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The Top 5 Free Microsoft Products & Why They Are The Best

Mahendra Palsule — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:30:34 +0000

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer may be the worst browser on the planet, and any Mac lover or Linux geek can easily expound on the flaws in the Windows operating system.

However, it would be foolhardy to abandon our objectivity and criticize all Microsoft products. Not only does Microsoft make some great products, but several of them are available for you to use completely free.

Here are my picks for the Top 5 free Microsoft software products and why they are the best.

#1: Windows Live Writer

Any blogger not using Windows Live Writer (WLW) is wasting time and being unproductive. Looking for a better alternative? There is none.

WLW makes blogging a breeze on popular platforms like Wordpress, Blogger, Windows Live, LiveJournal and Typepad. True WYSIWYG editing shows you previews of how your post will look. Easily upload/embed photos/videos with borders, effects, alignment, and resizing. WLW also has an extensible framework of plugins, that let you customize and extend its functionality. Check out our previous coverage of WLW to get more out of this must-have tool for bloggers.

#2: Photosynth

Microsoft Photosynth is a jaw-dropping technology that automatically stitches together your photos to create an immersive 3D view. You can explore hundreds of thousands of synths on the site, or upload your own photos to create your own synth. You can then embed your synth on your website to share with everyone. This can even be used for multiple people uploading pictures of an event. For example, here is the photosynth of Obama’s presidential inauguration made with hundreds of photographs contributed by multiple people. Below is a snapshot of a popular synth of the Statue of Liberty.

From NASA to National Geographic, you can explore fascinating 3D views of places all over the world. Photosynth uses the Seadragon technology that we’ve covered previously on MakeUseOf.

Photosynth is also integrated with Bing Maps. Over 14,000 geo-tagged photosynths comprising 1.4 million photos uploaded by users like you and me can be explored via the Photosynth Bing Maps application – easily one of the best free Microsoft software products.

#3: World Wide Telescope

Microsoft WorldWide Telescope (WWT) brings terabytes of imagery from the best ground telescopes and the Hubble Space Telescope to your desktop. It seamlessly combines the data from these multiple sources into a rich immersive world that you can explore from your home. Use the native Windows client for all features, or the web client for a smaller subset. Guided tours from experts are a great way to introduce the stars and galaxies to youngsters. Exploration is possible not only in the visible light spectrum, but also in non-visible wavelengths such as x-ray and infrared.

The user interface and imagery use Photosynth technology and is said to be significantly better than Google Sky.

#4: Windows Live Skydrive

Windows Live Skydrive offers 25 GB of free space to anyone with a free Live ID for uploading, storing, and sharing files and photos. Most online storage services do not provide anything above 2 GB for free, and Skydrive’s 25 GB remains unparalleled. You can choose to keep files private, share them with contacts, or make them public. People are uploading 4 million photos to Skydrive every day. With Office 2010, you’ll be able to directly save a document on your PC to Skydrive.

Check out MakeUseOf’s coverage of Windows Live to get the most out of Skydrive.

#5: Bing

Bing is one of the best free Microsoft software products. While I still use Google almost exclusively myself, I have no hesitation in nominating Bing in this list of the best free Microsoft products. Why?

For starters, Bing is better than Google for certain kinds of queries. Natural language searches seem to be better in Bing. The categories and suggestions offered by Bing on the left are unique and not matched by Google. Check out these 10 Sites to Compare Google vs Bing Results Side by Side and judge for yourself.

But the real reason I love Bing is because it provides competition to Google. The past decade has seen Google become a monopoly in the search business. With Bing’s increasing popularity, Google is forced to innovate. Compare the rate of feature enhancements announced by Google before and after the arrival of Bing and you will agree that Bing makes Google better. That is certainly good for all of us and the web in general.

Which are your favorite free Microsoft products? Share with us in the comments! Don’t like Microsoft? You’d be interested to read Justin’s article on The Top 5 Free WORST Microsoft Products & Why They Suck and chime in!

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Blog Directly From Your WM Device Via Windows Live Writer Mobile Beta

Karl L. Gechlik — Thu, 28 May 2009 13:00:23 +0000

This post is for all the bloggers out there. I have been using Windows Live Writer (WLW) for some time now. We have covered WLW more than once here, here and here. Now, you can use WLW on your Windows Mobile Device!

This is awesome for me as I do a lot of my work and writing on my Windows Mobile Device. I have a HTC Fuze aka the Touch Pro.

Let’s take a look at WLW Mobile Beta and how it works.

First, we start off by visiting the product site because this is a third-party application and not originally written by Microsoft.

We download the application which is a ZIP file that can be extracted to your device. You can store it anywhere but to execute it you need to browse to it using your File Explorer. Browsing to it you should see a screen similar to this:

From here all you need to do is hit that WLW.exe and it will launch. No installation necessary. After launching it for the first time, you will be greeted with this screen prompting you to set up your settings like so:

I clicked OK and the settings window popped up. The default settings will work for most blogs. You can also change the language between English and Czech.

I clicked Save settings and was ready to set up my Wordpress account for publishing to http://www.askTheAdmin.com, my personal Blog. To enter account information, I clicked on the Account Manager button as you can see below:

Now, we are ready to write a test post. I clicked OK and went back to the main menu. From there, I choose New Article and away I went!

When I was done, I hit next and saw a screen asking me if I want to publish this post or any others I have drafted on my device.

I hit Publish and the article was on its way to the Web after confirming the account I want to use. At that point, I got a Czech pop-up which said this:

It gave me two choices: OK or Cancel; but what the prompt said… I had no idea! So, I hit OK!

I checked the web and the post was there in all it’s glory! I logged in to my Wp-Admin and deleted it. Now, I know I can post articles on the fly from my handheld device! Sweet!

Not using Wordpress? Learn how to blog to Blogger from your cellphone.

Do you have another mobile blogging tool that you want to share with us? Well, what are you waiting for? Do it now! Leave them in the comments.

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7 Great Plugins For Windows Live Writer 2009

Charnita Fance — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 20:00:46 +0000

I have been using Windows Live Writer 2009 for about a month now; for me, it was love at first use. If you haven’t used it before you should really take advantage of the new Windows Live Writer.

For me, Windows Live Writer really makes blogging enjoyable and I especially love the ability to add plugins. There is an extensive list in the Windows Live Gallery but these are the 7 that, in my opinion, are a must have for Windows Live Writer users.

But before we begin, I strongly recommend you check out earlier MakeUseOf article Five Things To Do After Installing Windows Live Writer. It shows you how to

- Turn on Spell Check
- Use Link Glossary
- Configure FTP
- Learn the Shortcuts
- Set Blog Pings

Now, back to plugins.

Flickr4Writer

If you use Flickr for uploading and sharing your photos then this is a great plugin for you. With Flickr4Writer you can browse photos from your own account as well as anyone else and then insert the images into your blog post. You can choose to search all images, photosets, or certain tags. One you find an image that you like, you can then specify how you’d like it to appear in your post. You can customize the alignment, spacing, border, CSS class, and you can even choose whether or not to include a link to the image.

xPollinate

This plugin is for all of you Ping.fm lovers. xPollinate lets you cross post to other blogs linked in your Windows Live Writer and social sites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and more through the use of Ping.fm. You have the option to customize the setup of how your blog posts, micro-blog posts, and status messages will look. For others blogs that you may choose to cross post to already added in your Windows Live Writer, you can also include a footer and/or header.

Twitter Notify

This is great for all you Twitter lovers. Twitter Notify allows you to send a tweet for any newly published blog post. With the TinyURL integration, you don’t even have to worry about long URLs; a shortened link to your blog post will be automatically created. You will be prompted to customize your message format You can customize your default message and will be prompted to do so before publishing a post.

DiggThis

This is a very simple plugin that allows you to manually add a Digg button or badge to your blog posts. There are 4 styles to choose from and can set it for right or left alignment.

Tag Generator

This plugin automatically generates tags based on the content of your blog post. Tag Generator allows you to generate tags for Technorati, Windows Live Writer, WordPress, and Blogger. After selecting all of your blog text and clicking on “Generate Tags” your next step will be to edit them. As you can see below, you can modify, delete and add tags. Even though this plugin is more geared toward beginning bloggers, it’s still a tool that can come in handy for anyone.

The final 2 plugins are personal favorites of mine; I definitely could not live without either.

Text Template

This plugin is a must for anyone who uses repeated text or html in their blog posts such as banners, signatures or an invitation for readers to leave comments. With Text Template you can create and save templates containing text and/or html for later use, and then quickly and easily insert them into your posts. Templates that you create can also be put into categories to make them easier to find if you have a lot saved.

Screen Capture

Currently there are 4 screen capture plugins available but this one is by far my favorite and the easiest to use in my opinion. First you’ll need to decide and specify if you want to capture the full screen, browser window, or a customized area. Whatever you choose to capture, it will automatically appear in your blog post. Once inserted you can customize the layout, size, rotate, crop, tilt, contrast, watermark and even add special effects. If you use WordPress, when publishing or saving your blog post these images will be uploaded to your media gallery.

Which plugins do you use and which are your favorite? Please feel free to let us know in the comments.

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7 Reasons Why You Should Try Out Windows Live Writer 2009

James Yeang — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 23:01:59 +0000

I rarely find myself recommending a Microsoft product to people, but Windows Live Writer certainly bucks the trend here. As a desktop application for blogging, it’s powerful, simple to use and set up.

If you’re a blogger and you’re not convinced, here are 7 reasons why you should try out Windows Live Writer 2009.

1. Much faster than writing your post online

Being a blogger for several years now, I’ve had the pleasure of trying out both the Blogger and Wordpress platforms with my websites – and while they were relatively easy to update, just like most web services at this point – I’ve always felt that they just lacked the speed and smoothness of a desktop application. Windows Live Writer fills this gap by taking everything blog related offline. Tasks like inserting pictures into posts, and previewing posts, which used to take time to load up online, now happen instantaneously. Not only do you speed up your work, but you can take more time to play around and edit your post without having to wait every time you make some changes.

2. Ability to import your blog theme so you preview your post as you write

Windows Live Writer has an excellent feature called ‘Edit Using Theme’ which allows you to download and incorporate your existing blog theme so that when you write your post, you’ll see it as it would appear in your real blog. Think of it as a real-time preview as you write so you don’t have to keep hitting the preview button to see how your post would actually turn out.

3. Extendible and Customizable

As most Firefox or Wordpress users would testify, having a community which builds up plug-ins and extensions which make a product better is very important. Windows Live Writer allows for such customization and has a gallery for such plug-ins for you to browse. Granted, the amount of plug-ins aren’t fantastic at this point, but with the release of the 2009 edition of the Windows Live Writer, you can see Microsoft making an effort to take this community up a notch by releasing official plugins for Twitter, Digg, and Flickr as well as tutorial videos on their blog.

4. Switch between blogs at a click of a button

Write for more than one blog? With Windows Live Writer you can easily switch between blogs in an instant. All login details are stored in the application so everything is incredibly snappy. The picture below says it all.

5. Easily insert rich media

Inserting rich media like videos and maps are a walk in the park with Windows Live Writer. For example, if you want to upload the latest video in your YouTube account, rather than copying and pasting large chunks of code, you can login directly to your YouTube account from Windows Live Writer, and pick your videos to insert.

You can also quickly insert maps from Live Maps (Microsoft’s equivalent of Google Maps) – again, no copying and pasting code involved – just point and click.

6. Immediate access to drafts

Windows Live Writer allows you to store post drafts either locally on the client side, and have them displayed on the sidebar. This option of local drafts allows for instant access to any posts you’ve been working on so all your most recent work is only a click away.

7. Superior image handling and effects

When it comes to handling images, Windows Live Writer comes with a plethora of options so you can do all your image editing right there and then within the application. You can handle everything from adding borders, and resizing images, and even adding watermarks to your photos.

…and there you have it, 7 excellent reasons why you should consider trying out Windows Live Writer 2009 to update your blog.

If you’re interested in finding out how to set up WIndows Live Writer, check out our previous post on Five Things To Do After Installing Windows Live Writer, and if you want to take at a close look at some of the finer details of Windows Live Writer check out another previous post which details how to Take Advantage of Windows Live Writer.

I’d be interested to know ‘How do you blog?’ Would you consider using a blogging client like Windows Live Writer? Share your experiences with us in the comments!

Title Photo credit: Ravage

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How To Make Windows Live Writer A Portable USB App

Jorge Sierra — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:05:42 +0000

If you’re a blogger that uses Windows Live Writer and Portable Apps, you’ll be pleased to know that you can have the best of both worlds! Scott Kingery at TechLifeWeb put together a nice tool to make Windows Live Writer portable!

You will first need to install Windows Live Writer to obtain all of the program files (if you don’t have it installed already).

After you’ve installed Windows Live Writer, download WLWPortable3.zip and extract the contents to your USB drive. Finally, copy all of the files and directories from C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Writer to the WindowsLiveWriterPortable\App\WindowsLiveWriter directory on your USB drive. To run Windows Live Writer Portable, just launch WindowsLiveWriterPortable.exe from your portable drive.

For instructions, visit the Windows Live Writer Portable project page.

Did it work for you? If not, leave a comment here and perhaps we can help you.

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