mynetx: Wonderful that you take some minutes to talk with me about Windows Live and You.
Please tell me a bit about yourself. Is your life directly or indirectly involved with Windows Live?

Sean Bradford: Windows Live is my central hub for online communication. I’d have to say my life is involved directly with Windows Live. Most people know me as RebelSean but my name is Sean Bradford. I’m a journalist over at Neowin.net, where I focus on Windows Live. I’ve followed Windows Live’s development since the initial rebranding.

About the interview, I don’t know what I can and cannot answer right now as I am under quite a few NDA‘s.

mynetx: Well, I suppose that’s good news, seeing as things make progress.
Since when are you in the Live business? Tell me a bit about your history.

Sean Bradford: I’ve been involved with the Messenger community since about 2002. I’ve been beta testing Windows Live products and services since 2006, and I’ve been a Windows Live Butterfly since 2006.

mynetx: So quite long already…

Sean Bradford: Indeed. I’ve been a Microsoft enthusiast since as far back as I can remember.

mynetx: Do you think the Windows Live team cares for their users’ demands? Why?

Sean Bradford: Definitely, as the Windows Live ecosystem evolves so does the products. Windows Live Homepage is a perfect example. When the “What’s new” feed was launched back at CES 2009, users requested more feeds be added. Since then Microsoft has added 40+ services to the list of partners, including Facebook, Digg, Twitter, and much more.

mynetx: That happened only recently, true? Why did the complete Web Activity Provider list take so long (from January when Brian Hall announced it), until it was live?

Sean Bradford: Indeed it was only recently. That’s a good question. As with all Microsoft products, it takes time to roll out updates especially world-wide. I don’t know the specifics on that certain rollout, but I’m sure Brian wouldn’t mind answering that.

mynetx: If Microsoft took over Facebook, would you be using it then? Why?

Sean Bradford: Although I don’t foresee that happening, and I’ve not heard any plans on that, I would still use Facebook. Simply because it’s great social networking site to keep in touch with real life friends. And if Microsoft ever took over Facebook I don’t believe they would change the core business model, only improve it.

mynetx: Let’s talk about last summer’s big story. If Microsoft managed to take over Yahoo!, how do you think Yahoo!’s future would have been affected?

Sean Bradford: If that acquisition ever took place, Microsoft’s only gain would be in the search engine market. Live Search has came a long way, and it has a bright future thanks to Bing. With or without a Yahoo! partnership, Bing will continue to grow more and more.

mynetx: I think that the story isn’t finished yet… So far for the past. Looking into the future: Within the next five years, where could you picture Windows Live?

Sean Bradford: Your right, it’s not finished. Microsoft and Yahoo! are still in talks regarding a search partnership. It’ll be interesting to see the outcome of those talks.

Sean Bradford: Windows Live has grown tremendously since its initial launch. I think the main focus on Windows Live has turned to its online services. As more and more online services are launched, I foresee Windows Live becoming a central hub for communication and collaboration for users.

mynetx: Please provide two positive and negative comments about any outstanding Windows Live product.

Sean Bradford: I don’t think that I have anything negative to say about any Windows Live product, although I am glad to say that Windows Live Movie Maker is making great progress and there was a recent announcement by the team that a non-beta version will be released later this year.

mynetx: Positive?

Sean Bradford: There are a lot of positive things to say, I could name at least a hundred that comes to mind. But I guess I’d say that the development of Windows Live Messenger has been phenomenal over the past few years. From version to version the team has added innovation, and has taken the consumer experience to the next level.

mynetx: That’s something I can only confirm! Do you run Windows Live Messenger 24/7? Do you have some kind of a routine with Messenger and the other parts of Windows Live?

Sean Bradford: I do run Windows Live Messenger 24/7 but that doesn’t mean I’m online and available 24/7. No routine though, but I do check my home.live.com page every morning when I wake up to see what’s going on in my circle.

mynetx: Use your fantasy: how do you think Messenger will look like within the next five years? What new features could it present?

Sean Bradford: I’ve thought and thought, cannot answer that .

mynetx: Too difficult to imagine, or if you decide deliberately not to answer it?

Sean Bradford: I just don’t have an answer, too difficult to imagine…

mynetx: Well, looking at Messenger’s current functionality, what might the next release, Wave 4, feature?

Sean Bradford: Can’t comment on that my friend .

mynetx: OK! Are you satisfied with the Windows Live services that are provided to you? Why?

Sean Bradford: Of course I am, I use almost every Windows Live product and service to date. It offers me the tools I need to communicate and collaborate online.

mynetx: What is your favorite feature in Messenger?

Sean Bradford: My favorite feature would have to be a video conference. It works smoothly, great quality. And I use it on a day-to-day basis with folks around the world.

mynetx: What was your first impression of Live Mesh? Could it be a new diverse method of file sharing among peers, or could it improve the current system at hand?

Sean Bradford: My first impression of Live Mesh was W.O.W. Finally a piece of software that is free and I can use on all of my machines at home, at the office, and at my relatives house. It’s one of the easiest ways for me and my family to share pictures, files, and at work we use it to send documents and larger files. I’m not much of a developer myself, so I don’t have an answer to the later part of that question.

mynetx: What about its correlation to the rest of Windows Live products? I see various ways of getting them more connected.

Sean Bradford: More to come with Wave 4 my friend .

mynetx: Do you wish Messenger would have a feature that a third-party IM software already has?

Sean Bradford: Indeed, and I think it’s well known across the spectrum and is probably still the #1 requested feature for Windows Live Messenger: Tabbed Chatting.

mynetx: I still hope this will be one of the breaking news in Wave 4!
As Messenger user, I’m sure you’ve got a good tip that not everybody might know about yet.

Sean Bradford: Can’t think of anything off the top of my head .

mynetx: What about the easiest level of tips? Doesn’t need to be complicated!

Sean Bradford: I guess I’d have to say that the best tip I’d have for people is that if they don’t want people who are not in there circle seeing there status updates or random people sending them IMs to make sure they have that option checked in the privacy sections.

mynetx: You mean, the options you can find at http://profile.live.com/Permissions/ ?

Sean Bradford: No in Messenger’s settings.

mynetx: You said development of Messenger has been phenomenal. Somebody else just stated that ‘with the absence of joint voice conversations or video conversations, it has been anything but phenomenal. User interface is the only improvement we get.’ (Imran Hussain; via Twitter) What is your opinion on this?

Sean Bradford: Well as an avid user of video and voice conversations via WLM, I hardly ever have the need to have multiple users. If that is the case then I use Skype or another conference application.

mynetx: Right… Are you working on any project related to Windows Live, currently?

Sean Bradford: I am not, besides beta testing products like Messenger Plus! Live and Windows Live Messenger itself, I hardly ever code or develop anything .

mynetx: And finally—is there anything you’d like to tell our readers?

Sean Bradford: Just keep up the great feedback and suggestions for the Windows Live Team. You guys rock, and thanks for the opportunity to participate in these interviews .

mynetx: I have to thank *you* for your time! It was really interesting to discuss Windows Live and You with you.

The Live album features the following 9 tracks:

1. I. Glass of Water
2. II. 42
3. III. Clocks
4. IV. Strawberry Swing
5. V. Hardest Part / Postcards from far Away
6. VI. Viva La Vida
7. VII. Death Will Never Conquer
8. VIII. Fix You
9. IX. Death And All His Friends

Grab your free copy—now!
Free Download: Coldplay—LeftRightLeftRightLeft

Thank you Bram Lancsweert for the hint!

Chaitanya Sareen, senior program manager on the Windows Core User Experience team, says:

With more developers leveraging its functionality, the Notification Area has grown in popularity over the years. Some may observe that it has changed from a subtle whisperer to something louder. Based upon the feedback we’ve collected from customers, we recognize the Notification Area could benefit from being less noisy and something more controllable by the end-user.

The problem: Messenger might be in your way

If you have recently downloaded Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 and installed Windows Live Essentials on it, especially Messenger, you might notice that it reacts differently from previous versions of Windows when you minimize its main window, that is, the Contact list. Instead of moving the Messenger icon to the notification area like in Windows XP and Vista, it just minimizes to the taskbar—following the guidelines the Windows team has set up, in order to keep the notification area clean and tiny.

However, if you are running Messenger quite frequently, perhaps even permanently, the rather big Messenger icon in the “normal” taskbar might get into your way rather quickly. How would it be to force Messenger to act like in previous versions of Windows—that is, to “minimize to tray”? Here is how you can.

The solution: Move it out of your way

1. Click , then choose Computer.
2. Double click Local Disk ( C: )
3. Browse to Program FilesWindows LiveMessenger.
4. Right click the file msnmsgr.exe, and choose Properties from the appearing context menu.
5. Switch to the Compatibility tab.
6. Check the check box next to Run this program in compatibility mode for.
7. Open the drop down field, and choose Windows Vista (Service Pack 2).
   
8. In the dialog box msnmsgr.exe Properties, click OK.
9. Close Windows Explorer, and start Messenger from the Start menu.
10. When you minimize Messenger’s main window now, it will silently minimize itself to the notification area again. If you cannot see the Messenger icon there, try unfolding the expanded view, using the arrow button pointing upwards.

Sources:

• Engineering Windows 7: User Interface: Starting, Launching, and Switching
• Life Rocks 2.0: How to Minimize Windows Live Messenger to System Tray in Windows 7

The adware altercation

Software developer Patchou provokes fierce opinions in cyberspace. His army of fans think he’s a genius; critics say he has sold his soul for profit.

Cyril Paciullo (aka Patchou), who created Messenger Plus! Live

To some in the downtrodden kingdom of the geek, he is a messiah. To others, he is the devil incarnate. No one, it seems, divides opinion among the tribes of of cyberspace quite like Patchou. The software creator, real name Cyril Paciullo, is the man behind Messenger Plus! Live – which, he claims, has been downloaded 60m times and is particularly popular among teen­agers. An updated version is due out at the end of this month; the forum on his site boasts 80,000 members.

Patchou’s creation is an add-on to Microsoft’s hugely popular Windows Live Messenger, or MSN, the instant messaging and social networking program used by 17.5 million people in Britain alone. Patchou’s software adds dozens of extra features, such as custom sounds, colours, clever ways to manage contacts and, for the uber-geeky, the ability to program your own tweaks.

And for that Patchou’s grateful young disciples sing his praises in thousands of web forums and chatrooms. “You rock,” they gush. Such is their adulation that one admirer boasts of making a 100mph dash to Disneyland just to spend a few minutes in Patchou’s company. The acolyte proclaims: “It was really cool to meet Patchou, he’s awesome.”

But this is a man who has also outraged millions. His sin? A Faustian pact with dark forces responsible for distributing adware, those pop-up windows that torture PC users the world over. Messenger Plus! Live comes bundled with a “sponsor’s program”, which the unwary install unwittingly on their machines. They are then subjected to messages urging them to buy insurance, take out credit cards, play poker or download ringtones. To his opponents this breaks a sacred code of geek ethics and the two sides engage in furious online debates. Supporters say Patchou has provided a brilliant piece of software free to millions of people and the adware is harmless; critics call him “a scam artist making money off gullible young Live Messenger users”.

Devil in the detail

In the middle of this maelstrom sits Microsoft, which appears to have been impressed by Patchou’s work. In 2006, the software giant was moved to honour him with a Most Valuable Professional award – but the howls of protest about his links to adware led the company to withdraw it. Although the dust has settled and the adware is easier to spot and remove, online forums remain littered with the pitiful pleas of the infected driven to distraction by the unslayable sponsor program.

So who is this demi-god/devil? In fact, he is a French-born, self-confessed geek and Star Trek aficionado living in Montreal, Canada. Even his harshest critics admire his skill and industry. After all, he’s been at it since he was 14, when he first got a computer and started dabbling with programming. “I’ve always been passionate about computers,” he says.

Messenger Plus! Live started eight years ago; it’s now a full-time job.

“Back then, I was working on it part-time, during the night, while working as a software developer for a company during the day. The popularity of the software was growing so I decided it was time to do the jump.”

Much of the success is down to attention to detail, the 27-year-old insists.

“Thousands of programs are created and put online every day. Unfortunately, a majority of them are never ‘finished’, never polished. If you do something, do it well,” he says. “I now have around 60 million active users and a lot of people working for me, directly or not. About 50 people are working to translate each new version of the software into 21 different languages and 100 more give a hand for the beta tests. You have the official helpers on the main forums and people on various websites doing the promotion of the add-on.

In a given month I may be working only 20 hours a week and the following month, I’ll get up only to put myself in front of my computer screens until I go to sleep 16 hours later. The good news is I have a very nice and forgiving girlfriend.”

And he doesn’t find it easy coping with the worldwide adulation.

“Software developers tend to be geeks and, yes, geeks tend to be shy,” he says. “Still, I’ve always enjoyed our gatherings, what we call Plus! Meetings, quite a lot. It’s a nice feeling to see many people coming from many different countries and who have never met before have some fun together, speak in real life. The software is just a pretext to socialise. It’s good to see people from time to time when you spend your days and nights in front of a screen.”

The devotion surprises his critics. Another Microsoft MVP award holder, the internet security campaigner Chris Boyd, who spoke out against Patchou in 2006, says he was taken aback by the amount of vitriol poured in his direction by the software designer’s youthful army of fans. Boyd acknowledges some of Patchou’s changes have helped soothe some, if not all, of the critics, but adds: “It’s a very peculiar business model.”

There are perhaps a dozen other Live Messenger add-ons available, although none of them have Patchou’s audience. MessengerDiscovery, started four years ago by the New Zealand-based software developer Matt Holwood, adds 150 features to Live Messenger, has racked up millions of users and has a forum with more than 8,000 members. Like Patchou, it started as a part-time project but has also become a full-time job, paid for by more traditional ads on his website.

But Holwood, 21, is scathing about Patchou’s use of adware. He says:

“Personally, I think it’s wrong and greedy. You have a moral obligation not to get greedy and infect such a large amount of unsuspecting people with malware. I’m sure he lives a very luxurious lifestyle but you have to look at the big picture. Developers should fight against that sort of trash rather than distribute it. He could live very well simply from the advertising on the website. I do, and he has seven times the visitors.”

Not into temptation

In Holland, another 21-year-old, Frans-Willem Hardijzer, known as The Blasphemer, has been running StuffPlug for the past five years. He also uses ads on his site to to fund his program, which has about 250,000 users. Although he has had to fit his project around his school and university studies, and now a full-time job, he also refuses to be tempted by adware.

“Apart from the server to host the website, there isn’t that much cost to keep it running,” says Hardijzer. “In the past I’ve made enough money through the Google AdSense program to live pretty comfortably as a student. I’ve considered selling out but I simply don’t like the idea of bundling mal/spy/adware with my program like [Patchou] does. People trust me to give them quality software and I don’t like abusing that trust.”

Adware is undoubtedly profitable. Because it inhabits a murky corner of the internet linked to more malevolent forms of computer infection, no one knows exactly how much money it generates, although estimates of up to $2bn (£1.4bn) a year are bandied about. Distributors pay those who help get their software on to them a few cents each time their adware is installed or, more rarely, each time a pop-up ad is clicked.

One notorious US adware company netted a reported $149 million in four years. Another, which was eventually brought to book by US regulators, raked in a reported $80million in three years.

Messenger Plus! is connected to a little-­known company called Circle Development Ltd – which appears to be based in the Ukraine – also known as C2Media or CiD, and linked to the website Lop.com.

Installing belief

For people like Patchou there is plenty of potential to get rich. Challenged in forums by claims that at 6 cents an install, with 800,000 downloads a month, he could potentially net $48,000 (£34,000) a month, he responded:

“In case there would be some doubts, I’m still not paid by install. And so you know, C2Media doesn’t give 6 cents per install for the kind of package I have. For the record: I’m being paid by searches (and only for some of them), so I wouldn’t win a cent even if a billion users installed my sponsor tomorrow. C2Media (lop.com) is probably one of the best adware companies on the market today and that’s exactly why I continue to do my business with them: because they can be trusted.”

Graham Cluley, a senior technology consultant at Sophos, says adware is a “huge business” and some “very well-known companies” were trying to exploit the fact no one really considers what they are installing on their PCs .

“If you are a youngster, then you just press the button until the thing you want is installed,” he says. “You agree to the terms and conditions, so it’s legal. It’s human nature not to read the terms and conditions.” At best, he adds, adware is a nuisance. At worst, it can be bad for online business. “It’s not the way you want to behave on the internet. It does inflame the internet community.”

For all that, Paciullo is unrepentant.

“People who accuse me generally do not understand – or accept – that software development is not something you can finance easily these days. People don’t tend to buy software, they just download it. The idea behind an optional sponsor program is to offer a way to support the work while offering at the same time a product that’s completely free of any obligation.”

He says he may adopt the same approach for future software launches.

“It’s a win-win situation that works out pretty well.”

—Ian Pickering, The Guardian

What do you think? Adware? Malware? Software? Cool-ware? Curious to read your opinion .

Free Download: Messenger Plus! Live 4.79.353 Beta (4.7 MB)
This download is no longer available.
Be sure to have read the Change log as well.

Your favorite add-on is back…

…with all its functions!

This version is entirely compatible with the final version of Windows Live Messenger 2009 (build 1202). Yes, that includes chat logging, emotion sounds, skins, scripts and so on .

Maybe you heard some rumors about UIB, the new binary resource format in Messenger. Well, Patchou has created a full-transparent en-/decoder for that, so just don’t worry.

Messenger Plus! will decode the files automatically when extracting the resources and will re-encode them automatically when added in a skin. For everybody else, this means Messenger Plus! will still rock in 2009!

Please note that this Build 353 of Messenger Plus! is still a beta. Expect the final Messenger Plus! 4.80 around (!) end of January 2009.