Well the new Hotmail, as part of the larger Windows Live Wave 4 initiative, has rolled out for everyone and I got to admit it is looking pretty smooth. The only beef I have so far is that you can only add four additional email addresses to pull in – not sure why this is the cut off point.

Microsoft:

• Microsoft’s LightSwitch: Building business apps for Web, PCs and cloud – Mary Jo Foley
  Microsoft’s “KittyHawk” — a rapid-application-development tool targeted at fledgling coders who are interested in building business applications — now has an official name: Visual Studio LightSwitch
• Oh no Microsoft! Don’t kill HTML Email again! – WMPoweruser
  MobilityDigest has discovered, via Herm Software, that the handling of pictures on Windows Phone 7 is very similar to Windows Mobile 6 – No automatic downloading of pictures, and no option to change it
• Kinect: the backstory – Steve Clayton
  Network World covered Craig Mundie’s talk at our Financial Analyst Meeting last week and zoned in on the Kinect discussion.

Windows Phone 7:

• Ballmer on Windows Phone 7 – there is no contingency plan for failure – WMPoweruser
  Microsoft has concluded their investor conference last week, and made it very clear they are coming out fighting to win back marker share in the important smartphone and tablet market.

Bing:

• How Bing is out-innovating Google – CNN
  Google is one of the smartest, most innovative companies in the world, but in its core business — online search — it’s being routinely shown up by Microsoft’s third-place search engine, Bing.
• Bing Maps learns to calculate taxi fares before Google – DVICE
  Microsoft has figured out a clever way to inject some innovation into its search service, Bing, with a contest called the “King of Bing Maps.” It’s paying off, as Bing is getting a leg-up on its arch nemesis, Google Maps by learning some new tricks first.
• Bing Maps looked ugly before, now looks like s*** – istartedsomething.com
  I’ve never been a fan of the Bing Maps/Virtual Earth color scheme so when I read reports today that it had been updated, I was hopeful Microsoft might have injected some vibrancy and fine detail into their otherwise dull and indistinct maps. That was before I realized Microsoft wanted to make their maps look worse.