Microsoft's Windows Live SkyDrive offers 25GB of storage in the cloud, for free. It has a range of neat features: shared photo albums, integration with the new Hotmail and Office Web Apps, and RSS feeds. OneNote 2010 integrates directly into SkyDrive, making your notes available wherever you are—all sorts of good stuff.

Microsoft's Live Mesh offers the ability to sync a couple gigabytes of data with cloud storage, and provides remote desktop-like access to PCs in the "mesh."

Microsoft's Windows Live Sync offers file syncing directly between machines, supporting large files and quantities of data. It even provides access to non-synced files, enabling remote access to files over the Web.

A set of slides distributed to Microsoft's PC partners in April of this year has been leaked onto the Internet. The slides outline Microsoft's vision for Windows 8's hardware ecosystem: the form factors the software giant will be targeting, the hardware capabilities that will be offered, and the demands that these parameters will place on OEMs.

A new "Windows Store" is perhaps the most ambitious feature described. Microsoft would offer a store service to third-party software developers. The store would allow easy discoverability of applications both from within Windows and from the Web. The store would handle standard features like account management and software updates, as well as providing capabilities such as the ability to replicate applications and settings across different devices. The store would be curated, so only applications that reached a certain quality standard would be permitted. The basic model, then, is a cross between Apple's App Store and Valve's Steam.

Let's look back at this week's top Microsoft news, which was dominated by...

IE9 Platform Preview 3: video, audio, canvas, and fonts too: Microsoft this week launched the third of its Internet Explorer 9 Platform Previews. The new version includes long-awaited support for HTML5 video, along with hitherto unannounced support for the canvas bitmap drawing element.

Windows Live Essentials Wave 4 public beta is out: Microsoft has posted the first public beta of Windows Live Essentials Wave 4. The suite includes Messenger, Mail, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Writer, Family Safety, Sync, and the Bing Bar.

I love instant messaging. I use it both for work—we use instant messaging extensively at the Orbiting HQ—and for play, talking to my girlfriend, my family, and random people around the world. For most IM protocols, I use Digsby, but for Windows Live Messenger I've always tended to stick with the official client. I depend on many of Windows Live Messenger's built-in features—photo sharing, multiple-location sign-in, and webcam support—that I just don't get with third-party clients.

I also use social networks, including Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter. So, I was looking forward to the new version of Windows Live Messenger. An update to the client I use all the time, designed to integrate better both with Windows 7 and the social networks I use all day sounds great. What could possible go wrong?

In addition to the security bulletins posted on this month's Patch Tuesday, Microsoft has released a slew of non-security updates, the majority of which are for the latest versions of the client and server operating systems. All of them are available on Windows Update and the Microsoft Download Center.

Compatibility

The first patch is for a game, application, or firmware that is either installed incorrectly, causes system instability, or has primary functions that do not work correctly. The update will either prevent incompatible software from running (hard block with third-party manufacturer consent), notify the user that incompatible software is starting to run (soft block), or improve the software's functionality (update). This month's update has changes for two applications on Vista/Server 2008 plus 11 applications on 7/Server 2008 R2, which is a few hundred times less in than previous months. Here are the direct links: Windows Vista 32-bit, Windows Vista 64-bit, Windows Server 2008 32-bit, Windows Server 2008 64-bit, Windows Server 2008 Itanium, Windows 7 32-bit, Windows 7 64-bit, Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit, and Windows Server 2008 R2 Itanium.

The next issue occurs when a dynamic-link library (DLL) is not manifested correctly and runs in the latest OS context unexpectedly. The update enables a DLL designed for earlier versions of Windows to run in a Windows Vista context if the DLL does not specify an RT_MANIFEST resource and the DLL calls an API that uses the dynamic compatibility context. This backward compatibility feature enables Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 to provide a Windows Vista context for applications that are designed for earlier versions of Windows. You can grab it for Windows 7 32-bit, Windows 7 64-bit, Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit, and Windows Server 2008 R2 Itanium.

Media

The first media update is a cumulative one for Windows Media Center (WMC), which specifically fixes the following issues:

• If there is a revoked version of the PlayReady PC Runtime installed when you use Windows Media Center to play protected content, a "Copy Prohibited" overlay message or a black screen is displayed. After you apply this update, the overlay message will direct you to the appropriate PlayReady PC Runtime update on the Microsoft Update website.
• You reference a backup database when the guide database in Windows Media Center is corrupted. If you set a manual recording on a channel that is not listed in the backup database, the Mcupdate.exe process crashes.
• Schedule data may disappear in regions that use in-band guide data. For example, schedule data disappear in Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) regions.
• Windows Media Center crashes when you use an invalid path for a recorded TV location.

The fix is available for Windows 7 32-bit and Windows 7 64-bit.

There is also a June 2010 Cumulative Update for WMC which fixes an issue where if the program guide database is corrupt, WMC crashes and Mcupdate.exe may crash when it automatically performs a daily guide update. The fix is available for Windows Vista 32-bit and Windows Vista 64-bit.

Other

Another update provides fixes and improvements to graphics, media foundation, and print functionality in SP2 of both Windows Vista 32-bit and Windows Vista 64-bit. It's a beta update, however, so we wouldn't recommend that you go out of your way to install it.

This last issue occurs when you configure the regional date and time format settings to use Hebrew (Israel). By default, the "dd/MM/yyyy" format is used for Short date, and when you view the date in a Windows Forms application that uses the DateTimePicker control, the date is displayed in the "yyyy/MM/dd" format unexpectedly. This fix is available for Windows 7 32-bit, Windows 7 64-bit, Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit, and Windows Server 2008 R2 Itanium.

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Microsoft today released the Wave 4 beta of Windows Live Essentials. The Essentials are Microsoft's Windows Live client applications, designed to complement both Windows itself and the company's Windows Live Web services. Windows Live Essentials Wave 4 consists of a long list of software: Messenger, Mail, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Writer, Family Safety, Sync, and the Bing Bar.

As we saw with the Wave 4 Milestone 2 leak, there are big changes for each application, but the biggest ones are for Messenger (previewed in April), Mail, Photo Gallery, and Movie Maker. Live Sync, which is part of the suite as of Wave 4, has also received a major update; Microsoft is combining the old Live Sync product with its Live Mesh product (previously in beta) and the SkyDrive cloud storage service, as part of a broader strategy to integrate and unify its online services. The new Bing Bar is the successor to Windows Live Toolbar.

When Microsoft officially unveiled Windows Live Essentials Wave 4 earlier this month, the Windows Live team said it focused on updating the applications in a way that complements Windows 7. Wave 4 will still work just fine on Windows Vista, but not on Windows XP.

Microsoft is also positioning the suite as competition for Apple's iLife suite, which is a more aggressive posture than before.

The final version of Windows Live Wave 3 arrived in January 2009 and has been updated multiple times since. The final release of Wave 4 should arrive by the time we see Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

The auto (all applications are installed) and manual (choose which applications to install) installers are available in English (auto/manual), French (auto/manual), Spanish (auto/manual), Dutch (auto/manual), Portuguese Brazil (auto/manual), Japanese (auto/manual), and Chinese Simplified (auto/manual).

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After sending out invites to test Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 last week, Microsoft has given its beta testers their first build of SP1. The build number is 7601.16562.100603-1800, meaning it was compiled on June 3, 2010 at 6pm, according to the German enthusiast website WinFuture. The last build that we got wind of leaked in May, and was compiled on April 21, 2010. Broader testing of SP1 should begin later next month.

This particular build, which weighs in at 1.22GB, is available in English, German, Japanese, French, and Spanish. The public SP1 beta will also likely arrive in these five languages, according to to SP1 documentation that we discovered. The Windows 7 section on Microsoft.com's Help & How-to website has a webpage titled Why am I receiving a message that "Windows has detected unsupported languages files" when installing SP1 Beta for Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2? which confirms it. Three more newly posted articles further talk about SP1 beta: Troubleshoot problems installing a service pack for Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2, Why am I receiving a message about Microsoft Security Essentials or Microsoft Forefront Client Security when installing a service pack?, and Strategies for freeing disk space.

Microsoft began talking about SP1 for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 three months ago, though the company still isn't ready to talk about its release timeline for the service pack. As with previous service packs, SP1 will package together hotfixes already delivered through Windows Update.

For Windows Server 2008 R2, SP1 will include two new features that directly affect Microsoft's desktop virtualization platform: Microsoft Dynamic Memory and Microsoft RemoteFX. For Windows 7, SP1 will also feature an updated Remote Desktop client that takes advantage of RemoteFX introduced Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.

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The third release of the Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview arrived today. The new version brings long-awaited support for HTML5 <video> and <audio> elements, 2D graphics using the <canvas> element, and support for embedded fonts using the WOFF standard. To top it all off, Platform Preview 3 also updates the Internet Explorer's new Chakra JavaScript engine to support the recent ECMAScript 5 specification.

Video tags enable sites to offer YouTube-like video without a dependence on proprietary plugins like Adobe's Flash or Microsoft's own Silverlight. With support now found in Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera, Internet Explorer is the odd man out, a flaw that Internet Explorer 9 seeks to remedy.