi Moore – http://twitter.com/mrskutcher

Lily Allen – http://twitter.com/lilyroseallen

Trent Reznor -  http://twitter.com/treznor

Common – http://twitter.com/common

MC Hammer – http://twitter.com/mchammer

Ryan Seacrest and team – http://twitter.com/RyanSeacrest

Arnold Schwarzenegger  – http://twitter.com/schwarzenegger

Elijah Wood – http://twitter.com/elijahwood

Kevin Smith – http://twitter.com/ThatKevinSmith

LeVar Burton – http://twitter.com/levarburton

Luke Wilson – http://twitter.com/LukeWilson

Seth MacFarlane – http://twitter.com/SethMacFarlane

Will Wheaton – http://twitter.com/wilw

Britney Spears – http://twitter.com/britneyspears

Snoop Dogg – http://twitter.com/snoopdogg

Eli Manning – http://twitter.com/elimanning

Michael Phelps – http://twitter.com/Michael_Phelps

Barack Obama – http://twitter.com/barackobama

Joe Biden – http://twitter.com/joebiden

Coldplay – http://twitter.com/coldplay

Dave Matthews – http://twitter.com/DaveJMatthews

Ah yes.. you can also follow us on Twitter over at twitter.com/krunker

Technorati Tags: Twiiter. Celebrities on Twitter

Here is the new Samsung SMX-F34 – billed as the “company’s next generation YouTube compatible compact digital camcorder.” Features of the SMX-F34 include:

• Battery life up to 3 hours
• World-class Schneider optics
• 16GB internal flash memory
• Digital still photo capability
• Samsung’s 42x Intelli-Zoom – goes beyond the 34x optical zoom without sacrificing image quality
• SD/SDHC memory card slot
• H.264 compression provides 8 hours of standard definition video
• 720 x 480 resolution
• Web and mobile shooting mode allows you to record in the exact format and resolution for YouTube for faster upload times to the web
• Capture stills in 800 x 600 resolution

The SMX-F34 will be available in four colors – midnight black, sunset red, galaxy silver, and deep ocean blue- all with a silver trim. The camcorder will be available this spring.

Technorati Tags: Samsung, SMX-F34, Camcorder, YouTube, CES 2009

Widgets are migrating from the web/PC desktop, to the mobile phone, and now to the TV set. Dubbed the “Connected TV” experience, Intel showcased several upcoming devices utilizing the new Intel Media Processor CE 3100 and enabling the new “Widget Channel” application framework.

Announced back in 2008 and developed by Intel and Yahoo, the “Widget Channel” delivers Internet content directly to your television set via devices such as Blu-ray players, set-top boxes, and of course the TV set. TV Widgets from all sorts of content service providers have been developed since the launch of the Widget Channel including widgets from AP, CBS, CinemaNow, eBay, MySpace, and Yahoo! Here are several pictures of widget enabled devices from the Intel CES 2009 booth. We’ll show some of the vendor specific devices later on (including HDTV sets from Samsung, Toshiba and others).

The bottom is a Widget enabled Blu-ray player.

Here’s a set-top box with Widget Channel support

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Intel, Connected TV, CES 2009, Widget Channel

Think you’re good at spotting phishing and spam emails? Go ahead and take the SonicWALL Phishing and Spam IQ Quiz. I ended up getting 9 out of 10 – missing the 2nd question (which I still disagree with… but whatever).  According to SonicWALL (and via News.com), only 59.4 percent of test takers so far this year have been able to properly identify legitimate email – down from 77.8 percent in 2004. Only 7.4 percent of test takers this year were able to correctly identify every email they were presented. On the positive side – more people are able to identify phishing scams – with 86.1 percent catching the phishing emails.

[Check it out via News.com]

Technorati Tags: SonicWALL, email phishing spam, scam IQ test

Here are some of the key things about each of the new Live applications.

Mail beta is able to manage all of your email accounts from a single application. The app supports online services such as Hotmail, Live Mail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and various others. You can also share a single contacts list with Windows Live. Windows Live Mail also syncs with the web calendar in Windows Live (which is also sharable to others you might know).  Though I haven’t tried it out yet, this could be a viable alternative to using Outlook on some systems.

As mentioned earlier, Messenger Beta received a complete redesign in this release. You can still chat, make phone calls, video calls, play games etc with Live Messenger Beta. You’ll also be able to customize your profile and the look and feel of the conversation windows. There’s also a new “Updates from contacts” feature which notifies you of what your friends are up to on the net. Think of it as Facebook notifications meets Messenger. When your friends go offline, you will also be able to send SMS messages to your friend via Messenger

I’m a huge fan of Windows Live Writer (simply known as Writer). Writer received some nice new features in the beta release including support for almost every blog service out there including Windows Live, Wordpress, Blogger, Live Journal, TypePad, Sharepoint, Community Server, etc. You’ll even be able to publish videos directly to MSN or YouTube via Live Writer.

Photo Gallery photo library manager and a photo editor. The app will let you share and receive photos from friends as well as tag pictures (tag friends, items etc) for easy retrieval later on.

With Wave 3, Movie Maker gets brought into Windows Live complete with a new design for the application. You’ll be able to easily create movies from photos, video clips, and music and then upload them to the web.

You can read more about the new Wave 3 release via the Windows Live Wire blog here.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Windows Live, Wave 3

Sony also announced that Dailymotion’s SD and HD content will be available to users of the BRAVIA Internet Video Link. If you have a Sony BRAVIA TV, you can purchase the optional BRAVIA Internet Video Link for around $300 dollars.

[Check it out]

[Check it out at Amazon's website]

Technorati Tags: Amazon.com, Video On Demand, Sony, BRAVIA Internet Video Link

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Newegg, New York, Sales tax