We recently updated the Clubhouse site with some fixes, and it seems our point counters have gone a little crazy.  The point totals are all artificially inflated right now and we’re working to get the problem fixed and return the totals back to the correct amounts.   While more points is a Halloween treat, getting them due to an error is more of a Halloween trick.

Either way, I hope you all have a Happy Halloween, and we’ll try to get the club points situation resolved as soon as we can.  Our apologies for any confusion!

- Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager

Before we kick off another challenge next week, I wanted to take just a moment to highlight some of the best responses from the beta challenge that just recently wrapped up.  Here are a few contributions from the Windows Live Community that were highly rated within the community and by those who read them on www.windowslive.com:

• Make Sense Of Your Photos With Window Live Photo Gallery & Facial Tagging by Volvoshine
• Beta Banter………Windows Live Mail by Techogran
• People tagging and other new features in Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta by vasudev
• Why I switched from Mozilla Thunderbird to Windows Live Mail (Beta) by JD
• Windows Live Wave 3 Impressions by Bryan Hinton
• Microsoft is Releasing New Windows Live Betas by Mindy-QnA-MVP
• Installing Windows Live Beta! by Jeff

Thanks again to everyone who contributed to the challenge.  You have all done a great job letting everyone know what’s new and noteworthy in the beta release.

- Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager

The October edition of the Windows Live Newsletter is arriving in in-boxes around the world.  In this latest edition, you’ll see two more of our community members in the spotlight.

Chris talks about using Windows Live Messenger to keep in touch while travelling, and the Wordsmiths highlight how to use Outlook Connector.

Congratulations to Chris and the Wordsmiths for their great posts! 

- Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager

Thanks to everyone who responded to our challenge about the recent Windows Live beta releases.  That challenge wrapped up last week with 35 total responses!  There were some amazing posts contributed by a lot of different people.  Each and every one of them will definitely help others learn more about what the beta release has to offer.  Next week, I’ll highlight a few were highly rated by all of you.

For now, we’ll take a bit of a break from challenges and pick up again in early November.  In the mean time, take a look around the Clubhouse site, check out this Clubhouse Space, meet some of our newest members, and maybe review and rate some of the contributions made by the community.  And by all means, if you still have some great how-to tip or story you want to share about Windows Live, feel free to tag it, post it and share it.

- Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager

We’re always looking for better ways to describe Windows Live to the world, especially in a single short sentence.  As members of our Windows Live community and experts on Windows Live products, we would appreciate your help in reading and reacting to these three different statements:

1. Windows Live provides communication, file & photo sharing services, and more, integrated with Hotmail and Messenger. 
2. Windows Live is Hotmail and Messenger and other integrated communication, file, and photo sharing services.
3. Windows Live is a free online service featuring Hotmail, Messenger, plus other storage and photo-sharing services.

Which of those do you think best describes Windows Live?  Please just “vote” by leaving a comment to this blog entry with a 1, 2, or 3.

Thanks for providing us feedback!

- Marcus, Windows Live Community manager

It’s great to sign-in to the Clubhouse site and see some of our newest members jumping into our Windows Live community.  I specifically wanted to highlight a couple of our newest members who have been doing an incredible job contributing to the community, most visibly in response to our most recent challenge around the beta release.

First, please meet Technogran.  She’s been doing a whole series of great “Beta Banter” posts with her thoughts about all the new releases.  I especially thought her post about one of Messenger’s newest features – Tile with Moods – did a great job of highlighting something most people might not have found on their own.

Second, I’d like to introduce Volvoshine, who has done some great posts about the beta releases as well.  One he posted a few weeks ago talked about one of the biggest new features of Photo Gallery, People Tags.  He’s definitely got a great eye for cool visuals, including even creating some snazzy desktop wallpaper.

It’s great to see the community continuing to grow!  Thank you to each and every one of you creating and sharing your stories and how-to tips.  Your contributions are really making a difference for people learning more about Windows Live.

- Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager

If you’ve visited www.windowslive.com lately, you’ll see lots of new stories, how-to tips, and other articles from you, the members of our Windows Live community.  These are now being automatically routed from the Clubhouse to windowslive.com based on how you’ve tagged your specific post.  Here’s an example of what’s on the home page today:

Having this automatic routing turned on means the importance of tagging posts is critical.  Seika had a great suggestion left as a comment on a previous post that we take a moment to review how tagging works.  Here are some resources to help you understand tagging:

First, check out the tagging guidelines on the Clubhouse site.  Note you’ll have to be registered to see these.  If you haven’t yet registered, you can start by visiting http://www.windowslive.com/clubhouse/join. 

Second, look back at some of our previous posts about tagging here on the Clubhouse Space.  You can check out the Demystifying Tagging post or look at the quick post that highlighted the three required tags every Clubhouse contribution needs.

Third, look at how some of your fellow community members are tagging their posts by reviewing them on the Clubhouse site.  Again, you’ll have to be registered to view the posts here.  Sometimes the best way to learn something is to see how someone else did it. 

With automatic routing turned on, it’s also important to review and rate the posts coming from your fellow community members.  Over time, we’ll “raise the bar” and only put the top rated posts on some of the prime spots on www.windowslive.com, including the home page itself.  Please take a few moments to see what others are contributing and rate it so we know what you think is best and what you think should get the most visibility.

As always, thank you for your continued support and contributions to the Windows Live community!

- Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager

Our community primarily stays connected online using the Clubhouse Space blog, the Clubhouse website, various Live Meeting events (like this most recent one), and, of course, personal messages back-and-forth.   Now we’re starting to think about how the community can gather “offline” in face-to-face events and would like your feedback on the idea.   What do you think about gathering the community together in person?  As I see it, we have a few options over the next few months that may be “naturals” for these sort of get-togethers, including:

• International CES, January 8-11, 2009 in Las Vegas, NV USA
• MVP Global Summit, March 1-4, 2009 in Seattle/Redmond, WA USA
• Other gatherings in and around Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, WA

What do you think of these options as venues?   Are you planning to attend either CES or the MVP Summit?   Are there any other upcoming events that you think would be a great place or time for the community to meet?  What other thoughts do you have about offline events?

Please leave your answers to these questions as comments to this blog entry.  We’re looking forward to hearing from you!

- Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager

Earlier this week, several members of the Windows Live community participated in a Live Meeting event with Charlotte Jones, a Group Product Manager on the Windows Live team.  Charlotte walked us all through some of the great new features of the beta releases of Windows Live products, with a special focus on all the cool new things in Messenger.

Here is the recorded version of our event:

Thanks to everyone who participated and a special thanks to Charlotte for being a great guest presenter!

- Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager

Wow, can you believe it’s October already?  This year is definitely flying by.

Thanks to everyone who has been sharing their stories and how-to tips, and helping to review and rate your fellow community member's posts.  We’ve had some new folks join us recently and they are jumping right in with responses to our latest challenges listed up on Challenge Central. 

The latest challenge asks you to share your thoughts on the most recent beta release of Windows Live.  We’ll take as many responses as we can get on this one, and as specific as you want to be around each individual beta product.  In fact, if you’ve done one big post about the whole beta release, feel free to carve it up into smaller posts about the individual products.

In November, we plan to feature your contributions as we dial up the promotional activities around the beta.  You could find yourself in the same situation as Jamie where the advertising we did drove over 10,000,000 views of his Top 10 post.

I can’t wait to read what you all write and look forward to seeing the next post that gets millions of views.

- Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager