Windows Live Calendar Beta Update

I’m just about to roll off the Calendar team but we’ve just done another update, so I thought I’d share the good blog we just posted: The Windows Live Calendar team has been working hard the last few months on a cool update to the Windows Live Calendar beta. After many more bowls of udon noodles, lots of lattes and many late nights …we’re live! Everyone on our team is fired up about the release and we’re looking forward to your feedback. Give Windows Live Calendar beta a try by clicking the calendar tab in your Hotmail account or by going directly to http://calendar.live.com if you haven’t done so already. New coolness delivered in this update includes:

Birthday Calendars that automatically create events and reminders for your contacts’ birthdays. (Make sure to add birthdays to your contacts. Add the birthday to your own profile, too: http://spaces.live.com/profile.aspx?action=edit&mode=activecontacts. That way others who subscribe to your contact update will get a reminder about your own birthday!)
iCal Subscriptions that allow you to show calendars that update automatically from around the web. (This will be up and running very shortly!)
Holiday Calendars that are automatically added to your account depending on what country you’re in. Many more are coming, but in this update, there are holidays for: China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Korea, Indonesia, Philippines, India, Russia, France, the United States, Spain, German and the United Kingdom
A number of user interface changes including the ability to right click on calendars in the calendar list and to reorder that list
Improvements to accessibility functionality, including better tabbing and F6 key support
Additional print views that allow you to print from the day, week and month views
The ability to directly connect to the Windows Live Calendar beta via the calendar tab in Windows Live Hotmail
Vikram S., one of our dev leads, says that we shouldn’t add any more to this list as it will look like we’re trying to squeeze juice from a rock!

We’re already busy working on our next beta update and look forward to sharing more when we’re ready to release it. The Windows Live Calendar Team