Darren Straight’s Blog

A big shout out go’s to all bloggers residing in Spain!

This Thursday the 26th of April at 10am in the morning, the Spanish Microsoft Windows Live Hotmail Team will be holding a Breakfast and Windows Live Hotmail presentation for bloggers.

But to clarify this will not be the Spanish launch of Windows Live Homail, just a presentation to let all those attending know about the new features that Windows Live Homtail has to offer.

So if you would like to know more about this presentation Microsoft is holding in Madrid (Spain) and even attend, then head over to Ismael El-Qudsi’s Blog and leave a comment.

Now let’s get a Windows Live Hotmail presentation going here in the UK! :p

The following video is an excerpt from the 2007 Search Engine Strategies Keynote discussion between Danny Sullivan and Windows Live Chief, Steve Berkowitz. In this excerpt Steve Berkowitz explains that “it is not ever satisfactory not to be number one” in the search engine industry. He further explains that Microsoft’s first goal is to reach critical mass from an advertising standpoint and how Microsoft’s search platform will continue to evolve.

This video was shot by Ross Dunn, CEO and Founder, StepForth SEO Services and was originally posted at The StepForth SEO Blog. Also special thanks goes out to Matt McGowan of Incisive Media for allowing StepForth to tape segments from Search Engine Strategies New York 2007.

The Windows Live Spaces Team has not only today released a ton of new feautues for Windows Live Spaces but has also supplled my pals over at LiveSide with some interesting stats. As of right now, the service is now available in 51 countries in 25 languages, there have been 93 million spaces created since Spaces was released, and more than 111 million people a month use Spaces. As well as this more 18 million photos are added per day and totaling over 4 billion since day 1. Anyhow here’s the list of improvments as got from the Windows Live Spaces Team Blog (The Space Craft)

Communication
There are brand new ways to communicate with your friends, as well as with new people that you’d like to meet.

• Your new Spaces home page
  Now when you log in, you’ll see a new page dedicated to keeping you up-to-date on changes to your space and what’s new with your Windows Live Messenger contacts.  In one glance you’ll see who has updated their space and who has added comments to your space.  Roll over their picture to see who’s updated their photos, who’s posted a blog entry, and who’s added new lists.

• Messaging
  Keep in touch with your Spaces friends and meet other people on Spaces by sending them messages. Just put your cursor over their profile picture and you’ll see a “Send a message” link.   You can also use the link in the Visitor tools module on a person’s space.

• Guestbook
  Add the guestbook module and people visiting your space can leave comments with rich formatting, including images and video. Add the guestbook to your space by clicking here.

Customization
There are many new customization options for Spaces, so you can better control how your space looks.

• Custom background image
  Now you can upload whatever picture you want from your computer and use it as the background of your space. Upload your image in the Customize menu under the Advanced tab.

• Additional colors and themes
  There are now more themes to choose from and an easy-to-use color picker. You can also change the fonts!

Gadgets and Modules
With the changes we’ve made to gadgets and modules, now you can customize them to create the layout and design you want for your space.

• Size and style
  Most gadgets and modules can span the full width of a column, and you can now remove their borders or change their titles to whatever you want by clicking on the arrow in the right hand corner of the gadget or module when you are in Edit mode.

• Other cool stuff
  You can have multiple modules at the top or bottom of your space that span all of the columns – perfect for your space title and tagline. You can also have more than one version of the same gadget on your space. And if you’re on someone else’s space and see a module you like, you can add it to your space by clicking the “+” sign in the upper-right corner of the module.

Check out and install some spaces gadgets today from the Windows Live Gallery.

Photos
With over 18 million photos uploaded by Spaces users every day, we know that improving the experience of managing photos is important to you, so we added a few new features. 

• Managing your photos
  There’s a brand new page for viewing and editing albums on your space.

• Viewing photos
  There’s a new layout for the individual photo pages so it’s faster and easier to view your photos and see all of your comments at a glance.

Mobile
There’s been a dramatic increase in Spaces mobile usage over the past few months, and we wanted to provide great mobile interaction with Spaces. Here’s what’s new:

• See at a glance the recent updates and comments on your space
• Add, delete, view, and browse your friends
• View profile information

Interested in learning more about mobile features for Spaces? Read this Space Craft blog entry

Lists
Lists are now easier to use – and they look even better.

• Music lists
  Now you can show specific music lists on your spaces home page as well as see multiple results when searching for music on Amazon to create your list.

• Book lists
  Same as with music! Search for the book and add the information and picture from Amazon.com to your list.

• Looks better in narrow view
  We’ve make some improvements to make your lists look better when in narrow columns on your space.

APIs and Feeds
We wanted to give you the ability to access your Spaces information from a variety of locations and services, so we added new RSS feeds and opened up our APIs to allow you more freedom. Go crazy with your Spaces data!   Visit: http://dev.live.com/spaces over the next few days for more information. Note: Only spaces with permissions set to “public” can use RSS feeds and APIs.

Profile Updates
There are some new, cool additions to profiles.

• Enhanced contact updates preview
  When you see a profile picture on Spaces, just put your cursor over the picture and you can see a lot more information about the person than ever before.

Have fun using the new features! And don’t forget the Windows Live Spaces Team is looking forward to seeing what you do with your space and what you think about the updates.  So hey why not leave them a comment and let them know what you think.

Great News for all you Upcoming.org fans, today the Yahoo Search Blog announced the release of Upcoming.org 2.0 which includes some additional changes and upgrades to Upcoming, including the integration of Flickr and the transition of Upcoming.org onto the Signle Sign in Yahoo! Local platform. And this time Yahoo! seems to have sweeten the deal with a free offer of a T-shirt. However its only available to America and Canada.

Anybody from the US or Canada willing to help me get it sent to the UK by re-sending it for me? Really would be greatful!

Read more about the release here and here!

Check out my Upcoming Profile at:

http://upcoming.yahoo.com/user/95912/

Just noticed a press release from The University of Pennsylvania, stating that they have partnered with Microsoft to adopt the Windows Live @ edu programme to enhance the communications platform it offers to many of its students

So from the beginning of the fall semester, students in the School of Arts and Sciences and the Wharton School will have the option of using a customized version of Windows Live called Penn Live to access e-mail and a full suite of online communications services.

Penn Live will host student e-mail accounts, including support for both mobile and offline access.  The arrangement with Microsoft will provide students with 2 gigabytes of storage space.  Other features include calendaring and contact management; Windows Live Messenger instant messaging and file sharing; Windows Live Spaces for personal web publishing, blogging and photo sharing; and FolderShare, a private peer-to-peer network that allows users to synchronize files between multiple devices and share files with other student users.

Penn Live will initially be offered to students in SAS and Wharton, representing 13,000 of the University’s approximately 20,000 students.

The agreement is the culmination of a discussion involving students, University administration and representatives of Microsoft.

Omniture, Inc. a leading provider of online business optimization software, yesterday announced it will work with Microsoft on its new Windows Live Messenger i’m Initiative. Every time a customer has a conversation using i’m, Microsoft shares a portion of the program’s advertising revenue with the participating i’m Initiative organization of his or her choice — creating a simple and effective way for users of Windows Live Messenger to make a difference.

Building on the companies’ long-standing relationship, Microsoft will use Omniture Web analytics technology to measure the performance of their online promotional activities around the i’m Initiative, giving the company insight into how each of their marketing channels contributes to the success of the program.

“Omniture will give us a real-time understanding of the ‘buzz’ around our i’m Initiative,” said Tara Kriese, senior product manager for Windows Live Messenger at Microsoft Corp. “Its Web analytics technology allows us to measure and tie together the impact of this integrated, multi-faceted program while quantifying our customers’ behaviors, perceptions and attitudes surrounding Windows Live Messenger.”

Follwing my recent post about removing or disabling the Ease of Access Icon, located in the lower left hand corner of the Windows Vista login screen. I just found an article titled “Windows Vista - Backdoor Logon” which exlains to you a method which you can use to exploit the ‘Ease of Access’ menu at the bottom of a regular Windows Vista Logon.

Normally, if you click the Icon then you get a choice of help from Narrator, Magnifier and High Contrast.  The trick is to replace the file called Magnify.exe, with a file which is really cmd.exe.

Once you make the change, then when you select Magnifier from the Ease of Access dialog box, you enter the operating system at the command prompt.  The result is you can logon as the System account, without the need of a password.  However one of the limitations that exsist is that your shell program is cmd.exe rather than explorer.  Though a more serious limitation is that in order to enter via this backdoor, you would need to install a Trojan horse program.  Another possibility is that you have logged on previously, and manually made the changes as described below.

Preliminary Step - Deal with Permissions

Problem: You cannot rename or delete the original Magnify.exe in Windows \system32.  Even though you are an administrator, even though UAC is enabled, all you get is this message:

‘You need permission to perform this action’

Solution: Take ownership of the file Magnify.exe, then change the permission for the Administrator’s group to Full control.  Then rename Maginify.exe to MagnifyOld.exe.

Main Step - Create the Impostor Magnify.exe

1. Create a new folder called Ease
2. Copy CMD.exe —> \Ease \cmd.exe
3. Rename \Ease \cmd.exe —> Magnify.exe
4. Copy \Ease \Magnify.exe —> Windows \system32\Magnify.exe

What you have achieved is that the old, relatively harmless, ‘Magnify’ becomes the more versatile cmd.exe.

Test Your ‘Ease of access’ Backdoor Method

1. At the Vista Logon screen, click on Ease of access
2. Check the box next to: Make Items on the screen Larger (Magnifier)
3. Click ‘OK’
4. You should now find yourself at the Command Prompt
5. Try whoami
6. Try regedit
7. Feel the power!

It looks like quite a few people out there (here, here and here) would like to know how to go about removing or disabling the Ease of Access Icon which is located in the lower left hand corner of the Windows Vista login screen as you first boot up to Windows Vista or when you lock the screen.

Well it looks like a guy named James Wilcox who I found via a thread on the Shell: revealed forums has developed a solution, which he calls the “Ease of Access disabler”

A small program that disables that annoying Ease of Access button in the bottom left hand side of your Vista logon screen.

Ease of Access disabler is a small but clever program that disables the Ease of Access button in the bottom left hand corner of the screen and show a message similar to the above when clicked.

If you work in a location where people often meddle with your PC, i.e a school, and when you come back someone has switched the narrator on, the magnifier on , and onscreen is turned on and the color scheme has changed to black and white. Annoying.

There is really no point in this button, unless of course you are disabled, so why not disable it with this neat little program. You can also re-enable it if you find out that you do want it.

Simply click the disable button to disable it and the enable button to re-enable it. This application must be run with Administrative priviliges. Right click, and select run as Administrator.

It can be very annoying because somebody can still fiddle with your PC even while its locked!!?

Doesn’t make sense to me! But I have fixed the problem. Just run this small application, click disable and the button no longer opens the Ease of Access window.

When you come back to your PC it will be the way it was when you left it, not with narrator, magnifier the onscreen keyboard and the black and white color scheme running.

The Ease of Access disabler can be downloaded from here or here.

In a weeks time, the 25th of April to be exact, Microsoft will finally launch Windows Live Hotmail in Spain (España). This exact date of when Windows Live Hotmail will launch in Spain (España) comes from a recent press inviatation that was sent out. In it also states “actualmente hay más de 9 millones de cuentas activas de Hotmail en España.” which translated means that there are currently more than 9 million active Hotmail accounts in Spain.

Quite a fair ammount of accounts, but what will they all be happy to recieve Windows Live Hotmail. I hope so. But I guess we will know for sure next week.

Hopefuly the Windows Live Hotmail launch won’t be too far away for those of us in other European Countries either, especially tor those of us in he UK and France who have also been receiving word of a launch just around the corner!

Great news! Today the Microsoft Windows Home Server Team are broadly rolling out a new test build of Windows Home Server - a Community Technology Preview (CTP).

The Windows Home Server CTP (build 06.00.1371) provides a wide range of code fixes, user interface improvements and feature enhancements, such as:

• A more complete and simplified “out of box” experience, including an easy, 7-step setup process after installation, personalized home server naming, and the ability to configure a standalone Windows Home Server from an existing home computer.
• You can now set up and configure Remote Access capabilities from the Windows Home Server Console, including selection of a personalized web address from the Windows Live Custom Domains service.
• You can enable or disable home network health notifications and can dictate where and when various notifications are displayed on their computers.
• Users can clearly define their password settings, and designate a password hint to assist in recovering a forgotten Windows Home Server password.
• And you can now add and remove Windows Home Server Add-in programs developed with the Windows Home Server Software Development Kit.

The Windows Server CTP is an exciting milestone for the team on the road to final release. As always, those interested in participating in the beta program can apply here.