Kevin Unangst, Director for Games for Windows, made a pretty cool little announcement today over on the Gamerscore Blog regarding Games for Windows - LIVE.  Games for Windows - LIVE now offers completely free multiplayer capabilities even when playing in cross-platform games with Xbox 360 users! Kevin also tells us that not only will new games like Dawn of War 2 and Fallout 3 under Games for Windows - LIVE have free multiplayer awesomeness - so will existing games under Games for Windows - LIVE such as Shadownrun, Gears of War, and Halo 2. I wrote about Halo 2 on Windows Vista here last May.  

Another tidbit that Kevin revealed (and has certainly perked my interest!) is that they have announced that his fall they will be delivering a brand new marketplace for Games for Windows - LIVE. This Marketplace will be THE place to go to get content for all your Games for Windows - LIVE games. Expect to see some awesome content up on the new Marketplace for Games for Windows - LIVE including game demos and trailers!

In case you are not familiar with Games for Windows - LIVE - these are games that are designed to let users add achievements and gamerscore points earned in games to their Xbox Live account. You can also chat with your Xbox Live friends regardless of their platform (either on the PC with Games for Windows - LIVE or on an Xbox 360 console). To read more about Games for Windows - LIVE - click here.

The Windows Live Calendar Team have been rolling out an update to the Windows Live Calendar Beta today and have recently blogged about what users will find within the update. I am a very heavy Windows Live Calendar user currently so this is a very exciting release for me.  I figured I'd go down their list of changes / improvements / new features with a little context of my own based on my own experiences. Here we go!

Birthday Calendars: Any Windows Live Contacts that have their birthday entered in their Windows Live Profile (you can make sure you have your birthday added to your profile by going here) will have their birthday appear in a new calendar for you called "Birthday Calendar". This allows you to keep track of all your friend's birthdays. Never forget a birthday again!

iCal Subscriptions: You can now subscribe to public calendars (*.ics calendars) in Windows Live Calendar. A great resource for public calendars is http://www.icalshare.com/ (although at the time of writing this post I was having some issues with their website). I am a Space buff so I went and grabbed the calendar for astronomical events and subscribed to it.

Once you subscribe to these calendars - as long as the publisher continues to update them they will automatically update in Windows Live Calendar. If anyone has any other useful iCal resources on the web for free calendars to subscribe to, let me know!

UPDATE: Some calendars available on www.icalshare.com have URLs that direct to a different location. Windows Live Calendar Beta does not yet support following redirects. However if you are able to determine where the URL redirects to - you can always subscribe to its "final destination".

Holiday Calendar: A new calendar will show up (depending on which part of the world you're from) that will display holidays for your country. I find this incredibly useful. Currently users in the following countries will see a Holiday Calendar:

• China
• Taiwan
• Hong Kong
• Thailand
• Singapore
• Malaysia
• Korea
• Indonesia
• Philippines
• India
• Russia
• France
• United States
• Spain
• German
• United Kingdom

UI Changes: Notably - users can now right-click on a specific calendar in their calendar list and change its color and also its order in that list.

Print Views: You are now able to print from the day, week, and month views. I prefer printing from the Month view myself. You can also print your Agenda as well. I am noticing I am using the Agenda tab quite often these days.

A few more notable changes to Windows Live Calendar Beta with this release are accessibility functionality which includes better tabbing (and F6 key support). And users can now go directly to Windows Live Calendar via the calendar tab in Windows Live Hotmail.

Want to test out subscribing to a calendar? I've shared out my Windows Experience Blog calendar to anyone interested in subscribing:

webcal://windowsexperience.calendar.live.com/calendar/The+Windows+Experience+Calendar/calendar.ics

Not a whole bunch of events there just yet. You'll find I've added today's Windows Live Calendar Beta update as an event and in October you should see events for the PDC2008 Pre-Conference and PDC2008 as well. I definitely plan on updating it. If you have any suggestions for events that would be of interest to the Windows community - leave a comment!

If you're attending PDC2008 you can also subscribe to their calendar they publish as well to add a separate PDC2008 calendar to Windows Live Calendar:

http://www.microsoftpdc.com/Microsoft-PDC08.ics

REMEMBER: You can also subscribe your calendars in Windows Calendar in Windows Vista as well!

Beginning last week (July 1st to be exact) - existing Windows Live OneCare users (paid subscribers) began automatically receiving Windows Live OneCare 2.5. The Windows Live OneCare website also began offering Windows Live OneCare 2.5 for new users as well. If you are a Windows Live OneCare subscriber and have not yet been automatically updated, you can either wait until the update occurs or download the new version from the Windows Live OneCare website.

NOTE:  If you choose not to wait for the automatic update to occur and want to go ahead and "manually" update yourself via downloading the new version off the Windows Live OneCare website - you will need to uninstall the previous version first before Windows Live OneCare 2.5 will install. I had not been automatically upgraded so I chose to install manually on 1 of my PCs but the others were automatically updated soon after.

So what's new with Windows Live OneCare 2.5? As I stated previously, the Windows Live OneCare 2.5 release is mainly an "under-the-hood" release. That means all the improvements take place behind-the-scenes so you will not notice any major new features or changes to the overall UI. Windows Live OneCare 2.5 is an incremental release that highlights Microsoft's ongoing commitment to improving Windows Live OneCare for paying subscribers.

However, Windows Live OneCare 2.5 does bring some changes worth taking note of. Windows Live OneCare is now available in 3 new markets: Brazil, India and Hong Kong. Also, if you are using the Online Photo Backup feature in Windows Live OneCare, you will be pleased to see that online storage capacity has been increased from 10GB to 50GB! Online Photo Backup is an added benefit to Windows Live OneCare users where they can pay $50 a year (on top of their existing Windows Live OneCare subscription) to have their digital photos automatically backed up to the "cloud".

As a Windows Live OneCare user myself, I enjoy seeing updates to Windows Live OneCare even if they aren't major updates. The priority for me is simply keeping my PC protected.

There are 3 more webinars for you to attend - with the next one being tomorrow June 26th, 2008 at 1:00pm PST with Ian Dixon from The Digital Lifestyle.  Click here to register for the webinar.

I'll also be posting reminders for the webinars coming on July 8th and 10th.

You can get the latest weather (Maximum and Minimum temperatures per Sol or Martian Solar Day) on Mars from the Phoenix Mars Lander delivered to your desktop from the Phoenix lander currently on Mars.

Download: Phoenix Mars Weather Gadget

The Phoenix Mars Lander is a Martian lander (not a rover like Mars Pathfinder) designed to look for evidence of water or ice under the surface of Mars. Instead of roaming around the surface of Mars looking for water evidence - the Phoenix lander will dig below the surface to look for water or ice. Matter a fact, today the Phoenix Mission Team announced they may have found ice - aka frozen water! That's awesome.

The Phoenix Mars Weather Gadget is updated regularly as soon as the weather data is downloaded* from the Phoenix Mars Lander.

*In some cases due to technical reasons, weather data may not be available on a daily basis. For example: I believe today is Sol 25 but the Phoenix Mars Weather Gadget is reporting weather data from Sol 22.

You can get the latest on the Phoenix Mars Mission from their website here or the NASA website here. You can follow them on Twitter as well.

But first, take a gander at today's Press Release from HP on the HP MediaSmart Connect...

Press Release: HP MediaSmart Connect Makes It Easy to Enjoy Digital Media from Any HDTV

Ok, now let's take a look at the device. First off - the form factor for the HP MediaSmart Connect is perfect for "extending" your Windows Media Center experience into other rooms in your home as it does not take up tons of room. Its exact dimensions (width x depth x height in inches) are 8.5 x 8.5 x 1.8. The unit would fit perfectly right next to a flat panel HDTV or on an open shelf.  I currently have my review unit sitting on a small shelf next to the entertainment unit that my HDTV sits on. It would fit within the shelves of the entertainment unit had they not been completely filled with DVDs (heh). It is also not very heavy (around 3.5 lbs).

It will come in black with HP's identifiable "Zen" pattern on the top which also exists on some of their laptops (similar to the pattern seen on my HP tx1000 Tablet). You'll see in the photos I took of my review unit HP sent me that it doesn't have the "Zen" pattern however the production version will.

The front of the unit consists of 2 panels that open.

The HP MediaSmart Connect comes with 2 outputs for HD video: component out and HDMI.

Video output is either 720p or 1080i - with a switch (depending on your TV) in the front to switch between the output options.

There is a single USB port on the front as the HP MediaSmart Connect comes with the ability to read media off a USB device such as a thumbdrive or external harddrive. There is also a USB port in the back giving the HP MediaSmart Connect a total of 2 USB ports.  If you want to get fancy you can add a HP Pocket Media Drive as there is a single slot for one in the front as well.

For audio you have stereo analog audio out and digital audio out.

You have several networking options with the HP MediaSmart Connect. It comes with a single Ethernet port supporting 10/100-Base-T or wireless IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n. The wireless antenna is built directly into the device so there are no protruding wireless antennas to get in the way.

A Universal Remote is also included with the HP MediaSmart Connect. In comparison to the remote that comes with a HP Pavilion dv6871 - the HP MediaSmart Connect has more buttons designed to accommodate it's functionality as a digital media hub as well as Windows Media Center extender.

The HP MediaSmart Connect supports a variety of digital media formats:

• Video: MPEG-1, MPEG-2 MP@ML, MPEG-2 MP@HL, MPEG-4 ASP, DivX®, WMV, WMV-HD, DVR-MS, H.264 (MP4)
• Audio: MP2, MP3, WMA, WMA-Pro, AAC (m4a)
• Photos: JPEG, BMP, GIF, PNG

The HP MediaSmart Connect also supports online services for digital media:

• Snapfish
• CinemaNow,
• Live365

Some of these services work with Windows Media Center - such as CinemaNow.

In terms of features - you get the "extension" of Windows Media Center with the unit. But HP has added functionality on top of the Extender experience you get with Windows Media Center by giving the HP MediaSmart Connect the ability to also aggregate content for multiple "media servers" or PCs sharing media. If I have 1 PC sharing media and say a Windows Home Server - the HP MediaSmart Connect will aggregate content from both those systems. I currently have a HP MediaSmart Windows Home Server that the HP MediaSmart Connect finds content off of and aggregates it.

The HP MediaSmart Connect certainly comes with some pretty good specs.

Following up this post in the near future - I plan to post about several of my experiences in using the HP MediaSmart Connect.

This summer HP is launching a brand new Extender for Windows Media Center device - the HP MediaSmart Connect. The HP MediaSmart Connect will let you wirelessly stream your Windows Media Center experience including content such as Live TV, Recorded TV Shows, Music, Photos and Videos to any TV in your home using your wireless or wired home network. And I've got some information below on how you can attend online webinars put on by HP and Microsoft giving you a first-hand look at the HP MediaSmart Connect! Read on...

Extenders for Windows Media Center are devices that are designed to "extend" the Windows Media Center experience from a centralized Windows Media Center PC running Windows Vista Home Premium or Windows Vista Ultimate to any room in your home with a TV using a personal home network.

The HP MediaSmart Connect packs quite a punch. You can stream recorded or live HD content from your PC to your TV as well as take advantage of Windows Media Center's Internet TV Beta - which I blogged about here a few months ago. With Internet TV Beta - you can watch movie clips, movie trailers and even music videos such as Weezer's brand new single "Pork and Beans" (a personal favorite!). The HP MediaSmart Connect is also capable of searching all the PCs on your home network and creating a single list for all digital media such as photos, music, and videos and as well as access to great entertainment from services like CinemaNow, Snapfish and Live365. There is much more to the HP MediaSmart Connect but I'll save the rest for a later post!

I'm personally very excited to get my hands on the HP MediaSmart Connect myself because I have a Windows Vista PC that serves as my digital media hub in my living room using Windows Media Center that is connected to my HDTV. However with the HP MediaSmart Connect - I can now "extend" my digital media I have on this centralized Windows Media Center PC to any room in my house such as the master bedroom. I'll be able to stream recorded HD TV shows such as Discovery Channel's When We Left Earth series to my bedroom for late-night-geeking-out to stunning video of NASA's early missions. And the form factor is perfect for sitting right next to my TV (whisper quiet - no fans!) in the bedroom.

To celebrate the launch of the HP MediaSmart Connect - HP and Microsoft are putting on 4 webinars this summer to demonstrate the capabilities of the HP MediaSmart Connect. HP's Director of Marketing for their Connected Entertainment group Brian Burch will be headlining the demos along with industry experts who will share their own experiences during the webinars.

• Tuesday, June 24th - 10:00 am PST with Ed Bott, http://www.zdnet.com/
• Thursday, June 26th - 1:00 pm PST with Ian Dixon, http://www.thedigitallifestyle.com/
• Tuesday, July 8th - 10:00 am PST with Patrick Norton, http://www.tekzilla.com/
• Thursday, July 10th - 1:00 pm PST with Mike Garcen, http://www.missingremote.com/

And I of course will be attending the webinars myself as well! Click here to register for the webinar you would like to attend!

I will also be talking about the HP MediaSmart Connect here on the Windows Experience Blog in the coming weeks as well. Stay tuned!