Today we released Windows Live Events, as well as some Spaces updates. Now planning get-togethers, keeping in touch with friends and family, and sharing photos are much easier. Plus, we’ve added some of the top feature requests you’ve sent in to us over the past few months.

You can read about Events and the other updates below, and, as always, keep the feedback coming. We are listening!

-Chris Keating and Jay Fluegel
Product Managers, Windows Live

Easily create a great-looking website for your next event To offer you more ways to connect and share memories with the people you care about most, the team that brought you Spaces would love to hear your feedback on Windows Live Events, our new, free social event planning service.  With Events you can easily: Plan that next baby shower, birthday party, or family reunion Create a great-looking event invitation and website using one of over 100 fantastic templates Invite anyone with an e-mail address and track who’s coming Make your event unique with familiar customization features - choosing a friendly web address (like http://kates1stbirthday.events.live.com), using custom colors, fonts, and background images, or adding modules and Windows Live web gadgets Let guests and organizers share photos and stories before and after the event Click on Events from the new navigation and then click Create event to get started!
Share photos and stories after the party’s over Ever notice that your guests take more and better pictures at your parties than you do because you’re focused on everyone having a good time?   And, if you remember to even ask, there is a mad scramble afterwards to try to collect everyone’s photos over e-mail.  Well, we want to make that A LOT easier with features like: Photo album creation by the event organizer AND any of the guests Stunning full-screen photo slideshows Ordering prints through our partner, HP Snapfish One-click download of a photo album into Windows Live Photo Gallery After the event, return to the event website and click Add album in the Photos module to share those photos! In addition to making it easy for everyone to share photos after the party, Windows Live Events allows guests to share memories in other ways, including a discussion board, guestbook, and sharing videos you upload to Soapbox on MSN Video or other popular video sharing sites.
Works great with other Windows Live services Like Spaces, Events works really well with Windows Live services you’re already familiar with. For example, while an invitation can be sent to any e-mail address, click Invite guests from the event website and quickly invite individuals and groups from your same contact list that’s available in Windows Live Hotmail, Windows Live Messenger, and Spaces.

What’s new in What’s new

In today’s release, we also added some new features to the Spaces home page.  

• What’s new now shows more details about what your friends and Messenger contacts are doing online, including adding photos, files, new blog entries, profile updates, lists, and friends.
• Comments on your space now also includes photos and guestbook comments, in addition to blog comments.

For additional information on the new spaces home page, Rob Dolin, a Spaces Program Manager, has a detailed post on the new features here. 

Do more with your photos

With this release, we’ve made it easier to share photos using Spaces.

Here’s how:

• Let your friends know about new photos you’ve added to your space. Click Send a link and you’ll get a formatted e-mail with links to your album – just add your friends and family to the “To:” line and click Send.

• Put your photos and albums on other websites. Click Embed and then copy the web address or embed code and paste it into the appropriate location on the other site.
• Blog about your own or other people’s photos. Click Blog it and a new blog entry is created automatically with the photo already in the entry. Just add your thoughts and click Publish entry.
• No more downloading an entire album of photos one by one. Download all the photos in an album by clicking Download and then selecting Download album.
• Share photos from your space on Facebook (only in some markets where Facebook is available)
• For those wall-worthy shots, you can order prints online from HP Snapfish in 9 new markets including Australia, Belgium, France, Italy, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, and the UK.

Control who can see your albums

Want Mom to see the pictures from your hiking trip, but not the shots from your friend's birthday? No problem! Now you can choose who can see which albums on your space.

Just go to an album and click Edit album. You’ll see what the current permissions are for that album. To change them, click Change permissions. (By default, all albums are set to use the same permissions as your space.)

Add photos to your blog entries

You can now add and resize photos directly in your blog entries to make a richer experience for readers.

Note: If you want more options for editing your Spaces blog entries, download Windows Live Writer. It’s free, and it makes it easy to compose, edit, preview, and post entries to Windows Live Spaces.

Getting around Spaces – the new navigation

With this release, we removed the buttons for What’s new and Your space, and added additional links at the top of each page to make it easier to get to your Spaces home page and your space, as well as additional pages within your space.

We also added an icon on the right hand side of the navigation that links to the Spaces community page where you can find some of the most popular spaces and search for people that have similar interests.

Recent activity in your profile

Have you ever wanted a quick overview of what one of your friends has been up to recently? With our new and improved profile you can see the most recent updates to a space:  

• Recent activity shows recent blog posts, new photo albums, updates to lists, new files, and more.
• Friends and Profile lets you see who is in this person’s social network and quickly browse to their friends enhanced profile pages.

You can get to the new profile page for any space you have permission to view by clicking on “Profile” in the new navigation bar.

Print your blog entries for your personal keepsakes

You now have the ability to select from your Spaces blog entries and print them. We’ve partnered with HP, and the printouts look great.

Just go to any blog entry and click Print. Select the entries you want to print – the entries are automatically compiled into a document for easy printing.

Go crazy with customization

Customizing your space should be quick and fun – at least that’s what we heard in the feedback from the last release. Here’s what’s new:

• There are more ways to get into customize mode. Just click the icon at the top of any module to get into customize mode.  
• It’s faster to add modules, or change templates, themes, layouts, and colors. Just click Customize and select the action you want to take.
• It’s easier to find modules or gadgets to add to your space. Click Customize and then click Add modules —you’ll see all of them at a glance.

Posted with Windows Live Writer