Ever wondered what the Christmas Nativity would look like in todays world of modern technology and socila media?
No, me neither, until i spotted this fun video.. Enjoy!
Bing and Facebook Social Search now available
03
Nov
Last month, Bing and Facebook joined forces to bring some new social search features into the Bing search engine.
Today, this is now live for US customers, with rollouts globally over the next few months. This update allows users to sign in to the Facebook accounts within Bing and get a more personalised search service as a result. The first of these new services is Liked Results, which shows you relavant links to your search that are also liked by your friends in Facebook.
For more details on the other elements in social search you can read the full article over on liveside.net
Help! I've lost my Windows Phone 7 – can you help?
01
Nov
Windows Phone 7 can help you, even if you have lost it! Have a look at the options available to make find your phone a whole lot easier.
See the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZtAY0RlKZU for a demo.
Syncing Outlook calendar with Windows Phone 7
27
Oct
I had difficultly getting my calendar appointments, which live in Outlook, into my nice shiny-new Windows Phone 7, an LG E-900.
I finally worked out – you can’t – at least not at present, but there is a workaround thats good for me.
You almost certainly have a Windows Live account, if you dont – go get yourself one from http://www.live.co.uk
then, go to http://explore.live.com/outlook-hotmail-connector-pack and download the Outlook connector pack.
This gives you a new option when you come to add an account to your Outlook. So, what we are going to do is add this Live account, from the file menu, click on Add Account.
Then pick the ‘Manually configure server settings or additional server types’, and click on next.
Then pick the ‘Other’ radio button, and select the ‘Microsoft Outlook Hotmail Connector’ from the list, and click next again.
You will be asked for your account details, which for obvious reasons I’m not going to show here! When you’ve done that, click on next. and then Finish when you get to the confirmation screen.
Thats got everything setup, just need to go to your Outlook calendar view, and see the 2 calendar views. You can then go to the email accounts on your Windows Phone and also sync to this account..
Hey presto… Outlook appointments in Outlook and on your Windows Phone!
Moving contacts from my old phone to Windows Phone 7
27
Oct
I had some initial difficulties moving my contacts from my really old Nokia 6310i to the new Windows Phone 7. I had the bridght idea of copying all the contacts to the sim and then moving the sim. All well and good, except that the Windows phone didnt show the contacts on the sim!.
I found a quite well hidden button that imports the contacts though. Go to the people hub, and hold down the People heading at the top of the screen. A box will appear with a single option – settings.
Touch that and theres a button called Import Sim contacts. It may have scrolled off the top of the screen, so check and scroll up if you cant see it.
Heres a very short video demoing where this button is. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXj0W2bmcFw
Incidentally, this button initially didnt do anything. The sim wasnt seated properly, but there wasnt a clue to that. So if the button doesnt work for you might want to check that.
Shortcut symbols for Twitter messages
24
Oct
I’ve never been a fan of the shortcut stuff used in mobile phone text messages, you know (like using l8 for the word late). I’m from a generation that wants to write things out in full. Maybe thats the reason I hardly send any text messages. That and the fact that my fingers are too big for most phone keyboards 😉
My father in law has recently joined the Twitterati, and, knowing that I ‘do computers’, keeps asking for a list of what symbols and shortcuts are allowed. Fed up of being asked, I did a search on the ‘net and found an extract from the excellent Dummies series regarding Facebook and Twitter… http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/facebook-and-twitter-for-seniors-for-dummies-cheat.html
Motoring Journalist
24
Oct
I’ve written articles for all sorts of media over the years, including for the motor industry. However, a lot of those are ‘offline’ articles, before the Internet really took off. However, I did come across a link to an article I’d written for The Independent newspaper, which is now online. Its only a short article, but heres the link.
Google introduces new web image format
02
Oct
Google has placed a great deal of emphasis on speed for the last year or two, offering numerous tools and resources aimed at speeding things up. The speed theme continues as Google has introduced a new image format from the web, aimed at speeding up load times. It’s called WebP
Those interested in SEO will likely find the status of the format worth paying attention to, as Google recently announced that it now counts page speed as a ranking factor. Just remember, page speed is only one of a few hundred ranking factors the search giant takes into consideration.
Heres an extract from the announcement
“Most of the common image formats on the web today were established over a decade ago and are based on technology from around that time. Some engineers at Google decided to figure out if there was a way to further compress lossy images like JPEG to make them load faster, while still preserving quality and resolution. As part of this effort, we are releasing a developer preview of a new image format, WebP, that promises to significantly reduce the byte size of photos on the web, allowing web sites to load faster than before. Images and photos make up about 65% of the bytes transmitted per web page today. They can significantly slow down a user’s web experience, especially on bandwidth-constrained networks such as a mobile network. Images on the web consist primarily of lossy formats such as JPEG, and to a lesser extent lossless formats such as PNG and GIF. Our team focused on improving compression of the lossy images, which constitute the larger percentage of images on the web today. “
Googles set a site up where you can compare the sizes and load times of JPEGs and WebPs. Theres also has a conversion tool to convert images to the new format that can be downloaded, and is working with the web browser and web developer community to add support for the format. Google is also developing a patch for WebKit to provide native support for WebP in an upcoming release of Chrome. It also plans to add support for a transparency layer or alpha channel in a future update.
It will be very interesting to see how widely this format gets adopted over time.
Tuner Free for MCE updated
02
Oct
A little while ago I talked about Tuner free for MCE from MillieSoft. This allows you to watch a whole load of channels on your Media Center PC without having a tune card installed. You can even get this contemt streamed out to XBOX360s as it supports extenders.
Theres been a whole load of updates been done recently, including the integration of the MSN video sources that came back on line in the UK earlier this year.
Its a really cool program. You can install from here.
Bing Maps gets a major boost
03
Aug
Bing Maps added some new major functionality yesterday.
First of these is the OpenStreetMap view. Described as the Wikipedia of maps, it allows the the user to view lots of different sets of data for the same location, without leaving the Bing Maps interface.
Secondly, Bing Maps announced that its “Sexy Maps” (Microsoft term;-)) built with Silverlight have been rolled out to all Bing Maps users. The new maps are a “combination of both raster tiles and vector graphics rendered in the browser at run time”.
The new dynamically labeled areas are clickable and will zoom you into the respective region, like peeling back layers of an onion, with this, Bing Maps will add more emphasis on its Local Search
Theres a load of visual effects as well, designed to make seeing the map when you are colour blind easier, and using some of the local machine hardware, and the power of Silverlight to make zooming a load more smoother.
More details can be found at TheNextWeb http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2010/08/03/new-features-in-bing-maps-openstreetmap-taxi-fare-calculator-enhanced-silverlight-maps
