I'm both excited and a bit nostalgic to be writing this blog entry letting our users know that The Space Craft (the official Spaces Team blog), is merging with the Windows Live team blog.

In some ways, this is a formalization of changes that started years ago as the team that built MSN Spaces expanded and partnered with other teams to help build Windows Live web services including Home, Profile, Photos, Events, Groups, and of course Spaces. ;)

For Spaces fans, here’s a quick history of our service:

• MSN Spaces launched in fall/winter 2004-2005 with support for blogs, photos, and lists. It was also integrated with MSN Messenger so that when a friend posted new content, a green star ("gleam") would show next to that person's name.
• In January 2006, support was added for searching Spaces, people, and blogs with the help of the (then MSN) Search team. (I joined the Spaces team in March of 2006.)
• In summer 2006, we added friend lists, and a host of other modules, redesigned the Spaces home page, and re-branded as Windows Live Spaces. In some ways, this was the launch of Windows Live 1.0.
• A bit over a year later in fall 2007, we launched Windows Live Events and a revised Spaces home page that included What’s New with your network and big improvements in our photo sharing experience. This broad release might be deemed Windows Live 2.0.
• As we embarked on planning for “Windows Live 3.0,” we expanded our team’s mission to include not just Spaces but also the friend/network experience, profiles, “What’s new,” permissions, groups, and Windows Live Writer.
• Most recently, starting with web release in December 2008 we shipped a bunch of new services, including:
  •  Windows Live Groups
  • Network invitations and friend suggestions
  • Web activities
  • New privacy and permissions controls

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Windows Live team blog, it is a fantastic resource for everything that is happening on Windows Live and is available at: http://WindowsLiveWire.spaces.live.com/. There is also an RSS feed and you can use Windows Live Alerts to subscribe via email, IM, or SMS.

• Twitter - You can also “follow” WindowsLive on Twitter at http://twitter.com/WindowsLive or TXT “follow WindowsLive” to 40404 in the USA, 21212 in Canada, or +44 7624 801423 in other locales.
• Facebook - You can become a fan of Windows Live Messenger and also add the Windows Live Messenger Facebook application.

Whether you view the blog on the web, follow Windows Live on Twitter, or any combination, I hope you’ll take a minute to connect with the Windows Live team. In addition, many of our team members including Chris, Eric, Joe, Michelle, and me will be continuing to blog about our work on Spaces and the rest of the Windows Live web services on Windows Live team blog. See you there. ;)

Thanks much—
- Rob Dolin
Program Manager, Windows Live team

Hey everyone,

In case you didn’t see the post on the Windows Live team blog, we made a change to the Spaces header last night as a direct result of the feedback that we received from you in the blog comments and the Feedback page.

For more information, check out the Windows Live team blog.

Thanks.   Please keep the feedback coming!

-Chris

There have been a number of questions about the new version of Windows Live web services over the past two days. We really appreciate the feedback and will be taking it into account as we plan and build future versions. We’ve taken some of the most frequently asked questions and answered them here.

Top 5 questions:

Why did I have problems accessing Windows Live pages yesterday, including Spaces, Profile, and Photos?

Yesterday some users intermittently got errors when they tried to access Windows Live web pages. We tracked the problem down to a load issue with some of our DNS servers, and the problem was resolved at around 1:00 PM PST. We’re sorry that some of you had problems accessing our sites, and we want to reassure you that we take the availability of our service very seriously. We’re constantly working to improve the quality and availability of our service – we want you to be able to rely on our service.

What is the story with privacy?

• The privacy and security of your information is a top priority for us, and we want to assure you that we haven’t done anything that changes any of the privacy settings you’ve put in place. We have made changes that allow information you’ve already entered to be shared more easily across Windows Live. This means information you’ve entered is showing up in many more places and can make it look more public than it was before. But, the key thing is that the privacy settings you put in place when you first entered that information are still being honored.
• It’s important to note that your view of your own profile typically shows more information than visitors will see.  For example, you will see your last name on your profile if you’ve entered it before, but unless you’ve explicitly changed the permissions on it, then other people won’t see it when they visit your profile.  This principle holds true throughout Windows Live – people will always (and only) see the content that they have permissions to view.  See this blog post on Windows Live Wire for pictures that show how this works.
• To help address any confusion, the blog post on Windows Live Wire shows you where you can view and edit your permissions, as well as step-by-step instructions you can follow to protect your information the way you want.

How do I keep comments I make from showing up in what’s new?

One of the great things about the updated what’s new system is that it shows the comments your friends left so you can see what’s interesting in the network and join in on the conversation. If you don’t want your comments to show up in what’s new, however, you can go to this page and uncheck the items for Blog, Documents, Guestbook, Notes, Photos, and Shared Favorites. This will turn off all of the what’s new updates you generate for those services, including comments. Keep in mind, turning off the what’s new updates doesn’t prevent someone from going to the item in question and seeing the comment – anyone who can access a blog post, photo, file, etc. can see any comments left on it.

How do you get to your space?

Your Windows Live space is still at the same URL as before (for example: http://thespacecraft.spaces.live.com/).   If you forgot your web address, there are two easy ways to get there:

• Click “Profile” in the header, and then click “Space” in the left-hand navigation area.
• Or, click “More” in the header, then click “Spaces.” On the Spaces page, click the big “View your space” icon near the top. Also, you can always go directly to http://spaces.live.com/ and click “View your space” from there.

How do I get to someone else’s space?

When you are looking at the person’s display picture click on their name to go to their profile, then click on “Space” in the left hand column on their profile (if there is no listing for “Space” that means they don’t have a space). You can find someone in your network on the People page, and you can search for people outside your network.

Privacy questions:

How do I make my photo album, profile details, space, etc. completely private?

When you are editing the permissions for something you can uncheck all of the boxes or click the “Clear these settings” link and then click “Save.” This will make it so only you can access that item.

Are my private messages now visible to everyone? OR What is the Notes feature on my profile?

The private messages (previously called “Messages” in Spaces) you send and receive are NOT public – only you and the person you sent them to can see them. We have introduced a new feature called Notes that lets you leave a public message on someone’s profile. This is a separate feature from Private messages – your private messages are still just between you and the person you are talking with. You can choose who can send you private messages on this page. You can change who can view your notes and who can leave you notes by going to your notes page and clicking “Edit permissions.”

Comment questions:

How do I see recent comments on my stuff?

We’ve built a brand new Recent Comments page, which shows you up to 50 comments made in the last 30 days on your blog, guestbook, photos, and files, as well as notes left on your profile. You can reach this page from the Spaces home page, or from the Windows Live Home page (on the right hand side click the “Do more” link and choose “View recent comments”). You can filter the comments on this page to show you all of your comments, just comments on your space, just photo comments, or photo and file comments.

What have you been doing to reduce comment spam?

We recognize that comment, invitation, and private messaging spam has been a real problem recently. In this release we’ve added a number of anti-spam measures behind the scenes. We don’t want to go into detail about how these measures work, as any information we provide may help spammers out. So far we have seen a significant decrease in the amount of spam in the last 2 days since the release, but we recognize that fighting spam and abuse is an ongoing battle, and we will be continuing to invest in methods to prevent and remove spam and abuse from our network.

Why don’t I have more formatting options for my comments?

In the previous version of Spaces you could use bold, italics, underlines, and hyperlinks in all comments. In guestbook comments, if the owner of the guestbook allowed it, you had much richer formatting options including HTML editing. For regular comments we found that the usage of formatting (other than hyperlinks) was very, very low, and supporting these formatting options made all of the pages that included comments slower to load. In order to improve performance we removed the ability to use bold, italics, and underlines in regular comments. You can still add a hyperlink to your comment – just type the URL in your comment and when you submit the comment it will automatically get fixed up into a clickable URL. If you’ve enabled rich formatting in your guestbook comments we still offer the full range of formatting options, including bold, italic, and underline. If you would like to add an image to your guestbook comments, you can drag a selection over the image in another website and paste it directly into the comment field.

Why are some of the comments on my blog, guestbook, photos, or files missing?

One of the features we built in this release was the ability for you to delete your own comments (great if you notice a typo after you submit your comment and want to delete and resubmit it). We’ve seen some reports that people are “missing” comments that were actually deleted by the people that left them.

Spaces questions:

Why are the spaces statistics not updating?

As part of our release process we have to update a lot of different components. The statistics servers take longer to update than the rest of our servers, which is why you are seeing zero new page views in your statistics since we released. Once the statistics servers finish updating in the next few days your statistics will be available again. In the mean time we are still tracking page views and those page views will be included when the statistics servers are fully updated – you won’t “lose” any page views in this process.

How do I change back to the old Spaces font?

We changed the default font on Spaces to be more readable and consistent with other services on Windows Live.  If you don’t like this change, you can customize your space to use the old font.

Why does BlogIt on a Spaces blog post not quote the original post in my new post?

When we updated our APIs to make them more compliant with web standards we ended up having to reduce the number of quoted characters in the BlogIt function. When clicking BlogIt on short posts you will still have the post quoted in your post, but for longer posts we end up dropping the post body. We know that this is less than ideal, and we’re investigating ways to improve this experience in future releases.

What’s new questions:

How do I remove one of my updates from what’s new?

You can remove updates from what’s new by going to your profile, hovering on the update you want to remove, clicking the “gear” icon to the right of the update, and selecting “Remove this update”.

How do I stop receiving what’s new updates from a specific person?

You can block what’s new updates from a specific person or updates of a specific type from your Home page.  Hover on an update from the person you want to block, click the “gear” icon to the right of the update, and choose to hide updates from that person or that type of update. Or you can go to this page and add a person to your block list or uncheck a type of update that you no longer want to receive.

Miscellaneous questions:

Why can’t I reorder the photos in my albums?

Unfortunately we had to cut reordering photos in albums and reordering photo albums from our feature list. These were two of the features we wanted to have in the new photos experience, and we are considering adding these features in a future release.

Why don’t some of my friends are show up in my network?

A very small number of people are affected by this issue, which will be fixed in the near future. As part of our update we are running a migration job on everyone’s friends list. If you added someone to your friends list between November 20th and December 2nd it is possible that that person will not show up in your network. We are completing our friends list migration by December 15th,  and at that time any missing friends should be back in the list of people in your network. If there are people missing from your network that were added before November 20^th please let us know us know by leaving a comment.

How do I turn off e-mail notifications when someone sends me an invitation?

You can change your communication preferences, including who can send you an invitation and whether you get e-mail notifications on this page. You can get to this page by going to any Options page (from the options menu on every page), choosing “Windows Live” in the left hand navigation, and then clicking “Communications preferences.”

Why do some people have “No name” as their name?

If you’re seeing “No name”, it means that person hasn’t put a name into Windows Live. We’ve built a number of notifications into Windows Live that encourage people to set their name, so as time goes on you should see fewer and fewer of these “No name” people. You can change your name on this page. We also had a temporary problem (now fixed!) during the early hours of this release that made some people appear as “No name” even when they had a name. If you see others that have “No name,” encourage them to go to that link and change their name. Your name will appear on your profile and anywhere else in Windows Live where your identity is shown.

How do I delete a friend?

You can delete a friend from your People page, which you can access by clicking the People link in the header of most pages. On the main people page, select the checkbox of the person you’d like to delete and then click “Delete” from the action links at the top.

The updates to Spaces, SkyDrive, and Events, as well as the brand new Profile, Groups, and Photos experiences have just been released. We can’t wait for you to try them out!

We’ll be talking in more depth about all of the cool new stuff in the coming weeks, and we’ll be answering a list of frequently asked questions later this week. But if you want more info about the release, you can check out these blog posts:

• The pre-release announcement on the Windows Live team blog and our announcement here on The Space Craft
• The web release post on the Windows Live team blog, which provides details about the new header, the Home page, the new Photos experience, the new Profile, Groups, Events, and SkyDrive
• Our in-depth post about the updates to Spaces
• Details about “what’s new” and “web activities,” which help you keep in touch and up-to-date with what your friends are up to
• The full scoop on the new Profile page
• A breakdown of all the cool new stuff in SkyDrive over on the SkyDrive team blog

This is an incredibly exciting release for us, and we really hope you enjoy all of the new experiences. Check it out, and let us know what you think in the comments!

- The Windows Live team

P.S. Updates to other services, including the Windows Live Home page, will be rolling out soon.

In the past few posts we’ve mentioned the new profile that we’re shipping in our upcoming release, but today’s the day that we give you the full scoop!

Profiles will be the center of Windows Live

Your profile will be the place for people to see what is going on with you, to communicate with you, and to see the content you are sharing. It’s also your way to express yourself. You can choose from a variety of themes, share what you’re doing online (both on Windows Live and on other websites) in your what’s new feed, and get to all of of the things you’ve posted on Windows Live – your photos, files, space, and profile details. If you want to add someone to your network or communicate with them, either through private messages or by posting a note for everyone to see, the profile will be the best place to do it.

Your profile will use the existing information you’ve filled out for your space’s profile – there’s no need to re-enter anything. So if you’ve already added a profile picture, interests, a self description, or any other profile information it will still be there.

Let’s talk about the different parts of your profile:

• The top of the profile will highlight your theme, profile picture, name, status message, occupation, and location. Many of the new Windows Live themes (like the one shown below) will be dynamic, reflecting the time of the day and the weather in your current location. You can see that it’s kind of cloudy and gloomy in Seattle right now, but it’s not raining!
  
• In the left hand column there will be links to the content that you’ve shared, including photos, files, and your space.
• Beneath that will be the profile details you’ve shared, including your self-summary, interests, birthday, and contact information. Don’t worry, you decide who gets to see this information. In fact, you decide who has permission to see your stuff in Windows Live, from photos, to your space, to your favorite music.
• Under the profile details will be the list of web activities you’ve added to your profile. If you use another website, like Flickr, Pandora, or Twitter, you can add it to your Windows Live profile. Every time you make an update on one of those other sites it’ll show up in your what’s new feed. It’s a great way to share all of the things you do online in one place.
  
• Speaking of what’s new, your recent activity will be front and center on the profile page. Your friends can quickly catch up on what you’ve been up to, and all you need to do is just keep doing the things you normally do online. You can see below that Joe has added a favorite book, uploaded a Word document, shared some photos, and left some comments on photos and blog posts in the past few weeks:
  
• The profile will be a great place to get in touch and communicate with people. You’ll be able to send an e-mail or private message from a persons profile, or post a note on their profile if you want your friends to see what you’ve said:
  
• At the top of the right-hand column of your profile there will be a list of the people in that your network. When someone visits your profile they’ll see a list of the people you both know:
  
• Finally, there will be a special section where you can show the world, or just your friends, the books, music, and movies you really care about, called favorite things:
  

We’re really excited about the new profile, as well as the rest of Windows Live, and we can’t wait to release it to the world. Let us know what you think in the comments.

- The Windows Live team

One of our favorite features in the current version of Spaces is the What’s New feed on the Spaces home page. It’s a great way for you to keep up to date on what’s happening with all of your friends on Windows Live, and in our upcoming release we’re making it even better!

Include updates from non-Windows Live sites in your What’s New activity:

The biggest news is the addition of Web Activities to What’s New. What’s New has always done a good job keeping you up to date on what your friends are up to in Windows Live, but what about the things they do on other sites like Flickr, Yelp, or Twitter? With the new release you will be able to add Web Activities to your profile for 3rd party sites and the things that you share on those sites will show up in your friends’ What’s New. For example, if you use Twitter you can add the Twitter web activity to Windows Live, and then every time you send a tweet it will be automatically included in your recent activity and your friends’ What’s New feeds.

We’re shipping with support for over a dozen Web Activities in our upcoming release, but we’ll be adding even more as time goes on.

Windows Live activities:

Web Activities aren’t the only new and cool things in What’s New though. Here are some of the other exciting changes we’re making:

• Beautiful new way for showing photo updates
  
• Profile picture and status message updates:
  
• Comments made by your friends on blogs, guestbooks, photos, files, and favorite websites are now included in What’s new:
  
• Favorite websites shared by your friends show up in your What’s New:
  
• Files added to SkyDrive now include an image for the specific file type uploaded as well as the file name:
  
• List and Favorite Things updates now include the pictures of your favorite books, movies, or music in them:
  

Viewing What’s New throughout Windows Live

The primary place for viewing your What’s New feed in the next release is the Windows Live home page, which functionally replaces the Spaces home page:

The new Windows Live home page will have all sorts of awesome features, like giving you access to your e-mail and calendar, letting you add your favorite photos to the top of the page, showing you your beautiful Windows Live theme, and, of course, showing you What’s New with the people in your Windows Live network.

You will also be able to see What’s New with an individual friend by visiting their profile page:

Throughout Windows Live we will surface What’s New information in lots of appropriate places:

• The new Spaces landing page will highlight blog activity in Spaces and on 3^rd party blog sites
• In Messenger you’ll see What’s New updates scroll across the bottom of the main window
• On the Hotmail Today page we’ll show you What’s New from your favorite contacts
• After you send an e-mail to someone in Hotmail we’ll show you What’s New for them
• When you go to an individual Group or Event you’ll be able to see all of the new activity in that group right from the main page for that Group or Event
• We’ll also have a home page for all of your Groups (and another for your Events) that will give you an overview of all the new activity in your Groups (or Events)
• The landing page for photos will show you your friends’ recent photo updates in Windows Live and other photos web sites like Flickr and Photobucket 

We’ll be continuing to talk about the upcoming release of Windows Live next week. Please let us know what you think in the comments.

- The Windows Live team

As promised last week, we’re going to talk in more detail about the exciting changes coming to Windows Live, and we figured we should start with the product you’re using right now, Windows Live Spaces.

More freedom to do what you want

Let’s start off with the most visible change: we’re removing the horizontal ad from your space!

Your space is all about your content, the way you want to show it, so we’re reducing the amount of clutter and giving you more freedom by:

• Removing the horizontal ad from the top of your space
• Making all of the modules optional (even the Title and Tagline module, which previously couldn’t be removed)
• Using a simpler header that has less text than other pages in Windows Live
• Letting you change themes, fonts, colors, and background images on your space using the customize menu
• Letting you rename or not show the title of each module on your space by using the settings menu for each module in customize mode
• Letting you select exactly which photo albums to show in your photos module – you can even customize what parts of the photos interface to display

(These last three are features that we’ve already implemented and are available today in Spaces)

Better looking pages

We’re also making some additional small changes to make your space look even better. One of the things we’ve done is to improve the typography on your space by using a larger, more readable default font, Segoe UI. It’s a subtle change, but it really helps make your content easier to read. Here’s a side-by-side comparison of our post from last week with the current font and with the new default font:

(Current version on left, new version on right)

We’re also doing a better job of differentiating titles from normal text by using different size text instead of relying on bold versus plain text. Of course, if you prefer the old font you can customize your space to use the old font (when we release the new update, we won’t override any font selections you’ve already made).

There’ll also be a couple of theme changes, mainly to the header and background images, that make things look a bit simpler, cleaner, and more attractive. The most obvious of these is that we’re getting rid of the 3D “bevel” in the header and moving to solid colors or unobstructed background images. You can see this in the comparison screenshot below:

(Current version on top, new version on bottom)

Don’t worry, these theme changes won’t break your layout or change the way your modules look – they’ll only affect the header and background images.

Improved blogging experience (especially with photos)

Blogging with photos will get even better with the next update. About a year ago we fixed the Add Photos button in blogs on Internet Explorer so your photos were inserted inline in your blog entry, which let you move them around, place them exactly where you wanted, and generally make your blog entries more attractive and appealing. With this release all browsers will be able to insert images inline, and you won’t need to install our upload tool in order to insert images. If you do install the tool, however, you’ll get a rich, drag and drop upload experience that makes inserting images from your computer, or from a photo album you already have on Windows Live, a snap.

We also built a great new photo preview that you’ll see when you click on a photo in a blog entry. Instead of opening up a new window with a larger version of the image, the current page will show a beautiful preview of the original size image (or as much as can fit on your screen):

In the coming days we’ll continue to blog about all of the cool stuff in the next release. We hope you’re as excited about it as we are. As always, please let us know what you think in the comments.

- The Windows Live team

Some folks are going to ask this question when they read about or see the small tweaks we’ve made to the formatting of Spaces. The new font we’re using throughout Windows Live helps make your content more readable and better looking, but if you want to use the old font, or even a completely different font, you can do so in Spaces by following these steps:

• Sign in and go to your space
• Click on the “Customize” menu in the upper right hand corner, and choose “Advanced”
• When the “Advanced” menu pops up go “Text colors and fonts” section and choose “Verdana” for the font
• Go to the “Module colors and fonts” section and choose “Verdana” for the title font
• Click the “Close tab” button and then the “Save” button

Have you already changed which font you are using on your space? If so you don’t need to follow the steps above because your font selection won’t change if you’ve already changed the font on your space.

If you want to keep the current, smaller text size when we release the next version of Spaces you can change the text size to “Small” in the same “Advanced” part of the customize experience described above.

- The Windows Live team

Hey all,

As you may have read on Windows Live Wire, there is a new public beta of the Windows Live client suite available today. 

Folks on our team have been using the Beta for a few weeks now, and I wanted to highlight two features that I think are especially relevant to people using Windows Live Spaces:

• Windows Live Writer added awesome support for inserting video.  You can read more in Writer Zone
• Windows Live Messenger has integrated What's New functionality like you see on the signed-in Spaces home.  You can read more in Messenger Says

Thanks for using Windows Live and please leave us comments if you have feedback on the public beta.  Thanks--

--Rob Dolin

Program Manager, Windows Live team

In October of last year, we partnered with HP to add a feature to Windows Live Spaces which allowed you to print your blog entries in a neatly formatted manner.

We were notified recently by HP that they are shutting down their blog printing service and ending their partnership with Spaces. As a result, on Monday September 15^th, the blog printing feature on Spaces won't be available anymore.

While it's not as pretty as the original blog printing service, you can get a good printout of your blog from the RSS feed.

To print your blog entries, add "feed.rss" to the end of your blog's web address. Here's an example:
http://thespacecraft.spaces.live.com/blog/feed.rss

To print your blog entries by category, add "feed.rss" to the web address for the category, like this:
http://thespacecraft.spaces.live.com/category/Employment/feed.rss

We hope this tip helps, and we're sorry for any inconvenience that this may cause.

-Chris
Product Manager, Windows Live

Just four short years ago today we shipped the first beta version of Spaces.

The Spaces team would like to thank you, all of our wonderful users, for an awesome four years. We’re looking forward to many, many more.

Back on May 22^nd we put a call out for people to join the Windows Live Clubhouse community. We wanted to bring together a group of people who are passionate about Windows Live, showcase cool stuff they are doing, and inspire others to try new things. And now you can see it in action on WindowsLive.com. You'll find great tips and tricks and show-and-tell stories on how people are using Windows Live.

Once people join the Clubhouse community, they contribute simply by posting a blog and tagging it on their own space.  This content is then aggregated by an RSS feed into the community, where it can be seen and rated by all Clubhouse members.  The content rated most highly by the community gets featured on WindowsLive.com.

If you're interested in contributing, join the Windows Live Clubhouse (you must request access first).

And please, as always, let us know what you think.

Thanks!

Marty Collins
Senior Product Marketing Manager

Hey everyone,

We've been watching the comments that you leave for us, and we wanted to answer your frequently asked questions.

Leave us a comment and let us know if these FAQs are helpful, and if there are other questions that you have that aren't included.

- Chris
Product Manager, Windows Live

FAQ Sections

• Account
• Spaces and Blogs
• Friends
• Photos
• Search
• Windows Live Writer

Account

Q: When I go to my Windows Live space, it says it's unavailable. What's the problem?
A: Here are some of the things that might affect your ability to view your space:

• Operational issues
  Please check the Spaces home page or The Space Craft to verify the Windows Live Spaces service is available. If problems persist, you can be sure we're working on it. We need some time to resolve these types of issues, so please check back later.
  
• Code of conduct violation:
  You may have posted content to your space (often unintentionally) that violates the Windows Live Code of Conduct. Check your Hotmail inbox, or the inbox associated with your Windows Live ID, for messages from Support.

If you're still not sure why your space is unavailable but the rest of the site seems to be working, please contact Windows Live Support for additional assistance.

Q: How do I change the space web address that's associated with my Windows Live ID?
A: You can have one space web address per Windows Live ID. This means that if you want to change the address that's associated with your Windows Live ID, you must delete your existing space and then select a new address. To change your web address, follow the instructions in the FAQ about deleting your space. After you see the confirmation that your space has been cleared, click Your space in the navigation bar to create a new space for yourself.  Click Choose web address in the Welcome module and enter your new web address.  

Q.  I just created a new e-mail address.  How can I associate this new e-mail address with my existing Windows Live Space?
A.  A space is associated with a single e-mail address from its creation, and you can’t change that association. However, if you clear your existing space, you may be able to reclaim the web address for your space using your new e-mail address. Then that web address would be associated with your new e-mail address. You’d have to add all of the content back onto your new space, though. Please note that it can take up to 60 days for your web address to free up before you can reclaim it.

Q: How do I delete my Windows Live space?
A: Once you have created a space, you can delete it at any time. Go to your space and sign-in, and then click Options and then Space settings. At the bottom of the space settings page you'll see the section Clear your space. Click Clear your space and you can clear all of the information on your space and delete your web address. Please note that doing this will erase all of the content on your space and you won't be able to get it back.  

Q: What types of content are not allowed on Windows Live Spaces?
A: We want Windows Live to be a great place for you to share and express yourself. The members of our team come from diverse backgrounds, have a broad diversity of opinions, and do our best to respect those.  However, there are some types of content which are not appropriate for sharing on Windows Live. You can read about what's not allowed in the Windows Live Code of Conduct and Microsoft Service Agreement.

Q: How do I report a space that has pornography?
A: We take our content policies very seriously. If you come across a space that you believe has objectionable content, please report it by clicking Report Abuse at the bottom right of every page.

Spaces and blogs

Q: How can I remove a comment?
A: To remove a comment, go to your blog entry page, sign in, and then click Edit. Scroll to the bottom of the edit page and click the red X for the blog comment(s) you want to remove, and then click Publish entry. It's important to remember to click Publish entry to delete the comments. The entry will be saved but the date of the original post will remain the same. 

Q: How do I manage and delete multiple comments at the same time from multiple blog entries?
A: You can manage comments from multiple blog entries from the summary view. Here's how to get to the summary view:

1. Sign in to your space.
2. Go to your blog.
3. Change to summary view by clicking Summary in the left column.
4. Click Comments below each blog entry to show the comments for that blog entry.
5. Select the comments you want to delete and click Delete selected items.

Q: How do I add and remove modules? Is it gone forever once I hide it?
A: To see a list of all modules, click Customize and then Modules. Select a module to add it to your space, and then drag the module to where you want it to appear. Remember to click Save to save your changes. You can also hide a module. Just click Customize and then Modules. Look through the list to find the module you want to hide, and then click the module name to hide it. Hiding a module removes it from your space but doesn't delete it —you can add it back at any time (with all the content you added previously) by selecting it from the Customize page.

Q: Does the statistics page count the number of times that I visit my own space?
A: It depends. When you are signed-in and visiting your own space, the pages you view do not count as part of your space statistics.

Friends

Q: How do I remove people from my what's new list?
A: At the bottom of your signed-in Windows Live Spaces home page, click Options at the bottom of the what's new module. You can select who you want to show and who you don't want to show in the what's new list on this options page. Note: We're aware of some issues on the what's new options page, so if it doesn't seem to be working for you, rest assured that we're actively working on it.

Q: How do I reorder people on my friends list?
A: For instructions on how to manage and reorder your friends list, read this Space Craft blog entry.

Q: How do I delete people on my friends list?
A: To delete someone from your friends list, sign in, go to your space, and then go to your friends list (one way to get there is to click your friends list module heading, or you can click Friends in the top navigation). Click the pencil icon next to the person you want to delete. On the next page, click Delete from friends list. The person will be removed from your friends list. If you want to add them back, you'll need to invite them to be a friend again.

Q: If I have a friend that deleted his space. Will he still appear on my friends list?
A: Yes. If you're friends with someone who's deleted their space, they'll still appear on your friends list unless you explicitly remove them.

Photos

Q: Why do I have photo albums that have no pictures in them?
A: If you have an empty photo album, you may have clicked Add album and then didn't add any photos.  You can either add photos to that album or you can delete it from your space.

Q: How do I delete a photo album?
A:  Go to your space, sign in, and click Photos. On the photos page, click Edit or delete albums.  On the next page, select an album(s), and then click Delete selected albums. Note: if you delete an album, all the photos in that album will be deleted from your space. For more info, read this blog post on the Space Craft.

Q: Is it possible to change the order my albums?
A: Yes. Sign in, go to your photos page, and then click Edit or delete albums. You can drag your albums into any order you want. When you're done, click Save and close.

Q: I can no longer embed photos from my Windows Live space on another webpage or blog.  Is there a reason for this?
A: Only photo albums that are available publicly to everyone on the Internet can be embedded on another webpage.  As a result, the embed link will only show up for public albums on a public space.  If the permissions for your space are set to anything other than public, you won't be able to embed your photos in another webpage. If you want to embed your photos, sign in to your space. Click Options and then Permissions. Change the permission to Anyone on the Internet. Also make sure your album permissions are set to Anyone on the Internet.

Q: How do I rotate a photo before I upload it?
A: If you use Internet Explorer, you can rotate your images using the Spaces ActiveX photo upload control.  Place your cursor over the photo you want to rotate and you should see the rotate controls on the bottom of the photo. You can also rotate your photos with an image editing program like Windows Live Photo Gallery (this is especially handy if you're using a browser that doesn't support Active X, like Firefox). With Photo Gallery you can rotate more than one photo at a time, and you can batch upload your photos to your space.

Q: Can I add photos to my Windows Live space and restrict them so that only certain people can see them?
A: Yes. After you add your photos, click the album, and then click Edit album. There should be a permissions area on the page that tells you the current permissions settings for this album. Click Edit permissions and then select the people who're allowed to see this album. You can set different permissions for each album.

Q: Why is there a blog images album on my space? Can I delete it?
A: The blog images album contains images that were uploaded to your space, but not into a specific photo album. For example, if you added a blog post that included a photo, the photo is stored in the blog images album. If you delete this album, you'll also delete the image from the blog post, and you'll see a red X in the blog post where the image used to be.  In other words, we recommend that you do not delete this album.  You can however, move the album to the bottom of list of albums to make it less visible.

Search

Q: How do I get my Windows Live space and blog to show up in search engine results?
A: Here are a few things that may help your space and blog appear more often in search results:

• Make sure the permissions for your blog are set to public (Anyone on the Internet).
• Include some text on your blog and in your profile, especially if you want your blog to show up when you search for your name. For example, include a small paragraph about yourself on your profile or space, and make sure you blog posts have text in them, not just pictures or videos.
• Make sure the search engines know about your space, blog, and profile.  While Windows Live Spaces supports the SiteMaps.org protocol and sends pings for new blog entries, you may find directly submitting your space, blog, and profile to a search engine may increase your likelihood of getting indexed. 
• You may also find that getting people to link to your space, blog, or profile will help to increase both your likelihood of getting indexed in search engines and can affect where your page is listed in the search results. Three ways to get inbound links are: 1) leave relevant comments on other people’s blogs, 2) ask people to link to your page, and 3) invite your real-world friends to become friends on Windows Live (when they accept your invitation, they'll automatically be linking to your page).
• You can also use Windows Live Writer to set ping servers which will automatically notify certain websites when you've posted a new blog entry. See the Writer section of this FAQ for more information.

Q: How do let people search the content on my Windows Live space?
A: To help visitors search your space, add the Search My Blog gadget.

Windows Live Writer

Q: How do I notify search engines that I've posted a new blog entry?
A: With Windows Live Writer you can set up your blog posts so that every time you post a new blog entry, Writer automatically notifies the search engines, feed readers, and other sites of your choosing. Just set up the appropriate ping servers and you can quickly ensure that your blog entries are being indexed. See this blog post on the Writer blog for more information

Q: Are there any video tutorials to help me understand more about the features and functionality in Windows Live Writer?
A: Yes, the Writer team has created several videos to help people blog with Windows Live Writer. Check out the list of videos

This morning, the Windows Live Writer team released a new version of Writer for download from Writer Zone, their team blog.   The new version is a technical preview only available in English (United States), and the primary focus of the release is to get feedback on the improvements made to the plug-in SDK. 

In addition, there are some additional product features as well, including the ability to publish videos from your computer to Soapbox and Spaces as well as new photo editing capabilities.

Go check out the Writer team space where you can read more about the SDK changes and the new features, and download the technical preview.

And as always, keep the feedback coming.

- Chris
Product Manager, Windows Live

We're looking for people who love using Windows Live products. More importantly, we're looking for those of you who would like to share your experiences on Windows Live with others.

This is your chance to help build a community from the ground up. We'd like to showcase for the world the best of what you do on Windows Live. If you have stories, tips or tricks, or product reviews you would like to share with our entire Windows Live audience, we'd like to hear from you.

If you're interested, take this short survey so we can find the best way to get you involved.

Thanks for participating!

Marty Collins
Community Manager for Windows Live

Have you heard about Windows Live Writer and how easy it makes blogging, but didn’t know how to get it or how to configure it to work with your space?

The Writer team has created a set of instructional videos which show you how to:

• Quickly set-up Windows Live Writer to publish to your space or a newly created space
• Begin authoring a blog entry with Windows Live Spaces
• Insert and format pictures, videos, maps, and other content directly into blog entries
• Publish a blog entry to your space with one click

Check out the Windows Live Writer space for more information and if you don’t have Windows Live Writer yet, download it here.

Enjoy and let us know your feedback on Writer by leaving us a comment.

- Chris
Product Manager, Windows Live

Congratulations to one of our sibling teams, Live QnA, on their recent launch of major updates on their site. 

Dennis has all of the details on the QnA team space and as you may know, you can add modules to your space for “Questions I’ve Asked” and “Questions I’ve Answered” on Live QnA.  Details on these modules are also in an earlier entry on the QnA team space. 

Congrats again to the QnA team.

--Rob
Program Manager, Windows Live

We wanted to let you know that we had a small release to Spaces today.

The primary change in this release was that you can now include Messenger for the web as well as SkyDrive files in the Custom HTML module using embed codes.  

In addition, we also made some changes to the infrastructure of Spaces to make the service faster and more reliable.

We hope you enjoy the changes.   Keep giving us the feedback.  We are listening.

- Chris
Product Manager, Windows Live

Do you want to work on one of the fastest growing products using some of the hottest technologies on the web today?  Are you passionate for the web and the desire to create great new user experiences?

If you are an engineer who wants to set new grounds in innovative technology – we want you on the Windows Live Social Networking team to help design and build our next generation of social networking products.  As a member of the Social Networking team, you’ll have the opportunity to contribute significantly to the design and implementation of our worldwide products – including Windows Live Spaces, Events, and Writer – as well as collaborate closely with other Windows Live Experience teams including Hotmail and Messenger.

Check out our job descriptions here and here.   If you think you have what it takes, submit your resume online.

We want you on our team.

- The Windows Live Social Networking team.