Microsoft has finally retired Windows Messenger (Live Messenger, MSN Messenger) and is asking users (former users) to migrate to it’s Skype platform. Luckily, your contacts come with you with the transition.

I did prefer the simple Messenger over the more feature rich but beefy Skype. Skype is a great product, but sometimes I like the skinny client that doesn’t use much screen space or system resources (I’m OCD when it comes to that!).

Messenger was retired in April 2013 and is no longer available or supported on most Mac and Windows operating systems. *

You can continue to make audio and video calls with your contacts on Skype and Facebook and send IMs for free—your contacts will come with you when you update to Skype and sign in with your Microsoft account.

Extended support for Windows XP is finally coming to an end. Exactly one year from today, Microsoft is pulling the life support plug. What’s this mean to you? If you want to stay secure and up to date, you need to upgrade to a newer version of Windows. For some, that’s as easy as buying an upgrade. For others, this comes by upgrading your whole machine and getting the OS bundled with it. Either way, it’s time to move on.

What does End of Support mean to customers?

Simply, it means you should take action to move off of Windows XP. After April 8, 2014, there will be no new security updates, non-security hotfixes, free or paid assisted support options or online technical content updates. Running Windows XP SP3 and Office 2003 in your environment after their end of support date may expose your company to potential risks, such as:

• Security & Compliance Risks: Unsupported and unpatched environments are vulnerable to security risks. This may result in an officially recognized control failure by an internal or external audit body, leading to suspension of certifications, and/or public notification of the organization’s inability to maintain its systems and customer information.
• Lack of Independent Software Vendor (ISV) & Hardware Manufacturers support: Back in 2011, many independent software vendors (ISVs) were already unlikely to support new versions of applications on Windows XP.

A new blog post on the Bing Blog tells how and why they choose their daily picture on the Bing home page. I search with Bing, and to be honest, the daily picture does bring me back to the actual Bing homepage daily. At least for curiosity. Always an interesting visit, and I do click to find out more information on the majority of images. Many of the images are very nice to look at and do spark a bit of the positive emotion. So, mission accomplished, Bing. Well done.

But satisfaction isn’t our only business at Bing. Take, for example, the beautiful, high-resolution daily homepage image at Bing.com. While it may not increase your life satisfaction by helping you get something done, a quick look at Twitter and Facebook will tell you that it is a source of momentary delight for millions of people every day. The editorial team behind choosing the image carefully considers user happiness in every selection they make, working to maximize the surprise and delight we can get by simply taking a moment to explore our world visually.

Skydrive has finally updated it’s iOS application to include some much needed and requested features. Number one on the list: iPhone 5 and iPad Mini support. Also included is the ability to download full resolution photos, whereas before you could upload full res, but downloaded images would be resized to lower resolutions.

Here are the updates we’ve made to v3.0 of the SkyDrive app for iOS:

• Support for iPhone 5 and iPad Mini
• Updated app icons and user experience
• Works better with your photos:
  • Download full resolution photos to your iPhone or iPad
  • Control the size of photos you upload and download
  • Photo metadata is retained when you upload to SkyDrive
• Opening and saving files to SkyDrive works better with other apps on your iOS devices
• Many other small changes, bug fixes and performance improvements

Ed Bott made a post “Just how much do people hate Windows 8”, and it has created a lot of conversation in the replies. Windows 8 has a lot of people being more vocal than usual when it comes to operating systems. It seems like Microsoft is getting a lot of feedback from people that either hate it (a LOT) or those that love it (a lot less that those that hate it), and a few from those that just like it or have no opinion.

So, Microsoft definitely has word of mouth on this release, as well as a lot of feedback to go off of to build a better OS in the future. However, are they going to listen to the haters or the lovers this round?

Feel free to jump in on the conversation. Just don’t get too sore when someone that doesn’t agree with you starts bashing your opinion. I try to stay out of those type of conversations. For me, Windows 8 works excellent. It’s not without it’s faults, but I have no major complaints and use it exclusively at home. But, that’s just my opinion. For others, Windows 8 is an abomination that shouldn’t have seen the light of day in the hands of consumers. They can use it, but it makes things more difficult. Some can’t even figure it out.

So, like Windows 8 or hate it, people are being very loud in their opinions. And they will fight to the death to make sure their opinions are stated as fact (they are not….).

Windows 8 is slowly gaining market share by taking it from Vista. While there are a lot of critics of Windows 8, the OS isn’t that bad. All new PC’s ship with Windows 8 and it will become more and more prevalent on the desktop scene. But, I am not sure if the increased market share is due to people actually wanting it with their PC, upgrades or custom PC’s, or if it is mainly from people upgrading their older Vista or pre-Vista PC’s with a new model that comes with Windows 8. The numbers don’t really say that much.

The Outlook.com calendar has finally been updated to the newer ‘Metro’ style interface. This was one of the first things I noticed with the new Outlook.com styling, was that it didn’t expand into the other features. I’m glad they finally are updating the others. The calendar definitely looks better. As of right now, mine is still the old style, but it is expected to roll out to all users this week.

We also made navigating and getting info into your calendar faster than ever. You can add or edit events with a single click, enter an event by simply dragging your mouse across the time or date range you need, add tasks without opening a new page, and jump to a particular day simply by clicking the date.

Sources have said that the new update to Windows 8, also known as Windows Blue, will be called Windows 8.1. This is similar to the Windows Phone releases with WP7, WP7.1 and WP7.5 before jumping to Windows Phone 8. As Windows 8 is a new direction for Microsoft with more, but more incremental, updates it makes a lot of sense for these smaller version changes.

Microsoft executives like Windows Chief Financial Officer Tami Reller have said repeatedly that Microsoft envisions Windows 8 as something more than a one-season wonder. Reller has saidMicrosoft considers Windows 8 a product "of multiple selling seasons." So it makes sense that Blue would be christened Windows 8.x, not Windows 9.

I’m back from a nice vacation to Arizona. Drove from Oregon. I like driving, I don’t like driving 2000 miles. Expect more posts coming soon for Windows, Xbox, and general Microsoft news. A little something I noticed – my HTC 8X (Windows Phone) has quite a bit better reception than an Apple iPhone 4S. Just the antenna design, I guess, but enough to make a substantial difference!

There have been some rumors and screen shots for the upcoming release of Windows Blue (supposedly the newer version of Windows will not be Windows 9) that show a new kernel, using 6.3, which is ahead of Windows 7’s 6.1 and Windows 8 6.2. If this is true, then it will bring more improvements than previously thought. Some were saying the Windows Blue was more of a Service Pack than a real release.

The screenshots do not show what type of features Windows Blue will include, but the NT kernel change is notable. Windows Vista adopted NT kernel 6.0, while Windows 7 jumped to 6.1, and Windows 8 to 6.2. A switch to 6.3 with Windows Blue suggests this is a major revision to Windows, but one that will be delivered much sooner than a traditional Windows cycle. Sources tell us there is no "Windows 9" project inside Microsoft at the moment, and that Blue is the next major update to Windows.