Right now as I write this everyone should be enjoying the shiny new Windows Live Betas – available for download at download.live.com. I’d like to take a moment to highlight several blog posts from the Windows Live Product Teams I think folks will be interested in reading.
Tanja, Program Manager for Windows Live Mail, is back on the Windows Live Mail Blog talking about today’s Windows Live Mail Beta release. We all know that Windows Live Mail is sporting calendar sync with Windows Live Calendar (currently in Beta at calendar.live.com) but Tanja sheds some light on some specific calendaring features such as the “Add to Calendar” button. When you’re reading an email with important information about an event or related to an event all you need to do is click “Add to Calendar” and you can take that information within the email and turn it into an Event in one of your Calendars. She also discusses the Event window where you can set the event to reoccurring, set a start and stop time and more.
Speaking of Windows Live Calendar – tomorrow Thursday Sept. 18 starting around 3PM Pacific Time the Windows Live Calendar Beta will be down for a few hours while the service gets upgraded.
Aaron from the Windows Live Messenger Team posted on the Windows Live Messenger Blog and discusses their Beta release and the features within the new Beta release such as Favorites, Group IM, Personalization, and the What’s New feed. Aaron also mentions that the Windows Live Messenger Beta also has the ability to sign in at multiple locations called MPOP (short for Multiple Points of Presence).
The Windows Live Writer Team published a very extensive list of changes and updates in their Beta release. You should definitely check it out if you’re a heavy Windows Live Writer.
And the Windows Live Digital Memories Team has posted lists of new features and changes in both the Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta and Windows Live Movie Maker Beta.
And Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta? Yup! Michael Palermiti, Program Manager for Windows Live Photo Gallery, has a blog post up on the Windows Live Dev Blog discussing new extensibility in the Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta. Developers now have a framework to develop publishing plug-ins for Windows Live Photo Gallery.
Matter a fact, Omar Shahine has published a plug-in he created for publishing photos to SmugMug.
When folks create new plug-ins for Windows Live Photo Gallery, the Digital Memories Team will add the plug-ins to this page off their blog. Bookmark it now 😉
Be sure to check out previous blog post on the Windows Live Betas and outlining what’s new in each of the client applications.