Arthur de Haan, Windows Live Test and Service Engineering, summarizes the changes:

• Mail: We fixed a sorting issue in the Sent items folder and improved the upload reliability and instrumentation in Photo mail.
• Messenger: We fixed a couple of stability issues and made various changes for improved voice and video quality. We fixed an issue that was causing sound to be lost after upgrading, and we improved performance when displaying the MSN Today page in the main window.
• Photo Gallery: We implemented various bug fixes for crashes related to launching Photo Gallery through Autoplay and facial recognition.
• And more: We made many other usability, performance, and stability improvements across the suite of Windows Live Essentials apps.

Download Windows Live Essentials 2011 15.4.3538.0513.

I am using Messenger 2011 with multiple endpoints signed in (MPOP). When I sign out on one endpoint or close a chat window there, it gets closed on all other endpoints as well. Is there a switch (registry or so?) to disable this behavior?

Here’s the explanation and answer. I thought I’d share it with you because it is interesting:

From Messenger 2011, you can choose to sign out from only the current location, or all other endpoints. Chat windows on the other hand are closed across all online endpoints. There is no switch to disable this behavior. But there is an option in the “History” category to “show my last conversation in new conversation windows”. This should let you resume a conversation from a new endpoint if it was closed from another.

Thereby, we see three major points: Connecting to Social Media got stronger, future-proof steps toward Cloud Computing were made, and connected with these two, the Wave 4 updates for all Windows Live services and Essentials.

Wave 4

The first half of the year was dominated by Wave 4, the fourth development wave of the Windows Live services.

With this update, the Windows Live team focused efficiently on selected products: Messenger, Hotmail and Photo Gallery were much revamped and enhanced, Office Web Apps were developed from scratch.

Social Networking

Since the beginning of this year, Windows Live is active on Facebook and Twitter as well. In the meantime, many thousand fans use the provided offers to inform themselves or exchange Windows Live news.

With this focus, Windows Live reached out to more partners from the social networking sector, e.g. with Facebook and LinkedIn. The intended goal is not to be the best in all sectors, but to offer the best features in Microsoft’s central tasks. Partnerships are a way to shorten your ways on the web and to provide you with existing offers that you already use, now connected with Windows Live.

For instance, Windows Live Messenger 2011 puts the focus more on social networks. Using the new social networking view, you can follow all updates from your favorite services from one central location. In the new Windows Live Hotmail, the one click filter “News from social networks” helps you to remove clutter in your inbox.

Cloud Computing

In Photo Gallery and Movie Maker, it got much easier to share your fresh Photofused images, your slideshows or movies with your friends on social networks. Windows Live Skydrive gives you great flexibility — from numerous devices with Web access, you can upload and backup your data from wherever you are, share them with your friends, send them to collaborate with your colleagues or publish them to the public.

For the new year, Windows Live is again preparing various enhancements and news for you — Happy New Year!

Today, we are going to take a look at the first half of 2010, that is, from January to June.

• January 2010
  • Details and first photos about Messenger Wave 4 emerge.
  • You can now connect SkyDrive to Windows Explorer — using CloudStorageExplorer.
  • Hotmail Wave 4 will add Conversation view for messages.
• February 2010
  • The cloud system Windows Azure launches officially.
  • The social network Facebook launches its new home page layout.
  • Windows Live ID has an outage, causing that customers cannot sign in anywhere.
  • The Windows Live Messenger extension Messenger Plus! becomes silent at Yuna Software, its new owner, but eventually the silence is broken and we can move on to new pastures.
  • The Chinese website cnbeta.com discovers the design of Windows Live Writer 2011.
• March 2010
  • Google acquires the online image editor startup company Picnik.
  • The IT trade fair CeBIT 2010 takes place in Hanover, Germany.
  • The release roadmap for Windows Live Wave 4 surfaces.

• April 2010
  • Live.com changes to be Windows Live Home.
  • Office 2010 reaches RTM status, its development is finished.
  • Chris Jones talks about the future of Windows Live.
• May 2010
  • The search engine Google overhauls its interface.
  • Angus Logan showcases the Windows Live Messenger App for Apples iPhone smartphone.
  • mynetx.net takes an in-depth look at the new features in Hotmail Wave 4.
  • Messenger 2011 retires the existing “View webcam” feature and instead relies on Video calls, which are easier to maintain. Users’ reactions are overly negative and loud.
  • The complete feature list of Windows Live 2011 is published. Remarkable new features include Messenger’s Facebook Chat module as well as Photo Fuse and facial recognition in Photo Gallery.
  • On May 31, Windows Live Events is closing.
• June 2010
  • Office 2010 and Office Web Apps are released to the public. Office Web Apps allow to edit documents, spreadsheets and presentations right in your web browser.
  • The Windows Live Wave 4 public beta launches in 7 languages.

What was your personal highlight in the first half of 2010? I am curious to know!

Starting from Windows Live Messenger 2011, your friends will always see your real name when talking with you. In order to unify the experience, the development team says, the display name feature has been removed from Messenger.

The name shown to your friends now originates from your Windows Live Profile. Thus, this is the place to look at when you want to change your display name in Messenger.

1. Open http://profile.live.com/details/Edit/Name.
2. Sign in with your Windows Live ID and the corresponding password.
3. Enter the name you want to show into the boxes for First name and Last name.
4. Click Save.

Sign out and back in — and you will have changed your name displayed in Messenger.
Did this work well for you?

Did you know that you can switch languages in Windows Live without having to reinstall the Essentials suite? In this tip, let’s take a look how this works:

1. Exit any running programs of Windows Live Essentials (e.g., Messenger, Mail, etc).
2. Click Start, Computer. (Windows XP: Start, My Computer.)
3. Open Local Disk (C:), Program Files, Windows Live, Installer.
4. Double click the LangSelector.exe file.
5. In the appearing window, choose your favorite language.
6. Now click OK to confirm your change. If the language pack is not yet installed, it gets downloaded automatically.
7. As soon as the progress dialog has closed, you’re ready to use Windows Live Essentials in the changed language!

You may change languages as often as you want to, without rebooting your computer. To follow the steps above, you need to have Windows Live Essentials 2011 (15.4) installed. This version is available for free download at Windows Live Essentials 2011 15.4.3538.0513 and runs on Windows 7 and Vista.

Did this work for you?

Stay tuned for weekly tips about Windows Live!

Since Windows Live Messenger 2011 (code name “Wave 4”) was released last Thursday, I received some questions as to when Messenger Plus! will be updated to work with the new Messenger version. Here are some details.

Messenger Plus! 4.9 will be released around the next week-end (Sunday 10 October 2010, plus-minus two days). Note that this minor update will provide only basic support, similar to the support with Plus! 4.85 for the last Messenger Wave 4 beta. It is still the next major version, Messenger Plus! 5, that is targeted at full support for Messenger 2011.

By the way, removing advertisements in Messenger 2011 is also possible:
Ahmed has updated his patching software A-Patch for Messenger 2011 1.43.10.

Ye Gu, Group Program Manager, Windows Live mobile services, explains:

On June 21st, we released the Windows Live Messenger app for iPhone. Since then, the Messenger app has reached #1 in the iTunes app marketplace at some point in time in over 50 countries, and we’ve had nearly 7 million downloads worldwide. Thank you for the great support you’ve given us!

For example, you can now resort your contact list, like sorting it by online/offline contacts, by Favorites or by status. More new features include:

• Support for iOS 4
• Facebook Chat integration
• Friends List Filters
• Blocking/unblocking contacts
• Faster sign-in
• 31 languages supported

Still missing: feature-complete iPad support. It is unknown when this will get added.

Long awaited, now available: The Windows Live team has released the latest version of its application suite Windows Live Essentials, code-named Wave 4. Essentials extend your Windows computer with photo, video and blog editing and enable you to communicate with your friends.

Essentials 2011 was designed to make full use of the new interface features introduced in Windows 7. For example, task bar jumplists are now supported. All Essentials applications have been updated with the Ribbon interface. And finally, Messenger is getting tabbed conversations.

Chris Jones, Vice president, Windows Live engineering, declares:

I want to offer a special thank you to the millions of people who installed the beta! Our beta users helped us identify and address issues, with over two thousand forum posts and comments. In today’s release, we’ve addressed 95% of all bugs reported by beta users, leading to improvements that you’ll see across the suite.

Windows Live Essentials 2011 includes the following programs:

• Windows Live Photo Gallery
• Windows Live Movie Maker
• Windows Live Mail
• Windows Live Messenger
• Windows Live Family Safety
• Windows Live Mesh
• Windows Live Writer
• Messenger Companion Internet Explorer add-on
• Bing bar

For installing Essentials 2011, your computer should run Windows Vista SP1 or higher.

Free download: Windows Live Essentials 2011 15.4.3538.0513 (48 languages)

Windows Live Spaces is migrating to WordPress.com. This is what Dharmesh Mehta, Director Windows Live Product Management, has announced in the Windows Live team blog. All existing 30 million spaces can be migrated without hassle in an automated process. Dharmesh states:

Windows Live and WordPress.com have worked together to build a simple way to move your blog posts, comments, and integrated photos right over to WordPress.com and start taking advantage of all their new features. And we’ll also redirect all your old Spaces URLs to your new blog, so you don’t lose any visitors along the way.

Until now, Windows Live Spaces has had a mere shadow existance. Despite the Windows Live team working to reduce clutter and ease the usage, Spaces have often suffered from Spam attacks and a user interface hard to use. On the other hand, WordPress is the perfect blogging platform for just anybody — mynetx.net is powered by its self-hosted version as well.

Paul Kim, VP User Growth for Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, welcomes you as Spaces users:

We’re excited to announce that WordPress.com is now the default blogging platform for Windows Live Spaces users. [...]

Over a six month period, beginning today, Windows Live Spaces users will have the option to move their blogs to WordPress.com. To make this possible, we’ve created a brand new importer for Windows Live Spaces to WordPress.com. New Windows Live users will also be offered a WordPress.com blog when they choose to create a new blog.

Originally launched as MSN Spaces in 2004, Windows Live Spaces come to their end until March 2011. It is more than just another end of life for a Windows Live service. In the past weeks, we have seen passing away Alerts, as well as the emergency platform Microsoft Vine. I feel proud for the Windows Live team to team up with WordPress.com. It simply provides such a good platform for you as users.

Soon, I’ll give more information about how to migrate your existing Spaces blog to a WordPress.com one. What do you think about this news?

In June, with releasing Windows Live Essentials Wave 4 beta, Microsoft had merged two similar programs for data sync, namely Windows Live Sync and Live Mesh beta. The result, Windows Live Sync beta, will be called Windows Live Mesh and get released along with the other Live Essentials Wave 4 Final.

The software synchronizes files and folders among different computers and stores data in the web. Furthermore, Microsoft offers SkyDrive web storage for photos and simple collaboration for Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents via Office Web Apps.

Since June, the Windows Live team has gathered feedback from some 240,000 users. Concluding the ideas from these users, Live Mesh will soon also synchronize hidden files and be able to generate reports telling you which files are missing in synchronizing folders.

Allison O’Mahony, Principal Program Manager Lead, Devices & Roaming at Windows Live, explains:

We’ve made several performance updates to Windows Live Mesh in response to your requests that will provide noticeable improvements to your experience. We worked on cutting the application load time in half and made syncing large numbers of folders and adding multiple devices to a sync folder faster. We’ve optimized both memory and CPU usage during sync activity as well as decreased CPU consumption by as much as 30% when Windows Live Mesh is idle.

We hope you enjoy these changes and take the time to install the new Windows Live Mesh along with the rest of Windows Live Essentials 2011 once it is released from the beta.

1. Browse to http://profile.live.com/Services/Add.aspx?appid=1140906031.
2. Activate the check box Chat with my Facebook friends in Messenger.
3. Scroll down and click Connect with Facebook.
4. Grant Windows Live permission to access Facebook Chat on your behalf.
5. Sign out and back in to Messenger. Your Facebook friends should now appear in the “Facebook” category.

The Windows Live Essentials Wave 4 public beta has been refreshed with a new version. Several new features as well as numerous bug fixes were implemented into this Beta Refresh. Its build number is 15.4.3001.0809, and it is available for free download from now on.

Download the Essentials Beta refresh

• English: Web (1.2 MB), Full (151 MB)
• French: Web (1.2 MB), Full (153 MB)
• German: Web (1.2 MB), Full (156 MB)
• Dutch: Web (1.2 MB), Full (152 MB)
• Portuguese (Brazilian): Web (1.2 MB), Full (152 MB)
• Spanish: Web (1.2 MB), Full (153 MB)
• Japanese: Web (1.2 MB), Full (151 MB)
• Chinese (Simplified): Web (1.2 MB), Full (151 MB)
• Russian: Web (1.2 MB), Full (153 MB)

Eager to know about what’s new in this Wave 4 Beta refresh? Stay tuned.

In this webmail update by Microsoft, new features like filters, inbox sweep, quick views and more were introduced. Furthermore, some changes have been integrated into this version, like you will not be signed in to Messenger automatically anymore when you open Hotmail.

The update began more than a week ago, and the team saw the need to delay the rollout to all datacenters in order to fix some issues before the new Hotmail would finally be launched worldwide. If you notice any problems with this update, please report it to the Hotmail team, either in their blog or in the Windows Live Solution Center.

Mike Schackwitz, Program Manager in the Windows Live Hotmail Team, mentioned that in the meantime, over 100 million user accounts have been upgraded to the new version of the Webmail service. Therewhile, the indices for the new thread views are still being generated.

Until now, the rollout to Hotmail Wave 4 has been one of the smoothest transitions in the lifetime of Hotmail, Schachwitz stated. The upgrade will be finished until the end of next week, so then all users will be able to use the new Hotmail features.