msn

The planned fall revamp of MSN isn't just about giving the butterfly a fresh coat of paint. Microsoft also hopes to drive more people to its search engine.

The company has been toying with different search box designs to see which ones lead to the most queries. As it stands, the MSN portal already accounts for half of Microsoft's search engine traffic. Comparatively few people typed in queries straight from Microsoft's Live.com address (now Bing.com)

"A big part of my job is figuring out how I pull the Bing experience into MSN in a … Read more

Although most of the discussion of Microsoft's online business has been around Bing, its new search engine, Microsoft is also working on a fall revamp for MSN, its decade-old portal site.

Though often overlooked by Microsoft watchers, the MSN portal remains critically important to Microsoft's online business. Its home page is the crown jewel of its display ad business and MSN is also responsible for about half of the company's Internet search traffic. And, despite the notion that portals are passe, Microsoft says its research shows that 37 percent of Internet users still rely on a portal … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--In the coming months, Microsoft plans to significantly scale back Soapbox, the video site it once hoped might take on YouTube in the user-generated content arena.

In an interview on Tuesday, Microsoft Vice President Erik Jorgensen said Soapbox is one of the areas that Microsoft is pulling back on in the wake of a tough economic environment. His unit also recently pulled the plug on Microsoft Money, the company's personal finance software product.

Soapbox launched in 2006--the same year Google announced its deal to buy YouTube--but never emerged as a significant threat to the market leader. (… Read more

Even though it's been around almost as long as the modern Web, instant messaging is still a great way to send short communication bursts without tying your ear to a telephone. But with great utility comes buckets of options: Do you use Yahoo IM? AOL IM? MSN? Google Talk? ICQ? What do you do if your parents are on one service, but everybody at your office uses a second, and your friends are all on a third?

Nobody wants to be logged in to half a dozen different chat programs simultaneously, which is where multiprotocol apps come in, to … Read more

In the wake of additional layoffs on Tuesday, Microsoft is scaling back--but not totally eliminating--several products. After cutting 1,400 jobs in January, Microsoft said on Tuesday that it is cutting more than 3,000 more jobs.

Among those products affected are Microsoft's ResponsePoint phone system, its .Net Micro Framework, and its MSN Direct Service.

Microsoft said it will continue to sell and support the initial version of ResponsePoint, which is aimed at small businesses.

"We will also continue to promote the product online and spotlight compatible 3rd party services and add-on products," Microsoft said in a … Read more

Microsoft met a deadline this week to respond to European Commission charges that its inclusion of a browser in Windows violates antitrust laws there.

In January, the European authorities filed a new complaint with a preliminary finding that Microsoft had broken the law by bundling a browser into Windows.

Microsoft's response was not made public and the company did not offer a comment, but it's fair to say the company disagrees with the finding.

The stakes are high. In addition to potential fines, Microsoft has noted in regulatory filings that European authorities may seek to force Microsoft to include rival browsers … Read more

On Tuesday, Alpine Electronics announced that it is now shipping its latest in-car GPS, the Alpine PND-K3msn. The device offers a lot of the same navigation features as the Alpine PND-K3, including text-to-speech functionality, integrated Bluetooth, and highway junction view. The main difference between the two models is the addition of MSN Direct services.

MSN Direct brings real-time information to the PND-K3msn, such as real-time traffic, weather forecasts, gas prices, and movie times. There's also a "Send to GPS" feature that lets you find addresses and businesses from your PC on Live Search maps and then send … Read more

I don't think I can come close to beating Kara Swisher's headline at All Things Digital, "Is Wonderwall Gonna Be the One That Saves MSN?"

So I'll just cut to the chase: in a move that seems to be way, way, way out in left field, Microsoft's MSN division has partnered with media company BermanBraun to launch an entertainment news site called Wonderwall.

Geared toward a slightly more highbrow breed of entertainment fan than the Perez Hilton set, Wonderwall primarily aggregates content from other entertainment sites but has an editorial team spearheaded by pop-culture … Read more

Now here's a recipe for success: Take a brand that your parent company's been on the verge of abandoning for the last four years. Slap it on a new music download store for mobile phones. Encrust all the tracks with DRM, even though the rest of the music download industry is finally moving away from DRM. Make sure that the downloads are tethered to the user's handset, so they can't keep them when they upgrade phones in a year or two. Charge more than the competition. Then, when questioned what the heck you could possibly have … Read more