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October 22 A day in the life of Windows Live – webDotWiz Online column Oct 22, 2009
Live Photo Gallery So your young 'uns have made you set up a Facebook account but you don't really feel like adding much to your Facebook pages when you've already got lots of services in Windows Live. You've just uploaded some photos to an album on Live Photos to share with your family and friends in your Live network. As well you've sent off a link to your album to other family and friends not in your Live network. But there are those family and friends breathlessly waiting for you to add some content to your Facebook page. Well, these people can be easily satisifed - all you need do is install the LiveUpLoad to Facebook addon (see the link in this week's Quicklinks) for Live Photo Gallery and Live Movie Maker and with a click you can upload photos from Live Photo Gallery to your Facebook page. Now everybody's happy. Just an aside for those of you Windows Live people who also have a Facebook page. Check with webDotWiz how you can turn off email notifications when your Facebook friends put something on their page. Live Writer trick Once you've created a few movies in Live Movie Maker you'll want to share them by putting them into entries on your Live Space. You'll need an account at YouTube (it's free) and you can upload a movie directly from Live Movie Maker. At YouTube choose the movie you want to include in your Live Space. On the YouTube page there's a Share option with a link to your movie - copy this link and when you paste it into Live Writer - whoosh, your movie is automatically embedded in your post. Now all you have to do is click Publish. Live Messenger At the top of your Messenger window there's space for you to enter a short message that all of your people in your Live network will receive on their Live What's New page. It's a good way to let people know, for example, that you've added some new photos to your Live Photos page. Remember that hovering your mouse over your display picture gives you some quick links, such as to your Live Space. Hovering your mouse over one of your contacts also gives you quick options such as sending a message. With the latest version of Live Messenger, the person you want to IM doesn't even have to be online at the time you send your message - they'll get it next time they sign in. You can add people from other services (for example, Facebook) to your Live Messenger contacts list so it's easy to keep up to date in just one place with what your friends are doing. Live Movie Maker We all know by now that Live Movie Maker's AutoMovie feature is a real timesaver. As well, Live Movie Maker's range of options for the type of movie you want to output is extremely useful - standard definition, 720p or 1080p high definition. Movie Maker accepts a range of movie filetypes including MOV files. So if you want to burn a MOV movie onto DVD, load it into Movie Maker, choose your output type and let Windows DVD Maker to all the work for you. Live Hotmail For those readers who have taken one of Terry's beginner's classes at Rushworth Community House will know that he stresses the use of shortcut keys to make computer use more efficient. Well, there are a whole set of shortcut keys for Live Hotmail such as CTRL+N to create a new message and CTRL+Enter to send a message - check them out on Hotmail's help or hover your mouse over the relevant button. If you're more familiar with keyboard shortcut keys in other web email services you can use them as an alternative (see Options). Hotmail now has a web version of Messenger. You won't need this when you're on your own computer with Live Messenger running but it's handy when you're on another computer to be able to keep in touch with your Live contacts. Remember that you can jazz up the colour of your inbox - click Options to choose Themes or More themes for dynamic ones that change according to the time of day (or to suit your mood). You can bring all your email accounts into Hotmail so they're all in one place to make life easier. Hotmail help tells you how to do this with your Gmail and Yahoo email accounts, for example. Live Mail The best part of Live Mail is being able to add as many email accounts as you wish so you access to your email in one place. Live Mail makes the task of adding other email accounts as simple as it can possibly be - in most cases all your need do is enter your email address and password for the account. Let Windows Live bring the information to you and your friends Windows Live has lots of easy-to-use ways for you to share information with your family and friends. Just as importantly, you can keep up to date with what people in your Live network are doing. When you've signed in to Live Messenger to being your computing day, click on Messenger's What's new link to start your day in the life of Windows Live. Quicklinks
---------------- Follow webDotWiz on Twitter. Posted using the 2009 version of Windows Live Writer. Windows Live Tags: Windows Live,Live Photo Gallery,Live Movie Maker,Live Mail,Live Hotmail,Live Writer,Live Messenger webDotWiz Online at www.webdotwiz.com webDotWiz on Facebook at www.facebook.com/webdotwiz May 14 Panoramas created by the webDotWizards on DeepZoomPixHere are links to various panoramas created by the webDotWizards using Windows Live Photo Gallery and uploaded to DeepZoompix for all to view in awe: GenieChene (http://cheniechene.spaces.live.com):
JbMurch (http://jbmurch.spaces.live.com):
PoppyIronBark (http://poppyironbark.spaces.live.com):
Youniversity (http://youniversity.spaces.live.com):
Apparently there are more to be uploaded to DeepZoomPix – links will be posted as soon as webDotWiz catches up with what the webDotWizards are up to next!! ------------ Follow webDotWiz on Twitter. Posted using the 2009 version of Windows Live Writer. April 11 Count the blue cars in this panorama
A panorama created by one of the webDotWizards using Live Photo Gallery. January 02 Did you know – choose photo size when uploading photos to photo album or SkydriveThere are a couple of different scenarios where you’ll come across the option to choose the size of your photos that you’re uploading:
(1) Publish to an album from Live Photo Gallery The latest trial release (Dec 2008) of Windows Live Photo Gallery now incorporates an option to choose the size of your photos that you’re publishing from Windows Live Photo Gallery to an album in your Live Photos.
To help decide which photo size option to use consider your viewers’ type of internet connection – Original or Large will be ok for those on broadband but certainly not for those on dialup. A second point to consider is that by uploading photos to an album you’re backing up your photos at the same time so you might want to upload using the Original size option. (2) Upload photos to your Skydrive online storage With the December updated to Windows Live Internet Services we now have 25Gb (that’s 25,000 megabytes) of free online storage for documents and photos. We can use it to backup files, have them available to us as we move from work to home and vice versa, and, as well, make documents and photos available to others for download if we so wish. To get to your Skydrive folders, choose the More link at the top of any of your Live Services pages (e.g., your home or profile page, or Hotmail) and choose Skydrive from the list. You’ll see something like the following:
Note the tie-up between your Live Photos and Skydrive (e.g., the Sandringham triathlon folder was created and photos uploaded in part 1 above in this write-up). We could create a new folder and upload our content straightway from the page above or we could view All folders – let’s see what that looks like:
Skydrive folders are organised like they are on Windows XP (the Pictures folder is to the far right and out of shot). We all have to Favorites folders – a personal one and the other is our Shared Favorites folder to share sites with those we choose. See an earlier post Did you know – share your favorite websites on Live Skydrive for a tutorial on adding your favorite sites to your Shared Favorites folder. Our goal in Skydrive in this case is to backup those Sandringham photos in their original size – this is a slightly different purpose we had in part 1 where we wanted to put a photo album online for others to view. So we’re going to open our Pictures folder, create a new folder and upload the photos in their original size. Later on if one of our family or friends on our network want to download them, we’ll change permission on the folder so they can do just that.
So choose Create folder, give it a name when the new page opens and click the Create folder button. On the next page that opens click Add files or Why not add some files? Now we’re in familiar territory with the upload tool prompting us to Drop files here and then we can start the upload.
Arrange Live Photo Gallery on your screen so you can see a bit of the Drop files here box and drag ‘n’ drop the photos.
As soon as the photos land in the upload tool’s box, guess what you’ll see at the top right corner…
Now in this scenario webDotWiz wants to upload these photos as a backup so his aim is to preserve his photos in their original size in case of some disaster on his computer in the future so he chooses Original from the dropdown list.
Then it’s just a matter of clicking on the Upload button at the bottom left of the screen and go make a coffee and he can rest assured he’s backed up these photos as a safeguard. As well there’s the option later on to come back to this folder of photos and edit the permissions to allow others to download them to their own computer. As a finishing note, the above photos make up about 50 Mb to be uploaded. There are a number of internet service providers who include upload amounts in their monthly cap so be careful of not exceeding your monthly cap even though you’re doing the right thing by backing up your important files. --------------------- Posted using the 2009 Release Candidate of Windows Live Writer. Windows Live Tags: Windows Live,Live Photo Gallery,Skydrive,Live Photos,Live Home Live Profile,Live Spaces December 20 Did you know – share your favorite websites on Live SkydriveBeing able to take your favorite websites with you wherever you went with Internet access was a Windows Live feature introduced a couple of years ago but it was a cumbersome process to add sites to your list involving copying and pasting basically. Now it’s much easier with the Windows Live Dec refresh as long as you chose to install the updated Windows Live Toolbar along with the other Windows Live Essential programs from download.live.com. If you didn’t choose to install the Live Toolbar, now is a good time to go back to download.live.com and do it. If you navigate your way to your Live Skydrive page, you’ll see your Documents and Photos folders as well as a Favorites folder and a Shared Favorites folder.
Remember that in the new Windows Live you can navigate from any page to another page – the same links – Home, Profile, People, Mail, Photos and More – appear at the top of each page. So when webDotWiz clicked Skydrive, he got:
Because webDotWiz had earlier added a couple of sites to his Shared Favorites folder, it was in his Recent Folders list. We want to see all our Skydrive folders so click View all. Then we see:
This is what webDotWiz’s Shared favorites folder contains at the moment (more will be added as time flies by):
You can see from the above screenshot that you can add a favorite website to your list from the page above but that means you have to do some copying and pasting. The easy way is to use the Share button on the Windows Live Toolbar. Go to a website you want to add to your Shared Favorites. Check you’re signed in with your Windows Live ID (far right of the toolbar) and click Share which will bring up a dialogue box where all you need enter (if you want) is a description of the site. Click Share to save the site to your Shared Favorites list.
Let’s refresh my Skydrive page and see what’s there now in my list of Shared Favorites:
Yep, there it is, the link to Small Basic at www.smallbasic.com (the page redirects to a page at MSDN so that’s why you don’t see smallbasic.com under the Web address heading). That’s how easy it is to add sites to your Shared Favorites folder on your Skydrive page. Now no matter where you are on the web you have access to your favorite sites. As well it’s an easy way to share your favorite sites with your Windows Live network. ----------------- Posted using the 2009 Release Candidate version of Windows Live Writer. December 16 Windows Live Essentials update Dec 15/16 2008 – some screenshots to get you startedIt’s Dec 16 here DownUnder but it may be still Dec 15 for you. The important point is that the Windows Live Essentials beta (trial) programs – Live Mail, Live Messenger, Live Photo Gallery, Live Movie Maker (Vista only), Live Toolbar, Live Writer and Live Family Safety – have been refreshed and you can download them (or just those you want) from download.live.com. A new item in the Insert menu in Live Writer is Photo Album so let’s try that by inserting all the screenshots taken thus far: The installation informs you it’s checking for programs that need to be closed before the Live Essentials can get to work properly and will close them itself (if you leave the default as set on the dialogue that comes up). You’ll be informed what Live Essential programs you already have installed and others you can download and install if you want. Once you’ve made your choices, the installer gets to work – it’ll take a while so it’s coffee break time! When the installation finishes, you may have to restart your computer (you’ll be informed if a restart is necessary). webDotWiz noted that on his Start Menu the Live Essentials under Windows Live don’t have the Beta suffix (except for Live Movie Maker). When can we expect the final release of the Windows Live Essentials? Early next year apparently. Hopefully you get the Live Essential updates installed without prob – webDotWiz is on his sixth or seventh here are the Rushworth Community House and all has gone ok thus far. After more exploration, webDotWiz will post more experiences (and screenshots). ---------------------- Posted using the Dec 15/16 2008 refresh of Windows Live Writer. Technorati Tags: Windows Live,refresh,Live Messenger,Live Writer,Windows Live Essentials,Installation December 03 Sites Wed 03-Dec-2008 – Windows Live Wave 3 updates, DeepEarth, FORTRAN, Mount Washington photos, Office Holiday templates
The important news today is the announcements relating to the upgrade of the Windows Live Internet Services: Live Home, Live Profile, Live People, Live Photos, Live Skydrive. webDotWiz caught the announcements first thing this morning and you’ve probably read those. Here are the links to more announcements and features we’ll enjoy as a result of the updated services. The new slide show viewer in Live Photos In particular, there are plenty of new opportunities to show off our photos with family, friends and the general public if we choose to do so.
Other links for today:
----------------- Posted using the Wave 3 trial version of Windows Live Writer. Windows Live Wave 3 services launch today (Updated)More news on the updates being rolled out across the Windows Live world, courtesy Liveside.net:
New face of Windows Live on the webCourtesy Windows Live Wire: 02 December The new face of Windows Live on the webAs Brian announced a few weeks ago, Windows Live is in the midst of releasing a new wave of updates for the web, for your PC, and for mobile devices. Today we’ve started releasing the first set of updates to our web services, and these will continue to roll out globally over the next 24 hours – including a new version of Windows Live Home, Spaces, Events, and SkyDrive, as well as completely new web services such as Windows Live Groups, Photos, and Profile. New header for Windows LiveFirst, you’ll notice a new common header that will be appearing at the top of all Windows Live web pages.
Our goal is to keep this consistent, so you can always find your way around easily. It includes links to all of your Windows Live services, links to great news, stories, videos, and content with MSN, a place to quickly search the web using Live Search, and the sign-in area, in the top-right corner, where you can quickly access your Windows Live account information. Now, let’s now jump to the new services. New Windows Live HomeLocated at http://home.live.com/, the new home page is the place to start your web browsing. It provides a simple dashboard for all of your communication and sharing activities. At the top, you can see your e-mail, local weather, any private messages that people have left for you, people you might want to add to your network, and upcoming appointments or birthdays. You can customize this area with rich themes – some of which are dynamic and change depending on the time of the day or the weather. And as you can see below, you can also add some of your own pictures to your page to make it a little more personal.
As you move down the page, you’ll notice a preview of your e-mail, and updates on what’s new with people in your network. This “What’s new” list gives you a quick summary of the most recent updates that people in your network have made and decided to share with you. This can include things they’ve done on Windows Live as well as other activities from across the web – like updating a Flickr album, writing reviews on Yelp, and more. The new home page also provides the latest headlines from MSN and other news and information sources that you can add to this page.
Windows Live PhotosSharing photos is now a much richer and more personalized experience on Windows Live. The first thing you’ll notice when you start sharing a photo album is the new storage limit – 25 GB! With the way digital cameras have been growing in megapixels, we wanted to make sure you had tons of room to save and share plenty of high-resolution photos.
You’ll also notice lots of improvements to the design and usability of this service, the ability to add people tags, simpler commenting, better access to photo information, and easier ways to upload and share your photos. One of the coolest features is a rich photo slide show that gets even better if you have Silverlight installed. We hope you enjoy the dynamic background colors that change based on the colors in your pictures.
Windows Live ProfileYour new profile is the place to decide what information about yourself you want to broadcast. The most prominent feature of the new profile is the “What’s new” list, which shows all of your own recent activities on Windows Live — this is the same information that people in your network will see about you in the “What’s new” list on the home page. Don’t worry, you get to control who sees what information in “What’s new,” for example, when you publish a new photo album, when you change your personal message or display picture, or when you add favorite books, movies, or music to your profile.
But your profile is more than just a place to show all of your Windows Live activities, because you can also add web activities from outside of Windows Live. This includes things like publishing updates on Twitter, adding photos to Flickr, or writing reviews on Yelp. And as you may suspect, we have many more partner updates and additions to come!
This completely new service makes it easier for teams, clubs, and friends to collaborate online.
You can set up owners and members for different groups, and each group gets its own online profile. Plus, each group also has a calendar, SkyDrive folders, and photos. Groups can also have discussion boards that make it easy to share your ideas with the group, and discussions can be saved online for others to see.
Like individual people, groups on Windows Live have their own “What’s new” list that lets everyone know what’s been happening lately with the group.
Spaces continues to be a great place to tell your personal story, show off your photos, or do anything else you might want to do with a blog. And Spaces works really well with Windows Live Writer so that you can write, edit, and preview your blog entries offline, before you publish them to the web.
There are two big updates to Spaces that I want to highlight:
Windows Live EventsEvents is the Windows Live service for planning get-togethers, parties, and other events with your friends and family. Like Spaces, this experience has new design updates. The new interface is based on feedback from customers like you, along with design changes that we’ve made across all of Windows Live.
We’ve also added new themes and made it easier to share photos with anyone invited to your event. So after the party, all your guests can easily upload their pictures and share them with the entire party.
Windows Live SkyDriveSkyDrive is your place for easily storing or sharing files, documents, pictures or anything else. As we mentioned above, you now get 25GB to store files on SkyDrive – whether that’s photos or other kinds of files.
But beyond the storage increases, SkyDrive also has:
Discover the updated Windows Live todayThe easiest way to really get to know these services is simply to sign in and start using the new Windows Live web services. Get started on the new home page at http://home.live.com/. There’s a ton there – and as we mentioned a few weeks ago, there’s even more to come. Let us know what you’re enjoying with the new updates, and as always, keep sending us your feedback so we can continue to improve Windows Live. - Dharmesh M. Mehta, Director of Windows Live Product Management Windows Live Tags: Windows Live, clubhouse, story, Spaces, SkyDrive, Events, profile, Groups, Home, photos Technorati Tags: Windows+Live,Home,Groups,Events,Spaces,SkyDrive,Photos,Profile,Twitter,Flickr,Yelp,MSN Updated Windows Live Web Services Rolling OutCourtesy Brandan LeBlanc on The Windows Experience Blog:
September 18 Updated Windows Live programs released – webDotWiz’s highlightsThe big news today is the release of new trial (beta) versions of all programs in the Windows Live Suite (the Wave 3 release, to use a bit of jargon). You can download all of the suite from http://download.live.com or pick just the one(s) you want to install. Go and get them all as webDotWiz has done. From what’s he tried so far, they are all stable and he hasn’t had any problems on either Windows Vista and Windows XP. On XP, however, the new Windows Live Movie Maker doesn’t seem to have made an appearance (he needs to check, though, tomorrow). If you’re on XP, wait a few days to see if he posts any problems and then get to work installing. webDotWiz is using the update to Live Writer to put up this entry to his webDotWiz Online has a Space. The toolbar at the top has been tidied up and the Insert Picture and Insert Video functions have some more alternative sources for pictures and videos. Live Messenger has a much more tidy look (no more of those silly tags down the left-hand side of the contact list) and lots more opportunity to customise the look to your own likes. Groups and sharing photos are new features. A real boon is now being able to be signed into the same Live ID on more than computer as the same time. Live Photo Gallery now has facial recognition and a new set of tags called People Tags so you can organise your photos based on photos of family and friends using your contacts from Live Messenger; the old Tags becomes Descriptive Tags. In the Fix section, there’s a Straighten tool so that will help webDotWiz tidy up some of his shots (and scans of 35mm slides). You can now Photosynth a selection of photos directly from Live Photo Gallery, too. One of the snazziest new features is the integration of Live Calendar into Windows Live Mail so you can access and share you calendars more conveniently whether you’re online or not. Synching between Live Calendar and the Live Mail calendar is automatic. There are easier ways, too, to add events to your calendar, e.g., dragging an email into your calendar to remember an event. That should be enough to whet your appetite for now – lots more stuff can now be done in all the Live programs and they work better together to make life simpler. Exciting times ahead to get the best from them all. Expect to see more writeups from webDotWiz as he discovers what’s possible. In the meantime, here are some links to what the Liveside team have been writing up about (with plenty of screenshots):
---------------------- May the Synth be with you. Posted using the latest trial version of Windows Live Writer. Windows Live Tags: Windows Live,Wave 3,Live Messenger,Live Mail,Live Writer,Live Photo Gallery,Live Calendar August 21 Riding the Windows Live waveThere’s a long list of Windows Live services at Liveside.net but today we’ll just look at a couple of them, namely Windows Live Calendar, Windows Live Skydrive and Office Live Workspace. There’s been a calendar in Live Hotmail from the year dot but it’s been fairly basic in what it can do and hasn’t been updated a great deal for years. Windows Live Calendar is a completely new service and is far more modern in design and in how it works. Clicking the Calendar link in your Hotmail now gives you the option to change over to the trial version of Live Calendar. Alternatively, you can go directly to Live Calendar at calendar.live.com, sign in and get started. The first job is to choose your time zone:
You can choose whether to view your calendar in day, week or month view. Let’s use day view and add a couple of appointments and events. Here’s what you see when you’re in day view and if you’re familiar with the old calendar, you’ll be looking for the task pane to carry out tasks such as making an entry.
Well, in Live Calendar the calendar page is completely interactive so let’s click on the 900 time slot:
Now click on Add to enter an appointment or event that’s timed to begin at 900:
Note that you’ve got a choice of which calendar you’re going to add this event to – yes, that’s right, you can have different calendars, such as family birthdays, school holidays, public holidays, Olympic events, and more. In fact you can subscribe to calendars from several sites such as Mark This Date. Clicking on Add more details opens a page where you can enter more information in relation to this event including the option to flag it as recurring during the year (e.g. weekly, fortnightly, and so on):
Notice you can receive alerts to your Hotmail if you want a reminder (set the appropriate time or number of days before the event). When you’ve entered the data, click Save at the bottom or top of the window. As well as the new interface, Live Calendar gives you various choices as to how you may want to print out a view of your calendar (day, week or month). Finally notice you can have many different calendars so as to separate out your events and appointments and, using the top toolbar, you can share any of these calendars with people on your contact list. Surfing over the Live Calendar wave, let’s take a quick look at Live Skydrive since it’s now got a new folder included, namely your Favorites, where you can create and update a list of your favourite sites.
Since you can use Skydrive wherever you have an Internet connection, you can now access your favourite sites from any computer. Once you’ve signed in, click on the Favorites folder icon to open a window where you can begin to create a link to a favourite site.
Enter the data (or use copy and paste to enter the web address) and click Create.
Over time you can build up your list of favourite sites that you want available wherever you have Internet access. The last wave to catch is a reminder that Office Live Workspace is another free Live service that enables you to have access to your Excel, PowerPoint and Word documents as well as others wherever you have Internet access. As well, you can share documents with others so you can set up a group so everybody has ready access to the latest versions of documents. Here are some sites that will help you get started:
------------------------ Posted using the Tech Preview of Windows Live Writer. Windows Live Tags: Windows Live Calendar,Windows Live Skydrive,Office Live Workspace,Excel,PowerPoint,Word March 06 Skydrive - your free 5Gb of online file storageSkydrive is the latest Windows Live service to be offered. Using your Windows Live ID, you have 5000 megabytes of free - yes, free - storage online for your documents, photos and videos. You can use Skydrive to backup your important files, share some files with selected contacts, or upload files to be shared with everybody. To get started, go to http://skydrive.live.com, scroll down to the Get Started button, sign in to your Windows Live ID and you're away.
Now you'll see the three types of folders: Personal, Shared and Public. Your Personal Folders already have folders for your documents, music, pictures and photos, and videos.
Over on the right-hand side of the page you'll see we haven't started using up any of our free 5 gigabytes of storage.
Let's upload some photos to our pictures folder. So click Pictures to get to the next screen and click on Pictures.
Now we get the page where we can upload and add files to our online Pictures folder.
You'll see you can only upload five files at once unless you install the Upload Tool. To do the latter, you need to be in an administrator account, so if need be, change over, go to Live Skydrive to download and install the upload tool - you'll be glad you do!
Now when you come back to add files to your folders, you can drag 'n' drop your files from your folders on the hard drive onto the Drag files here box.
For photos, the easiest way to find those you want to upload is to use Live Photo Gallery. webDotWiz wants to upload his aloe vera photos so here's easily found them because they're tagged.
You need to be able to see the dotted box when you've loaded Live Photo Gallery (or your My Documents folder, for example) when you drag 'n' drop. When done, your file is shown as ready to be uploaded.
You might have more to upload so resize Live Photo Gallery so you can still see part of the dotted box.
Now we've got this list ready to upload.
Click the Upload button and the screen refreshes to let you know how things are progressing.
A little bit later:
When your files are uploaded, you'll see them in your online folder. webDotWiz uploaded photos and thumbnails are displayed.
And wow, look at all that storage space still to be used.
Once your files are on Skydrive, you can access them from any computer that connects to the web. So you can save a file at home and download it at work to make some changes, save it again to its Skydrive folder and access it from home. In other words, Skydrive is your mobile thumbnail drive that you can't lose! Some notes about using Skydrive:
Posted using Windows Live Writer with the help of Paint.NET, Microsoft Office OneNote (to get the screenshots) and Live Photo Gallery to organise the screenshots. February 22 Skydrive is here - your free 5 Gigabytes of storageSkydrive (http://skydrive.live.com/) has just been made available to Windows Live users in 38 countries, including Australia
Get started and upload those important documents, photos and videos so they're backed up. Or use the Shared Folders to allow your Live contacts to download files or let everybody download some of your files from the Public folders.
January 11 Windows Live OneCare update to version 2 on the waywebDotWiz received his update to Windows Live OneCare from version 1.6 to version 2 this afternoon so other Australian installs should be receiving their's too around this time. There are a couple of links below about OneCare's new version 2 features. You'll know you're getting your OneCare update when OneCare pops up and tells you to restart your computer. Note that the new version keeps all your settings (backups, backup times, tuning times) but you can change them. One new service is a subscription to storing photos securely online (10 Gb of space). From the OneCare help: To purchase a OneCare online photo backup subscription:
Here are a few links so you can read up on OneCare version 2's new features:
Posted using Windows Live Writer. January 06 Office Live Workspace - webDotWiz just got his - w00t!webDotWiz just got his email to notify him he has been accepted into the Office Live Workspace trial. What is Office Live Workspace, he hears you ask - from the site:
So now webDotWiz is off to install the add-in to Office that will enable him to save and open Word, Excel and Powerpoint files from his Live Workspace from the menu in Office. You can get more info about how to make best use of the Office Live Add-in here. As always, this post was created in Windows Live Writer. November 29 How do you use Windows Live?The free desktop programs in Windows Live are Windows Live Mail, Messenger, Photo Gallery, Toolbar and Writer (download them all or the ones you want from www.windowslive.com). The one Live program that's not free that webDotWiz uses is Live OneCare which keeps viruses and malware away (with the help of Windows Defender which is installed with OneCare) and also does a monthly PC tuneup along with a regular backup of important files. When webDotWiz signs in to Windows, Live Messenger lets him know who's online. As well, webDotWiz has a Windows Live ID he uses at work and another he uses from his home computer. This way he can use Messenger's ability to send messages (such as reminders and jobs to do) from one Live ID to another even though the other ID might not be even signed in. Windows Live Mail is webDotWiz's gateway to all his email accounts (the one with his Internet Service Provider and several others associated with his Live IDs). But webDotWiz mainly uses Live Mail to be informed when there are new photos and blog entries on his Messenger contacts' Live Spaces. As well, webDotWiz has subscribed (via the RSS orange button in Internet Explorer) to numerous sites that have an RSS feed so he can quickly browse the list of headings of new content to see what is worth reading in full later on. Windows Live Photo Gallery has become his preferred tool to organise and edit his photos and tutorial screenshots. webDotWiz hasn't yet completed the job of tagging all his images but Photo Gallery has brought back to life lots of photos that have been sitting on his computer for ages and nothing's been done with them. Now it's a simple job to upload a group of them from Photo Gallery to one of his Live Spaces to share them. Naturally this column has been written in Windows Live Writer. There's now a spell checker but as well it's a simple job to add a photo, video, map or table to a blog entry. When ready, one click on Publish and the writeup is put on webDotWiz's Live Space. Live Toolbar keeps popup ads away, gives one-click access to Live Hotmail or Live Spaces, and the Sign-in Assistant makes it simple to swap from Live ID to another when necessary. There are a couple of online Live services, namely Skydrive and Family Safety, that aren't yet available to Australian users. Skydrive will give us online storage to backup photos and documents and share these files with others if so desired so it's worth keeping an eye out when Skydrive becomes available - soon we hope. November 18 Windows Live suite full versionThe free Windows Live suite of programs - Windows Live Messenger, Live Photo Gallery, Live Writer, and Live Toolbar - have now all been released as final versions. That is, no more trial beta versions, and it's time to make use of all these free programs to connect and share. WindowsLive.com is the site to visit to get an overview of the Live suite and then begin the download and install.
If you installed the trial versions a few weeks ago, you'll be familiar with the Live installation process which downloads the programs of your choice and installs them from the same dialogue. As soon as they're installed, you can begin using each one.
If you'd like to know more about what to expect when you're installing the Live suite, see this earlier post which has plenty of screenshots (blog it to your own Live Space for reference). Let's now have a look at some of the features of the new Live applications. There have been a couple of posts about using the Windows Live Photo Gallery including how to get started using tags to organise your photos and how to create a panorama so have a look at them to get underway with organising your photos. Another resource for some ideas is the Live Photo Gallery team blog at blogs.msdn.com/pix/. Live Messenger 8.5 final version is little changed from the trial version of 8.5. Note if you're running Messenger version 8.0 or earlier you'll be prompted to download the latest version. Windows Live Mail is a replacement for old out-dated Outlook Express. You should upgrade to Windows Live Mail for no other reason than for the enhanced security features. However one of the best features of Live Mail is that you can subscribe to as many email addresses you like and get all your mail in one place (e.g., webDotWiz has ten email subscriptions). As well you can keep up to date with your Messenger friends' Live Spaces, blog an email to your Live Space, start chatting with your Messenger contacts, and email your photos in a special style to impress family and friends. It can be a bit of a pain to write up an entry in your Live Space using the web interface as it does its spell check. It's a lot easier to do your writing in Live Writer which now has a U.K. English dictionary. As well Live Writer makes it easier to add photos to your entry and you can use tables too and insert a map or video as the need arises. So that's it for the free Windows Live desktop programs. Remember though that there other free services such as Live Hotmail and the new Live Calendar. Soon we should be seeing Live Skydrive where we'll be able to backup and store our important documents and photos online. Note: the above can also be read at webDotWiz Online at this link. This post has been put together in Windows Live Writer. Technorati tags: Windows Live, Live Messenger, Live Mail, Live Writer, Live Photo Gallery, Live Skydrive November 11 Live photo gallery tip - importing from memory stick, CD, DVDYou can not only import photos into Live Photo Gallery from your camera but also from a memory stick, memory card, CD or DVD:
Click on File then Import from a camera or scanner... webDotWiz imported some photos from his Kingston memory stick:
A reminder that you may have click Refresh. Click Import to get the following:
Yeah, alright... webDotWiz has all sorts of photo bits and pieces on his memory stick... Next gives:
webDotWiz has used Clear all to unselect all the groups that Live Photo Gallery had flagged as not being on webDotWiz's computer and he's decided to only import the four scans selected above. Now it's time to Add tags - note the semi-colon after the first tag that webDotWiz has typed: So after Cars, webDotWiz entered Racing; Sports cars; 1970s; Tech Drawings. Note: Live Photo Gallery automatically added the semi-colon after each tag that webDotWiz typed. After the import finished, here's the photos (scans really) displayed in Photo Gallery showing that all the tags were applied:
A reminder that the Import Photos and Video window is separate from the main Live Photo Gallery window (check in your task bar) so that you can refer to your list of tags when entering them before importing. Technorati tags: Live Photo Gallery, tagging photos, importing, camera, memory stick, CD, DVD, memory card Live photo gallery tip - the forward slash and the semi-colon when adding tagsBy accident webDotWiz found you can have sub-tags in Live Photo Gallery. This came about when he entered a tag named PDP 11/34 to tag a photo of a Digital Equipment PDP 11/34 model computer from the old days. Later when he was looking down his list of tags, all he could see was the PDP 11 tag which had a + next to it - clicking the + sign expanded the PDP 11 tag to show that a sub-tag named 34 had been created. So when you use the / (forward slash) in a new tag name, Photo Gallery assumes the text after the slash is a sub-tag. Try it when you get a chance (you can delete the new tag and its sub-tag by right-clicking on it). When you're importing photos from your camera, memory card or stick, CD or DVD, you can add tags, as you know. In the latest version of Photo Gallery you can add more than one tag. Have a close look next time you're importing and you'll see that after you type in your first tag that a semi-colon is automatically added - that means you can add more tags.
Note that the Import Photos and Videos window is separate from the Live Photo Gallery window (you'll see them both on the Windows task bar). That means you can click on Photo Gallery to check your tag names before you start typing. |
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