It seems like Windows Live Home has been silently updated overnight with a few new hidden features. Sunshine already uncovered one for us a few days ago regarding the new Web Slice support for your What’s New feed. Jamie also posted on his blog about the ability to update your Personal Status Message (PSM) directly on the page without page refresh.

We have also found a new little feature in the Windows Live Wave 3 header – word-wheel contact search in the search bar. When you start typing a person’s name into the header search bar, a list of your contacts beginning with the characters you typed will start to appear under the search box, in real time! It’s very similar to the contacts word-wheel in Messenger and Hotmail. When you click on the contact’s name, it will link you directly to their Profile. Try it out yourself!

We’re guessing this feature should be coming to all services that has the header search bar reading “Search People or Web” instead of simply “Search the web” (this includes Home, Profile, Spaces, Groups and Events). However, it seems like Windows Live Home is the only service that has this feature at the moment.

On a side note, we also noticed that OneCare is no longer listed in the “All services” page on Windows Live Home, marking the beginning of an end to the OneCare service.

Have you noticed anything else new to Windows Live Home? Drop us a note in the comments section below!