At last, Windows Live Messenger has a Web interface

Better late than, um... what took so long, again? Never mind: Microsoft's release this week of a Web interface to its Windows Live Messenger instant-messaging service is good news for users in Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, the UK and the US. (The rest of you are going to have to wait.)

The interface can be reached from one's Windows Live Hotmail or People pages -- in other words, from any computer that can get online. (It worked fine from my Mac and Linux boxes, and from within Firefox.) Sign in as usual and there's a Messenger option in the upper-right corner; you can sign in or, if you need your privacy at the moment, you can ignore it.

If you choose to operate from the People page, you can use your contact list to speed things along; clicking each contact's icon gives a picklist, and on that picklist is a send-IM option that shows that person's status. From Hotmail, you can see the IM status for anyone who's sent you mail, as long as you've already become one of their Messenger contacts.

Our light testing on Tuesday revealed that it's functional if not yet as slick as that offered by, for instance, AIM or even Gchat. It's not yet a multimedia tool; there's no video and no photo sharing. We'd like to have seen the ability to sort our contacts by availability, too. And we noticed some quirky behavior with displaying which of our pals was and wasn't online. (It's possible that the display inconsistency had more to do with our friends' antics, though.)

Being a Microsoft offering, it's a good bet that the functionality will indeed be smoothed over time. In any case, it's a tiny welcome nod to increased openness coming from Redmond; if Messenger is your IM of choice, this ought to simplify quick-and-dirty messaging in a pinch.