The Live Messenger team just introduced a new feature to the Messenger platform that lets you receive IM’s from the web. The feature, called Windows Live Messenger IM Control, allows you to show your online status on your website, blog, or social networking profile.

When visitors to your site want to send you a message, the Windows Live Messenger IM Control launches and runs within the browser, letting the visitor send you an IM without having to install Messenger software first.

You can see it in action here:

http://www.marctalkstech.com/contact.html

You can read more on their Blog posting here:

http://tinyurl.com/25dyw4

Enjoy….

Kind Regards

Marc Liron
Microsoft MVP
www.marcliron.com

Here are just some of the areas they have focused on:

Relevance – They have quadrupled the size of their index, which means they can return the right results for your searches. They have also enhanced their ranking algorithms for a better search experience and added auto-spell correction.

Speed – Pages load much faster than before.

Streamlined look and feel – They have focused on the whole end-to-end experience from the homepage to the pages that deliver your results. For example, search results are now easier to read thanks to work on typography, contrast, colors and spacing.

More high-interest content – More results in Entertainment, Shopping, Health, Local and Video.

Live Search can be found at:

http://www.live.com

Enjoy.

Regards

Marc Liron
Microsoft MVP
www.marcliron.com

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This beta is available in 35 languages!

If you are a Windows XP user you will need to have Service Pack 2 installed.

While the look and feel is almost the same as Beta 1, they have listened to feedback and fixed many of the top issues reported by users of 8.5 beta 1.

You can grab your copy here:

http://get.live.com/betas/messenger_betas

Enjoy.

Regards

Marc Liron
Microsoft MVP
www.marcliron.com

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Custom Domains provides unlimited accounts and 250MB of email space. However, administrators can invite up to 40 specific users on their domain to use Windows Live Hotmail. Accounts invited to use Windows Live Hotmail have access to a 5GB inbox.

Test drive the new features at https://domains.live.com

Regards

Marc Liron
Microsoft MVP
www.marcliron.com

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Blogging has turned the web into a two-way communications medium. Microsoft’s goal in creating Live Writer is to help make blogging more powerful, intuitive, and fun for everyone.

You can grab your Beta copy here:

http://writer.live.com

Enjoy.

Regards

Marc Liron
Microsoft MVP
www.marcliron.com

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three new features that help you find faces, portraits and black and white images.

Try this feature out right now.

Go to www.live.com

Then click the “Images” link.

To search for photos with a face use: filter:face

So if you wanted to find images of Jimi Hendrix face you would type: Jimi Hendrix filter:face

To search for portraits of Jimi Hendrix use: filter:portrait

To search for black and white images of Jimi Hendrix use: filter:bw

When you use Live Search “Images” to look for famous people, also check out the new feature on the right that gives “Related People”

Enjoy.

Regards

Marc Liron
Microsoft MVP
www.marcliron.com

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One of the 1st things you will notice is the new look and feel to Windows Live Messenger.

If you are a Windows XP user you will need to have Service Pack 2 installed.

You can grab your copy here:

http://get.live.com/betas/messenger_betas

Enjoy.

Regards

Marc Liron
Microsoft MVP
www.marcliron.com

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Now the team have announced today a spell-check for Answers and Comments!

This means that as you click on the “Answer” or “Add comment ” buttons, you will see the “Check spelling” button right at your finger tips.

Windows Live QnA can be found at:

http://qna.live.com

Enjoy.

Regards

Marc Liron
Microsoft MVP
www.marcliron.com

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With the Windows Live Favorites tab, it keeps your favorite web sites at your fingertips!

You do not even have to open a web browser and start looking for the item you want. Just flip over to the Live Favorites tab in Messenger and start typing. Your favorites list is instantly filtered as you type, narrowing down the list to exactly what you want.

If you are not using it yet go ahead and import your current bookmarks from Internet Explorer!

Very cool!

Enjoy.

Regards

Marc Liron
Microsoft MVP
www.marcliron.com

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…well print out this image and keep it near your PC!

They work with Windows Live Messenger 8.1 and above:

Enjoy.

Regards

Marc Liron
Microsoft MVP
www.marcliron.com

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If you misspell words now, well, you have no excuse!

Windows Live QnA can be found at:

http://qna.live.com

Enjoy.

Regards

Marc Liron
Microsoft MVP
www.marcliron.com

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One great feature is “ratings”

Well now you get to see how many times something was rated so you have a good perspective of the existing rating based off that number. You can see this in the “Average of x rating(s)” displayed right above the “Your rating” field

You can visit Windows Live Gallery here:

http://gallery.live.com

Kind Regards

Marc Liron
Microsoft MVP
www.marcliron.com
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What’s new in this version?

Roaming Identity – Your display name follows you any place you sign into. Now your display picture and personal message will follow you too. (You can turn this off..)

Contact Card – The contact card has gotten a updated look. Instead of a flip it does a slide to toggle between the Spaces and Contact information. Also no more squinting at an icon and trying to figure out what it means the actions on the card are now listed out plain and simple.

Emoticons, Winks, Backgrounds, Display Pictures – The menus have gotten an updated look. They include a recently used list and easy access to featured content so you can get new emoticons, winks, background and display pictures to use. hint: typically in the featured section the first 4 are free.

SMS Phone Book – You now have a quick way to send SMS to a phone number or add phone numbers for your contacts. Just click the cell phone icon in them main window for a good time.

New Contact Emotion – In 8.0 all our icons got an update but we forgot a very important one. The contact emoticon. Type (M) to send it.

Status Menu includes Sign Out – We noticed people look in the status menu to sign out and so ta-da now you can sign out from the status menu.

Report abuse – Here is something you will hopefully never need to use, but it is there just in case in the help menus.

Vista Presentation Mode – When you are in Presentation Mode on Vista Messenger will change your status to busy so you can avoid the embarrassing situation of everyone reading your IMs! Don’t worry if you want to show Messenger in your presentation you can turn this off: Tools-> Options-> Personal-> My Status -> Show me as “Busy”…

Behind the scenes changes – This release also includes changes to the “guts” of some of the features. The goal is for these changes to improve your experience. Please let us know if that is not the case.

You can checkout Windows Live Messenger 8.1 here:

http://get.live.com/messenger/overview

Enjoy.

Regards

Marc Liron
Microsoft MVP
www.marcliron.com

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What’s new in this version?

• Easier-to-manage contact list and conversation inbox
• View and participate in up to 5 active conversations at one time
• No more idle conversation experience: Messenger for mobile can now maintain current conversation history and re-establish an idle conversation in the background
• Emoticons are now displayed as graphics within display names and conversations
• Easily change your display name and status, and even set status before you sign in
• Sort and find contacts more quickly and easily (search, filter by group, and hide offline contacts)
• Call or send e-mail to contacts directly from their contact cards
• Converse with temporary contacts (new people who don’t yet appear on your list of Messenger contacts), and receive the option to add them to your contact list

You can checkout Windows Live Messenger for Mobile at:

http://imagine-windowslive.com/Mobile/Landing/Home/Default.aspx

Enjoy.

Regards

Marc Liron
Microsoft MVP
www.marcliron.com

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Instead of just IM’ing your contact a link to a video, you can now actually watch a video with friends, using Windows Live Messenger in real-time!

So, now there is no reason not to share a video with your friends whilst logged into Windows Live Messenger.

Regards

Marc Liron
Microsoft MVP
www.marcliron.com

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