Archive for Releases
June 12, 2008 at 2:07 pm ·
Filed under Releases, Digital Life
The Release Candidate of Windows Home Server Power Pack 1 for public testing is now available at this location. This is the time to install and upgrade, and to send feedback to the team so they can still tune the final version. Power Pack 1 provides a range of new enhancements, including support for home computers running Windows Vista x64 editions, backup of home server Shared Folders, improvements to remote access, more efficient power consumption, improved performance and support for the Chinese and Japanese languages. Power Pack 1 also resolves the data corruption issue experienced by a very small set of customers.
- With Power Pack 1, the Windows Home Server Connector software for home computers is compatible with 64-bit editions of Windows Vista.
- Customers can now backup and restore their pictures, music, and documents that they have in their home server’s Shared Folders.
- Uploading and downloading batches of photos or other files, at home or away, is now easier with the option of ZIP or self extracting .exe files.
- Photos are now presented as thumbnails on the built-in Home Server web page, making it easier for customers, friends and family to see photo collections.
- There is now more granular control of the access various users have to data on a home server. This is particularly useful for home based-businesses who want to give their clients controlled access to certain files.
- Windows Home Server can automatically decrease and increase its power consumption on some processors, meaning making it more energy efficient.
- Windows Home Server now supports and streams Windows Media playlists.
More info in the press release
May 16, 2008 at 2:28 pm ·
Filed under Releases, Live Services
Microsoft’s consumer and online division in Europe announced the official release of Messenger TV to 21 countries (Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom).
With Messenger TV, we are bringing two of the most popular activities online – watching videos and chatting on IM. This new service lets you watch MSN Videos with a friend as you have live text conversations about the videos you are watching together. Similar to watching television with your friends, you can watch videos and chat about them as you both see the same video at the same time. But the best way to understand Messenger TV is to visit http://MessengerTV.msn.com or to start the activity while chatting to a friend in Windows Live Messenger. With Messenger TV, you can select any of the videos that are available from MSN Video, build your playlist, and watch the videos with a friend.
With Messenger TV, you can also:
- Blog about the videos you see and like by clicking the “Blog to Spaces” button. Clicking this opens your browser with your Windows Live Spaces blog already written, complete with a thumbnail of the video and a link to watch it so all you have to do is click “publish” from within Spaces to share the video with your friends and family who visit your Spaces site.
- Send e-mail to offline friends with links to the videos you see and like by clicking the “Email Video” button. Clicking this creates a new e-mail in your default e-mail client, such as Windows Live Mail, with a link to the video so all you have to do is click “send” to share the video with your friends and family.
- Search for other videos to watch online by entering a word or two in the “Search for videos online” box. The search results open in your browser with search results displayed on http://video.msn.com where you can continue watching videos that are found as a result of your search.
Nice little gadget to make your Live Messenger activities a bit more fun!
Check out LiveInEurope to stay on track more releases and features
May 15, 2008 at 10:20 am ·
Filed under Technology, Releases
It’s here! All yours to enjoy and totally free. I’ve made a demo about it, but it’s taking aaaages to upload and so after 3 attempts, I’ve decided to use Keith’s wonderful demo instead. It’s even better than mine, so turns out even better for you readers as well :) Keith points out most of the goodies in the little app, and the most coolest part of it is indeed the fact that the planets keep revolving, true to their behavior in real life. Check it out:
Go download WorldWide Telescope
May 9, 2008 at 8:56 am ·
Filed under Technology, Releases
As announced on November 13th last year, the guys from the Microsoft Office team released a plug to help people with a handicap ‘read’ Word documents. It’s a simple software add-in for MS Office that converts text documents from Word into audio files, so people with a reading disability (or blind people) can still ‘know’ what’s in the document.
The add-in appears in the menu and shows as “Save As DAISY” (image below), just like when you’d save for an older version of MS Office, or in a different format. The plugin has been created together with Sonata Software and DAISY (which is an abbreviation for Digital Accessible Information System). The software allows you to save Open XML-based text documents as DAISY XML, which can then be converted to the DAISY Talking Book format (DTB). However, this last bit does require an extra bit of software called Pipeline, and is not included in the plug. As shown below, the plug is compatible with Microsoft Word 2007, Word 2003 and Word XP. I’ve experienced that during the install, the loader bar does not make progress very fast, and then jumps almost straight to the end. Might be because my demo laptop is pretty full already, but it’s just so you know. :)
The cool part about a DTB book is that the audio file encloses part of, or the entire source text plus a joint file that makes sure the text lights up as it is being read. Nice job!
Links:
Announcement Press Release
Download the plug
DAISY Pipeline (updated on May 7th)
MS Presspass: DAISY Virtual Pressroom
May 6, 2008 at 11:41 am ·
Filed under Games, Releases, Fun
If you’re familiar with mash-ups and you’re into gaming, then this is the rocking fun zone for you! As the name suggests, this release builds on Popfly’s current set of mashup and Web page authoring tools to add support for easily creating and sharing casual games. There are 2 ways to get to the Game Creator. On the landing page, you have the “Create a Game (Alpha)” link, or if you select the “Create Stuff” dropdown, you will see “Game” there.
Here’s a tutorial and walk-through to get you started:
See you in the next level :)
Related:
PopFly site
The PopFly Wiki
Snapshots on TechCrunch
May 6, 2008 at 11:10 am ·
Filed under Releases, Live Services, Photography, Digital Life
Microsoft Pro Photo Tools provides a set of tools for photographers to perform various tasks with their images—including RAW captures. The current version enables you to quickly geotag your photos, view and edit metadata, and more, leveraging the power of Windows and Microsoft Live Local. Very closely related, this cool Outlook plugin just saw the daylight: Microsoft Pro Photo Shoot is a new software add-in for Microsoft Office Outlook that allows photographers to add details of the client and equipment for a photo shoot appointment in Outlook. This allows photographers to greater leverage the power of Outlook when managing their photography.
Pro Photo Tools includes the following features:
- Geotagging with flexibility
As geotagging gains popularity, photographers want to be able to quickly identify the location for their images. With Pro Photo Tools, you can gather location information from a variety of sources and apply it to the metadata in your images.
- Determine location name automatically
With Pro Photo Tools, you can automatically apply the actual name of the location where a photo was taken based on the GPS coordinates. Instead of numbers, you’ll have the “real” names, and that information can then be saved in the metadata for your photos.
Determine GPS coordinates from location name. Just because you haven’t always had a GPS receiver doesn’t mean you can’t assign GPS coordinates to your photos. In fact, using the power of Microsoft Live Local you can determine the GPS coordinates where any photo was taken based on location name information in the image metadata. The GPS coordinates can then be added to the metadata for your photos and the photos plotted on a map.
- Identify location on a map
For the maximum in flexibility when assigning a location to an image, you can navigate to the precise location where you took a given photo and tag the photo with that location information based on a specific position on the map.
- View images on a map
As cool as it is to have GPS coordinate information connected to your images, to really get a sense of place with your photos, you need to view them on a map. Pro Photo Tools utilizes Windows Live Local to display your images on a map of the world, including the ability to view your images on a normal map or a satellite view of the world.
- Edit image metadata
Metadata has become increasingly important to photographers as a way to manage and organize their images. Among the many things it enables is a rich capability to search for images. You can now update a wide range of metadata for your images using Pro Photo Tools, and that metadata gets stored in the actual image file, so wherever your photo goes, your data goes.
- RAW support
By leveraging the Windows Imaging Components (WIC), we’re able to provide support for any RAW file format (in addition to TIFF and JPEG) for which a codec has been developed. And that includes most RAW file formats. Not only can you view your RAW images within Pro Photo Tools, you can also update metadata—including GPS coordinates—directly in the file. The updated metadata is stored within the RAW file, not in a cumbersome “sidecar” file. (For information on obtaining codecs for your RAW images or other file formats, visit (Codecs for Windows )
- Extensibility
Pro Photo Tools was built with extensibility in mind. Rather than creating a one-off tool, we created a framework we can leverage for future tools. This will allow us to add additional functionality in future versions of Pro Photo Tools more efficiently. That means you’ll get more features sooner.
Downloads:
Microsoft Pro Photo Tools
Microsoft Pro Photo Shoot
Very closely related cool stuff:
Microsoft Photo Info
SyncToy v.2.0 Beta
HD Photo Plug-In for Photoshop
May 6, 2008 at 10:41 am ·
Filed under Releases, Gadgets
Time for another Outlook plug to fly out the beta-zone and into the great wide open. I’ve been on Xobni for a few months now, and I must say I really enjoy the plug. There’s a load of options this thing has, but I’ll tell you what I use it for. The rest is something you can dig out for yourself. So, the coolest part is that when I click on an email in my inbox, Xobni keeps track of all conversations I had with the sender. It also lists all the attachments that have been sent by me or to me from the selected contact, so I no longer need to search my inbox or any folders I might have dumped the email in. Other than that, it keeps track of the contact’s activity - which is the timeline of the conversations. That means that I can see when it is most likely that this contact is behind his or her computer. With a very easy ’schedule time with x’ I can book a meeting, or I can see the contact data in a glance. Sure, all of this information is already in Outlook, but Xobni just makes it accessible even faster. Less time spent looking. Yeey!
So, below is a real sized image of the little sidebar that is added in Outlook. I’ve clicked on my own name from an email I sent to someone, so this lists my activity. I peak during lunch, funny enough, and apparently there’s no time during the day that I have no email activity. Maybe I should send this to my boss :)
One of the other nice little thingies about Xobni is the fact that it also keeps track of ‘lost contacts’. It’s like ‘hey, did you know it’s been three months since you’ve had any conversations with x or y?’ - I love that.
Get Xobni for your Office Outlook edition and join the fun!
After the jump: a video of Bill Gates promoting Xobni and the Xobni demo video. Read the rest of this entry »
May 6, 2008 at 8:44 am ·
Filed under Releases, Live Services
Finally, the official Windows Live Messenger App for Facebook is here. There’s been quite some unofficial apps present, but I never installed them because I don’t really like to give up my password and Live ID to some third party dude. Even if he doesn’t harvest the addresses, I still think it’s a bit tricky. BUT, no more of that. The official app is here! On April 29th, Microsoft released the Windows Live Messenger Facebook Application. Members of Facebook can chat with their friends using this application that runs on the Facebook site. Once you have installed the application, people who have access your Facebook profile page can initiate IM conversations with you (it is based on the Windows Live Messenger IM Control. One side of the conversation happens on the Facebook site, the other side in the WL Messenger client). You can invite your Facebook friends to add the application and join Windows Live Messenger. The application also shows the WL Messenger online presence of your Facebook friends who have installed the application (it is based on the Windows Live Messenger Presence API).
The application will be promoted worldwide in partnership with RockYou. RockYou will only promote the application to existing Facebook users. This is an opportunity for Windows Live Messenger to acquire new users.
April 26, 2008 at 10:03 am ·
Filed under Releases, Live Services
MSN launched the A-List page, a page where you can find one hot topic per day. The related queries at the top and below are other popular searches and headlines including the top web searches, the top people searches, the top videos, the top MSN.com headlines, the top movies and DVD rentals, the top five in Sports, the top Deals, the top health stories, the top tech stories, and more. Really nice to have an updated list page like this that shows you in a glance what’s happening on the MSN pages.
Check it out
April 26, 2008 at 9:45 am ·
Filed under Releases, Vista
It’s taken ages, at least to me, since the last special updates had been pushed for Vista Ultimate. But finally and at last, they rolled out the Extras just a few days ago. If you’re running Vista Ultimate, two new Ultimate Extras should show up on Windows Update when you connect. The first one is Windows Sound Schemes, a pack of 2 new sound schemes for Windows Vista: Glass and Pearl. For more details on the Windows Sound Schemes - click here. The second one is Windows DreamScene Content Pack #3, which brings you 3 new DreamScenes for your Windows Vista desktop. For more information on Windows DreamScene - click here.
So, I’m going to download and install these babies to include them in my next demo. It’s always fun to have some new stuff to show, even if it is ‘just’ a dreamscene. Here’s a still shot of the one I’m adding right now:
Pretty pure and not too intrusive. I like it that way. If you want to stay up to date with all the goodies they push out for Ultimate users, please keep an eye on either the Windows Vista Blog, or the UltimatePC website, your home for the latest releases and updated features.
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