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Just a quick note - the authors of Advanced Windows Debugging have been interviewed on MSDN's Channel 9. It's about 43 minutes long, and it's interesting to hear the authors talk about their experiences, the motivation behind the book, the effect of additional layers of abstraction, etc., and go through a handle leak debugging session. Check it out!

So there seems to be the rumor running around that we're supposedly cancelling our Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld ads tomorrow. I wouldn't count on anything being "cancelled". It was always the plan to have Jerry Seinfeld in the first phase of the campaign and not a part of every ad. Instead, our Windows Consumer Campaign is moving into the next phase and we did mention previously that you should expect the campaign to evolve. I'll direct you to a post by Stuart Elliott of The New York Times to shed some light on what's next for our ad campaign.

More to come - stay tuned!

Right now as I write this everyone should be enjoying the shiny new Windows Live Betas - available for download at download.live.com. I'd like to take a moment to highlight several blog posts from the Windows Live Product Teams I think folks will be interested in reading.

Tanja, Program Manager for Windows Live Mail, is back on the Windows Live Mail Blog talking about today's Windows Live Mail Beta release. We all know that Windows Live Mail is sporting calendar sync with Windows Live Calendar (currently in Beta at calendar.live.com) but Tanja sheds some light on some specific calendaring features such as the "Add to Calendar" button. When you're reading an email with important information about an event or related to an event all you need to do is click "Add to Calendar" and you can take that information within the email and turn it into an Event in one of your Calendars. She also discusses the Event window where you can set the event to reoccurring, set a start and stop time and more.

Speaking of Windows Live Calendar - tomorrow Thursday Sept. 18 starting around 3PM Pacific Time the Windows Live Calendar

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This might just be the quickest research project to commercial application transition from Microsoft Research yet.

In late February earlier this year I wrote about a cool Microsoft Research project called “MySong” made in collaboration with the University of Washington full of gifted computer science students. Now seven months later, Microsoft has just filed a trademark application for “Songsmith” for “computer programs for generating background music to accompany singers” - exactly what MySong did.

For those who have forgotten what MySong was about, it was a software application where it autonomously generates a dynamic background melody to accompany any vocal singing you throw at it. Whilst it was still not as dynamic as a real accompanist, but still a good mile ahead of other commercial alternatives on the market today. Oh and it saves you the embarrassment for any real musicians to have to accompany you and your attempt at “SexyBack”.

So far there’s no other evidence as to how Microsoft intends to market “Songsmith”, whether as a freebie MSR download or a cheap casual music program which I’m sure will be quite popular with teenagers

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Want to check out what's next for Windows Live? Chris Jones, Corporate Vice President for Windows Live Experience Program Management, has announced today the availability of new Betas for the Windows Live client applications on the Windows Live Wire blog. These Betas showcase significant updates to the client applications in the Windows Live suite introducing the next wave of Windows Live products and services. Chris does a fantastic job explaining the term "wave" and how it's used to describe Windows Live releases.  Definitely give his post a read as it discusses some background for Windows Live as it's progressed from 2006 to 2007 to today. Expect regular posts on the Windows Live Wire blog from members of the Windows Live Engineering Team discussing in greater detail specifics on the new stuff coming up for Windows Live.

To download the new Windows Live Betas - just head on over to download.live.com later today and install the betas.

When we talk about the Windows Live suite - we are talking about the following desktop client applications that sit on the user's PC that tap in to the Windows Live services in the "cloud" (the web). These applications are only part

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