Microsoft Live: What you need to know

It appears that Microsoft, in an attempt to beat out Google, has begun a new campaign to overtake the Internet. They call it Live and essentially it is all of their existing services with enhanced services, new look and feel and they�ve added some things as well. Currently you can go to live.com and that�s their MSN search engine rebranded and with a new look with pretty cool features. Other services include, Live Local, Messenger, Spaces, Office and more. There are some interesting features to these new services but I�m realizing more and more that there are not many differences to be seen.

Read More...

Live messenger is pretty powerful and includes some great collaboration tools using Remote Assistance, games and great buddy management. Office Live is also awesome in the way it allows a company to work together on a website with some neat built in templates and have a .com name registered for free with your own @yourdomain.com email address. Its definitely a great way to get your name out there for free and you can transfer that domain to your own host when you grow beyond MS�s templates and rest assured they are tracking your usage and they do sell your mailing address to registrar companies (I know). Office Live also includes a web based version of their Office applications and you can have MS Word in your browser, save documents to your live web space and your coworker can login and view / edit your documents.

Live Local is a pretty awesome competitor to Google Earth. Browsing New York or Los Angeles was beautiful because the buildings and streets were of much higher quality but using the search engine was difficult. Google does a better job know what I�m searching for and suggesting it. I can type in �Metreon 94104� and it will find the Lowes Theatres at the Sony Metreon but Live Local told me nothing like that existed. Typing in Sony Metreon with the street address and San Francisco in the �where� field did work where Google knew exactly what I wanted.

There are quite a few �beta� Live features that are worth checking out. Microsoft�s competitor to Myspace dubbed �spaces� is ok but needs a lot of work before it can complete with the social networking giant. Either way check out Live beta and judge for yourself if you want to move your life from Myspace, YouTube and Google to Microsoft�s new Live platform. Check it out!

I really like the new Live Mail Desktop software. Even in beta it has performed extremely well for me and has a great interface. I haven't had a chance to use all of the Live features they are offering, but am rather impressed with the mail and homepage.

I agree. the live services are extremely well made. Live mail live messenger but Live local is still kinda buggy.

I did a bit of poking around, and I like the clean interface (in contrast to Windows' previous attempt at a service like this) and the maps are indeed pretty nice. Unless they do something to go above and beyond the services that are already available to me, I'll stick to what I've been using.

Agreed. Most of the services are currently in beta.