Another week, another build. This week, build 70 brings over 100 bug fixes and also introduces MSN Voice Calls. As with the Yahoo voice calls that was added in build 68, you might experience some call lag.

I don’t know if anyone else experienced it or not, but that last build seamed like it had a heck of a memory leak in it.

A new Trillian Astra build was pushed out on Friday. This build focused more on adding mail support for the various clients, and fixing some of the Windows Live Messenger (MSN) bugs.

Cerulean Studio’s has released a massive update for Trillian Astra. This update mainly offers a major revamp of the Windows Live (MSN) Messenger plugin, as well as Profile 2.o. You can read about all of the changes on the development blog.

C|Net News has done a review of Web 2.0 Email Applications, putting Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo against each other.

Several sites are reporting that Microsoft and Yahoo are working on a deal that would allow both of their instant messenger (IM) clients to communicate to each other. The move would put pressure on AOL which has the largest IM network thanks to AIM and ICQ, and also on Google, Skype, and other smaller networks.

I found an interesting comment in BetaNews’ article:

Still, a source at Yahoo expressed concern about the new partnership to BetaNews, hypothesizing that interoperability will only serve to strengthen Microsoft’s position in the market.Recently, IM software clients have evolved to link consumers to other services beyond just chat - from blogs to search. And if users are able to message contacts on Yahoo through the MSN client bundled with Windows, it could hamper Yahoo’s efforts to reach more eyeballs.

Personally, I hope Yahoo thinks twice and ends up not following through on this deal. I’d be for a Yahoo-AOL or Yahoo-Google deal, just anything that doesn’t help to further strengthen Microsoft grip on the desktop.

Of course, the best option would be for Yahoo, AOL, and MSN to all switch over to jabber.

Microsoft has released its newest service to compete directly with Google. MSN Virtual Earth is Microsoft’s poor attempt to take on Google Maps.

I’d have to say MS Virtual Earth ranks on the “brilliant product list” right up there with Windows ME. Sites like The Register have been eager to point out that MSVE has some rather dated satellite images. In the example used by The Reg, Apple Computers’ HQ isn’t shown on the MSVE maps, however comes in clear when using Google’s service.

Microsoft has released its newest service to compete directly with Google. MSN Virtual Earth is Microsoft’s poor attempt to take on Google Maps.

I’d have to say MS Virtual Earth ranks on the “brilliant product list” right up there with Windows ME. Sites like The Register have been eager to point out that MSVE has some rather dated satellite images. In the example used by The Reg, Apple Computers’ HQ isn’t shown on the MSVE maps, however comes in clear when using Google’s service.

I think by now everyone has heard that Internet Explorer version 7 will include tabbed browsing (also known as Multiple-Document Interface or MDI). A highly popular features among alternate web browser such as Opera and Mozilla Firefox, and even some Internet Explorer shells.

While IE7 is still a ways off, Microsoft’s new MSN Search Toolbar adds tabbed browsing support to Internet Explorer 5.01 and greater. Probably the only tabbed browsing support Windows 2000 users will see from Microsoft.

The new MSN Search Toolbar adds more than just tabs. It’s new features try and take on the popularity of two of Google’s products, the Google Toolbar for IE and Google’s Desktop Search application.

I’d have to give Microsoft credit on this one, as they did something I wish Google had done. They integrated the two products into one. With Google, you have to download, installed, and configure each application separately. - Though I can see the flip side to this as well.

Microsoft has released a new version of the MSN Toolbar. The new version of the toolbar adds desktop searching ability, similar to services previously launched by search competitors Google and Yahoo.

It’ll be interesting to see what people think about this.

Back in October we ran a poll at OCC that asked what search engine our members used most. Out of the 139 people that responded, 88.49% said that Google was their main search engine and lone person said MSN.

Well now that MSN has had their new search engine out for a few weeks, I thought I’d ask OCC members if they’ve tried it, and what they think about it. Maybe you’ve switched from Google, Yahoo, A9, or something else for MSN Search. Let us know what you think in this week’s poll.