Getting the message
Somewhat belatedly, Microsoft is continuing with its laudable strategy of playing to its strengths. Yesterday we saw evidence that it plans to differentiate its new mobile phone OS by focusing on its massive presence in the gaming industry, and today we learn that Microsoft is increasing the level of integration between Windows Live and Facebook.
Windows Live Essentials is a much needed attempt by Microsoft to bring its many free consumer cloud services under one, coherent banner. For years it's been possible to sign up to things like Hotmail or Messenger, but no central interface for accessing, controlling and integrating them.
Arguably the strongest component of WLE, currently in the Wave 4 beta phase, is Messenger; most people we know use it as their default desktop instant messaging application. So if Microsoft wants to compete successfully against Google in the consumer cloud space, it makes sense for it to base its strategy around Messenger.
Today Microsoft announced integrating Messenger and Facebook chat. There are a lot of instant messaging apps out there, many of them just add-ons to the main product, as is the case with Facebook and Skype, for example. Integrating with these other services seems like a good way of increasing and bolstering Messenger's ubiquity.
Here are some of the other improvements as listed on the Windows Live blog:
- A quicker Messenger - The time it takes to sign in, and to refresh contacts and social feeds, as well as animation speed, are all faster than in previous versions of Messenger.
- More efficient video chat - Messenger video chat uses 30% fewer CPU resources by offloading work to the GPU.
- Better facial recognition - Photo Gallery facial recognition is improved significantly and works more quickly.
- Larger movie uploads - Movie Maker will upload higher resolution movies to SkyDrive (480x640 vs. the previous 320x480).
- Higher bit-rate movies - Movie Maker now supports higher quality (bit-rate) content.
- Better spell-checking - Writer has significantly improved the quality of its spell-checking.
- Better integration with Office - Writer is much better at retaining all formatting when you copy and paste from Word and other Microsoft Office programs.
- Better handling of Gmail - Mail now automatically handles Gmail's spam and trash folders properly.
- Faster web filtering - Family Safety web filtering is 35% faster than in the previous version.
