OfficeLive - the new service from Microsoft - provides three subscription models. The first model provides you with a free domain name!  It sounded quite unbelievable at first!

So I went ahead with the steps - pretty simple - you choose your domain name, login with a Passport account (I think you need a Passport account tied to a USA address) and then came the surprise part. I was asked for a credit card number. Turns out, the credit card information is just for "verification purposes".

In other words that meant to me - well, get a free domain only if you are serious about it and if you trust us - after all, we are giving it to you for free!

So I gave my credit card details (was a little disappointed to see that they actually store the information and use it if you buy any of the paid services in the future), but I don't intend to sign-up for any paid services and I can pretty well trust Microsoft not to do anything stupid like go charge your card without asking you first.

What I saw after that was amazing!  The site builder tool is fabulous! Simply awesome! I would encourage everybody to go register only to get the experience of that tool. It took me just a few minutes to select a layout and create a simple one-page site.

Of course, it said the domain registration would take 24 hours - it took lesser than that. I now own another domain - www.pandurangnayak.com - but if you visited it right away - there comes the shocker!!!  It shows me the Apache/Red Hat test page!!!

That is SO NOT COOL - I know that the domain must have been registered with some external organization who has just pointed it to some default site. And there must be some batch job that will point it right. But it is so uncool to see a Red Hat Linux / Apache test page for a Microsoft service.

If somebody is listening, please fix it before the Slashdot guys have a good laugh and scribble some nonsense.

PS: If you want to see my temporary page, visit http://temp.pandurangnayak.officelive.com If you had questions about whether that is going to be my new home - visit the site and find out.