Everyone, let’s give a round of applause!

Windows Live, my baby, has just been updated.  This latest round of updates includes the following products:

- Windows Live Homepage - the place for you to get notified of new Windows Live Hotmail email and to track updates on recent online activity by people in their Windows Live network.  It’s connected to the “What’s New Feed,” so customers can follow what their contacts have shared on Windows Live as well as on other 3^rd party services.

- Windows Live Profile Page - quickly and easily broadcast key information about yourself from Windows Live and more than 50 partners’ sites to your Windows Live network. Anything that you do on Windows Live or on select 3rd party services is automatically reflected on your profile as well as throughout most other services in Windows Live.  You can also choose to publish your activity on more than 50 sites into your Windows Live feed, so your network can see all your online activities in a single place on Windows Live.  You no longer have to visit multiple sites to get the latest information from the people you care about most!

- Windows Live People Pages - the central address book that contains all of the people that are in a customer’s Windows Live network including their Hotmail contacts, Messenger buddies, Spaces friends, and Groups.

- Windows Live Photos - the home to your photos on the web at http://photos.live.com. Create Silverlight powered [read: cool] web slide shows, share photos through Windows Live™ Hotmail, Windows Live Groups, Windows Live Events, Windows Live FrameIt, and Windows Live™ Spaces.  You can even see all your photos from Windows Live Photos on most cell phones.

- Windows Live  Groups  - a new service that helps small groups or clubs collaborate online. It is the great tool for communication and collaboration on private group pages, announce upcoming events, share fun photos and files, and instantly chat with the whole gang.

- Windows Live Events - allows you to quickly and easily send free online invitations, add a map and driving directions, easily track guest replies, create a custom homepage with event details, and share photos and comments with all of their guests after it’s over.

- Windows Live Spaces - With this release, we have focused on improving the experience – making the fonts easier to read, removing advertisements and generally improving the user interface.

- Windows Live Skydrive - Now offering 25GB of storage and tighter integration with other Windows Live services - upload your photos, files and other digital content and access them online from anywhere.

A few key highlights that I really like about the new Windows Live:

- I really love this new look and feel.  Very personalized, easy to setup, and pretty visually appealing too.  The new dynamic themes also makes the homepage really lively.

- The new photos page is really well-designed.  Kudos to the design team to pay attention to the tiniest details which make the page look really nice!

- The silverlight photo slide show is just really cool :) call me a geek!

-Whats new feed! What else can I say?  I finally have a centralized location that I can get all the updates from my friends in one single place, instead of having me go to log in to the X SN sites that I belong to.

For a really detailed walk through, check out my buddy Dharmesh’s blog on Live Wire.   

So how can you access it today?

Nothing you need to do, just go to the site and enjoy the new experience! :)

As some of you already know, our US friends are running a pretty interesting ad campaign.  I’m sure different people will have different opinions towards the campaign, but as a MS employee myself, I’ll call it ‘inspirational’ :)

The official site is here: http://www.windows.com.  If you want to join this campaign with a video of yourself, go ahead!

Oh and by the way, I wear glasses :)

Actually, I should broaden up my scope and say, a new set of Windows Live clients has arrived in Canada! I’m super excited myself, not only because the products are so hot and sexy right now, but also because I worked so hard on it for the past few months :) :)

I’m excited to announce that the latest client betas have just arrived in Canada.   The beta release aim to test new functionality and technology from Windows Live as part of our ongoing development to help complete the Windows experience for consumers and provide communication services that help people stay in touch, share their experiences and keep their lives in sync.  In this beta, not only you will find many new and exciting feature upgrades in all products, you will also find our UX is drastically improved which provides a consistent look and feel across all our client programs.  Please feel help to spread the word to your family and friends so all of them can help us make improvements to our Windows Live experience.

The beta includes Windows Live Messenger beta, Windows Live Mail beta, Windows Live Photo Gallery beta, Windows Live Movie Maker beta, Windows Live Writer beta, Windows Live Toolbar beta, Windows Live Family Safety beta, Microsoft Office Outlook® Connector beta .

To download all in one shot –>

If you prefer to install them individually, scroll down!

I’m happy to announce the launch of our Canadian version of the new Sympatico / MSN Toolbar today.    This is a new toolbar that the dev team help to build from scratch: it combines great content from our portal with our rich search experience and showcase our exciting Silver Light technology.

http://toolbar.msn.com/overview.aspx?loc=en-ca

http://toolbar.msn.com/overview.aspx?loc=fr-ca

We’ve launched Windows Live SkyDrive into 38 markets sans beta tag today. In addition, we have upgraded all users to 5 GB of free storage!

Our latest release includes vast performance & scalability improvements, the top customer issues addressed, the aforementioned storage upgrade (from 1 GB) and a host of other changes. With the removal of the beta tag, we’ll be begin finally talking about WL SkyDrive publicly with press and partners.

We’re also ready for folks to start telling their friends & families. Please do!

You can find out all about SkyDrive directly on the website – skydrive.live.com – or by visiting SkyDrive's team blog. Feedback? They're listening!

What can I use SkyDrive for?

SkyDrive is designed for roaming your files online (think of how you use your USB keys today) as well as sharing securely with friends or sharing publicly with the whole world. The model is simple and easy to understand – create a folder, add the folks from your contact list (or type in their email address!) and presto – you’ve shared. Your friends will get an email about it, as well as be able to see you’ve created a folder they can access in their What’s New feeds on Windows Live Spaces. You can even embed files and folders into your blog, view your photos, and drag and drop the files you want to store online directly into your browser.

Can I share with friends who don’t have a Windows Live ID?

Absolutely. When you invite a friend who doesn’t have Windows Live ID, or when you invite someone who uses another Live ID than the email addressed, they can “fix up” the sharing to go to a new Live ID or to another Live ID they use.

Is SkyDrive available in my region?

Starting today, SkyDrive is available in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Finland, France, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Turkey in addition to Great Britain, India, and the U.S.

Now that Windows Live has launched 20 days, I guess it's still not so late to share some of our launch efforts around the world :) Below is just a small sampling of some of these amazing launch activities and marketing all over the world.  I know I’ve inundated you with words over the last several weeks, so this time I’ll let the pictures do the talking – you’ll see stellar examples of cool stuff from Canada, China, France, Taiwan, United Kingdom, United States, and Redmond Campus below.   

Canada

Launch Portal

Windows and Windows Live Portal

China

Launch Portal

Chang’e-1 (Chinese Lunar Orbiter) Creative

France

Messenger Update Creative

Xbox.com Campaign

Microsoft.com Campaign

On Network Campaign (“Soon we are all going to be Live”)

Taiwan

Agent M Campaign

United Kingdom

“Characters” Campaign

www.countdowntobetter.com

teaser site

Launch Creative

Windows Live Channel on MSN

United States

Share a Smile Events

New York

 L.A.

msn.com Campaign

Microsoft.com Campaign

Hotmail Log-In Graphic

Press Release and Press Pass Q&A with Chris Jones

Redmond Campus

Employee Photo Contest Winners in Huge Windows Live Photo Gallery Frames

Messenger “Greeters” at Campus Entrances

Share a Smile Banners

Launch Banners

http://get.live.com/wl/all will get you the latest of everything (EN)

Flood gate is open, hope you can get the ID you like :)

http://get.live.com/getlive/overview

32 Bit Includes:  Mail, Messenger, Photo Gallery, Sign-in Assistant, Toolbar, Writer, Family Safety,
64 Bit Includes:  Mail, Messenger, Photo Gallery, Sign-in Assistant, Toolbar, Writer

The installer should auto detect the architecture and omit Family Safety if you are on 64 bits.

We're officially launching our products in Canada soon.  In a short time we'll finally have a full suite of WL so that every consumers can take advantage of.  I know up until now you guys have been reading up on a lot of individual service, like Mail, Hotmail, Photo Gallery.... But as I always love to tell my colleagues, the beauty of WL is not in particular services but the completely integrated solution that we provide.  To sum it up, Windows Live has 3 parts, on a surface level we have web services and also client software, to power both of these we have Windows Live Platform.

*Services available in Canada.  List differs in different countries.

The client software extends your online experience to your desktop world.  For instance, now you can connect to your Windows Live Hotmail account in Windows Live Mail or you can share pictures on Spaces directly from Windows Live Photo Gallery (see prev post).  Now you have more ways to access your favorite WL services.

Windows Live is about putting you in control of your digital world, you can customize, add-on, and personalize our service to fit your need. Starting with an all new @live.ca email address, you'll have everything from Email to blogging, from family safety to instant messaging, all for free. 

We've been working hard on this release for a long time, and I certainly hope you guys will like it when they become fully available.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me.

Have been a week since I last blogged but I wasn't slacking off!  Our office has been busy running around to get the Windows Live unified installer beta out the door, and I'm glad to announce that it has finally launched and available for 58 countries in the world.  It works on both Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista.

The unified installer will assist in the download of new global betas of Windows Live Photo Gallery beta, Windows Live Mail beta, Windows Live Messenger 8.5 beta, Windows Live Writer beta, Windows Live OneCare Family Safety and Windows Live Toolbar.  Building on momentum from other recent Windows Live releases, today’s beta marks an important milestone leading up to the launch of a new generation of integrated Windows Live services expected in the coming months aimed at helping consumers communicate, share and be safe online.

Users can go to http://get.live.com/wl/all and download all these programs in one shot, but if you only want a particular program, you can do it too.  The download experience is extremely simple, a couple clicks, wait a few minutes and you're all set.  To illustrate what I mean, here are some steps:

1) http://get.live.com/wl/all

2) Click on "Get Windows Live" - check / uncheck the items that you want / don't want to install. I highly recommend to leave the box (Help us improve the installation...) checked.  It won't impede your installation experience, but will help us to identify any problems and make improvement for future releases.  And we promise "information will not be used to personally identify you." :) 

If you already have some programs installed, the installer will detect whether the version number and upgrade if necessary.  If you already have the latest, installer will leave it untouched.

3) Click on Download and click "run" on the pop up window.  The installer is only 1.7MB and it should take about 15 seconds if you are on broadband, and around 2 - 5 minutes if you are slower connection.

4) Just wait for the installer to proceed.  Depending on how many programs you've chosen it might take from 5 minutes to 15 minutes.  No restart is required. 

5) Meanwhile, the browser with the installation web page will change to the following.  If you want a new ID, click on sign up, if you already have one, you can safely close your browser or click on "sign in".  This is not the chance to get @live.XX.  That is launching in a separate date.  Stay tuned :)

6) That's it!  that's all you need to do to get all these products we've been working on, completely free of charge :)  I hope you all will like it. 

So what's new about the products?

Windows Live Photo Gallery beta: Today’s release marks the first broad consumer availability of Windows Live Photo Gallery beta, and includes some new functionality from prior beta versions of the service, such as the ability to:

• Share your photos on Windows Live Spaces directly from Windows Live Photo Gallery beta
• Share your videos on Soapbox on MSN Video directly from Windows Live Photo Gallery
• Import your photos from your digital camera and the Windows Live Photo Gallery will automatically organize them into events based on date and time.
• Create cool panoramic pictures by stitching together multiple photos
• Edit your photos using the improved cropping and color adjustment tools
• View QuickTime files in the Gallery Viewer

· Windows Live Mail beta: Today’s release builds off of recent Mail beta releases and now includes some of the top customer requests from prior betas including:

• Customizable toolbar and formatting abilities
• Improvements on performance, Photomail, Contacts, Safety, Speller features and more

Windows Live Messenger 8.5 beta: release builds on prior beta releases of Messenger and now includes:

• Additional family safety functionality integration
• Performance and security enhancements

Windows Live Writer beta: release expands new market availability for Writer to 32 languages and 55 countries, as well as being available worldwide in English, and now also includes:

• Easy ways to insert video from various video services into a blog entry, with an enhanced experience for Soapbox on MSN Video
• XHTML markup and justified text alignment
• Image upload for Blogger, which allows publishing images to PicasaWeb
• The ability to print out your blog posts on paper
• Support of market or language specific tag providers
• Other performance enhancements

Windows Live OneCare Family Safety:

• Family safety support in Mail, Messenger and Spaces

My personal favorite is the Windows Live Mail.  I have to tell you, I've been on the internal beta for almost 9 months now and I witnessed how much improvements have been made in the UI/functionality/integration departments.  I've been using this client as my primary email check tool forever since.  It's quick, simple, and easy to use.  The best thing is still it allows me to check all my hotmail accounts in one screen.  Make sure you also check out other products such as Windows Live Photo Gallery and Writer :)

Make sure you also read Chris Jones's  blog here: http://windowslivewire.spaces.live.com/.

Note that some of Chris's comments are not applicable to CA, such as SkyDrive, homepage, etc...

As usual, LiveSide is a great resource: http://www.liveside.net/blogs/main/archive/2007/09/06/cleaner-faster-first-impressions-of-quot-windows-live-2008-quot.aspx

Thank you very much for those who dropped by the Metro Toronto Convention Center last Saturday!  It was fun, informative and engaging.  I'm also glad to see so many of you are interested in understanding Windows Live.  My booth was definitely one of the busiest booths in the hall and constantly surrounded by 5 - 6 people at any time.  There are two questions being brought up again and again so I'll like to share my answers with all of you:

1) What is Windows Live / I've signed up for Live, but what is it? / I've been on Live for a year, what's next?

Windows Live is a suite of 20+ products aiming to help our users to stay connected, informed and protected in their online experience.  The experience must be consistent across different devices, browsers and OSes.  It is an extension from your desktop/offline experience and you could expect the same quality of service, UX and UI no matter you are online/offline.  To help our users stay connected, we have Hotmail, Messenger, Spaces, etc; users can stay informed of the latest technologies by using Live Search, Live Local, Alerts, Favourites, and more; and of course, our Windows Live Onecare, Family Safety Settings help users to stay protected.

Our goal is to unify all your online experience in one place, and you could trust us to deliver the best of breed products no matter which vertical you are using.

We also recognize the importance of user generated contents, that's why we've provided a platform to access our WL services.  If you are a developer, you could program your own application using our Virtual Earth Maps, Live Search APIs, WL Messenger, WL Spaces control and more.  Windows Live is not just a family of products, but also a rich platform that developers or businesses could take advantage of, and mostly for free too.

2) Where can I get more information about WL Live?

For all products that are in the market right now: http://get.live.com

For all beta products that are in the market: http://get.live.com/betas

For development resources: http://dev.live.com

For stuffs that people has created using WL platform: http://gallery.live.com

I've only provided some quick facts here and there are definitely more to WL than a few paragraphs.  I'll be more than happy to chat with you if you want to learn more.

On Friday, Soapbox on MSN Video, MSN's user generated video service, was made available to the public, allowing everyone to upload and view videos.  What makes this release exciting was that the service now has automatic filtering tools and automatic tools for content owners to find and remove their copyrighted material.  The automatic filtering tool is provided by Audible Magic. The service is available in English only for now and will be rolled out to French Canada in the near future. 

For those of you who never tried soapbox before, some cool features of soapbox include:

1) Search for videos while playing another at the same time

2) Embed your video into your spaces or blog in just one click

3) Use RSS feed to keep yourself up to date with different categories

4) Flip between full screen and embedded video view without reloading the page

5) Auto playlist

and many more!

What are you waiting for? Sign in with your Windows Live ID, and start viewing / uploading videos!

To get you started, check out these ones!

Crazy shirt folding technique

Photocopier's Revenge

CNET: View article...

Unfortunately this is not launched in CA yet, but as a MS employee I got the privilege of trying out the US experience and I'm getting a little ahead of myself and want to share with you.

If I'm only allowed to make one comment, this is it: it's really cool.  For the longest period of time, I've been dazzled by the amazing functionality and usability of academic search, I'm very grateful to see the search team has extended their success to this all new book search beta. 

What amazes me is the amount of information you could get before going into the book.  Other than the usual title, description, author, published date and a little thumbnail, WL actually provides you with a lot more information before you clicking into the page: the frequency that your search term appears in the book plus the table of content if it is available.

I also found the frequency bar very helpful and give a great deal of insight into the book.  For instance, I did a search on Vista and a whole whack of books came out.  While the search terms "Vista" might appear similar # of times in different books, the book on the left below is way more sparse than the right, so that gives me an idea that Vista is the main punch of the book from Andy, while Charles used Vista in some of his examples.

As a WL users, you are also entitled to look at 20% of the content for free for most books, you just need to sign in to view it.  You can also search within the file once you've signed in.  The thing that has amazed me is the speed of flipping through the book, you really gotta try it out yourself to be impressed.

Last but not least, you could always choose to buy the book from Amazon or Barnes and Nobles within the same interface (of course) :)

For more information, visit these links:

Live Search Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/livesearch/archive/2007/06/01/live-search-books-now-with-in-copyright-content.aspx

Live Search Spaces (entry kinda old): http://livesearch.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!8560B877FE8E9138!1243.entry

Announcing:

On behalf of the Developer, IT Pro and Community Affairs Teams, I am pleased to announce the launch of MatchIT.  This is a new Canadian online initiative designed to help bring together charities and non-profit organizations who have IT needs with Canada’s Technical Communities who are looking to give-back to the community by volunteering outside of their day-to-day jobs.

What started out as a discussion on how we could support our Citizenship and Community Affairs efforts in Canada (and hopefully drive a positive image) has evolved into the first national program to virtually align technology opportunities from charities with our key technical audiences (Developers, IT Pros, Students and Hobbyists).  To help us engage Canada’s charities and non-profit organizations, we have joined forces with Imagine Canada (www.imaginecanada.ca) who supports and coordinates this sector.  This gives us access to a large number of organizations across Canada.

What is MatchIT?

MatchIT is an online environment where charities and not-for-profit organizations can connect with Developers, IT Pro’s, Designers, Students or other technical individuals willing to volunteer their time and expertise to bring technology solutions to these organizations.  Our goal is to enable them to be more effective with their limited resources and focus their efforts on having a positive impact in society.

What does MatchIT do?

MatchIT will allow charities across the country to post virtual "want ads" describing opportunities to our audiences that have inputted their volunteer profile to assist these organizations.  Through a unique taxonomy process, only true matches will be put forward to awaiting volunteers, so users will not have to wade through all the opportunities to find a good fit. 

In addition to assisting in aligning these volunteer opportunities, Microsoft Canada Community Affairs will provide the applicable Microsoft software to the charities in order to ensure that the job is done right!

How are we promoting this?

Starting today, we will be getting the word out in a number of ways:

- Imagine Canada has announced MatchIT in their newsletter

- It will be included in the monthly MSDN and TechNet email newsletters.

- MSDN and TechNet Events (such as the upcoming EnergizeIT event in Toronto)

- Blogging – across all of our community team blog sites (like Canadian Developers and Canadian IT Pros)

- Via the MVPs and User Groups

- 3^rd Party Events (like MESH)

In FY08, as we build a set of success stories around MatchIT, we will do more proactive press to promote awareness of the site.

How can I get involved?

First and foremost - help us spread the word!  The more volunteers with technical skills we have ready for opportunities, the better as the need for technical assistance in the charitable sector is astounding.  If you know a Developer or IT Pro looking for ways they can help Canadian communities, or if you are interested in applying your technical skills to incredible Canadian charities in a volunteer capacity, simply visit http://matchit.imaginecanada.ca/MSImagine/Home.aspx and "Sign Up"!