With over 100 million unique visitors, MSN Spaces is the largest blogging service worldwide according to comScore Media Metrix. It is amazing how blogging has taken off. With popular sites like MySpace and MSN spaces, it is safe to say that almost everyone is doing it. Who ever thought that someone's random inner wonderings would actually mean something to someone else, enough to post it on the Internet? Apparently, we all like the more human element in information publishing. Blogs such as post secret draw people in by the droves, because somehow blogging reaches people in a sincere way, and sometimes a deep way. Personally I love blogging, and though I haven't set up my own blog on MSN spaces, I do like their format and options. So swing on by and see what is hoping over there. There is a new service scheduled to take the place of MSN spaces called of course, you guess it "Windows Live Spaces" later this year, and it will have more social networking, to no doubt compete with mySpace. You can read Microsoft's full story here.

Microsoft is holding a contest to see who can develop the best new BOTs for the newly launched Windows Live Messenger Beta.  BOTs are those little pieces of software that typically help users with things such as movie times, stock quotes, even price quotes and help with using IM. For any budding IM developers out there, you can find the three, yes three, software development kits (SDKs) from Microsoft available at the www.robotinvaders.com website. Entries will be accepted until September 15th, 2006. At stake is $40,000, bragging rights, and a mention in the new messenger application. I don't know the first thing about BOT-ing, so somebody clue me in, is it hard? In any case, go check out the website and get your grooviest robot dance on. Ready? Set? BOT!

Engadget reported a few days ago on the fact that Google had outmanouvered Microsoft with respect to ensuring that their Google Desktop software comes preinstalled on Dell hardware instead of Microsoft's desktop search product, MSN Toolbar.  This deal also means that Google will be the default search engine on Dell machines, rather than defaulting to Microsoft's MSN Search page. The truth is that this is as it should be; Google really is the top of the heap in terms of online search engines, so it's good to see that Dell users will get that by default. It isn't clear to me, however, that Google Desktop or MSN Toolbar for that matter are particularly good choices to be installed for new users. Time will tell.

Microsoft has a relatively unknown site called Pause 2 Play, which advocates taking breaks from work to play some of their online games as a tension release. The site is mostly an aggregation of different time wasters organized by the different properties they hold that have games associated with them, primarily MSN Messenger. There are also links to articles to help you justify understand why it's important to take frequent breaks. As if we needed a reason.

John Battelle is one of the authorities on search and his Searchblog is a must read for anyone interesting in the Search space. Recently he conducted an interview with Garry Flake who used to work for Overture and then moved on to work for Yahoo. Garry is now working for Microsoft as the director for the Live Labs strategy. His job being to get Microsoft and Microsoft Research to come up with the next generation in search. Garry provides some very honest answers to some well thought out questions.

If you have a modern Windows Mobile 5.0 device, live in the United States, and are interested in beta testing Windows Live on your mobile device, head on over to Microsoft's Connect site. There you can sign up to become a beta tester for Windows Live for Mobile by clicking on Available Programs, then logging in to your Passport account.

Windows Live for Mobile appears set to replace MSN Mobile, which currently only features support for Hotmail, MSN Messenger, and viewing MSN alerts. BetaNews has further details.

In a Reuters article this morning Neil Holloway, Microsoft President for Europe, Middle East and Africa, claimed that within six months, Microsoft's internet search engine will return more relevant results to users than Google will, specifically for users in the United States.

This new search engine will be integrated into Hotmail as well as MSN Messenger, but Holloway does not confirm if it will be built into Vista.

This is not the first time Microsoft has claimed they were poised to take on Google in the web search space. Previous attempts have been utter failures; let's hope this time is different. 

You know what worries me? Kids. No seriously, they do worry me, especially kids who are allowed to play online without supervision. Now, I am admittedly a little old school when it comes to raising kids but I think the Internet is too dangerous to just let kids roam with no supervision. The recent news on myspace is a prime example of the dangers kids face online. I am not in either camp that say both that "myspace is evil and should be shut down", or that "it doesn’t matter, kid will be kids." I am somewhere in the middle. I have read numerous articles on how the industry isn’t doing enough to keep kids safe. Security pundits say that it is the computer operating system manufacturers that should be keeping kids off the bad part of the net.

So my question to you (almighty reader) is this: Is it Microsoft’s responsibility to keep kids safe by adding software, user controls, and other such methods to their OS? In the end I think it comes down to parents and/or guardians. The software can only do so much, and it can help parents keep track of kids online activities, but the truth is that kids will almost always find a way around it if they want to bad enough. Am I saying we should spy on our kids? Not really. I think we should do a little (shall we say) “open-source” spying? If you told your kids that you would be monitoring their Internet usage, but that they had free reign for what they do and where they go, but that later they would have to be accountable for anything “over the line” would it work? Parents out there, can I get a big Doo-Doot?!

[Via SafeKids.com]