Windows Live Wave 3 includes new movie maker, writer, messenger
Windows Live Wave 3 includes new beta versions of Windows Live Messenger, Toolbar, Mail, Photo Gallery, Writer, and Family Safety. Windows Live Movie Maker has been included in the Windows Live suite for the first time as well, although I discovered that Movie Maker Beta is only available for Windows Vista. If you try running the installer using Windows XP, Movie Maker doesn't show up as an option.
The new applications feature a number of changes. First, the user interface has changed a bit. All of the applications have a lighter, brighter color scheme than their predecessors. Windows Live Writer Beta includes a new tool that lets you post videos to YouTube directly from the blog editing client. There's a new calendar in the Windows Live Mail Beta application.
Windows Live Movie Maker appears to be a stripped down, easier to use version of Windows Vista Movie Maker. It lacks a timeline and audio editing features, doesn't allow you to crop or edit clips, and lacks the ability to place text overlays on a video. In other words, if the old Windows Movie Maker is like Final Cut for dummies, Windows Live Movie Maker is Movie Maker for dummies. I'm not entirely clear on why Microsoft even bothered with this program.
I don't know if this is a labor of love or merely the brainchild of four very gifted games designers, but Level Up is a really weird mash-up of gaming elements that you have probably never seen in a Flash game before.
Let's start with the premise itself: Groundhog Day meets Memento. The game experience revolves around 'days': you explore the world and the clock slowly ticks towards the evening. You bounce around picking up gems and talking to the denizens of 'Level Upland'. Eventually you feel tired and head back to ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Mark said 12:43PM on 9-17-2008
I hate how they are taking all the built in Windows apps and turning them into Adware. It's not like they are strapped for cash.
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Johnny said 1:53PM on 9-17-2008
What? Windows Live Messenger is the only program to include adverts in the entire suite, and that's not even shipped as part of Windows any more. None of the others have ads!
Kai said 6:46AM on 9-18-2008
@Johnny: ya, and WLM has ads because they need some form of revenue to pay for the back-end servers they need to manage the service. The other apps don't have this "maintenance cost" and don't have ads.
Mac said 5:45PM on 9-17-2008
Considering the Movie Maker built into Vista Ultimate doesn't work, it's pretty annoying to see them wasting time on a completely different version shipped via Live. I'd rather see these guys put to work giving me some of those mostly-missing freebie Ultimate Extras we were promised.
Once I figured out that MS really wasn't going to deliver Extras, I admit getting the "I can't believe I fell for it" feeling.
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Jash Sayani said 6:46AM on 9-18-2008
Seriously. The Vista MovieMaker is a pain. They should work on it or ship the XP verison of MovieMaker with Vista that actually works. But anyways it M$ !
iofthestorm said 4:27AM on 9-20-2008
Actually, you can download Movie Maker 2.6, which is basically the XP version on Vista, although personally I find the Vista version to be superior. Unfortunately there's some weird preview bug on my computer so I can't preview anything. Supposedly there was a bug like this that affected people with Intel graphics chipsets, but I have an ATI graphics card and AMD CPU, and in any case that bug was supposed to be fixed by SP1 so I don't know what's wrong with my computer. The new Photo gallery looks nice, it'd be even nicer if it would remember the people tags when uploading pics to facebook or something. That is, if I actually uploaded pics to facebook.
Shawn said 5:06PM on 9-18-2008
Hey! Where did my form-fill feature in Live Toolbar go??? EVAPORATED with NO warning and I don't see a replacement. BEWARE!!! I'm screwed, hope this helps others.
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Some_Person said 5:07PM on 11-12-2008
The new Movie Maker is TERRIBLE! You can't do anything with it!
Please, Microsoft, PLEASE bring back the Vista Movie Maker!
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maeen said 12:01PM on 11-25-2008
thanks
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