Live.com has just been updated with a whole bunch of nice features. Sanaz Ahari, comments on the series of new features and infrastructure upgrades that are part of this release and as quoted from her blog “With this launch we’ve deployed a scaleable, geofederatable, higher performance backend which we’re looking forward to growing in to”
The changes that stood out most to me are listed below:
Booting Windows Live
So you can’t really boot a webpage but nevertheless, the first time you load Windows Live you’re prompted with a nice set of customization options such as themes and language and a quick introduction to new enhancements such as Windows Live Search and the various gadgets that are available on the site.
Windows Live Profile
Once you’ve successfully selected the default customization, everything centers around making Windows Live your portal. So my account is a profile about what I like to see first, the colors I like to see things in and even the ability to port things over from other sources. For example, importing my OPML file was a breeze and cutomizing the look and feel of my Windows Live portal by way of adding new gadgets could not be more easier.
Tabs or Pages
By allowing me to add extra pages of information I can finally have information categorized by tabs or pages. This is definitely my favorite feature in this release and I’m so glad that renaming or deleting a page is so easy.
Search
The whole search experience has also been improved with easy access to Web, News, Image, Feeds and Local results.
Overall I’m definitely happy with this upgrade and it’s so much faster to use. However, with the multitude of Live sites and products being launched it’ll be interesting to see how Microsoft tries to tie the sites and products together whilst still providing a seamless experience for the end user.