Media Center Gadgets for SideShow Released! – Available on the Windows Live Gallery
Today the RTM release of the Windows Media Center Gadgets for Windows SideShow is available on the Windows Live Gallery!
Download locations:
4 gadgets are included:
· TV: Browse the program guide, schedule recordings, and browse and play back recorded TV shows
· Music: Browse and play music
· Pictures + Videos: Browse pictures on your device and play slideshows and video
· Now Playing: Provides information on what is playing in Media Center and provides playback controls like those on your Media Center remote
Thank you so much to the community of folks that have contributed testing and valuable input through our Microsoft Connect Beta program. This has greatly increased the quality of this release, and we look forward to implementing feature changes based on your feedback in future releases.
source- MSDN Blog
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Live Search Maps Argentina is Live!
Argentina now has it’s own Live Search Maps beta site. I’m a little late getting this on the blog, but better late than never. Plus, since I’m a little late to the game there’s a good chance you didn’t know about it either, so let’s dig in.
This site comes with geocoding places and addresses, road maps, satellite imagery and photography and traffic incident and flow information. In terms of content, this is what you get which is a great framework to build on.
Also, I should point out, don’t miss the right-click menu. Within the right-click menu you can add pushpins to the map which then fires off the whole Collections feature. Those of you who have used Live Search Maps in the US are well versed in how Collections allow you to login with your Windows Live ID and store your points, polylines and polygons in a cloud service we host and are available to you when you return. With Collections you can also create new lists (200 items per collection) with descriptions, URLs and photos. On the collections panel, under the Acciones (or actions) menu you can Propiedades (rename your collection and give it a description), Mostrar todo (map all your points), Enviar por email (send the collection link via email), Eliminar (remove pins from the map) or Limpiar (delete your collection).
Source- Virtual Earth Blog
U Rank: A Social Search Experiment From Microsoft Research
A new project from Microsoft Research (who by the way, is doing the coolest things these days), is a social search experiment called U Rank. The current U Rank prototype is a social search engine built on Live Search that lets you organize, edit, and annotate your search results as well as share them with others.
Essentially, the way U Rank works is by letting you move the search results around – either higher or lower using drag-and-drop while also optionally adding notes to the results or deleting them entirely. In other words, you can create the perfect, personalized search results instead of relying on an algorithm to do it for you.
This could be a great tool for research purposes as you could keep lists of search results along with meaningful notes about the sites you visited. It could also be a better alternative to bookmarking – a process that could become overwhelming if you’re researching a large topic and saving numerous pages. Instead of having to tag bookmarks individually, you could just save your search results themselves. That list could then be shared with other friends, colleagues, or anyone else who might be interested in your findings.
Because the site is just a prototype, participation requires you register your existing Windows Live ID in order to test it out. At the moment, the site is a little slow, but throw some more power behind it and you could really have something here.
Source- Channel 10 Blog
Windows Live Groups appears on MS internal sites
I was just looking through some of the sites and finally saw this page-http://groups.live-int.com/ though earlier I had posted about it but their wasn’t any confirmation.This site is probably the Windows Live team’s internal site.
Though the site doesn’t have any graphics or so but it pretty much confirms that Windows Live Groups is coming. So probably it would replace the old MSN groups.
Here is what the page reads-
Get a group going on Windows Live
Bring your team, club, or any group of people together online.
Your group’s webpage
Create a custom webpage where everyone can see the latest group activities.
Easy planning
The shared calendar makes it easy to see who’s busy when, and plan your next group event.
Staying in touch
Share photos, start discussions, send e-mail, or IM with the whole group at once.
Update:We were able to signup and look deeply in the Windows Live Group
Just sign up here- https://signup.live-int.com/ (Windows Live Wave 3 looks indeed,and thing to note the usual Windows Live mail address does not work so you have to create a new one) if you are more eager to have a look at the Windows Live Groups page
After signing up just enter the following link http://groups.live-int.com/ and you would be taken to the page as shown below
After playing a bit more with the site we were able to reach the Groups creation page(though the link in the above image doesn’t work.Here is how the page looks
The create option wasn’t working so we weren’t able to go further but one thing to note they have added some new themes.
We would be posting more info whenever available
Windows Live Messenger release date confirmed
According to an email sent out tonight to users of MSN Direct Spot watches, which will not support the new Wave 3 version, Windows Live Messenger is set to be released on February 10, “2008” (sic). The email gives the correct start date for the beta (Sept 17, 2008). Of course it remains to be seen whether or not the release schedule is met, but this gives us some indication of the timetable for Wave 3 final releases.
Source- Liveside
Hotmail update coming soon
It’s late September already, and time for that inevitable question: what did you do on your summer vacation? Well, this summer, the Hotmail team and I were hard at work on a new version of Hotmail, and we’re super excited to start rolling it out to you very soon.
Here’s a sneak peak at some of the changes.
- A great new look – We’ve done a little remodeling, and we think Hotmail looks much, much nicer and is easier to use. We did a lot of testing around the world to see what people liked and didn’t like. We’re really excited about the final results, and we hope you like it too! There’s also a whole new set of vibrant themes that replace our old color schemes.
- Classic & Full, together at last! – Our clever developers figured out how to take the performance of the Classic version of Hotmail, and combine it with features of the Full version, in a single experience. Now everyone gets the same features. You don’t have to trade off speed for functionality or decide which version is better for you. If you have been using the Full version, you’ll see much faster page load times, and if you have been using Classic, you now get to use the reading pane, drag & drop, and other features formerly limited to the Full version.
- A contact list that’s more than just contacts – Our contact list is now much more useful. Besides a new layout and improved look, we added features that are both fun and time-saving.
- Fun - If your Messenger contacts have a display picture, that picture will appear in your list.
- Time-saving - When you view a contact, you can see recent e-mail they’ve sent you, send them a message from right in the contact page, and view items from across Windows Live that you’ve shared together.
- Now THAT’s something to write home about! – We completely redesigned the experience of composing a new message. We have brand new auto-complete functionality for e-mail addresses, and a new contact picker that even detects commonly misspelled addresses. There is a new way to attach files and a new spell-checker that we think are much easier to use (especially if you were using Classic – no need to go to a new page to attach files anymore!). The text editor is completely rewritten, and we fixed a bunch of bugs – right-click now works!
- Updated Calendar beta – If you aren’t using the Calendar beta yet, now’s a great time to try it. Calendar sharing, an automatically generated birthday calendar for people in your contact list, a holiday calendar, iCal subscriptions to public calendars, to-do lists, and much, much more await you. Go to http://calendar.live.com, or go to Hotmail and click Calendar under “Related places” to sign up.
There is more to this release that I haven’t yet mentioned, including greater speed and more powerful spam fighting, and even more improvements coming soon (but I’ll save those for a later post that my boss is going to do.)
If you haven’t used your Hotmail account in a while, check out the changes at http://mail.live.com. You can also sign up for a new account from there.
Source- Windows Live Wire Blog
Social Bookmarking Plugin for Windows Live Writer
Here is another version of my Social Bookmark Plug-in for Windows Live Writer. Based on the previous feedback I have changed a few things. The script errors that used to come in WLW due to the embedded scripts won’t bother you anymore. Besides, there are 4 more book marking sites incorporated, namely…
Microsoft Social
Microsoft Expression
Microsoft MSDN
Microsoft Technet
Install the plug-in from…
Once done click on Insert -> Bookmarking Tags (Ensure that your WLW is running as an Administrator!)
Select the book-marking sites that you prefer and click on Save My Favorite…
Click on Done
Try hovering on the icons above…
And when you click on it, it would automatically take you to the Bookmarking site and fill up the details…
Source- .net scraps
Microsoft announces pre-beta build of Windows 7 for PDC
Microsoft will unveil Windows 7 at PDC and provide developers and attendees with a pre-beta build of the operating system.
Steven Sinofsky, Senior Vice President, Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group, will keynote on Tuesday, October 28. Part of Sinofskys keynote will be a demonstration of the work being done for Windows 7. Advances across the full range of Windows—including the kernel, networking, hardware and devices, and user-interface will be demonstrated at PDC.
Attendees of PDC will also be able to attend 21 different sessions based on Windows 7.
Neowin will be attending PDC and providing coverage of as many of the 21 sessions as is humanly possible 
View: PDC 2008 Blog
Source-neowin
