Major Nelson has posted that an update to Games for Windows – LIVE will be available next time you login to a LIVE enabled game (of course) - offering you the brand new LIVE Guide. He’s also posted a bunch of shots of the new LIVE Guide here on Flickr.

Unfortunately I’ve packed my Games for Windows – LIVE games away as I’m in the middle of moving. But I’m thinking of picking up the new James Bond game Quantum of Solace (I’m anxious to give the new Live Guide a try myself). Feel free to recommend other Games for Windows – Live titles for me. I already own Halo 2 for Windows Vista and Shadowrun.

As you probably have noticed, we just re-launched our blog today as The Windows Blog sporting an all-new look and feel reflecting Windows in a broader sense instead of a single Windows release. We figured it was time to give our blog a good facelift (it’s looked the same since we originally launched in October of 2006) – especially as we start talking about Windows 7, Windows Live, and many other interesting Windows topics. Our old design focused strictly on Windows Vista. Our new design is no longer tied to a specific Windows release allowing us to talk about a wider range of topics.

With the previous site design – we essentially had 2 blogs hosted together on the same site: the Windows Vista Team Blog and Windows Experience Blog. But because of the design – not a lot of people noticed that there were actually 2 distinct blogs on our site.

We wanted to fix that.

In thinking about the design for The Windows Blog, we wanted the site to act like a community of blogs focused on talking about Windows.

Today – our new design reflects that.

...

Please pardon our dust, we’re currently deploying a pretty sweet upgrade to the site and ironing out a few issues. Some things may not work correctly at the moment. I’ll be posting more shortly on the changes to the site once we get everything the way we want it. Thank you for your patience!

Hi there, Mike Nash here. 

As you know we are getting ready to talk about Windows 7 at the PDC next week.  Before we do that, I thought I would give you an update on our latest work for Windows Vista.

We are committed to continually improving Windows, and we've been getting some questions about the timing of the next service pack for Windows Vista.  Following the success of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 last spring, we have been working hard on Windows Vista Service Pack 2. As a part of the development and testing process, we're going to start by providing a small group of Technology Adoption Program customers with Windows Vista SP2 Beta for evaluation next Wednesday, October 29. The final release date for Windows Vista SP2 will be based on quality. So we'll track customer and partner feedback from the beta program before setting a final date for the release.

Windows Vista SP2 Beta contains previously released fixes focused on addressing specific reliability, performance, and compatibility issues. We expect Windows Vista SP2 will retain compatibility with applications that run on Windows Vista and Windows Vista SP1 and are written using public APIs. 

Because we've adopted a single serviceability model, these improvements are

...

Hi there, Mike Nash here.

For me, one of the most exciting times in the release of a new product is right before we show it to the world for the first time. And that time is right now.

In a few weeks we are going to be talking about the details of this release at the PDC and at WinHEC. We will be sharing a pre-beta "developer only release" with attendees of both shows and giving them the first broad in-depth look at what we've been up to. I can't wait for them to see it.

And, as you probably know, since we began development of the next version of the Windows client operating system we have been referring to it by a codename, "Windows 7."  But now is a good time to announce that we've decided to officially call the next version of Windows, "Windows 7."

While I know there have been a few cases at Microsoft when the codename of a product was used for the final release, I am pretty sure that this is a first for Windows. You might wonder about the decision.

The decision to use the name Windows 7 is about simplicity. Over the years, we have taken

...

Yesterday, the Zune Team announced their Zune 3.0 release was hitting next week on September 16th. As a Zune user myself, I am pretty stoked for the Zune 3.0 release. The Zune 3.0 release consists of updates across the entire Zune ecosystem including new firmware updates for all Zune devices, new Zune software update, and updates to the Zune Social. The Zune 3.0 release focuses on music discovery and taking it to the next level.

Instead of me talking about the new features in Zune 3.0 that help users discover new music - I figure I'd just show you these videos from members of the Zune Team instead that show off the new features themselves (I love that new Zune animation they use at the beginning and end of the videos!).

Terry Farrell, Product Manager on Zune Marketing Team, discusses the new Channels feature. Channels are like "regularly updated playlists" as Cesar Menendez explains in his blog post on the Zune Insider talking about the Zune 3.0 release. One of the Channels users can be able to subscribe to is the Billboard Top 100. Check out Terry's demo for the low-down:

...