Outer Space

My Cybertwin

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 23:19:49 GMT

I just thought I would give this a try. It's pretty funny actually, and of course, just like me!

Get on your Soapbox

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 23:50:59 GMT

You may not have heard of it yet, but MSN has had a YouTube equivalent service for a few months now, and today it finally took the sign-up process out of the way of their Beta Soapbox video sharing service.

Just like YouTube, you can upload your own videos, tag them and share them with friends etc., but the videos load very quickly and can be of a much higher quality than you may be used to on YouTube.

http://soapbox.msn.com/

Take a look around. It's pretty cool, and there are already a large number of videos uploaded.

Here's what the team had to say about it:

1) Always be watching

Soapbox allows users to browse and watch videos at the same time. This is huge and it makes browsing Soapbox videos a joy.

2) Amazing video quality

A lot of independent bloggers are giving us feedback on the quality of our video and saying that is amongst the best (or the best) of all the user video services.

3) Go full screen without restarting the video

How many times have you been watching a funny video that you wanted to share with an office mate, so you click full screen and then you have to download and restart the video ALL OVER AGAIN?!? Not with Soapbox. Go full screen with a single click of a button.

4) Beautiful embedded player

We put a lot of thought and effort in designing this player. We wanted to make something that a user would be proud to have on your blog. (Also, for some cool undocumented features check out the team blog – link is also on the bottom of the Soapbox page).

5) RSS feeds for everything!

Get an RSS feed for a tag, a search, a users videos, anything.

November 27th 2006

Thu, 30 Nov 2006 19:56:35 GMT

Well, I never thought I would say I appreciated Humvees until today. At around 3pm on Monday November 27th, it started to snow. Just a little at first, but then it came down faster and faster and started to cover everything in sight. I had meetings at work until 5pm, but I left as soon as I could after that - around 5:20pm. I had 10 miles to travel home. It took 3.5 hours.

From the start, it was a standstill on the roads leaving Redmond and for most of the time I made great progress at 1 to 2 miles per hour as the volume of traffic, the icy roads and lack of visibility through the snow storm kept everyone at low speeds.

I don't have a particularly good car for this kind of weather. It's basically a sports car with low profile tyres and rear wheel drive. At least being a manual (stick shift) I was able to keep it in 1st gear most of the way home. However, it's not grippy in the snow and ice and at the first hill downwards, I slid a little way, luckily nowhere near other cars. I took the main roads all the way, and then came across a jam of people trying to get up a short hill eastbound with traffic lights at the top. Once you stop on a hill like that, 2 wheel drive cars just couldn't get going again and just slid around. I managed to avoid that hill by cutting right, going for a while, then left and left again to take the same hill from the south side which was less steep and continuously moving.

A little farther on, still doing an average of 2mph, and still on main roads, I needed to get over one more major hill before reaching the next main road home. I decided to chance it, since any alternatives were much worse, and being a main road, I was hoping that most of the ice and snow had been swept away by other vehicles.

Well, I made it most of the way, but about three quarters of the way up, the car lost traction and couldn't make any forward progress at all. The back end started sliding out towards the other side of the road and I just had to stop and try to get lined up again and take another run at it. All the while there was a line of traffic behind me, just as I had been behind a line of traffic ahead of me, which was now way over the other side of the hill.

By this time, 2.5 hours had passed, and I was about 4 miles from home. I was seriously considering letting the car back down the hill into the grass bank to the right and park it there. I was holding up too much traffic and would have to walk home.

Just at that point, coming the other way, was a Humvee, the kind that looks a little like a Land Rover with no rear cover. It had huge winter tyres with thick tread and chains on every one of the 4 wheels driven by the engine. The driver stopped as he lined up with me on the other side and asked if I needed help. Yes! Thank you! I couldn't believe my luck. At just the point I would have had to spend another couple of hours walking home, here was someone in the only practical car for this weather, offering to tow me up the hill. Well after a few minutes involving the locating of the tow hook, which is stowed in the boot (trunk) and needed to be screwed in, we were soon making progress up the hill and just at the brow we stopped and he unhooked me, turned around and left after profuse thanks from me.

I then proceeded to make my way over the rest of the hill and back down, where I then sat for 45 minutes not moving at all behind another line of traffic. Apparently the same thing as I had been doing, had been occuring on this side of the hill where other cars unable to make it up the hill, had just been abandoned and caused a hold up on the other side of the road and cars and SUVs that could make it had to go around them.

After 3.5 hours I finally got home. I was so relieved and the car was covered in a thick layer of snow. It was so nice to be home, and I was thankful I didn't have further to go, otherwise it might have resulted in a night in the car.

Online Search and Calculator?

Thu, 14 Sep 2006 00:41:01 GMT

You're going to think I am biased, but really, have you tried making http://www.live.com your home page for Search (instead of your no doubt current favorite http://www.google.com)?

The search results are more relevant, it's just come out of Beta, and seems just as easy to use with more custom options than Google. There is a blog entry available on MSDN that lists the enhancements to the new Live.com Search service.

However, the thing that surprised me recently, was that the Live.com search page, can also be used as a Calculator. In fact you can enter quite complex mathematical equations and it knows what to do with them.

Just to experiment, I tried entering “25 * 5 + 45 / 78 - x + 9.2 = 56.7769231” in the search box of Google and Live, and I was amazed by the results, Google gave me “your search did not match any document”, but Live Search gave me “25*5+45/78- x+9.2=56.7769231 : x=78”.

Live executed that mathematical equation and gave me the value of X. Pretty good I thought.

I'm hoping that eventually, it will also generate graphs on command e.g. y = x² + 2x − 3, but it doesn't do it yet, and sometimes, just entering an equation into a search box would get tricky without some kind of ability to draw brackets etc. Still, you have to start somewhere I guess.

Gone Phishing?

Sun, 20 Aug 2006 02:17:54 GMT

No, it's not a mispelling. I really did mean "Phishing". Phishing has become the commonly used term for an email or website which pretends to be something it's not, in an effort to obtain personal information from the unsuspecting user. Some of the more common ones tend to be emails that look like they come from eBay or PayPal stating that your account information needs updating, otherwise your account will be shut down. These emails have a link which tends to look like the real thing and take you to a site which looks like the one that belongs to the company in question, but in fact, it's just a scam, and it's not actually their site at all.
Well Microsoft Windows Live has a few safeguards available to help the unwary user spot the scam before they get to the point of entering any personal information into the Phisher's site.
One of the more recent ones is the Windows Live Toolbar, which is now out of beta and available at http://toolbar.live.com. The product was released July 24th along with integration to Windows Live Gallery . There are a number of new search enhancements inside the Windows Live Toolbar’s latest 3.0 release.

Wordwheeling of past search terms & suggesting similar search terms in the Toolbar text box so that you can more quickly and precisely find what you’re looking for.

Custom buttons to extend your search across 3^rd party provided search / content buttons in the Toolbar (all custom buttons are available from the community at the Windows Live Gallery beta site: http://gallery.live.com ) Custom buttons let you personalize the toolbar with buttons about topics and Web sites you care about.

Smart Menu enables immediate access to information about things you select on any Web page. Whenever you highlight text that Smart Menu understands, a menu bar automatically displays near the highlighted text, providing you shortcuts to access maps, weather, stocks or web calling through Windows Live Messenger.

Mapping buttons – Maps picks up multiple addresses on any Web page and lets you simultaneously map them all out on Windows Live Local.

Onfolio - Easily save, organize and share your online research with Onfolio. Capture copies of pictures, text or Web pages to your PC for reliable access later. Organize your Web research and publish it in emails, blogs and documents. Search through your clippings anytime with Windows Desktop Search.

OneCare Advisor - Increase your protection against Web fraud and financial scams with Microsoft Phishing Filter. Our improved blocking technology helps prevent accidental sharing of personal information. Get free basic virus scanning on-demand.

You can download and install from http://toolbar.live.com.
I did this today, and was disappointed to find that I was asked to Reboot after installation, since it takes my laptop a good 10 minutes to be ready to use after starting up, and it's a real pain to have to reboot after all that has already taken place.
However, after rebooting, the installation process continues, and begins to convert your Internet Explorer Favorites into Live Favorites. This just means that if you want to, you can store your Favorites online tied to your Windows Live ID (your login name), so that they are available to you from any other computer you care to log into.
Then, if you have the Microsoft Office Outlook email applicaiton installed, it will add the toolbar and search into it.
Then it installs the Popup blocker, but will disable the new Windows Live Popup Blocker if you happen to have already enabled the one that comes with Internet Explorer. You can change this later if you wish, but they appear to do pretty much the same thing.
Close to the end of the installation process, which takes around 5 minutes in all (if you don't count reboot time), you're asked if you would like to participate in the customer feedback process, where it will collect anonymous data about usage of the toolbar. This is actually a good idea, since although it collects information about how you use it, Microsoft isn't able to find out who used it in that way. So it seems really invasive, but it could really be anyone to them.
Finally, you can say yes to being a Phish Detective, which is great. I've always wanted to be a detective, but I'm no Magnum P.I. so I have to be content with reporting to Microsoft, any suspicious website I come across, so that everyone can be forewarned should they click on the same link I did, some time in the future.
Now, I will give it a try for a while, and see what happens.

Live Spaces are Live

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 17:27:04 GMT

Well it's finally here. The promised switch to the Live.com version of Spaces. Originally it was spaces.msn.com and now it's spaces.live.com.

Along with the change in the website address, is a major overhaul in the look and feel of the Spaces application. We can now add a public list of Friends to our Space, which then enables you to navigate to their Spaces or Profiles etc. There are new tools for the visitors and the owner too.

You can even add Gadgets, of the sort you might know from http://www.live.com which should by now, be your home page

More details about the changes today can be found on The Space Craft - the Space maintained by the team who brought this to you.

Origami Unfolds

Thu, 09 Mar 2006 19:25:55 GMT

Well, it's officially launched now, and it's pretty much as I expected. A small tablet PC with a host of wireless and media features.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/262289_msftorigami09.html

On the Microsoft Ultra Mobile PC (the official name of the products being produced) website the functionality is explained, including WiFi networking, Blue Tooth, touch-screen, TV, MP3 player, Games, Movie Player and Hard drive for storage. It will run Windows Live Messenger, Mail, Internet Explorer etc., just like any other regular PC, but with plans to make it no more than 1 Pound in weight, and a 7" display, it will easily replace that laptop you only use for viewing Ebay or answering email too.

The price range, of between $500 and $1000 looks good too. I may wait for the later versions to come out but Samsung is committed to producing one by April this year. The early models are going to have some problems too, like battery life, being around 3 hours at first, but later models are bound to resolve this over time. The inclusion of 2 USB ports means that you don't have to use the screen to enter text when you're not travelling, you can easily attach an external Keyboard.

Looks like a great idea for Christmas this year!

Here's a link to an interview with the architect for the project: http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=169962

John Tokash also has an entry in his blog all about the UMPC: http://blog.tokash.org/2006/03/08/channel-9-origamiumpc-video-is-up/ along with a video on MSN Video.

Origami Project

Fri, 03 Mar 2006 01:24:45 GMT

A lot of buzz has recently been generated by references to the new Microsoft Origami project. It seems to be a nice self-contained tablet computer about the size of a paperback book.

I've seen hardware like this before, but either the market wasn't ready for it, or the software and operating systems were clunky, or the screens were too small, or used too much power etc. However, the timing of this indicates that maybe, finally, the stars are aligning and all the parts are in the right place to make this a success. Let's see what you think.

http://www.origamiproject.com/2

http://youtube.com/watch?v=CJQpUenJCq0

It will be interesting to see this project unfold...

Philosophy of Life

Thu, 23 Feb 2006 01:38:51 GMT

I came across this little gem today, and thought I would share this rather unique way of looking at what's important in your life as you live it.

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the 2 cups of coffee...

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full.

They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar.

He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full.

They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar.

Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full.

The students responded with a unanimous "yes".

The professor then produced 2 cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, filling the empty spaces between the sand particles.

The students laughed.

"Now," said the professor, as the laughter subsided, " I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life.

The golf balls are the important things-your beliefs, your family, your children, your health, your friends, and your favorite passions - things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, and your car.

The sand is everything else - the small stuff. "If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued, "there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you.

Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first - the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented.

The professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked. It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend."

Is your Space slow? Remove the Media Player Powertoy.

Sat, 28 Jan 2006 23:03:42 GMT

Based on some early investigations where some people's MSN Space was running really slowly whenever they tried to open a photo album, or leave a comment, or almost anything that required an action on a Space, we have discovered that removing the Media Player powertoy from your Space will improve matters in most cases.

The problem is not related to the servers delivering the content, but something about the Media Player toy which is making your computer work hard whenever it has to render it and remove it when moving onto another page.

I have just temporarily removed it from my Space here, and it appears to have resolved the problem.

I will put it back on my Space, when the Spaces team have had a chance to find out why it causes this problem, but I thought I would share the workaround with you.

Live Contacts

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 19:28:56 GMT

You may already have seen that a major update of MSN Spaces took place yesterday, and all the new features are listed on this site.

My favorite feature though is Live Contacts, not least because I helped it come to fruition.

Basically, you can go to your Profile through your Space, and update your Personal and Business contact information. Then you can invite your friends to subscribe to changes.

If they subscribe, then in their online Address Book, such as that shown in Hotmail or in Messenger, there is a link created between your Profile, and their Contact record about you.

Whenever you change your details, such as a new phone number, then anyone subscribing to your changes, will see them in their own Contact record about you - automatically.

You still have control of course, of who can see your Profile, so you can easily make sure only your friends can subscribe to changes. Basically, if they can't access or see your Profile, then they can't subscribe to changes to it either.

This link has more information: http://spaces.msn.com/thespacecraft/blog/cns!8AA773FE0A12B9E3!3891.entry

Stitching your best Group Photo together

Tue, 17 Jan 2006 23:47:24 GMT

Came across this piece of news today and had to share.

Have you ever spent time taking 6 or 7 photos, just trying to get everyone's faces turned correctly and smiling correctly? Ever wish you could take the best parts of each photo and glue them together? Well now apparently, you can with something new from Microsoft Research, called "Group Shot".

MSR's Group Shot helps you create a perfect group photo out a series of group photos. With Group Shot you can select your favorite parts in each shot of the series and Group Shot will automatically build a composite image.

It's free, and available to the public to try: http://research.microsoft.com/projects/GroupShot/

In time for Christmas? UPS says yes, no matter how late!

Wed, 14 Dec 2005 18:18:43 GMT

Not feeling 100% well yesterday, I went to bed and turned the light off around 10pm last night. All was quiet. It was getting foggy outside despite being a relatively clear night, so the moonlight was washing through the air, reflected off the tiny water droplets, giving the ground a strange white hue. It looked almost like daylight out there.

I drifted off to an uneasy sleep, since the common cold soreness I was getting, was tickling the back of my throat, making me want to cough every minute or so. This eventually subsided and I was fully asleep by 11pm I'm certain.

An hour later, at 12:07am, the dog barked, and I was roused to the sound of a truck engine idling nearby. Since we live on a country road, this is highly unusual, so I was naturally concerned and jumped out of bed to look out through the blinds to the driveway at the front of the house.

There, in the semi-twilight still bathed by the whiteness of the moon and the fog, was a large dark brown UPS van, clearly trying to turn around at the top of the drive.

The poor guy had actually delivered a package from JC Penney at midnight to our house!

Watching him finally get the van turned around and drive off, I was relieved it wasn't something more sinister, and with heart still racing I returned to bed. It took another hour or so to get to sleep, and of course the dog was jumpy and kept growling from time to time by way of warning.

So, I write this with mixed feelings this morning. Wonderful service by UPS. Amazing dedication by that driver. I will definitely use UPS for urgent packages in the future. However, surely both the driver and myself deserve to sleep undisturbed after midnight?

Thanks guys, but can you please let your drivers take the night off from house to house deliveries after say, 10pm?

Is Google your Friend?

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 21:58:30 GMT

I'm not one to blast competitors, but I am all for fair competition where the consumer is able to make fully informed decisions. There are times when I use http://search.msn.com and if I don't find it there, I do use http://www.google.com, but recently I came across a good reason to use Google as infrequently as possible, on this site: http://www.rinf.com/news/nov05/googlefacts.html. Take a look. It lists the following interesting points:

1. Google's immortal cookie:
Google was the first search engine to use a cookie that expires in 2038. This was at a time when federal websites were prohibited from using persistent cookies altogether. Now it's years later, and immortal cookies are commonplace among search engines ; Google set the standard because no one bothered to challenge them. This cookie places a unique ID number on your hard disk. Anytime you land on a Google page, you get a Google cookie if you don't already have one. If you have one, they read and record your unique ID number.

2. Google records everything they can:
For all searches they record the cookie ID, your Internet IP address, the time and date, your search terms, and your browser configuration. Increasingly, Google is customizing results based on your IP number. This is referred to in the industry as "IP delivery based on geolocation."

3. Google retains all data indefinitely:
Google has no data retention policies. There is evidence that they are able to easily access all the user information they collect and save.

4. Google won't say why they need this data:
Inquiries to Google about their privacy policies are ignored. When the New York Times (2002-11-28) asked Sergey Brin about whether Google ever gets subpoenaed for this information, he had no comment.

5. Google hires spooks:
Matt Cutts, a key Google engineer, used to work for the National Security Agency. Google wants to hire more people with security clearances, so that they can peddle their corporate assets to the spooks in Washington.

6. Google's toolbar is spyware:
With the advanced features enabled, Google's free toolbar for Explorer phones home with every page you surf, and yes, it reads your cookie too. Their privacy policy confesses this, but that's only because Alexa lost a class-action lawsuit when their toolbar did the same thing, and their privacy policy failed to explain this. Worse yet, Google's toolbar updates to new versions quietly, and without asking. This means that if you have the toolbar installed, Google essentially has complete access to your hard disk every time you connect to Google (which is many times a day). Most software vendors, and even Microsoft, ask if you'd like an updated version. But not Google. Any software that updates automatically presents a massive security risk.

7. Google's cache copy is illegal:
Judging from Ninth Circuit precedent on the application of U.S. copyright laws to the Internet, Google's cache copy appears to be illegal. The only way a webmaster can avoid having his site cached on Google is to put a "noarchive" meta in the header of every page on his site. Surfers like the cache, but webmasters don't. Many webmasters have deleted questionable material from their sites, only to discover later that the problem pages live merrily on in Google's cache. The cache copy should be "opt-in" for webmasters, not "opt-out."

8. Google is not your friend:
By now Google enjoys a 75 percent monopoly for all external referrals to most websites. Webmasters cannot avoid seeking Google's approval these days, assuming they want to increase traffic to their site. If they try to take advantage of some of the known weaknesses in Google's semi-secret algorithms, they may find themselves penalized by Google, and their traffic disappears. There are no detailed, published standards issued by Google, and there is no appeal process for penalized sites. Google is completely unaccountable. Most of the time Google doesn't even answer email from webmasters.

9. Google is a privacy time bomb:
With 200 million searches per day, most from outside the U.S., Google amounts to a privacy disaster waiting to happen. Those newly-commissioned data-mining bureaucrats in Washington can only dream about the sort of slick efficiency that Google has already achieved.

Your choice of course :-)

Here's a collection of Google Watching articles: http://www.google-watch.org/

Got Photos?

Wed, 09 Nov 2005 20:25:40 GMT

Quite a few posts ago, I displayed some photos I took of the general feeling of panic and extra security checks going on in London when the second (and thankfully flawed) bombing attack took place during the summer.

Well, it seems that I, along with many others, could have made some money from my photos!

I have just come across this site, which I also saw reviewed in Wired Magazine, and they will accept Mobile Phone Photos and any other photos you submit, of anything you consider either newsworthy, or providing additional views or evidence of events and actions around the world. Just like a newspaper photographer, even your mobile phone photos can be submitted and used by newspapers and television anywhere in the world.

So, I recommend you sign up on http://www.scoopt.com and if you find yourself near to the action, don't forget to snap a few photos with your mobile phone, and submit them to the site. You could get anything from $50 upwards for your photos if they manage to find a buyer for you. Unless you feel like peddling the photo yourself, this company will provide a valuable service for even the grainiest photo, so you don't have much to lose by just sending them your views of the news.

What is live.com for exactly?

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 22:39:38 GMT

If you are used to having your home page as http://www.msn.com or even http://my.msn.com then you are probably happy with the programmed content provided to you by MSN which is personalized content presented in a very magazine-like manner. You can think of it as a TV and you get to hold the remote to select what content you want to see on there, but you are still only provided with a limited choice of what the TV company wants to provide to you, when they want to provide it.

http://www.live.com however is more like the DVR (Tivo) of the online information world. This site, in addition to pulling in your Windows Live Mail inbox (previously known as Hotmail Kahuna) lets you set up Searches and RSS feeds which are automatically refreshed whenever you view the site. You get to choose what is going to be on the site, and you are in control.

http://my.msn.com - the programmed feed

http://www.live.com - your personal window on the world

Have a look around http://www.live.com - I think you will love the control you have over it. It's really nice to be able to add regular searches and have the results updated every time you visit. This is definitely going to be my home page from now on.

How do I convert from start.com to live.com?

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 22:22:43 GMT

If you have already been using http://www.start.com and have populated various sections with RSS feeds and gadgets, you probably don't want to have to search and enter those again on your new http://www.live.com site.

There is a way of exporting from one and importing to the other, all of your stuff under My Web.

On your Start.com page, if you click on the Advanced link at the bottom of the page (it looks like it's part of Search but isn't), you will see an option to Import an OPML file, and immediately below that, an option to Export your feed subscriptions to an OPML file.

If you click on the link, you will get a new window with the XML containing your feed information. Select File, Save As and save it as an OPML file.

You can then either send it to friends or yourself at home etc., and then on the live.com page, you can click on the Advanced Options link and Import the OPML file you created earlier. Voila! All of those feeds are now selectable under the "My Web" menu on the left, for you to drag and drop onto the page where you want them.

Don't forget to Sign In first though, otherwise all your settings won't necessarily be remembered.

What is Windows Live?

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 22:16:47 GMT

I don't usually simply quote other sites when making an entry in my blog, but the following quote (from Microsoft Presspass) says it all. I'll be trying it all out over the next few months, as I hope you will too, and I'll be sure to tell you what I find. :

Windows Live

Windows Live™ is a set of personal Internet services and software designed to bring together in one place all of the relationships, information and interests people care about most, with more safety and security features across their PC, devices and the Web. Some Windows Live services entered an early beta phase on Nov. 1, 2005; these and future beta updates can be found at http://ideas.live.com.

Microsoft’s research shows that people increasingly are spending more time online, but many are frustrated with the fragmented nature of their Internet experience. Windows Live is designed for people who want to easily manage and create their information, interests and relationships, saving them time and effort and allowing them to better manage their life and their world. Designed to put the individual in control by offering complete choice and customization, Windows Live looks to seamlessly bring together the information, relationships and interests they care about along the following four pillars.

Find and Discover Information

Windows Live will provide individuals with the tools to easily find and organize important information, no matter where it is:

•

Live.com. The Windows Live home page, http://www.Live.com, is a software-powered service that enables consumers to build a fully personalized home page that automatically delivers the information they want, no matter who published it, so they can stay on top of the news, blogs, RSS feeds and other information they really care about. Live.com will become the place to seamlessly access other Windows Live services and will serve as a great place to experience Windows Live Search. Live.com will deliver a new, innovative, search-driven experience that will make it an effective place to perform Internet searches. It includes features such as searching for RSS feeds (news, for example), and allows a user to easily add these feeds directly to the page as well as saving persistent searches. Live.com will also be a platform for third-party developers to build and deliver customized services, called “gadgets,” to customers. Live.com is available in beta form at http://www.live.com, and more information can be found at http://ideas.live.com. Windows Live will be offered alongside MSN, which will be the destination for compelling programmed content experiences to consumers. Windows Live services will be available on MSN, and the trusted content from MSN.com can be consumed by people using Live.com, should they choose to make it a part of their personal online experience. Microsoft expects many customers will use both MSN.com and Live.com, which will be made easy via a seamless experience.

•

Windows Live Search. With expected delivery in 2006, Windows Live Search will deliver powerful and personal search services that help consumers find what they are looking for on the Web, their desktop, their mobile device or in their local geographic area, such as instant answers, documents, pictures, multimedia content, local information and immersive maps. Windows Live Search will be a core element of the overall Windows Live experience, powering compelling scenarios across the Windows Live services.

Enhance and Deepen Relationships

Windows Live will provide users with a set of new and more meaningful ways to communicate and share with the people they care about:

•	Windows Live™ Mail. Windows Live Mail is Microsoft’s new, global Web mail service, built from the ground up to be faster, safer and simpler while delivering powerful new customer scenarios. Currently in limited beta testing, Windows Live Mail will continue to evolve through customer feedback, scaling to more customers over the coming months. MSN® Hotmail® customers will be able to use Windows Live Mail with their existing Hotmail ID. People can sign up to join the Windows Live Mail beta at http://ideas.live.com.
•	Windows Live™ Messenger. Windows Live Messenger builds on MSN Messenger to help people develop even deeper connections with the people they care about through a variety of experiences — from communication to sharing. Future enhancements will enable people to place PC-based calling through Windows Live Messenger (this feature will be provided through third-party commercial relationships). Windows Live Messenger will also allow users to more easily share files such as their personal pictures and documents with their contacts. People can learn more about the Windows Live Messenger beta in the coming months at http://ideas.live.com.
•	Windows Live™ Favorites is a service that enables individuals to access their Microsoft Internet Explorer and MSN Explorer favorites from any PC that’s online. The service is currently in beta form at http://ideas.live.com.
•	Windows Live for mobile devices. People do not always have easy access to a PC, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be able to access their important communications or information via Windows Live services. Microsoft is working to ensure that Windows Live services including Windows Live Mail and Windows Live Messenger and more are available through mobile devices — from rich experiences on Microsoft Windows Mobile®-powered devices to basic Internet-enabled phones.

Explore and Find New Interests

Windows Live will deliver new ways for customers to discover and explore:

•

Social Networking. Social Networking features for Windows Live will be based on the people whom customers know rather than strangers who may visit their blog or Web site. Social Networking in Windows Live will be centered on a customer’s unified contact list, enabling the user to find and connect with people who have similar interests, but may be new to his or her social circle. Customers will be able to choose and control who has access to discover and connect with them.

•

Windows Live Spaces. Microsoft will continue to invest in services that help people express themselves, and find, connect and nurture deeper relationships with others around the world. MSN Spaces will transition to Windows Live Spaces as Microsoft adds new features to the service next year.

Protection and Performance

Windows Live will offer consumers a set of tools and services to help keep their computing experience safer:

•	Windows Live™ Safety Center. Helping protect customers is important to Microsoft. The Windows Live Safety Center is a free, Web-based, on-demand service that will enable customers to scan their PC for viruses and clean their PC, as well as perform other tasks to help protect their PC and Windows Live services. Windows Live Safety Center is currently in beta form and can be accessed through http://ideas.live.com.
•	Windows OneCare™ Live. Customers will be able to take the health of their PC to the next level with Windows OneCare Live, a robust subscription service that not only helps protect your PC from viruses and spyware, but also helps ensure that it continues to run well by keeping it up to date and helping make sure the system is maintained regularly. Windows OneCare Live will also manage backups to help give customers peace of mind that they won’t lose the information, photos, music, documents or other files on their PC that are important to them. Windows OneCare Live is currently in managed beta testing, and people can nominate themselves participate at http://ideas.live.com.
•	Integrated protection. Beyond the Windows Live Safety Center and Windows OneCare Live, Microsoft is also making many more investments to help protect customers as they use Windows Live services, such as the Microsoft Phishing Filter, currently available for the MSN Search Toolbar and which will be available in the future for Windows Live Search customers, Smartscreen spam and phishing filtering for Windows Live Mail, and much more.

Are you Insured? What defines an accident anyway?

Thu, 20 Oct 2005 01:58:53 GMT

If you have listened to the news on the radio over the past few days, you couldn't help but hear about the plight of poor 60 year old Ethel Adams, who was innocently driving down the road last March in her little Hyundai, when a truck suddenly appeared on the same side of the road coming the other way, and hit her car head-on, crushing it, and nearly killing Ethel.

Ethel spent the following 9 days in a coma and a further 5 months in hospital and a nursing home recovering from her injuries, generating over $500,000 in medical bills, and continues to receive physical therapy in the hope that she will walk again.

Apparently, another driver by the name of Michael R. Testa was in a rage with his girlfriend and was responsible for ramming his girlfriend's truck from behind whilst she was driving, forcing it onto the other side of the road, whereupon it hit Ethel's car coming the other way.

Michael Testa was not insured, which is of course, against the law, but the fact remains.

So, in these cases, the victim rather than the person causing the crash, has to claim on their own insurance. We carry a special "Uninsured Driver" coverage on our driving insurance policies (by Law) for just this kind of thing.

Ethel was insured through Farmers Insurance. A very well known and hitherto, respected insurance company.

Farmers Insurance refused to pay. In their view, the crash was caused by a deliberate act, and therefore was not an accident. They only pay out in the event of an accident.

What a cruel and unfeeling time to play with symantics and refuse to pay! As we all know, insurance companies in general, will do anything they can to get out of paying out. You can be paying in for years and get nothing in return. They are one of the unique industries who actually hope you will never use their product.

In my view, the initial ramming may have been deliberate, but the crash was not deliberate, not matter who started the process. If you think this way, then you could start going all the way back to Michael's birth, and ask if that was planned or accidental eh? Given his apparent IQ level, you might wonder!

This might be the scenario in that case: Dear Farmers Insurance - please pay up, since Michael's birth was an accident, and he caused the crash :-) (I don't know of course, this is just conjecture).

Anyway, you may be happy to learn that Farmers Insurance were forced to pay up in the end. Today, the Insurance Commissioner, Mike Kreidler told them to pay, so they paid.

What a shame they had to be forced to pay out, but we wish Ethel a speedy recovery and live in hope, whilst we pay our insurance premiums, that we may never be in the same situation.

Farmers Insurance though, is definitely not going to see a penny from me.

Media Player Powertoy and My Music

Mon, 03 Oct 2005 21:14:37 GMT

Well, I added the Media Player Powertoy over there on the left side of my Space, with the intention of having one of my compositions available to play, but found out that the location of my tracks, is storing them as ASF files, and the current version of the Spaces Media Player is restricting me from playing ASF and ASX files. It supports all the other audio/video file extensions, but not those, for some security concerns.

This is the music I wanted you to hear. These are my own compositions, made mostly for dancing and working out, and I'd welcome comments:

http://www.acidplanet.com/artist.asp?songs=423248&T=5548

A little birdie told me though, that the Spaces site will support them in the next release later this year, so I will leave the media player up there on my Space, until the next release supports my files!

(Copyright Stuff: You can freely listen to these tracks for your own enjoyment (or otherwise), but please don't use them for any commercial project without contacting me)

UPDATE - October 7th: Jazzman93612 provided me with the tricks I needed to make my music available directly from the media player here on my Space! Just click on the Play button in the Media Player and listen to the tracks. Thanks Jazzman!

Photo Album: Blog Images

Sat, 17 Feb 2007 13:22:07 GMT

Blog Images

Photo Album: Optical Illusions

Sun, 10 Sep 2006 14:12:29 GMT

Optical Illusions

Illusion1

Illusion10

Illusion12

Illusion13

Illusion2

Illusion3

Illusion4

Illusion5

Illusion6

Illusion7

More Photos...

Photo Album: A few more

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 19:14:09 GMT

A few more

tanlines

LouisianaQuarter

Seattle at night

Count the Sheep

Ctrl-Alt-Del

downloaded

Escargot

exercise

Kids and Computers

More Photos...

Photo Album: More funny pictures

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 22:18:51 GMT

More funny pictures

Untitled Photo

More Photos...

Photo Album: Driving and Cell Phones don't mix

Mon, 13 Jun 2005 17:56:28 GMT

Driving and Cell Phones don't mix

Crashing

Crashing2

Crashing3

Crashing5

Crashing6

Photo Album: Winter Fun

Tue, 25 Jan 2005 17:19:16 GMT

Winter Fun

butttwisters

Helpme

Lookmanohands

Stuck

Stuck3

Stuck5

Takethatsister

Winterlover

Minnesotafridge

Stuck2

More Photos...

Photo Album: Pets

Fri, 17 Dec 2004 02:21:41 GMT

Pets

they are great at decorating for the holidays

they are happy to test the water for you

they are happy to test your food

they are patriotic

they converse with each other

they have great expectations

they help you when you're down

they know who's boss

They look out for smaller ones

they love their teddies

More Photos...

Photo Album: Never Exported

Mon, 13 Dec 2004 08:18:48 GMT

Never Exported

only_in_Japan1

only_in_Japan2

only_in_Japan3

only_in_Japan4

only_in_Japan5

only_in_Japan6

only_in_Japan7

only_in_Japan8