One of my favorite features of the latest Windows Live Messenger is the ability to have your picture change when you enter certain emoticons.  For example, you can have a picture of your smile when you smile :) or have a picture of you winking when you wink ;)

Here’s how you can do it:

1. Login to Messenger
2. (left) Click on your picture in the Messenger “main window”
3. Click the [Dynamic picture] button on the right
4. Pose and click :)

Enjoy--
--Rob

I’ve been trying to get my parents (both in their 60’s) to start using Windows Live more actively so my spouse, sister, and I can share more of what’s going on in our geographically dispersed lives with them (and vice-verse.)  Over the winter holiday season (while I have some time off), I’m thinking about writing a series of blog entries for my Mom (and Dad) on how to more effectively use Windows Live for family sharing.  Below are a few topics I’m thinking about writing on:

• Setting-up a Profile
• Sharing Photos
• Downloading Photos
• Posting a blog entry
• Updating status
• Sync’ing with Facebook, Twitter, etc.

I’d welcome feedback from blog visitors on what addition topics they’d recommend.  Thanks--
--Rob

I sync my status updates between Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and Windows Live and in doing so, I sometimes get asked (especially from people who only use Facebook) what all of the symbols in my status updates mean.  The two most common are @name and #HashTag. 

@Name (also known as “at-replies”) are references to people or brands, specifically a Twitter alias.  For example @YoungDems is a reference to http://twitter.com/YoungDems (the Young Democrats of America) or @WindowsLive is a reference to Windows Live.  On Twitter, not only does @name become a hyperlink, but it shows-up on a user’s http://twitter.com/replies page:

#HashTags are single words that start with a “#” symbol which is often called a “Hash” and they are used to indicate not just use of that word but intent to tag the post with that keyword.  Examples that I often use include “#tech” “#politics” and “#seattle.”  Sometimes, hash tags can be multiple words merged together like “MoSoSo” for mobile social software or “SeaMayor” for the Seattle Mayor’s race.  Has tags are also useful in that you can search for public tweets that contain a particular hash tag (ex: http://www.bing.com/twitter/search?q=%23seattle or http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23seattle)

Thanks--
--Rob

P.S. If you’d like to learn more, I highly recommend The Twitter Book by Sarah Milstein and Tim O’Reilly; and if you’d really like to deep-dive, I recommend the MicroSyntax wiki. 

This past week, I finally got sick of all of the pre-installed crap on H’s laptop so I reformatted the hard drive and did a complete re-install.  Here’s what I installed to get a base PC configuration that she could use for her professional and volunteer work as well as something I could do the occasional web development on when she is on my desktop PC:

• Windows Vista Ultimate
• Windows Live (Free)
• Microsoft Office Ultimate (Free trial)
• Expression Web (Free trial)
• Visual Web Dev (Free)
• Firefox (Free)
• Adobe Reader (Free)

Now that we bought a new desktop PC, here are the additions or substitutions that I've made now that some new software or versions (including Windows 7) are available:

• Windows Vista -> Windows 7 (included with most new PC's) - Windows 7 is just straight-up awesome.  My favorite feature is the window docking so I can easily dock one window on the left side of my monitor and another window on the right side.  Thus, a single widescreen monitor can be used as if it was two. 
• Firefox --> Flock (free) + Chrome (free) - Since Windows 7 already comes with the the (IMHO) best productivity browse in IE8, I like to also install Flock which has great social features like a "People" column that connects to Facebook, Twitter, and Digg.  (Hey Flockers, please add Windows Live.)  Flock also uses the mozilla engine so it renders web pages like Firefox.  I also installed Chrome because I've annecdotally noticed that it seems to render JavaScript games like Mafia Wars slightly faster than the IE or Mozilla engines and I've become slightly addicted to Mafia Wars after doing some research on online gaming. :)
• Microsoft Security Essentials (free) - I always hate how some of the pre-installed anti-virus software seems to be overly cautious and constantly trying to up-sell me to some paid version.  I like that Microsoft came-out with a basic, free anti-virus / anti-spyware program that doesn't try to up-sell you to a paid version.  When Microsoft Security Essentials came-out, I installed it on H's laptop and it was part of what I added when setting-up my Win7 PC (and removing the free but up-sell laden included anti-virus program.) 

Happy computing--
--Rob

Updated ~6pm PST on 11/8: Added a mention of Microsoft Security Essentials

Bing is my preferred search engine, but working on web development, I usually install many browsers on a given machine.  (IE8 and Flock are my current favorites.) 

So, this morning, I tried to add Bing to a new install of Opera 10.  When I went to www.bing.com as you can do in Firefox, there was no link at the top right to add Bing, so I did a bit of bing’ing ;) and found this blog entry from the Bing team: http://www.bing.com/community/blogs/search/archive/2009/06/11/bing-and-your-browser.aspx?PageIndex=3 that described how to add Bing to Chrome.

I found that similar instructions work with Opera:

1. In Opera, select Tools | Preferences

2. Click the Search tab

3. Click the [Add] button

4. Enter the below info:

(It’s up to you if you want to check the “Use as default search engine” box.)

5. Click [OK]

You may need to close and re-open opera for your default choice to take, but I was pleasantly surprised that this was so easy.

Happy bing’ing--
--Rob

Windows Live Embraces the Activity Streams Open Standard
by Peter Galli on September 04, 2009 11:52AM

More good news with regard to Microsoft's embrace of open standards, this time out of the Windows Live group.

The Windows Live team is using a developing open standard called Activity Streams - an extension to the Atom feed format - which kicks in when users add Web Activity for Facebook and bring their status, photos, shared links, and more from Facebook into Windows Live to share in Messenger, Hotmail, and on their Windows Live Profile. 

As Windows Live Program Manager Rob Dolin notes in a post on the team blog, what you may not know is that when you add the Facebook Web activity, the data is passed from Facebook to Windows Live using the developing Activity Streams open standard.

"With hundreds of thousands of users since release a few months ago, the Windows Live web activity for Facebook might be the largest implementation of Activity Streams today ... Just as many of our other web activities leverage community standards like RSS 2.0, Atom 1.0, and MediaRSS, I'm hopeful that Activity Streams will be a powerful enabling technology so users can bring their activities like status updates, posted photos, or shared links, from one service to another. We look forward to working with other partners to enable our mutual users to share their activities between services," Dolin says.