Steve Caravaial points out the existence of a sweet and free little add-on for Outlook that enables Live Mail accounts to be managed within your big, burly enterprise mail client:

For those that want to manage their Hotmail account (now known as Windows Live Hotmail) from Outlook 2003 or 2007, you can download the Microsoft Office Outlook Connector free of charge. You can also view your Windows Live Hotmail contacts in Outlook with the connector. So go check out all the benefits. I just installed it and it works great.

If the launch of Office 2007 was a new day at the office, is today only your second day on the job?

Here’s the official blurb…

“Wehave managed to complete the engineering work slightly earlier than we anticipated and are making the download available from OfficeOnline.

What can you expect in Service Pack 1?

SP1 focuses on the issues that matter most to our customers based on direct customer feedback and error reporting tools. You can expect:

• Stability.Using data from the Dr. Watson bug-reporting system, we’ve fixed the top software issues for each application in the 2007 Office system. The 2007 Office system SP1 also improves the stability of server components in the 2007 Office system and delivers compatibility with Windows Server® 2008, so you can confidently plan for future upgrades.
• Performance. The 2007 Office system SP1 improves performance in applications and servers. Performance improvements can be found in Microsoft Office Excel® 2007, Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007, Microsoft Office PowerPoint® 2007, and Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007.
• Security. By incorporating incremental advances in security and results from application testing, the 2007 Office system SP1 offers home and office users better protection against malicious software and potential threats to privacy.

Fora full list of improvements in SP1, download the Service Pack 1 whitepaper.

What does SP1 mean for you?

Service Pack 1 eliminates distractions and performance issues that disrupt workflow, allowing employees to be more productive in the work that they do. SP1 is also an important milestone for deploying the 2007 Office system, making it easy to deploy the most secure and reliable version of Office to date.

How do you get it?

Initially, SP1 will be available as a free download from OfficeOnline. SP1 will be made available via Automatic Update in the next 3-6 months, and we’ll issue 30 day advance notice prior to delivering SP1 via automatic update.”

(Mark Bower)

The modern productivity worker isn’t quite as location-monogamous any longer. People are working from their desks, beds, and gazebos. Office Live Workspace is the beginning of Microsoft’s facilitation of this roaming work style. With the service, documents can be posted online directly from Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to be edited from just about any browser. The days of saving a file to your local machine and using a disjointed browser interface to move it online are coming to a close.

Eric Schonfeld’s initial review of Live Workspace for Techcrunch points out a few of the limitations at present. Most file types are only viewable online and cannot be modified. The only editable documents are those created in Microsoft Word, and those cannot be saved to the desktop from the Web Notes online word processor. Also, the ability to sync documents online is currently restricted to those running Windows with Office XP or later.

While the demand for Microsoft to release feature parity with the current crop of online productivity tools, there’s no great motivation to follow suit. As Joe Wilcox pointed out last month at eWeek, current sales are double the previous release, with Office 2007 volume responsible for 17.4 percent of all software that runs on Windows.

With that sort of growth in Microsoft’s traditional software business, there is a reasonable counterpoint to the Web 2.0 communities death knell for software sold in boxes.

The other night the Meebo crew through a second birthday party for themselves, mostly to play Guitar Hero and munch, but there was a larger goal: to announce the next iteration of Meebo as an online platform.

Having spent the past few years building one of the best web-based IM clients in town, team Meebo decided to make themselves available to developers with one simple phrase, “I want to _____ with you.“

Scrape together some Flash or JavaScript into a way to watch, shop, frag, (or eat?) all within the Meebo universe. They’ve organized a Lunch 2.0 + all-night dev camp on 27 November to kickstart the ecosystem. The team will even set up a video conference if you’re interested but can’t make it down to Mountain View, CA this month.

Emre Sokullu has rolled up the Office 2.0 space for Read/WriteWeb including Meebo’s entrance. The productivity-on-the-web market would appear highly lucrative from all the companies diving into it. From Yahoo’s purchase of Zimbra, to the current crowd favourite Google Apps, and even Adobe’s Virtual Ubiquity, Meebo’s rocket has taken off for a very desirable planet.

All of this puts Microsoft in a very delicate position. The continued investment in free, online productivity tools certainly represents shots across the bow of the Office Armada. While the Office Live tools are mostly about the storage of data in the cloud, everyone else seems to be banking on the ability to do their work online; We’ll have to wait for Ray Ozzie’s other shoe to drop. Even after all the kimonos have been opened and all the offerings have matured, who knows what humans actually want.