MS Inbox.com

Moving home...

2005-12-15T08:29:00.000+11:00

I am now a member of the Weblogs, Inc team under the The Unoffical Microsoft Weblog. Please update your aggregator to point to the following feed. Thank's everyone for your support.

Palm Treo for Windows Mobile looking good

2005-12-10T11:45:00.000+11:00

Ed from PocketPCThoughts brought me this shot. Yet the PDF he linked to is nolonger working.

Windows Live Local now live

2005-12-08T21:59:00.000+11:00

You have to love that title. Virtual Earth has changed it's name to Windows Live Local and it now has the bird's eye feature we have been hearing about.

Paul Thurrott has posted some Vista Screenshots

2005-12-03T22:13:00.000+11:00

Windows Vista Build 5259 Screenshot

Handy Bot for Messenger

2005-12-03T22:03:00.000+11:00

The following contact adds Encarta to your list of buddies to answer any questions you have. More on the RTC Technology blog.

mailto:encarta@conversagent.com

Microsoft research releases SNARF email triage program

2005-12-03T20:10:00.000+11:00

I'm download now. Looks great.

Windows Vista November CTP screenshots

2005-12-01T11:02:00.000+11:00

Thanks ActiveWin

OneNote Mobile the next killer app for Windows Mobile

2005-11-25T08:30:00.000+11:00

You get all your OneNote goodness transfered both ways, along with automatic photo OCR'ing and audio search capabilities once you get sync'd back up to your PC. Chris Pratley (OneNote Program Manager) has the details. Blown away!

US gets Xbox 360!

2005-11-23T18:58:00.000+11:00

www.xbox360.com

Excel 12 looking not too shabby

2005-11-20T17:01:00.000+11:00

Just in case you didn't know the Excel Team are blogging.

Firefox now supported by WGA

2005-11-20T15:53:00.000+11:00

Thanks Ed for the link: Windows Genuine Advantage Firefox Plug-in

New Desktop Search Capabilities for Enterprise

2005-11-16T08:09:00.000+11:00

Unless they have updated Windows Desktop Search I don't think you can get Outlook 2000 or below working with either the enterprise or consumer product. More on Microsoft Press

Xbox 360

2005-11-15T22:01:00.000+11:00

Scoble points to some interesting Xbox 360 commercials. Jump in!

Microsoft offers Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions for free

2005-11-09T08:23:00.000+11:00

This is fantastic news. The original price for these Starter Editions was going to be $49US. You'll have to hurry the offer is only available until Nov 7 2006 :-) Thanks for the link Paul.

Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware is now called Windows Defender

2005-11-05T20:14:00.000+11:00

Steve Dodson has a write up on his blog.

Windows Live pictorially

2005-11-03T21:46:00.000+11:00

TechCrunch tells us more about the Live announcement

2005-11-03T20:22:00.000+11:00

Heh, I am sending this post via Outlook this time. I did a quick write up of Windows Live a moment ago and Blogger crapped itself. Isn't it funny that when you start talking about Microsoft and Web 2.0 it breaks the Google service Blogger. lol

On a more serious note it is something this industry is going to have to address at some stage. How to you recover from a wipe out like that where the browser and the web server don't play nice? I need to have confidence in Web 2.0 in order to adopt it. If the page breaks and my data is lost I'm going back to my highly workable, configurable and disconnect-able (Americanism alert!) Outlook 2003 solution.

Screen shots of Windows/Office Live

2005-11-03T19:20:00.000+11:00

Microsoft's new plan Office and Windows Live

2005-11-02T08:12:00.000+11:00

This is the next bet for the company. It started with the Web in 1995 then .NET in 2000 now in 2005 we have online services that bring everything together.

Your online world gets better when everything works simply and effortlessly together. That's the basic idea behind Windows Live. So all the things you care about online - your friends, the latest information, your e-mails, powerful search, everything – comes together in one place. This is a brand new Internet experience designed to put you in control. And this is just the beginning – you'll see many more new products in the coming months.

Microsoft Press

Oh yeah... Happy 50th BG!

2005-10-30T13:43:00.000+11:00

The 28th of October was Bill Gates' 50th birthday. It looks like he was in London.

Microsoft releases Works 2006

2005-10-30T13:28:00.000+11:00

This sounds like a fantastic deal. Microsoft Word 2002, Works 8, Money 2006 Standard, Digital Image Standard 2006, Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2006, Streets & Trips Essentials 2006 for only $99US

SQL Server and Visual Stuido 2005 RTM

2005-10-30T13:21:00.000+11:00

Microsoft just released two major development prodcuts to manufaturing. They are also available to MSDN subscribers. Paul Thurrott points us to the new .NET Framework that go along with it.

More Windows Media Player 11 screenshots

2005-10-26T08:55:00.000+10:00

Thanks Paul

600 MSN buddies

2005-10-23T15:55:00.000+10:00

Looks like the MSN Messenger guys have doubled the amount of contacts you can have from 300 to 600.

Great Bill Gate's interview

2005-10-23T13:12:00.000+10:00

Kevin Schofield points out a great interview with Bill Gate’s over on MTV where Bill responds to questions from America’s youth.

Windows Vista Build 5231 CTP

2005-10-22T11:21:00.000+10:00

Microsoft's next Community Technology Preview includes the much anticipated Windows Media Player (WMP) 11, Media Center - Vista style and Network Center (this looks great). Paul Thurrott has a write up of this build over on the Windows Super Site.

Exchange Server 2003 SP2 Ships

2005-10-22T09:49:00.000+10:00

Looks like Microsoft have just shipped the free (to Exchange 2003 customers) Blackberry solution.

New seamless Direct Push Technology e-mail experience. No longer is there a reliance on short message service (SMS) to notify and ensure that your device automatically retrieves new e-mail from your Exchange server. SP2 uses an HTTP connection, maintained by the device, to push new e-mail messages, calendar, contact, and task notifications to the device.

Hotmail Add-in for Media Center Screenshots

2005-10-19T08:29:00.000+10:00

Sean Alexander tells us that a preview should be out sometime next week.

Office 12 Beta screens

2005-10-16T18:11:00.000+10:00

More at ActiveWin

How to make a XP SP2 CD from an XP CD

2005-10-16T17:54:00.000+10:00

Paul Thurrott has posted a step by step guide to slipstreaming you CD.

Microsoft Streets & Trips 2006 With GPS and Voice-Prompted Directions

2005-10-11T16:54:00.000+10:00

Wow! This product just keeps getting better and better. Scoble can you do a Channel9 video with these guys. More on Yahoo News

Microsoft Streets & Trips 2006 with GPS Locator includes the following new features:

New! Voice-Prompted Directions work with the GPS Locator to provide an easy-to-use, hands-free option that delivers turn-by-turn directional information to the desired destination.

New! Driving Guidance Pane prominently displays text-prompted turn-by-turn directions, enlarged arrows indicating where to turn, and distance measurement by miles and yards as drivers get closer to the destination.

New! Dynamic Turn View automatically zooms in to travelers' current position, allowing them to see where they are and upcoming directional changes.

New! Night Map Style enhances views of maps and directions for easy reading when consumers are traveling at night or on dark roadways.

New! Locate Me technology helps lost travelers who don't have their GPS Locator on hand determine where they are by utilizing Wi-Fi hot spots to estimate their location to help them get back on track or find nearby points of interest. Consumers can also go online to cross-reference MSN® Virtual Earth(TM) for greater trip-planning accuracy through additional maps and aerial imagery.

Portable Media Center lives!

2005-10-10T21:30:00.000+10:00

It's been quite some time since we have seen one of these little PMC's. Nothing mind blowing in the sepc department. I suppose it's just nice to see that they still exist. Engadget has more.

UPDATED: New Vista screenshots from NeoWin

2005-10-10T21:14:00.000+10:00

Showing off the new Windows Media Player 11 and brand new audio stack's interface. Thanks NeoWin; Paul Thurrott on the WinSuperSite has some too.

Update to MSCONFIG

2005-10-10T20:47:00.000+10:00

This is a fantastic utility that was noticeably absent in Windows 2000 yet came over from Windows 98 to Windows XP. Ed Bott points us to the Microsoft Download.

Bureaucracy insight

2005-10-09T13:21:00.000+10:00

Steven Sinofsky from the Office team talks about bureaucracy and where/if it works.

Office 12 loves PDF's

2005-10-02T21:31:00.000+10:00

This is fantastic news! What a lot of time this will save everyone. Can't say Adobe will be too impressed yet that seems to be the general theme this year for Microsoft vs. Adobe. Brian Jones tells us more about what the Office team have been doing.

Get Virtual Earth in MSN Messenger

2005-10-01T18:02:00.000+10:00

This is an awesome idea. Can't wait to get the maps in Australia. The Virtual Earth team have a MSN Space with more information.

More on Gadgets

2005-09-29T16:33:00.000+10:00

Scott Isaacs points to a great article explaining Gadget/Widgets (your new start.com and Windows Vista sidebar companions) and what Microsoft's strategy is.

Office 2003 Service Pack 2 out

2005-09-28T17:41:00.000+10:00

Available from : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=57e27a97-2db6-4654-9db6-ec7d5b4dd867&DisplayLang=en#filelist or the new Microsoft Update http://update.microsoft.com/

Mainly fixes yet this release also includes Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 Phishing Protection

Origen Xbox 360 teaser site opened

2005-09-28T08:25:00.000+10:00

Remember me talking about the following teaser site for the new Xbox 360 gaming console. Well today's the big day. Knock yourself out.

What do managers do and how big should my team be?

2005-09-26T22:26:00.000+10:00

I thought this was a great article I hope you like it too. Thanks Steven Sinofsky (He's in charge of the Office team).

Microsoft Company Meeting 2005

2005-09-25T01:08:00.000+10:00

It looks like the company meeting went well. More news over on the Mini-Microsoft blog.

Lighting Up on Windows Vista

2005-09-20T11:42:00.000+10:00

1. Follow the Windows Vista style guidelines
2. Enrich the user experience
3. Enable users to visualize, organize, and search
4. Run securely
5. Design for reliability and manageability
6. Establish a customer feedback loop
7. Build for connected systems
8. Bring data to the user with RSS
9. Make document data accessible
10. Build for mobility

Find out more here

Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar Beta

2005-09-19T10:05:00.000+10:00

The IE Developer Toolbar provides several features for deeply exploring and understanding Web pages.

Explore and modify the document object model (DOM) of a web page.

Locate and select specific elements on a web page through a variety of techniques.

Selectively disable Internet Explorer settings.

View HTML object class names, ID's, and details such as link paths, tab index values, and access keys.

Outline tables, table cells, images, or selected tags.

Validate HTML, CSS, WAI, and RSS web feed links.

Display image dimensions, file sizes, path information, and alternate (ALT) text.

Immediately resize the browser window to 800x600 or a custom size.

Selectively clear the browser cache and saved cookies. Choose from all objects or those associated with a given domain.

Choose direct links to W3C specification references, the Internet Explorer team weblog (blog), and other resources.

Display a fully featured design ruler to help accurately align objects on your pages.

Windows Vista Home Page Update

2005-09-16T08:23:00.000+10:00

www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/ now with RSS feed

Windows Workflow screen shots

2005-09-15T17:02:00.000+10:00

Thanks ActiveWin again.

Screen shots of Microsoft Digital Locker and Windows Workflow

2005-09-15T16:54:00.000+10:00

Digital Locker is an advancement on the Windows Marketplace to allow you to contain your digital software purchases from different suppliers. Thanks ActiveWin for the screen shot.

Media Center Edition Vista Style

2005-09-15T16:35:00.000+10:00

Thanks Chris Lanier for these shots.

MCE Update Rollup 2 details…

2005-09-15T16:24:00.000+10:00

Found these details over on Ed Bott's new Media Central feed. Not what most people were expecting.

Free Download from Windows Update
Available in about 1 month
2nd HD Tuner supported
No CableCARD
No QAM
DVD Changer (No other public information)
Xbox 360 Extender support
Sonic DVD Burning fixes
Slight improvements in Media Library performance

What new features I’m looking forward to in Windows Vista

2005-09-14T16:23:00.000+10:00

In no particular order of preference, the Quick Tabs feature in Windows Internet Explorer (above) which allows you to glance at all your open tabs in IE at once - a little like Expose on the Mac yet browsing.

The new Ribbin menu (above) in Office 12 will be drastically improved to be task orientated. It will bring commands closer to the user and in a better context.

Improved Alt+Tab now works in real time (supports Windows Media Player) giving a preview of each window. Another option with a different key combination that escapes me allows you to have the windows show up like the below example which allows you to also cycle through each window in real time.

Preview of taskbar items lets you hover over each individual task item and get a real-time preview of that screen (including Windows Media Player).

Outlook and Outlook Express will now be able to get RSS feeds (think NewsGator) using the common RSS store in Vista. An Outlook only feature (not Express) will be the ability to download referenced URLs in RSS feeds that are in Outlook. Allowing you to work with your disconnected Outlook client to read your RSS feed along with any accompanying websites that the feed points to. AWESOME!

Windows Gadgets (think Yahoo's Konfabulator and Apple's Dashboard) allows you to add widgets to the new Sidebar in Vista's desktop area or on the desktop itself. Another location you will soon find these little programs that can also take advantage of the Windows Presentation Foundation (think killer 3D and 2D) will be on your Windows mobile device or even the side of your laptop. This auxiliary display on the outside (duh!) of the new Vista laptops will now be referred to as the SideShow). These widgets that could will also find their way on to the MSN portal Start.com that was in beta over the last couple of months. Allowing contained widgets (I mean gadgets) to be added directly into you new proposed IE startup page. Very interesting!

Super Fetch me! The new prefetch feature that Ed Bott does a fantastic write up for in Windows XP has now been supercharged - hence the name change. It now does a analysis of your computer usage over the life of Vista's install and figures out how to best guess what programs you are going to run and load those programs into memory so they are ready to go. I've heard this works really well!

One of the things that Jim Allchin talked about in his keynote was that many of today's older systems just won't have the resources to take advantage of Super Fetch. Thankfully Microsoft have thought about this and have come up with a simplistic yet extremely practical way of combating this issue. You know that often useless bit of memory you have hanging around your neck all day? (You know what I'm talking about right?) The USB keys that you use to transfer files from one computer to another (and the more tech savvy of you use to load operating systems from) will be used to cache programs in turn increasing Super Fetch's usefulness by the amount of free space you have on the USB key. How cool is that?

Virtual Earth Beta 2 coming soon

2005-09-14T14:19:00.000+10:00

Looks like the Earth part is not too far away. Heh

Eagle Eye image view – photos taken from fairly low altitude at a 45° angle (as opposed to the 90° that the imagery currently uses). This makes for a really neat perspective view.

User pushpins and collections

Improved aerial and satellite imagery (of the 90° kind)

Driving directions

New content types – Traffic, Movies etc

Mobile – send to phone. This looks like you’ll be able to send details of a location or locations to your mobile (or someone else’s). Imagine being able to send a “meet me here …” SMS.

The big one (for me) is the geographic expansion – currently planned to be England and perhaps some more of Europe. More and more data will come on line as the team source and massage the data.

Check out Andrew Coates blog for more details

Microsoft's photo application example for Vista

2005-09-14T13:58:00.000+10:00

Microsoft Max

More from Office 12

2005-09-14T08:42:00.000+10:00

More over on NeoWin

Hello Office 12

2005-09-13T19:39:00.000+10:00

More over on Bink.nu

No more phishing please!

2005-09-13T18:28:00.000+10:00

The IE team have put together a clear explination of how the anti-phishing countermeasures will be incorporated into Windows XP SP2 and later versions of Windows Internet Explorer.

The first screen shots of Vista PDC build

2005-09-13T10:11:00.000+10:00

More here

News of PDC Vista build 5219 coming out

2005-09-13T08:35:00.000+10:00

Looks like the pictures linked to on NeoWin have exceeded the bandwidth limit.

What's new and changed:

Sidebar is back
Outlook express how has an RSS reader integrated
Outlook express showing more of the visual overhaul
glass taskbar
previews of applications on taskbar
3D task switcher and 3D Carosel type task switcher
Picture editor
Photo album
Movie Maker 3 with DVD authoring
.NET 2.0 framework
System restore wizards
System backup wizards
Software version of windows update (now does updates like OSX)
Pictures have a border around them in thumbnail view
Popup extended preview on items in explorer (bigger thumbs)
Expanded driver support
Performance fixes
Bigger LDDM Driver support
IE's CSS support has been expanded since beta 1
PNG support for Icons (icons are all in PNG format now in a package called .ICO)
Windows Media Player 11 (not included yet, but bits and pieces of it are in this build)

Wish you were here

2005-09-12T16:32:00.000+10:00

PDC05 Gear

2005-09-12T16:27:00.000+10:00

System Font (Segoe UI)

2005-09-12T15:20:00.000+10:00

Segoe UI (pronounced, "SEE-go") is the new Microsoft® Windows Vista™ system font. It is designed specifically for user interfaces and is optimized for ClearType font technology.
Segoe UI:
Improves consistency in text styles across all languages.
Is optimized for ClearType, which is on by default in Windows Vista. Segoe UI is less readable without ClearType enabled.
Has the standard font size increased to 9 pt. to accommodate for better layout and readability for all languages.
Has a new set of themed font styles that can be referenced through the Aero theme file.
Contains currently the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic characters. Microsoft will continue to develop, add character sets and support this font.

More Vista eye candy

2005-09-12T14:48:00.000+10:00

Max icon size 256 x 256.

The start of PDC 2005

2005-09-12T12:51:00.000+10:00

This is going to be good!

Exchange 12 will ship (only) on DVD

2005-09-10T13:38:00.000+10:00

This article looked like a bit of a non-issue until i read the reason as to why the team are going to release E12 on DVD. See below highlight.

A while back, we asked you what you thought about having Exchange 12 ship on DVD. We also did some market and customer research outside of the blog and carefully weighed all of the feedback together to make our decision: Exchange 12 will ship on a single DVD.

I wanted to let you know how important your feedback was to us making this decision as well as address some of the concerns that were raised on the anti-DVD side. Another plus of this experience was it was a great proof of concept as to how useful this blog is in gathering diverse customer feedback, so thanks for all the comments and please keep them coming. Even when we don't explicitly ask for feedback, the comments are still useful, any time you tell us what you think about something, positive or negative, we appreciate it.

First, I should explain what would be taking up this much space. The main feature is unified messaging, which is a core feature in E12 that we're very excited about bringing to the masses (and trust me on this one, there are some amazing features in UM). The largest part of this feature are the text-to-speech engines that are needed for each language. These engines allow you to call up your server on your phone and have it read your email and appointments over the phone to you. We estimate that the final size of each language of these engines (using a non-lossy
compression) will be around a couple hundred megs and we are working on
including as many languages as we can.

I should also mention that it's a natural progression we're making towards DVD -- as several commenters said, "it's only a matter of time." Exchange will likely be one of the first products to make the switch to only DVD, but we aren't doing this without good reason and without carefully weighing the pros and cons (and if we didn't need the space, we wouldn't make this move). We are announcing this change over a year in advance in order to give our customers enough time to plan for their
Exchange 12 deployments to ensure that they have a DVD drive available for copying E12 to a network share or for installing E12.

News Source: blogs.technet.com

http://bink.nu/Article4814.bink

Microsoft answers my tabbed browsing request with GroupBar

2005-09-08T11:36:00.000+10:00

I wrote an article here talking about the issues of tabbed browsing and grouping liked windows together. Here is the solution produced by Microsoft Research's VIBE (Visualization and Interaction for Business and Entertainment) group that implements exactly what I was suggesting. GroupBar is a program to allow taskbar groups to be dragged and dropped to better suit the context of the windows and not just the program creating the window.

RE: Windows Vista Beta 2 Preview Shots!!

2005-09-07T22:05:00.000+10:00

No no no... This is not Beta 2 everyone! Slow down.. we only got Beta 1 just over a month ago. The current preview build that was displayed at TechEd 2005 in Australia and New Zealand was build 5219. This is also the build that is slated for preview at the PDC next week. Microsoft Windows Vista Beta 2 is not expected out until November at the earliest..

From: Bink.nu
Posted At: Wednesday, 7 September 2005 4:25 PM
Posted To: Bink.nu
Subject: Windows Vista Beta 2 Preview Shots!!

Just weeks after releasing Windows Vista Beta 1, Microsoft has shifted our paradigms again, unveiling a preview of beta 2 at the TechEd 2005 developer conference this morning.

Among the breakthrough new features shown to the 2,000 developers paying $2,000 each to attend TechEd: Solitaire with new background images, a scrolling Alt+Tab bar and Microsoft's version of Mac OS X's Expose function, which allows all the open Windows to be viewed at once.

News Source: www.apcstart.com

http://bink.nu/Article4801.bink

Microsoft's New Keyboards and Mice

2005-09-07T21:51:00.000+10:00

More photos here.

APC Interviews Iain McDonald

2005-09-07T12:34:00.000+10:00

Iain is a very interesting charactor. See the Channel9 video on my previous post. Here is the APC interview from TechEd 2005 where Iain was the main speaker.

PDC’s Vista Build 5219

2005-09-07T11:40:00.000+10:00

It looks like APC have the scoop on the Professional Developers Conference next week. APC along with the rest of the TechEd 2005 Australia event attendees were treated to a preview of the next build of Vista by Iain McDonald (recently on Channel9 again).

Windows Vista Self-Guided Tour

2005-09-04T20:32:00.000+10:00

Microsoft TechNet:

This document is a high-level user's guide for information technology (IT) professionals who are building and deploying desktops by using the Beta 1 release of Microsoft Windows Vista delivered as part of the Beta 1 program. It is not intended to be a detailed process-oriented guide but rather a high-level introduction to some of the new features and capabilities of the next release of Windows. For more detailed information about this release, see the release notes in the Readme.htm file in the root directory of the Windows Vista DVD.

The Windows Vista operating system is designed to help users become confident in using their PC, help them find creative ways to easily find information they need to do their work, and make them better connected to systems, information, and people. For IT professionals, Windows Vista will be the easiest Windows ever to deploy, secure, and manage.

With Windows Vista, Microsoft is making significant investments in the areas of security, deployment, and desktop management.

To become familiar with Windows Vista, complete the following steps after you have completed the installation process. Enjoy!

Windows Vista Fast User Switching on domain joined machines

2005-09-02T09:56:00.000+10:00

Bink has the following:

Looking over at John Howard's blog today (not the Aussie Prime Minister, the other one!) I noticed John is excited at the discovery that Fast User Switching appears to be enabled in the Vista Beta whilst joined to a domain. For those who don't realise, currently XP only supports this feature in a workgroup environment, not in a domain. IF this feature makes it through to the final release of Vista then it will be quite a change.

Freeze Dry for Windows Vista

2005-09-02T09:46:00.000+10:00

Ed Bott:

Looks like Windows Vista will have a cool new feature with a cool name. The word comes from ZDNet Australia:

Windows Vista will include a new technology known as Freeze Dry designed to maintain application states and unsaved documents even when patches are automatically applied and PCs are rebooted.
Speaking at the Australian Tech Ed conference on the Gold Coast in Queensland this week, senior product manager Amy Stephan offered a preview of the Freeze Dry technology.

Many IT managers plan to automatically install patches and updates on machines during periods when they are inactive, such as overnight or on weekends. However, as some patches require machines to reboot, users who leave documents open and unsaved run the risk of losing that data if the machine is automatically updated.

Freeze Dry eliminates that problem by automatically saving application state and documents and then restoring them once the system restarts, Stephan said.

Where is Emerald?

2005-08-31T21:54:00.000+10:00

Windows XP MCE 2005 Update Rollup 2 Codenamed "Emerald" including Xbox 360 capability was supposed to come out this month (August)? I wonder if Diamond has changed the ship date. Diamond is the codename for Windows Media Center Edition 2006

Xbox 360 store

2005-08-31T21:35:00.000+10:00

Microsoft to open Xbox 360 store in Tokyo and Times Square. Engadget has all the latest.

First few screenshots of MSN Favorites Roaming (beta)

2005-08-31T21:20:00.000+10:00

thehotfix.net

Released to beta testers earlier today, the MSN Toolbar Roaming Favorites Add-In Beta 1 is Microsoft's first attempt at allowing users to access their internet bookmarks (a.k.a. Favorites) remotely without having to be signed up to the MSN Internet service. Because the MSN Toolbar is free, anyone will be able to install this addition once it's released. The only major requirement is that you have a Microsoft Passport account and the free MSN Toolbar, which anyone can get for free by going to http://memberservices.passport.net/ and http://toolbar.msn.com/

MSN Messenger 7.5 out

2005-08-24T07:41:00.000+10:00

The MSN Messenger team have just released version 7.5 of the client to the masses.

Among the new features are Dymanic Backgrounds and Voice Clips. Dynamic Backgrounds fill your MSN Messenger conversations and subtly animate during the conversation. Voice Clips allow you to send short audio clips (15 secs max) to your friends on MSN Messenger.

New audio improvements mean talking over MSN Messenger is far improved from recent versions.

You can also do the following:

Start a conversation with a contact: msnim:chat?contact=@hotmail.com
Add a contact to your contact list: msnim:add?contact=@hotmail.com
Send an invitation to start a voice conversation: msnim:voice?contact=@hotmail.com
Send an invitation to start a video conversation: msnim:video?contact=@hotmail.com

Thanks for the link NeoWin

origenxbox360.com ?

2005-08-23T10:57:00.000+10:00

Hi Robert,

Just noticed the following and wanted to know what you thought. It's registred by Microsoft and has a count down time for next month. I thought the Xbox 360 was coming out in November.

http://origenxbox360.com/

New MCE EPG hack for Australia

2005-08-22T19:10:00.000+10:00

“Since Windows XP Media Center (MCE) was first released in Australia in late 2004, it has lacked an important function which is essential to the Media Center experience - an officially supported Electronic Program Guide.

In the beginning two separate programs came to the rescue. Namely TVHarvest, which obtains the guide data, and Quickguide which enables MCE to read the data and display it in a traditional form. Whilst these programs worked quite well together, they were difficult to configure and the majority of users struggled to set up an EPG.

The original Bladerunner was created to simplify the TVHarvest/Quickguide set up and whilst still employing these programs, it enabled an easy installation which opened up the EPG for many more users.

Now we welcome the next chapter in Bladerunner's development - Bladerunner Pro!”

Vista hibernates very well

2005-08-20T00:31:00.000+10:00

I'm still going through all the new goodies in Windows Vista Beta 1. Man is this beta fast! Heh. Programs are monitored and preemptively loaded based on use for very snappy responses. I just tried out the hibernate feature and all I can say is wow - it does not mess around.

Roaming Favorites Add-In for MSN Toolbar Beta coming...

2005-08-18T21:17:00.000+10:00

Found this over on NeoWin.

More info coming out about Acrylic

2005-08-16T18:45:00.000+10:00

If you have anything to do with graphics in your day-to-day job or even if you're an enthusiast go check these videos out and download the Community Technology Preview over here.

More on Microsoft Mail Beta

2005-08-16T18:01:00.000+10:00

Aaron just emailed me my login details for the Hive.net, a community leader site by Microsoft that Scoble pointed out to me. Thank you both!

Here are a few new screenshots for Microsoft Mail that I talked about yesterday:

Outlook Mobile Manager 2.0

2005-08-15T21:27:00.000+10:00

Microsoft Research / Channel9:

Mobile users can be overwhelmed by incoming messages on their device. Employing technology developed at Microsoft Research, OMM learns about the urgency of your email messages, and prioritizes them for relay to a mobile device. Intelligent decisions are be made about if and when to notify you. Based on your preference settings, the system can decide that a message can wait until you get back to your desk. This way, only time-critical messages are sent to your mobile device.

OMM has the ability to learn from you to continue to enhance its behavior. It considers feedback and adapts over time and can continue to enhance the quality of its decisions. The system also forecasts the time until you will read a message from your inbox and uses this prediction to determine when it is best to withhold mobile messaging--and to instead simply wait for you read the message in a non-mobile setting.

Download

AJAX meets Hotmail. Mail Beta coming soon...

2005-08-15T19:36:00.000+10:00

I don't think it will be long now before MSN release the challenger to Gmail. MSN Mail Beta will consist of a folder selection > Email selection and > Preview pane going from left to right in that order (same as Outlook 2003). The use of AJAX will allow you to preview your email without actually clicking in and out of each message. The MSN Hotmail team has a blog up now that you can check for more information. - Thanks for the link Scoble. Keep up the good work!

RAR files OK under Vista

2005-08-15T19:23:00.000+10:00

It looks like our second favorite file compression format has made it into Windows Vista, the beta at least. Let's hope it makes it into the final build.

Copying has never looked so good...

2005-08-14T21:17:00.000+10:00

It great finding all these little additons in the Windows Vista OS.

No NET SEND in Vista

2005-08-14T18:20:00.000+10:00

The Beta 1 of Windows Vista does not appear to have the Net Send command line function or the associated services. If Vista is supposed to be a security focused OS this would make a lot of sense.

Internet Explorer 7

2005-08-14T17:13:00.000+10:00

Along with using Windows Vista beta 1 this week I have also been using IE7 on both Windows XP SP2 and Vista itself which has IE7 ship along with the beta. Paul Thurrott has a great review of both here. From what I've seen in this early stage of IE7 development it looks like the platform is coming along quite nicely - thank you Firefox for making this possible. The inclusion of RSS and more importantly the inclusion of RSS as a central store for other applications to access and use is welcomed. Much to Dave Winter's (the father of RSS) disgust Microsoft made the decision at the moment to refer to the RSS feeds as just web feeds to avoid any confusion. I tend to agree with Microsoft that web feed is clearer and adding RSS would no doubt confuse the mass market that IE currently supports.

The inclusion of tabbed browsing is an appreciated feature that if you haven't used before you should see immediate improvements in your web consumption. Although I have found it irritating that the close button is at the top right of the tab window in question and not next to the tab itself, I'm sure this is a result of the Window's guidelines for proper UI placement. Paul in his article talks about a number of user interface elements not meeting this guideline to fit in with the new Vista style of doing things. I personally find the refresh button to be in the wrong spot - in place of the go button after a page is loaded and not where it used to be yet this will just take a little getting used too.

For those people wanting to try IE7 out on Windows XP SP2 I recommend using a Virtual Machine with an activated copy of Window's on it (otherwise it will not install). Please don't use this version of IE7 on your main computer or any production machine - it's an early beta! You can get the executable here. Note the download is not from a Microsoft site.

Life with Windows Vista plus MS Research and fabric

2005-08-14T16:49:00.000+10:00

I've been using Windows Vista Beta 1 for most of this week and one of the changes from XP that stands out would be the Aero Glass UI. The way I use to interact with the computer compared to now is profound. Generally when you get a dialog message good or bad on your screen it's very abrupt and in my opinion gives off a negative experience compared to the one Vista has now. In Vista a dialog eases in and eases our to provide a much better way to communicate between me and my computer. I can't understate the difference this makes when working on a computer throughout the day.

Microsoft Research Downloads have released Microsoft Scalable Fabric used to bring windows in and out of the periphery. Well worth a look, mind you it's fairly resource hungry yet works on XP.

IE7 turns off browser re-use option by default

2005-08-08T18:37:00.000+10:00

It's great to see Microsoft implementing some of my wish list for 2005 ;-)

Note: This is based on IE7 Beta 1 which could change by the products final release.

Microsoft SyncToy PowerToy coming soon...

2005-08-01T12:51:00.000+10:00

The SyncToy PowerToy to be released some time in August this year looks to resolve the issues users have synchronising files among multiple Windows XP computers. Microsoft just uploaded a whitepaper available here. It looks like Lockergnome has more information.

UPDATE: 3/8 Beta Download

Free Microsoft Education Pack for Tablet PC available

2005-07-26T20:37:00.000+10:00

Microsoft Download:

If you are a student with a Tablet PC, the Education Pack is a must. Download the Education Pack and get five free programs to help you excel at school and have some fun while you're at it. If you're an educator with a Tablet PC, you'll want to download the Education Pack too.

MSN Virtual Earth beta now live

2005-07-25T18:52:00.000+10:00

Virtual Earth (photo above) More on Channel9

MSN RSS / Search / Messenger Screensaver

2005-07-24T01:51:00.000+10:00

This is hot, check out the MSN Screensaver Beta, cool screen saver, does RSS, weather even search. The UI is simple, clean and kind of sexy. I grabbed a screenshot, I can even keep up with Scoble on it.

I never thought about integrating messenger buddy status and search into a screensaver.

Jeff Sandquist's blog

Introducing Microsoft Windows Vista (codename: Longhorn)

2005-07-24T01:48:00.000+10:00

Bringing clarity to your world.
Today we live in a world of more information, more ways to communicate, more things to do. There is more you can do and even more you can discover.
Every day, millions of people around the globe rely on their Windows PC to manage their increasingly digital lives. While familiar tools for managing digital information are powerful, today's world requires more.
In today's digital world, you want the PC to adapt to you, so you can
cut through the clutter and focus on what's important to you.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/

TechNet podcast

2005-07-19T21:40:00.000+10:00

The WMA RSS feed is only giving me .asx files which I need to stream (not good for podcasting?) so download the mp3 feed here. I'm looking forward to this cast, I know the Canadian team were doing this a while back, lets hope this can expand to other groups if successful. TechNet Events.

New Windows Tested Products List

2005-07-19T20:45:00.000+10:00

Added into the Windows Marketplace is the new Tested Product List (TPL) to help validate the testing status of Windows products.

New Starter Kit for the .NET Framework 2.0

2005-07-17T15:26:00.000+10:00

The new starter kit allows your .NET 2.0 application to easily enable a splash screen, payment via PayPal, Product Activation, Product Registration, Event/Error Reporting, and Product Feedback. Jeff Sandquist has some more information.

Microsoft opens comparison shopping site

2005-07-17T14:45:00.000+10:00

http://beta.shopping.msn.com/

More over on the Comparison Engines site.

PDC 2005 Breakout Sessions

2005-07-14T18:05:00.000+10:00

I'd love to be going to this years PDC2005! Just have a look at some of these breakout sessions. It gives you a great idea of what's to come from Redmond in the coming years.

My wishlist for Microsoft this year

2005-07-12T07:39:00.000+10:00

Voice Command

Add to the Windows Mobile Smartphone
Add to the Windows Mobile Portable Media Center
Allow partners to make an iPod killer by licensing Voice Command

Windows XP Media Center 2005

Add the EPG (Electronic Program Guide) for Australia (how can you sell the product without this?)
Sell the Xbox Extender Kit outside the US! (very disappointed with this)
Where is the Remote Record outside the US (I understand this ties in with my first point)

Internet Explorer

Turn off "Reuse windows for launching shortcuts" default option (it's 2005!)

Scoble do a Channel9 video with Bill Gates

It was a great interview with SteveB and I know you've been hoping for Mr Gates for some time.