As of this evening, we finished rolling out the latest version of Spaces. Whether you or your friends are checking out what your Messenger contacts have been up to, organizing your lists, navigating around your space, or setting up a space, the latest Spaces release has a lot of new features.

As usual, we will also be posting tips and tricks about the features over the next few weeks so send us comments with your feedback.  We look forward to hearing your thoughts.

-  Chris
Product Manager, Windows Live Spaces

Spaces home page updates 
We've made some slight changes to the design of your Spaces home page so it's even easier to see what your Messenger contacts are doing with their spaces.   We've also added birthday reminders!

To see birthday notifications, first share your contact information and then subscribe to a contact's information.  You can subscribe to contact information through Spaces, Messenger, or Hotmail.

• Spaces:  Roll over a person's profile picture and in the preview window, click on the “Receive contact updates” link
• Messenger:  Right-click a contact, click “Edit contact”, and check “Subscribe to updates for this contact”
• Hotmail:  Click Contacts in the lower lefthand corner, “Edit contact”, and check “Receive contact updates from this person”

If your contacts have entered their birthday information, you'll see their upcoming birthdays on your Spaces home-page, and you'll be able to send them an electronic greeting card from MSN Greetings powered by American Greetings  (currently only available in the US market).

The latest on lists: You asked for it, and now you've got it

While we have significantly enhanced lists over the last few releases, one of the top Spaces customer requests we get is the ability to re-order lists.   Now you can reorder lists just the way you like!

New photos features to make you smile

Many of you have told us that sharing photos on your space is important.  The people looking at your photos can now see your slideshows even bigger with the View full screen link at the bottom left of every picture.

We also added a feature which allows you to easily download individual pictures.  Just click on the Download photo link at the top of every picture if you want to save a copy of the photo to your computer.

Try a template

There are new templates that make it easy to customize based on what you want to do with your space.   Click Customize to access the templates.  Some options include photo sharing, gaming, blogging, and lists.  You can use a template as-is, or change it with your own colors, fonts, and modules.   If you've already customized your space, don't worry-- you can use a template anytime.  Your existing modules and content will still be there if you apply a template.

New ways to get around Spaces

With this release, it's easier for you to navigate back to your Spaces home page and personal space when you are browsing on Spaces.   Just click on What's new to go to your home page or click Your space to go to your space.

There are also two different ways to search for the information you want.  Enter a word or phrase into the search box and you can either search Space only, or you can search the Web, so you can get to the people, spaces, or websites you want.

Alerts arrive in new markets

Windows Live Alerts are a great way to stay notified of updates to your favorite spaces, or to know when people post new comments on your own space.   With this release we are expanding Spaces alerts to 17 new countries, including: China, Japan, Netherlands, US (Spanish), Canada (English and French), France, Germany, Italy, Korea, Spain, Denmark, Belgium (Dutch and French), Norway, Mexico, and Sweden.   This is in addition to the existing countries in which we currently offer Alerts.  

When visiting a space, you can subscribe to Alerts (if the space is public) from the new "Tools" menu on the top right side of each page.

Spaces in more places

Helping people connect and share with Spaces throughout the world is one of our goals. That's why we are happy to announce that Spaces is now available in 8 new countries and 8 new languages: Bulgaria, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Serbia, and the Ukraine.  We look forward to seeing all of the great spaces which are created in those countries.

Other features

A couple of other features that are included in this release are:

• Click a blog entry title - it will take you to that specific blog entry
• Want to learn more?   Then sit back, relax, and watch the Spaces demo

(Posted with Windows Live Writer)