For everyone who wants to get the most out of Windows Live: The Windows Live Essentials and Services Book.

This book by MVP Brad Jones and Marcus Schmidt is a full-color, step-by-step guide for using Microsoft's new Windows Live Essentials series of free applications.

Step-by-step instructions show you how to use not only these applications, but also associated Windows Live on-line services. As an example, you'll learn just how easy it is to create panoramic pictures in seconds or how to create movies from pictures in just a few minutes. Then you'll get the inside scoop on how to communicate and share using Messenger, SkyDrive, Spaces, and Groups.

With this book, you'll quickly be on your way to accessing these useful applications in an effort to making your life easier.

• Learn how to get Live Essentials Applications free and install them on your computer
• Chat with Live Messenger, keep in touch with Live Mail, and set up and create your own blog with Live Writer
• Get creative with Photo Gallery and Movie Maker, which let you manage and enhance your photos and turn them into movies
• Socialize with the help of Live Spaces
• Organize appointments and special days with Live Calendar
• Use SkyDrive to store files and documents online for easy access from anywhere
• Explore additional apps and services such as Live Contacts, Live Groups, Bing Maps, Bing Search, and more

You can purchase the book at amazon.com.

I got called a namedropper on Twitter today for my earlier Day 1 post, but really we think of our readers as being the reason we’re here, and it’s because of you that we’re able to get to do this cool stuff.

We’ll have a bit more later on the PDC in general, but at the risk of being called a namedropper again, today I had a chance to spend 20 minutes with Dr. Gary Flake of Live Labs, and got a personal demo of the project they’ve been working on for the past year, Pivot:

Here at Live Labs we’re all about experiments, and Pivot is our most ambitious to date. Pivot makes it easier to interact with massive amounts of data in ways that are powerful, informative, and fun. We tried to step back and design an interaction model that accommodates the complexity and scale of information rather than the traditional structure of the Web.

You need an invite code to get into the preview, and thanks to Gary Flake and Microsoft, we’re going to put up some codes on our Twitter account for you.  Of course we want to be a bit sneaky about it, so we won’t hashtag the codes or anything, you’ll need to know to look on our Twitter feed to find the codes. Each code is good for 10 installs, so be nice and use one and leave the others for other LiveSide readers, please.  I’ll put the first code up shortly (we have 4 codes to give away, 40 installs total), and more as I get time in the next day or so.  Remember, the first 10 installs win!

You can learn more about Pivot and watch a video with Gary Flake describing the latest Live Labs project at www.getpivot.com, and we’ll have a review up soon, too.  Have fun, and thanks for reading LiveSide (and following us on Twitter)!

Now the liveblogging is over, let’s take a look at what was announced today.

Silverlight

A whole lot was said about Microsoft Silverlight, going through some features of Silverlight 3 but most of all of Silverlight 4! Yes, today at the PDC in Los Angeles, Scott Guthrie announced the availability of Silverlight 4 beta, just four months after bringing Silverlight 3 to market.

More information about Silverlight 4  is available at http://www.silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight-4-beta/

Office 2010

Also announced today is the Office 2010 Beta (Professional Plus) availability. You can learn more about all the 2010 productivity apps at www.microsoft.com/2010 or go directly to the site for Office 2010 and download from there after filling in a little questionnaire (it’s meant for business customers, but hey ;) ). Included apps are Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Excel, OneNote, Access, Publisher, InfoPath, SharePoint Workspace and Communicator.

Microsoft Office Mobile 2010 beta is available now too, you can download it through the Windows Mobile Marketplace for Windows Mobile 6.5 phones.

IE 9

Besides these announcements, Steve Sinofsky gave some details on the development of the next version of Microsoft's Web browser, Internet Explorer 9. IE9 will support DirectX and other standards, including CSS3 and HTML5. For some videos head on over to Channel 9.

Some more read of interest:
Microsoft Showcases Developer Opportunities for Windows and the Web
Microsoft Office 2010 Reaches Beta, Bringing Productivity Gains to the PC, Phone and Browser
Duet Enterprise for Microsoft SharePoint and SAP Extends Collaboration and Productivity
Digital Inspiration - What’s New Inside Microsoft Office 2010
Announcing the Outlook Social Connector

Here we go!  Live blog day 2!

Thanks to Sunshine for recapping the PDC day one keynotes, our second day of keynotes, and liveblogging, is set to begin in a few hours.  At this PDC, to be sure, there’s not a lot of Windows Live news, or news about Live Mesh or any of the periphery of software and services that make up what interests us most, but that’s not to say we’re not working hard in Sunny LA (too bad we didn’t see much of that sun, maybe later in the week).

We’ve met some of our best contacts and favorite colleagues at events such as this one, and the first order of business has been to hook up with the liveblogging crew, get reacquainted, and get a feel for the business of Microsoft watching in its current and future forms.  This is a fun bunch, but along with some (very) sharp wit, we find in invigorating to talk shop.  It may not translate into immediate blog posts, but it’s important networking, and fun.

We were also honored to be invited for a second year to attend a lunch meeting with Microsoft President Bob Muglia and CTO Ray Ozzie. A heartfelt thanks to Jeff Sandquist from Channel 9 (and much more), one of the real good guys at Microsoft.  Our lunch was a casual, interesting conversation, again invigorating, a chance for the non-Wall Street Journal types to talk tech with a couple of passionate and interesting guys.  In a way we’re sorry we couldn’t have it online somehow, but the very act of “reporting” on the conversation would have altered it, and not for the better.  

Day one was about Azure, not right up our alley, as you might have been able to tell from the tone of the live blog.  To be sure, the hard work of replumbing the world’s data centers into a more cloud based approach, once you’ve unveiled a new name and logo (Azure, at last year’s PDC) isn’t quite as “sexy”, say, as reporting on a new Google phone.  It also isn’t the kind of work that’s going to make Microsoft the same kind of boatloads of cash that the glory days of Windows and Office have made, either, to be honest.  It is important and necessary, and while the message here at PDC may have been a bit muddled, Microsoft is where it needs to be to deliver cloud computing to the backbone of business.

Later, we headed on over to the expo booths, poked around the Bing and Live Labs booths, and spotted Angus Logan and Ori Amiga, from Live Services/Live Mesh/Windows Live.  Of course they weren’t talking except for saying how hard they’re working and to stay tuned, but good to make contact, to let them know we’re still here, and that we’ll be looking for them in the months to come.

Last evening, at a press and analyst’s reception, we had a chance to meet two real “rocket scientists”, from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  They were here to promote their collaboration with Microsoft on the “Dallas” project, but what fun to talk tech with rocket scientists!  A highlight of our “career” here at LiveSide, to be sure.  We’re excited to take a look at Dallas when we have a bit more time.

After that it was off to dinner at Morton’s, apparently something of a tradition now, with some old friends and new to talk more tech and relax.  Then back to the hotel for our usual 5 hours of sleep, and we’re off again to bring you a Day Two liveblog, lots more networking, and more invigorating conversation.  Not the PDC for breaking news, this one, but one that sets up events to come.  Be sure to tune into the live blog today, as we’re expecting some news about Office Web Apps, maybe a sneak peek at Internet Explorer 9, and some Silverlight surprises.  Should be fun!

The transcript of yesterdays keynote, with Ray Ozzie & Bob Muglia, has been posted online. Let’s take a look at some interesting tidbits:

Today, we're going to focus primarily on the back-end: servers, tools and cloud computing.

So what was there? Azure will be going from CTP to production service in January 2010. Billing won’t start until February.

Of course there was more: Seesmic for Silverlight, Wordpress on Azure, Windows Server AppFabric Beta 1, ASP.NET MVC2 beta.

Ozzie also unveiled the next evolution of Microsoft Pinpoint (a unified catalogue of business apps and services targeted specifically at developers and IT) and introduced a new information service codenamed “Dallas,” also available through Pinpoint and build completely on Windows Azure. “Dallas” is available as a limited community technology preview (CTP). A project that already makes use of “Dallas” is the new citizen-science programming competition called the Pathfinder Innovation Challenge (NASA).

To add to the codenames (3 new ones in total) there’s also Project Sydney, a technology that enables customers to connect securely their on-premises and cloud servers, slated to go to beta early next year .

You can read it all in the transcript. Or wait for the video to become available on demand of course, it should be on microsoftpdc.com within 24 hours after the keynote. For additional comments and pictures see the Day One liveblog.

Tomorrow, we're going to focus more on the experience, things at the top of the stack: Windows, IE, Silverlight, Office and SharePoint.

This should make an interesting keynote, you can watch the keynote live at http://microsoftpdc.com/. Don’t forget to also follow the liveblog here!

And then in a few months, this coming spring, you're going to hear about the progress we've made with Windows Live and the Windows Live platform, and again also this spring at MIX 2010 you'll hear about developing apps for the next generation of our Windows phones.

Looks like there will be no Wave 4 this year…(very disappointed).