Sarah In Tampa

Push Notifications on Windows Phone 7 Series

Sarah Perez — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:52:00 GMT

At the Game Developers Conference, Microsoft has been giving attendees a deeper look at the Windows Phone 7 Series platform, specifically as it relates to gaming. Already we’ve seen how games can be developed using Visual Studio to run on Windows PCs, the Xbox 360, and Windows Phones.

Now, thanks to this video upload from the conference itself, we can learn more about push notifications on Windows Phone 7 Series devices. There are three kinds of push notifications available: raw, tile, and toast.

Raw notifications are when a cloud service notifies an application. If the app isn’t running the notification is discarded. The second type, tile notifications, are used when a user pins a tile to the Quick Launch menu (tiles are the new squares on the main screen). In this case, the cloud service will update that tile with an image URI. Finally, there are toast notifications which is when the cloud service send a title and a subtitle. You see toast notifications on the Xbox 360 today – it’s when a little pop-up appears to let you know one of your friends is online.

After giving an overview, the rest of the talk is devoted to explaining the technical aspects in more detail and providing examples of how developers can use these notifications with their games. The entire video is only a little over 6 minutes long, so it’s definitely worth a look if you’re thinking about developing for the new Windows Phone.

Kodu Updated!

Sarah Perez — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:52:00 GMT

According to recent news posted on the Microsoft Research site, there’s a new build of the Kodu game creator now available and with the release there comes a lot of new features. Some of the more notable changes include improved mouse controls, a new hint system and an automatic update mechanism. There are also a number of bug fixes and minor improvements which will make the overall Kodu experience even better than before.

The full list of changes includes the following:

Automatic updates: When installing the new version you have the option to opt-in to have Kodu check for updates each time it starts up.
Usage information: When installing the new version you have the option to opt-in to having Kodu send anonymous usage information to help us make Kodu better.
New privacy statement.
Add support for Cyrillic characters.
Added mouse control buttons to help screens.
Allow the ‘Home’ key to take you directly from the MainMenu to the HomeMenu. Note that this only works if you already have a level loaded, ie you’ve either loaded a level or resumed since starting.
Allow going from paused mode straight to the HomeMenu. This is great for creating nice thumbnails since you can pause the game, move the camera to where it looks best and then go straight into the HomeMenu to save the game.
New Hint system. When toast pops up you can either press <Y> on the gamepad, or F1 on the keyboard or left click with the mouse to bring up the modal version of the dialog. Created a handful of hints that work with the new system.
Fixed bugs with ToolTips being rendered underneath AddItem menu and over text editor.
Fixed bug where dragging a character with the mouse across the bottom of the screen would drop the character and activate the ToolBar.
Added HelpOverlay information for tag editing on LoadLevel and SaveLevel menus.
Fixed help overlay information for paused mode. BTW To get into paused mode, on the keyboard just hit the ‘pause’ key. With the GamePad you have to press both triggers AND boh stick-buttons at the same time.
Fixed end of game display so you can just click on the buttons on the screen as well as pressing them on the keyboard.
Fixed bug caused by transitioning between gamepad and keyboard/mouse modes while the AddItem menu is active.
Fixed a bug in the radio button UI element which was causing its value to be ignored.
Fixed a bug in the text editor’s handling of key caps.
Tuned the physics behavior of the apple, rock and soccer ball to be less infinitely bouncy. This should not affect already created levels.
Fixed a bug with how the SaveLevelMenu handles mouse input.
Modified more built-in levels to be keyboard/mouse friendly.

You can grab the latest release of Kodu for PC here.

Gist's New Outlook Plugin Delivers More Insights

Sarah Perez — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:46:00 GMT

Gist, the company behind the email mashup service of the same name, just updated their Outlook plugin. The new plugin now lets you see a contact’s profile information prior to sending them an email. To use this feature, you simply start creating a new message, and the profile info will display next to the email itself, in a sidebar pane. Specifically, the profile info shows things like name, title, company, and links to your contacts’ social network profiles on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Other plugin features include the ability to get updates on your contacts and their companies within Outlook, a search feature for easily locating email, links, and attachments, and a drag-and-drop method for sharing news from your contacts via email or Twitter.

Click here to in you’re interested in trying the new Outlook plugin. Note that you’ll need to have signed up with Gist first before you can use it.

Wow, Where Did All These Themes Come From?

Sarah Perez — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:46:00 GMT

Rob Margel recently discovered a great March theme for Windows 7 users at download.live.com which features shamrocks and other spring-related imagery. I thought I’d go check out the Windows 7 Personalization gallery to grab it and whatever else was new, too. However, for some reason, the Shamrock theme isn’t there. No matter, since Rob posted the direct link for the download. However, I was surprised to see the gallery had a ton of new themes since my last visit only a couple of months ago. There are now several regional themes like Canada, Australia, Czech Spring, China, Baltic Beaches, France, India, Hungary, Germany, Italy, and a dozen or so others. Plus, there are new animal themes like “dogs in summer,” “cats everywhere,” and “Year of the Tiger.”

But lately, I have to admit that I’ve found myself addicted to Smashing Magazine’s Windows 7 theme collections which they release monthly. They offer themes made up of artistic backgrounds that come packaged as two different options – those with an embedded calendar and those without. I like to grab those without the calendar myself so I can reuse them later on when I’m ready for a change. You can grab the last collection here.

HP MediaSmart Home Servers Link up with Tivo

Sarah Perez — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:33:00 GMT

HP just announced a partnership with home DVR system maker Tivo which allows MediaSmart Home Servers to connect with Tivo devices. The connection will be made by way of a free WHS add-in that lets you manage your recordings via the WHS console. The benefit for Tivo users is obvious: you can now record all the shows and movies you want without worrying about running out of space. Well, I suppose that you could, in theory, run out of room, but since the servers come with either 1 TB or 1.5 TB hard drives plus 3 available expansion bays, it would certainly take some time before you’re maxed out.

In addition to the extra storage, MediaSmart owners can watch the recorded shows on either a PC, Mac or TV by way of the Home Server’s remote streaming option.

XNA Game Studio 4.0 to Support New Windows Phone

Sarah Perez — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:33:00 GMT

Game developers attending GDC this week will get a first look at the latest version of the XNA toolkit – XNA Game Studio 4.0 – which provides the technology to create games for Xbox 360, Windows, and now, the Windows Phone 7 Series. Shawn Hargreaves posted on his blog about what’s new with this latest release:

New platform
- Windows Phone 7 Series
New features
- Integrates with Visual Studio 2010
- Dynamic audio output
- Microphone input
- BasicEffect has four new siblings
  - SkinnedEffect
  - EnvironmentMapEffect
  - DualTextureEffect
  - AlphaTestEffect
Improved portability and usability
- Collapsed graphics caps into just two profile levels: Reach and HiDef
- Many graphics API improvements
- This involves some breaking API changes
- Split Microsoft.Xna.Framework.dll into several assemblies, to make it more obvious which pieces are available on each platform

Michael Klucher also added a few answers to some people’s “burning questions,” noting “yes, we have hardware accelerated 3D API’s on Windows Phone 7 Series. Yes, we have Visual Studio 2010 integration with our toolset. We’ve even added buffered audio support to the Audio API’s that many of you have asked for.”

You can find out more about XNA news on the XNA Creators Club Online.

Sobees' Windows App Gets a Makeover

Sarah Perez — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:32:00 GMT

Sobees’ desktop Twitter client, a native app built using .NET technology, has just been updated with a fresh design and built-in real-time search, reports TechCrunch. The updated application looks a lot like competitor TweetDeck with its columnar interface, but it offers a few differences.

Llike TweetDeck, Sobees supports Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn in addition to Twitter. However, unlike TweetDeck, Sobees lets you drag and drop columns in order to reorganize them in the client’s layout. You can also preview tweets, translate them, view threaded conversations, and preview Twitpics within the app.

Also new in this version is the addition of real-time search which lets you search OneRiot, Twitter, FriendFeed, and FacteryLabs all at once.

You can get the new client app from the Sobees website here: http://www.sobees.com.

Use Windows Live Writer with Posterous

Sarah Perez — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:32:00 GMT

I just came across a great tip for Posterous bloggers on the LifeRocks blog. If you’re among those who prefer Posterous’s simplified blogging platform over the more complex options from Moveable Type, Wordpress and the like, you’ll be happy to know that you can use Windows Live Writer to post to Posterous.

Now why would you want to do that considering that Posterous is already one of the easiest platforms to publish to? Well, maybe you want to send the same post to both your traditional blog or website and your Posterous blog at the same time. If you create the post in WLW, that’s possible. You would just write the post once, publish it to one site, then switch blogs to publish it a second time to the other site. Or maybe you just prefer WLW’s interface over anything else (I know I do!).

In order to support Posertous publishing, you’ll need to grab the Writerous plugin from Codeplex. Once installed, you access the new settings via Tools –> Options –> Writerous from WLW’s main menu. Here, you’ll have to provide your Posterous login info and site name (the latter if you maintain more than one Posterous blog). You can also configure your Posterous posts to autopost to Twitter and Facebook, too, by checking the box next to that option.

For more details on how to configure and use the plugin, check out the project’s page here.

Bing Announces Earth Day Contest

Sarah Perez — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:32:00 GMT

Bing is kicking off another photo contest where the winner gets to decorate the Bing.com homepage with their winning image. This time around, though, the contest is limited to students only. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, the winning photo will grace the homepage on April 22nd (Earth Day). To qualify, the students must be in the United States as this is a regional contest.

Besides the grand prize, the top winners from four age groups (ages 5-10, 11-13, 14-17 and 18+) will also win a trip to Microsoft where they get to participate in a Bing editorial meeting where they pick future homepage images. All winners will also receive equipment from HP and Canon. Specifically, HP will be providing the winners with HP Pavilion desktops and a monitor.

In addition to the contest participants, those voting on the images can win, too. From April 13th to the 19th, Bing will give a $5.00 GivingCard for DonorsChoose.org to the first 20,000 people who vote each day. This money can be spent on classroom projects (like math, science, art, reading) at local schools. In total, Bing will donate up to $100,000 a day to help schools across the U.S.

You can find out more about the contest, its requirements, and the submission information here: http://earthdayphotocontest.com.

Pivot Demoed at TED

Sarah Perez — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:00:00 GMT

At the recent TED Conference, Gary Flake, a Technical Fellow and founder of Live Lab, demonstrated Pivot as can be seen in the video available here. This new technology, launched at last year’s PDC, lets you browse and manipulate images and data using Seadragon technology. It’s primarily meant to be a visualization tool for discovering patterns and insights by viewing datasets as thumbnail images. The visualization is done via the web using Silverlight, as opposed to using a software program installed on your computer’s hard drive.

In the demo, Flake showed how Pivot could be used to browse a magazine’s archives, Wikipedia, and even your own web browser’s search history. If you have five minutes to spare, the TED video is definitely worth a look.

Microsoft Demos Game Playing on Windows Phone 7 Series, Xbox, and PC

Sarah Perez — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:00:00 GMT

At TechEd Middle East, Microsoft's Eric Rudder showed the potential of Windows Phone 7 Series when he demoed a game that could run on the mobile phone, Windows PCs, and the Xbox 360. The game, in this case Indiana Jones, was created using Visual Studio which allows developers to share 90% of the game’s code across the three platforms: Xbox, Windows, and Windows Phone 7. The additional 10% of the code changes required are to implement features unique to each platform – like touch sensitivity and accelerometer support for phones or mouse support on PCs, for example.

What’s even more amazing, perhaps, than the cross-platform support was that Rudder was able to continue playing his game on the Xbox from where he left off on the mobile device. Amazing!

You can see a video of Rudder’s demo here.

Zune HD Facebook App Lets You Share Songs for Live Streaming

Sarah Perez — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:00:00 GMT

After a bit of a false start on Monday, the Zune HD Facebook application was relaunched on Wednesday and is now available for installation via the Zune desktop software. As you may expect, the app offers the typical Facebook features: a News Feed, the ability to post status updates, view photos, check out your friends’ profiles, and more. Plus, as PocketNow discovered, the phone offers a cool Zune-specific feature: it lets you post an update about the music you’re currently listening to. The app creates a link to the album and song and automatically posts a picture of the album art along with whatever text you input in your status update. When your friends click the link you shared on Facebook, they can stream the song right in their web browser via Zune.net.

You can see a video of the app in action here.

Microsoft and the Cloud: The Highlights from Ballmer's Speech

Sarah Perez — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:31:00 GMT

In case you missed it, Steve Ballmer spoke on Thursday about Microsoft and the company’s vision for its cloud services to a group of students from the University of Washington’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering. If you missed the speech, you can go watch it here on the Windows Team Blog.

However, if you just want the highlights, we’ve got you covered:

The New Website

A site dedicated to Microsoft’s Cloud Services launched at http://www.microsoft.com/cloud/

The Stats

70% of Microsoft’s workforce is working on cloud computing or cloud-related activities
Next year, that will be 90%
Windows Live ID’s identity and authentication system has 460 million users

The 5 Bullet Points

The Cloud creates opportunities and responsibilities: This made me think of the Spider-Man quote, “with great power comes great responsibility.” But that’s kind of what he meant. As SeattlePi summarized, “The industry must strike a balance between the immense power of cloud computing and the privacy concerns that go along with it…As a result of this interconnectedness and the cloud's relative ease of use, the ‘creators,’ as he called them, have all the power. ‘For the creator to have the opportunity to build a strong business,’ Ballmer said.
The cloud learns and helps you learn, decide and take action. Here he talked about how the cloud needs to learn in order to improve. The idea of machine learning was touched on.
The Cloud enhances social and professional interactions. No surprise here: social networks like Facebook, Xbox Live, and Twitter are big cloud businesses. Ballmer also mentioned how Office was moving to the cloud with Office 2010 and the Office Web Apps that arrive with it.
The cloud wants smarter devices. Here Ballmer talked about the 3 screens: TV, PC, mobile. The PC is represented by Windows, the TV is connected to Xbox and the mobile is now Windows Phone 7 Series – a device “really designed for the cloud.”
The cloud drives server advances that drive the cloud. As cloud technology advances, so will the server technology that supports the cloud. Things like scaling, rapid deployment, peak load, virtualization, and next gen servers were discussed. A containerized data center was shown – it actually sat outside the Allen Center where the talk was held. Inside the shipping container were servers, cooling systems and cabling.

A Round-Up of the Latest Outlook Add-ons

Sarah Perez — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:31:00 GMT

Microsoft Outlook is one of the top email software programs in the world, but there’s no email program out there that can protect you from the information overload of a busy inbox. Although Outlook has several great built-in features for managing your messages, appointments, contacts and tasks, it’s still easy to get overwhelmed. Luckily for us, there are a ton of Outlook add-ons that can help.

Some of the more recent add-ons integrate social networks into your inbox for a bit of social CRM while others focus on more advanced search and organizational tools.

Below are some of the more recent ones I’ve come across.

(One caveat: I haven’t used all of these in the list below myself. However, the ones I have used in the past – Lookeen, Xobni, and ClearContext – all worked well.)

NEO Pro 4.1 (www.emailorganizer.com) - Automatically manages your inbox and catalogs all email messages using virtual folder structure to significantly reduce email overload and boost overall productivity – with no manual upkeep, clicking, or dragging to folders.

Lookeen (www.lookeen.net) - Provides a fast search for all things in Outlook.

Xobni (www.xobni.com) - Helps find emails, conversations, contact info & attachments faster while integrating social networks and email analytics features.

ClearContext Professional (www.clearcontext.com) - Keeps messages organized by suggesting the right folders to instantly file messages and conversations with one-click.

Chilibase for Outlook (www.chilibase.net) - Easily search and track all contacts and conversation threads.

RedCritter (www.redcritter.com) - Plugs documents, tweets, messages, maps and more — all related to the message you are currently viewing — into Outlook.

SimpyFile (www.techhit.com) - Turns filing Outlook messages into a one-click action and suggesting the correct target folder.

Auto-Mate (www.pergenex.com) - Applies flexible rules to your Outlook folders periodically, automatically organizing your mail in the manner of a personal assistant.

Advanced Folders Watch (http://www.mapilab.com/outlook/folders_watch/) - Monitors new mail messages and posts appearing in Microsoft Outook folders and public folders on Microsoft Exchange Server.

E-mail Follow-Up (www.mapilab.com/outlook/email_followup/) - Reminds you if an email you sent did not receive a reply after a certain time, thus requiring a follow-up email.

Olympic Photosynths

Sarah Perez — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:31:00 GMT

Over on the Photosynth blog, they’ve rounded up the top contributions from users who submitted Photosynth’d collections from the recent Winter Olympics. Over the past several weeks, there have been over 40 different synths from the games added to the online gallery, including contributions from the following synthers:

Rick, beatnavy, fjcwhistler, siblog, cgsguy2, Mooseboys, MidnightFrog, rieskame, erickoo, BDsynth,Onyxmoon63, singalittlesong, kriskrug, GaryGlanz, brad_dennis, bal, jessica.glago, neilbl, msnbc.com,jimcseke, Lit, aeolien

(Click through on any of their names to see their Photosynth submissions.)

The top synths – aka the “most viewed” – included those featuring the sports themselves like luge, skating, curling, and skiing in addition to synths from Vancouver and those from other major events like the torch lighting, for example.

You can see some of these favorite synths in the image below:

For more Olympic action, head to the Photosynth site and search for Olympics.

Windows Phone 7 Series Themes for 6.5 Devices

Sarah Perez — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:31:00 GMT

The announcement about the next version of Windows Mobile Phones – Windows Phone 7 Series – has inspired some developers to create (unofficial) themes for their Windows Mobile 6.5 phones. Right now, Jaxbot on the XDA-Developers forum is working on a theme that resembles Windows Phone 7 Series’ new UI. So far, he’s been able to make a homescreen and lock screen with live tiles for SMS, mail, and weather. You can also set phone, text, Outlook, and People to a certain app, see upcoming appointments on the lock screen, and launch programs.

However, this theme is in alpha and has some issues that are still being addressed. The known issues include occasionally sluggish animations, problems with kinetic scrolling, and unlock problems.

Another developer, LeSScro, also from XDA-developers, has been working on a WP7S-inspired theme for WisBar Advance Desktop 2.x, the software program that lets you replace your existing Today screen and more. This theme offers time, data, and notifications on the lock screen, profile settings, transitional animation, hubs for games, media, and Office, and an apps launcher.

You can see a video of the first theme here and the second one here.

(via Engadget)

Bing Autosuggest Now Pulls from History

Sarah Perez — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:22:00 GMT

Bing has just launched improvements to its autosuggest functionality. When you start typing in the search box on Bing.com, the autosuggest function – which previously just suggested words and phrases based on popular searches – now prompts you with words and phrases from your own search history, too. According to a post on the Bing Search Blog, this change was made because many search tasks span multiple search sessions that last for days or even weeks. In fact, they found that 44% of non-navigational search sessions last longer than 1 week. In other words, a lot of the things you search for, you’re going to search for again. And again and again and again. By providing those searches to you just a click away, you can get to the info you need faster.

To differentiate your queries from the other autosuggestions (is that a word?), your items will appear in purple – the same color as a previously visited link. The other search suggestions appear in blue as always.

Of course, if you don’t want your searches appearing here, you can simply switch your History off using the “Manage History” option. Alternately, you can use IE8’s private browsing mode to make sure nothing is recorded.

Geosense for Windows

Sarah Perez — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:23:00 GMT

Popular bloggers Long Zheng of iStartedSomething and Rafeal Rivera of Within Windows joined forces to create a Windows 7 sensor driver that connects the location platform of Windows 7 with geolocation service providers. The new tool, called Geosense for Windows, is now available for download from both of their websites (click links above).

As Zheng noted on his blog, Windows 7 offers a built-in location platform and accompanying API which allows third-party developers to build location-aware native apps. However, the way the platform was designed, it required OEMs to first ship GPS-enabled laptops before developers could take advantage of this feature. The Geosense application is essentially a workaround for that limitation as it provides a way to connection the location platform in Windows with various geolocation providers. The providers match and triangulate known cell towers and wireless access points to estimate latitude and longitude.

By offering Geosense for Windows for free, Zheng and Rivera have made Windows 7 location-aware and they hope that third-party developers will take advantage of this to create new applications for the platform.

HP's New Business-Ready Slate

Sarah Perez — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:23:00 GMT

HP just announced their new line of business-ready computers called the “EliteBooks.” These multitouch-enabled PCs come with Windows 7 Professional pre-installed and allow for input and navigation with either a keyboard, or, in the case of the EliteBook 2740p tablet, a stylus or your fingers. The EliteBook 2540p is similar, but without it’s sibling’s swivel screen. It’s also the lightest of the two, weighing only 3.3 lbs.

Both EliteBooks come with the following:

reinforced glass 12.1 inch 1280x800 LED screen – you can choose to opt for a less reflective screen for easier outdoor use, too
a range of Intel Core i5 and i7 processor options
a 6-cell lithium ion battery which provides 5 hours of use and you can optionally add a supplemental battery for 11 hours of use
stainless steel finish and magnesium casing
an optional easily portable expansion bay which functions like a laptop dock where additional ports, hard drive bays and an optical drive are available
military-grade resistance to high temperatures, dust, vibration, and altitude
HP’s DriveGuard technology

The 2740p tablet starts at $1599 and the EliteBook 2540p starts at $1099. Both will be available next month.

Augmented Reality Comes to Silverlight

Sarah Perez — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:20:00 GMT

The ARToolkit, a library of tools for creating augmented reality applications, has just been ported to Silverlight. The SLARToolkit, as it’s called, is hosted over on Codeplex where it and its source code are available for download. Available features in the SLARToolkit include direct Support for Silverlight's CaptureSource, multiple marker detection, simple black square markers, real-time performance and more. It also uses the Matrix3DEx library.

While the above feature list may mean something to application developers, what it means for consumers is that we’ll soon start seeing augmented reality applications developed using the Silverlight platform. These apps will be able to take advantage of your computer’s webcam to launch “augmented reality” applications – that is, those that use technologies like computer vision and object recognition, for example.

There are already two sample apps available on Codeplex, one being a 3D game called Balder and the other a sample that uses Silverlight's 3D projection capabilities. To run these samples, you’ll need a webcam and at least the Silverlight 4 runtime. For more information on this toolkit, check out the documentation.

(via ReadWriteWeb and Channel 9)

Facebook for Windows Mobile Touchscreen Arrives

Sarah Perez — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:20:00 GMT

Remember a few days ago when we blogged about the updated Facebook application for Windows Mobile? At that time, the app was only available for standard edition phones - that is, those without touchscreens. Now, touchscreen users have an updated app too. According to reports from Unwired, the touch client, Facebook Mobile 1.2, introduces features like the ability to like and comment, read and respond to friend requests, view and write wall posts, message your friends and other users, update your profile picture, upload photos and videos directly from the phone, and call your friends’ using their Facebook phone numbers. You’re also able to share your Facebook activity with the Windows Live service, too.

At the moment, the new version is only available in the U.S. Mobile Marketplace, but users in other countries can switch to “world view” to download the app.

Outlook PST Spec Released

Sarah Perez — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:19:00 GMT

Back in October of last year, Microsoft announced plans to release the documentation for the PST file format – the file where your Outlook email, calendar, and contact data is stored on a PC. The documentation was to be released under Microsoft’s Open Specification format, said the blog post, which means that anyone could implement the .pst file format “on any platform and in any tool, without concerns about patents, and without the need to contact Microsoft in any way.”

Now that documentation has been made publicly available. On MSDN, anyone can read through all the details about the PST Structure Specification, including all the data structures it uses, examples, considerations, data algorithms, and product behavior.

Armed with this info, developers will be able to interoperate with PST data in both server and client scenarios on the platform of their choice. You can access the full spec details here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff387869.aspx.

Windows Easy Transfer Tool Tip: Back Up Windows Live Writer

Sarah Perez — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:28:00 GMT

Over the weekend, I had the fun experience of reinstalling Windows 7 – no, I’m not being sarcastic, I’m a geek, I like doing things like this. For one thing, a fresh install lets me pare down the number of applications I’ve crammed onto the machine to just the essentials. And despite my move to the cloud for many things, I’m always surprised at the number of desktop programs I still use. (For example, Windows Live tools like Messenger and Live Writer, Adobe Photoshop and Reader, FileZilla for FTP uploads, Microsoft Office, and Skype just to name a few.

Anyway, after backing up the essentials (files, photos, music, videos, and my user account) via the included Windows Easy Transfer tool, it occurred to me that I needed to back up my Windows Live Writer settings too. This led me to the free software program called Windows Live Writer Backup. I thought I had used this in the past successfully, but this time around the program just hung. It looks like the current version was released back in the summer of last year, so maybe it just needs an update? (It’s open source, guys, so have at it!).

Since I couldn’t automate the process with the tool, I took a couple of screenshots of my settings and moved on. After reinstalling Windows, re-downloading my favorite programs and re-running the Easy Transfer tool to restore my files and other settings, I launched Windows Live Writer. I was prepared to reconfigure my settings using the saved screenshots, but - low-and-behold! - they were already there! I guess the Easy Transfer tool grabbed them too. How nice!

If you’re preparing to reinstall Windows (and users of the Release Candidate like I was – this means you!), I thought you’d be grateful to know about this little tip. It certainly made my experience easier and hopefully will help you too.

Windows Phone 7 Series Gets Its Own Twibbon

Sarah Perez — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 13:28:00 GMT

If you’re a regular Twitter user, you’ve probably seen a lot of “twibbons.” These Twitter avatar overlays let you put a small icon, often in the shape of a ribbon, overtop your profile image. These can be used to support a particular cause – for example, something political in nature – but have also become a popular way to express your interest and/or fandom of other subjects, like sports, celebrities, TV or movies, events, promos, games, hardware or software, and more.

The new Windows Phone 7 Series twibbon is designed for those interested in showing their support or desire to own one of the newly announced phones. When you support this cause your avatar will be overlaid with a Windows Phone twibbon picturing a small icon of the phone next to the text “Windows Phone 7 Series.”

Note that Twibbon posts a tweet on your behalf when using the service. In this case it reads: “Support Windows Phone 7 Series, add a #twibbon to your avatar now! - http://twibbon.com/join/Windows-Phone-7-Series.” They also auto-follow you to the @Twibbon account, but you can unfollow if you wish.

You can grab the Windows Phone Twibbon here.

(Hat tip: My Microsoft Life)

New Beta of Launchy Arrives

Sarah Perez — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:15:00 GMT

It’s been awhile since I last looked at Launchy, the open source application launcher for Windows. With this application, you use keyboard shortcuts to launch applications, files, folders, bookmarks and more with just a few keystrokes. Once installed, it hides in your system tray waiting for its next command. When you’re ready, you hit “Alt + Spacebar” to display the input window. Then you can just start typing what you want. Launchy finds it.

For users of Windows XP, this app has clear benefits. However, later versions of Windows offer a similar feature just by using the “Search” box in the Start Menu. Still, some Launchy enthusiasts prefer the app to the native functionality and, well, that’s the great thing about Windows – you can tweak away by installing alternative programs like this.

Just recently, the developer released the next edition of this application – the Launchy 2.5 Beta. This version offers the following changes:

• Faster performance
• Icons displayed correctly
• Environment variables updated correctly when system changes
• Controly includes more items
• New shortcut keys
• New controls:
o Shift+tab or Shift+bkspc deletes previous tab
o Shift+Ctrl+Enter launches in elevated mode (Vista and Win7)
o Down arrow shows history (when there is no current search text)
• Default skin built into executable in case no other skin is found
• Down arrow
• Launchy now has an icon in the system tray
• Skins are simplified and easier to create

The executable is here. As with any beta software, the usual caveats apply. Install at your own risk. But this sounds like a good update to a pretty great program. Can’t wait to check it out!