The Windows Live Dev site has just posted that the Windows Live Search SDK is now available on MSDN (link). So what's new in this release? According to the blog post it includes:

• Lots more sample code!
• Weather and Movie Time queries
• Support for keyword/placename queries (ex: coffee seattle)
• Increased number of results returned (from 250 to 1,000)
• Easier to write paging algorithms
• Support for file type filtering
• Support for the zh-CN market for Web and News queries
• Local query support in additional markets
• Enhanced functionality for SearchTags (ex: filtering)

So what do you need to know for making an application that utilises Live Search? Well, a good knowledge of the SOAP Protocol really, the rest can be done in C#. First off though, you will need to get yourself an Application ID, which you can get by following the instructions on the Getting Started with the Windows Live Search API page. There's also a pretty good example on the Code Samples page that is exactly as it says, a Comprehensive Windows Forms Application (C#).

Go take a look and see what kind of apps you can make, how you can integrate it into your own existing apps. If you do go ahead and use this, leave a comment on this entry and if I get enough apps, I might do a write up on them.

SL