Windows Live Home was a

web portal A web portal is a specially designed website that brings information from diverse sources, like emails, online forums and search engines, together in a uniform way. Usually, each information source gets its dedicated area on the page for displayin ...

launched by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

as part of its

Windows Live Windows Live is a discontinued brand name for a set of web services and software products developed by Microsoft as part of its software-as-a-service platform. Chief components under the brand name included web services (all of which were exposed ...

services. It aimed to bring many of the Windows Live services together in one place, by providing a central location to access Windows Live services and monitor status information.

History

Windows Live Home was first revealed on August 3, 2007 at

Microsoft Japan Microsoft Japan, officially , is a subsidiary of Microsoft based in Japan. Their headquarters are near to Shinagawa station at Minato-ku district of Tokyo. History In 1978, Kazuhiko Nishi, co-founder of ASCII Publisher, partnered with Bill ...

's annual Business Strategic Meeting 2008. It was expected that a new version of Live.com (later

Windows Live Personalized Experience Windows Live Personalized Experience (also known as My.Live.com, previously Live.com) was a customizable portal launched by Microsoft in early November 2005. It was one of the first Windows Live services to launch. Features Live.com lets users a ...

, now defunct) would be released in Fall 2007, featuring a new interface design together with Windows Live service integrations. Microsoft later confirmed that Windows Live Home would not be a replacement for Live.com. Some of the early announced features for Windows Live Home included: *Providing access to emails and contacts through Hotmail *Showing upcoming calendar items from

Windows Live Calendar Outlook.com is a webmail service that is part of the Microsoft 365 product family. It offers mail, Calendaring software, calendaring, Address book, contacts, and Task management, tasks services. Founded in 1996 by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smit ...

*Allowing blog and photo publishing direct to

Windows Live Spaces Windows Live Spaces was Microsoft's blogging platform and social network service. The site was originally released in early 2004 as MSN Spaces to compete with other social networking services, and re-launched in 2006 as a part of a shifting of comm ...

*Showing the status of

Windows Live OneCare Windows Live OneCare (previously Windows OneCare Live, codenamed A1) was a computer security and performance enhancement service developed by Microsoft for Windows. A core technology of OneCare was the multi-platform RAV (Reliable Anti-virus), wh ...

installed on the PC The final version of Windows Live Home was released on October 15, 2007. One notable feature of the first release of Windows Live Home was the ability to set the location of the user and display the current weather conditions for the city or region selected. The color of the homepage also automatically changed according to the time of the day. Windows Live Home was updated on December 2, 2008 as part of the overall Windows Live Wave 3 update. In April 2010, , the former address of Live Search, which had become

Bing Bing most often refers to: * Bing Crosby (1903–1977), American singer * Microsoft Bing, a web search engine Bing may also refer to: Food and drink * Bing (bread), a Chinese flatbread * Bing (soft drink), a UK brand * Bing cherry, a varie ...

by then, started linking to Windows Live Home. The service was updated to "Wave 4" release on June 7, 2010. In 2012, Microsoft began to phase out the Windows Live brand, and introduced Outlook.com as a future replacement for Hotmail. As Outlook.com sends users directly to their inbox when logging in, there is no equivalent of Windows Live Home. After the final Hotmail accounts were migrated to the new Outlook.com UI in May 2013, Windows Live Home ceased to exist.

Features

Windows Live Home integrated tightly with other Windows Live services, serving as the entry point to many other services. These services featured the following: *Ability to change the themes to be displayed on all Windows Live properties *View the "Messenger social" feed for people in the user's network *View recent activities for people in the user's network from Windows Live properties including

Windows Live Profile A Microsoft account or MSA (previously known as Microsoft Passport, .NET Passport, and Windows Live ID) is a single sign-on Microsoft user account for Microsoft customers to log in to Microsoft services (like Outlook.com), devices running on on ...

Windows Live Groups OneDrive Groups, formerly Windows Live Groups, was an online service by Microsoft as part of its Windows Live range of services that enabled users to create their social groups for sharing, discussion and coordination. Features The service allowed ...

, SkyDrive,

Windows Live Photos Microsoft OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) is a file hosting service operated by Microsoft. First launched in August 2007, it enables registered users to share and synchronize their files. OneDrive also works as the storage backend of the web vers ...

, and

Windows Live Messenger MSN Messenger (also known colloquially simply as "Messenger"), later rebranded as Windows Live Messenger, was a cross-platform instant messaging client, instant-messaging client developed by Microsoft. It connected to the Microsoft Messenger ser ...

*View recent activities for people in the user's network from a range of third-party Services, such as

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

, MySpace, and

LinkedIn LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented online service that operates via websites and mobile apps. Launched on May 5, 2003, the platform is primarily used for professional networking and career development, and allows job se ...

*View "

Hotmail Outlook.com is a webmail service that is part of the Microsoft 365 product family. It offers mail, Calendaring software, calendaring, Address book, contacts, and Task management, tasks services. Founded in 1996 by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smit ...

highlights" information such as any unread messages, upcoming birthdays and

Calendar A calendar is a system of organizing days. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months and years. A date is the designation of a single and specific day within such a system. A calendar is also a physi ...

events, flagged messages, or unread social network updates *Update a user's personalized status message *View

MSN MSN (meaning Microsoft Network) is a web portal and related collection of Internet services and apps for Windows and mobile devices, provided by Microsoft and launched on August 24, 1995, alongside the release of Windows 95. The Microsoft Net ...

headlines *View online Messenger contacts and chat with them using Web Messenger.

References

External links

*
Windows Live Home mobile version
{{Windows Live

Home A home, or domicile, is a space used as a permanent or semi-permanent residence for one or many humans, and sometimes various companion animals. It is a fully or semi sheltered space and can have both interior and exterior aspects to it. H ...

Internet properties disestablished in 2013 Defunct websites