Windows Live Events & new Spaces updates

Check out the Space Craft for more information about the team’s release tonight of a free social event planning service and some useful new Spaces features.  Here’s the Events excerpt:

Easily create a great-looking website for your next event To offer you more ways to connect and share memories with the people you care about most, the team that brought you Spaces would love to hear your feedback on Windows Live Events, our new, free social event planning service.  With Events you can easily: Plan that next baby shower, birthday party, or family reunion Create a great-looking event invitation and website using one of over 100 fantastic templates Invite anyone with an e-mail address and track who’s coming Make your event unique with familiar customization features – choosing a friendly web address (like http://kates1stbirthday.events.live.com), using custom colors, fonts, and background images, or adding modules and Windows Live web gadgets Let guests and organizers share photos and stories before and after the event Click on Events from the new navigation and then click Create event to get started!
Share photos and stories after the party’s over Ever notice that your guests take more and better pictures at your parties than you do because you’re focused on everyone having a good time?   And, if you remember to even ask, there is a mad scramble afterwards to try to collect everyone’s photos over e-mail.  Well, we want to make that A LOT easier with features like: Photo album creation by the event organizer AND any of the guests Stunning full-screen photo slideshows Ordering prints through our partner, HP Snapfish One-click download of a photo album into Windows Live Photo Gallery After the event, return to the event website and click Add album in the Photos module to share those photos! In addition to making it easy for everyone to share photos after the party, Windows Live Events allows guests to share memories in other ways, including a discussion board, guestbook, and sharing videos you upload to Soapbox on MSN Video or other popular video sharing sites.
Works great with other Windows Live services Like Spaces, Events works really well with Windows Live services you’re already familiar with. For example, while an invitation can be sent to any e-mail address, click Invite guests from the event website and quickly invite individuals and groups from your same contact list that’s available in Windows Live Hotmail, Windows Live Messenger, and Spaces.

Here’s what some others are saying about the release:

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2194927,00.asp

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/11/windows-live-adds-events-to-its-roster/