I'm writing this post from version 12.0.1366.1026 of Windows Live Writer - updated as part of Windows Live Wave 2 of the Windows Live suite of applications, which was released overnight. That includes a new version of Live Messenger, Live Mail, Live Photo Gallery etc.

Also released this week was the first alpha of Paint.NET 3.20. I don't know many people who still don't use Paint.NET, but it's an invaluable addition to Windows if you do any kind of image manipulation. See Rick's blog post for the full list of new features and changes in this version.

And lastly we have the first CTP of PowerShell 2.0! Remember that this is a CTP drop, so it's not for installation on production machines. See Jeffrey's post about CTPs if you're not sure.