It’s with great pleasure, a lot of late nights, and barrels of caffeine, that our team launches the public Windows Live QnA beta.

For all you thousands of beta testers who took a chance on us, nagged us, mocked us, and made us better – we thank you. Keep doing it. Enjoy. Obey the code of conduct. We see you getting hooked.

For all of you new to the service, we will be providing more blog posts here to help guide you through the features, but here’s a quick roundup of what you will see with the Windows Live QnA beta:

• A smooth interface that enables you to ask, answer and vote on a question.
• A free-form “tagging” system that allows you to attach your own keywords and phrases to your question to make it more discoverable by other users. With QnA, you tell us what the question is about, not the other way around!
• Integration with Windows Live Spaces via modules that show off questions you’ve asked and questions you’ve answered.
• See your score constantly increase on the Superstars page and earn reputation stars for consistently giving great answers.
• Windows Live Messenger “gleams” that show when you and your buddies have participated in QnA.
• Email notification that someone has answered your question, or when others have voted on a best answer, via MSN Alerts.
• Ability to tag embarrassing or “adult” questions with the "mature content" tag – which keeps explicit content away from those who don’t want it
• Ability to subscribe to a customer, question or site search via RSS.
• Message boards that let you get support information, discussions with other people, and contact with the QnA team. You can’t chat or discuss things in Windows Live QnA without breaking the format… so instead, go to our message boards. (http://boards.live.com/qnaboards/forum.aspx?ForumID=17)
• You can always find news and updates to the service on this blog, http://liveqna.spaces.live.com!