As reported by Mary Jo Foley, the Windows Live Butterfly program, a group of beta testers who signed on to test whatever was thrown their way, is sputtering to a close.  From a statement issued by Microsoft on the subject:

“The Butterfly group has been involved in beta testing MSN and Windows Live products for a number of years.  Rather than continue the program as something only focused on beta testing, we’re offering the group a variety of options to engage in the broader Windows Live community, including the opportunity to join the MVP (Most Valuable Professional) program and continued and future access to beta testing opportunities.”

(how one goes about “joining” the MVP program is beyond us, but hey)

In case you didn’t know, LiveSide came about largely as a result of the (then MSN Butterfly) program.  We all met as beta testers, and were all original members of the MSN Butterfly program, which later changed its name (along with dang near everything else in Red West not nailed down) to Windows Live.

Now that the Live Mesh team has finished rolling out their update, here’s a quick overview of the new stuff (beyond the obvious like this now being a beta with worldwide availability).

Progress meters in the Live Mesh client – this was a popular request ever since Mesh first rolled out in the CTP, as it was impossible to accurately tell how much had been uploaded or downloaded. The data was available definitely wasn’t reliable, but this appears to have changed for the better with the latest update.

Now there are both upload and download meters available for each device, and our initial tests showed they were reliable indicators of progress.

Making its first appearance in the Windows Live suite, Movie Maker Beta is a solid new application lacking in basic features to make it actually useful.

I’m a huge fan Windows Movie Maker in Vista because it offers a simple application with just the features needed to make/edit videos from clips, images and audio. Windows Live Movie Maker Beta does not include many of what I consider to be essential features. What it is however is the promise of something better, a new application that can offer all of the great features of the past with additional service integration and plug-in architecture for the future.

Lets look at what features it currently does have, what features from Vista’s “Windows Movie Maker” it is missing and what the future could hold.