If you love the Kahuna (Windows Live Mail) User Interface, Imran Qureshi is the guy to thank. Today, on his blog, Imran announced that the focus of his job has been changed to oversee the creation of a developer platform for Windows Live Mail. The team plans to make tools available to third party developers to extend the possibilites of Windows Live Mail, Calendar, and Contacts.

This is not the first venture into this territory for Windows Live and MSN however. They currently provide developer support for other products such as Messenger, Spaces, Search, Virtual Earth, and Live.com. Imran also mentions that Microsoft Gadgets plays a big role in current Windows Live developer platforms. Presumably, the integration with Gadgets will also carry over into Windows Live Mail.

All of this of course means that once the tools are in developer's hands, then we should start seeing some very exciting extensions to the killer application that Microsoft has built.

MSN/Windows Live Developer Center