Remeber the Windows Live Search activity for Windows Live Messenger we told you about in April? Well it's finally been updated and now supports image search (and Internet Explorer 7).

The image search not only allows you to search for images and then share the url of an image with your contact but it also lets you drag-and-drop it to be your display picture or conversation window background. Another new feature is a spell checker.

Unfortunately the image searching is currently only available in English (so only in mainly English speaking countries UK, US and Australia). However soon it will offer support for 32 more markets as well as Instant Answers and a user tutorial.

Elsewhere in the Windows Live world, Windows Live Toolbar was officially launched out of beta last night. Available for Internet Explorer only, some of the features it offers include:

• Search from any Web page
• Guard against Web fraud and viruses
• Turn addresses into maps from any web page
• Collect, Save and Share with Onfolio

It also allows you to customize it with buttons and add-in from the new Windows Live Gallery Beta site, also launched yesterday.

Windows Live Gallery is a place where you can go to find any Live.com Gadgets, Windows Live Toolbar buttons, Windows Desktop Search add-ins, Windows Live Messenger activities, bots and add-ins, Windows Live Search macros, and other extensions to personalise Windows Live services.

It gives developers, who can find out how to make these things at Windows Live Dev, a chance to showcase their creations and gives users the opportunity to expand the way they use Windows Live services.

Also, Windows Live Mail has just been upgraded to M7. There hasn't been any announcement from the team yet but it looks like the upgrade was successful on all servers. New features include a new loading screen (along with quicker loading), a new Today page, checkboxes for message selection in the inbox and a photo uploader for mail messages.

Windows Live Search activity update info
Windows Live Search activity initial info
Windows Live Search activity instructions

Windows Live Toolbar site
Windows Live Toolbar features
Download Windows Live Toolbar

Windows Live Gallery
Windows Live Dev

Windows Live Mail M7 improvements list and info
Windows Live Mail

The new Windows Live Search has really made an impression on me. The results are what you are after and it is fresh up to date coding. Soon it will be a huge search engine. Today as an added bonus you can use it via messenger.

Click the activities button in a conversation window and then click search (screenshot). This will bring up a search page in the side activity/game holder that appears (screenshot). So far Web and News searches are the only available in this compact version of Windows Live Search. Also the listing are limited to a certain number per page (which is scrollable), and further results can be viewed by clicking the numbers of arrows at the bottom of the page to view more pages of results.

The search listings (screenshot) then offer various ways to integrate with the conversation:

Using the the square nine dot handle on the top right of a result you can drag it to your message writing space (when there is a orange border around the result). This copies the title of the page and its linked url.

By clicking the small 'S' to the left of a search result this directly sends your contact an instant message with the title and url of the search result. (Or click the similar 'P' under the 'S' for a quick preview of the page within the side activity holder.

Altogether this is a real nice feature for messenger. I hope you like it!