The MSN UK Homepage team reported that the switch on an updated version of Windows Live Today was flipped last Tuesday. Looking for the changes of the feature that can be reached from within Windows Live Messenger I was disappointed to see they were not yet live for me which raises the question where they are? Fortunately we were able to find the new content online and am now wondering why it is not showing up inside of Windows Live Messenger.

While the release of Windows Live Messenger 8.0 and 8.1 simply renamed MSN Today to Windows Live Today while providing the same old content page the team finally updated the feature. The look has been completely revamped. Up until now it was still using the old MSN style. While you would expect a Live-ish design from the name the new release more closely resembles the updated MSN look that started to appear on MSN properties early this year.

Instead of the fixed tabs MSN Today, News and Hotmail you now get the ability to customize your Windows Live Today page. Depending on the market you get a variety of tabs that can be added and sorted in the way you want. These include tabs for Weather (a quick overview is still available in the upper left corner), Video, Sports, Money, and others. Some tabs cannot not be removed from your content. This also seems to depend on the market - for most only Today cannot be removed but some markets also seem to require the Hotmail tab or others. The content of the Hotmail tab has not been updated meaning that the names of people that send you emails still get cut after too few letters for example.

Thanks Andy for the tip also - you can reach us through tips [at] liveside.net