“Facebook is a private company that people opt in to use. In this sense, the situation is not analogous to a government document like the Bill of Rights, as that document is meant to define national law.”

This last bit however made me think about an article in the NY Times from a few weeks back. It actually compares the growing word count in Facebook’s privacy settings with that of the United States Constitution. A nice way to compare both:

Also that full article is worth reading as it discusses how to manage your privacy on Facebook. Did you know  you will need to navigate through 50 settings with more than 170 options to do so?

I think I got my account set up all fine, but then again it’s probably worth double checking that. And I must admit, even as an avid internet user, that when I get these Facebook popups in which apps ask access to all kinds of info on my profile (through Graph) I also don’t understand why all of that is needed really.

[Via Brandflakes for Breakfast]

“Virtually everything a startup needs to build a web service (many of the tools and software compete with open source alternatives, such as MySQL) is being offered to startups for free for three years. The program, run by VP Strategic and Emerging Business Development Dan’l Lewin, is global and provides access to full-featured development tools and production licenses of server products with no upfront costs. BizSpark also provides the necessary hand holding with free technical support.”

First of all this seems like an exciting program to me but I also wanted to highlight that Dan’l Lewin will be interviewed by Steve Gillmor on stage at LeWeb in Paris this year. Also in case you’re going to LeWeb make sure you visit the Microsoft booth which will have a lot of information about this… and some nice surprises, but more on that later :)

Also check out the blog of my buddy Julien Codorniou who’s program manager for BizSpark in Redmond, he’ll be at LeWeb as well.

Windows Live Messenger

Let’s start with the most popular of all Windows Live applications, used by 300 million people worldwide. I have +400 contacts in my Messenger and it’s fair to say that I use this every single day. Being able to add contacts to a favorites list will help me find people faster (although the search bar on top is always pretty handy for that as well). And also the groups feature is useful for me to start instant conversations between a bunch of people working on the same project, both from inside as outside the company. Lastly the “What’s new” update is also a nice feature and like Joe Wilcox notices, one with tremendous potential:

“What’s New is nascent, but it has great potential unifying some of Microsoft’s disparate social networking services. The venue is appropriate. While IMing with your buddies, you see a stream of updates about what your other friends, family or coworkers are doing. I can just imagine the teen exchange when Tracey sees that Wendy and Frank are now an item while chatting with Janie. Oh the gossip. The broader potential is tremendous, if Microsoft chooses to capitalize on it. What’s New, or something like it, could inform what game Jack is playing on Xbox 360 right now, what song Mary is listening to in Zune 3.0 software or what TV shows Manny has scheduled to record today in Windows Media Center….”

Oh and one interesting new feature I’d almost forgotten: the ability to log in on more than one PC.

Windows Live Mail

Next to my Microsoft.com company email address which I read using Outlook, I have about 10 other email addresses. I know I could do with less, but they are my old Hotmail some new Live.com addresses I could snatch at the launch :), my Gmail… etc and since I use a separate email address for each blog, that adds up to 10.

Although you could add your Hotmail accounts also into Outlook by using the Outlook Connector, and you can obviously also add POP3 email to Outlook, I still prefer Windows Live Mail for all that. First of all it keeps my work email separated from all the other email, second it’s just hand to click on ‘Unread email’ and get all new email from across all accounts in one single view. I like that more than using email forwarding from one email to the other as using it like this I will still reply on email using the right account and not give up any other email account. Might sound silly to you, but that’s important to me.

Most important addition to the new version (apart from that new look of course) is the Calendar. I think that will make quite a few people happy and therefore it’s good that is finally in there. My life sits in my Outlook calendar so I won’t use that part of Windows Live Mail that much. Still, especially when you have one or more Hotmail, but also when you just have more than one email account, you should check this out.

Windows Live Photo Gallery

I’m not a Pro photographer (although I wish I was) but that doesn’t mean I don’t take photos of course. There are over 6000 photos on my hard drive and I use this program to sort them all out. I think Windows Live Photo Gallery became part of Windows Live with Wave 2 and it was just what I needed to sort all this out. Unlike real professional photographers I don’t do much of retouching on my photos. Maybe a bit of contrast, cropping maybe but that’s mainly it. And that’s all in here, plus upload to Flickr so that was pretty much all I needed. I missed one Fix – and lucky for me that’s one of the only new things they added to this release: the ability to straighten a photo. I tend to take pictures that are slightly tilted to one side… it’s probably something to do with the camera :)

Most interesting new feature is probably the people tagging which uses some kind of facial recognition. Still playing with that one but I like how you can now use ‘descriptive tags’ and ‘people tags’ and especially that the program does some kind of face detection in your photos.

Hopefully developers will start creating the plug-ins needed to publish to other services (also new in this release) but Flickr is already in there and that’s why I use so again less important for me. A last nice addition (and probably as expected) is that you can start creating your Photosynths now right from Windows Live Photo Gallery as well.

Windows Live Writer

What can I say, it’s the best desktop blogging app out there and it’s improved a bit – like for adding Youtube video to your posts – but main differences with the older version here are that new, fresher, whiter look that comes with Wave 3. Nothing else, but who cares, it was pretty darn good already :)

Note 1: I haven’t used Windows Live Moviemaker nor Windows Live Family Safety yet (my kids aren’t allowed to use my pc basically) so can’t say much about these services for now.

Note 2: I wanted to use some home made screenshots instead of the official ones but believe it or not, I couldn’t find how to mask the names etc in a nice way. Somebody teach me how to use Paint.net please :)

Although not literally mentioned the graph shows an important ‘early adopter’  characteristic that we underestimate all to often: the need for change. The last few years, with the rise of web2.0 etc it seems like all you need to become successful is connect with early adopters and allow them to spread the word, eventually resulting in everybody using your product/service. Now you won’t hear me say this approach is not important but there’s a rather big disconnect between early adopters and the mass out there and that’s related to this need for change.

I consider myself an early adopter, I want change. It’s like when you’ve signed up to something new and after you get used to it, you’re slowly looking out for something else, that excitement to try something new again… hoping it will surprise you with some nifty innovations. That said, most of the people around me aren’t like that at all. They aren’t early adopters in the technology space, and more important they don’t like their tech to change at all. And there’s nothing we can do to change that, just don’t forget that when you want your service to spread beyond the early adopter sphere you will need more than just buzz. You’ll need a reason for change, and a pretty darn good one.

What has happened? Philippe went to Egypt recently and stayed at the Sheraton El Gouna which proposed him the Starwood Preferred Guest program. He signs up for the program but when he receives his card it says Jean Deltenre instead of Philippe Deltenre so he tries to get that changes… and what happens then is just ridiculous. Read for yourself here (part 1) and here (part 2).

They’ve got work to do. Silly little side remark, I’ve been on the SPG program for about 3-4 years now and still don’t really know what it is good for… but don’t say any of that to Philippe ok.

Update: Starwood finally figured it out, good to see they admitted the initial failure as well

This means that also when not flying SAS, I will check if there’s a reasonably priced option with Star Alliance to get to my destination and only fly with someone else if there isn’t. As a result for being loyal to Star Alliance, I’ve been Eurobonus Gold for quite a while now.

Now where is the reward? There are 2 things that bother me a lot about this so called loyalty program. First of all, these miles don’t mean much. I wanted to go to NYC with my wife in August to celebrate our wedding anniversary. I got the miles so I started looking for Eurobonus available seats on flights to NYC (and back obviously). The trip would be for 5 days or so but there was some flexibility to it. Tough luck, it’s impossible to find 2 Eurobonus seats on any Star Alliance flight to NYC… and even if there were, chances that you would find seats for the flight back is pretty much non-existent… so much for being loyal.

The second part that bothers me is the lounge. The Eurobonus Gold card allows access to the Star Alliance lounge with one guest… well, if you’re flying with Star Alliance that is. So this week for instance, I was flying Brussels Airlines to Budapest, I went to the Star Alliance lounge before my flight and to my big surprise I wasn’t allowed in. Just because I wasn’t flying with them, gold card or not. So basically you only get rewarded with Star Alliance if you’re flying with them right now, not because all the flights you’ve done with them in the past… so much for being loyal.

Stephanie is a freelancer herself within the internet industry and given I really only met her at conferences so far it’s fair to say she knows a bit about conferences as well ;) I think, knowing Stephanie, this is going to be an exciting event for all you ‘connected’ freelancers out there, hence why I like to spread the word a bit as well.

Currently there is not full program available yet, but confirmed speakers are Stowe Boyd, Suw Charman, Martin Roell, Laura Fitton and expect more counting down to the event. If you want to be part of this event, then register quick to benefit from the early bird price which ends March 16th.

“Have you signed up to participate in My ooVoo Day yet? My ooVoo Day lets 20+ bloggers, podcasters and digital media makers from around the ‘sphere connect with their communities in a series of 6-way video chats. Sound cool? Want to join in the fun. Head over to http://myoovooday.com, find a favorite blogger and register to attend.”

The ooVoo software (for PC and Mac) allows video conversations like in Live Messenger, with one big difference that you can have video conversations with up to 6 people at the same time. No better way to show that then by setting up these blogger chats so people have a reason to try it out… and blog about it :) So great job of the Crayonistas, although I must say I received a bit more messages about this promotion through email, FB, … than I wished for.

Anyway, when I saw they added Drew and Gavin to the planning to talk about Age of Conversation, I put my name on the list immediately. And so we ended up with a half hour conversation between myself, Gavin Heaton, Drew McLellan, Luc Debaisieux, Paul Mcenany and J Erik Potter which was good fun. And the quality of the video was quite good as well, with an interesting option to record the conversation from within the client by the way.

I don’t think I’ll be using it much though, it’s the 4th or 5th IM client on my desktop and that’s more than enough. But whenever I want to have a video conversation with a few people at the same time, ooVoo will definitely be what I’ll be using though. Thanks for the conversation guys!

With the Suite you’ll be able to install the whole pack of Windows Live software at the same time, or install just the program you need. Download the whole suite or just one program or take a look at the overview of all:

Windows Live Writer

Maybe still my all time favorite as I’ve been using this program since the very first day I could get my hands on the internal beta and I loved it every since. Windows Live Writer is a program that allows you to blog from your desktop to any blog service you can think of. I use it to blog to 3 blogs on WordPress, 1 on Live Spaces and 1 blog on sharepoint. Here are the main updates of the Writer beta.

Windows Live Mail

I like to keep my work email separated from my personal email and I basically have a program for each. Outlook obviously is my work email client and for my private accounts that is Windows Live Mail. When you download this program it will replace Outlook Express on XP and Windows Mail on XP. If you have one or more Hotmail addresses and a Gmail, … then this client might be a good solution for you (when on a PC). Since I have a few Hotmail & Live IDs together with other accounts like Gmail I use this program every single day.

Windows Live Photo Gallery

The Live Photo Gallery is becoming a new favorite of mine. I’ve just bought myself a new Canon 400D SLR and taking more pictures than ever before. The program will import all pictures from your camera, turn them in the right direction if needed, has crop feature, red-eye correction, … etc but apart from what I see as nice but basics is the option to create very nice panoramas as I tried with some pictures of my visit to NYC in July. Pretty nice no?

And of course – it’s a Live service isn’t it – there’s the option to add photo’s directly to your Space & videos directly to Soapbox from the Gallery.

Windows Live Messenger

Not many updates from the 8.5 beta 1 if you were on that already, but mainly bug fixes and the availability in quite a few more markets. With up to 400 contacts in my Messenger list this program is really becoming a commodity, I couldn’t miss it for a day.

Other elements of the Windows Live Suite are OneCare Family Safety (which I need to test some more myself before commenting on it) and Windows Live Toolbar (which is already out for a while – no updates). I installed the full suite which took me about 15 minutes for all programs and I experienced no issues. Like maybe most free software these days, the Suite will also propose to change your search defaults which is an easy opt out in case you’re not interested.

Up next? I also noticed Windows Live Translator is out in beta (no announcement yet) and works with Systran for the translations (like Babelfish) but offers a nice side by side view. And on September 26th there will be a search PR event at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley Campus to announce our search 2.0. I’ll report on that after that.

(disclaimer: I work for Windows Live)

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