Do you leave your doors unlocked?  Do you lay your wallet on the restaurant table?  … carry your social security card with you?  If not,  you might be interested in this little utility to help you create passwords. 

You’ve probably been admonished “Use strong passwords” but you wondered how.  Or even if you’ve been told how, the method is hard to remember. 

Some finer web sites provide help now, but if not, you can use the “Password Checker” to help protect yourself the next time you have to change a password.

Strong Passwords | Microsoft Security

Scarlett and Melanie are all decked out in new Windows 7 frocks. Our two Dell machines upgraded in style and grace, so it seems thus far.

Graciously, Windows 7 is a money maker because the new image backup feature in Windows 7 replaced Acronis True Image Home avoiding an alarmingly expensive upgrade. And what would Scarlett say about Acronis True Image if she weren't a lady! The new Microsoft Security Essentials also saves money because it replaced McAfee Virus Scan subscriptions. Free Logitech and HP printer software upgrades for Win7 seem to be working. Although the Windows Upgrade Advisor was wary of the Broadcom software, Windows Update quietly took care of that issue.

Those great features of Vista that tended toward incomprehensible are now more intuitive and visible.  The whole experience is dressed up in Aero and Silverlight.

So, to Scarlett and Melanie we say, "You look beautiful!"

On their blog, the photosynth team announces that a new version of Photosynth was released 07-Oct-2009.  A handy new feature, Overhead View, is not only interesting, but a way to navigate the space of the photosynth.  Search, performance, and internals are improved. 

My latest synth is of the Dallas Pride Parade 2009.

Photosynth works well with Windows Live Photo Gallery.

Photosynth Blog : A New Angle on Photosynth

Can your PC run Windows 7?  Start with the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor.

More information for a broader audience is in Windows 7 Team Blog.

Windows 7 is available 22-Oct-2009.

Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor

Students!  If you missed the earlier discount, here’s another deal, this time “exclusively to college and university students”, starting 17-Sept-2009.

Windows 7 Team Blog - The Windows Blog

This announcement in the Windows Live Team Blog could be impressive for those who remember “sharing files” meant writing them on the 5 1/2 inch truly-floppy disk and walking it, in your sneakers, across the room to a colleague -- “sneaker-net”.  

Some points: 500+million Windows Live users; Skydrive users; Office 2010 is coming; Windows Live integrates with Office via “Office Web Apps”; “one place for storing contact info, one personal calendar …, one primary mail service .. to check … [your] e-mail accounts, one place to get updates from all … social networks, and one place to store, share, and manage … [your] ever-growing collection of photos, documents, music, and videos.”  OneNote will be added later.  The richness of the formatting in the desktop apps will render in the web apps.

Excerpt from the announcement:

Starting [9/17/2009], a select group of SkyDrive customers will be invited to try out a technical preview of the online versions of Microsoft Office Excel, Word and PowerPoint, also known as the Office Web Apps, integrated right inside their Windows Live SkyDrive experience. Over time, as the final version is released, the Office Web Apps will become available to all 500 million+ users of Hotmail, Messenger and other Windows Live services.

Office comes to Windows Live – starting today - Windows Live

Have you been putting off updating/upgrading your Windows Live Messenger?  Well, it’s time to go with the flow.

As of 15-Sep-2009, if you’re using version 8.1, you’ll be required to upgrade before signing in.  Relax.  It’s worth it.  Messenger and all the other essentials at download.live.com.

If’ you’ve been putting it off because you need more knobs and whistles, visit Messenger Plus!

 Upgrade from Windows Live Messenger version 8.1 - Windows Live

Friends, if SPAM weren’t enough, now we deal with SPIM. 

I regret having to block good friends from instant messenger because of uncontrollable/uncontrolled and unsolicited messages emanating from their Messenger IDs and I hope they never have to block mine.  Microsoft recognizes the problem and is going after SPIMmers in the courts. 

Extract of the post in the Windows Live blog:

Today, [16-July-2009] Microsoft is filing suit against several people and businesses in which we allege that they undermine the security and privacy of Windows Live customers. This case alleges that the defendants engaged in instant messaging spam and phishing on Windows Live Messenger. (For reference, phishing is an attempt to collect user account credentials under false pretenses. Spimming is the act of sending unsolicited instant messages, usually junk advertisements, to other IM users.) The complaint, Microsoft Corporation v. Funmobile et al No. 09-2-21247-3 SEA, “FIRST AMENDED COMPLAINT FOR DAMAGES AND EQUITABLE RELIEF”, can be found in full in this pdf.

This filing is an important step in maintaining and improving the safety of our 320 million active Windows Live Messenger users. With today’s action, Microsoft is sending a clear message that this kind of activity is not allowed and that we’re taking proactive steps to protect our customers accordingly. As this case moves forward, we will keep you updated on progress.

Thank you, Microsoft, for setting a higher standard!

Creating a safer place - Windows Live

“What is Twitter?”  “I don’t get it.”

Well, Bing debuts this week BingTweets to make sense of all that data flowing through the Twitter-verse.

1. Go to http://bingtweets.com/.
2. Click on the trending topics.  Try the search for “Dallas weather”.  Try anything.
3. Think “now” and “real-time.”

Wow. 

Bing!

Bing Community

From Microsoft Press Pass:

Today, [July 13, 2009] at its Worldwide Partner Conference 2009, Microsoft Corp. announced that Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Microsoft Visio 2010 and Microsoft Project 2010 have reached the technical preview engineering milestone. Starting today, tens of thousands of people will be invited to test Office and Visio as part of the Technical Preview program.

“Office 2010 is the premier productivity solution across PCs, mobile phones* and browsers,” said Chris Capossela, senior vice president of the Microsoft Business Division at Microsoft. “From broadcast and video editing in PowerPoint, new data visualization capabilities in Excel, and co-authoring in Word, we are delivering technology to help people work smarter and faster from virtually any location using any device.”

Microsoft Office 2010 Hits Major Milestone and Enters Technical Preview

See “What’s New” at http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/

Well, look what I found in the 25-June-2009 Windows Blog.  Is this a technical event, or a shopping event?  I think both:

Finally, as a way of saying thank you …, we …introduce a special time limited offer! … pre-order Windows 7 at a more than 50% discount. In the US, … $49.99 … … special offer online via select retail partners …, or the online Microsoft Store (…).

This program begins tomorrow in the U.S., …. The offer ends July 11th in the U.S. … or while supplies last. …. Act fast …more information … click here.

Windows 7 Team Blog - The Windows Blog

Publisher HTML output uses some very large numbers for object coordinates. This behavior has worked in the past. However, Internet Explorer 8 does not support such large coordinates.

Navigation bars and other content is missing from Publisher HTML output in Internet Explorer 8

When I grow up, I want to write as eloquently as these guys.  No kidding.  I’ve been suffering from this problem with Publisher 2007 and MSIE8 and reading what’s available to find that this official Knowledge Base article is succinct, clear, and probably a massive understatement of what hit the fan when this all came to light in the last 2-3 weeks.

Think:  Edit with Groups.  Publish without.

(1) Edit the original pub > close it. 

(2) CTRL-C > CTRL-V copy the original pub. Call this the ungrouped pub.

(3) Edit every page of the ungrouped pub.

1. CTRL-A (selects all)
2. CTRL+SHIFT+G  (ungroups all)
3. CTRL+G > page number (goes to page number)

Note that CTRL+SHIFT+G toggles the group/ungroup. See  Keyboard shortcuts for Microsoft Publisher

Grrrrr.

[happy dance] The Windows Live team has announced a much needed enhancement today:

Now you can arrange them by dragging and dropping them or by numbering the photos in the order you’d like them to appear.

New: drag photos where you want them - Windows Live

Sometimes photo subjects require an ordered presentation and sometimes the “title” picture is just the wrong one.  Well that can be fixed.

If you are not using Windows Update, then you may have to install Microsoft Silverlight.

Quote

Talking about New Toolbar Release - Windows Live
Go to your control panel and select "Add or Remove Programs". Look for an entry called "Windows Live Favorites for Windows Live Toolbar" and remove it.

If you're having trouble with Windows Live Favorites syncing with IE, then follow the instructions in the blog quoted above. 

Favorites.live.com is going away, bye bye.  The new toolbar for the new Live product line syncs to your skydrive.live.com instead.  If the old add-in is still installed it will sync to favorites.live.com.  When you delete an IE favorite, favorites.live.com will restore it.  Duplication, confusion, !@#$.   Update 15-Apr-2009: SkyDrive adds new features! 14-Apr-2009 Favorites.live.com is “gone”.  That URL now resolves to your skydrive.live.com and your old favorites.live.com data is moved automatically to your skydrive favorites folder.  Thank you WL Team!

So you must uninstall that "Windows Live Favorites for Windows Live Toolbar" add-in.   Then go to toolbar.live.com and install the toolbar.  Then click button "get new buttons..." found on the right end of the toolbar > "toolbar options" > sync your favorites > give it a few minutes or hours to sync.  Then eliminate duplicates, if you need to, with something like AM-Deadlink (search cnet.com for AM-Deadlink).

(Revised 10-Apr-2009) Still broken or misunderstood: The module "Windows Live Favorites" is not using skydrive.  It's still using the old favorites.live.com. This is confirmed by Microsoft.  Update 15-Apr-2009: SkyDrive adds new features! 14-Apr-2009.  The Space module “Windows Live Favorites” “Manage Your Favorites” is now getting an error as of the 14-Apr-2009 conversion of favorites.live.com to skydrive.

I've opened a ticket with support.live.com to clarify.  An enhancement request is submitted to TheSpaceCraft team to support Space module favorites sourced from Skydrive.

Quote

Talking about McAfee® - threat_center - Protecting yourself from the Conficker worm
Its “call-home protocol” will change on Wednesday, April 1, and may entail an update with some as-yet unknown functionality.

That's the deal for April Fool's Day -- that is, Conficker is supposed to today get what-to-do-next instructions in order to continue it's evolution that started in late 2008.  McAfee has lots of information at http://www.mcafee.com/us/threat_center/conficker.html.  The Microsoft information is at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS08-067.mspx.

For home users, if you allow McAfee to automatically update, then that machine is covered.

For prevention, if you allow Microsoft Update to automatically update, then that machine is covered.   The prevention for Conficker was publised way back in October 2008.

If you are guilty of not allowing your security software do it's thing, then go to http://www.mcafee.com/us/enterprise/confickertest.html > click ConTest.exe > see the labels "Hostname/IP" "Start IP" and "End IP" > see the big button to the right with the label "->" > click the big button > your IP address is added to the "Start IP" box.  Now click the big button with the blue right-arror.  The results of the test are in the big box at the bottom.  Hopefully, under "Status" it will say "Not infected."

Although AT&T still outsources it’s mail services to Yahoo, other functions of Yahoo are being spun off, discarded, or simply just rotting.  The value of the AT&T / Yahoo alliance for one-stop shopping certainly is diminishing.

Yahoo Music’s Launchcast is gone, “replaced” by Rhapsody.

Yahoo Photos is gone, succumbing to Flickr.  That’s okay.  I enjoy Windows Live Photo Gallery integrated with Windows Live Photos.

Yahoo Briefcase is gone, … you’re on your own, now.  (See Windows Live Spaces for a replacement.)

I hear complaints about Yahoo groups restrictions.  Is it too going away?  (See Windows Live Groups and other services for a replacement.)

What is next?  Tell me what you know.