The Office Live Team has announced today that the next version of their suite of online business tools is now available. The web-based service for small businesses will be available in the US, UK, Japan, France and Germany. A new e-mail marketing system and improved free Web design tools are among the many new features and enhancements. In addition, Office Live Small Business will support Firefox 2.

Just a quick follow up to my post last month about Microsoft's participation at Search Engine Strategies London 2008 ! The conference will be held at the Business Design Centre in Islington from 19th to 21st February.

Due to the overwhelming demand from customers outside the United States, we have decided to open up the web analytics beta and invite customers from international adCenter markets. )Please be aware the beta is available in English only.( Customers who have expressed in interest from the UK, France and Canada should receive an invitation very soon! Do be aware that Gatineau is still in its early stages of development,

Today, Kate Newton gives us some insight into how to make our keywords work that little bit harder! Cheers Mel - adCenter Community Team H ow are your keywords performing? Is your account bloated and sluggish from carrying excess keywords that just never get served? Do you want your adCenter account to be a lean, mean keyword machine that generates great ROI? Then look no further!

Hello Everyone With the holidays just days away, we thought we'd take the opportunity to let you all know how the Gatineau Beta is going, and address some of the main support questions you've been asking via email and on the Web Analytics Forum . Firstly we've sent out quite a number of invites to customers who have registered their interest .

Today, Damian from the adCenter Marketing Team sends us off into the final days of the holiday shopping season with some best practices for adjusting your campaigns after the holidays. The adCenter Blog will be on vacation next week - happy holidays! Thanks! Carolyn, adCenter Community Team Post-holiday best practices Opportunity doesn't end with the online "Holiday Crunch" - holiday shoppers are still buying even after the holidays.

One question we hear from customers in the community and through our support channels is about how to import information into adCenter - so we thought we'd review this process in case it's a question that's on your mind as well. Back in September, we released functionality where you can import a campaign into the adCenter interface without first having to copy and paste your exported data into an adCenter template, as previously required. Now,

Today we'd like to share recent adCenter budget improvements we've made due to your feedback: daily budget targets and new notifications to inform you when your monthly budgets have been spent. Daily Budget Targets In October, we added a new daily budget target, which is something many customers had requested. To set a daily budget target: Go to the Pricing page )new campaign( or Keywords tab )existing campaign(. In the drop-down list next to the Campaign budget box,

On the heels of the release of our Report Center Tutorial , we wanted to take a moment to review some of our new reporting capabilities. First off, when you click the adCenter Reports tab, you will see up to 20 of your recent reports, and you can quickly view graphs, data, and details for each recent report, or download a recent report as a zipped, comma-separated values )CSV( file. From the Reports tab, you can also access your saved report templates or create a new report .

Some of our adCenter customers have commented in discussion forums about some of the new functionality now available in the Microsoft adCenter Reports tab. We recently released useful new improvements to adCenter Reports and have created a helpful tutorial to help you learn how to make the most of these new features. In this tutorial, you will receive an in-depth overview of our new improvements to the Microsoft adCenter reports tab,

Today - Chris Francis from our Creative Services Team talks about ad copy for gadgets and all things technical. Cheers Mel - adCenter Community Team A s the Festive season approaches at break-neck speed, now is a great time to make the most of the increased search queries that are carried out for all kinds of technology products and services. This December many letters to Santa will include hints to a new PC or Xbox360.

We're excited to announce a new source of helpful educational materials now available to our adCenter advertisers. Designed especially for our advertisers, the Microsoft adExcellence program offers free training to help you become a Microsoft adCenter expert. Check out our new adExcellence classroom and start learning more about how to get the most from your adCenter experience.

The adCenter Add-in Beta for Excel 2007 is coming'and we're so excited to be building new tools for our customers that we couldn't wait to share the news! Our team is still putting together the final touches, so register with the link below to be notified of its release. This new tool will be available in mid-winter. The adCenter Add-in for Excel 2007 is a no-cost keyword research and optimization tool that integrates into Excel 2007.

This week our Lifestyle guru, Ewan Swain, helps us fall in love with some tantalizing tips on dating ads. Cheers Mel - adCenter Community Team W ith the New Year and Valentine's Day fast approaching, many a lovebird will be surfing the net looking for a partner, or just someone to share a glass of wine with over the coming winter months.

Before we send those of you in the U.S. off for a happy Thanksgiving holiday, we wanted to share some research to help with your holiday campaign planning. First off, interesting information from the Atlas Institute . Their findings show that last year, the busiest online shopping day was Monday, December 11 - the second Monday before Christmas. Atlas predicts this year's busiest day will be Monday, December 10th.

For the last few months we've been sharing tips and tricks on ad copy best practice . The last two posts took a closer look at the specific business areas of Travel and Finance . This week Simone & Kate show you how to creatively fine tune Retail ads. Cheers Mel - adCenter Community Team The diagram below shows how to write amazingly effective Retail ad copy: Simone & Kate's Top 5 Insider Hints for Writing Amazing Retail Copy 1.

Can you believe Thanksgiving is next week already? It's really sneaking up on us this year'and it's important to remember to spend some time preparing your PPC campaigns for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the days that follow - in between shopping for turkey )or soy turkey!(, green bean casserole, and stuffing fixins. Here are a few more tips from our team of adCenter experts. I'd like to thank Tina K., Matt D., Matt R., Peter H., and Peter H. )yep, there are two(,

Today we have part one in a series from Catherine and Nicolas, who specialize in helping our Canadian advertisers. -Carolyn, adCenter Community Team With adCenter only having launched in Canada in February of this year, the Canadian PPC market is young and dynamic, and advertisers are still learning to navigate its waters. I'm Catherine, a Media Specialist based in Redmond, WA; I work with small to medium sized Canadian advertisers.

This week Gabe Ingalls from our Creative Service Team offers some tips for all of you in the finacial services sector. Cheers Mel - adCenter Community team As Libby pointed out last week , many of us are now thinking of our next holiday. Be it a winter or city break, a holiday in a warm climate or just a trip home for the winter holidays, you will have to take into account personal finances to get you there. Consequently,

Hi All We're pleased to announce that quite a few of us will be speaking at Search Marketing Expo - Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman's inaugural London conference under the SMX brand. The conference, taking place on 15th & 16th November at The Hilton Metropole in London,