We’re pleased to announce Entrepreneur Magazine’s eBook (sponsored by Microsoft Office Live) “I Hate my Website: 10 Easy Ways to Improve Your Website, Plus 9 Things Never to do.”   This 54-page pdf includes tips, techniques, and tools to help you design an effective and engaging Web site, generate more Web site traffic, maximize search engine results, engage a Web professional, provide a more secure online experience, and much more.

Download your own copy today, click here

The Microsoft Office Live Team

 Microsoft Office Live is partnering with Ask.com to make search advertising more accessible to small businesses; this breakthrough service provides you with an aggregated tool to advertise over multiple search engines and helps you advertise your business to the right people—those already searching for what you sell.

About Microsoft Office Live adManager beta:

• ·         Purchase and manage your keywords – now offering Ask Sponsored Listings in addition to MSN.com and Windows Live Search
• ·         Establish a monthly budget and maximum cost per click
• ·         Create your own search ads
• ·         Track results and optimize your search advertising budget
• ·         See which keywords are driving the most traffic

Get more information about adManager  

The Microsoft Office Live Team

Microsoft Office Live Essentials and Office Live Premium customers everywhere, we’ve heard your feedback. So now, we’re giving you what you asked for: an easy, less confusing way to add your employees or colleagues to your Office Live business applications and workspaces.

We learned that the previous way to add new users --- clicking on the Common Tasks box and then Set Permissions, resulting in a new page in your browser --- didn’t always accommodate the tasks you were trying to accomplish. It took you away from the application you were working in, and also made it harder to see exactly who had permission to access your applications.

So, drum roll please, we have created what we call the Sharing Sidebar.

“This is a direct response to feedback we’ve been getting, and we believe it will increase the usability of our business applications,” says Chris Beiter, program manager for Microsoft Office Live who writes a blog for Office Live developers.   

You will see the Sharing Sidebar on the right side of your screen when you’re in Business Contact Manager, Project Manager, and other business applications and workspaces in Microsoft Office Live Essentials and Office Live Premium. It says “Sharing” at the top, not surprisingly, and “Users” next to a drop-down arrow right below.

The Sharing Sidebar follows you on your screen as you traverse the different business applications and workspaces. It shows you the names of any users who have permission to use the application. Their names are separated by the roles that each has been assigned --- owner, administrator, editor, or reader.

Meanwhile, you can use the drop-down menu that you see in the Users tab to both manage users for the current application, and manage all users.  

·         Managing users for the current application: You can now manage users specifically for the application you are using, and you won’t have to leave it to do so. Instead, a small dialogue box pops up over the top of the application, enabling you to add new users or remove or modify permissions of existing users of the application. Once you click OK, the dialogue box closes, you are back in the application, and your changes begin appearing in the Sharing Sidebar.

·         Managing all users: This option takes you to the User Manager, the previous way of granting all user permissions. It’s still available if you prefer making changes in the User Manager, and it is a good method for adding many users at a time or giving a few users permissions to several applications at once.

Just as before, new users added to the permissions list, as well as existing users whose permissions have been discontinued or modified, will each receive an automatic e-mail message that notifies them of the change.

Note that if the Sharing Sidebar happens to get in the way while you’re working in a certain application, it can be collapsed in that application. It will stay in collapsed form until the next time you log into Microsoft Office Live.

“We hope this new way of viewing and modifying permissions makes it easier to share Office Live applications and workspaces, and really starts unlocking the potential for online collaboration,” Beiter says. “Thanks to all the customers who sent us their feedback on this. Please keep the feedback coming.”  

Monte Enbysk