Of course the big news this week was the WL 2011 beta refresh, which, unfortunately, I didn’t get to install until yesterday because of hardware problems (had to install new GPU). But there was more news. News we overlooked …

We’ve been spelunking for applications on Facebook (more news coming soon), and just noticed the Messenger page on Facebook:

8,115,283 monthly active users, not bad!

How has your experience with Facebook integration been going?  We’ve noticed a couple of things …

Thanks to a tip by Chrilo, who has found out the download address for the new Windows Live Essentials 2011 “Beta Refresh” supposedly due to be released in a few hours (10AM PST according to Neowin.net). To get it, …

When we first revealed the download links to the new Windows Live Essentials 2011 Beta Refresh, we started off by providing the English version link first. Many of you have asked for the links for the different language versions, …

As a direct response to feedback received since last month’s launch, the Bing Webmaster Tools gained some new features.

Data Export Capability
You can now download and export data from Bing Webmaster Tools about your registered sites. You …

A blog post on the adCenter Blog at Microsoft Advertising reports that the transition of organic (algorithmic, or non-paid search results) search results from the Yahoo! search engine to Bing has begun.  Once the transition is complete, according to …

What a fun day!  This morning at about 7:30 am Pacific Daylight Time, ace LiveSide contributor damaster found that the download link he had been tipped to earlier was now working, and he worked feverishly to post at the same …

(via meraTechPort, thanks Vasudev!)

So you rushed to download and install Windows Live Essentials 2011 Beta Refresh, only to get to 98% installed and fail, doh.  The problem was that although the final version of WLE 2011 will support …

In what would seem to be a major coup, Bing Maps will be the map provider for the newly announced Facebook Places, on Facebook.com.  The location service for Facebook, which will allow you to check in and share your …

Explanation:  This post was written under embargo, before the links to what was apparently the Beta Refresh became available earlier today.  According to a Microsoft spokesperson, those links point to a download that “is not the right build; the …