Yes the new Live Writer BETA 2 is available for download !
I'm so in love with this little tool. I can't wait to look at all the new features.
Source : Liveside.net, Windows Vista Team Blog, Writer Zone Blog
Download : get.live.com/betas/writer_betas
From Josh's Windows Weblog :
Here is a handy way to export your wireless LAN settings if you failed to save them off or want to transfer them to another machine. You can also use this as a method of exporting your corporate wireless LAN settings which tend to be more involved than your typical WPA setup. You can also use this to deploy using SMS or other delivery methods.
- Launch a command prompt as an admin
- Using the netsh command prompt list your wireless LAN profiles using the following command
"netsh wlan show profiles"- Note the Wireless LAN profile name you are wanting to export (ex. Linksys)
- Run the following command to export your profile
"Netsh wlan export profile name="[ProfileName]" Folder="[Folder Path]"Pretty easy, right?
To import on the new/other machine is just as easy simply use and admin command prompt and run the "netsh wlan add profile filename="[filename.xml]" command.
FolderShare is a Windows Live Service that allows people to share their files with their friends, family & co-workers, and synchronize files across multiple devices. People can also access their files from anywhere on the web.
Looks cool. Sure your device (computer) has to stay up and connected for the P2P network share to work, but looks like a good solution for the family.
Source : LiveSide.net
Official site : www.foldershare.com/
Microsoft Surface represents a fundamental change in the way we interact with digital content. With surface, we can actually grab data with our hands, and move information between objects with natural gestures and touch.
Surface features a 30 inch tabletop display whose unique abilities allow for several people to work independently or simultaneously. All without using a mouse or a keyboard.
Sounds cool? Well, it won't hit the market until Winter 2007, but there will be opportunity to get hands on with Surface. Have a look under 'find it' at the site here: Microsoft Surface
Source : Bink.nu
Outlook 2007 has a very little known feature where you can publish your calendar to the web using Microsoft Office Online. Microsoft Office Online has a Calendar Sharing Service that gives you 2MB of space online to share calendars with friends, families, and co-workers through the web. To view this service on Microsoft Office Online, all you need to do is sign-in using your Windows Live ID.
Source : Windows Vista Team Blog
Wubi is an unofficial Ubuntu installer for Windows users that will bring you into the Linux world with a few clicks. Wubi allows you to install and uninstall Ubuntu as any other application. If you heard about Linux and Ubuntu, if you wanted to try them but you were afraid, this is for you.
Ubuntu is installed within a file in the windows file system (c:\wubi\disks\system.virtual.disk), this file is seen by Linux as a real hard disk.
Windows Vista is not supported at the moment but you may try to search the support forum for a manual solution (good luck).
Source : Wubi Official home page
Sean A. Walberg (sean@ertw.com), Senior Network Engineer at IBM has started a new series of articles about tuning LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP)
I look forward to new articles in this series.
From «Utility Spotlight» column in Technet Magazine (June 2007) :
The first annoyance was that there was no method to elevate an application from the command line or from the Run dialog box. So after asking around within Microsoft, I came across a sample script from John Stephens (a Software Design Engineer at Microsoft) that provided the information I needed. It turns out that if you pass the verb "runas" to either the ShellExecute API or to its COM equivalent, the ShellExecute method of Shell.Application, the application launched will prompt for elevation (see the sidebar for details). This allowed me to create the first Elevation PowerToy—the Elevate Command PowerToy.
Read the article : www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag
Download the tool : Utility2007_06.exe
Question: Why is it that the average computer user still chooses to spend hundreds of dollars on Windows or Mac when there are countless Linux alternatives that they could download, install and make use of completely free of charge?
Today we are announcing the availability of the Microsoft Office Isolated Conversion Environment (MOICE) feature and more widely notifying customers of the File Block functionality for Microsoft Office 2003 and the 2007 Microsoft Office system. Both features are designed to make it easier for customers to protect themselves from Office files that may contain malicious software, such as unsolicited Office files received from unknown or known sources. MOICE makes it easier by providing new security mitigation technologies designed to convert specific Microsoft Office files types, while File Block provides a mechanism that can control and block the opening of specific Microsoft Office file types.
The Microsoft Office Isolated Conversion Environment (MOICE) uses the 2007 Microsoft Office system converters to convert Office 2003 binary documents to the newer Office open XML format. The Conversion process helps protect customers by converting the Office 2003 binary file format to the Office open XML format in an isolated environment. In summary, MOICE provides a mechanism for customers to pre-process potentially unsafe Office 2003 binary documents, by virtue of the conversions process it provides customers with a greater degree of certainty that the document can be considered safe.
Source : www.microsoft.com
More infos : David LeBlanc's Web Log
Microsoft just released an update to Web Folders. This update apply to Windows 2000, XP, 2003 and Vista.
They say it corrects the problem describe in kb892211
This fix does not seems to do anything for those of you who got the '401, Unauthorized' error on the root dir and the /dav dir when accessing a webDAV folder on WebCT (Linux).
I'm not sure yet if this update modify the WebDav Mini-redirector of Vista or only the WebFolders package from Office.
Download it : www.microsoft.com/downloads
It is (kb907306) an update to the WebFolders and not the Mini-redirector (WebDAV). And I was partly wrong, it does fix the '401, Unauthorized' error by replacing de mini-redirector by the WebFolders package. Although I'm now able to connect to my webDav folder on WebCT, I can't modify any file (save).
Microsoft has announced the alpha version of Popfly, its new application creation, mashup enabling tool and social networking software for nonprogrammers.
Popfly consists of two parts: Popfly Creator, which is a set of online visual tools for building Web pages and mashups; and Popfly Space, which is an online community of creators where you can host, share, rate, comment and even remix creations from other Popfly users.
Popfly is based on the concept of "Blocks," akin to Lego blocks, which users can snap together to create applications and build Web sites to share with others.
Source : Bink.nu
Check out http://www.popfly.com
Frank Koch (from Microsoft Switzerland) has written a Windows PowerShell book and made it available for FREE download HERE. The subtitle is "An introduction to scripting technologies for people with no real background knowledge".
Micorosoft may offer 250Mb, 500Mb or more of online free storage. The new Windows Live Folders initiative looks very promising.
This service was previously called Windows Live Drive.
The Windows Live Folders homepage is now offline. The beta has not started and there is no signup page yet either. But you can see what it would look like at www.liveside.net
Own a non-Ultimate edition of Windows Vista, but very like the DreamScene application featured in Ultimate Extras package?
Microsoft SharedView is a fast and easy way to share documents and screen views with small groups of friends or coworkers; anytime, anywhere. Use SharedView to put your heads together and collaborate.
Click here to learn more about the SharedView Beta (note: at the time I posted my blog the link was not working)
You can download it at www.microsoft.com/downloads
Since last week the code name for this product was «Tahiti». There's a blog about it : codenametahiti.com
If you want to get familiar with the new ribbon in Office 2007 products Micorosoft has just the thing for you. They just release a new series of video call «Up to speed with ...»
You can watch it live here :
Or you can also download them from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/ to see them later.
You can turn scripts into redistributable executable files with existing software in Windows Vista and Windows XP. Windows Vista and Windows XP both have a rarely used tool known as IExpress.
The tool allows you to wrap an executable file around your scripts so that you can distribute any script as an .exe rather than distributing a "raw" script file (.bat, .vbs, etc.).
This eliminates the need of explaining to non-technical users how to execute scripts through the Command Prompt. This is an extremely useful tool for turning Visual Basic script files and other non-executable scripts into one-click executables.
Read the full article : www.petri.co.il
Do you use the Run feature in Windows XP or Vista ? For most, this feature remains unused (or rarely used).
Why is that? Well, First off nearly all of the Run Commands Correspond to a particular Control Panel Item or a Utility, Tool or Task that can be accessed through Windows.
There are, however, tools and utilities that I bet you never knew you had that can be accessed through the Run feature. The main reason most people don't use the Run feature is because they don't know the Commands. So, to solve that problem, I decided to put together the following listing, which lists 177 Run Commands and what they correspond too...
Source : fixmyvista.com
Here's my personal list of Windows Vista shortcuts :
| Press | To |
| Alt + Double-Click | Displays property sheet for the selected item |
| Alt + Esc | Cycle through items in the order in which they were opened |
| Shift | Hold when loading disk to prevent AutoPlay application |
| Shift + Right-Click | Shows alternative commands for the selected object |
| Ctrl + Shift + Enter | Launch the application with elevated privileges in the windows search box (start menu) |
| Ctrl + Shift + Esc | Open Task Manager |
| Ctrl + Tab | Move forward through tabs |
| Windows + F | Search for a file or folder |
| Windows + X | Windows Mobility Center |
| Windows + Space | Bring Sidebar to front |
| Windows + D | Show Desktop |
| Windows + Tab | Cycle through programs on the taskbar by using Windows Flip 3-D |
Each time that you send a new message in Outlook, the emails that you type in To/Cc fields, are automatically inserted into the AutoComplete list, so in the next time that you type an email address, Outlook automatically completes the right email address for you.
The AutoComplete file of Outlook is stored under [Your Profile]\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook , and it always saved as the profile name of Outlook with .NK2 extension.
This utility reads the AutoComplete file of Outlook (with .NK2 extension), displays all email records stored in it, and allows you to easily export these records into text/html/xml file.
Download this utility at Nirsoft.net
Windows Live Hotmail is now officially out of Beta. Paul Thurrott's have good review of the new service.
Read de the review : www.winsupersite.com
Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of Microsoft .NET–based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.
It works on Windows and Mac OS X with Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari browser.
It's still in beta but you can download it and try it at www.microsoft.com/silverlight
George Ou compares Microsoft Office 2007 to OpenOffice 2.2 in memory and CPU usage using the OOXML and ODF file formats. The conclusion according to Ou:
"We can see that the OpenOffice.org ODF XML parser (while vastly improved) is still about 5 times slower than Microsoft's OOXML parser. OpenOffice.org also seems to consume nearly 4 times the amount of RAM to hold the same data. While OpenOffice.org continues to have fewer features than Microsoft Office, it continues to consume far more resources than Microsoft."
Read the article at zdnet.com
Ashton Mills has a good review of Ubuntu 7.04 on apcMag.com :
I love Linux and want it to succeed in the areas it doesn't currently, so I'm usually straight about what does and doesn't work -- because tip-toeing the issues isn't doing the community any favours. I have great expectations for 7.04, and unfortunately they're not all met. If you're a fanboy, don't read on, because I'll shatter your fragile world.
Read the article at apcMag.com
Lex van der Horst wrote at MSTN :
Lots of useful Windows Vista tips are now starting to materialize. A new one that I've just implemented on my external Lacie USB Hard Drive is to enable Write Caching, which is turned off by default. By enabling Write Caching you can significantly speedup external Hard Drives in Windows Vista.
To enable Write Caching for external drives in Windows Vista do the following:
- In the Start Menu type "Device Manager"
- Under Disk Drives find your External Drive
- Right-click on it and select "Properties"
- Go to the Policies tab and check "Optimize for performance"
- Click OK and reboot
One final word of warning. If you want to disconnect or turn the drive off yo should use the "Safely Disconnect Hardware" option in the taskbar, to make sure that you don't lose any data.
Microsoft already gave us command finders for Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2007 (read my post), now a new one is available for Outlook.
There is a few new options in the NETSH command in Windows Vista that may help you diagnose problems with wireless network connections.
Type netsh wlan show network mode=ssid
To display infos about each visible SSID
Type netsh wlan show network mode=bssid
To display infos about each visible SSID, antennas, signal strength, radio type and channel.
More infos : technet2.microsoft.com
A month earlier then expected WSUS 3.0 is released to web!
Microsoft Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) 3.0 delivers new features including an MMC-based user interface with advanced filtering and reporting, improved performance and operational reliability, flexible deployment options to improve branch office support, and more content access through the Microsoft Update Catalog site.
More at www.microsoft.com/Technet/WindowsServer/WSUS
Source : bink.nu
Don't waste your time trying to understand what this blog is about or why is there so many unrelated news in it (from Formula 1 to computer programming). It's simply my own personal blog where I can put any information I like.