RIM and Microsoft announce Windows Live services for Blackberry handsets

RIM and Microsoft have announced a deal that will officially bring Windows Live Services -- specifically Hotmail and Messenger -- to Blackberry handsets. Has hell frozen over? We wouldn't know. What we do know is the two companies have been rivals in the mobile industry up until now, but they both gain significantly from agreement.

Microsoft is no stranger to the idea of playing in a competitor's sandbox (remember Office for Mac?). By making Windows Live Messenger and Hotmail more accessible on the Crackberry, the company further pushes its communications services towards mass standardization especially in the business world. RIM also benefits from the agreement in the same way Apple benefits from Office for Mac: an OS is only as good as the software on it.

Messenger on Blackberry should retain most of its functions. It looks like users will be able to do the usual: IM, set status, pull up buddy lists, save conversations, use emoticons, and even send and receive files. While it looks like users can join group chats, creating group chats seems to be absent from the feature list.
[Via: Download Squad ]
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Google Friend Connect: a social network for every site

On Monday night, Google launched its entry into the growing field of programs that attempt to share your "social graph" -- your collection of friends and relationships -- across many social networks. The program is called Friend Connect, and it's starting with a handful of sites, including Facebook, Plaxo and Hi5. Friend Connect is also going to support applications under OpenSocial, Google's social network application platform that has been around since last November.

For the average web user, Friend Connect means you're going to see social data cropping up on a whole bunch of websites that never included social networks before. You'll basically be able to plug in your information from any of the participating networks where you have a profile, and then you can interact with other users of the site who do the same. It's basically like a mini-Facebook built into any site.

What does this mean for site owners? Well, Google is promising to make setting up Friend Connect on your site ridiculously easy -- which is why we think you're going to start seeing it everywhere on the web. It basically generates the entire code for you, to be pasted into your existing site. If you're interested in trying it out, you can apply to Google now.Does every site really need to be a social network? Is this just an attempt to jump onto the "open" bandwagon and generate more data that might be valuable to marketers? We're sure that Google will have to deal with those questions from critics very soon, but for right now, we're still watching their bizarre "Love Da' Guacamole" demo video.
[Via: Download Squad ]
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How's Windows XP SP3 treating you?

Well, Microsoft finally got SP3 out the door for you stubborn Vista-resistant XP users, and we're dying to know how you like it. That's right, you. See, our resident guinea pig intern hasn't felt any performance improvement, we've received tips from people who have seen a speed bump, and problems have cropped up as well -- we've heard reports of sporadic reboots and crashes, some of them AMD-related. But hey, forget all of them... how has SP3 changed your life?
[Via: Engadget ]
[Tag: microsoft,windows,windows xp,WindowsXp,xp sp3,XpSp3 ]