This week, MSN has been tweaking its services line-up by rolling out a couple of new services and temporarily withdrawing the test version of its new MSN search engine.

On Tuesday, MSN removed the alpha release of its forthcoming algorithmic search engine from the MSN Sandbox site, as first reported by the BoostMarketing.com Web site. (The MSN Sandbox is a collection of technologies under development by MSN and other Microsoft divisions.)

MSN is planning to launch another preview release of its MSN Search engine later this year. And in the meantime, MSN is continuing to provide users with Web search using its current MSN Search facility.

"Thank you very much to all of those that tried our service and sent us feedback. We will make improvements based on the suggestions we received. Once we are ready, we will release another preview of our new algorithmic search engine," read a note on the MSN Search Tech Preview test page.

Microsoft had posted the MSN Search alpha code as part of an open test program on June 30. MSN officials have said to expect Microsoft to launch both its new MSN Web search, as well as a new MSN desktop search service by the end of 2004.

An MSN spokeswoman elaborated further: "The Technology Preview was designed to enable us to gather ongoing feedback on the relevancy of the results delivered by our new algorithmic search engine.Given that the feedback we have received has exceeded our expectations, the Technology Preview site was shut down on August 16th to incorporate some of that feedback. We are planning another Tech Preview later this year prior to the delivery of the final search engine.

The spokeswoman confirmed that MSN is still expecting to field the new MSN Search engine before year-end.

"We're aiming to launch our new algorithmic search engine, as well as a range of other search services, later this year," she said.

Also on Tuesday, MSN introduced what several new, free MSN services that it's calling "life management features" for its Hotmail customers. Among the new services MSN added are online calendaring, online task manager, note creation, and reminders. MSN also added new functionality to the contact management service that's already available to Hotmail users, enabling them to store more detailed contact information than just names and e-mail addresses. All of these new services are available immediately, according to Microsoft.

An MSN spokeswoman said that none of these new life-management services is considered part of the new IT small-business services that MSN executives have promised to roll out in the coming months. The spokeswoman had no comment on whether any of the new services are repackaged versions of services formerly offered via Microsoft's bCentral small-business portal.

The spokeswoman said the new life-management services are "just another way to increase customer satisfaction with Hotmail."

MSN recently added more free extra storage to Hotmail and added new free antivirus protection to the site.

On Monday, MSN made available yet another new service, the second iteration of MSN Video.

MSN Video is a free service that offers video clips of news, sports and other programs. MSN rivals, including AOL, Yahoo and Real Networks, all offer similar services.

MSN had told its MSN Premium subscribers to expect the launch of MSN Video 2 by end of day Monday.