{"id":3525,"date":"2010-06-03T10:11:49","date_gmt":"2010-06-03T08:11:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tokao.com\/2010\/06\/03\/microsoft-rolls-out-impressive-enhancements-to-windows-live-essentials-suite\/"},"modified":"2010-06-03T10:11:49","modified_gmt":"2010-06-03T08:11:49","slug":"microsoft-rolls-out-impressive-enhancements-to-windows-live-essentials-suite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tokao.com\/wordpress\/2010\/06\/03\/microsoft-rolls-out-impressive-enhancements-to-windows-live-essentials-suite\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft Rolls Out Impressive Enhancements To Windows Live Essentials Suite"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n

The picture above is a complete fake. But more on that in a minute.<\/span><\/p>\n

Microsoft is giving a preview of a variety of enhancements to its Windows Live Essentials<\/a> suite \u2013 a set of online and desktop services that includes hotmail, messenger, sync, movie maker and photo gallery. Most of the desktop versions of these services are available only for Windows users, although the online components only require a browser from any operating system.<\/span><\/p>\n

These enhancements come after Microsoft\u2019s preview of the online version of Office, which is also within this suite. I had a chance to sit down with Brian Hall<\/a>, GM of the Windows Live Business Group, today to see some of the changes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Many of the changes are fairly minor, but at least two are going to be big crowd pleasers. First, Microsoft has made changes to their Movie Maker video editing software that allows for the creation of Animoto-like video clips containing photos and videos. They\u2019ve added a variety of transition and effect options, as well as the ability to add music and text, to these clips.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the really interesting changes are around Photo Gallery. Previously Microsoft had a facial recognition feature to allow you to quickly add names as tags to photos. But they are now adding facial recognition as well, and it takes a guess as to the person in the photo. In the demo it worked very well and saves time with tagging \u2013 a lot of time. The application also has one click sharing of photos to Facebook and other services and the tags go with it.<\/span><\/p>\n

But by far the most impressive thing I saw today was the Photo Fuse feature that they\u2019ve added. The general idea is you can take a bunch of pictures and turn them into a single photo that\u2019s better than any of the originals. And it only takes a few seconds.<\/span><\/p>\n

The best use case is clearly group photos that you\u2019d take a a wedding or wherever. Someone always has their eyes closed or is looking away. With Photo Fuse you can take the best parts of a number of photos and create that perfect group picture.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hall spent a lot of time today showing me Photo Fuse, which I zeroed in on among all the other new features launching. We even took a few pictures of Hall and his PR people \u2013 Michael Celiceo and Bonnie McCracken \u2013 and ran them through Photo Fuse.<\/span><\/p>\n

This was the final result \u2013 a picture that was never actually taken (the top image \u2013 you just can\u2019t tell). The working photos that are real are below it. There\u2019s also a video of the whole process. Fascinating stuff.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
\n\"\"
\n\"\"
\n\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/object><\/span><\/p>\n

The new suite will launch in a few weeks, says Microsoft. In the meantime we\u2019ll give away 100 accounts now \u2013 details in the next post.<\/span><\/p>\n

More screenshots from the new products:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
\n\"\"
\n\"\"
\n\"\"
\n\"\"
\n\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

(via techcrunch<\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The picture above is a complete fake. But more on that in a minute. Microsoft is giving a preview of a variety of enhancements to its Windows Live Essentials suite \u2013 a set of online and desktop services that includes hotmail, messenger, sync, movie maker and photo gallery. Most of the desktop versions of these […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,66,6],"class_list":["post-3525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-microsoft","tag-photography","tag-techcrunch"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tokao.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tokao.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tokao.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tokao.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tokao.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tokao.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3525\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tokao.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tokao.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tokao.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}