http://windows.live.com/Aggregated from multiple blog sourcesPeople Like YouContent Aggregationhttp://www.windowslive.com/connect/post/ahmedeltawil.spaces.live.com-Blog-cns!CA3B008F40073FA3!966.entryAfter several days of thinking out loud with the family we decided to go overseas to visit our relatives in Syria. Being that we are the only ‘Eltawil’ family in Canada, we had no option but to spend an arm and a leg to be with our relatives during the holidays. God, oh please god make it worth every penny! So, after it’s been confirmed, approved and given the green light, I sparked up my Windows Live Calendar and added in the necessary entries that represents my flight’s itinerary. It would’ve been awesome if my BlackBerry Bold gets the latest changes done to my Windows Live Calendar and syncs it with my BlackBerry’s calendar. But until that dream comes true, I have to enter the dates into my BlackBerry’s calendar manually…again. Usually whenever I travel anywhere out of town, I will eventually be forced (either by a friend, relative or most likely a family member running after me with a stick) to take a couple of pictures. Those pictures will eventually find their way on my Windows Live Spaces account either by sending them directly from my BlackBerry Bold using the built in camera or by uploading them from my digital camera directly into Spaces using the quick-n-easy upload tool. Since I like to blog often, I will be updating my Windows Live Spaces blog using (as always) my BlackBerry Bold. Like when I am on the way to the airport, checking in my luggage, waiting for my plane, entering the plane, sitting in the plane and getting yelled at by the flight attendant to shut off my BlackBerry while the plane is taking off. Yeah, somewhere along those lines, I will be definitely blogging about them. Compose email, type it and send it to my blog’s email. Voila! A new blog entry has been created and is almost instantly displayed on my blog. You wouldn’t even know it was written thousands of miles away from home (hopefully when I land safely)! Keeping track of my email using only PCs is something of the past. My phone will be with me and it will push any new email that arrives in my Windows Live Hotmail account to my BlackBerry Bold (or at least I hope it still does that overseas, if not, back to PCs I guess). Open email, read it, hit reply, type away and send. All from the comfort of a third world country café. Windows Live Contacts will definitely come in handy when I get introduced for the first time ever to the many (many many many) relatives I will meet in Syria. Adding their contact information into Windows Live Contacts will definitely provide a guarantee to me that I’ll be able to get back in touch with them and see what they’re up to on Windows Live Messenger. Let the video chatting begin! In the end, no matter how far or close your travels are during the holidays, Windows Live will always be right by your side. I mean, why else would I not use all the great and (I have to add) free services available that Windows Live provides? Plus, all services are well integrated together which makes passing data between services a breeze. And with all the exciting updates we’ve seen (and more coming soon), it makes more sense to continue using and fully experience Windows Live.   http://www.windowslive.com/connect/post/windowslivewire.spaces.live.com-Blog-cns!2F7EB29B42641D59!22459.entryWindows Live wants to make it easier than ever to connect from your PC to the web and we give you all the pieces. But sometimes, we realize that you might have accounts with other companies, so Windows Live is making it really easy to connect with other websites, too.  For example, in the coming weeks, as changes to Windows Live are released, you’ll be able to see updates from services like Twitter and Flickr on your Windows Live Home page. And now, with the help of plug-ins, Windows Live Photo Gallery beta and Windows Live Movie Maker beta allow you to publish photos and videos to sites outside of the Microsoft family, like Facebook or YouTube.  Installing and setting up a new plug-in that allows you to publish to Facebook Because there is a continually evolving list of web services that you use and might want to publish to, we’ve shared our publishing API with anyone who wants to use it, so that creative and industrious developer types can create their own plug-ins to work with Photo Gallery and Movie Maker. After installing the “Live Upload to YouTube” plug-in, you can publish to YouTube from Movie Maker Check this list of available plug-ins to see which ones you might want to install. Over time, the list will undoubtedly grow, so you can choose the ones that work best for you. - Windows Live team Technorati Tags: Windows+Live,Facebook,Flickr,YouTube,Photo+Gallery,Movie+Maker,Twitter http://www.windowslive.com/connect/post/missionjesusmom.spaces.live.com-Blog-cns!C9B90F15AA74BD26!2190.entryI am delighted to inform everyone that a new feature is being introduced to Live Search QnA!     Various participants on the Live Search QnA Beta and other Windows Live Communities such as the Clubhouse have indicated they would love to use the QnA forum for participants to communicate ideas and concepts in a "Conversational" manner.  Live Search QnA is primarily an enhancement to Live Search where you can ask real people to assist you in locating information that you are unable to find in real time.  Now you can share information as well by following some basic principles for tagging your questions to make sure that they are properly categorized.For a great tutorial about how to participate in this new feature please refer to the Live Search QnA Team Blog entry at this link.  http://boards.live.com/QNAboards/thread.aspx?boardid=260&threadid=850896This will offer opportunities for discussions related to online communities and sharing of concepts.  Here is a question posted by one of our Program Managers announcing the new feature.  http://liveqna.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!2933A3E375F68349!1982.entry Please use your Windows Live ID to login and try Live Search QnA at http://qna.live.com A Live Event is being held at this location and all are welcome to join.http://cid-00093b8d423f4036.events.live.com/default.aspx Mindy D'AmicoMicrosoft MVP - Windows Live Technorati Tags: Live Search,Live Search QnA,Microsoft,Internet,Online Ettiquette,Online Community,Windows Livehttp://www.windowslive.com/connect/post/gadgetgran.spaces.live.com-Blog-cns!2418D1CD90C52C20!1286.entryIn this post, I am going to demonstrate adding a map to your blog.  Think how much more interesting your blog will be if you can add a map to it in order to illustrate the place that you are actually blogging about!  Your readers will then feel so much more involved in your post, and may even decide to visit the area or place that you are describing! Recently I was posting to my other blogs on both Live Spaces and LiveJournal about my recent visit to Scotland, and inside those posts I made a lot of use of the INSERT MAP feature to be found in Windows Live Writer as you can plainly see in my other blog here.  So in order to illustrate this how-to, I will make use of one of the places that we visited during our stay. It can help Live Search Maps if you have the full address of the place that you are discussing in you post, but this isn’t always necessary.  So lets go ahead and insert a map. On the right hand side of the compose screen, you will see under the INSERT list, the choice of INSERT MAP, so click on that, and you will then be taken to the Live Search Maps screen which will ‘pop up’ inside Windows Live Writer. In the FIND A LOCATION box, insert the place that you visited or talked about inside your blog.  I will insert ‘Helensburgh,Scotland’ which is the name of one of the places we visited during our stay and where I also took some photographs. We stood on the pier and watched a submarine from here. After clicking on the search icon, your location will then be displayed in a road map view.  You can then just click on INSERT and the map will be inserted into your blog inside Windows Live Writer.  If you click on the map, you will be presented with a menu of choices on the right hand side of the compose screen.  Under OPTIONS, you can then choose to change or alter the map as viewed.  So lets take a look at those options. Helensburgh zoomed in You can ZOOM in closer to the area shown by clicking on the ZOOM slider on the left hand side of your map. When you alter the ZOOM view of the map it will then automatically change inside your post.  If you click inside the map and then hold, your cursor will change to a small hand and you will be able to then move the map around to adjust the view, or alternatively you can just click on the blue arrows to the left of the ZOOM slider and move the map using that method. The blue arrows signify North,South, East and West. Even better, you can switch your map to an aerial view. Just above the blue arrows and ZOOM slider you will see a box which by default shows  ROAD. By clicking on the arrow to the right of ROAD, you will then be presented with the choice of AERIAL, and if you click on it, the map will then change to an aerial view inside your blog. You can also choose whether or not your map should also display any labels such as street names by placing a tick inside the SHOW LABELS feature under the ZOOM slider. And here is the aerial view also showing the labels You can give your map a CAPTION which will appear directly below it in order to give your blog readers more information about the place shown on the map.  I have put in my map, ‘We stood on the pier and watched a submarine from here’ inside my CAPTION of my map,but you can add any information that you think will be interesting for your readers. You also  have a number of choices about its placement inside the post, you can choose whether or not to have it inline,left, right or centre by going to LAYOUT and then under TEXT WRAPPING selecting whereabouts in relation to your text you wish the map to appear.  As with your pictures you can also choose to have invisible margins around your map so that the text doesn’t butt right up to the edges of it. So now try adding a map to your blog if you are including a visit that you have made recently or mentioning somewhere you visited in the past.  Perhaps you are blogging about a holiday or a venue where you enjoyed a meal or a recent stay.  It all goes towards helping you to illustrate your blog and make it look more attractive and interesting to read! TG      Happy blogging and get mapping!   http://www.windowslive.com/connect/post/kiriel-salem.spaces.live.com-Blog-cns!280A1538334A1CB9!962.entryRemember the Publish → More Services in Live Photo Gallery ? Other than Flickr, we’re promised an extensibility. For the developers, there are API you can use to build plug in. For most of us programming-illiterate, we’re promised eventually there will be. The Windows Live Photo & Video Blog has posted new plug-ins by peoples in CodePlex to the plug-ins download page. The plug-ins are, LiveUpload to Facebook and LiveUpload to YouTube. This enable you to publish your photo or video to the two online services, just like you could publish to Spaces and Flickr. :) http://www.windowslive.com/connect/post/marcusatmicrosoft.spaces.live.com-Blog-cns!503D1D86EBB2B53C!1147.entryA few months back, I blogged about not having been bitten by the Twitter bug.  Well, it finally got me.  Here are a few things that that ultimately got me tweeting: It’s a great way to get timely news and insights filtered by knowledgeable people.  I especially like following people like @jowyang. Some of my colleagues and I can use it to tell more people about Windows Live.  Together we’re tweeting via @wlive. I can tweet from my Windows Mobile 6.1 smart phone (Samsung Blackjack II).  I’m using TinyTwitter for this.  And probably the biggest reason?  Windows Live is going to start supporting Twitter in our new integrated What’s New display (read more about this on Rob Dolin’s blog entry).  So if you’re not on Twitter yet, maybe it’s time you gave it a try too?  I hope you’ll consider following me, and I’ll follow you too.  And for an amusing read, check out this list of 66 twitter twerms, courtesy of @johmar.  - Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager http://www.windowslive.com/connect/post/hillboy8.spaces.live.com-Blog-cns!654C002E7B4C95BD!4516.entryI just noticed an article today that Google is announcing speech search for iPhone devices.  Google ever being the media darling, everybody is falling over themselves, gushing because it's Google.  However, Windows Live Search for Mobile on Windows Mobile devices has had voice input query for over a year now.  With each new release, the Windows Live Search for Mobile client does become more and more useful.  How can Windows Live Search for Mobile help you?  Let’s take you on a night on the town, in my case, Seattle.  Before you leave home, you should check the traffic, from the home screen, just navigate to the traffic icon.  If your local area supports traffic display, (that’s most major cities) you’ll see current traffic patterns which refresh every two minutes.  You can toggle view between road view or aerial view. Traffic doesn’t look so bad, so lets find a restaurant.  We’re not sure what we’re in the mood for, so we’ll just browse by category.  From the home screen, select Categories, then we’ll browse the restaurant category, then browse by type of cuisine by selecting Ethnic Restaurants.  This will give a listing of all the restaurants in my defined area that will fit within that category.  After dinner, we’ll go to a movie.  Windows Live Search for Mobile also gives me movie listings and cinema locations.  From the home screen choose Movies.  You can browse either by movie title to find a movie then find out where the film is playing, or I can browser by theatre and find what films are playing at that location. From the Movie Details view, if you click Menu and select “More Movie Info”, you’ll be taken to MSN Entertainment, Mobile version for additional information about the movie including a synopsis.  Remember I was talking about speech recognition in Live Search for Mobile?  So, after the movie, we always like to go out for coffee.  From the home screen, I can touch the “Speak” button where the left soft key would be, while it listens, I just speak my search term “Starbucks”.  It takes a moment to analyze what I’m looking for, then puts my results up in a list. Then I select which Starbucks store I’m looking for to take me to detail view, or I can select Map View to see where it’s located on the map. Whether you’re going across town, or across the country, Windows Live Search for Mobile will also give you directions.  From the home screen, select directions, set your beginning and end locations.  You can choose by inputting an address manually, choosing a city, a location on a map, one of your contacts in your address book, or if your mobile device is GPS equipped, by using your GPS location. And that’s not all…. Windows Live Search for Mobile will also give you your local weather, local gas prices, you can search user defined Live Local (Live Maps) collections that are created on the web, or even search the web itself….all right from this Live Search Mobile client.  If you’ve got a Windows Mobile or Blackberry device, you should download and install Windows Live Search for Mobile client to your device and get started using it to help you find things today.  You can also go to the web version of Windows Live Search at http://m.live.com/ to find directions, directory listings, maps and all of the other features Live Search has to offer.  Using Live Search for Mobile, both the client and web version, requires access to the internet. http://www.windowslive.com/connect/post/techybri.spaces.live.com-Blog-cns!2069E25BCBF5CBC8!163.entryPersonally, I think one of the coolest tools included in Vista is the Snipping Tool.  It allows you to capture all or part of a screen to email or save to your hard drive.  As an added bonus, you can also copy your "snippets" and paste then right into Windows Live Writer.  As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.  In fact, it's how I created this short tutorial. Finding the Snipping Tool Click the Start icon Type "snip" into the search bar The Snipping Tool Should appear Programs    Using the Snipping Tool with Windows Live Writer Make sure that Windows Live Writer is open Open the item that you would like to capture for your blog post Open the Snipping Tool (see directions above :)) Click on the upper-left of the area that you want to capture, hold the mouse button down and drag to the lower-right of the area you want to capture Release the mouse button and viola, the area is captured Press ctrl+c or click Edit -> Copy Move over to your blog post in Windows Live Writer and press crtl+v or click Edit -> Paste You now have a partial screen capture in your blog post http://www.windowslive.com/connect/post/LiveViews.spaces.live.com-Blog-cns!ACAA9A3B4D2792FE!580.entryShow your passion for being a PC user, Get lots of “I’M A PC” Gear. Microsoft have partnered with Zazzle, to create a third party online store featuring an array of "I'M A PC" merchandise .   The Zazzle store features a wide range of products such as ; T-shirts, mouse pads, Buttons, various design of Mugs, hats, Ties, bags and even skateboards with “I’M A PC” pattern. Check it out now and get your favorite Gear from http://www.zazzle.com/imapc To know more about I’M A PC, check Life Without Walls http://www.windowslive.com/connect/post/bobthegeek05.spaces.live.com-Blog-cns!FAC4F13465AB5ADF!438.entryThis kind of feature just gets my inner-geek all fired up! Quote Announce You’re Online with a Signature Sound One thing you’ll probably notice after trying the new beta release of Windows Live Messenger is that it just looks better.  It looks more fun and playful.  And as you dig into it a little more, you’ll see the playfulness isn’t just skin deep.  Something I particularly like is the new signature sound you can add to your online presence.  It’s kind of cool to know who is logging in without even looking at the notification “toast” that pops up from your system tray.  If you want to give it a try, first just click on your display picture in the upper left corner of Messenger, then click on Change your signature sound: Then either choose a sound from one that is built into Messenger, or Add a new Sound: I’m not sure who came up with “Life in Redmond” sound however.  Strange. Try clicking on Add a new sound and you’ll see one of the neat little fun fit-and-finish things in the new beta release.  You can pick any audio file you like, then grab your favorite few seconds of it, add fade in and fade out effects, and you’re set: I can’t wait to start hearing everyone’s favorite guitar riffs and sax solos!  Thankfully, Messenger limits your selected audio to only 5 seconds or less, so your friends won’t be blasting whole songs at you every time they sign in. - Marcus, Windows Live Community Manager