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. 

This stuff looked so damn good that I had to have it on my page. I don't like the pro-Google attitude, but will stick with it for a few days anyway!

Must watch:

Marc McDonald is Microsoft's first employee. Hired back in 1976. Channel 9 recently caught up with him and talked about the old days at Microsoft as well as what he's doing on the Windows Vista team (he's working on defect prevention).

Funny story. He left Microsoft in 1984 because Microsoft had gotten "too big." Microsoft's size at that point? A few hundred employees. (He came back after Microsoft bought the company he worked for).

http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=111590

At least a couple of readers of this blog will find this post interesting. The March CTP of VS 2005 SDK is out and it features and end-to-end implementation of incorporating a language into the VS environment. The language chosen for this sample is Microsoft IronPython.

Check out the announcement by Somasegar at http://blogs.msdn.com/somasegar/archive/2006/03/10/549102.aspx

For people who have been following DSL tools, the VS SDK Feb CTP had some great additions. The release version is expected in a couple of months.

Interestingly, many of these tools also work with the Express editions. So enthusiasts can actually try this out for free.

Microsoft Research India, based out of Bangalore, has taken a great first step towards creating Virtual India - the Windows Local version of India.

To start with, there are some wonderful street-level maps of Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi, with the promise of more.

It will be great to see the day when we have properly implemented driving directions in India.

It is really heartening to see the way live.com has shaped up. I had this one problem with www.live.com which was that all these gadgets would soon get unmanageable.

I always thought and also told people I know, that live.com should probably pick a lesson or two from www.oazabir.com or similar sites and provide a Windows-like interface on the browser to organize stuff into folders. Looking at the current www.live.com - I think they've done a great job. It could get better, but hey we're still in BETA. And unlike the real evil empire, we keep improving during BETA :)

Great job guys.

And by the way, have you checked out the other live.com offerings?  A virtual walk in Seattle on http://preview.local.live.com or hosting your website with http://www.officelive.com or buying and selling stuff on http://expo.live.com?

And if you wanted all of it together, there is always the all new Windows Live Toolbar (downloadable from http://ideas.live.com/) with integrated Windows Desktop Search and a lot of goodies - like MSN Money,  Phishing Filter for IE 6.0, Feed Reader, Maps,  and everything bundled in.

Also, your favs get auto saved on Windows Live Favorites, making it globally available. This is simply too good!

For those who didn’t know already, I am currently at Rockville, Maryland (USA). Whenever you are in the US, you will realize the importance of online maps (and offline too at times) and the way these maps can familiarize you quickly with an unknown territory.

Mapquest and Yahoo were probably the forerunners of online maps till Google came around. Google Maps and Google Earth were simply too good and they used some neat AJAX-ing to get the wonderful effect of these “sliding maps” when you moved around.

Yesterday I was talking to Rosh, who was busy looking to see if he could see a satellite image of me when he was talking to me over the phone, and then I told him that MSN Virtual Earth is also a good alternative.

I had myself visited MSN Virtual Earth very long ago, and so decided to check it out. For one, MSN Virtual Earth now powers Windows Live Local and the interface seemed very confusing some time ago. But now it all makes sense.

It is simply the best web-based map tool interface – and I’m not being partial. The Scratch Pad is such a wonderful concept. I hate it when I have to keep typing the address again and again in other tools once you’ve moved elsewhere.

The best feature of all is the “Bird’s Eye View”. Seeing is definitely believing here – you got to see it to appreciate it. It gives you a much clearer idea of the map than the satellite map which shows you the rooftops of buildings that you wouldn’t anyway be able to see.

I also like the nifty tools and the neat menu interface on the top. Also try the directions when you are viewing in bird’s eye view, the map shows you step-wise landmarks of where you have to take a right or a left.

To the friends at Redmond – GREAT WORK!