Yesterday, I blogged about the page turning experience in MSN. Today its running in Powerpoint! Check it out at http://www.msn.com/defaultO.aspx. As with most previous MSN.com office experiences , this will not last more than a day.

via istartedsomething

MSN homepage is running a page turning Geico ad. I have seen similar Ad representations on other web sites, but never before on MSN.

Here's a quick screencast.

 Xbox team has added a couple of themes for Live Spaces. One is a Halo 3 theme which I have currently applied. The other one is an Xbox 360 theme. Cool stuff

1. Log into spaces

2. Visit http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/h/halo3/livespaces/default.htm

3. Click to view the Halo 3 theme

4. Continue

5. Save

To my country:

Though I may be miles away,

The Pride I take in You, nothing can sway

No matter how far or near you are

In my heart, no one there is, as dear as you are

Happy Independence Day!

My favorite Windows Live product, Windows Live Skydrive, got an update today! Making it ever more better and usable.

Since this is a new service, I will try to explain what is Skydrive. As the name suggests, its your harddrive in the "sky" (cloud), currently providing 500MB of free space.  Which means you can use it for storage and access it from anywhere, as long as you are connected to the Internet. What more it lets you share your file with your friends or everyone. Of course by default, only you have access to it. Skydrive is currently in beta and very simple to use. Of course this is a basic version, I am sure there is more bells and whistles to follow.  

Now back to  talking about the updates.

Skydrive (also Windows Live Folders) has an updated landing page once you sign in.

 Features:
* Basic integration with spaces It pulls out your display picture information from the Spaces profile.

* Simple interface. Lets you easily add files, folders and "permission"  your content.

* Keeps track of your recent "friends"

* Also has the new Windows Live Header which looks very pretty.  

Thumbnails

They have added thumbnails!

Embed

You can embed thumbnails in your webpage.

 Star of the show - File upload tool

Its like Zen. Drag and drop. Or Browse. Right there.

The best part, this is the beginning. I can totally see integration with folder share coming. And the start tells us that this one is going to be very promising.

Btw, you can add your public folders to your space!

Windows live has a new home. Basic. But pretty. And oh yes, the color changes as the time of day changes :). Cool huh!

You can still get to your personalized live.com page 

via liveside

Microsoft announced the impending price drop for Xbox consoles.

via microsoft

LiveSide has proved yet again that they can dig up really well! This time they found this really cool MSN Cartoon website which you can use to create different avatars and emoticons 

from your photograph!! But, its in Chinese only! But worry not. Because the folk at LiveSide have a solution for that too. Sukesh has uploaded a screencast on soapbox, showing how to create your own avatar/emoticions! Check it out! Try it out!

via LiveSide, Sukesh

Microsoft shipped 60 million copies of Vista. Nathan sums it up all:

Microsoft announced to financial analysts last week that it has already shipped over 60 million copies of Windows Vista, in addition to 42 million corporate licenses of the operating system. More than 20 million were sold in the first month, making about 40 million in the last four months. By comparison, computer makers only sold 67 million copies of Windows XP in the first year and total sales were just 46 million after nine months. Analysts believe Microsoft has already sold close to 60 million of the shipped copies.

via blognewschannel

This is old news now. But this update is worth mentioning. So Live Spaces had a, primarily, look and feel update. However, it was a much need one to move its status from being a blogging site to a social networking site. The spaces page now has a new header:

The live header looks incredibly similar to the Windows Vista taskbar!. The next important change has been to the "What's new" page to give its social networking aspect a lift. It also displays upcoming birthday's in the "What's new section".

The "Me" area has been updated to make "Add a friend", "Share photos" etc more discoverable.

Templates - Because there are so many ways to customize spaces, it is very important to have templates. And yes this update adds templates.  

There are several more little updates which make Spaces more and more attractive. Keep up the good work