PowerPoint Viewer 2003

I used the previous version of this product just the other day. I helped someone who neglected to find out if the borrowed laptop they were going to use for a presentation had PowerPoint installed.

PowerPoint Viewer 2003 lets you view full-featured presentations created in PowerPoint 97 and later versions. This viewer also supports opening password-protected Microsoft PowerPoint presentations. You can view and print presentations, but you cannot edit them in the PowerPoint Viewer 2003.

Windows on Wheels Experience

You lucky American’s, look what’s coming your way!

Be the first to see the nationally touring Windows on Wheels experience, a fully mobile and completely transparent "Digital Home on Wheels" featuring Microsoft products.

My Movies for Microsoft Media Center Edition

This freeware application is great news for anyone who would prefer to have access to their DVD library without having to jump up and insert the DVD into the computer. My Movies allows you to scroll through a list of DVD Movie art and select locally stored movies on your Media Center PC.

My Movies is a free MCE (Microsoft Media Center Edition) add-on application to function as remote operated dvd index for both your online and offline dvds. Browse your DVD collection by titles, actors, directors or genres - all with covers and images.

Microsoft Fast Facts

This document must have been made for the new employee kit. Great breakdown of worldwide revenue vs. headcount for the past 10 fiscal years along with some other useful company information.

DateLens calendar

You should go visit the Microsoft Research Download site if you have some free time. Some great applications that are still being worked on are made available to the public along with some extensive whitepapers. http://research.microsoft.com/research/downloads/ . One of these great applications DateLens looks fantastic for getting the most out of your digital calendar.

Avalon preview now on MSDN

This is great news to get the wider developer community interested and working on the next wave of great applications. Note you will need to be an MSDN subscriber to download this preview. For more information visit Tim Sneath's weblog or the Longhorn developer center.

Avalon is the new graphics display subsystem that we announced at PDC, which unified documents, graphics, media and user interfaces into a single platform. Using a new vector-based compositing engine, Avalon takes full advantage of modern graphics hardware and provides the capabilities for building rich, immersive applications with 2D and 3D capabilities. Avalon also introduces XAML, a markup language that maps XML markup to objects in the .NET Framework and is built to allow designers and developers to work together in the user interface development process.

Originally a Longhorn-only feature, the Avalon team has been working over the last couple of months to additionally support current releases of the Windows operating system. The fruits of that work are now visible in the form of this preview release, which runs on Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows Server 2003. You'll need .NET Framework 2.0 installed on your machine, and ideally a DirectX 9-class graphics adapter(although Avalon has a software fallback for older cards).

Copy a popup message

I just found this handy shortcut on Joel Spolsky's blog. When you Ctrl+C a popup message it actually does get copied to the clipboard - who'd of thought ;-). I wish someone had told me this earlier.

Get at your Media database with Media Info Exporter

The Media Player team have released a handy power toy to export your Media Player playlist to a wide range of formats.

Export your Windows Media Player 9 Series library to MS Excel, Word, MS Access, HTML and even XML with this nifty little powertoy from the Windows Media Player team. Part of Windows Media Player 9 Series Winter Fun Pack 2003

WMPlugins

MSDN Webcasts Calendar

George from MSDN posted this on the MSDN Webcasts WebLog:

Nicole Stocker on our webcasts team had this really cool idea to provide everyone with a calendar of upcoming webcasts you can print, keep on a share etc, to help you remember and look at the upcoming webcasts for the month.

MSDN Calendar

The History of Microsoft.doc

The following document is a short refresh of the major events that made Microsoft the multi-billion dollar company it is today. If you’re interested in finding out more you can visit the Microsoft Museum.

MSN Search Beta

The work being done here can not be understated. This is a significant project for Microsoft and I'm sure some of the smartest people at Redmond are working on this.

On behalf of the MSN Search team I'm very pleased to announce that we've begun the worldwide rollout of our new algorithmic search service Beta release. I invite you to check it out at http://beta.search.msn.com and send us feedback via the "help us improve" links. You can identify the Beta version by the text "Search (beta)" next to the MSN butterfly logo.

MSN Search weblog

Media Player 10 Halo 2 Skin

Halo 2 rocks! For all those who are stuck at the PC and away from the Xbox this Media Player 10 skin should keep you company with sound effects and all.

MSN Direct: Movie Listings on Smart Watches

Great news for all you lucky folks who are using this very futuristic Simple Personal Object Technology already. It's a shame that when I asked one of the MS Product Managers who comes along to the Melbourne Pocket PC User Group (that I am privileged to help run) if SPOT was on its way to AUS, he said it was not on the horizon. I wonder if things have changed since around 6 months ago for nineMSN Direct in Australia.

Bill Gates loves Halo 2 too

Found this on Mike's weblog