Now, chat in high definition

The new Windows Live Messenger from Microsoft aims to be the single window to your social world. The first messenger to offer full screen ‘High Definition’ video chat.

The new Windows Live Messenger from Microsoft aims to be the single window to your social world. The first messenger to offer full screen 'High Definition' video chat, the new iteration of Messenger also provides online games, photo and website sharing in real time and integration of different networking sites.

The new messenger also integrates Bing search, making it easier to add links, photos and videos without leaving the conversation window. Users can set their status by category — for instance, users can be online for family, while appearing offline to co-workers! The social dashboard gets updates from across social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace, as well as videos directly from YouTube.

A web version is available across the Windows Live network including Hotmail, as well as at www.messenger.live.com . It is also integrated with mobile phones including Windows Phone, iPhone and Blackberry.

The all new Live Messenger will be available for download at http://download.live.com .

New additional features include tabbed conversations, Messenger Companion (an add-in for Internet Explorer which detects when users are on a website that one of their friends has shared content from and surfaces that update so they can instantly view it and comment right back), synchronised social networking status updates and inline comments that post back to wherever the update came from, and customisable privacy settings.