The web authentication SDK for Windows Live ID has hit version 1.0 today and is now available for download, according Angus Logan's blog post. This means that websites can now easily integrate the Windows Live ID login to their site to take advantage of the massive infrastructure that exists for Windows Live.

We have looked at developing against the Windows Live Web Authentication with Colin's posts (here, here and here), and he will soon be updating those for the newly released version. So what's changed since the release from Mix? According to Angus, this:

• Samples in ASP.NET, Ruby, Java, Perl, Python, PHP
• AppID- in Production. The salient point is that sites provisioned in production will be authenticating actual production identities, not INT identities. (This means using @hotmail.* rather than @hotmail-int.* addresses)
• SDK docs replace white paper; now available widely on MSDN2 (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=91762)
• Samples now available widely on Microsoft.com (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=91761)

On his post, he points to a very useful page on dev.live.com which gives pointers on where to get started with using Windows Live ID, whether it be Web Authentication, or Client Authentication.

I look forward to seeing how popular this becomes; and yes, we're working on a live example of the Web Authentication.

SL