Friday morning's webDotWizards always seem to be online at the Rushworth Community House when there are major updates to various Windows Live servces. Last Friday, after refreshing their Live.com pages, everybody noticed new features added to each feed's module.

Here are some of the new features and functions: each page of your Live.com feeds can have its own number of columns, each feed's title header now includes functions to refresh that particular feed and a separate settings function to change the number of headlines and whether or not to display graphics from the feed's source (e.g., photos added to an MSN Spaces entry), weather gadget icons made smaller, gadgets, such as the weather gadget, will always display functions, such as "Add a new city", to make them easier to use, and feeds can be explorted as an OPML file.

Last Saturday (Australian time) the Windows Live Mail team announced several enhancements to be part of the next version of Windows Live Mail. Before going further, remember that you can sign up (and join the other 3 million testers of the beta version) at http://ideas.live.com.

Here are some of the things we'll see: return of the signature option to automatically add a signature to each post sent, extension to 120 days (from 30 days) of account expiration, a customise choice on each page so colours can be changed on-the-fly (and the effect seen immediately), an option to turn off the first message being selected to show in the reading pane, subscribe to a contact's Live Contact when entering a new contact so we have the latest information, compose a new mail, contact, folder or group from anywhere within Live Mail, support for the Firefox browser and only one advertisement to be displayed (the tall one on the right-hand side will be removed).

You can keep track of most Windows Live services by visiting the webDotWiz Space, or better still, subscribe to the feed from the webDotWiz Space to save energy. The Windows Live Ideas page lists all the Windows Live services, some of which are currently restricted to other countries such as the U.S. and U.K.

For more online services for the new web, read through the Everything Web 2.0 - The List. And then there's sites such as Second Life and Croquet which point to a whole new web in the future.

By now every school should have downloaded and installed the Kids Programming Language package (it's free). As well, schools should have by now downloaded and installed the free Microsoft Visual Studio Express products: Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition, SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition, Visual C# 2005 Express Edition, Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition and Visual J# 2005 Express Edition. The earlier that students are exposed to programming (say 10 years old), the sooner they can become disciplined in writing programs to a standard with documentation before distractions come along when they're fifteen or sixteen years old.