With yesterday’s update to Windows Live Essentials (which included the final release of Windows Live Movie Maker), we also released an updated version of Windows Live Family Safety.

Windows Live Family Safety is designed to help parents keep their children safer online. It offers parents the ability to manage which websites their kids can visit, as well as the list of contacts they can communicate with when using the Windows Live services such as Windows Live Spaces, Hotmail and Messenger. It can also generate a report for parents so that they can monitor their children’s computer and online activity. The best part is it lets parents monitor what their kids are doing from anywhere they are online — from any Windows Vista or Windows 7 PC that has web access and that parents have administrative rights to (via http://fss.live.com).

The updated version of Windows Live Family Safety also offers deeper integration with Windows resulting in fewer log-in prompts and faster web surfing compared to previous versions of Family Safety while it’s running on the PC.

Windows Live Family Safety uses Windows accounts as the basis for storing settings. Parents are no longer required to have a Windows Live ID for each child who needs their own settings.

Windows Live Family Safety reads the Windows Parental Control (WPC) settings on Windows Vista and Windows 7 enabling parents to retrieve WPC activity reports from any Windows Vista or Windows 7 computer online. These reports include time spent on the computer, browsing history, and games and applications run. This monitoring is transparent to the end user, as a notification is displayed once on Windows account login when monitoring is enabled.

With Windows 7, there are new Windows APIs which provide software developers greater control of Windows Parental Controls UI and settings. Windows Live Family Safety takes advantage of the new Windows APIs. It’s now easier for users to access Windows Live Family Safety directly from the Windows Parental Controls Control Panel in Windows 7.Windows Live Family Safety is another good example of Windows Live “lighting up” the Windows PC.

With these improvements to Windows Live Family Safety, Microsoft demonstrates its continued commitment to helping parents keep their kids safe on the Web. You can download Windows Live Family Safety, part of Windows Live Essentials, at download.live.com.

Brian Hall, General Manager for Windows Live, just has announced via the Windows Live Team Blog that the new Windows Live Movie Maker is now available. The new version of Windows Live Movie Maker is part of an update to Windows Live Essentials – available for download here. I’m currently running the new version of Windows Live Movie Maker on Windows 7 RTM and it will also run on Windows Vista too.

For more information on the new Windows Live Movie Maker, see Brian’s blog post or this awesome resource website which includes demo, HD samples and deep product info.

Sorry for such a short post, but I’m off to make me some movies!

Back in October during PDC2008, I highlighted the Windows + Windows Live relationship. Specifically, I called out how Windows + Windows Live will complete the Windows PC experience with Windows Live Essentials. Now that people can experience the relationship first-hand with Windows Live Essentials today – I thought I’d re-approach and discuss the topic in a little more detail.

Today, users are increasingly expecting that their PC (and their OS) allow them to do things on their desktop that have an online component such as e-mail. This is where Windows Live Essentials comes in. For example, when you’re at home on your laptop you can use Windows Live Mail, but when you’re on the go you can access that same mail from any computer with an Internet connection by going to Windows Live Hotmail. Windows Live Essentials combines what you do on the PC with what you do on the Web. That’s the benefit of software + services.

Many of the Windows Live programs within Windows Live Essentials serve as a “bridge” to the Windows Live services:

• With Windows Live Messenger, you can not only chat with your friends via IM, but also follow What’s New with them on Windows Live, which means you can stay on top of updates they make like new photos or blog entries.
• With Windows Live Writer, you can publish new blog posts to Windows Live Spaces.
• With Windows Live Photo Gallery, you can upload your photos to Windows Live Photos and share them with the people you choose.
• With Windows Live Mail, you can sync your Windows Live Hotmail e-mail and calendar to your PC.

Windows Live Essentials extends beyond Windows Live as well. Windows Live Writer is capable of publishing blog posts to most major blogging services, not just Windows Live Spaces. As a matter a fact - I use Windows Live Writer to publish all my blog posts here on this blog, which is powered by Telligents’ Community Server. Windows Live Mail supports POP3 and IMAP allowing for multiple e-mail accounts from a variety of e-mail providers including Gmail. And Windows Live Photo Gallery supports custom plug-ins for uploading photos to a variety of photo sharing websites (check out this awesome plug-in for uploading photos to Facebook).

For Windows Live Essentials, we have introduced 3 programs as the successors to programs that were introduced in Windows Vista:

• Windows Live Mail is the successor to Windows Mail
• Windows Live Photo Gallery is the successor to Windows Photo Gallery
• Windows Live Movie Maker is the successor to Windows Movie Maker

We made this change because we learned that many of the end-user experiences need to be updated more frequently. With Windows Live Essentials, we feel we are in a better position to innovate on these programs and enhance your experience as a PC user and at a much quicker rate - as they are outside of the Windows OS.

Windows Live Essentials doesn’t just consist of the above 3 programs, it also includes Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Writer, Windows Live Toolbar, and Windows Live Family Safety adding significant value to PC users through its integrated and powerful features.

Windows Live Essentials today are free, key applications that make it easy to manage multiple e-mail accounts, edit and share photos, chat with IM for PC users and available today for you to download at download.live.com (available for Windows Vista, Windows XP, and the Windows 7 Beta).

In the coming weeks, I plan to dive deeper into many of these integrated and powerful features (many of which I use myself) that I that I hope you will enjoy.

3 new Plug-ins for Windows Live Writer were recently release that I think bloggers who live and breath in Windows Live Writer (such as myself) will appreciate. These plug-ins were created by the awesome Windows Live Writer Team here at Microsoft.

DiggThis – Add a “DiggThis” badge to your blog posts so your readers can quickly “digg” your blog posts. The plug-in offers several different “styles” of badges to choose from, as well as alignment options for where its placed on your blog. Download the plug-in here.

Twitter Notify: This plug-in will automatically “tweet” the title and link to your blog to your Twitter account when you publish a blog post. Download the plug-in here.

Flickr Upload: When you insert an inline image in a blog post in Windows Live Writer it also uploads that image to Flickr you when publish your post. Download the plug-in here.

You can download the latest version of Windows Live Writer in the new Windows Live Essentials suite today at download.live.com. Some of the new features include:

• Insert and upload Windows Live photo albums
• Insert and publish video to YouTube
• Server-side tagging (support coming soon to WordPress.com and BlogEngine.NET)
• Improved blog account setup

And there is more! You can read about what’s new in the latest Windows Live Writer release via the Windows Live Writer Team Blog.

Windows Live Writer is a must-have tool for bloggers.

Today, we’ve released a refresh of the Windows Live Essentials Betas. You can download the updated suite at download.live.com. The Windows Live Essentials consist of Messenger, Mail, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Writer, Toolbar, and Family Safety.

We want to make sure we iron out all the kinks before removing the “beta” tags ;-)

Earlier this month, we rolled out the new Windows Live web services.

Brian Hall, General Manager for the Windows Live Business Group, just posted to Windows Live Wire an exciting overview Windows Live today and how the pieces of Windows Live will fit together to give users a connected experience. He is sharing more details regarding the next “wave” of products and services coming for Windows Live designed to help keep your life in sync.

In September, we talked a bit about the new Windows Live products and services and released client betas for the Windows Live suite of applications – now known as the Windows Live Essentials. Those betas are still available for you to try out today at download.live.com. The Windows Live Team is working hard to ship the Windows Live Essentials out of Beta soon.

The Windows Live Hotmail Team has also recently rolled out a new update to Windows Live Hotmail as well.

On top of the Windows Live Essentials, we’ll be shipping updated versions of the Windows Live web services.

Windows Live Calendar, Windows Live Spaces, and Windows Live SkyDrive will all be updated.

We’re will also be updating the main homepage for Windows Live. The redesigned homepage for Windows Live will serve as your gateway to the Windows Live services - with a strong emphasis on the What’s New feature which consists of activities from your friends on Windows Live. You will be able to add friends to your “network” and see what they are doing via Personal Message updates from Windows Live Messenger, recent blog posts on their Windows Live Spaces, or photos uploaded to Windows Live.

What’s New also lets you pull in updates from partners such as Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn, WordPress, and more. If you have friends on Windows Live pulling in their Twitter updates into their profiles, it will appear in What’s New.

And remember – Windows Live Messenger will now pull in What’s New directly into the client for quick access to what’s going on with your friends on Windows Live. You will be able to access What’s New through Windows Live Toolbar as well.

(Pssst… What’s New is my favorite Windows Live feature!)

A brand new Windows Live Profile page will let you update your Personal Message directly from the web, view your Network, and add “Favorite things” such as books, movies and music. Your friends can leave you Notes on your profile too.

We’re also introducing a new Photos experience for Windows Live utilizing Windows Live SkyDrive as well as Windows Live Groups.

On the mobile side – there will be new points of access to Windows Live on any mobile device with a browser. You will be able to use your mobile phone to access What’s New and see what your friends are doing, update your Personal Message, upload photos to Windows Live, and manage your email and calendar.

I’m pretty excited for what’s being done with Windows Live and I think you will be too. For all the latest and great news and information on Windows Live, you should bookmark and subscribe to the Windows Live Wire blog. You can also follow Windows Live Wire via Twitter as well.

As mentioned at PDC this year – Windows + Windows Live will complete the Windows experience as they work together hand-in-hand.