As we said, both code-name Max and Live.com released updates on Friday.  Max added RSS and ATOM feed reading to the photo sharing and more to come product, as well as support for the .Net Framework 3.0 rc1. You can download Max here.

The Live.com update included a lot of work on the back end, fixed "hundreds of bugs", improved responsiveness in general and with the Search page in particular, added new gadgets, and accessibility with a screen reader mode.

There are now also new ways to get to Live.com - by typing beta.search.live.com (soon to drop the "beta"), or my.live.com or home.live.com to get to those pages.

And to top it off the  Windows Live Product Search beta was updated as well. New features include better crawl and extraction algorythms to provide a larger, fresher, and higher quality selection of products, a new grid-based default view, an enhanced preview, refinement of related terms search, and of course bug fixes. You can try it out by clicking "more" in Windows Live Search.

While none of these updates offer earth-shattering news, each of them is a step forward, and their products are faster, easier to use, and more stable than they were. Live.com and Windows Live Search have come a long way in just a few months, an encouraging sign.