The Microsoft Windows Live team got a small number of developers, users and bloggers together to let them know about the latest and greatest developments along with a few details about their direction over the next few months.
The basics of what they said were that they are looking to have a consistent interface between Messenger, Spaces, portal, search etc. This is so that people don't think they are all created by different teams etc. It will be interesting to see how they approach this. They are placing a lot of effort into the contact card and related things to that. Personalisation is the big thing with them, but here is my question to you all, do you care if you have personalised news and search pages? Personally I just want to get the information. I couldn't care less if the sites say hello Sarah or nothing at all about me. I don't need gadgets for things unless they are for things like finding a car or a house. RSS fed some gadgets could be useful, unfortunately the useful industries to have this don't.
I didn't see much innovation and new product ideas. It seems to me at the moment that MSN are just trying to catch up with Google, Yahoo and co. They have a long way to go, and they seem to have the team working together to get these things done. Expect lots of small frequent updates to the Live beta suite of applications.
Expect more updates from this area over the next few months, they are beginning to listen to their users. They don't have much choice now if they want people to use their products.