Microsoft released its much awaited new version of Windows Media player today. And this has already caught some critics eye.

Download your copy here.

Hmm... seems like developers at google started thinking about work/life balance instead of just being robots on a mission.

Blogger seems to have too many bugs embedded in it. But people still does not complain... because its not a Microsoft product afterall...

I'm glad that I'm using live spaces. Wake up, dude... before you wake up to find that somebody deletes all your entries or points to some kladblog entry from yours :P

Check this article for mode details

Windows Desktop Search 3.0 is the technology which enables instant search on your computer. It helps you to find, preview, and use your documents, e-mail, music, photos, and other items. The search engine in Windows Desktop Search 3.0 is a Windows service that is also used by applications such as Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 and OneNote 2007 to index application content and deliver instant results when searching within that application. Windows Desktop Search 3.0 provides fast indexing, improved performance, and improved file type support.

If you choose to install and use Windows Desktop Search, you can search for e-mail, documents and other files located on your computer. No information about the files on your computer will be sent to Microsoft as part of this process. Instead, Windows Desktop Search will index the content of your computer and store the index file on your computer. You can customize Windows Desktop Search to index only specified folders on your computer. Windows Desktop search will not store copies of e-mail or documents after they are deleted. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer.

This is available only for people running genuine windows... Get your copy here

What is Windows Live Barcode

Windows Live Barcode is a set of services that transfer information between various media (PCs, billboards, magazines etc.) and handsets via Quick Response Code (QR Code), a two-dimensional barcode. It provides a new method for people to exchange information and enjoy various online services on handsets. Windows Live Barcode aims to enhance handset utility and provide you with more convenience and flexibility.

What is QR Code

The QR Code is a two-dimensional barcode. It contains a considerably greater volume of information in both vertical and horizontal directions than typical barcode in one dimension.
* QR Code^® is a registered trademark of Denso Wave Inc.

Hello, World! would become

My Business Card would be

Is this the beginning for the world turning towards Windows Mobile more seriously??? Lets See...

Welcome to the world of safe *Windows* computing... Windows defender, as the name suggests, defends your machine from known spywares and malwares.

Lately, this is my favorite program and the very first program I install after loading Anti-Virus.

The news is that this wonderful piece of software is now available for download and more good news is that you'll get 2 free support instances with this download... If you think this is good too... get it here. However, you must have a genuine windows to download and use this :)

I'm really happy to see the Beta (and RC) tags out of this. It is really a great improvement over previous versions of IE and certainly will not disappoint any sensible user.

*Haters always hate* and if you are/or not one among those get your download now...

I've already downloaded and it runs pretty well... I'll post my review after using for couple of days

Until then... happy browsing...

Time: 4.00 in the morning
Place: Near my house
Activity: My doggie woke me up for her nature call and I took her out

I normally don’t chain my dog (A.K.A Honey, 9 months old black Labrador). I chain her when I take her out so that she doesn’t scare away the pedestrians. It was very early in the morning and road was occupied by walkers and joggers. I took her out (with her chain on) to let her satisfy the nature’s call. I was still closing the gate of my house and somehow she let herself free. I caught her and tied her again. We were walking and when we touched the main road, she mysteriously set herself free again. This time I could not catch her as she was running wild. I was not worried as she’ll always comeback to me after some mischief.

But, today was a different day. She ran and ran and ran… as wild as she can. Suddenly… she encountered three stray dogs barking and raging towards her. She normally stays calm when I am around. But this time I’m far from her so she did the most intelligent thing, came back running. While she was running back at double the speed, the vehicles on the road came to a stand still. The truck driver stopped the vehicle seeing my dog running towards it.

Honey had a nightmare… her enemies are still chasing her. This is the first time in her life that such a thing happened to her and she narrowly missed a collision with the vehicles. Thanks to the truck driver that they are now stand still. She came to me and hid herself behind me. I scared the hell out of the stray dogs. Honey was very nervous; I could see the fear in her eyes. I took her home, un-chained her, gave her some water, gave a bone and pampered her a bit.

This certainly is a lesson for my cute little baby.

If you are a dotnetspider member and using Answering Machine, then here is something useful for you (hopefully)...

The answering machine provided is absolutely fantastic, feature rich. But, somehow I am not fully inclined using it as it gives me all the messages. I've to manually scan all the questions and decide if they can be answered by me or not. For eg., I dont know anything about data grids or Javascript. it is waste of my time to even see if the question falls into this category.

I've developed my own tool and called it SpiderAlert. It is very inferior when compared to Answering Machine. No system tray icon, no persisting of results between application life cycles.

Then why is it that I'm even bothering to mention it here??? It is because, it does what I want and only what I want. It will not show me news/articles and other stuff... it will not show questions containing words stored in the list of blocked words... and more importantly... it does not require a mouse to operate. *I hate mouse*.

If you are also looking for something similar, then post a comment and I'm more than happy to share the binaries and the source code with you.

I wanted to post tool at dotnetspider itself, but could not find an upload tool/project.

It all started with GMail... All the free mail providers realised the fact that their interfaces were very old and users wanted something more, something better.

This brings to the interesting topic on which ones better. Nope.. I'm not comparing different mail providers. Rather, I'm comparing the classic yahoo mail to the modern yahoo mail.

The single view of the classic yahoo! is gone. Now we have a Outlook like interface. Como'n guys, think new... Outlook interface is already time tested, but is more attached to Microsoft. Gmail has come up with something different to the traditional mail look and feel and people accepted that. Windows Live Mail is carrying forward the "Outlook Lite" interface, though pumped in more Javascript.

Ups:

1. Search box remembers my previous searches
2. Options are really easy to edit. *Best* among all the new generation mail providers
3. Shortcut keys are simply amazing
4. Events are displayed at the bottom and are easily accessible
5. Attach your files while you compose your mail. A breather from the classic style of attachments.

Downs:

1. Shows up the welcome screen instead of directly taking to my inbox. An additional mouse click.
2. Why did they wasted so much space to their right?
3. Mail Filters are not very easily customizable. If you want to add/edit any filters, it will switch back to the classic view. and clicking back to mail options will not switch back to the new mail.
4. Cannot change the color schemes
5. There is no way to configure the reading pane position.
6. Spell check is not automatic and not accurate.

Today, I woke up and checked my mail and to my pleasant surprise found that the Windows Live Mail was upgraded. I am really happy that they did this change.

These are the things I could observer right away...

Ups:

1. The inbox opens up faster than the previous version
2. New customizable look allows to change almost all color schemes
3. New icons - most of them are standard outlook icons (I liked the check mail icon)
4. Themes - This one can be done a better way though
5. More space to read my mails - At last, they listened to me. But still the Windows Live Mail banner is way big in its size. Dont know if they have any plans to get the size down yet or not?
6. Live.com menu (this is the coolest one) - Though not much useful, the way is appears and vanishes is simply cool.
7. Spell Check is faster - This one go so much of a tweak for sure.

Downs:

1. No advanced search - The search seems to be very limited. An advanced search option should be made available
2. Copyright info and Legal note in the options menu?
3. Auto-save still fails - Will this ever work?
4. Sort the mails by menu - This is kind of a wierd behavior. Users are used to clicking on header to sort the list.

As they put it... Windows Live OneCare is "an automatically self-updating PC care service that’s always on, helping provide persistent protection against viruses, hackers, and other threats, and helping keep your PC tuned up and your important documents backed up."

The news is that they've released another beta of this... go get it here

As the world (of hackers) started targetting other softwares (outside Microsoft), bugs and security issues are fast appearing in all softwares (one by one). The latest one being Google blog.

First it was Firefox... now Google... well tomorrow it might well be Linux ;)

Here is the excerpt from the original news item:
"Intruder exploits a bug in Google's blogging tool, posts announcement that company has called off eBay project..."

For complete news click here

Spike Xavier & Dan Wahlin came up with this song while carpooling to their work... 
Is starts like a rock song, then loses track. They have however tried to keep onto the same genre, but...

They realized that they created a new genre of music and promply gave it the name Heavy .Netal

Check this link for the song

Long long ago... when people tried "Failure" in the search box and tried their luck (I'm Feeling lucky), they were directed to President Bush related website... How obvious!!!
And they say... history repeats... and here is another proof...

Try "Search" in the searchbox and try your luck. I'm sure you'll Live with the result.

It seems Google... is now feeling the heat... Long LIVE.
Not sure how many days this will survive... So guys try this... fast

So, yet another one... But this is a forward to me. But wanted to let people know how funny this bug is ;)

Guys... that's why they say, clean the lens before snaps... Check this link

I'm really happy to say that the bug in WLW is now resolved in build 145. I can now post images as part of my blog...

Ok... seems like all the bugs in all the softwares happen only to me.

The latest one being GTalk. This one is really stupid...

I've disconnected connection and restarted my machine. GTalk is set to start with Windows, so the next time Windows starts, GTalk opens and tries to connect to the server. It will not succeed as I dont have an active connection. It did not succeed in connecting (as expected) :)

This is not the bug... Let me complete.

Now keeping the dialog box open, I've connected to internet... My Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and a list of several others that failed to connect before internet connection connected well.

Now, I select Retry on the dialog... voila.. what I see is this...

Now what happened to my password??? I open my GTalk main window and see my password sitting pretty well. I keep getting the same message even if I click on the Sign In button there. I've to clear the password and re-type it to successfully login...

Isn't this a bug??? All you crazy (blinded) admirers... explain this to me...

Wait a minute... are they changing my password, when the connection error occurs??? If that is the case, it is the worst idea could ever dream of.

I've just checked the community credit website and saw my name is the winners list yet again. This is kind of dream come true... two times in a row

I dont get any mails from community-credit. And as it turned out as last time, it is some problem with my mail. I've won the Ninja Burger Honorable Employee Handbook.

Windows Live Writer Beta (build 145) now supports Blogger. Dont know if it is good news or not?
I doubt if bloggers @ blogspot like to use Microsoft tools or not...

But, I'd still say it works better with Live Spaces. If you like to give it a try then download it here

If you have installed Windows Vista RC1, then the last date before the OS expires is June 30. Microsoft Office 2007 Beta 2 does now extend until that date. If you want to use your Microsoft Office 2007 Beta 2 until your Vista RC1 expires, then you should get yourself the the Beta 2 update.

You can get the Microsoft Office 2007 Beta2 Update here

I've installed it... have you?