You may not be familiar with Windows Live Essentials, but it's basically a suite of applications available via a free download, which includes Live Mail, Live Messenger, and in this new update—a Bing Bar!
The new pack includes updates to Live Mail, Live Messenger, Live Photo Gallery, Live Movie Maker, Live Sync, Live Writer, Live Family Safety and last but by no means least (snicker), a Bing Bar. Windows 7 and Vista are supported, but there's no XP love for you, you and you.
Microsoft's aimed to make sharing easier in this update, whether that be photos, movies and songs, or even emails. Some of the apps you can pretty much ditch straight away, but Live Photo Gallery actually has a pretty neat sounding feature added—Photo Fuse, for combining several photos into one. Kind of like that photo of the most beautiful women in the world, turned into one.
And, like iPhoto on OS X, it can also recognize people's faces in photos, tagging them for your convenience.
It's not out yet, with Microsoft foretelling of a beta download sometime in the coming few weeks. [ZDNet and Ars Technica]