The big news today from the Microsoft camp is Bill Gates and Ray Ozzie announcing in San Francisco Windows Live and Office Live via live.com.

Michael Arrington blogged the event live today writing via his new techcrunch blog about Bill Gates comments:

Windows Live: Primarily ad supported. Does not kill off MSN.

Office Live: “internet based services for growing and managing your business online.” extensible, thousands of partners. ad supported level with tier above requiring subscription.

There is already a call out to developers on Channel 9 to get some gadgets working with live.com and maybe win an Xbox 360 for their efforts.

Dan Farber from ZDnet adds:

Everything we have done on MSN fits the live software model,” Gates said. Live software also extends to managed services for enterprises, with Microsoft running SharePoint or Exchange for customers. Small business software connecting to ADP payroll service, for example.

First thoughts
I chuckled when Paul Kedrosky demoed live.com and wonders where the pulse is at: “BillG, this is 2005. Why isn’t Windows Live “Live”?”

I tried Paul’s test in Internet Explorer after seeing that the page wouldn’t load correctly in Opera (just the Windows Live logo and the search box show, nothing else). Live wasn’t smart enough to locate the RSS feed from this blog despite the fact the RSS aware code is used in the head. I then put in the feed name and the windows alert shown above appeared.

Even though I was already signed into .NET passport, it still told me I needed to sign in, so I did the .NET passport signin process and then tried adding the RSS feed again — worked adding the feed the second time. However, when I tried to click on the link in the “My Web” area (interesting Y! coincidence there?) I saw the message: “Oops, we seem to be having a problem with this feed.”

Wait, was my RSS feed down? I went there directly. Nope. Ran it through the Feed Validator. No problem — except for Windows Live. How good is My Web if it can’t even handle My Feed?

When I first attempted to navigate to the prominent link that says: “Discover more about Windows Live” and received the error message below:

Oops is right.

I tried it again and successfully arrived at ideas.live.com. Mail screenshots look cool. Sign up. Wait, it’s only available to Hotmail users. I haven’t used that for years. Tried to go there and ended up in a brief whirlwind of redirects as it attempted to log me out so I could login again and choose a new hotmail email address.

Trepidation. I don’t need another spam drop off. I choose a Hotmail account nobody could have used yet. It worked. Created a strong password. This signup form felt like it was swimming in quicksand. Navigate the crooked eight character CAPTCHA. Slowwww. Submit. No, I don’t want to install MSN Messenger or change my f!#%ng home page to MSN, but you checked the boxes anyway, thanks. Uncheck, twice and continue.

The account will only remain active if I: “Sign-in at least once within the next (10) days.
Sign-in at least once every 90 days after the initial (10) day period.” Accept.

Accept another Microsoft legal agreement. Man, the lawyers were feasting on this process, weren’t they? Ok, I’m in and activated now back to live to try the mail beta:

“Thanks a lot for signing up. There’s nothing else you have to do at this point-you can expect to hear from us soon with an invitation to join the beta.”

Well, at least the beta signup page is … live.

Meanwhile, others continue to make observations on the event like Steve Hamm who is reminded of a fateful day in 1995 before Microsoft dethroned Netscape as the de facto browser.

Now what about Office Live? Can’t look at that one yet, but I filled out the beta request form which says Office Live is “coming in early 2006.”

Like Google Reader, think I’ll come back to this when this is closer to being cooked. Still blood rare right now.

Update 5:08pm PST: Check out Niall Kennedy’s 52 photos of the event which offer a peek into what Office Live has coming. Check out Windows Live call, should eBay/Skype really be worried now?

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