Daily Archives: November 6, 2010

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Microsoft Dumps Live Spaces for WordPress

Microsoft and WordPress.com announced Monday that WordPress will be the default blogging platform for Windows Live.

The partnership will allow Windows Live Spaces customers to upgrade to WordPress.com, let WordPress users notify friends about blog posts via Messenger, and let Windows Live users easily create new blogs on WordPress.com.

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“WordPress powers over 8.5 percent of the web, is used on over 26 million sites, and WordPress.com is seen by over 250 million people every month,” Microsoft said in a blog post. “So rather than having Windows Live invest in a competing blogging service, we decided the best thing we could do for our customers was to give them a great blogging solution through WordPress.com.”

Microsoft currently has 30 million people using its Windows Live Spaces blogging platform. Those users can port their blog posts, comments, and photos to WordPress, and redirect their old Spaces URLs to the new blog, Microsoft said.

The next time users visit their Spaces account, they will see a prompt that asks them to update to WordPress.com. Those who do not want to switch to WordPress have the option of downloading their blog to the PC, deleting their Spaces blog, or delaying the upgrade for the next six months.

Users can also keep friends up-to-date with Messenger Connect. “When you connect your Messenger account to WordPress.com, you can have new posts on your WordPress.com blog automatically send a notification for each new blog post to your Messenger friends’ feeds,” Microsoft said.

Those who start blogging today will be directed to WordPress.com, and the upcoming Windows Live Essentials 2011 will also use WordPress as its default blogging solution, Microsoft said.

“We’re very happy that Microsoft chose WordPress.com as their preferred new blogging service for Windows Live users,” WordPress said in a separate blog post. “It’s a sign of how strong WordPress.com has become, and credit for that goes to every one of you who’s been creating here.”

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Microsoft: Silverlight Still ‘Very Important and Strategic’

Microsoft on Monday defended its Silverlight strategy, and stressed that the product is “very important and strategic” to the company.

The comments, from Bob Muglia, president of the server and tools division at Microsoft, came after an interview he did with ZDNet in which he said Microsoft’s Silverlight strategy has shifted.

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Silverlight will continue to be a cross-platform solution, “but HTML is the only true cross platform solution for everything, including (Apple’s) iOS platform,” Muglia told ZDNet.

In a response blog post, Muglia said that his interview was accurately reported, but he acknowledged that some of his comments “surprised people and caused controversy and confusion.”

“As this certainly wasn’t my intent, I want to apologize for that,” Muglia wrote. He stressed that Silverlight is still a top priority for Microsoft and that the company is working hard on the next release. “It will continue to be cross-browser and cross-platform, and run on Windows and Mac,” he wrote.

“Silverlight is a core application development platform for Windows, and it’s the development platform for Windows Phone,” he continued. “We haven’t yet publically announced a launch date for the next release of Silverlight, but we’ll talk more about it in the coming months.”

Muglia admitted that the Silverlight strategy and focus has indeed shifted, but said “this isn’t a negative statement, but rather, it’s a comment on how the industry has changed and how we’re adapting our Silverlight strategy to take advantage of that.”

Going forward, Microsoft will focus its Silverlight development around key trends, like enterprise app development, touch input and embedded devices, HD studio-quality content, and the expansion of Internet-connected devices, Muglia said.

Silverlight 4 made its debut in April. Last week, Microsoft released some updates for that version, which included improvements to WCF RIA Services, as well as the new Portable Library project, which will make it easier to share assemblies across SL Desktop, SL Phone, WPF and .NET on the server, Muglia said.