What is Windows Live?

Windows Live helps people stay in touch and keep their online lives organized in one place. But Windows Live is more than just web services. It also includes programs for your PC and mobile services for your web-enabled mobile device.

Here's a little summary of all of the Windows Live services.

Note

Family Safety is mentioned twice because you have to download and install the Family Safety filter on each computer your children use. As a parent, you control settings by using the Family Safety website from any computer.

Whether I'm sharing photos, publishing to my blog, or communicating with friends and family, when I use Windows Live I frequently find myself thinking, "Wow, that was easy!" That's the beauty of Windows Live: all the products and services work together—and with Windows—to help me do what I want to do.

Next, I'll tell you about some of the things I like to do with Windows Live. If you want to try any of this out for yourself, you can get started right now at home.live.com (on the web) and download.live.com (to get Windows Live Essentials on your PC).

I don't know about you, but I find it tough to stay up-to-date on all the people I know. With e‑mail, IM, text messages, and social networking sites, it feels like there are just too many places to check to see what my friends and family are up to. I could call them, but by the time I think about calling it's often either too late in their time zone, I'm out of mobile phone minutes (whoops), or something else comes up.

But now all I have to do to see what people are up to is sign in to Windows Live. There, on my Windows Live Home under "What's new with your network," is a summary of what all my friends and family have been up to lately online,

Windows Live Home is a great place to get started with almost anything you do online.

I can see everything new—blog posts, comments, photos, and other things that the people in my network have decided to share with me—and I can click the links to see more or comment about what they're doing. It's all the new stuff at a glance. If you've used Messenger or Spaces before, you probably already have people in your network on Windows Live. Your network is made up of your Messenger contacts and what used to be called your Spaces friends.

If you've never used Messenger or Spaces, it's easy to grow your network. You can find people already on Windows Live, and you can invite your friends from other social networking sites like Facebook. When you add people, you decide if you want to invite them to Messenger (so you can chat online), to appear on your profile (so other people can see who you know), or both. Just invite them to your network. That's all you have to do! If they accept, they become part of your network and you'll start seeing their updates in your "what's new" list.

The cool thing about the "what's new" list is that once you add people to your network, they'll see updates about you, too. When I add new photos to Windows Live and share them, the people I've shared them with see my photos in the "what's new" list on their own Windows Live Home page. It's so much easier than sending photos to lots of different people!

The other thing I like about the "what's new" list is that you can add the things you do on other sites, too. So if you already have an account with Flickr, Twitter, or Pandora, you can just add those activities to Windows Live. That way, the people in your network can see all the different things you're doing online.

When people in my network want to see everything I've been doing lately in one place, they can just go to my Windows Live profile page. There's a list of what's new on my profile page, too, but this list is all about me. Anytime I do something on Windows Live, the list is automatically updated with the new things I've done. I can decide which activities I want to share and which people I want to share them with. If I want my best friend to see everything, when she visits my profile she sees everything. If I want my mom to only see certain photos I've added (like the cute ones of the cat), that's all she can see.

Your profile on Windows Live can automatically show the things you do online so the people in your network can stay up-to-date on your life.

So basically, all I have to do is what I already do online—upload and share photos, write in my blog, comment on other people's stuff—and my profile is updated automatically. And as I mentioned, after I add my other web activities, the things I do on those other sites appear on my profile, too. So if my friends in New York are wondering what I've been up to lately, I can just point them to my profile on Windows Live.

Photos are a big thing for me. I love taking them and showing them off (at least the good ones, meaning any photo where I don't look like the living dead). Windows Live Photo Gallery is great because it works with my computer to make getting the photos off my camera fast and easy.

Note

If you've used Windows Vista, you might have tried a program called Windows Photo Gallery. Windows Live Photo Gallery is similar, but offers more features and options.

All I do is plug my camera in to my computer using a USB cable. The AutoPlay window opens and I click Import pictures and videos using Windows Live Photo Gallery. That's it! The photos are copied over to my computer and added to my gallery.

With Photo Gallery, I can add tags (descriptive words) to photos to organize them the way I want—by date, by event, by subject, and by person. I can edit any not-so-perfect pics and even order prints of the ones worth framing. I also can use Photo Gallery to add photos to online albums and set permissions so my friends and family will see only the pictures I want them to see.

A few clicks in Photo Gallery and you're publishing your pictures online!

It used to take me weeks to get my vacation photos online to share with people. (Really, it took an hour or so, but it was such a hideous process that I would procrastinate for a few weeks first.) But now it takes just a few minutes. It's pretty slick and one of my favorite features in Windows Live.

Of course, once I've uploaded my photos, they automatically appear in the "what's new" list on my profile (for the people I've given permission to see them). The people I've shared the photos with can click to view my photos either in regular mode or as full-screen slide shows.

Full-screen slide show mode really shows off photos.

Messenger, MSN Messenger, IM—whatever you used to call it, it's now called Windows Live Messenger and it's how I like to stay in contact online with friends, family, and co-workers. I've been using Messenger since the mid-1990s—back when grunge bands were in the Top 10 and Twin Peaks was must-see TV—and I have to say I'm still pretty amazed by how I can have a conversation from Seattle with someone who's in Austin or Amsterdam without picking up the phone. I can even play games, share photos in real time, or make a video call from my computer.

Put your favorite people at the top of the Messenger main window.

I like to put the people I chat with the most into the favorites category, which always shows up at the top of Messenger. I just click their names on the contact list and drag them up there. That way I can quickly start a conversation with my most chatty friends.

I also like the "what's new" area near the bottom of Messenger—it shows me all the new things my Messenger contacts are doing online. If I see something I find interesting, I can click the link and see the details (or, if the person is online at the time, I might just start chatting with them about it).

Another thing I like to do with Messenger is show a little slide show while I chat with friends. It comes in really handy if I have some new pictures that I want to share with just one person, or if I want to get my friend's opinion on a picture of my new shoes!

Share photos while you chat online.

I can drag the photos I want to share right into the conversation window. My friend can see what I'm talking about, and we can chat while we scroll through the photos. She can even save the shots to her own computer!

Another cool thing about Messenger and Windows Live is that I can chat with people not just with the Messenger program, but also when I'm cruising around the web. If I get an e‑mail from someone in Hotmail, or I see them on my People page, I can instantly see if they're online and we can start chatting on the web. This means that I can chat with anyone who's online in Messenger, even if the computer I'm using doesn't have Messenger installed. It has come in really handy when I've been on vacation and need a quick answer. I just sign in to Hotmail, see who's online, and instead of sending an e‑mail, I start a Messenger conversation.

Speaking of Hotmail, like Messenger, it's been around for a while and it's just getting better. I love not worrying about my mailbox storage—Hotmail storage grows as I need more. And if you have multiple e‑mail accounts like I do and don't want to visit several different websites to check them, you can add them to Hotmail and receive and send e‑mail from all those accounts—all from Hotmail! This is a huge time-saver for me.

Add all your different e‑mail accounts to Hotmail and check them all.

I've also downloaded Windows Live Mail (one of several programs that make up Windows Live Essentials) to my computer. I love how easy it is to use and to see unread mail from all of my accounts at a glance. Mail lets me move messages into storage folders on my computer—perfect for the messages I want to save long-term. It also lets me easily send Photo Mail. I just select the photos I want to send and they're automatically saved to an online photo album. My friends get a great-looking e‑mail with previews of my photos, which they can click to go to the online album. They can then see the photos in a slide show, order prints, or save hi-res versions to their computers. I love it and so do my friends, because I'm not sending them huge files in e‑mail!

Use Windows Live Mail to send a photo e‑mail instead of a large attachment.

I already mentioned how you can see if someone is online and send an IM instead of an e‑mail if you want. You can actually do this both from Hotmail and from Windows Live Mail. It's very handy when you need to verify what time you're meeting your best friend for happy hour!

If you have a hectic social life or work life, you'll want to check out Windows Live Calendar online or from within Windows Live Mail. You can create several calendars, keeping the main one for yourself and then sharing the others with your family, group, or club. You'll see events from all of your calendars together on Windows Live Calendar. If you're using Microsoft Office Outlook or Windows Live Mail on your PC, you can even see your calendars when you're offline.

Create an event and add it to one of several calendars. You can keep one calendar private and share other calendars with friends, family, teams, or clubs to make coordinating activities easier.

Here's another super useful feature in Windows Live that not everyone is aware of: the contact list. To get to your contact list from anywhere on Windows Live, just click People.

On the People page, you can scroll through all of your contacts, or just the people in your network (those folks you've added to your profile or to Messenger). You also can create and manage categories of contacts—create a category for your friends, teammates, schoolmates, or any group of people. You can even mark certain people as your favorites by clicking the star.

See all of your contacts on the People page.

But the thing I'm really excited about is… (drum roll, please when someone on Windows Live updates their contact information, it's updated automatically in your contact list, as long as that person has allowed their contact info to be shared with you. OK, so it's not the flashiest feature, but it's pretty mind-freeing for me to not have to worry about updating my contact list.

Privacy and protecting yourself online is important. Windows Live puts you in control of what you share and whom you share it with. Share with everyone (public), just the people you know, a select few, or nobody at all.

To make managing permissions even easier, I set up a few categories for different groups of people I know—friends, family, and co-workers—and now I can quickly permission a photo album of our work party to just my co-workers. I can also post my more artistic photos for everyone to see so I can get some feedback on my work. It's comforting knowing that I decide who sees what.

On Windows Live, you decide who can see your stuff.

I've briefly touched on my favorite features in Windows Live. There's so much there, it was hard to narrow it down! Here's a rundown of some things I didn't go into detail on. Remember, everything is free, so if something sounds interesting, try it out! Just go to home.live.com to sign in (or sign up) for the web services, to mhome.live.com on your mobile phone, or to download.live.com to get Windows Live Essentials on your PC.

To start using Windows Live, you need a Windows Live ID. If you have a Hotmail or MSN e‑mail address, if you use Messenger or Xbox LIVE, or if you ever signed up for a Microsoft Passport account, you already have a Windows Live ID (it's your e‑mail address and password).

If you don't have a Windows Live ID, it takes about a minute to sign up for one. Once you have it, you can use it for everything in Windows Live and a bunch of other services like Zune, or anywhere you see this icon: You don't need a Windows Live ID to get Windows Live Essentials, but you do get extra features when you sign in using your Windows Live ID.

I've shared some of the things I like to do with Windows Live, but you should really check it out for yourself. Get a Windows Live ID (if you don't have one already), and sign in!