Microsoft has launched another service in its Windows Live family: Windows Live Events, a free (ad-supported) event planner. The service is available immediately at http://home.services.spaces.live.com/events/.

Windows Live Events essentially allows users to create an event, send invitations to it an then enables users to add photos or comments following the event. It's got all the standard online invite features which other services such as Evite.com feature, and allows you to include a map and customize almost all features. Live Events also enables to uploading and sharing of video in addition to photos, much like nearly all online social networks.

A nice feature is the possibility of those who do not have Windows Live IDs to respond to invitations, thus does not force those invited to sign up with Microsoft's service. Of course, having a Windows Live ID simplifies the process and enables invitees to upload feedback after the event, such as comments, photos and video.

Live Events is built upon the same technology as Microsoft's Spaces blogging service, which itself has been given some subtle updates, including the ability to more easily see newly added content and manage who can access it. Events is one of the first Live services to launch to the public without a "beta" designation. Live Events will be launched in all of the 56 markets that Spaces currently operates in. Users have the option to choose from over 100 templates when creating their event invitations, or create a custom appearance with an easy to use editor which also features drag-and-drop.

Windows Live Events' users can choose e-mail addresses of people to invite to their event from an address book they may already have in their Hotmail or Messenger accounts. They can also manually type in e-mail addresses. The service integrates with other Microsoft online services, such as Windows Live Search Maps which can be used to plot the location of events.

A nice feature enables users to embed portions of the site into other social networking services, including MySpace.

Microsoft also announced that users of the Skydrive beta service, which lets anyone store and share files online, will now have 1G byte of storage, up from 500M bytes.