Bulletin boards, forums, instant messaging—since its earliest days, the Internet experience has been centered around helping groups of people communicate, collaborate, and share online. Windows Live continues to extend and improve upon this experience with new, integrated features that help you keep your life in sync, while staying in touch with the people you care about.

With the new Windows Live Groups, we’ve released a set of simple tools to help you communicate and share with the “real world” groups that so many of us belong to: sports teams, school committees, neighborhood associations, scout troops, etc.  

To be fair, this first release of Groups isn’t trying to be a comprehensive replacement either for large public community forums, or for “badge”-like affiliation groups where millions of people can express their connection to a celebrity or a cause. Those are great and valuable services—they’re just not what we’re aiming at in this first release.

So let’s take a look at what we can do with Windows Live Groups:

Creating a group

Getting started is easy. From Windows Live Messenger, just click the Add menu (the little Messenger icon with the + sign at the top of your contact list), and then click Create a group:

…or from the Windows Live website, click More at the top of any page, and then click Groups:

Then, pick a name and a web address (we also use this for the e-mail distribution list address), choose a theme if you’d like, and you’re ready to go.

Group conversations in Messenger

A unique feature of Windows Live Groups is that the groups you create will automatically show up in Messenger. For smaller groups (up to 20 people), you can even have group conversations with whomever happens to be online. This is great for shooting a quick question, such as asking the other moms in your meet-up group who’s up for a quick park outing during an unexpected sun break here in Seattle. It’s also good for teasing your teammates about last night’s game.

My friend Steven recently created a group for his Saturday morning soccer club, for the parents of his daughter’s pre-kindergarten class, and for his poker buddies.

When Steven created his poker group,  he immediately saw it appear in his main window in Messenger (it also shows up on the web on his Groups page). He can expand the group, see who else has joined recently, and start conversations with those people.

When 2 or more people from a group come online, he can double-click on the group and bring up the conversation window with everyone who is online.  He can send winks, emoticons and even nudge the group Messenger window just like in a regular IM conversation.

Of course, as the owner of a group, you can turn off the Messenger conversation feature, if that’s what your members prefer, or if the group grows to more than 20 people – just click Options on your group’s web site, and then click Edit Settings. 

Scheduling events in your shared group calendar

Groups also include a shared calendar, which is automatically linked to your personal calendar on Windows Live.

Just click Calendar from the navigation links on the left of your group’s website, and you’ll be able to see the calendar for that group:

Or, to see how your calendar looks and find out if you have time to make it to all of the events that your groups are scheduling, just click More at the top of any Windows Live webpage, and then click Calendar.  You can easily hide or show individual calendars, etc.

Sharing photos, files, and discussions

It’s also easy to share photos or files with the members of your group, and to post ongoing discussions.

Just like with your personal profile on Windows Live, you can just choose Photos or SkyDrive from the navigation links on the left of your group, and post pictures, team rosters, to-do lists, and even shared web links. When you post things, the info shows up in the “What’s new” list on the group’s main webpage, and will show up on the Windows Live Home page for all of the members of the group.

We’re just getting started with Groups.  We hope you enjoy this first round of features and find them to be useful online tools for your real-world groups.

- Jeff and Steven

We hope you are getting a chance to take some time to relax and enjoy the company of good friends and family. And while you’re taking a break, we wanted to share some of our favorite things to do in Windows Live during the holidays.

	Manage your photos in Windows Live Photo Gallery and easily tag friends and family in your holiday pictures.
Find friends from other networks and add them to your Windows Live network so you can easily stay in touch.
	Create a Windows Live group to share your holiday plans, pictures, discussions, and other information.
Publish your photos from Windows Live Photo Gallery to photos.live.com so you can share them with others.
	Change your scene to a touch of holiday flair in the new Windows Live Messenger.
Create a beautiful photo montage on your holiday events using Windows Live Writer.
	Use Windows Live Family Safety to keep your kids safe and to monitor their online activity and contacts.
Plan a holiday party using Windows Live Events.
	Share your favorite holiday story and photos by creating a personalized site on Windows Live Spaces.
Save up to 25 GB of files on Windows Live SkyDrive so you have what you need while you’re travelling.
	Update your Windows Live profile with the new books you read and movies you saw over the holidays.
Share photos in real time with your favorite contacts in Windows Live Messenger.
	For those in the US, join I’M and we’ll donate to your selected charity every time you send an e-mail message with Windows Live Hotmail or an instant message with Messenger.
Use mobile.live.com to get the latest holiday updates on your mobile phone so you can enjoy Windows Live even when you’re relaxing away from your PC.

On behalf of the Windows Live team, we wish you very happy holidays and all the best in the new year!

- Dharmesh

As we all know, people don’t live their whole online lives on one site or on one network—and with the wide proliferation of services out there, it’s getting harder every day to share all the cool stuff you’re doing with the people you care about. Similarly, it’s easy to feel like you have to check so many different places to see what your friends are up to that in the end, you wind up missing out.

With the new Windows Live, it’s easy for you to choose to share more of what you’re doing with the people you care about. This feature, called “web activities,” lets you share the stuff you do on other websites with the people you add to your network on Windows Live. Updates about your web activities appear not only on your personal profile, but also in the “What’s new” list in other popular areas of Windows Live that your friends may already use every day—like Messenger, Hotmail, and the Toolbar. You can choose which web activities to share, and for each activity, you decide whether to make it visible to everyone (public), just the people in your network, or just the people you choose.

Check out this fun video we made to demonstrate how it works in Windows Live.

Discovering web activities

There’s a variety of ways you might discover web activities for the first time:

What’s new list:  On the home page, on a friend’s profile page, in Messenger, or anywhere else where you see a list of updates called “What’s new,” you will see an update when someone in your network adds a new web activity like Twitter, Yelp, or Wordpress. Just click Add this web activity, and you’ll go right to the page to start sharing the stuff you’re doing on that website with people in your network on Windows Live.

Home page:  On the home page, near the top of the right column, click Add web activities, and you’ll go to the web activities page, where you can choose from the various sites who have partnered with Windows Live. 

Profile page: On your profile page, if you haven’t added any web activities yet, you’ll see a module on the left side encouraging you to add some.  Click Add web activities, and you’ll go to the web activities page, where you can choose from the various partner sites to add.

Adding web activities

When you get to the web activities page, you’ll see a list of web activities to choose from. Windows Live has partnered with lots of different websites so that the people you care about can get updates on the stuff you do on their sites. The list of partner websites varies from one region to another and is continually growing, so keep an eye on this over the coming year if one of your favorite activities isn’t here yet—it may show up in the coming months.

Just click Add to choose the site you’d like to share your activities from….

All you have to do is enter your user name (or however you usually identify yourself to the partner website; for some sites, you’ll have to (securely) provide your password as well), and then click Add. Pretty simple. :)  

Experiencing web activities

Now whenever you do new things on one of the sites you’ve added (like posting a new blog entry on WordPress or reviewing a new restaurant on Yelp), those activities will automatically show up in the list of what’s new with you on Windows Live—just like the activities you might do on Windows Live.

This means that people in your network can see those items on your profile page, as well as in any of the places on Windows Live where they see what’s new with people in their network like the home page, Windows Live Toolbar, Windows Live Messenger, etc.

Web activities displayed on the profile page	Web activities displayed from Windows Live Toolbar	Web activities displayed in Messenger

And of course, clicking on any of your web activities in what’s new links directly to that content on the partner’s site.

A Yelp web activity	A Twitter web activity

Lastly, after you’ve added some web activities, you and your friends can easily get to your content and see what sites you’re sharing from by looking at the module on your profile page.

I hope you enjoy beginning to share your web activities on other sites with your friends and family on Windows Live. And stay tuned for a great, steadily growing list of partners for web activities over the coming year.

-Jeff Kunins, Group Program Manager for Social Networking

I’m Ian Tien, part of the Windows Live product management team here in sunny Redmond, Washington, USA.

I’m here to talk about our lives online—ever feel like yours is too complicated?

Too many online accounts, too many applications installed, too many places where your files are stored—in your e-mail account, your USB drive, the CDs you’ve burned, your old PC, your new PC, in your digital camera, in your phone (which also has a camera)…

If managing all your digital stuff became easier, wouldn’t that be AWESOME?

Here are three ways Windows Live helps simplify your life:

1) Share your favorites!

I LOVE this feature. It synchronizes my favorites (also known as “bookmarks”) in Internet Explorer across my laptop at work and my PC at home:

All I need is Windows Live Toolbar on both computers,* and I can get to my favorite websites from either computer, and save new sites to both machines.

But let’s say I’m on vacation and I don’t bring my own computer—then what?

Sha-zam!

My bookmarks are also synchronized to my Windows Live account on the web:

So I can reach them from any computer (even my Apple Laptop).

You know what else I do with favorites? Share them with friends!

No, silly, I don’t mean e-mailing links to people—that is so 1992.

I mean, “Hey, here’s a cool article!”

To share it, I’ll hit the Share button on Windows Live Toolbar, make a quick comment…

…and—SHA-ZAM!

Moments later, friends can see my new shared favorite in the “What’s new” list.

“What’s new” allows me to share my activities with the friends and family I choose to add to my Windows Live network. They can see all the content I’ve decided to share with them on my Profile page:

And on Windows Live Home, I get a running summary of what all my friends and family are doing:

Plus, I can browse through “What’s new” in Messenger, too.

And I can track my shared favorites online in the same place where my personal web favorites are stored on Windows Live SkyDrive:

It gets even better:

2) 25GB for online photo and file sharing—for free!

Wow! 25GB? Really?

That’s like, a bazillion photos.

But, not only can I share a bazillion photos, I have a FANTASTIC experience organizing, fixing, labeling and sharing them. It starts with Windows Live Photo Gallery which can automatically find photos on my computer and organize them by file folders, date (e.g. year, month, day), or based on tags I enter:

In the following example (photo of me flexing on a mountain—how I spend most weekends ), not only can Photo Gallery automatically recognize a face, it allows me to add a “people tag” to each face to label it as my own, as one of my Windows Live contacts, or as any name I type in. In addition to people tags, I can also add descriptive tags like “Weekends,” “Mount Baker,” and “Hiking.”

The tags help me find the photos later on and can be viewed from the web as well.

Plus, I can automatically (or manually) adjust color, exposure, and detail as well as crop, straighten, fix red eye and even add black & white effects.

Oh no!

I accidently saved my changes! I didn’t mean to turn myself into the Incredible Hulk forever! What do I do? 

Oh, phew! Photo Gallery can not only undo my changes, but revert to my original photo even after saving…

Fantastic.

Where was I?…

Right, now that my photos are organized, labeled, and touched up, I want to share them.

POW!

I click the Publish menu in Photo Gallery and my photos are on the web in a flash.

Here’s how the photos look in an online album:

There’s even a beautiful slide show mode where the background “glow” of each photo is designed to complement the colors of each image—Snazzy!

I can share these photos with anyone. Just click Send a link on the page with the photo (or group of photos), and either select from my Windows Live contacts or type in an e-mail address.

Information about the new album also shows up in my “What’s new” list to update people in my network with whom I've decided to share this album:

If my friends want copies, they can download the photos using Photo Gallery (or, if you’re in the US, Denmark or Ireland, as a compressed .zip file).

Okay, so now that my friends and I are happily sharing photos, could this get any better?

Yes! Mega bonus points: I can click Setup gallery sync (from the File menu in Photo Gallery) to keep my entire photo collection synchronized across my home and work PCs!

Now new photos I add or update from home or work are available on the other computer too—and I can revert to my original photos from either machine if I change my mind.

Note: At the time of this writing, gallery sync is not yet available to the public (awww…). But it’s coming soon (hurray!).

If I enjoy keeping photos up-to-date, I can use Windows Live Sync to synchronize documents between computers too—great if you’re tired of using e-mail, USB keys, and CDs to move data around, and a lifesaver if your computer ever breaks down.

By the way, these photos were taken with the 2.0 mega pixel camera in my HTC Shadow phone. 

Plus, I never worry about running out of space, because Windows Live gives me 25GB:

And that’s not any 25GB, that’s 25GB of fun, powerful and easy-to-use photo sharing that I can use with anyone in the world.

But wait! There’s more:

3) Enjoy Windows Live with your existing services!

Today, you probably use different services for sharing your photos and websites—maybe through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Wordpress, Yelp, etc.

How do you keep track of all those accounts?

SHA-ZAM!

Windows Live lets you integrate other social networking services, either by adding web activities from other networks into your “What’s new” list:

Or, by adding friends from those networks to Windows Live (you can even tell which Facebook friends are already on Windows Live):

The list of partners for web activities grows constantly—it also varies in different parts of the world, so check the settings on your profile to see what’s available in your area. There’s no better place to keep up to date with the people you care about.

Bottom line: If you’re looking to simplify your life online—and you like having fun sharing with friends and family without the hassle of difficult software or isolated websites—think about what your life COULD be like.

Favorites in sync. Photos in sync. Family in sync. Friends in sync.

Two words:

SHA…ZAM!

Ha ha, just kidding.

Here are the two words that make it all happen:

Windows Live.

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* Favorites sync is not available in all regions, and requires installation of Windows Live Toolbar.

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Thanks again to all of you who have passed along your feedback about Hotmail’s fall releases. We’ve used your feedback to add some key updates quickly before the new year.

It is very important to us that you are happy with our updated Hotmail experience. We heard many users say that they had trouble navigating through Hotmail, especially if they had a smaller monitor. We’ve spent the last few weeks reviewing how users at various monitor sizes and resolutions were using our product. We’ve decided to make a significant change in our product: Hotmail will scroll like classic Hotmail.

To make your Hotmail scroll like classic Hotmail, you’ll need to turn the reading pane off:

1. Click the Inbox folder.
2. Click Options (upper-right, below the sign-out link).
3. Under Reading pane settings, click Off.

We’re also including other fixes. Here are a few highlights, and thanks for suggesting them:

• When you’re done choosing contacts to send your message to, click anywhere outside the contact picker window to close it and go back to typing your message.
• We fixed an issue where some users couldn’t select the last contact in the list.
• Holding down the Shift key and clicking a message in the inbox now opens that message in a new window, as it did in the past.
• We’ve changed the links in the header at the top to match the rest of Windows Live and point to more great Windows Live services.

If you haven’t seen these changes in your account yet, you will soon!

None of this would have been possible without the great feedback from you, our users. Your feedback affects how we develop our product by helping us understand where we need to focus our energy. We appreciate everyone who has taken the time to work with us in tracking down issues, providing steps to reproduce problems, and giving constructive feedback on how Hotmail can be better for you.

Although you can leave comments on the blog for others to see, here’s how to communicate with us more effectively:

• The best way to give us feedback about Hotmail is through Windows Live Feedback. (Click the (?) icon in Hotmail (top-right), and then click Feedback).
• The best place to get answers to problems with Hotmail is in the new Windows Live Solution Center.

More improvements are coming up in early 2009, including things we’ve mentioned before like Messenger chatting as part of Hotmail, moving the ad to the side, increasing the number of messages shown at one time, and other stuff. Thanks for all of your valuable feedback, which has helped make these changes possible.

- The Windows Live Hotmail team

 

The Hotmail team really values your feedback and experience when using our products. We currently get feedback from many different places, including usability studies on new feature designs, surveys of existing Hotmail customers like you, the Hotmail feedback link, our support team, and other sources. We use these many sources to prioritize which new features to add, how to make Hotmail easier to use, and to identify problems that we need to fix quickly because they block you from using Hotmail.

While our blog posts give us a good way to communicate new features that we add to the product, a blog is not a complete solution. We want to have two-way communication with our customers and decrease the time that it takes to solve problems that users are having with their accounts.

We are proud to announce a new and better way to interact: Windows Live Solution Center!

What can you do on this new website?

1. Get fast answers to common questions, such as “How can I stop receiving spam?”
2. Get up-to-date status reports about Hotmail service issues or outages
3. Work to resolve issues you’re having with Hotmail 
4. Talk with other Hotmail users about issues you’re having, or exchange tips and tricks

Hotmail support staff may be contributing to, moderating, and monitoring the site. The Windows Live Solution Center at www.windowslivehelp.com is the best place to go to report a problem with Hotmail or get help with your account.

The Windows Live Solution Center is just for Hotmail right now, but other Windows Live services will be part of the site in the future.

We look forward to talking with you more on the www.windowslivehelp.com site!

- Windows Live Hotmail team

About three months ago, we released public betas of the Windows Live Essentials – our suite of downloadable programs for your Windows PC, including Messenger, Mail, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Writer, Toolbar, and Family Safety.

Since then, we’ve received a ton of great feedback and we’ve been using that information to update these programs. We’re getting very close to the final release. But before we get there, we’re refreshing the beta versions one more time to make sure we’ve ironed out all the kinks. You can get the latest betas from: http://download.live.com/.

We’re working hard to get the final versions ready to go as soon as possible. So let us know what you like and don’t like, and if you’re running into any issues that we need to take care of before we take the “beta” tags off.

- The Windows Live team

I’m guessing that like most people, you probably have multiple e-mail accounts, some of which you use more than others. Since people may send Windows Live invitations to any of your e-mail addresses (work, school, personal), it can sometimes get confusing when you want to build out your network at a single, primary Windows Live ID. Let’s walk through a few scenarios for how to deal with this.

Situation: You have a primary e-mail address you regularly use to sign into Windows Live, but you get invitations sent to another e-mail address.

1. From your invitation e-mail, click the View invitation button. This will open up a page in your web browser. 
2. If you’re not signed in to Windows Live yet, you will be prompted to sign in.  Make sure you’re signed in with your primary e-mail address, the one where you want to accept the invitation.
3. After signing in, you will be on the All Invitations page. Now, depending on whether or not the e-mail address that the invitation was sent to is also registered as a Windows Live ID, you should see one of the following two messages at the top of the page:

3a) If you received the invitation at an e-mail address that is NOT registered as a Windows Live ID, then you’ll see the following message:
To accept the invitation at your currently signed-in, primary Windows Live ID, click Move invitations. This will take all of the invitations sent to your other e-mail address, and connect them with this Windows Live ID so you can accept them here. Then, go ahead and accept the invitations you want (and ignore or block the ones you don’t want.)

Note If any of these people are in your network already, then those invitations won’t be moved (so it’s possible you won’t see any new invitations).

3b) If instead, you received the invitation at a secondary e-mail address that IS registered as a Windows Live ID, then you should see the following message:
In this case, you should sign in with your primary Windows Live ID and re-invite the people you want to add to your network from that ID. Detailed instructions for inviting people to your network are in the next section. Then, you have two choices:

• If you don’t want or need the Windows Live ID where you received the invitations, then you should simply close that Windows Live ID account by going to https://account.live.com/CloseAccount.aspx and following the instructions there. The advantage of closing it is that now any future invitations that people send to you at the closed account can easily be moved and accepted as described above.
• If you still want to keep the Windows Live ID where you received the invitation, (or if you’re just not sure you want to close it yet), that’s fine. However, there is no simple way right now to move invitations from one Windows Live ID to another, so every time someone sends you a new invitation at the secondary Windows Live ID account, you will need to re-invite them from your primary account. More details about how to invite people are in the next section.

Situation: You use multiple Windows Live IDs, but you want to accept all invitations at one primary Windows Live ID.

As I mentioned above, unfortunately there is no simple way to move invitations from one Windows Live ID to another right now.  However, you can manually re-invite people using your preferred Windows Live ID by following these steps:

1. From your invitation e-mail, click View profile (under the View invitation button).

   
2. Sign in with the Windows Live ID you wish to invite this person from.
3. On this person’s profile page, above their what’s new list, click Add to your network.
   Alternatively, if you know the person’s e-mail address, you can go to http://profile.live.com/connect/, and type in their e-mail address. (By the way, this page is also a great way to add all the people you care about at once – you can easily import and invite your friends from Facebook or LinkedIn, or select people to bulk-invite from your Windows Live contact list (your Hotmail contacts) so you can start seeing their updates in the what’s new list and keep up with what they’re doing.)

It is our goal that the invitation process should go as smoothly as possible for you. If you have any other questions relating to invitations, please leave a comment and we will try to provide you with answers here or in a future blog post.

- Richard Shih, Windows Live Program Manager

Hi, I’m Allison O’Mahony, lead program manager on the Windows Live Customer Experience team. My team works on all of the common experiences that you see throughout the newly released Windows Live web services. 

As your online experiences are becoming increasingly complex with multiple e-mail and IM accounts to manage, and multiple sites to keep track of your friends and the content you care about, the Windows Live team has been working to help you bring them all together, with features such as the home page, the “What’s new” list, and the ability to add web activities and contacts from outside Windows Live. 

We’ve also focused on ensuring you can easily find and use all of our web services. We created a set of consistent ways to get things done no matter where you are on Windows Live. For example, we created the common header that you see throughout the Windows Live website, and other common elements like themes, options, and what’s new, so that whether you are using Windows Live for e-mail or for photos, all of the interactions will be similar and easy to use.

Here are a few of the areas that our team has worked hard on improving for this release.

Header and navigation - With the new release we’ve updated the header that appears across the top of most Windows Live webpages.  For those of you familiar with previous versions of Windows Live, you’ll find that the navigation has evolved from one that included just a few services like Hotmail and Spaces, to one that is organized around all the many ways you can use Windows Live to connect with people you know. So the new header has links to Home, Profile, People (which now includes all of your contacts from Hotmail, Spaces, and Messenger), Mail, and Photos, plus (under “More”), Calendar, Events, Spaces, Groups and SkyDrive.  By bringing your profile, contacts, and calendar out of Spaces and Hotmail, and giving them their own links in the navigation, you should find it easier than ever to communicate and share with people you know.

In addition to links to your Windows Live services, the header also provides access to MSN content such as Autos, Money, and Music along with the ability to search the web with Live Search.  In the upper-right corner, once you sign in to Windows Live, you’ll see your picture and name along with links to your account and related options.

You may also notice that we’ve removed the ad from the top of most pages! (Note: it will take some time for this change to make it to all pages.) This helps maintain the navigation and sign-in links in a consistent location at the top of all pages, so you can always find them. 

Home page - Windows Live Home (home.live.com) has been redesigned to look clean, simple, and light. You will see the same look consistently applied to all services across Windows Live. The home page continues to be the “front door” for Windows Live, providing you with a quick view of all your Windows Live activity at a glance, and a great place to start anything you want to do on Windows Live.  We’ve also made significant changes to the layout and the types of content that appear on this page. While we continue to give prominence to your inbox, home.live.com now lights up with the pulse of your social network, the latest headlines, and even a few of your personal photos.

What’s new - By placing the what’s new list prominently on key “front door” pages such as Home, Profile, and Photos, we wanted to make it easy to keep track of what is happening with the people you care about most. And because you and your friends can now add web activities from outside Windows Live, you can get an even more complete picture of what the people in your network have been up to lately. 

On the home page, the what’s new list shows recent updates from people in your network and group that you’re a member of. Updates include activities from across Windows Live, including changes to blogs, favorite things, lists, photos, Messenger status, and even games played in Messenger.  You can change what sorts of updates appear here by clicking Options at the bottom of the what’s new list.

On other pages like Photos and Profile, the what’s new list is limited to the updates that relate to that page, so on your profile, it shows all updates about you, and on the Photos page, it shows all updates to photos from anyone who is sharing their photos with you.

MSN - Windows Live has partnered with MSN to deliver headline, entertainment and other news on the home page and relevant content to other key pages such as Photos.  While Windows Live helps you stay in touch with “your world” - the people you know, and things you do on Windows Live, the addition of news helps create a place where you can also stay in touch with what’s happening in the rest of the world.

Photos - Most people love to look at and share photos, so we’ve added a place at the top of the home page for you to display up to 4 of your favorite photos. You can add and edit photos in the header (just under your profile picture) which will display in a mini slide show when you sign in.  You will also see thumbnail photos from people you know who shared photos with you in the what’s new list. 

Daily weather and other notifications - At the top of the home page is a new notifications area designed to help you keep on top of your day. There you’ll find today’s date and weather conditions in your location, as well as notifications of new private messages, network invitations, and the next event on your calendar. During special events such as your birthday you may see a personal message here too.    

Customization - You can customize your home page by clicking Options (now located in the upper-right on all pages) and then click Customize this page. You can re-arrange the items shown on each side of the home page, change your weather location, change the number of items displayed in your inbox and what’s new, and (depending on your regional settings) you may also be able to add additional headlines.

Themes - New themes allow you to customize your experience throughout Windows Live. Click Options and then click More themes to choose from twelve standard themes that apply different designs to the header. You can also choose from several dynamic themes, which change their design based on the time of day and weather conditions—some of them even offer a special birthday surprise. 

For example, here we have the Daisy theme on a typical rainy morning in Seattle, so there are rain clouds and Daisy is wearing her raincoat and galoshes. 

That is a brief look inside some of the updated features of the Windows Live web experience. We are excited to share this new release with you, and we hope we’ve made it easier for you to connect to the people, photos, files, and content that you care about most.

- Allison

Great news! We are now live with our new and updated Windows Live services for mobile. Go to http://mobile.live.com from your mobile phone’s web browser and check it out. There are a lot of new features and services that weren’t even available for our beta users. We’re really excited about these new mobile experiences!

The new and updated mobile web services include Windows Live Home, Photos, Profile, People, and Spaces. These complement our existing mobile services, like Hotmail and Messenger. (An update to Hotmail for mobile web is on its way in the coming months – check this blog for more mobile news as it becomes available). With this release, we are extending even more of Windows Live to mobile devices, but with a mobile twist. To get started, all you need is a phone with a browser and a data plan. Using these services doesn’t require a download – all you do is go to the new Windows Live website at http://mobile.live.com.

There are actually two versions of http://mobile.live.com – one for your computer, and one for your mobile device. If you’re on your computer, go to http://mobile.live.com to learn about what you can do with Windows Live on your mobile device, and to set up mobile SMS services, such as alerts. Or, on your phone’s web browser, go to the same web address, http://mobile.live.com, and you can simply start using the new Windows Live services for mobile.

Let’s look at the different services in detail…

Windows Live Home for mobile

Windows Live Home for mobile is designed as the hub of your mobile Windows Live experience. It allows you to quickly update your personal message, and provides an overview of what’s new with people in your network.

Here are some other key things you can do here:

• View and update your personal message. Any changes you make here will, of course, be reflected across all other Windows Live services, both PC and mobile.
• See notifications of unread e-mail and pending network invitations, with one-click access to act upon them.
• Browse your “What’s new” list to see what your friends are up to, both within Windows Live and on other online networks, such as Twitter. Click a link to get more details.
• Get to all the different Windows Live mobile services.

Windows Live Photos for mobile

Photos for mobile extends the Windows Live Photos experience to your mobile device, so now you can view, share and upload photos from your mobile phone. This means you can take a picture with your phone’s camera, upload it to Windows Live from your phone, share it with your friends (if you want to), and then view it online from either a PC or a phone.

With Windows Live Photos for mobile you can:

• Browse your own photos and photos from people in your network. You can also view thumbnails of all the photos within an album, and get a larger view of a photo when you click a thumbnail.
• View other people’s comments on photos or post your own comments.
• Get an overview of what new photos or comments have been added by the people you know through the “What’s new” list, which, in Photos, is filtered to show only photo-related activity.
• Upload new photos, directly from your phone’s browser (this feature works great on many phones, but unfortunately not all mobile phones support this).

Windows Live People for mobile

People for mobile gives you easy access to all your Windows Live contacts from your mobile phone. This new service includes the ability to search through your Windows Live contacts, and easily get to their profile pages to see more details. You can also initiate a phone call or an e-mail from here.   

Windows Live Profile for mobile

Profile for mobile is the place to share personal information with the people you know, just as you do on the Windows Live website on your PC. On the profile page of someone in your network you’ll usually find their contact and personal information (depending on what they’ve shared with you), as well as updates on what they’ve been doing lately. And of course, all your settings for what information you share with which contacts carries over from your PC to mobile.

With Windows Live Profile for mobile you can:

• View detailed contact and personal information, if it is shared with you.
• Get an overview of what’s new with a particular person.
• Quickly link to to other content related to the person whose profile you are viewing, such as their photos, spaces, etc.
• Invite friends to join your network, and view and reply to invitations from others.

Windows Live Spaces for mobile

For those of you who already use Spaces on your mobile phone, you’ll notice that we refreshed it a bit for this release. We updated the design to match the other new mobile services, and some adjustments to make it work well with the new Photos and Profile services.

Windows Live Mobile website
(on your computer)

The Windows Live Mobile website, which you can browse to from your computer at http://mobile.live.com, is a great place to learn more about all the great mobile services. In addition, you can:

• Get a preview of what the mobile experience looks like for you.
• Attach your phone number to your Windows Live ID, so you can start using Windows Live SMS services.

And with that, we’ll sign off for now. Please visit http://mobile.live.com on your computer to learn more about these services, or go to the same web address from your phone’s browser to try them out for yourself. We hope you enjoy using Windows Live on your mobile phone, and look forward to hearing your feedback!

Thanks,

-- Keith Senzel and Martin Krupicka, Windows Live Mobile team

P.S. Stay tuned for more new Windows Live SMS services, coming in the first half of 2009.

Thank you to everyone who has shared your feedback with us on our team blogs, Live QnA, and through other channels.  We’ve heard some concerns from some of you that the new Windows Live isn’t respecting the privacy settings that you’ve put in place already, and wanted to take a few minutes to address those concerns.

• The privacy and security of your information is a top priority for us, and we want to assure you that we haven’t done anything that changes any of the privacy settings you’ve put in place. We have made changes that allow information you’ve already entered to be shared more easily across Windows Live. This means information you’ve entered is showing up in many more places and can make it look more public than it was before. But, the key thing is that the privacy settings you put in place when you first entered that information are still being honored.
• It’s important to note that your view of your own profile typically shows more information than visitors will see.  For example, you will see your last name on your profile if you’ve entered it before, but unless you’ve explicitly changed the permissions on it, then other people won’t see it when they visit your profile.  This principle holds true throughout Windows Live – people will always (and only) see the content that they have permissions to view.  See below for pictures that show how this works.
  
  Here is an example of Joe User’s profile, viewed by himself (left), next to the same profile viewed by a public visitor (right). 

The visitor sees much less information (right), because Joe hasn’t given them permission to see it.

How to change who can see what

To help address any confusion, we’ve pulled together the following links to where you can view and edit your permissions, as well as step-by-step instructions you can follow to protect your information the way you want.

Profile info

• Name - Choose whether to make your last name public
• Profile picture – Choose who can see your profile picture.  Note that this is separate from your Messenger picture.
• Your network– Choose who can see who is in your network (which is made up of your old Messenger contacts and your Spaces friends).
• About you – Choose who can see your basic info like your occupation, location, and interests.
• Your personal message – Choose who can see your status message.
• Contact info – Choose who can see your contact info like your email address and mobile phone number.
• Social – Choose who can see information like your favorite quote.
• Work info – Choose who can see what company you work for.
• Favorite things – Choose who can see the books, music, and movies you’ve added to your profile.

Invitations and communication preferences

• Communication preferences – Choose who can invite you to their network, and if you want to get e-mail notifications when they invite you.
• Notes – Choose who can post notes onto your profile, and who can view them.
• Photo and file comments – Choose if you want to allow comments on your photos and files.
• Blog comments – Choose if you want to allow comments on your blog posts. (See step-by-step instructions below)
• Guestbook comments – Choose how people can comment on your guestbook. (See step-by-step instructions below)
• People tagging – Choose if you want to allow your contacts to tag you and if you want to allow tagging of people in your photos.

What’s New

• What’s new with you - Choose which of your activities (like posting photos or adding to your network) that you want others to see. You can remove individual items and/or remove all future items for each type of activity. (See step-by-step instructions below)
• Web activities - Choose who will see your activities from other web services like Flickr and Twitter.

Your content

• Your space – Choose who can view your Space (including your blog).
• Your photos – Choose who can view photos in each of your albums.
• Your files – Choose who can view files in each of your folders.

Step-by-step instructions

Updated: Links to most permissions settings can now be found all in one place, at http://profile.live.com/permissions/.

Here are the specific steps to follow if you want to change the permissions in any of these areas:

Profile info

Name

1. http://account.live.com/editname.aspx
2. Make any changes you would like.
3. Click Save.

Profile picture

1. http://account.live.com/editpic.aspx
2. Make any changes you would like.
3. Click Save.

Your network

1. http://home.live.com/options/
2. Click Network permissions (lower left)
3. Make any changes you would like.
4. Click Save.

About you

1. http://account.live.com/editabout.aspx
2. Make any changes you would like.
3. Click Save.

Your personal message

1. http://account.live.com/editprofileaccess.aspx?pa=psm
2. Make any changes you would like.
3. Click Save.

Contact info

1. http://account.live.com/editcontact.aspx
2. Make any changes you would like.
3. Click Save.

Social

1. http://account.live.com/editinterests.aspx
2. Make any changes you would like
3. Click [Save]

Work info

1. http://account.live.com/editwork.aspx
2. Make any changes you would like.
3. Click Save.

Favorite things

1. http://profile.live.com/FavoriteThings/
2. Click Edit permissions.
3. Make any changes you would like.
4. Click Save.

Note: You can also add, delete, or edit any item in your Favorite Things from step 1.

Invitations and communication

Communication preferences

1. http://spaces.live.com/commpref.aspx
2. Make any changes you would like.
3. Click Save.

Notes

1. http://profile.live.com/notes/
2. Click Edit permissions
3. Make any changes you would like.
4. Click Save.

Note: By default, only people in your network can post notes

Note: You can delete a note posted on your profile by clicking Delete next to the note.

Photo and file comments

1. http://skydrive.live.com/commentoptions.aspx
2. Make any changes you would like.
3. Click Save.

Blog comments

1. http://spaces.live.com/
2. Click View your space (top left).
3. Click the Options menu (top right) and then click Blog.
4. Make any changes you would like.
5. Click Save.

Note: If you know the web address of your space, you can skip steps 1-3 by going to http://<your_space>.spaces.live.com/options/blog/

Guestbook comments

1. http://spaces.live.com/
2. Click View your space (top left).
3. Click the Options menu (top right) and then click Guestbook.
4. Make any changes you would like.
5. Click Save.

Note: If you know the web address of your space, you can skip 1-3 by going to http://<your_space>.spaces.live.com/options/guestbook/

People tagging

1. http://skydrive.live.com/peopleoptions.aspx
2. Make any changes you would like.
3. Click Save.

What’s New

Remove an update from What’s New with you

1. http://profile.live.com/
2. Hold your mouse pointer over the update.
3. Click the round blue gear (Settings icon) that appears at right.
4. Click Remove this update.

Remove future updates from What’s New with you

1. http://profile.live.com/whatsnewwithyousettings/
2. Make any changes you would like.
3. Click Save.

Hide updates from specific people from “What’s new with your network”

1. http://profile.live.com/whatsnewsettings/
2. Type the name or e-mail address of the person whose updates you want to hide.
3. Click Hide.
4. You should see a yellow bar at the top that says “Your changes have been saved.”

Hide updates of a specific type from “What’s New with your network”

1. http://profile.live.com/whatsnewsettings/
2. Select or clear the check boxes under Updates from Windows Live and Updates from web activities
3. Click Save.
4. You should see a yellow bar at the top that says “Your changes have been saved.”

Web activities

1. http://profile.live.com/webactivities/
2. Click Manage web activities.
3. Click Edit under the web activity that you want to change the settings for.
4. Make any changes you would like.
5. Click Save.

Note: You can also add web activities from step 1 by clicking Add under the web activity you want to add.

Your content

Your space

1. On the Home page, click More, and then click Spaces, or go to: http://spaces.live.com/.
2. Click View your space (top left).
3. Click the Options menu (top right) and then click Permissions.
4. Make any changes you would like.
5. Click Save.

Note: If you know the web address of your space, you can skip 1-3 by going to http://<your_space>.spaces.live.com/options/permissions/

Your photos

1. http://skydrive.live.com/albums.aspx
2. Click the album you want to work with.
3. At the bottom, it will say “Shared with: <who the album is shared with>”. Click whoever it is shared with currently.
4. Click Edit permissions
5. Make any changes you would like.
6. Click Save.

Note: You also set album permissions when you create a new album

Your files

1. http://skydrive.live.com/home.aspx
2. Click the folder you want to work with.
3. At the bottom, it will say “Shared with: <who the folder is shared with>”. Click whoever it is shared with currently.
4. Click Edit permissions.
5. Make any changes you would like.
6. Click Save.

Note: You also set folder permissions when you create a new folder

RSS feed of your space

1. http://spaces.live.com/
2. Click View your space (top left).
3. Click the Options menu (top right) and then click General.
4. Select or clear the check box for Syndicate this space (this will only be available if your space is public)
5. Click Save.

Note: If you know the web address of your space, you can skip 1-3 by going to http://<your_space>.spaces.live.com/options/general/

As we have continued to release the latest updates to Windows Live, we’ve been getting a ton of great feedback from all of you. Most of you have said that you’re really enjoying the new updates and features. But we’ve also heard about some problems and received some questions, so we want to tell you about what we’re doing to fix the problems and give you some answers to your questions.

First of all, as we’ve been rolling out these updates, some of you have noticed issues with accessing the new services. Specifically for Profile, Photos, SkyDrive, Events, Spaces and Groups, some people have had to try multiple times to get to their services. We have identified this as a problem related to networking, and we are working hard to resolve it and make sure that all of you, around the world, have consistent access and can get in and enjoy the new services.

We have also heard about issues as you try to send network invitations to other users. There is an error that is currently affecting some users. We’re aware of the problem and are working on having it fixed soon.

As with any new service, there are bound to be some growing pains, but we sincerely apologize to anyone who is encountering problems, and we hope to have all of them resolved quickly.

A few questions and answers

Some of you have also asked a number of questions about where to find or how to do certain things. Here are some of the most common questions and our answers.

How do I customize who has access to different parts of my personal information?

You have a lot of control here and can be very specific on who gets access to what.

• Determine what information you want to share from the things you are doing on Windows Live by going to your Windows Live Profile, and then, under “What’s new,” click “Options” – or go straight to here: http://profile.live.com/WhatsNewWithYouSettings/
• You can also edit what personal profile information you share with whom on your profile by clicking “Edit profile details” as shown in the picture below. You can choose to share different pieces of information with everybody, nobody, just the people in your network, or specific individuals.

Where is my customized live.com page with all of my feeds?

The new http://home.live.com/ allows for a great deal of customization and you can add some feeds to this page through the “Add headlines” link. You can also rearrange the layout by clicking “Options” near the top-right, and then “Customize this page.” If you are looking for some of Microsoft’s other customized home pages, you can still find them at http://my.live.com/ and http://my.msn.com/

Why can’t I see updates from Twitter and Flixster immediately?

These updates are currently being delayed, but we are working with both companies to address the issue and you should expect to have real-time updates delivered to Windows Live shortly.

Why do I sometimes see “No Name” instead of a real name?

If you’re seeing “No Name”, it means that person hasn’t put a name into Windows Live. So we’d encourage you to get them to do so! It’s really easy and can be done from the same Profile details page mentioned above and located at http://profile.live.com/details/. We also had a temporary problem (now fixed!) during the early hours of this release that made some people appear as “no name” even when they had a name.

With that, I’ll sign off for now. Please keep sending us your feedback on what you’re enjoying, problems that you’re having, and any questions. We’ll keep responding as quickly as we can.

Thanks,

Dharmesh

As Brian announced a few weeks ago, Windows Live is in the midst of releasing a new wave of updates for the web, for your PC, and for mobile devices.

Today we’ve started releasing the first set of updates to our web services, and these will continue to roll out globally over the next 24 hours – including a new version of Windows Live Home, Spaces, Events, and SkyDrive, as well as completely new web services such as Windows Live Groups, Photos, and Profile.

New header for Windows Live

First, you’ll notice a new common header that will be appearing at the top of all Windows Live web pages.

Our goal is to keep this consistent, so you can always find your way around easily. It includes links to all of your Windows Live services, links to great news, stories, videos, and content with MSN, a place to quickly search the web using Live Search, and the sign-in area, in the top-right corner, where you can quickly access your Windows Live account information.

Now, let’s now jump to the new services.

New Windows Live Home 

Located at http://home.live.com/, the new home page is the place to start your web browsing. It provides a simple dashboard for all of your communication and sharing activities. At the top, you can see your e-mail, local weather, any private messages that people have left for you, people you might want to add to your network, and upcoming appointments or birthdays. You can customize this area with rich themes – some of which are dynamic and change depending on the time of the day or the weather. And as you can see below, you can also add some of your own pictures to your page to make it a little more personal.

As you move down the page, you’ll notice a preview of your e-mail, and updates on what’s new with people in your network. This “What’s new” list gives you a quick summary of the most recent updates that people in your network have made and decided to share with you. This can include things they’ve done on Windows Live as well as other activities from across the web – like updating a Flickr album, writing reviews on Yelp, and more. The new home page also provides the latest headlines from MSN and other news and information sources that you can add to this page.

Windows Live Photos

Sharing photos is now a much richer and more personalized experience on Windows Live. The first thing you’ll notice when you start sharing a photo album is the new storage limit – 25 GB! With the way digital cameras have been growing in megapixels, we wanted to make sure you had tons of room to save and share plenty of high-resolution photos.

You’ll also notice lots of improvements to the design and usability of this service, the ability to add people tags, simpler commenting, better access to photo information, and easier ways to upload and share your photos. One of the coolest features is a rich photo slide show that gets even better if you have Silverlight installed. We hope you enjoy the dynamic background colors that change based on the colors in your pictures.

Windows Live Profile

Your new profile is the place to decide what information about yourself you want to broadcast. The most prominent feature of the new profile is the “What’s new” list, which shows all of your own recent activities on Windows Live — this is the same information that people in your network will see about you in the “What’s new” list on the home page. Don’t worry, you get to control who sees what information in “What’s new,” for example, when you publish a new photo album, when you change your personal message or display picture, or when you add favorite books, movies, or music to your profile.

But your profile is more than just a place to show all of your Windows Live activities, because you can also add web activities from outside of Windows Live. This includes things like publishing updates on Twitter, adding photos to Flickr, or writing reviews on Yelp. And as you may suspect, we have many more partner updates and additions to come!

Windows Live Groups

This completely new service makes it easier for teams, clubs, and friends to collaborate online. 

You can set up owners and members for different groups, and each group gets its own online profile. Plus, each group also has a calendar, SkyDrive folders, and photos. Groups can also have discussion boards that make it easy to share your ideas with the group, and discussions can be saved online for others to see.

Like individual people, groups on Windows Live have their own “What’s new” list that lets everyone know what’s been happening lately with the group.

Windows Live Spaces

Spaces continues to be a great place to tell your personal story, show off your photos, or do anything else you might want to do with a blog. And Spaces works really well with Windows Live Writer so that you can write, edit, and preview your blog entries offline, before you publish them to the web.

There are two big updates to Spaces that I want to highlight:

• Removal of the banner ad that used to be at the top – we found that our users dislike having ads on their personal blogs and that this advertising didn’t perform particularly well for advertisers either.
• New default themes, fonts, colors, and other design elements that are now more readable and appealing, and consistent with similar changes elsewhere on Windows Live.

Windows Live Events

Events is the Windows Live service for planning get-togethers, parties, and other events with your friends and family. Like Spaces, this experience has new design updates. The new interface is based on feedback from customers like you, along with design changes that we’ve made across all of Windows Live.

We’ve also added new themes and made it easier to share photos with anyone invited to your event. So after the party, all your guests can easily upload their pictures and share them with the entire party.

Windows Live SkyDrive

SkyDrive is your place for easily storing or sharing files, documents, pictures or anything else. As we mentioned above, you now get 25GB to store files on SkyDrive – whether that’s photos or other kinds of files.

But beyond the storage increases, SkyDrive also has:

• An updated and enhanced design, including rich photo sharing.
• An improved file upload experience, so it’s easier for you to move files from your PC to SkyDrive.
• Flexible controls on who can access your files on SkyDrive – so you can change the permissions on a folder to private, when you want to store files just for yourself, share it with some of your contacts, or make it public, for files you want to share with the entire world.

Discover the updated Windows Live today

The easiest way to really get to know these services is simply to sign in and start using the new Windows Live web services. Get started on the new home page at http://home.live.com/. There’s a ton there – and as we mentioned a few weeks ago, there’s even more to come. Let us know what you’re enjoying with the new updates, and as always, keep sending us your feedback so we can continue to improve Windows Live.

- Dharmesh M. Mehta, Director of Windows Live Product Management