For over 10 years newsgroups (NNTP) have been Microsoft’s primary public support forums for its products and technologies.

Currently there are more than 2,000 public newsgroups and 2,200 private newsgroups devoted to its various products and services.

But from June 2010 these will be moved to revamped forums on Microsoft TechNet, MSDN and Microsoft Answers.

Here is a statement from a Microsoft spokesperson:

“On June 1, Microsoft will be progressively  closing newsgroups and helping active newsgroups users migrate their discussions to the refreshed Microsoft forums that include Microsoft Answers, TechNet and MSDN.  This decision was made in an effort to provide the best community and support resources and experience to our customers with social features and functionalities that address their feedback and needs.”

You can read more about this transition on the Microsoft Newsgroup page: Click Here.

I personally think this is a good move as it will allow less technical users to access these communities, rather than rely on newgroup readers. In 2010, a web based (and even social) approach to support is the way to go.

Regards

Marc Liron – Microsoft MVP

Messenger Connect from Microsoft marks an important step forward for the Windows Live Messenger service as it will allow websites to integrate the function into their pages resulting in better sharing with friends.

Essentially its a new social API that allows new ways for partners and developers to connect with Windows Live Messenger. (It incorporates exisitng APIs Windows Live ID, Contacts API, Messenger Web Toolkit).

Messenger Connect is a major leap for Microsoft. Until now, the company’s social products have been largely closed off to 3rd parties. Now, this new API allows Windows Live Messenger and 3rd party websites and applications that use it, to pull in data from across a user’s online social world.

Developers are going to be able to create compelling social experiences on their websites and apps by providing them with social promotion & distribution via Windows Live Messenger, and when you see the new capabilities of the Windows Messenger due in a few weeks time – that is really going to be a great experience for the end user.

Microsoft really are putting “Social” at the heart of their new Windows Live products coming this summer!

Regards

Marc Liron – Microsoft MVP

Microsoft has been hard at work on the next version of Windows Home Server – codenamed “Vail”.

This new version of Windows Home Server is notable chiefly for being based on Windows Server 2008 R2 — a major upgrade from the current version, which uses Windows Server 2003 SP2 as the underlying OS.

Essentially it’s an Operating System with a built in Media Server, Backup, Data Recovery, Document Management, Remote Access and a gaggle of “add-ons” bundled in; and allows you to build a reliable network at home!

The Windows Home Server team blog cites four key areas of improvement with the new version: extending the ability to stream media outside of the home network and over the internet; multi-PC backup and restore; simplified setup and user experience.

This time round the OS is 64-bit only, with no 32-bit version available. Minimum hardware requirements are modest: a 1.4GHz x64 CPU, 1GB or RAM and a 160GB hard disk.

Individual hard disks larger than 2TB are now supported, as are iSCSI storage devices, and drive removal operations have been improved.

Here is a screenshot of the new User Interface:

In the following video you will see a walk through of the new product UI and take a first look preview of Windows Home Server v2