When Google introduced the GMail beta two years ago on April 1, many thought it was a sly and considered trick aimed at making Microsoft scramble. Hotmail had 2mb accounts, and that's the way it was for 200 million users, …

Ben Poon announced on the Live Mail beta blog yesterday that Windows Live Mail beta is expanding, from 300,000 to 3 million. As an incentive to try it out, Windows Live Mail is giving away a Safari trip to Africa…

Ken Levy points to a new site run by Ronny Kohavi, a "general manager in Windows Live division" at http://exp-platform.com/ According to Ken's post:

The Experimentation Platform will enable product groups at Microsoft and developers using Windows Live to innovate

The Windows Live Developer Center has a new link to an MSDN Library document, "Windows Live ID Service", an overview of the upcoming replacement to Passport, Live ID. Learn about the high-level architecture, SOAP, RPC, WS Trust, and …

Ken Levy points to the seven Windows Live PowerPoint decks from last month's Mix 06, all found on the Mix '06 site, along with decks from other sessions. Ken says the on demand videos from the sessions will be …

In Niall Kennedy's post, linked below, he describes Live.com as the new default home page for Windows Vista and IE7. MSN.com currently receives a huge amount of traffic as the default home page in Windows, and a shift away from …

Ken Levy, Product Planner for the Windows Live Platform, posted on Monday a link to a new document on the Windows Live Developer Center, Business Opportunity for Building Applications with Windows Live and MSN Messenger . He talks about the …

One nice thing about LiveSide is that we don't have to chase down every Origami fold that wanders across the web. It's Windows Live here, and that's it. But Ray Ozzie's got me in a dilemma – is Live Clipboard …

The Office Live team blogged last week about some changes coming up in future versions of their products. Look for Office Live to be offering more and better developer access through Sharepoint Services 3 (WSS3), and Sharepoint Designer, the new …

What with BillG at Mix and the Office DevCon, and the Vista stain on the carpet, somewhat overlooked as announcements go was the first official introduction of Windows Live ID, presented at Mix by Brian Arbogast and Ken Levy. The …