Microsoft made a statement that Windows Live 3 services would begin rolling out by years end and that time is quickly approaching. Microsoft was not specific on a date publicly but a letter sent to beta testers said that December 1st would be the day. If your one of the lucky few who has been beta testing, your applications may cease to work once the final product goes live.What can we all expect on or around December 1st? Not too much really as that's the day that Microsoft will start to roll the big ball of Windows Live 3 services. No one other than Microsoft knows that products will hit first but the transition will begin shortly after December 1st.
When the products do go live you will be able to download them at download.live.com.
The branding and marketing is unbearable nerdy, plain, and uninspiring. For goodnes sake, just include these items as free updates to the OS and stop with this "Live" branding nonsense. With each release, the apps become more clusterous or the design itself just becomes more "blah". Features are useless unless people can actually publish direct to services like Myspace or Facebook.
...and if they bundled it with the OS they'd probably be smited for attempting to monopolize over competitors' products. I'd imagine that a better solution would be similar to a *nix style installer that asked the user what features they wanted installed with their OS, and then during installation would then download any packages not included on the disc.
It'd do MS some good if enhancements would be released gradually for Vista, rather than trying to get people to wrap their minds around yet another set of web tools in a sea of endless choices that already exist. For example, SkyDrive should come standard along and sit n the (My) Computer window so MS wouldn't have to make the same mediocore attempts to market the service.
Instead of the awkward and useless home.live.com site, MS could actually have something that is useful and intuitive called MyWindow.com, where Windows users can login to access all their stuff in one centralized location that closely mimics their own PC experience and desktop.
1) The user would see a virtual desktop with their current wallpaper, sound events, etc.
2) Icons on the virtual desktop would include their SkyDrive, Mail, Events, Calendar, Messenger contacts, Photo Gallery, etc.
Having separate/segmented service titles is confusing to the common user. There's nothing cohesive about Live services as they exist now.
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