My reflection on the last post, and the Live announcements as follows:

Firstly, these are all really positive steps forward for Live, and I think some of the services are really beginning to take shape.

The Windows Live Messenger Library is very interesting. Previously, it's been possible to to create bots, and activities and thus harness Messenger as a channel, or an entry into a web proposition, but WLML now gives the power to use Messenger as part of the proposition: perhaps just for the retention of eyeballs, but maybe for improved social capabilities and other sophistry.

Mentioned in the post, but covered in more detail by Andy Conrad is these services are going to ADO.NET Data Services (Astoria... keep up...) which "means we now support LINQ queries from .NET code directly against our service endpoints". Very cool. I'll be keeping an eye on the MIX session from Pablo on that subject.