Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

There has been lots and lots of rumours, speculation and conjecture on just what the new release of Windows Live was going to contain. The LiveSide website has been the source of plenty of leaked screenshots, links to downloads and other information on the way.

Download links available at LiveSide

Now that is released into the wild, and people are using it I thought I would write up a quick review of some of the new features – and there are plenty.

Live Messenger

• A whole new communicator window, with integration with Facebook and MySpace accounts – means all your contacts, status updates and commenting can be done in one place, along with access to media like photos and videos. Note the Facebook chat feature has not been enabled in the public beta yet but will come later. (Image from LiveSide)
• A new tabbed conversation window – at last!. No longer do you need to have 75 windows open of all your current messaging sessions, they are now contained in one window with tabs at the top. This is a major improvement.

I love Windows Live Photo Gallery. Apart from the fact that it is free, is the best camera import tool I have found, can display RAW images (with the right codecs installed), can publish to flickr, facebook and YouTube, has facial recognition built in and other cool features, it also has another really cool feature – editing with a revert to original option.

So this week I discovered something about that. I had been noticing my C drive space slowly decreasing. Now seeing as I only have Windows 7 and all my programs installed on the C drive and most of my data is contained on other drives, I was wondering what was going on. A quick search found the bulk of the data was in two folders, my outlook data folder where I had an unused old archive sitting (10GB) and then a folder called

C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Photo Gallery\Original Images. There was some 20GB in here

When I looked I was amazed to see a bunch of photos. Some research turned up these facts.

Power point techniques and templates from Doug Klippert:

You are not limited to a flat PowerPoint slide. You can add a 3-D look to your shows. Rolling 3D images and PowerPoint Drawing for 3D objects

Download some free PowerPoint templates

Best practices for Outlook 2007 from the Outlook Team Blog.

• how to set up Outlook (layout, rules, folders, etc.),
• how to best process e-mail messages to “tame your Inbox”
• the importance of doing a daily review of your calendar and tasks
• how best to get work done in Outlook
• doing effective searches
• the do’s and don’ts of writing great messages
• how to best manage your calendar and set up meetings

Microsoft Pages

Special Offers on Training and Certifications from Microsoft - Microsoft helps you become a key contributor within your organization by providing some of the best training available. Take advantage of these great offers that can help you turn your job into a career.

Running Windows 7 in Mixed Environments – technet discussion on interoperability issues

Migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7 - Guidance for IT pros

Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor - To see if your PC is ready for Windows 7, download the free Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. It scans your PC for potential issues with your hardware, devices, and installed programs, and recommends what to do before you upgrade.

Syncing Recorded TV to your Media Device – great tutorial with screenshots.

Getting started with Office 2010 – use this page as a starting point for transitioning help in each of the Office 2010 products.

Office 2010 Tool: Office Environment Assessment Tool This is a comprehensive environment scanning tool for use in deploying Microsoft Office 2010.

Office 2010 Tool: Compatibility Inspector The Compatibility Inspector compares existing (legacy) code against the Microsoft Office 2010 object model to identify possible code issues.

Get more from Windows 7 – top things to do after you upgrade

If you are a Windows Live Messenger user – you’ll probably find this to be a fun feature to muck around with. I sure did!
So here’s how it works – step by step. Only took me a few minutes.
For this to work, you must have a webcam installed before putting the following steps into practice.

In your Live Messenger, if you click on your display picture you’ll see a box like this…

Select “Dynamic picture…” from the grey boxes on the right.

Then you’ll be looking at a box like this…