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November 29
Office Live (Open/Save) Add-in installs new menu options in Microsoft Office 2007 and a toolbar in Microsoft Office XP & 2003. You will be able to Open & Save documents located in Office Live Workspace directly from Microsoft Office Word, Office Excel, and Office PowerPoint.
November 28
Other improvements include:
- Enhanced viewing experience for charts in Excel Mobile.
- Ability to view SmartArt in PowerPoint Mobile.
- Ability to view and extract files from compressed (.zip) folders.
With Microsoft Office Outlook Connector, you can use Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007 to access and manage your Windows Live Hotmail or Office Live Mail accounts, including e-mail messages and contacts for free! Calendar, tasks and notes can also be accessed and managed in Outlook for accounts with a paid subscription.
Outlook Connector enables you to use your Live Hotmail accounts within Outlook:
- Read and send your Office Live Mail/Windows Live Hotmail e-mail messages.
- Manage your Live Mail Contacts.
- Use advanced options for blocking junk e-mail messages.
- Manage multiple e-mail accounts in one place.
With a paid subscription, Outlook Connector enables these additional features:
- Manage, share, and synchronize your Windows Live Calendar in Outlook.
- Access your Tasks and Notes.
Microsoft has released four updated Sysinternals programs. (Thanks Otto)
- ZoomIt v1.72: This update enables you to center the mouse with the space bar when in drawing mode, adds an option to view time elapsed after the break timer expires, and reverses the keys used to draw lines and arrows.
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PsExec v1.92: Fixes a bug in the -i option that prevented it from correctly displaying windows on the console desktop.
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DebugView v4.74: Fixes another race condition that could cause system hangs on first run.
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November 20
"Firefox 3 Beta 1 is based on the new Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 27 months and includes nearly 2 million lines of code changes, fixing more than 11,000 issues. Gecko 1.9 includes some major re-architecting for performance, stability, correctness, and code simplification and sustainability. Firefox 3 has been built on top of this new platform resulting in a more secure, easier to use, more personal product with a lot under the hood to offer website and Firefox add-on developers."
More Security
- One click site info: Click the site favicon in the location bar to see who owns the site. Identity verification is prominently displayed and easier to understand. In later versions, Extended Validation SSL certificate information will be displayed.
- Malware Protection: malware protection warns users when they arrive at sites which are known to install viruses, spyware, trojans or other malware. You can test it here (note: our blacklist of malware sites is not yet activated).
- New Web Forgery Protection page: the content of pages suspected as web forgeries is no longer shown. You can test it here.
- New SSL error pages: clearer and stricter error pages are used when Firefox encounters an invalid SSL certificate.
- Add-ons and Plugin version check: Firefox now automatically checks add-on and plugin versions and will disable older, insecure versions.
- Secure add-on updates: to improve add-on update security, add-ons that provide updates in an insecure manner will be disabled.
- Anti-virus integration: Firefox will inform anti-virus software when downloading executables.
- Vista Parental Controls: Firefox now respects the Vista system-wide parental control setting for disabling file downloads.
Easier to Use
- Easier password management: an information bar replaces the old password dialog so you can now save passwords after a successful login.
- Simplified add-on installation: the add-ons whitelist has been removed making it possible to install extensions from third-party sites in fewer clicks.
- New Download Manager: the revised download manager makes it much easier to locate downloaded files.
- Resumable downloading: users can now resume downloads after restarting the browser or resetting your network connection.
- Full page zoom: from the View menu and via keyboard shortcuts, the new zooming feature lets you zoom in and out of entire pages, scaling the layout, text and images.
- Tab scrolling and quickmenu: tabs are easier to locate with the new tab scrolling and tab quickmenu.
- Save what you were doing: Firefox will prompt users to save tabs on exit.
- Optimized Open in Tabs behavior: opening a folder of bookmarks in tabs now appends the new tabs rather than overwriting.
- Location and Search bar size can now be customized with a simple resizer item.
- Text selection improvements: Multiple text selections can be made with Ctrl/Cmd; Double-click drag selects in "word-by-word" mode; Triple-clicking selects a paragraph.
- Find toolbar: the Find toolbar now opens with the current selection.
- Plugin management: users can disable individual plugins in the Add-on Manager.
- Integration with Vista: Firefox's menus now display using Vista's native theme.
- Integration with the Mac: Firefox now uses the OS X spellchecker and supports Growl for notifications of completed downloads and available updates.
More Personal
- Star button: quickly add bookmarks from the location bar with a single click; a second click lets you file and tag them.
- Tags: associate keywords with your bookmarks to sort them by topic.
- Location bar & auto-complete: type the title or tag of a page in the location bar to quickly find the site you were looking for in your history; favicons, bookmark, and tag indicators help you see where results are coming from.
- Smart Places Folder: quickly access your recently bookmarked and tagged pages, as well as you more frequently visited pages with the new smart places folder on your bookmark toolbar.
- Bookmarks and History Organizer: advanced search of your history and bookmarks with multiple views and smart folders to store your frequent searches.
- Web-based protocol handlers: web applications, such as your favorite webmail provider, can now be used instead of desktop applications for handling mailto: links from other sites. Similar support is available for other protocols (Web applications will have to first enable this by registering as handlers with Firefox).
- Easy to use Download Actions: a new Applications preferences pane provides a better UI for configuring handlers for various file types and protocol schemes.
Improved Platform for Developers
- New graphics and font handling: new graphics and text rendering architectures in Gecko 1.9 provides rendering improvements in CSS, SVG as well as improved display of fonts with ligatures and complex scripts.
- Native Web page forms: HTML forms on Web pages now have a native look and feel on Mac OS X and Linux (Gnome) desktops.
- Color management: (set gfx.color_management.enabled on in about:config and restart the browser to enable.) Firefox can now adjust images with embedded color profiles.
- Offline support: enables web applications to provide offline functionality (website authors must add support for offline browsing to their site for this feature to be available to users).
- A more complete overview of Firefox 3 for developers is available for website and add-on developers.
Improved Performance
- Reliability: A user's bookmarks, history, cookies, and preferences are now stored in a transactionally secure database format which will prevent data loss even if their system crashes.
- Speed: Major architectural changes (such as the move to Cairo and a rewrite to how reflowing a page layout works) put foundations in place for major performance tuning which have resulted in speed increases in Beta 1, and will show further gains in future Beta releases.
- Memory usage: Over 300 individual memory leaks have been plugged, and a new XPCOM cycle collector completely eliminates many more. Developers are continuing to work on optimizing memory use (by releasing cached objects more quickly) and reducing fragmentation.
NOTE: Firefox 3 Beta 1 is a developer preview release of Mozilla's next generation Firefox browser and is being made available for testing purposes only. Blah blah blah
"Windows Home Server will automatically backup your home computers to the home server and allow you to easily restore the entire computer or an individual file or folder to a previous point in time. The Windows Home Server Backup solution backs up only the data that has not already been backed up. Even if you have several copies of the same data on different computers, the data is backed up only once on your home server and your home server keeps track of what data was stored on each home computer on each day. This makes it efficient in the time it takes for backups to complete and the amount of space that is used on your home server."
November 19
TIME TO UPGRADE: Microsoft has released version 3 of their Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats allowing you to open, edit, and save documents, workbooks, and presentations in the file formats new to Microsoft Office Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007.
Microsoft Math Add-in for Word 2007 Features:
- Plot a function, equation, or inequality in 2-D or 3-D
- Solve an equation or inequality
- Calculate a numerical result
- Simplify an algebraic expression
SteadyState helps manage shared computers in a school computer lab or an Internet cafe, a library, or at home.
FEATURES
- Getting Started – Provides the initial steps to help you during your first time use of Windows SteadyState.
- Windows Disk Protection – Help protect the Windows partition, which contains the Windows operating system and other programs, from being modified without administrator approval. Windows SteadyState allows you to set Windows Disk protection to remove all changes at a certain date and time or to not remove changes at all. If you choose to use Windows Disk Protection to remove changes, any changes made by shared users when they are logged on to the computer are removed when the computer is restarted.
- User Restrictions and Settings – The user restrictions and settings can help to enhance and simplify the user experience. Restrict user access to programs, settings, Start menu items, and options in Windows. You can also lock shared user accounts to prevent changes from being retained from one session to the next.
- User Account Manager – Create and delete user accounts. You can use Windows SteadyState to create user accounts on alternative drives that will retain user data and settings even when Windows Disk Protection is turned on. You can also import and export user settings from one computer to another—saving valuable time and resources.
- Computer Restrictions – Control security settings, privacy settings, and more, such as preventing users from creating and storing folders in drive C and from opening Microsoft Office documents from Internet Explorer.
- Schedule Software Updates – Update the shared computer with the latest software and security updates when it is convenient for you and the shared users.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
- Windows SteadyState Handbook provide step-by-step instructions on how to install and set up SteadyState, create and customize user profiles, establish global computer settings and restrictions, and use other features and capabilities of SteadyState (such as Windows Disk Protection). For network administrators or administrators of multiple computers, more advanced technical information is included to help configure and administer SteadyState on multiple computers running Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista.
- Windows SteadyState version 2.5 Beta Readme File provides late-breaking or other information that supplements the documentation for Windows SteadyState.
- Windows SteadyState Website
November 17
English & Spanish versions of Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2008 are now freely available for startups and home-based businesses.
Save time on everyday tasks
- Get started in minutes with a step by step interview wizard
- Create invoices, track time and expenses and bank online
- Enter data once and share it seamlessly with other Microsoft Office system programs
- Manage payroll and accept credit cards with affordable add-on services that save you time and money
Get a complete view of your business
- See customer, vendor, employee and financial data in one place
- Get business insights with customizable reports
- Easily share your books with your accountant through Office Live
Grow your business online
- List items on eBay, manage sales and download transactions
- Email invoices and get paid faster with PayPal
- Process credit card payments directly in Office Accounting
Accounting Express 2008 Features:
- Core Accounting (General ledger, A/R, A/P, invoicing, bill payment and online banking)
- Integration with Microsoft Word, Excel and Outlook
- Integration with add-on services for payroll, credit card processing, eBay and many others
- Visit the Resource Center to get help with common questions
--> FREE DOWNLOADS HERE <--
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
Partner Customization Pack for Office Accounting 2008 provides a guide on how to create a customized version of Microsoft Office Accounting that includes your company brand and exposes your products and services to your customers. Without writing any code, you use a customized XML branding file (Branding.xml) to modify the Office Accounting default user interface. After you customize the branding file, you create a setup package and distribute your co-branded version Office Accounting to your customers. You can also use the Office Accounting services infrastructure to create services, which interact with the Office Accounting client. November 15
Windows PowerShell 2.0 CTP (Community Technology Preview) introduces several significant features to Windows PowerShell 1.0 that extends its use, improves its usability, and allows you to control and manage the Windows environment more easily and comprehensively. (More details on the PowerShell Team Blog)
New Features in Windows PowerShell 2.0 CTP
- PowerShell Remoting
- Graphical PowerShell
- ScriptCmdlets
- Restricted Runspaces
- RunspacePools
- Background Jobs
- Data Language
- Script Internationalization
- Script Debugging
- 24 New Cmdlets
- Parser Tokenizer API
- New PowerShell Hosting APIs
- Metadata APIs for Command and Parameters
November 10
Windows Live Mail is a desktop application that lets you access multiple e-mail accounts in one place—even Yahoo! Premium and Gmail accounts. Search for messages across multiple accounts. Drag, drop, and organize your mail with one click. Preview messages in the Reading Pane. Get powerful virus scanning and cleaning. Block suspicious messages and destroy junk e-mail with a single click. Help protect your e-mail accounts from harmful phishing scams. Create and edit photo e-mails in a snap.
Windows Live Messenger has a fresh new look, but it's still got all the features you know and love. Connect with your friends and family via text, voice, and video*. Send text to mobile phones or handhelds. Control how and when your friends and family see you online. Share your personal files, photos, and videos—just drag and drop into a Shared Folder. IM and support your social cause by joining the i’m™ initiative.*Both users must have Messenger installed, a compatible microphone and speakers or a headset, and Internet access (webcam and broadband required for video).
Windows Live Photo Gallery makes it easy to organize, share and edit your photographs. Upload creative photo slideshows to your Windows Live Space with just a few clicks. Download entire albums from Windows Live Spaces at high resolution. Create a cool panoramic view by combining multiple photos. Enhance your photos by adjusting things like color and exposure. Improve them with simple crop and red-eye fixes.
Windows Live Toolbar helps you save time and browse the Web more safely. You can start a search from any Web page; whenever you highlight text such as an address or phone number, smart menus automatically appear. With one click, map all of the addresses on the web page you're viewing. Personalize your Web experience with custom buttons. Block phishing scams and viruses with Windows Live OneCare Advisor, included with Toolbar.
Windows Live Writer is a desktop application that makes it easy to publish rich content to your blog. It’s easy to publish to most major blog services, including Windows Live Spaces, SharePoint, Wordpress, Blogger and many others. Create a compelling blog, with your personal photos and videos, maps, tags and lots of other cool content, all in a snap. Preview before you post. Compose your entries offline, publish them later, when you get back online.
OneCare Family Safety helps you manage the Web sites your children see and the people your children interact with online. Help protect your kids from online stuff you don't want them to see by filtering the Web sites they visit. Built-in contact approval helps you know who your kids are talking to on IM, e-mail, or their blogs, when using Windows Live Spaces, Messenger or Hotmail. Review reports about their Web usage from work or home. Get information and recommendations based on advice from the American Academy of Pediatrics and other trusted sources.
November 07
FREE PRIMA GUIDE: "Lost in a particularly difficult level? Can't figure out how to beat that one boss? Wish you knew how to unlock that last character? Prima has you covered with guides for all your favorite Xbox titles. The world's leading publisher of official game guides and the exclusive guide publisher for Microsoft, Prima continues to dominate the field it created in 1990 by providing the highest quality game guides available. Get the best tips, maps, hints, and strategies from Prima's experts, and take your gaming further than you ever thought possible."
LEGO: StarWars - The Complete Saga "Official Game Guide"
November 06
After a year of beta testing, Microsoft has released their blog editing tool Windows Live Writer 2008 (now with Windows Vista x64 support).
Supplementing Hotmail and MSN email accounts, Microsoft is finally allowing users to create email accounts using their LIVE.COM domain. I've already snagged bhandler@live.com -- so grab your free LIVE.COM email account name while they are still available!
November 05
ADInsight is an LDAP (Light-weight Directory Access Protocol) real-time monitoring tool aimed at troubleshooting Active Directory client applications. Use it’s detailed tracing of Active Directory client-server communications to solve Windows authentication, Exchange, DNS, and other problems. November 02
Windows Live Calendar Beta -- You can see your schedule online, get reminders for important events, and share your calendar with friends and family.
- Share calendars — know what your family, friends, and groups are doing and when
- Get reminders — have calendar reminders sent to you via e-mail, text, or IM
- Import calendars — merge old calendars with your new, plus import TV and sports schedules, holidays, local events, and more from the Web
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