Windows Live surely taking its time with updates

I’m rather a bit upset that it’s been a real long while since Windows Live has offered some true updates or kept up with itself. Sure, Windows Live Wave 4 is just around the corner, but why should it take that long just for some updates? Or even stay active in the community somehow?

So far, the only new things is:

• a few Hotmail updates – more keyboard shortcuts, improved buddy list, improved contact picker, auto-save drafts, ability to download all files in one zip compared to one-by-one. Nothing really revolutionary here.
• brought back ability to attach photos (now a separate choice)
• another version of Windows Live Movie Maker
• Greater access to Office Web Apps
• Silverlight Streaming is dead
• Live Events is dying

Not much more than that. At least Windows Live Wire is still blogging occasionally, and they’ve finally let commenting come back.

However, there’s been things that should be simple to update, and I don’t see any point in waiting for Wave 4 to come. Such as:

1. More “theme” choices – Does it really take months to work on some nice simple themes? It’s not the most important priority, but given the limited choice of themes you can use (18 as of today), there shouldn’t be any delay in getting some more themes out until Wave 4 comes. At least the ability to customize our own themes, like the way you can use photos in Messenger, would be a nice way to customize.
2. UI update to Gallery, OneCare, My.Live.com – We’re on Wave 3 and OneCare and Windows Live Gallery sites are still stuck on Wave 2, My.live.com is surprisingly still on Wave 1, and I don’t see why the teams are so lazy to update. If these teams can’t update those sites by now, then it makes me less confident that I should bother using Windows Live. The Wave 2 header is so outdated. For instance, Contacts is still used in the place of People (though I do prefer ‘Contacts’), and Live Search is still in place of Bing.
3. Calendar Sync for Windows Live Mobile – If it’s not by Wave 4, Microsoft will really have some disappointed customers. Well more disappointed actually.
4. Cutting the spam in Live Spaces – Ok, I thought Microsoft had finally resolved the problem, but like I mentioned in a previous post, it’s still going on. Thankfully, X-Evolutionist has taken action by personally finding the URL’s of every spammer’s Profile to submit to Microsoft. Perhaps something will get done. Thanks X-Evolutionist.
5. Better account integration with other Microsoft entities – For instance, if I’m already signed into Windows Live, why am I not automatically signed in when I go to Bing or MSN or even Xbox sites? Why do I need to create a different username for different Microsoft entities, when it’s all using Windows Live ID? Sounds rather ridiculous and superfluous. This should be resolved.

Stuff like this shouldn’t require a whole ‘wave’ of updates. Nobody appreciates waiting months and months for good updates to come. Instead, a ‘wave’ should just be more of a UI update, with perhaps a few major new features/services, but for tiny or even medium-priority features, they should come out more often. No need to wait.

Anyway, I just wanted to express that I’m a bit tired of the waiting process for Microsoft’s online stuff. I know a few people that are already giving up Windows Live, because they were a bit annoyed with the usual ‘waiting game’. Anyone else feel the same about having to wait for ‘full waves’ to get more good stuff out of Windows Live?

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Return of the Spam Bots!

I know I haven’t been blogging too much lately, as I do have things of other prioities to take care of, but I couldn’t help but stop to write a quick blog about the insane amounts of spam coming back to Windows Live Spaces.

It looks like some Chinese spammers came and plagued my blog posts with their ugly links to some stupid website that sells electronic stuff. As you can see in the picture above, the red arrow is pointing to the tiny scrollbox that looks very miniscule compared to the whole scrollbar. Why? Because there’s that much spam shown in the comments section.

I thought the Windows Live team would have got it by now, but this is really annoying and I don’t like how the page HAS to confirm if you really want to delete the comment or not.

I’m not stupid Microsoft. With so much spam, there needs to be a way to disable dialog prompts like this, because I’m one of those users who are well aware of what they’re about to do, and deleting comments shouldn’t be a pain every time! Imagine me having to delete EVERY comment that’s spam, and clicking OK in a the dialog for the nth time!

Anyway, you think the Windows Live team could make it easier to report and shut down spammers? Or make it easier to delete comments? Or how about making text entry just a bit more limited where you can only put up to 4 links per comment? Anything to reduce spam attacks would be nice for us users Windows Live.

Windows Live Tags: Windows Live Spaces, comments, spam