We've hardly had time to draw breath from new features on MSN Spaces and Windows Live Mail when along comes a new interface for Windows Live and more ways to keep in touch with family and friends via MSN Spaces.

It's important to bear in mind that your MSN Space is where you keep in touch with your family and friends so as to share photos, your interests and hobbies, what you've been doing, your favourite sites, your list of family and friends to make it easy to contact them and get to their space, and your contact details. Please note that you, as owner of an MSN Space, have control over what others see on your space through different levels of permission. On top of that, you can't add friends to your Friends List unless they give their permission. The Rushworth Community House webDotWizards have already seen how these permissions work over the past couple of weeks when creatng their profile for their own spaces.

Windows Live, www.live.com, has been significantly enhanced. When you first go to the site you'll be given a range of feeds from various Australian sources from which to choose - if you want. Once you've signed in you'll see your Hotmail/Windows Live Mail inbox and you can subscribe to your own particular feeds and organise them around the page. A new feature enables you to have several pages of feeds so you can categorise them in whatever way that suits.

So you've got your feeds organised - of course you've added a feed from webDotWiz's Space! To read a particular item, hover your mouse over the word more at the end of a title and a box will pop up with the contents. You'll not only see the text but also any photos and graphics that the author has included. As well, from the popup you can click the link to read the story at its source, email it to a friend or blog it. Note that you don't need to do anything about updating your Live.com page - it's automatically updated by going around the sources of your feeds to check if and when there are new items.

Australia has been chosen to trial the Friends List in MSN Spaces so start to make it easier to share with family and friends by spending a few minutes updating your Space. You'll find tips at webDotWiz's Space and links to developer sites such as Torres Talking.