According to news from Chris Jones, the beta has proved quite popular so far, with 3 million unique users in Messenger alone, 3.5 million updates to display pictures, 6.2 million video calls, and 7.6 million updates to status messages, just to give you a taste of some of the beta-related stats.

So what’s new this go-round? A lot, actually. Here’s the list of service improvements:

• A quicker Messenger – The time it takes to sign in, and to refresh contacts and social feeds, as well as animation speed, are all faster than in previous versions of Messenger.
• More efficient video chat - Messenger video chat uses 30% fewer CPU resources by offloading work to the GPU.
• Better facial recognition - Photo Gallery facial recognition is improved significantly and works more quickly.
• Larger movie uploads - Movie Maker will upload higher resolution movies to SkyDrive (480x640 vs. the previous 320x480).
• Higher bit-rate movies - Movie Maker now supports higher quality (bit-rate) content.
• Better spell-checking - Writer has significantly improved the quality of its spell-checking.
• Better integration with Office - Writer is much better at retaining all formatting when you copy and paste from Word and other Microsoft Office programs.
• Better handling of Gmail – Mail now automatically handles Gmail’s spam and trash folders properly.
• Faster web filtering - Family Safety web filtering is 35% faster than in the previous version.

There are also new features being introduced as well, like “quick previews” and an improved tree view in Photo Gallery, Flickr video publishing and “Snapshot” in Movie Maker, Bing Maps integration in Photo Gallery & Movie Maker, 640x480 video upload resolution to SkyDrive, Jump List integration in WLW plus some other improvements to formatting features and spellcheck, better alerts and reporting in Family Safety, support for Russian and German languages in addition to English, Spanish, French, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese, and Simplified Chinese, and even more minor upgrades too numerous to list here.

But perhaps the feature I’m most excited about is Facebook chat via Live Messenger. I may hang out in “invisible mode” a lot on IM, but it’s nice to know that when I want to chat over my preferred communication service – that’s Facebook, actually, sorry GChat, AOL, & Messenger – I can. And I can do it without having to go to Facebook.com itself, which, quite frankly, can be a huge time suck I don’t always need.

To try out the new beta yourself, just head over to its homepage here and hit the “download now” button. 

• Laura Foy - Charlie Kindel on the Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools Refresh
• Time Heuer - Installing the Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools Refresh (including a PowerShell script if you get authenticode issues with signed assemblies)
• Larry Larsen - Windows Live Wave 4 Messenger Preview
• Ori Amiga - Messenger Connect - A new, unreleased set of APIs for user profile, social graph, status updates, and more, via Dare Obasanjo
• Pete Brown - Essential Silverlight and WPF Skills: Async programming, Dispatchers, Timers, and more
• Dan Fernandez - Stop capitalizing Microsoft products and technology incorrectly
• Andy Beaulieu - Using the free edition of Babel Obfuscator with Silverlight 
• Scott Guthrie - Studiostyles.info - Provides a way to easily discover and share Visual Studio color schemes
• Damien Guard - Creating RSS feeds in ASP.NET MVC,via dotnetkicks
• Speckyboy - 30 Pure CSS Alternatives to JavaScript

• Windows Live Messenger – o software campeão de bate-papo (instant messaging).
• Windows Live Mail – um gerenciador de e-mails para acesso offline e edição rica de e-mails. Tem suporte para os principais serviços de e-mail (Hotmail, Google, Yahoo, etc.).
• Windows Live Writer – uma excelente e premiada ferramenta para escrever blog posts. A grande novidade é a inclusão de corretor ortográfico para português.
• Windows Live Galeria de Fotos – um gerenciador de fotografias e vídeos digitais com edição de fotos, criação de DVD, revelação online, e publicação para as principais comunidades de fotos (Windows Live Fotos, Flickr, SmugMug). Grande novidade é a detecção de rostos para você identificar seus amigos com marcas (tags).
• Windows Live Movie Maker – um editor de vídeos para você compartilhar com amigos e publicar vídeos na Web. Tem suporte para MSN Vídeos e YouTube.
• Windows Live Proteção Para Família – um serviço que ajude você manter filhos seguros na sua navegação online através de filtros de conteúdo. Você inclusive pode configurar os filtros remotamente via Web.
• Windows Live Toolbar – uma barra de ferramentas para seu navegador Internet Explorer que mantém você conectado aos seus serviços como e-mail, calendário, fotos, e novidades da sua rede social.
• Microsoft Outlook Connector – uma ferramenta que permite o uso do Outlook como gerenciador de seus e-mails do Hotmail. Ele sincroniza e-mails, contatos e agenda do Windows Live com o seu Outlook.

Façam o download agora para ter os softwares mais atuais da família Windows Live.

Hoje a Microsoft anunciou parcerias com empresas líderes do mundo Web como Flickr, Twitter, Wordpress, Photobucket e Pandora, entre outras. Isso é uma primeira prova de nosso compromisso com facilitar o compartilhamento da vida digital dos usuários Windows Live com as pessoas que lhes são mais importante, independente do provedor de serviço Web.

Nossa visão para o Windows Live é que ele unifique os meios de comunicação e compartilhamento online – não importa o provedor do serviço – através de um único local onde você poderá escrever seus e-mails, conversar com seus amigos, compartilhar fotos e arquivos e realmente manter contato com as pessoas e as informações mais relevantes para você. Tudo isso do PC ou do celular, em casa ou no trabalho.

O vídeo nesse post mostra nossa visão e em breve eu vou publicar mais vídeos mostrando os novos serviços. Por enquanto, vocês podem acessar os novos softwares no site http://download.live.com.






O Windows Live Messenger agora incorpora as atualizações de sua rede direito no prorgama.

 

Windows Live Galeria de Fotos com detecção de pessoas.




Você pode organizar suas fotos por pessoas.




O novo photos.live.com para armazenar e compartilhar as suas fotos.

 

O Windows Live Writer permite colocar alguns de fotos no seu blog post.

 

O Hotmail agora permite que você faça buscas na Web direto do email para incluir fotos e vídeos que você encontra na busca.




A nova página de Perfil mostra de uma só vez tudo que está acontecendo na sua rede de amigos.




A nova página de Grupos permite que conversas só entre o grupo aconteçam na Internet.




O Windows Live Mail permite incorporar fotos no email de uma forma bem simples e com efeitos bacanas.

 

A nova Toolbar é bem rica e utiliza o conceito de Web Slices do Internet Explorer 8 para mostrar de forma rápida o que está acontecendo na sua rede.




A nova página Home tem um cabeçalho dinâmico que reflete o horário do dia e o clima em sua cidade.

The pack also comes with new Messenger backgrounds, too, but I wasn’t a huge fan of the default background, blue with “I’m a PC” written in fading white text across it. Then again, I’m not a fan of any Messenger background come to think of it. If you want to adjust your background, too, just open a conversation window then go to Tools –> Backgrounds from the menu there. Remember, you won’t see this menu unless you’re in the conversation window itself.

I was going to set my background back to “none,” but then I saw the white background with math equations in light blue which also came with the theme pack. Hmm, I might consider that one since it’s very light in color which I like as it makes conversations easier to read.

If you want the new Messenger pack, you have to be signed into Messenger first. Then open IE and click here. The pack will then automatically install.

You can add this to your blog too: Add Windows Live Messenger to your Blog

It is a simple matter of going to the above live.com (obviously, log in with your Live ID) and using the simple online form to configure your Messenger web widget.

The really, really cool thing is that you can have either a chat window, or your presence live on your blog.

For more indepth how-tos, visit Aussie Angus Logan's blog.

If you like to chat and also enjoy helping others there is a great option for you. And it will not cost you a cent. For every conversation you start by using Windows Live Messenger there is a certain amount of money donated to your preferred charity organization - e.g. I've chosen the UNICEF. In order to contribute to our society this way you just have to add a special logo "I´M" in front of your name. There has been almost $150,000 raised so far.
You might also consider to star in a new MTV project that is starting now in order to promote this cause.
Windows Live Messenger has over 220 million contacts worldwide. It is popular for the wide range of services it offers. Apart from the traditional text, phone and video conversations users can play games (e.g. chess), chat with special agents like Encarta and share their photos and other files. All this is for free - as well as other Windows Live services.