We've done the guided tour of the new clubhouse, and we've talked about Photo Gallery, and now we're going to do a Live Meeting on Windows Live Spaces.  That's a topic I know we all can get excited about!

Joe Bono, a Program Manager on the Spaces team will be joining us.  As with the previous sessions, we are just going to cover the current version of Spaces and can't get into future plans just yet.  We'll see if we can get Joe to come back again soon to cover what's next.

We're continuing to use both Windows Live Events and Microsoft Office Live Meeting for these.  You can find out about this event here.  The Windows Live Event invitation will be coming to your e-mail inbox soon.  Please RSVP to that invitation so we know how many people to expect.  RSVP'ing also allows you to post pre-event questions in the discussion board on the event page.

Thanks,

- Marcus

The new www.windowslive.com site and the new community clubhouse are launching on August 4th, less than a week away!  This is your chance to be one of the first to check it out by pre-registering

To pre-register for the site, we'll need a three bits of information from you. 

First, we'll need your Windows Live ID that you'll want to use to log-in.  For example, mine is marcussc@live.com.  Yours is whatever you use as your main Windows Live ID for your Spaces site blog posts.

Second, we need the Unique ID number that is found at the bottom of your account registration information page found at https://account.live.com/EditProf.aspx?mkt=en-us&rp=SummaryPage.  You should see something that looks like this (my ID blurred out):

Third, we'll need your Spaces URL.  For example, mine is http://marcusatmicrosoft.spaces.live.com.  Note that your Space needs to be public so all those great posts you do will be visible by everyone via the RSS feeds that go into www.windowslive.com. 

Just send those three pieces of information to us in an e-mail that you can start by clicking here.

After that, when you visit www.windowslive.com after August 4th and click Sign-In in the upper right corner, you'll go right into the clubhouse.  Then, you'll probably want to edit your profile in the clubhouse and start exploring, rating your fellow community member's submissions, and generally getting a feel for the new place.

Please allow a few days for us to get your pre-registration processed. 

We look forward to pre-registering as many of you as we can!

- Marcus

Here is the recorded version of the Live Meeting we did with JP last week.  He showed off lots of things in Windows Live Photo Gallery that were new to me, and we had a good set of Q&A at the end. 

JP has agreed to do a return engagement when we're ready to start reviewing what's coming out in the next version.

- Marcus

Please join me in congratulating Robert on being our newest featured member.  He's been a regular contributor to the Windows Live community for a while now, including helping us all learn more about Windows Live custom domains.  His recent post about how he made the leap from his personal website to using Windows Live for everything he wants to do on the web is great.

A little bit more about Robert from his profile:

A technology guy from Mid-Missouri who enjoys the outdoors and working on cars! I have a weekly column in the Boonville Daily News dealing with all things technology.

Thanks for all your help in building our community, Robert!

- Marcus

We had such a great time doing the last Live Meeting where we did the guided clubhouse tour that we're back again for another one! 

Later this week, we'll be hosting a Live Meeting about Windows Live Photo Gallery.  The Senior Product Manager for Photo Gallery, JP Wollersheim, will be joining me to share his thoughts on the products, show off some tips and tricks, and then take your questions and feedback. 

Just like last time, we're using a combination of Windows Live Events and Microsoft Office Live Meeting to make these sessions happen.  You can find out more here.  The Windows Live Event invitation will be coming to your e-mail inbox soon.  Please RSVP to that invitation so we know how many people to expect.  RSVP'ing also allows you to post pre-event questions in the discussion board on the event page.

Thanks, and see you on the next Live Meeting!

- Marcus

I'm starting up a series of podcasts around Windows Live that I'll be posting to my Marcus@Microsoft blog.  I'll be tagging them so they will also eventually appear on the new WindowsLive.com site when it launches on August 4.

You can check out the first podcast in the series here -- would love your feedback on it, as well as other topics you'd like to see covered.

Thanks,

Marcus

Thanks to all who participated in our Live Meeting last week where we walked through the new Windows Live Clubhouse.  For those of you who weren't able to make it, the video is available on-demand below:

We're planning more of these Live Meeting events for other topics.  As soon as we get them scheduled, we'll post a notice here in the Clubhouse blog as well as send out Windows Live Event invitations.

- Marcus

A while back I mentioned a new weekly schedule we'll be trying out for the Clubhouse blog.  This week we're focusing on Q&A, both here in the blog as well as in our guided Clubhouse tour event coming up later this week.

So what's on your mind?  What questions do you have about the Clubhouse, the community we're building, or any other Windows Live topics?  We're not the official tech support folks, so please understand that if you pose a really tough technical question we might end up referring you to those tech support experts.

Just pop your questions into comments to this post, or put them up on the events discussion board for the upcoming tour.  Either way, we'll gather them up and post replies as comments here, replies in the discussion boards, or in future blog posts.

Thanks,

Marcus

I've been waiting to share this news with all of you for a while.  We've worked out the last few issues with our schedule and we're ready to launch the new Windows Live Clubhouse, the new windowslive.com website, and the broader Windows Live community on August 4th!

We couldn't have done it without all of you, especially everyone who has taken the time to post how-to tips, stories, and challenge responses.  You'll see all your hard work paying off when we launch in just a few short weeks.

You're Invited to Take a Tour

In the mean time, we'd like to invite you to a special guided tour of the new Clubhouse so you can see what everything will look like when we officially launch. 

We're using a combination of Windows Live Events and Microsoft Office Live Meeting to host the guided tour.  You can find out more on the Events page for the tour.  You'll see a Windows Live Event invitation coming to your e-mail inbox soon.  Please RSVP to that invitation so we know how many people to expect.  RSVP'ing also allows you to post pre-event questions in the discussion board on the event page.

Thank you for helping us build a great Windows Live Community!

- Marcus

Spend any time cruising around Windows Live Spaces, and you'll see many different examples of how people customize their Spaces with gadgets.  What are some of the coolest ones you've seen or, better yet, implemented on your own Space?

To see the over 2,000 different web gadgets available for Windows Live Spaces, just click here and check out the list on Windows Live Gallery.

As you do your post telling us about your favorite gadgets, please don't forget to follow the tagging guidelines and include Challenge: Gadgets as one of your tags.

- Marcus

This blog is our primary way of staying connected with all of you in the Windows Live community.  As you've seen, we use it to make announcements, talk about our featured members, pose challenges, and -- best of all -- hear back from each of you as you leave comments.

As we move into July, I've been thinking about how to make sure we keep these blog posts useful and fresh, without bombarding all of you with too much.  So here's what I'm thinking for a monthly schedule:

• First Week:  Monthly Challenge -- moving to monthly instead of weekly
• Second Week:  Clubhouse Q&A -- post a comment with some of your top questions and we'll answer them in the comments directly or in subsequent blog posts
• Third Week:  Featured Member -- continue to highlight various community members, monthly instead of weekly
• Fourth Week:  Top Challenge Response(s) -- showcase some of the best things you post in response to the challenge of the first week

In addition to those four key things, I'll definitely keep posting other entries throughout the month as interesting stuff comes up.

What do you think?  With this and everything, I'm interested in your feedback.  Please feel free to leave a comment.

- Marcus

I'm a little off my normal posting schedule this week.  I usually have been highlighting our featured members on Tuesday and doing Weekly Challenges on Thursday but with launch right around the corner I felt I just had to get that Special Challenge out yesterday. 

But this process of doing regular blog posts to the Clubhouse got me thinking that a great person to feature this week would be Jeff.  He's one of the most disciplined bloggers I've seen, and is using Windows Live as a way to meet his goal of writing every day.

You've probably also seen Jeff's comments on a lot of his friend's blog entries including some of the ones here in the Clubhouse.  That's also what makes Jeff a great member of our community -- those comments help encourage us all to write and share more too!

Thanks, Jeff for helping us start a great community!

- Marcus

We're now only about two weeks away from launching the new Windows Live customer community along with the new and improved community clubhouse!  We can hardly wait to share more of the details with you soon. 

I've been absolutely amazed by what many of you have shared already about how you use Windows Live.  All of us who work with these products are grateful to have you as customers and are very thankful you have taken the time to share your experience with others.

With launch right around the corner, there are some special opportunities for how-to tips and stories for products that haven't been posted about much so far.  Specifically if you have anything you want to post about SkyDrive, Family Safety, and/or using Windows Live on your mobile phone, this would be a great time.  You might even have some older posts on these topics that could simply be tagged and re-published.

Please don't forget to tag any responses with Challenge: Countdown along with the other tags outlined in the tagging guidelines so we make sure and highlight your post correctly.

Thanks for helping launch your new community!

- Marcus