Things have been a little quiet on the Clubhouse blog over these two holiday weeks as we all take time to celebrate with friends and family.  But I wanted to do a quick post on this last day of 2008 to touch on a couple items.

First, thank you to everyone in the Windows Live Community for helping us create an all-new experience on http://www.windowslive.com/explore.  We built that site with the idea that customers would enjoy and benefit from reading how-to tips and stories written by other customers.  You all came through with flying colors, sharing amazing posts and graciously sharing your expertise.

Second, best wishes to all of you for a happy, healthy, and prosperous new year.  I look forward to continuing to spend time with all of you, learning together, and building on what we’ve started together in 2008.

Warm regards,

Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager

The main web site for people interested in learning more about Windows Live has upgraded.  Check out http://www.windowslive.com/explore to see the changes, including this new graphic:

Going forward, the shorter http://www.windowslive.com URL will redirect to http://home.live.com. 

For all of you that are members of the Windows Live Community, you’ll see there are new product and service areas on the site, including:

• Profile
• Photos
• Groups
• Calendar beta
• Movie maker beta

As you create posts about those products, please make sure to include a tag with the product name so we can show off your contributions in the right places on the site.  If you’ve already done a post about one of these, you can just retag it with the product name.

Thanks again for your help in making this new site compelling.  Your stories and how-to tips really make it come alive!

- Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager

Our holiday challenge recently concluded, and we have a new one hot on it’s heels.  This time around, we’re asking you to sit in the director’s chair and put together a video screencast to help our customers better understand some of the changes in Windows Live.  After all, you’re the experts!

Some of you have already been doing these, so entering the challenge will be easy.  All you have to do is tag your existing posts with Challenge-Screencast.

You can read more about the challenge here, including some hints on topics as well as some tips to consider when doing your videos.

I look forward to seeing your screencasts.  Thanks for being a part of our community and for helping others learn from your expertise!

- Marcus, Windows Live Community manager

We’ve only got a few days left for the Holiday Challenge.  If you have any great stories on how-to tips on using Windows Live as part of your holiday celebrations, please share them with the community.  There have been some great ones so far, including Creating e-Cards by Braden and Capturing the Holidays by Drew.

Look for another challenge starting up later this week.

And most of all, enjoy the holidays!

- Marcus, Windows Live Community manager

Lots of new stuff happening today with Windows Live services on the web!

Rather than go into all the details here, check out this post on Windows Live Wire for all the details. Things might be a little bumpy for the next 24 hours or so as the upgrades roll out to all our customers.

Thanks,

- Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager

One of the key things that’s important to remember about the Windows Live community is to tag posts correctly so they appear on the Clubhouse site so they can eventually appear on www.windowslive.com.

Kelly Martens has been working on a Windows Live Writer plug-in that will automate the tagging process based on the content of a post.  You can read more about it on his blog entry.  He’s interested in people testing it out, so please give it a go and let him know what you think.

Thanks for the plug-in, Kelly!

- Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager

Windows Live Tags: Beta,Live,Clubhouse,Kelly Martens,Writer

P.S.  The tags above were created using Kelly’s plug-in!