I have no idea how soon before we see a general release of the next wave of Windows Live services, however more information is becoming available and a lot of new features are being announced:
Windows Live Mail
Windows Live Mail is a great little program, a desktop mail application which provides a simplified Outlook kind of experience, Wave 3 will continue to develop this and complete the process of turning it into a Personal Information Manager (PIM) with Windows Live Calendar synchronisation (Finally!).
Windows Live MovieMaker
No MovieMaker isn’t great, but it’s good enough for say… people like my Dad. Although it’s been known to be coming for a long time now Live Movie Maker will be released for the first time with Wave 3. Emphasis will be on creating simple, easy to make movies which can then be published to sharing websites online, similar to what Live Photo Gallery offers for Flickr publishing.
Windows Live Photo Gallery
Google stole Live Labs’ thunder by introducing people tagging in Picasa first, but it’s still good news Live users are getting it as well. If you’ve used Facebook photo tagging you’ll know how it works, the big feature however is that ones you’ve tagged someone, Live Photo Gallery will be able to recognise people and tag them in all your other photographs.
It will also connect up the people tagged in your photographs with their Windows Live contact details, if they have one. Now I think that is pretty darn cool.
Windows Live Messenger
An old Live Messenger 9 leaked ages ago, however I won’t get too excited about it until it includes multi-client support, and I don’t think that’s ever gonna happen =( More unknown features are coming in the Wave 3 final build.
Windows Live Writer
A lot of the new Writer features are already available in the Technical Preview, however the final Wave 3 release will also include support for Windows Live Events (and I know we all use that), uploading videos to YouTube, Soapbox and possible other video services and also has a slightly redesigned UI. Thankfully that includes this:
… which for me is going to go right down with ‘word count’ as the most useful features in Live Writer =P
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You are right Martin Microsoft is improving. I have to say this but Windows Live Writer is the best DAMN blogging software ever. I miss it so much on Ubuntu. Hope Wine will let me use it. Also Windows Live Gallery is farrrr better than Picasa.
Microsoft kick Apple’s iAss.
Looking forward to new writer. Current one is decent but some quirks are terrible.
I’ll have to try few more blogging clients, but so far those I tried are bad-to-decent quality.
I have been using Live writer for many months now even starting beta. I love it very much. I cant wait to grab the latest update!
iampriteshdesai, agreed, I tried to run Live services under Wine but couldn’t get it to work =(
Rarst, there aren’t many, I’ve tried them all and WLW is easily the best. Some others offer nearly the same level of functionality but have worse UI, so why bother?
> Some others offer nearly the same level of functionality but have worse UI, so why bother?
Because I am borderline sick of unneeded image recompression, unneeded font tags and no portable version of WLW? :)
I like Zoundry Raven but despite releasing “final” version it is still too raw and unusable.
@ Rarst
There is a hack to make WLW portable. Google it.
I love WLW, WLG. Picasa 3 isn’t that cool.
If you have a quick Google you should find a portable version of WLW ;)
But there is no hack to make .net framework portable.
People should stop slapping “portable” on things that really aren’t. :)
Come on Rarst!
Most if not all PC’s have .net and there is another decent option I don’t remember the name but it was on DLS perhaps zoundry?
>Most if not all PC’s have .net and there is another decent option I don’t remember the name but it was on DLS perhaps zoundry
Most don’t have it or very old and broken one. And beleive me across two IT-related jobs I am seeing lots of PCs to make those conclusions. :)
On zoundry – see above. It is good software design but unfinished even less usable than WLW in current state.
I know what you mean by not having the alignment button. Why they didn’t put it there in the first place is mind boggling.
regards,
hackyourlife.co.cc