This week marked the unveiling of Windows Live Internet Services, news of a refreshed Windows Live Essentials beta coming soon, some new features (and some old ones) from Live Search, and lots of mobile news as well. Let’s recap:
Windows Live Internet Services
On Wednesday evening, Microsoft unveiled the online portion of Windows Live, which should be rolling out to users in the next “couple of weeks”. Lots and lots of changes and new stuff:
- Home.Live.com – The starting place for Windows Live online
- What’s New Feed – A totally new feature, aggregating news about your network and what they’re doing, including news from a variety of third-party sources (Twitter, Flickr, PhotoBucket, Yelp, Amazon.com, etc., etc.).
- Windows Live Profile – A single place to manage your profile information. Was part of Spaces, now stand-alone and expanded.
- Windows Live People – Again, a single place to manage your “Network”, combining Hotmail contacts, Messenger contacts, and Spaces Friends.
- Windows Live Photos – Like Profile, Photos no longer a part of Spaces, but available on its own or across Windows Live. Greatly enhanced viewing experience.
- Windows Live Groups – A new service to create an online Group, including an email address and url for the group, and including a Group specific What’s New feed, membership list, Calendar, SkyDrive, and a discussion list.
- Windows Live SkyDrive – Soon to include 25gb of storage, with new features like saving to a .zip file, and move or copy to another SkyDrive folder.
- Windows Live Hotmail – Will soon add ever increasing storage, POP access both in and out for free, and Web Messenger integration.
Recap: LiveSide posts on Windows Live Internet Services:
Windows Live internet services: Major release announced
Windows Live Feature Complete
Windows Live People Review
SkyDrive - What's to come
Hotmail, and early look
Our interview with Brian Hall Part 1
Our interview with Brian Hall Part 2: Demo
Selected posts on Windows Live Internet Services:
www.windowslive.com
MS PressPass: Microsoft Introduces Updated Windows Live Services
Windows Live Virtual Press Kit
Brian Hall: Windows Live keeps your life in sync
Kara Swisher: MS “Facebooks” WL services
Omar Shahine: WL People and the past 12 months
SkyDrive team blog - “Our Next Update”
Windows Live Essentials
With the online services announcement on Wednesday, official word also came of an upcoming refresh to the Essentials suite, which we should also see in the “next couple of weeks”
Recap: LiveSide posts on Windows Live Essentials
Messenger, a sneak peak
Windows Live Mobile
With the new Windows Live services come a number of improvements to Windows Live on mobile
damaster and Sunshine gave us a great overview:
Recap: LiveSide posts on Windows Live Mobile
New Mobile Search release
Windows Live for mobile Wave 3
Selected posts on Windows Live mobile
Phil Holden: Live Search for mobile
Live Search
Live Search made some announcements of their own this week: touting the success of Live Search cashback, and unveiling Live Search for Video: TV shows. (In my attempt to follow the PubCon keynote via Twitter, I posted that Birds Eye imagery for an Image Search on places was new. While this was demoed at PubCon, it isn’t actually new, as my colleagues were quick to point out to me :-| ).
Oh and by the way, if you’re in Canada, Live Search has a Big Ticket promotion for you:
Microsoft Live Search 'Big Ticket' promotion
Big Ticket Search will run from October 31st through December 31st. Every time our users search at bigticketsearch.com, they have a chance to win awesome prizes every hour, 24 hours a day. We'll be giving away tons of prizes including 2 new Mitsubishi Lancers, Raptors VIP package, Home Entertainment Systems, Laptops, $10,000 cash, Ticketmaster Gift Cards, Zunes, Xboxes, Raptors Season Tickets and Raptors Memorabilia. 
(Thanks to Windows Live Chronicles)
Recap: LiveSide posts on Live Search
Live Search: cashback traction
Silk Road: new Live Search API v 2.0beta
TV Show Search
Our previous post on Bird's Eye in Image Search
Selected posts on Live Search
Search Engine RoundTable post on PubCon keynote with Satya Nadella
Live Search blog: TV show search
Live Search blog: new Live Search APIs