Of course, you will be left in the dark for any technical support – since it is a beta (Google is your friend) – and we probably should tell you that you should download it at your own risk. But if you are desperate to see any small changes to Windows 7, then feel free to download it.

You can download it from Microsoft’s TechNet site. You would also need to have a current version of Windows 7 and it is a 1.2GB file to download – so you should really use your offpeak, or possibly get a friend to download it for you.

“Because enthusiasm continues to be so high for the Windows 7 Beta and we don’t want anyone to miss out we will keep the Beta downloads open through February 10th,” Brandon LeBlanc wrote in a blog posting on The Windows Blog.

However, people who have started the download before the 10th of February and have not finished the download will still be able to continue until February 12th, when it will no longer be available. MSDN and TechNet subscribers are exempt from the date, and will still be able to download bits of it during the beta phase.

Product keys will still be available after the downloads, meaning that if you didn’t get your product key, you can still get one so you don’t miss out the excitement of the beta.

Aviary already have a  image editor, a “colour swatches and palettes” tool and a “visual laboratory” tool. It is planning to add an audio editor, fonts creator, a “pixel pattern recognition” tool, a music generator, a desktop publishing tool, a video editor, a word processor, a terrain generator, a “smart image resizer” and a “painting simulator”.

Aviary hatched! We recently added 5 new apps (including a vector editor!!!), a brand new website redesign and more collaboration features. We think you’ll love the new Aviary.com <–(new url with no dot!)

Thanks so much for your patience and feedback during our private beta period.

We’re also excited to announce that in addition to our free plan, we are now offering a pro plan.

There are lots of great reasons to upgrade to pro: Early access to unreleased alphas; unlimited storage; private groups; files and more!

As a way of saying thank you, we’re offering all our early beta testers an $85 discount off a year’s subscription if they upgrade in the next 48 hours!

Be sure to follow this link and sign in to obtain your discount: http://Aviary.com/home?beta

We look forward to seeing what you create!

~ Michael

The Windows Live Mesh team has announced that during this week, Mesh will now be a beta and will add more features to the service. It will also become open to the public, meaning that users who have a Windows Live ID will now be able to access the product without waiting for an invite using Microsoft Connect.

Among the new features announced in a blog post, they include:

• Additional member roles: Creator, Owner, Contributor and Reader
• Drag and Drop files onto the Live Desktop
• Sync Mesh folders P2P only, excluding your Live Desktop, from the computer itself
• Improved P2P sync performance and reliability.

Also announced will be the support for Mac and Windows Mobile clients also this week. If you can’t wait – you can see this link (https://developer.mesh-ctp.com/Welcome/default.aspx) to have a look around. This will move to mesh.com when it moves to Beta.

As well, this now fully supports HTML and AJAX; meaning applications don’t need to be created in Flash. An extension for Dreamweaver will be released. The site is here…