Darren Straight's Blog

ICT Enthusiast and photographer.

By - Darren Straight

Windows Live Local Birds-Eye view available for London

Following the recent availability of new Windows Live Local Aerial Photography for the UK, and yesterdays New release of Windows Live Local which includes real-time traffic reporting, new ways to collect and share search results, and tight integration with Microsoft Office Outlook and Windows Live Messenger. Windows Live Local now has a Birds-Eye view available for London. And this after yesterdays

By - Darren Straight

Download Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor Beta

The Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor Beta is now available for Download. The Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor is a small beta application that you can run on your current Windows XP-based computer to find out if it’s ready for an upgrade to Windows Vista. When you run the Upgrade Advisor, it will scan your computer and generate an easy-to-understand report of any

By - Darren Straight

MSN Spaces changes member URL’s again!

MSN Spaces is once again going to change member space URL’s, this time from “spaces.msn.com/spacename/” to “spacename.spaces.msn.com”, before version 10.5 it used to be “spaces.msn.com/members/spacename/ so why the change again?, well my guess is that that the url change is to do with technical reasons, or better yet they changed it because it’s easier and faster to key in “spacename.spaces.msn.com” on a mobile phone

By - Darren Straight

Windows Live Image Search Beta Test Round 2

As some of you might probably remember, last month I posted a blog post titled “Windows Live Image Search” on my blog which in turn happened to be spotted and blogged about on a Live Community Blog by Kevin Briody a Consumer Community Marketing Manager for Windows Live at Microsoft. Ok but what’s so significant about all this, well it

By - Darren Straight

Windows Vista Beta 2 Download

The Windows Vista Beta 2 Download is now available for IT professionals and developers with MSDN and TechNet subscriptions. And in the coming weeks or so, Microsoft will release the Windows Vista Customer Preview Program (CPP) for developers and IT professionals who are not members of either the MSDN or TechNet subscriptions services. You can however get a head start on your Windows

By - Darren Straight

Download 2007 Microsoft Office System Beta 2

The Download for the “2007 Microsoft Office System Beta 2” is now online for the general public to download, I guess there’s not much else I can say other than go and grab it while it’s still hot, like a hot cake! Ohh and by the way yes it is now called the “2007 Microsoft Office System” just in case your

By - Darren Straight

Text Link Ads Calculator

The guys over at Text Link Ads, have just completed work on a tool that answers the timeless question of, “What is a link from my website worth?” The new Text Link Ads Calculator will help answer that question for webmasters, while helping potential link buyers out there figure out what they might want to pay out in today’s marketplace. Calculator factors include:

By - Darren Straight

Upcoming Release of Microsoft Connect 2.0

Microsoft Connect will be releasing Microsoft Connect 2.0 in a couple of weeks. With this new release will can expect to see many more new features, especially in the area of feedback and access level on the betas, here’s a more detailed post about this update: This new release of Connect will allow users to provide feedback to product groups

By - Darren Straight

First BritBlog BlogMeet

Ok so today I had the pleasure of attending the first BritBlog BlogMeet in The Marquess of Anglesey pub in covent garden in London. I arrived there at just after 4pm and couldn’t see anybody who looked like they were waiting for anybody else from BritBlog so I decided to order myself a pint of fosters and sit down on a