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linkslive.com: released on 11 1start.com: released on 9 1feedback: send us feedback!microsoft gadgets: gadgets goodness

We are VERY HAPPY to announce that you can once again see your Windows Live Hotmail using the Live.com mail gadget. You can add the gadget back to your page by clicking here. Remember, you must be a Windows Live Hotmail user to see your mail be sure to upgrade if you haven t already! Thanks everyone for your patience. Please let us know if you re seeing any issues.

Unbelievably it s been over 6 months since we ve blogged on live.com. The lull is not intended, but can be attributed to the fact that the team is diligently working on strategic customer focused products for the next wave of my.live.com. Microsoft Online Services Division released a few phenomenal products and had a terrific quarter. The Live Search team revolutionized search and released the new live search for a whole new online search experience. We heard the feedback from our customers about real time traffic re routing and delivered it as part of this release. It also includes many more breath taking visualizations and enhancements. Also did you know, you can now talk to Live search on your mobile and it will fetch you the results in a jiffy! The live.com team personally urges everyone to checkout this feature on their mobile handsets Check here for more details of the new live search. Considering obvious advantages of co branding arrangements that associates a single product or service with more than one brand name, partners.live.com team worked closely with some of our partners to foster Live.com s flexible architecture to create co branded portals. In doing so, we provided our partners with: Cobranded URL Flexible Logo, Jewel, and page structure Customized templates and tabs Customized Folders, Feeds, gadgets We ve launched the following co branded live.com pages so far: Qwest Launched 07 02 2007 qwest.live.com Verizon Launched 08 01 2007 verizon.live.com Lenovo Updated 10 31 2007 lenovo.live.com The Windows Live Product Suite made its official debut earlier this month, delivering a comprehensive array of new and updated services. The integration of the products is really cool, giving you the ability to edit pictures in Windows Live Photo Gallery, share them on Windows Live Spaces, e mail them directly to family and friends in Windows Live Mail, or put them into your blog via Windows Live Writer all quickly and with just a few clicks. The full suite includes: Windows Live Mail Windows Live Messenger Windows Live Photo Gallery Windows Live Writer Windows Live Toolbar Family Safety from Windows Live OneCare Installation is easy and offers the option of installing the full collection of products, or selecting only the ones you need. Find out more and download Windows Live at http: www.windowslive.com default.html As a team we shall continue the great work on new stuff. We know you all are eager to know the details! Unfortunately it s not yet ready to be disclosed. But stay tuned to hear back from us sooooon:

Live.com TeamRamana SatyavarapuSDET my.live.com teamLive.com Tech TeamTechnical team of my.live.comJuan BeaufrandLead Program manager 58; my.live.com teamPatrice PellandLead Development Manager 58; my.live.com team

The site is back up and running normally after a database error took down Live.com and our Partner portals on Monday. What happened? We started receiving reports of users being unable to login or being served the search only page when accessing the site on Monday afternoon. An investigation into the issue discovered that one of the database servers had gone offline, preventing users from logging in and accessing their personalized pages. The server was back online at around 5:30pm after all issues were resolved. No data was lost and users should be able to login to their personalized pages normally. We sincerely apologize for this error along with any hassles it caused and are working with our operations teams to ensure this doesn t happen again. The Live.com Team

Live Search has a new look and the Live.com Personalized Pages have a new location on http: my.live.com! We ll have more on the update later, but for now, we re getting reports that some users are unable to access their personalized page clicking on the link from www.live.com just redirects back to the same page. We re working on the solution that should be ready soon. In the interim, you can access your personalized page by going to http: my.live.com ?personalized true. Thank you for your patience and check back for more updates. The My.Live.com Team

We have a new URL! You can now access your Live.com personalized page by signing in with your Windows Live ID at http: my.live.com. Visit http: my.live.com today to view your personalized page and make our new URL your Homepage or add to your Favorites. Updated Directory While you are on your personalized page, check out the new Directory items under the Add Stuff link. We ve reorganized and added new feeds from a wider variety of business, technology, and entertainent sources. In addition, new collections have been added to the Windows Live gt; Collections folder for Business, Technology, and US Politics. Performance Updates We re very happy to announce an update that will provide increased performance for returning users. Changes to our backend infrastructure will provide returning users with faster feed and gadget load times. Changes on the horizon… We know it s been awhile but since February, the new My.Live.com team has been working diligently on some big projects and we ve just started our third development sprint. That s all we can say right now, but more information will be available in the next few months. So get ready and check in often we re back and it s full steam ahead for the new My.Live.com team! The My.Live.com Team

Since we began to dust off the blog we ve been inundated with spam messages in the comments section. Over the last week we ve deleted at least a few hundred spam comments. We ve gotten most of them but it seems like every day more and more just pop up. We re going to continue with the clean up for a few more days but to give us time and a chance to recover from the task, we ll be turning off comments for at least a couple days. We love hearing your feedback, but spending an hour or two a day cleaning up junk messages isn t our idea of time well spent. Thanks for your understanding, The My.Live.com Team

Exciting news today as we re pleased to annouce the release of an important update to the My.Live.com personalized pages! The biggest change that everyone will notice is the new header, along with some slight usability changes, other improvements based on user feedback, support for both IE 8.0 and FireFox 3.0, and corrections to a handful of bug. Overall, we took time out of upcoming project to address a total of 74 changes and bug fixes. Header Change The new header provides a cleaner, more streamlined look to the page, along with links to Hotmail, Spaces, OneCare, and other MSN services, all from your My.Live.com homepage. Additional Windows Live services are available by clicking on the Windows Live jewel: Usability Improvements Based on usability studies and feedback from you, we ve added a confirmation prompt to prevent accidental deletions of gadgets and feeds, renamed quot;Add Stuff quot; to quot;Add Content quot; and increased the visibility of the link, changed quot;Edit quot; to quot;Customize quot; in the gadget chrome and added more space between the Customize link and the delete gadget quot;X quot; icon. Delete Confirmation: Usability improvements to the gadget chrome: IE 8.0 and FireFox 3.0 SupportMy.Live.com now supports the Beta for IE 8.0 and the final version of FF 3.0. Users will now be able to access their pages and feeds using these browsers. Add Content Directory UpdatesCheck out the Add Content directory for new feeds and gadgets. The updates are part of our on going effort to ensure quality content, provide better organization, eliminate dead feeds and redundancies. New items include the full line up of content from Xbox.com, selections from Office Online, MSN Video, WeatherBug, and more! Minor Bugs and Glitches FixedAs part of our switch to My.Live.com, embarrassingly, we forgot to change some of the wording on the site to reflect our new name! That s been fixed, along with some minor quarks and hiccups that have been reported. Suggestions and Feedback ForumBecause you asked for it, we ve created a My.Live.com Suggestions and Feedback forum on Microsoft.com Forums. This forum will provide users with a way to interact with our development team by telling us what you think, ask questions, and provide your suggestions for what you think will make My.Live.com better. Access the forum at http: forums.community.microsoft.com en MyLiveCom threads . What s Next?We ll start planning for our next update to My.Live.com, aiming for a minor update in the Fall. Right now, most of our time is being devoted to another project that we ll have more information about in the coming months. Until then, we hope you like the changes, and look forward to reading your feedback in our new forum. The My.Live.com Team

In case you missed it in our last update, we have created a new quot;My.Live.com Suggestions and Feedback Forum quot; over in the Forums Community on Microsoft.com. You can access the forum at http: forums.community.microsoft.com en MyLiveCom threads Check out what others are saying about the recent updates to My.Live.com, tell us your own opinions, ask questions of our developers, and report problems directly to the team. We ve gotten a lot of great feedback and welcome more! The My.Live.com Team