Darren Straight's Blog

ICT Enthusiast and photographer.

By - Darren Straight

Improving E-mail Deliverability into Windows Live Hotmail

Looks like Microsoft’s document recently titled “Improving E-mail Deliverability into MSN Hotmail and Windows Live Mail” has been updated to reflect some of the recent changes within Windows Live Hotmail, the document now titled “Improving E-mail Deliverability into Windows Live Hotmail” can be located here. The document serves to provide an overview of the services, resources and best practices that marketers

By - Darren Straight

Windows Live Hotmail Unsubscribe Function gets tweaked

Microsoft has recently made a small adjustment to its Windows Live Hotmail unsubscribe function that should mean good things for marketers. Microsoft last August answered e-mail marketers’ calls to include an unsubscribe button in its interface so consumers will be less likely to mistakenly report permission-based commercial e-mail as spam. The unsubscribe link appears in place of the report-and-delete button

By - Darren Straight

Spinal Tap to Reunite for Live Earth Concert

Spinal Tap is back, and this time the band wants to help save the world from global warming. The mock heavy metal group immortalized in the 1984 mockumentary, “This Is Spinal Tap,” will reunite for a performance at Wembley Stadium in London as part of the Live Earth concerts scheduled worldwide for July 7. The original members of Spinal Tap

By - Darren Straight

Google surpasses Microsoft as world’s most-visited site

Just heard from SFGate and Search Engine Land that Google the Mountain View search engine has outstripped Microsoft on two fronts, by becoming both the most visited Web site and the most valuable global brand. For the first time, Google has edged ahead of Microsoft as the world’s most visited Internet property. Online measurement firm comScore Networks found that Google had

By - Darren Straight

Windows Live Search Executive Dane Glasgow Leaving!

Dane Glasgow, general manager for Windows Live Search, is leaving the company to work for various nonprofits and spend more time with his family, according to ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley. Only last month did, Christopher Payne, VP of Windows Live Search, leave to start his own company. He was replaced by Satya Nadella, who had been heading the Microsoft Dynamics team

By - Darren Straight

Windows Live Product Search: More Images, More Relevant!

The Windows Live Product Search Team has just released changes to Windows Live Product Search that boost customer-perceived relevance by increasing the number of query results with images to 88.6%. Previously, the number of query results with images was an average of 79.2%, with the rest having an empty white space, so this increase is clearly somewhat of an improvement.

By - Darren Straight

Spanish Windows Live Hotmail presentation for Bloggers!

A big shout out go’s to all bloggers residing in Spain! This Thursday the 26th of April at 10am in the morning, the Spanish Microsoft Windows Live Hotmail Team will be holding a Breakfast and Windows Live Hotmail presentation for bloggers. But to clarify this will not be the Spanish launch of Windows Live Homail, just a presentation to let all those attending know about the

By - Darren Straight

SES NY Keynote Video: Windows Live Chief Steve Berkowitz

The following video is an excerpt from the 2007 Search Engine Strategies Keynote discussion between Danny Sullivan and Windows Live Chief, Steve Berkowitz. In this excerpt Steve Berkowitz explains that “it is not ever satisfactory not to be number one” in the search engine industry. He further explains that Microsoft’s first goal is to reach critical mass from an advertising

By - Darren Straight

Windows Live Spaces Updates for April 2007

The Windows Live Spaces Team has not only today released a ton of new feautues for Windows Live Spaces but has also supplled my pals over at LiveSide with some interesting stats. As of right now, the service is now available in 51 countries in 25 languages, there have been 93 million spaces created since Spaces was released, and more than

By - Darren Straight

Yahoo! rolls out Upcoming.org 2.0

Great News for all you Upcoming.org fans, today the Yahoo Search Blog announced the release of Upcoming.org 2.0 which includes some additional changes and upgrades to Upcoming, including the integration of Flickr and the transition of Upcoming.org onto the Signle Sign in Yahoo! Local platform. And this time Yahoo! seems to have sweeten the deal with a free offer of a T-shirt.