You have probably seen several posts on this site from Dave and Rich praising Windows Live Writer’s capability, so on that note it might be prudent to check out some of the other ‘Windows Live’ branded products, namely Windows Live Photo Gallery. Because there are tons of other personal photo managers out there, it is somewhat difficult for any product to offer something revolutionary, but for the basics Windows Live Photo Gallery seems like it would fit the bill:

• Fix photos: Edit red-eye, crop, adjust light levels, and correct colors—or select “”Auto Adjust”” for one-click editing—so your favorite memories look just as great as you remember.
• Panoramic photos: Create panoramic views by stitching together multiple photos, then add captions to tell the rest of the story.
• Easy importing: Move photos and videos straight from your digital camera onto your computer—no need to install any special camera software.

Perhaps the most useful feature:

• Order prints online: Now you can order prints of your photos directly from 70,000 worldwide photo-printing partners.

Like the other suite of ‘Windows Live’ products, Photo Gallery is free and inter-operates within the family seamlessly, so if you use Live Spaces you should definitely take a look. Even you are not a Windows Live user, if you don’t already have a photo manager of choice then Windows Live Photo Gallery may fit the bill.

For those who were bummed out (including me) that the "full version" of Hotmail didn’t work with Firefox 3, it appears that it’s now a-okay and working great. I logged in this morning and noticed no warning messages or anything like that.

In addition, the operation is smooth. Very nice. The operation of full-version Hotmail in FF3 is way faster than it is in IE 7.

If you use Hotmail and Firefox but don’t like the Windows Live Mail client for whatever reason, full-version web-based Hotmail will suit you nicely.

OK, this is a bit of a technical post, but one which will come in handy for somebody down the road. Windows Live Writer is, so far, the best blog client I have found for either Mac or Windows. If you are running Windows and are a blogger, I highly recommend you download Live Writer. It is a freebie.

Continued

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Hey, it’s that great service Windows Live Expo! Everyone’s using it, right? RIGHT?! Actually no. No one’s using it and you probably never heard of it either.

This site like many others is now gracing the pages of Ghost Sites because it’s more or less dead as a doorknob. The particular article Steve wrote about Expo is here.

An excerpt from that article basically nails it:

MSFT keeps demonstrating a failure to master the simplest principles of Internet Marketing 101, including the principle stating that you must have a catchy name whose meaning bears some close resemblance to what the function of your property is. The name “Live Expo” sounds like some kind of virtual trade show, not a classified site. “Live Marketplace” or “Live Classified” would have been a far better choice, but even the word “Live” (used by its flagship search engine, “Live Search”) is practically meaningless, unless what you’re selling is longevity products.

You’ve got to admit, “Expo” doesn’t sound like anything to do with classifieds, does it? Right. But that’s what Expo is about.

Go figure.

I am in the midst of writing an article that is going to compare online photo services plus a few freebie photo clients.

It occurred to me that in order to make for a better article, it would be good to ask the audience: Why do you use what you use and what features are important to you?

Your online options

With online photo management you’ve got several choices (and if I missed any please feel free to mention one or more in the comments):

• Picasa
• Flickr (which connects with Yahoo! 360)
• Zooomr
• Windows Live Spaces
• Photobucket
• MySpace
• .Mac/MobileMe

Your client options

I personally find it absolutely necessary to have a locally installed program to manage my photos so I can tag, categorize and upload to the web easily.

For the ones of note, this is what I could immediately find:

• Picasa
• Windows Live Photo Gallery
• iPhoto
• F-Spot (Linux)

Once again, if you know of any that are readily available for download, please feel free to post a comment or two.

Of the ones listed above, the only one I haven’t tried is F-Spot (although it looks really good).

It also just happens to be that F-Spot is the only one that can connect with the most online services (Flickr, Picasa and so on). And yes, this means Linux scores a win once again for its ability to connect with the most stuff.

Windows Live Photo Gallery will connect to Windows Live Spaces and Flickr.

iPhoto only connects to the .Mac service to the best of my knowledge.

Picasa only connects to Google’s Picasa service to the best of my knowledge.

What do you use? Why do you use it?

Is there any particular reason why you would use one online service over another? Do you even use a photo managing program?

At the present time I’m using Windows Live Photo gallery because it appears to be the only Windows client that will connect up with Flickr easily.

But before I fly out that article – your opinion counts. What do you use?

In this small mini-series of videos I explain how to use the Windows Live Mail client that includes setting up with POP, IMAP, Gmail and of course Windows Live accounts like MSN, Hotmail and so on.

This is video 5 of 5 – the last in the series.

In this small mini-series of videos I explain how to use the Windows Live Mail client that includes setting up with POP, IMAP, Gmail and of course Windows Live accounts like MSN, Hotmail and so on.

This is video 4 of 5. The other parts will be posted soon.

One widely unknown feature of Outlook Express and the Windows Live Mail client is how easy it is to backup your mail locally (to which you can then burn to CD/DVD, put on a USB stick, etc.) Even if you’re not using Hotmail, you can easily back up any POP or IMAP account by a simple drag’n'drop to a local folder. You could even backup Gmail easily using the WLmail client.

See video below for details.

In this small mini-series of videos I explain how to use the Windows Live Mail client that includes setting up with POP, IMAP, Gmail and of course Windows Live accounts like MSN, Hotmail and so on.

This is video 3 of 5. The other parts will be posted soon.

In this small mini-series of videos I explain how to use the Windows Live Mail client that includes setting up with POP, IMAP, Gmail and of course Windows Live accounts like MSN, Hotmail and so on.

This is video 2 of 5. The other parts will be posted soon.

Name an e-mail service – any e-mail service – that offers both a web interface and a mail client, by the same company, that syncs mail, address book, calendar, instant messenger, and allows you to connect it directly to your domain…

…all for free.

As you can tell from the title of this article, Microsoft and its Live Services is the only one.

For those that say “Hey! Google does all that!” Not quite – they don’t have a true-blue mail client, and this is important. More on that in a moment. Continued