Today, SkyDrive is now live in 24 additional locations, bringing our grand total to 62 countries and regions!

We welcome new users in Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Thailand, Ukraine, and Venezuela.

Updates with this release>

· Comments. You can leave comments on any file in SkyDrive and see all of the recent comments people have left for you.

· Captions. A picture's worth a thousand words, but sometimes you need a few more. Now you can add captions and descriptions to your files and photos

· Browsing widget.  When you click on any file, you can speed through all the files in the folder:

· Larger photo previews - we've made the photo previews even bigger.

· This release also has some other features like Details view and Photo Thumbnails view incorporated from the other teams, plus more bug fixes. So spread the good news to your family and friends. 

Thanks to the work of the Live Search Selection Team we now have full access to all the Fodor’s Travel Guides through our Book Search & new Travel Instant Answer.

Fodor’s books are now available in the Live Book Search.  There are approximately 120 titles in the series, covering most high-interest destinations.

- Tx, Maggie, Product Manager, Windows Live

So, where are you heading next? :)

http://www.live.com

This update is mainly a UI change.  Features are reorganized to enhance usability and at the same time, I notice a quite dramatic improvement in PLT1/2 load times.. maybe it's my perception :)?

I'll edit this post if I get more update from the search team,

virtualawrence, thanks for the reminder and I owe you one:)  I actually missed a few updates/announcements on the Live Maps front as I was swarmed by the signinandwin campaign.  My apologies to Maggie, PM for Maps, who has been feeding me updates continually. 

April 1st - Wordpress plug-in to Virtual Earth (yes I've been missing updates for Maps THAT far)

I’m very excited to announce a new plug-in for Wordpress blog sites which allow bloggers to insert Virtual Earth maps inside a Wordpress Blog (Beta).

This plug-in is compatible with Windows Live Writer (when you use Writer to insert a post in Wordpress) , it’s mean when you insert a maps from Writer to a Wordpress post, the plug-in become the maps to a Virtual Earth Map instead of a static picture.

You can download plug-in from :

www.vivelive.com/wordpress/wp_livemaps_2_11_2_3.zip

www.vivelive.com/wordpress/wp_livemaps_2_5.zip  (wordpress new version)

-  Juan Antonio Roncero Martín - LIVE product Manager | Microsoft Spain

April 23rd  - Bird Eye View Launched!

Our Local experience on Live Maps has just launched today,  when you go to Live Maps and do a business search – click on any results and you’ll see the new Local Search experience.  This is a pretty cool user experience and we are now able to give user more in depth information about the business that they are searching for.  Feel free to try it out and let me know if there is any question!

An example:

http://maps.live.com/localsearch/Default.aspx?what=pizza&where=Toronto%2C%20Ontario%2C%20Canada&mkt=en-ca&FORM=LLDP

As a separate note – the long waited Bird’s Eye imagery is also launched.  !reas included are ~

Canada:

Calgary, Toronto, Montreal, Victoria, Edmonton,Vancouver.

- Maggie, Windows Live Product Manager, Canada