Live Spaces added the ability to take photos off your camera phone and email them to your Spaces site, right into the new or existing photo album.

Sending photos to your space

Several days ago we made uploading photos taken with your camera phone to Spaces more powerful. In the past you could post them only to your blog. Now you can also post photos directly to photo albums. You can do it as long as your phone allows you to send e-mail. There are two ways to set up the feature: from the PC site and from the mobile site.

If you are on the PC just go to your space (make sure that you’re signed in), go to Options, then E-mail publishing, and at the bottom of the page you’ll see a list of e-mail addresses for photo albums in your space. Each email address has the following format:

Member_name.Keyword_of_your_choice.Secret_word@spaces.live.com.

By default the keyword is a GUID, but you can change it to any string that you want. Then just add the email address to your phone’s address book and you can start sending photos to the photo albums in your space.

Another way to enable the feature is from the mobile site. Just go to http://mobile.spaces.live.com in your mobile browser, sign in and go to your space. From there, navigate to the photo album to which you want to post photos and select “E-mail publishing.” You’ll be given an e-mail address for that photo album (once again, you can change the keyword used in the email address to anything that you like).

One more note: if you want to post photos to a completely new album you can do it too. Just go to your space in the mobile browser and select the link to “Add an album”. Then save the email address generated for that photo album to your address book and you're all set.

PS. According to Telephia’s research Windows Live Spaces are #2 in the UK and #3 in the US among the sites receiving mobile-generated content.

Have you ever spent time taking 6 or 7 photos, just trying to get everyone's faces turned correctly and smiling correctly?  Ever wish you could take the best parts of each photo and glue them together?  That's Group Shot.  MSR Group Shot helps you create a perfect group photo out a series of group photos. With Group Shot you can select your favorite parts in each shot of the series and Group Shot will automatically build a composite image.

http://research.microsoft.com/projects/GroupShot/

See the still in beta plans for Windows Live.  This is where MSN Messenger is heading as well as Live Email.  Includes an online security scanning and repair engine and a new option for a home page based on RSS feeds.

Windows Live Ideas – Homepage

There is a new version of MSN Messenger, now 7.5, released to the web.  You can download it by clicking here.  Just to give you the high level changes / additions:

Dynamic backgrounds - a few free ones and some you have to pay for

Voice Clips - now you can send a voice message like you can a text message.  Doesn't require the full Voice Conversation be connected.

Better audio quality when you do use voice conversation, via echo cancellation

Security settings to keep URLs from coming in and file downloads from coming in.

I'm Just The Messenger: MSN Messenger 7.5 - I can't believe It's Not Beta

MSN Virtual Earth is now in beta.  You can find it here.  Some pretty neat features are available with it.  Maps are not complete in all places yet, still in beta, but it is getting there.  You can get your long / lat coordinates also.  You can view some major cities down to the lowest level possible on the web today.

John Gallardo's Weblog : MSN Launches Virtual Earth

You can get to the new version by clicking here. 

The new version extends the expiration date to December so if you are currently running the beta you will need to upgrade. 

A number of issues with messages moving quickly off the screen before you read them, longer descriptions of issues, and improved removal mechanisms are all contained in this release.

Kansas City T-Bones, the Northern League team in KC, will be playing 2 innings of a July 16th game virtually on an Xbox.  Two gamers will be in recliners at home plate playing out the game on the big screen at the ball park.

Kansas City Star | 06/21/2005 | Old ballgame has newfangled twist

Tabbed browsing is here!!! Well, for IE finally.   MSN Search Toolbar, that also includes desktop search, is updated and available and includes tabbed browsing as part of the package. 

There is a great feature that lets you reopen your browser including all the previous tabs you had open in case you accidentally shut them down.  Also, you can setup a routine that allows you to open a web browser and automatically open a set of tabbed pages that you choose.

Search and browse smarter with MSN Search Toolbar, now with Windows Desktop Search

If you want to know all the technical, and I mean technical, details comparing the Xbox 360 and the PS3, then see the blog below.  It is in 4 parts to make it a tad easier to digest. 

http://www.majornelson.com/2005/05/20/xbox-360-vs-ps3-part-1-of-4/

Great detail on how to use the full functionality of the new desktop search.

MSN Desktop Search Powertips

The new version of MSN Search Toolbar came out on Monday. I've been using a pre-release version of the toolbar for a while, and I've put together quite a few shortcuts that make my life easier. Now that it's out, I thought I'd share.

These are all keyboard-centric shortcuts for the deskbar - the little search box that lives down on the taskbar. To give focus to the deskbar without involving your (slow, analog) mouse, just type ctrl-alt-m.

Before I give a laundry-list of shortcuts that I use, let me give a brief overview of what the definitions mean. If you aren't into technical detail, feel free to skip down to the list below, or read the official help on deskbar shortcuts here.

Definitions come in the form: @keyword,action

The @ tells the toolbar that you're going to define a shortcut. You won't type it when you use the shortcut - if you type @mail when you define it, you'll type mail to use it. The part between the @ and , - the keyword - can be any word you like. (I'm using "word" in a very programmerish way, here, it can actually be any combination of letters, numbers and punctuation without spaces or commas.

After the , comes the guts of the command - what you actually want the computer to do when you type that toolbar. A simple shortcut will just replace a command with something easier to remember or type - for example, one of the default shortcuts for the toolbar runs Microsoft Word when you type word - which is good, because the actual file that Word lives in is named "winword." That shortcut looks like @word,=winword

Simple shortcuts are fine, but the real cool powers come when you master one last (totally optional) symbol: $w. If you put $w in your command, the the computer will replace it before it runs the command. In its place, the computer will put whatever you typed after the shortcut name. So the shortcut @space,http://spaces.msn.com/members/$w/ will send you to whichever space you ask for in the search box. After you set up that shortcut, space jwodicka will take you here, for example.

I have been using the desktop search tool since the beta was released a few months ago.  I have found it invaluable in locating information incredibly fast.  If you have lots of files / emails that you maintain on your drive, this tool can be a great help for you.

Find Documents and E-mail fast using MSN Search Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search

Social-networking technologies, including blogs, Wikis, and RSS, are likely to play a key part in the Longhorn "Aero" interface, based on a recent reorganization at Microsoft.  Full article link below. 

Longhorn to Get a Social-Networking Infusion

Now you can get RSS feeds, by product, for recently published KB articles.  An easy and excellent way to keep track of your favorite products, including hardware, games, server and workstation software.  Just use your favorite RSS Aggregator.  The one I use is RSS Bandit and it is free. 

RSS Feed Product Index