Darren Straight’s Blog

To provide users with more up-to-date terminology, Microsoft has now replaced the current content that was previously posted to the ftp site with a more concise document that is easier to use, moving this data from the ftp site to the Microsoft download center is also an effort from Microsoft to significantly increase reliability and accessibility for users.

The Microsoft Terminology Translations can be downloaded here.

Remember my post about Windows Live Local Coming to Australia?

Well now Windows Live Local really does have full support for Australia:

Street Address Lookups (geocoding) - Try entering 27 Polglass Way, Ardross, WA , AU in the WHERE field. If your map view is centered somewhere in Australia, you of course don’t need to specify the country and can just enter 27 Polglass Way, Ardross, WA

Driving Directions - Get directions between addresses, landmarks, or just right click on the map to set a waypoint. Here is a route from the Rocks to Perth - its a 48 hour drive. bring lots of water.

Business Listing search and overlay. View up to three layers of Business listings at a time. move around the map and watch them refresh automatically. here is a query in Brisbane for Hotels, Pharmacies and Cassinos

Detailed street network and Aerial Imagery - Until now WLL has had major city coverage in AU, but with this release the Windows Live Local Team have rolled out a detailed national street network based on data from MapData Sciences. GeoEye is supplying lots of high res aerial imagery for major cities as well.

Full API and Developer support - Get started with the Virtual Earth interactive SDK. Application developers have access to everything mentioned here making adding location services to your website a snap.

COLLECTIONS! - People have been creating Collection in AU since the Team launched the feature a few months ago, but now you can view and create on a much improved base of imagery and streets. Here are a few to get you started. If you create a Collection you want to share with the world, be sure to post it to Pass The POI.

• AFL Venues
• State Capitals of Australia
• Live Cams in Sydney
• Some Random Landmarks and more
• 3 Mobile Dealers in WA
• Blue Mountains Restaurants

Man was it hot up in London today or what, especially at The London Dungeons.

My first stop in London was Bodies The Exhibition an Exhibition very like Body Worlds in which human bodies have been preserved in their flesh to be shown off to us the public so we can see what are bodies are really made of and how fragile they really are.

The technique used to preserve the bodies is called Polymer preservation, which a revolutionary technique in which human tissue is permanently preserved using liquid silicone rubber. This prevents the natural decay process, making specimens available for study for an indefinite time period. Polymer preservation provides a closer look at the skeletal, muscular, nervous, respiratory, digestive, urinary, reproductive, endocrine and circulatory systems by unveiling the mysteries of the human anatomy.

But how is this accomplished?

• Anatomists fix a specimen with chemicals to temporarily halt the decaying process.
• They then dissect it to expose important structures.
• All of the water is removed from the specimen by replacing it with acetone.
• The specimen is placed into a liquid silicone mixture within a vacuum chamber. Under vacuum, the acetone becomes a gas that is completely replaced by the polymer mixture.
• Lastly, the silicone polymer is hardened. The end result is a dry, odorless, permanently preserved specimen containing no toxic chemicals. It retains the look of the original, but functions as if it were rubber.

Preparation time varies though as a small organ may take only a week, while a full-body specimen may take up to one year to prepare.

But what’s my overall opinion of this Exhibition, well it was very interesting to say the least, better yet it was fantastically fascinating as it’s great seeing what’s really under your skin from such a different angle view that text books or the web can give you as you can actually walk around the whole uncovered body, it’s a shame you can’t take photographs though, I guess that was probably my only disappointment with the exhibition other than that it was great and I would highly recommend going to it before it’s too late!

Also let’s just say I’ll never think about my body the same way ever again!

My second visiting place today was of course the red hot sticky London Dungeons, I’ve been before but I wanted to go again and see how it’s changed, quite a bit I must say, it’s just a real shame that you have to queue for ages to get in, even once your inside the actually building there’s still queuing to be done in stages, I guess that’s its main downfall.

But once you get past the queues you feel like it’s been worth it especially with all the interaction and fun that goes on inside, I actually got called up as a volunteer at one point at the beginning when everybody goes to the doctors to look for a cure for the black death, had to stand in front of everyone while being told I smelled of the black death, I was asked if I had tried bathing myself in my own urine to get rid of the black death, haha!

The maze of mirrors was pretty fun too; everybody was wondering where to go, so I would also like to recommend a visit to The London Dungeons, always as long you’re up for waiting in the queue for an hour or more!

Where should I go to next in London anybody want to make some recommendations?

Check this out, the long awaited http://get.live.com subdomain is now live and no longer redirects you to http://ideas.live.com

Shame about the horizontal scrollbars though!

Update: IE (Internet Explorer) Only

I’m not sure how many of you use the Windows Live Toolbar, but for those of you that do you might like to know that the Windows Live Toolbar is now out of Beta and can be downloaded here or from the Windows Live Toolbar site at http://toolbar.live.com/

The Windows Live Toolbar will let you:

• Start and refine a search from any web page.
• Guard against Web fraud and viruses
• Block bothersome pop-ups and adjust settings as needed.
• Customize your toolbar and select the features you wish to install.
• Personalize your toolbar with custom buttons
• Use the options drop down to change settings for your toolbar.
• Turn addresses into maps from any web page
• Collect, Save and Share with Onfolio
• Open multiple web pages within the same browser window with tabbed browsing.
• Access your favorites from any PC.
• And more…

Following up on my recent post about what the Windows Live Mail M7 Release would contain, and the even more recent post about how to preview Windows Live Mail M7, It looks like Windows Live Mail M7 has just been Released as more and more people are seeing the updated version of Windows Live Mail.

No official word from the Windows Live Mail Team yet though.

Following my post this morning about Windows Live Gallery launching today, the Windows Live Gallery Beta Site has now officially launched at http://gallery.live.com/

This new Windows Live Gallery site is intended to be a one-stop shop for consumers to personalize their Windows Live and PC experience as the Windows Live Gallery will help you find all of the coolest & most useful Gadgets, Toolbar custom buttons, Messenger Activities & Bots, add-ins, extensions and much more to personalize Windows Live to it’s full potential!

And from what I can see so far, it looks like it could just accomplish that as on the design side of things it’s looking great already as it’s the first Windows Live Site to actually include the vapor and orb look together!

As always don’t forget to hover over the upper left hand corner orb!

Microsoft has now launched a Beta Test Preview Homepage of what its new Homepage will hopefully look like later on in the year.

The current preview can be seen at:
http://preview.microsoft.com/en/us/default.aspx

But it’s not currently known how much, if anything at all, of the current look will stay in the Final version of the Hompage when launched. Also it is noted that this preview can only be viewed by those of you using Internet Explorer as other browsers like Firefox and Opera will give you a page error telling you that the site cannot be found, I’m sure over that over time this Preview Site will eventually work with other browsers though.

This New homepage has changed quite extensively from the last as the whole navigation and overall functionality of the site is now a completely different experience, as now when you click on the navigation menu a new div layer window (not a pop-up) appears in front of you and the background text in the windows behind that blurs a little.

I’m not sure if I entirely like it yet as it’s missing some functionality, but when finished I’m sure it will look pretty nice and will certainly tie in with Windows Vista and Windows Live.

One thing that would be nice too see though is a Live Search Box just like the one I have on my blog in which you type and wait for the search to bring up results automatically.

Via: ActiveWin

Technorati turns 3 years old this month and with its birthday it brings us a major update of Technorati, both in term of look and features!

Here’s a summary from the Technorati Blog:

• Technorati is 3 years old! What an amazing trip so far.
• The World Live Web is all about people - We’re here to help make sense of all the interesting stuff we do in real-time.
• Technorati’s rolled out a major update to our site and to our back-end systems.
• We’ve made some major speed and accuracy improvements in core search.
• Link counting is a lot more accurate and timely.
• We’ve personalized the homepage so you can get a look at all the stuff you care about on one page.
• While we love expert bloggers, we’ve also spent a lot of time making Technorati understandable to normal people.
• We’ve added in lots of features to help you make sense of the blogosphere, including Discover, which is topic-based, Favorites, which gives YOU the power to pick your favorite blogs, and Popular, which algorithmically derives the most linked-to items in the last few days.
• We’ve made some big changes to blog profiles - allowing you to get stats about any blog that Technorati tracks, including the tags used, posting frequency, traffic, and Technorati ranking.
• We’ve made things easier for advertisers and partners, and we’ve been overwhelmed with demand. We’re building out our capabilities, and if you’re interested in advertising, drop us a line.
• This is just a start - there’s more to come in the coming weeks and months, including better charts, more real-time spam detection and elimination, more real-time media indexing, microformats integration, and additional localization and language support.

Watch a video of the new Technorati Features here. (27.9 MB)

According to a post by Daniel Fleshbourne over at Neowin, The Windows Live Gallery Beta Site will be launching today at http://gallery.live.com/. This new site is intended to be a one-stop shop for consumers to find all of the great Gadgets, Messenger Activities & Bots, add-ins, and extensions to personalize Windows Live services.

Windows Live Gallery will also offer developers the ability to showcase their Windows Live add-ins to consumers all in one place by quickly allowing them to upload their latest creations for the community to see and give feedback on them.