Download for free at this link: http://download.live.com

The 2011 suite includes a tonne of new features including

• Facebook Chat integration within Messenger
• Bing Maps integration and improved geo-tagging support in Photo Gallery
• Upload video direct to Flickr
• Messenger video chat uses 30% fewer CPU resources by offloading work to the GPU
• Higher bit-rate movies in Movie Maker
• Better spell-checking and Office integration with Writer
• Improved Gmail support

In this video Bryan Saftler gives us a quick tour of the Essentials 2011 suite.

If you have any questions or requests for follow up interviews/demos related to Windows Live please leave them in the comments.

More: http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2010/09/30/windows-live-essentials-2011-available-for-download-now.aspx

Also, thanks to the new feature that allows you to publish a series photos directly to Photosynth (Create menu –> More Tools –> Create a Photosynth), the geotagged option will allow the synth to be rendered and then placed on Bing Maps. Then all you would have to do to finish your synth is add a title, tags, and a description.

To get the new version of Windows Live Photo Gallery which supports this feature, just head over to the Windows Live Essentials beta homepage here and hit the “download now” button.

(via the Bing team blog)

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. 

TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington already reviewed the suite positively in early June, calling the enhancements “impressive” and “crowd pleasers.” He’s especially taken with (and who can blame him?) the new “Photo Fuse” feature, which he said just yesterday “makes the suite worth trying out.”

For those that don’t know, Photo Fuse is the Photoshop-esque feature in the new Windows Live Photo Gallery app that lets you take the best parts from a group of photos and merge them into one single great-looking picture. It’s perfect for group photo scenarios where you want just the one image where everyone is smiling.

We’ve looked at some of the Windows Live improvements here already, including the new Windows Live Photo Gallery, Live Sync, Live Movie Maker, and Live Messenger. But if you really want a comprehensive listing of everything that has changed (and there is a lot!), you should check out the Windows Live Essentails preview site instead.

To hit the highlights though, you can look forward to the above-mentioned Photo Fuse editing function in Photo Gallery which joins Retouch and Panoramic Stitch features, facial recognition in Photo Gallery, batch auto adjust features in Photo Gallery, tons more social sharing and mobile sharing options in Photo Gallery and Movie Maker, an Auto Movie mode in Movie Maker which includes themes, export to HD (720p or 1080p) in Movie Maker, “Photo Mail” slideshows in the Mail app, offline access and shared calendars in Mail, integrated calendaring and messaging in Mail, remote desktop and file syncing via Live Sync, and so much more.

When the beta goes live it will be available from here: http://explore.live.com/windows-live-essentials-beta. Feel free to keep hitting F5 until that page changes!

Live Essentials requires Vista or Windows 7 and is available in English, French, Dutch, Japanese, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese and Spanish.

Ever since its initial release, I’ve used Live Photo Gallery exclusively to organize, edit, tag and upload my photos to various social networks including Windows Live, of course, and Facebook and Flickr via plugins.

However, in the new release, plugins will no longer be necessary – social sharing is built in. You can instantly publish to Facebook, Flickr, SkyDrive, SmugMug, YouTube (yep, it handles video too) and more. Email, of course, is still available as well, but it now uses SkyDrive to get around the attachment limits and size issues. When you attach photos to an email message, you’re now uploading them to SkyDrive and giving recipients permission to view them there. Since most of my friends and family members are on Facebook, I don’t have need of this feature often…well, except for that one family member who’s still a Facebook holdout.

For photo organization, the new Photo Gallery improves the previously available facial recognition feature (which identifies faces but required manually tagging) to one where faces are automatically identified as being associated with that person. You can then search through your photo collection by these so-called “People Tags” to find all photos of that person.

One of the more exciting new features is the Photo Fuse technology, which came out of Microsoft Research. Already getting early coverage on sites like TechCrunch, where it’s dubbed “impressive,” this feature lets you easily combine the best parts of similar photos, “fusing” them into a single perfect shot. (Great for the family photo where someone’s eyes are closed – just merge the best of the multiple shots together for one great photo!)

These changes and more will become available when the new Windows Live Essentials suite rolls out – which should be very soon!

In the updated Movie Maker application, there will be new themes built in and when you use the “Automovie” mode, those will be added for you. In a minute, you can create a movie using your own pictures and/or videos which has transitions, a title, captions and a soundtrack, all with very little effort on your part. This is great for those of us who are always pressed for time but also for those who are intimidated by editing video, even as easy as it is to do in Movie Maker.

Also coming to the new Movie Maker are improvements to video and audio editing with an updated editor and the ability to export to high-def 720p and 1080p video, Windows Phone format or Zune HD format.

As with Photo Gallery, social sharing is built in too, allowing you the ability to instantly upload your creations to SkyDrive, YouTube and flickr.

These changes and more will arrive soon when the new Windows Live Essentials suite rolls out to all.

• 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.