The Windows Live Wifi team has an introductory blog post entitled Hello World... which is excerpted below

I’m Stefan Weitz, director of planning for Windows Live WiFi. The team has been developing Windows Live WiFi Center over the past few months and it’s now time to let others experiment with it. The beta is currently limited to 5,000 people but will open up more broadly in the coming months.  If you are interested in participating please email your Windows Live ID (ex. JaneDoe@hotmail.com) to BellBeta@microsoft.com and we’ll get you on the list of interested parties.

Getting online in a WiFi world
Windows Live is all about unifying our customer’s online experience.  Well, let’s face it – you need to be connected (in one way or another) to have that world unified :).  The Windows Live WiFi Center is all about helping people get connected in a secure way – it’s essentially our first step at creating an integrated software solution that helps people find and securely connect to wireless networks around the world.  The Windows Live WiFi Center has a number of great features in this beta version (hint: beta = more features are coming soon…).

 ·         Hotspot locator:  Provides you with the ability to search for free and fee-based wireless networks in countries around the world.  The locator shows you the address, description, available amenities, service providers and shows you a map of the location.

 ·         Network Management: Helps you see what networks are available and makes it easy to get technical information about them, including their security configuration, signal strength, etc.  In addition, you can tag networks as ‘favorites’ for future connections, track connection history, and manage network preferences. 

 ·         Security: Our built-in security, using VPN technology, allows you to secure a wireless Internet connection on unsecured networks like those in hotels and coffee shops.  This security feature comes free with the Windows Live WiFi Center product. 

Sounds pretty sweet. I've known this product was coming but hadn't tried it out yet. Looks like I need to get hooked up with the beta. The HotSpot Locator sounds particularly interesting to me.