Microsoft and the Future - The Way it Should be

I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but what irks me a lot is that there's different kind of contacts on Windows Live. Instead of one simple unified contact system, there's at least 3 different categories of who your contacts are : Messenger, Spaces, and Hotmail.

If you add a:

Messenger contact - You get to view them on Messenger, Spaces (if they made one), and Hotmail. Wow. It's amazing isn't it? Sometimes you might have to ask permission if they kept their Spaces private for whatever reason, even if you are a Messenger friend.

Spaces contact - You only see them on Spaces. That's it. You have the option to add as a Messenger friend, from their Space, or you could ask yourself for their real e-mail address. Least friendly place to add a contact.

Hotmail contact - You can see them on Hotmail, Messenger (if it's a Windows Live or Yahoo! account), and Spaces (if they made one).

So the best places to add a contact is directly from Live Messenger, and you want to avoid making contacts from Live Spaces. Funny, considering Live Spaces is suppose to have a community feel to it, rather than being reclusive to make friends.

What's with the need for so many different types of contacts? If I add a person on Spaces, I expect them to instantly be in my Live contacts to have easy access via Messenger and Hotmail. Not the opposite of "easy access". I wouldn't add somebody if I didn't think they were worth of communicating on more private areas like Messenger and Hotmail.

I can understand the distinction between Hotmail contacts vs. Spaces+Messenger contacts, because not all your Hotmail contacts will actually use a Windows Live account. But Spaces and Messenger friends should automatically be paired up. NO sense in not doing so.

Jamie wrote a great article about Live Contacts and what needed fixing, with a good number of issues relating to Spaces vs. Messenger contacts.

Live Spaces is heralded as Windows Live's community site. However, it's definitely not a good community site. More or less, your "Space" is considered your own little world, and by chance, you might have a few friends who set up a Space and share and post items. Some community. Searching for a real-life friend is a joke, especially if you're an American. Or any other nationality. They're either in your contact list from the start, or you're very least likely to stumble upon anyone else you'd possibly know on Live Spaces. Oh, there might be some people that will add you, but they're honestly NOT the type of person you might consider a friend. If you consider a "friend" on Live Space to be someone who adds you to make their "friend" list larger, uses their Live Space as an advertising spam page, speaks shoddy English and has a Space in completely foreign language, doesn't even let you view their Space despite the fact they added you, or has absolutely nothing posted on their space, but a bunch of so-called "friends", than Live Space is the perfect spot to find all these people.

              MUST-NEED CHANGES AND NEW FEATURES

So what else is there to offer? Well you can install "gadgets" on your Space to view a feed or enjoy a simple activity offered. But most gadgets are pure crap, and there's not a lot developers or whoever to make real interesting gadgets. You can post photos and share them. But the photo upload tool is kinda cruddy, viewing photos on Live Spaces isn't enjoyable, and a lot of photos happen to be low quality. So what's left? Blogging. Personally, blogging is probably the only decent tool, next to photo-sharing (500 photos a month, free!) that's somewhat useful on Live Spaces. I use it all the time, like to write this blog.

So pretty much, Live Spaces really sucks, despite the improvements over the years. Here's what I think could change that:

1. Spam killing - Live Spaces used to be a decent place to blog, but now spammers are popping up like crazy every so often. Those nasty Chinese spammers. They're quite prevalent on long-abandoned Live team blogs. It's sad that the teams don't update their blogs, or do a thing about the spam issue. How about a report/flag button next to users in the comment section? Or maybe some proper spam filtering throughout the site? Or even a way to block users you don't want to see dropping comments on your Space? I'm not asking the impossible here.
2. Networks - Practically every social networking site does have a network users can sign onto, right? From what it seems, Live Spaces bills itself as a social networking site, yet there's no networks to join! What a lie! So how hard is it to create networks for users to join? A region specific network shouldn't be that difficult. Then moving onto education institutions, and then companies. I doubt Microsoft could ever beat Facebook in the way Facebook revolutionized what social networking really meant, but at least having a network shows some attempt. Maybe they can grab some market outside of America, that hasn't been tapped into the Facebook phenomenon yet.
3. Groups - MSN Groups is fine, for its ability to accept a lot of customization, but Groups would make a great deal and presence on Live Spaces, than off alone in MSN land. Live Groups needs to be just as user customizable enough (so that it's not atrocious like some MSN Groups), and have the usual features like a place to post photo, videos, links, have discussions, share news, etc. If Groups had a nice UI to it, and viewing media posted is a snap, as well as advance discussion threads (with branching replies, spectacular comment tools, and the works) Groups could be something.
4.  Classified ads - As soon as a regional network starts up, then it would be much more simpler to post a classified ad in the local area. If you want to succeed in making something successful, then give the listed posting a nice clean interface, user ratings on people, ability to post up some decent pictures or videos, IM/Send-A-Message/Call buttons, Live Map of the location specified, Enough characters to type up a good listing, etc. Make it nice looking, and you're set. All for free.
5. Personals & Dating - Yet another community feature. Take MSN's Match.com, add a new WinLive look, open to teenagers (contained separately), better searching, better layout, and make it FREE. Most online services put some stupid price for monthly subscriptions and that nonsense, while I just want to see who's available in my area based on my criteria. Ads are a better way of monetizing than some ridiculous subscription fees. I'd love to see a new social networking site cater to youths looking for dates, instead of eSPIN.
6. Retaining user privacy - One of my contacts Marge has an issue with retaining privacy on Space. Live Spaces has this community feature called "What's Your Story" that features 4 Spaces of particular interest. Marge never gave permission to be spotlighted on Spaces. She claims that she got a lot of "friend" invites from many users, who probably aren't even looking to be actual friends. She found this filling up her inbox very annoying, and says that spam came out more than usual. Live Spaces needs to contact users to receive permission to display their Space to the world. She also does not appreciate the "Print" option on top of every blog post. She loves to write poems and short stories, and doesn't want anyone to just go print off her work and do whatever with it. There should be an option to have more limiting functions on visitors.
7. Status Message - Is it that difficult to display my status message on Spaces? Live Messenger has this feature where you can type a quick status message on how you're doing. Just like a Twitter feed (though Messenger had this for a long time). Practically every social/community page has some type of status message display, that users can display, except Live Spaces. I'd love to see a status message display, that'd also synced with Live Messenger.
8. Easier page customizing - Moving around modules in Live Spaces, can be difficult and not friendly. On Facebook, it's super simple to drag the top of an application and move it around swiftly to where you might want it, and get a good preview at the way it will finally look. Netvibes also does it the same way, with the same nice dashed lines to indicate the space taken by the module. How does Live Spaces currently do it? You go to this option where you are presented with "module arrangement" and there are top, bottom, and the middle pane (with middle pane divided into 3 more pieces. You CAN'T drag-n'-drop these. Instead, there are these boring 4 buttons that say left, up, down, right. Cruddy.
9. Messenger IM Control/Presence - How about putting a little Messenger icon next to a user's name to determine if they're online or offline? Your friends can see you, but I don't mind showing everybody that I'm available, as long as they don't get my e-mail address. LiveSide does what exactly I'm talking about.
10. Better widgets - Or Spaces gadgets as it is called.  "Most" gadgets are rather boring, and there's not enough good gadgets out there. Most of them look crappy, and also act crappy. That's just the best way to say it. How come Microsoft isn't creating more gadgets? Why is it up to the developers, if there is any that wants to develop for Live Spaces? Microsoft needs to create incentives to get developers to build great apps. Maybe a contest to win a grand prize? A better API to work with? Make Live Spaces get more users? Facebook gets tons of quality ones because there's many users, and the ability to make social apps. MySpace is already getting lots of apps. Why not Live Spaces?
11. MyShelf - A personal feature that I made up. I would love an application where I can show a virtual shelf of my music, books, and movies I'm into. High quality cover art thumbnails of my favorite music, books, and movies line up my virtual shelves. When you hover over a thumbnail, you get the title, my personal overview of the item, as well as a link to buy the item at Zune Marketplace. Great idea, eh?
12. Flash/Silverlight player, not WMP - WMP is awful on the web. It doesn't load up as fast, keeps stalling as it loads, and the player's button configuration is awful. It's better to make a nice looking Flash/Silverlight player, then the crud that is WMP on the web.
13. Better browser support - Live Spaces runs well enough in IE "most" of the times, but Safari, Opera, and other browsers don't get the same treatment. Mostly, it's the same experience in IE, but the photo slideshows aren't as good, dropping a comment is buggy, and a few other quirks. It doesn't even work that great in IE7 sometimes. I don't know what, but Live Spaces needs to work better with other browsers, and load up faster.
14. Less page switching - I hate it when Live Spaces has to reload to go to another page. Live Spaces itself is sluggish enough, but to do quick fixes like deleting a comment, edit a caption, adding a comment, moving around modules, etc. shouldn't require a lot of page loading to do. Has the Live Spaces team ever heard of AJAX? They should, since Microsoft started it off a long time ago. I don't know how much AJAXing is done on Live Spaces, but there certainly isn't enough to do quick changes without reloading the page. Use AJAX better so there is less need to reload the page as much.
15. Chatrooms - Chatrooms are a great way to meet new people, and talk about interests you share. Live Spaces could bring back MSN Chat with a new sleek look, more categories, more input tools, and make chatrooms more flexible and appealing.
16. Better photo sharing - I want photo-sharing to be something Flickr-like (if MS doesn't buy Yahoo!) experience. All the AJAX goodness like on-the-fly editing, tagging, ability to search for public photos, offer several photo sizes to download, better commenting, fancy slideshows as well as Photosynthing, cooler ways to display photos on Spaces (like separate snapshots, frames, cool slideshow transistions, etc.), simple photo-editing tools (on the page), and anything else that might appeal to a photo-lover.
17. Video-sharing - There's MSN Soapbox, which is a separate site. I'm thinking that MSN Soapbox could move over to Live Spaces, get a brand new WinLive-esque UI, give every good feature there is possible, and bam. You've got a brilliant video-sharing site that could rival the likes of YouTube. If all the other reasons on this list ever get done.
18. Easier friend managing - I love how you can manage friends on Wallop. Each friend shows up as a circular icon, and you can drag them around in a virtual space. You can make a cluster, separate individually, put someone you like closer to your own icon, toss people out of the boundary, have people you might be interested lining just outside the boundary, and so on. It's awesome. I'd like something similar (if not the same), and an easy way to write a personal quick overview, tag them, view their contact card, brief profile, status, and an easier way of searching through/for your friends.
19. More themes, layout choices, more customization features - As the web grows and grows, it's only time until the need for more customization grows. MySpace is very popular for supporting lots of fancy codes (to a fault), while Facebook leans towards little is better. An easy way to change the color/shading/font/size/transparency/effect to a module, without needing to reload the page is good. Having more than 3 columns, a big or paned background image, ways to create unique themes, tons of gadgets, and all the works. The more the customizability, the better.
20. Better "Guestbook" - Guestbook is another decent enough feature. I just wish it could have some of the neat features of The Wall and Super Wall in Facebook. Things to include such as : Graffiti (doodled art), Photos, Videos, Music, Share Link (like Facebook's that bring up description and current pictures on site), Record Video (from webcam), etc.
21. Make a better Lists app. - The current List-making app. is fine enough, but there are parts I do not particularly like. Reordering items on a List is very cumbersome. Instead of dropping a number of the position I want in a box next to the listing, how about simply drag-n-drop items in the position you want? Is it that difficult Microsoft? It's not rocket science here if other sites can do it. It's a no-brainer. The ability to copy and paste pictures next to items, would be more easier for me, than hunting down image URLs.
22. Games - More on the casual gaming side, and the ability to play with you're online friends live. I'm thinking this is yet another MSN property that could switch it's roots over to WinLive. Give MSN Games a new WinLive look, bring interactive social games to play with friends, and keep the game rental service. Gaming as a social networking feature would be awesome.
23. Download Store - A direct download store on Live Spaces offering things like customized themes, applications, virtual pet supplies, display pics, etc. NO need to hang out on Windows Live Gallery to search for a simple thing on on Live Spaces.
24. MyWorld - A virtual online world. Every user can make their own avatar, has a provided pad which they can customize with stuff, and the ability to walk around in an open world environment where users can create up to a certain point. MyWorld can be available on a web browser, desktop, or even the Xbox. Certain things can have a price like accessories, dwelling upgrades, etc. It'd be wonderful if there could be realistic high-quality graphics, easy chatting, nicely customizable environments, lots of choices, and easy to use. Virtual worlds are the next big thing.
25. Public Events - There should be a page showing upcoming public events that are being hosted. The page could contain upcoming events, which can have an overview, location info., Live Map of the area, picture/video, any important links, add to calendar (Live, iCal, whatever), and maybe the ability for users to say that they're attending. This could be an extension of Live Local (formerly MSN City Guides). Live Spaces Events (the current one) is rather weak to me, and won't attract much but a few girly-girls who like frills, or maybe a guy that might try it just once and never again.

So I'm thinking that Live Spaces could become the next MEGA community/social-networking site, if all 25 things were accomplished. Or at least the big ones. 5/25 are actually a redone MSN site that belonged in a community/social environment, and another 5/25 is bringing in existing/dead Live services into the community/social mix. Some of the other stuff is rather wishful thinking, that I'd love to see become a reality, though the chances aren't that high.

I hope the Live Spaces team will consider some of these ideas.

It appears that the Windows Mobile site recently received a design fix-up.

I have to say, it's MUCH better than the old site. The old site was horrendous to navigate, and appeared to not have been updated since pre-2003. Overall, it's much better to go through, except for some things like:

I've been using Safari 3.0 for awhile, and it's actually pretty good. Better than I expected. I can't help but remember the buggy catastrophe the first time Safari was available for Windows users, but the latest one isn't that bad.

I did has some issues the first time with downloading it. So I gave up for 3 weeks, and tried it again. It finally worked. So I'm going to point out what I like, and what I don't like. Here's what I like:

• Simple and clean UI - I've commended IE7 for keeping a nice streamlined interface, but Safari is just as good. You have the menu bar, then the address and search bar with the back/forward-refresh-add buttons right under it, and then a bookmark bar. The bars fit in tightly with each other, to maximize website screen size. There's also no bottom bar at the very bottom. Pretty good.
• Extendable search/address box - Pretty handy. You can either stretch the search box to be bigger, or the address bar to be bigger.
• SnapBack - There's this neat orange button at the end of the address bar ( ). This button takes you back to the previous website, without having to rummage around the list of pages in the back button. Like say you're on a cooking website, and a link takes you to Amazon.com. Well you search for some more stuff on Amazon, and realize you want to go back to the cooking site. Instead of scanning the last viewed pages on the back button, you can just press the handy orange SnapBack button. Pretty neat, eh?
• Bookmarks Manager - One of my favorite features. Pressing on the bookmarks icon ( ), it takes you to a nice clean page, listing everything from items on the Bookmarks Bar, All Bookmarks, History, and RSS feeds. As well as imported IE favorites. It's much easier to organize and manage saved items, and a nice RSS feeder. I love how there's a slider bar to show how much of each feed you want to see, and you can select what timeframe you want to see the posts from.
• History - You can search pages that you viewed, and deleting history is as easy as 2 clicks. On IE, the minimum is 4 clicks. You also can dynamically search through history, where as in IE, you have to click search, to actually search it (though it's quick too).
• Loading bar - The loading bar on Safari, is simply just the address bar. It shines blue from the left of the address bar, all the way towards the right of the bar as soon as it's done loading. Another streamlined feature I like. Though the Origami Central browser (IE7 in Origami) does it that way too.
• Window sizing is smoother - I notice that window resizing in Safari has a more smoother look, in comparison to IE7.
• Better scrollbars - One characteristic about XP that I never liked was the ugly scrollbars. They're so grayed out, that a person with quick eyes can have trouble pinpointing where the scroll bar is, when the slider bar is whitish-gray, and sometime the page is white or close to gray. It annoys the heck out of me, especially in IE7. I don't much like Safari's bright, glossy blue scroolbars that much better, but it's definitely easier on the eyes.
• Download Manager - what every modern browser should have. Though I personally don't use it, since I'm not a heavy downloader.
• Slim Bookmarks bar - Safari just simply gives the name of one of you bookmarks and that's it. The bar doesn't take up much space, as in comparison to IE8's humongous favorites bar.
• Less crashes - I'll be honest. I use IE7 everyday, and I can probably expect at the minimum ONE crash per day. That's just cruddy, and Safari has probably only crashed once or twice in the time I used it.
• Better options menu - The options menu in IE7 is VERY cluttered. I don't think I need to view most of them, and it's horrendous to rummage through.
• Appearance - Apple's always known for making thing at least look better. Safari is no different. I love Safari's font smoothing. Makes webpages look much better. I also love how when you highlight, the color is blue, rather than IE's tradition of complete contrast highlighting. Blue is more easier on the eyes, and stands out pretty well.
• Input box edges highlighted - When you type into any input box (whether to fill in your username & password, a comment, or whatever), the box's edges are highlighted to it's easy to draw your eyes to that portion of your screen. Nice touch. Safari is a great browser if your eyes are kinda poor.
• Great webpage search box - It is hard to find, but it functions pretty well. Go to Edit > Find > Find... and there's a nice webpage search box that shows up. Start typing in a few words, and the screen darkens and highlights possible matches. When it narrows it down to one, it highlights the text in bright yellow with the text in black. Very nice touch!

What I don't like :

• Only 2 web search options - You can only search Google or Yahoo!. There's no other official way to get Live, Ask, or any other custom search engine. That's my main reason why I don't use Safari as much, I want choices. I search a variety of search engines, and no other options is really sucky.
• Bookmarks folder option is hidden - I didn't notice that puny "+" button at the bottom of the Bookmarks Manager. Pretty sneaky
• Hidden zooming options - I like how on other browser, it's easy to find the page zoom controls, and make the page bigger or smaller. You have to go into the menu bar to to View, and select either bigger or smaller. Whatever.
• No easy access to tabs - Despite Safari's choice of keeping the browser's interface super streamlined, I don't like going through a bunch of menus to find a function I want. Maybe OS X users love to do that (OS X has a default system wide menu bar), but I hate it. I like to see my options all out in front of me, or at least some of the least used things hidden away for later. I have to go to File and New Tab to get a new tab. Same issue with finding the darn zoom controls.
• No quick way to view all tabs or preview - I love how IE7 has QuickTabs to view all tabs at once with a mini-screenshot of all tabs, and Opera lets you hover over tabs to get a preview image. Safari has no such thing. It's all text.
• Lack of add-ons - Apple has no official place to find Safari add-ons (not surprising considering Apple's stance on 3rd parties and developers). Too bad. That's another downer.
• Some sites don't work well - Not a surprise, considering Safari is still new. Though Safari does support a lot of standards, I guess.
• Backward buttons and not being consistent with Windows - Hey Apple, this isn't OS X. OK? So please be consistent with the Windows UI for Safari. Like for instance when I try to close Safari with a couple of tabs being used, and Safari wants to check if I'm OK with this, the cancel button is first, and the close button is second. For a normal Windows user, the selection you're most likely to pick first, actually comes first, and cancel or quit is the last option. I don't know how many times I made this mistake with Safari.
• Lack of skins - I'm no big fan of Safari's default gray look. It's just so cold. It's suppose to have that brushed metal look like Safari for OS X, but it's just all gray. Kinda ugly in a sense.

Overall, Safari is nice. Much better than expected. Here's some screenshots of interesting stuff:

So MSN Radio died. Here's the message I got:

Too bad. I actually preferred MSN Radio's sleek black look, compared to Pandora's "slightly different look". I loved listening to Pandora on MSN Radio. Pandora's site has this really ugly Spartan look. When will they make a WMP 11 add-on? Oh well.

Live Search Maps also got a slightly revamped search box to make it more consistent with the latest Live Search UI. Here it is:

  Not too bad. The search box is bigger, so it's more easier to type in words. Though I can't help but feel the top portion is slightly larger than it was previously, which in turn means less map view.

Personally, I think the big white space, between the search box area and the map view area, is a waste of space. It does display words relating to the search query, but I think the UI could shorten up a bit? Like this:

Do you think the Live Maps UI looks better this way? Being more compact, and giving a bigger map view would be great to me.