Although Microsoft isn’t a company that people would usually associate with freeware, there are a surprisingly robust selection of free Microsoft products. The following list covers the cream of the crop products that truly stand out among their free and paid counterparts. This is part two to Mahendra’s part one  on free Microsoft products, which you can read here.

1. Microsoft Security Essentials

I work for a technology center that routinely diagnoses and removes viruses from its customers’ computers. While we use a hoard of different antivirus and malware scanners to eradicate viruses, none has been as surprisingly effective as Microsoft Security Essentials. One particular day in our office, Microsoft Security Essentials picked up sixteen entries that neither Panda Activescan nor AVG antivirus had found. In fact, it was so popular in our office that it became the default antivirus that we install on reformatted computers before they go back to their clients.

2. Bing Maps

Bing Maps is Microsoft’s version of the popular Google Maps. While the latter remains an integral part of many people’s lives, Bing Maps is an alternative that is, perhaps even more efficient. The first great thing about Bing Maps is that the front page of the website features both a To and From box. I typed in two places of interest (just to test how well Bing Maps was able to pin down their addresses) and surprisingly, Bing Maps loaded both these places immediately, and accurately. On the other hand, when I tried the same search on Google Maps, not only did the search take longer, but the addresses that Google picked were wrong!

Some additional features of Bing Maps that may prove useful are: the option to pick a route by the least amount of traffic, and the ability to send your directions to either an email, a mobile phone, or to your GPS. While I wasn’t able to test whether I could actually put my directions into a GPS system, seeing as I don’t own one, just the fact that this option exists makes Bing a viable alternative to Google Maps in my mind.

3. Windows Live Photo Gallery

Windows Live Photo Gallery is a free Microsoft product that can definitely give Picasa a run for its money. Although I prefer Picasa’s interface and organization a bit more, Windows Live Photo Gallery has the same basic features like cropping, people tagging, and simple editing. WL Photo Gallery’s exposure and color adjusting features are a bit more comprehensive than that of Picasa, but it lacks Picasa’s host of filters. As far as plug-ins go, WL Photo Gallery supports much of the same functionality that Picasa does, such as Facebook, youTube, and Flickr upload.

The main reason I love WL Photo Gallery is for its Facebook Upload plug-in. Whereas Picasa’s Facebook plug-in simply puts your photos and the associated captions in an album, WL Photo Gallery uploads your tags as well, which means that you can kill two birds with one stone! Upon upload, WL Photo Gallery pulls out the names you’ve tagged your pictures with, and compares them to the names of your friends, and automatically uploads these tags to Facebook.

For those names that WL Photo Gallery can’t match up, it lets you select the friend that goes with each tag. In the end, if you like having your pictures on your computer tagged, you won’t have to redo all of your hard work when you have to upload your pictures.

4. Process Explorer

To put it simply, Process Monitor is a bit like Task Monitor on steroids. If you ever feel the need to know exactly what is running on your computer, down to the last thread, then Process Monitor is your program. You can trace each program down to the individual processes and files that the program is using. You can also monitor your CPU usage, as well as the CPU usage history. Process Monitor tracks every last minute detail about the memory usage and running operations on your computer, so if you ever feel like learning a bit more about how the programs on your computer works, consider trying Process Explorer.

5. Paint.NET

Although Paint.NET isn’t technically a Microsoft program, it was originally mentored by Microsoft, and intended to replace Microsoft Paint. Now, Paint.NET is still maintained by some of the alumni, and has flourished into a commendable program that rivals Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro. It was designed with speed in mind, so users tired of Photoshop’s laggy rendering and slow startup, or looking for a image editor for their netbook, may find Paint.NET the alternative they have been looking for. Like for Photoshop, Paint.NET also has an extensive list of plug-ins available to further add on to its capabilities.

Although many people seem to think that Microsoft only develops paid products, it is quite the contrary. There is a hoard of free Microsoft products for the public that not only bolster Windows’s features, but also act as viable competitors to many popular programs such as Picasa and Google Maps. Now that we’ve introduced you to a few of these products, try them out, and let us know how they compare!

• (52)The Top 5 Free Microsoft Products & Why They Are The Best
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• (154)We Have 3 Copies Of McAfee Total Protection 2010 [MakeUseOf Giveaway]
• (67)The Top 5 Free WORST Microsoft Products & Why They Suck
• (1)Reminder: We’re giving away 3 x McAfee Total Protection 2010 [ends Feb 5th]

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!

• (36)5 MORE Free Microsoft Products & Why They Are The Best
• (25)7 Reasons Why You Should Try Out Windows Live Writer 2009
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• (50)What Image Editing Program Do you Use? [MakeUseOf Poll]
• (6)Two Sites To Instantly Convert Your Images To Text

Messenger Plus! Live is basically an add-on for Windows Live Messenger that allows you to do a large range of customisations, and it just makes your experience using IM a whole lot better. I have at least two favourite features of Messenger Plus! Live and that is to right click on a contact and copy their email address to the clipboard, and the other one to send a mass message to all your contacts you are talking to at once.

But before I go into more detail, I better go back to the start – and that is, installation. First of all, download the program, and run the installation as you would normally would with any program. The installation file gives you an option if you would like to install a sponsor. I suggest that you refuse it just to save the hassle.

You will be then presented with a series of options that you can choose. Have a read of each screen to learn more about the program. The Windows Live Messenger installation is now complete.

To access the menu of Messenger Plus! Live, you will have a Plus! menu on your toolbar, or you can right click on a contact and select Messenger Plus! features.

Now that the software is installed, we can now look at some of the features that it offers.

Event Viewer

I find the event viewing really useful at times when I want to keep an eye out for a particular contact, when they go online, sign-out or are idle from their computer. No, I am not stalking them, but it is really useful if you’re away from your computer and people leave you a message and they sign out. The event viewer also records what songs your friends are listening to, and if you’re shy, its a great conversation starter. “Oh, you like Greenday? So do I!”

Chat Log

You may find that the inbuilt chat log on Windows Live Messenger is alright, but I don’t really like that user interface when reading over your chat history. I find that the chat log viewer on Messenger Plus! Live is much easier to use, and to browse for particular conversations. If you are concerned about other users of your computer reading them, you can also set a password to protect your chat logs.

Clean Up Your Contact Lists

In part 1 of the post, I outlined how you can see if people have you on their contact list. Another way to see is by choosing the options to clean up your contact lists. It is also a quick and easy way to remove contacts that you no longer require. I think my contact lists needs a bit of a clean up though.

Lock Windows Live Messenger

If you find yourself having a very private conversation with someone on WLM,  and someone walks into your room, or you are at work and the boss walks in, you might find it very helpful to use the shortcut key to lock Windows Live Messenger. By default it is Control+Space. This minimises all open chats, the contact list and changes the task bar icon so it doesn’t look like you’re on Messenger. When you want to resume, double click the task bar icon and enter your password if you asked it to.

Sounds & Audio To Enhance Your Chats

If you are talking to a friend who also has Messenger Plus! Live installed, why not add some sound to enhance your conversation?Below are a couple of sounds you can get, and there are many more.

Setting Personalised Status & Away Messages

Another great feature is the ability to set your own personalised status and away messages. This lets you tell exactly why you are away (if you want to tell people). You can also set auto-responders, so if someone starts talking to you, they will get a message that you set.

There are many more features as well with Messenger Plus! Live. There are also scripts that you can download to get even more functionality out of Windows Live Messenger. So what are you waiting for? If you use Windows Live Messenger all the time, you should be using Messenger Plus! Live as well.

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• (5)Integrate Facebook Chat Into Pidgin Instant Messenger

This will be a two part post with the first part covering cool Windows Live tips and tricks that you can do without installing any add-ons, and the second part explains how you can make your Windows Live Messenger experience much more fun.

1. Remove Those Annoying Ads

You may noticed at the very bottom of the Windows Live Messenger main window, they show ads to you. However, if they slightly annoy you from time to time, here is a trick on how to block them.

On your Windows computer, open up Internet Explorer. Click on Tools, then select Internet Options. Click on the Security tab, click on Restricted sites, then click on the Sites button.

Then simply add the URL http://rad.msn.com. This serves as the Microsoft ad server and once you restrict this site, Windows Live Messenger will go from this:

to this:

2. See Which Contacts Haven’t Added You To Their Contact List

One of the most searched for keywords on my website is “how do I find out who blocked or deleted me on MSN”. It is really simple to find the answer and you don’t have to install any software on your computer or spy on your friends.

In Windows Live Messenger just go to Tools –> Options, go to the Privacy section, and under Contact List, click on View. The list that is presented to you are all your contacts that have got you on their contact list. If a contact of yours is not on that list, they have either not added you or have deleted you because they don’t want to talk to you anymore – yes I know the feeling.

If going through that list will take a while, you can also download aMSN (which is a excellent portable MSN program for your USB drive). When you view your contacts, the contacts that do not have you on their list will have a red cross next to them.

Another good thing is that you can send unlimited nudges to your friends.

3. Remote Assistance

MakeUseOf has covered many remote assistant applications such as Crossloop, Instant HouseCall, LogMeIn, uVNC, and Foldershare, but did you know Windows Live Messenger is another one? Just simply start a chat, select activities and click request remote assistance.

Accept all the prompts, then the other person will be able to view your screen, and they can control your computer if you wish for them too.

If it doesn’t work, make sure “Allow Remote Assistance” is enabled by right clicking on My Computer, select properties, Remote, and tick the box.

4. Changing Your Display Name

Want to impress your friends and have a cool name and spell your name like Ĝмдїι.©ǾМ? Well, if you open up Microsoft Word for example, find some symbols that look like characters, or even change the font, you can then paste that text into your display name field on MSN. If you want, you can also draw images like these ones.

5. View Contacts By Email Address

You may notice that in the new version of Windows Live Messenger, there is no option to view contacts by email address. I for one, view all my contacts by email address as I know contacts cannot change it (unlike display names which some contacts change all the time). By viewing contacts by email address, I know I am talking to who I want to talk to.

If you are in the same situation as me, here is a workaround to view your contacts by email address. However, it may be a bit time consuming.

What you have to do is give all your contacts nicknames when they are online. Just right-click on the contact, select edit contact, and copy and paste their email address into the Nickname box.

Unfortunately it may take some time to do this for all your contacts, but this is the only and easiest way I have found to view contacts by email. If you know of another better way, please let me know.

Remember to keep an eye out for my next post. You will be having fun with audio, and keeping up with what your friends have been doing.  In the meantime, if you have any cool Windows Live tips and tricks of your own, let us know in the comments.

• (10)Messenger Plus! Live – The Must-have Addon for Windows Live Messenger
• (27)Turn Your IM Program Into A Productivity Tool Using Imified
• (21)Translation For MSN: Auto Translates Messages While Chatting
• (21)5 Online Instant Messaging Services to Chat with Friends
• (15)3 Web-Based IM Clients For Chatting The Night Away

We have reviewed quite a few online storage services in the past. Microsoft’s offering Skydrive is right up there with others when it comes to storage space, offering a staggering 25 GB of online space. In addition we also showed you how you can edit your Office documents stored in Windows Live Skydrive with Office Webapps.

One of the most annoying aspects of nearly all online storage solutions is that you have to use a web browser to upload and manage files. Some of them offer Java applets to upload but there are a number of other operations that you may want to perform on the files you have in your account. Doing them in a web browser is generally not the best way to do such things. It would be nicer if you could integrate Skydrive into the Windows shell. Wouldn’t it?

Skydrive Explorer is one such application that lets you do just that. With Skydrive Explorer installed you can easily access your Skydrive account just like any other drive from inside My Computer. A meagre 1.23 MB download, Skydrive Explorer installs in a jiffy. Once installed you will see a Skydrive Explorer System folder listed inside My Computer.

Double click on it and you will be prompted to log into your Skydrive account. You can then view the contents of your Skydrive account just like any other folder without having to use the web browser.

You should note that folders may take some time to load since Skydrive Explorer needs to send a request and then process it before it can display the relevant information to you. You should therefore avoid working directly with files stored in your Skydrive folders. The right way would be create a local copy, edit it and then copy it back to Skydrive. That said, the performance is acceptable and a large part of it would be attributed to your connection speed.

Skydrive Explorer lets you perform almost all the file/folder management tasks that you can need:

• You can create, delete, rename multiple folders in a single go.

• Copy files to Skydrive folders from your hard drive which would then be uploaded to your Skydrive account or copy the contents to your hard drive from the account.

• You can also right click on any folder and then copy its URL to the clipboard. Visiting the URL in any web browser would take you to your Skydrive account, right to where the file is located. You can easily use this functionality to share files with others by adding them to the “Public” folder.
• Create shortcuts to a Skydrive folder on your desktop for quick access

With a little effort you can easily use Skydrive to backup your important files. You can use software like the previously mentioned Directorysync pro or Freefilesync to keep two folder synchronized with each other. Let’s say you synchronize the Documents folder on your Skydrive account with the Documents folder for your user account in Windows. Now changes to any file or folder will be automatically communicated to your Skydrive account – just keep in mind the 50MB file limit!

You can also have a look at previously mentioned Gladinet and see which one would you like to use in case you are looking for a way to access your Skydrive. Which is your favorite online storage service and how do you access it?

• (46)Windows Live Skydrive & 3 Alternative Online Storage Services
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With 500 million users, Windows Live is ranked the 5th most popular site by Alexa. In the UK, it is the 2nd most popular site after Facebook. With many innovations in recent times, there is something in it for everyone. Here are 5 tips to maximize your Windows Live experience.

Tip #1. Link Multiple Live IDs

If you have multiple Live IDs, you might find yourself signing out from one ID to use the other ID. You can avoid this by linking your multiple IDs. After you’ve link multiple IDs to your primary ID, you only need to sign in once using your primary ID. You can then “switch to” other IDs without signing out, and thus can check email or shared photos of other IDs. The active ID is selected easily from a drop-down menu.

Thus, you can use one Live ID for your professional network, another for your personal circle, and easily switch between the two. Or, if you’re often helping Mom to use any of the plethora of Windows Live services, you can link her account to yours to speed things up, by seeing exactly what she sees in her browser.

On the Live homepage, click Options, select More Options. In the General section, click Linked IDs under the Account category. Now, you can add other Live accounts to easily switch between them, without having to sign out.

Simply click the drop-down menu in the upper-right corner to choose your current active ID.

Tip #2. Import your Social Contacts

You can now add all your Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Hi5 contacts to your Windows Live Network. On the Live homepage, click Add People. Select the network from which to add your contacts, and click the right arrow.

You will need to sign in to your other network and allow access. Facebook Connect works both ways as seen below.

Similarly, incorporating LinkedIn within Windows Live allows you to view your LinkedIn network updates from within Windows Live, and broadcast your updates from LinkedIn to Windows Live automatically.

Tip #3. Get Social with Web Activities

Stay up-to-date with your friends and let them know what you’re up to, automatically. Like Friendfeed, Windows Live automatically aggregates your updates from 20 web services that you can share with your network. So your updates to Digg, Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress, Flickr, etc. are broadcasted automatically for you.

Click Profile in the top header on the Live homepage. In the Web Activities section in the left side-bar, you can add and manage your feeds. You can individually choose the privacy setting of each feed. So for example, you can restrict your Facebook updates to your network, and make your Wordpress blog updates publicly visible to everyone.

Tip #4. Use SkyDrive as a Virtual Drive

Anyone having a (free) Windows Live ID has a free SkyDrive account with 25 GB cloud storage free. Check our previous coverage of SkyDrive to get started (note that the free storage has since been increased to 25 GB). To enhance SkyDrive’s usability, you can use it as a virtual drive on your desktop with Gladinet. Gladinet is now in Release Candidate, and you can check out our previous coverage of Gladinet to get started.

You can also use this virtual drive with a backup tool like Comodo Backup or Microsoft SyncToy to automatically backup your files and folders to your Skydrive.

Tip #5. Use Hotmail for your Custom Domain

If you have registered your own custom domain, you can use Hotmail to provide email hosting services. Note that Windows Live does not provide a free domain – this is only for users who have already purchased their own domain.

Just like Gmail with Google Apps, you can use Live Hotmail for your own domain. You can customize Hotmail with your organization logo and use it for up to 500 email accounts. This allows you to have email addresses of the type abc@yourdomain.com, but using the familiar Hotmail interface. To get started, visit the Windows Live Admin Center.

Why would anyone want to use Live Hotmail? For starters, millions of users are familiar with the Hotmail interface. This might also be a preferable option if your organization uses MS Office, or if your users prefer traditional email folders to Gmail’s labels.

These are some of the ways to get the most out of Windows Live. Do you know any other great tips? Share them with us in the comments!

• (10)3 Gadgets To Help You Get Social In Gmail
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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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• (12)7 Great Plugins For Windows Live Writer 2009
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Shankar has previously discussed this subject but the latest Windows Live Writer code drop has been released as a technical preview and so I think it’s as good a time as any to go through a few more of the things you do with Writer and describing the changes in this build.

Live Dev stated that “this release is largely about updates to the Writer SDK” but once you load it up and have a bit of a poke around you’ll find quite a number of subtle new features and UI changes. Here is a rundown and a guide to making the best use of them as you can:

Word Count

Yep. This is a bonza one.

In the previous Live Writer getting a word count required a plugin. That was still pretty simple, but more involved then it had to be (such as, select all text> insert> word count).

Now its been added into Writer itself and you can simply go to Tools > Options and select “Show real-time word count in status bar” to get it displayed just like this:

Auto-Linking

This is another great new feature which will save you a lot of time if you find yourself repeatedly linking to the same place. For example I can now set Make Use Of as an auto-link, every time I type it now it’ll be instantly linked to the pre-specified target. You don’t have to worry about your paragraph being filled with identical links either, an option is available to “Link to each term only once per post”.

Image Editing

You’ll find a number of additions to image editing in Live Writer. For a start you can now centre your image from the properties panel (this was limited to just three options before) and five new borders have been added; photocopier, reflection, rounded corners, solid 1 pixel and solid 3 pixel.

Better still are a couple new options to crop and tilt images. No more cut-and-pasting into another image editor for a some quick edits, then cut-and-paste back into Writer.

Support has also been added for Lightbox… which is great I know, but what is Lightbox?

Lightbox is a script you can install on your blog so selected images are overlaid onto the page, rather then being opened in a new window or tab.

It’s quite popular and I’m sure you’ve recognized it by now. It’s dead simple to set up and if you’re interested here’s how you can do it.

Have you noticed these settings way down at the bottom of the properties panel?

Writer automatically pastes images with a drop shadow, so if you don’t want that it’s a pain to change.

It’s quite simple to fix, just change the border once then “save settings as default”. I must admit I didn’t notice this one for some time but when I did it sure made things easier.

That’s just a few of the new things you can do with Live Writer, with the updated SKD expect to see some great new plugins soon!

Also see Five Things To Do After Installing Windows Live Writer.

(By) Laurence John finds himself way over his head on the internet. Too many places, too much people. But that’s okay, being a Uni student he already has too much time on his hands. He has begun his blog Not Waving But Drowning.

• (25)7 Reasons Why You Should Try Out Windows Live Writer 2009
• (52)The Top 5 Free Microsoft Products & Why They Are The Best
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In a series of articles, I hope to cover Windows Live in a greater amount of detail then you may have seen before. I am aware that Make Use Of has previously covered several services (such as Live Writer and SkyDrive), so I am going to avoid simply giving a run-down of features. You already know it.

No what I hope to do is really give you a great deal more detail on fully integrating Windows Live and maximising your experience. These articles will include tips, hacks, reviews and most importantly the comparisons between Live Services and its competitors.

Windows Live SkyDrive

The first service I thought I would start with is SkyDrive. SkyDrive delivers a satisfactory online file storage and sharing solution in a free and easy to use service. It has a design that is both attractive and functional.

However I can’t help but notice some of the complaints people have expressed so far about the service. These include the 50MB file size limit and that the service is useless due to the fact their particular photo/video/music collection is larger then 5GB. Just remember this is free, and no-one is making you use it.

Moreover instead of just loading up on features, Microsoft is taking the approach used by Apple; aesthetically pleasing products that are designed with ease of use in mind. So yes, there are limitations, but weigh them up against the benefits and see if it’s worth the trade off. I love using it for the easy access, sharing capabilities and rapid sign-up through your Windows ID.

But I know, there are many of you who are not big Microsoft fans, and even more for whom SkyDrive just may not be the service you are looking for. If you’re one of those people, I have found three alternative free storage solutions. Why just three? Well this list is by no means comprehensive, so please forgive me If I have missed a popular one. What I have tried to do instead is to choose services which can be distinguished through their unique focus.

Skydrive Alternatives

(1) FOR THOSE WHO WANT SPACE

ADrive – Yes, ADrive is light years in front of its competitors when it comes to free storage capacity. The closest you’ll anyone else gets to it is MediaMax which offers 25GB.

So what’s the catch?

That was the first thing I thought. Either this just a ploy to attract a large user base before reducing the offer, or it’s just some sort of scam. But surprisingly after I clicked ’signup’ there was no request for billing details.

This really is 50GB free storage, no catches. If you can believe them, they state they will not be reducing the storage amount in the future and are simply aiming to provide the largest storage space available.

However ADrive is simply… a drive. So don’t expect it to much in the way of sharing features, or even features in general. Essentially you upload a file from your computer and store in the directories. You may make files available for public access by moving it into the sharing directory, but that’s about it. It isn’t ‘pretty’, and it doesn’t try to be. It is just a place for you to archive a lot of data and media in case of emergencies, and it is very good for that.

So if you are the type of person who wants to back up their complete photo, video and music library then this might be the service for you. Grab a account and upload away!

(2) FOR SOCIAL NETWORKERS

ESnips is the ‘Myspace’ of online storage, meaning it has been designed as a service to share and network with your files and friends. It is also the most generally feature filled service that I have reviewed here. The focus of ESnips is to share your files with people who have similar interests and hobbies.

Organisation is also a much larger component of ESnips and you will notice this when you begin uploading files. Each file can be given a name, a description and a series of tags. This is how you will locate your own and other associated files uploaded by other users.

You do have private folders, but the incentive here is to share your files with your friends and anyone else. The navigation bar gives you a range of communities to choose from when browsing public files. Not only that, you can create favourite folders, playlists and slideshows of videos, images and music.

This also reminds me, most of the MP3 search engines that are out there use eSnips as a source.

(3) FOR INTEGRATION

Divshare doesn’t stand out as far as storage goes, it provides 5GB like SkyDrive, but it does have a much greater emphasis on integrating your files into your own personal pages and networks for streaming and viewing.

Divshare has a wealth of sharing features and even specific integration for Facebook, WordPress and the iPhone. They also provide the DivShare API for developers to use on their own sites.

There is a 200MB maximum file size upload limit and a 50GB download limit. The service is ad-supported with upgrades to silver, gold and platinum accounts.

When it comes to streaming your music, images and video then DivShare is the way to go. After uploading your files it provides you with a page of codes that you can use to insert your files onto a page, post or website, wherever that may be.

I hope that my first article on MakeUseOf has helped you find a online storage solution. Even if you weren’t looking for a solution, maybe now you have a reason to! Drop me some comments and tell me what you think about SkyDrive or online storage in general.

(By) Laurence John finds himself way over his head on the Internet. Too many places, too much people. But that’s okay, being a Uni student he already has too much time on his hands. He is going to writing on his blog Not Waving But Drowning… as soon as he stops fiddling with WordPress templates and plugins and gets on with it!

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• (22)Windows Live Mesh: Get your Data on any PC from any Device

1) Turn on Spell Check

One thing that I missed a lot on Windows Live Writer (WLW) is a spell checker. But when Travis told me that there was a spell checker inbuilt and only that it needed to be turned on, I was overjoyed. Here’s how you can turn it on:

• Go to Tools > Options
• Under Dictionary, select a language of your choice to turn on spell checking
• Turn on real time spell checking by selecting the 2nd option.

2) Use Link Glossary

Link Glossary – What is it anyway? You can add a few words, and relate URLs with those words. For example, Make Use Of can be coupled with http://www.makeuseof.com. You can do this using the options in Tools > Options > Link Glossary.

This way, the next time you type Make Use Of in any of your posts, the words will automatically be linked to the URL http://www.makeuseof.com You can add an endless list of commonly linked sites from your blog here, it’ll save you a lot of time.

3) Configure FTP

Please don’t neglect this one. Don’t forget to configure FTP settings for your blog. Without configured FTP settings, using images in your blog post is worthless, and then you’ll have to manually upload and insert images via the WordPress post editor, which is a pain.

You’ll have to configure FTP settings from the Tools > Accounts > (Select the blog account) Edit > Images > Upload Images via an FTP server > Configure FTP.

FTP hostname should contain the FTP address of your server, for example, ftp://mysite.com. In the next fields, type in your username and password, specify the folder in the server where the images should be uploaded and also specify the address of the folder as a http:// URL.

Here’s another example: if your site’s ftp address is ftp://mysite.com, and the folder where the images are uploaded is ftp://mysite.com/images/, the http URL will usually be http://mysite.com/images.

4) Learn the Shortcuts

Windows Live Writer comes with a set of shortcuts that are make using it very easy, convenient and also productive. Here’s a list of shortcuts supported by WLW. Make sure you keep them by heart, they’ll come in big use when you’re writing posts.

New Post	Ctrl + N
New Page	Ctrl + G
Open	Ctrl + O
Save Drafts Locally	Ctrl + S
Publish	Ctrl + Shift + P
Print	Ctrl + P
Insert Link	Ctrl + K
Insert Image	Ctrl + L
Check Spelling	F7
Normal View	Ctrl + F11
Web Layout View	F11
Web Preview	F12
HTML Code	Shift + F11
View Post Properties	F2
Toggle View of WLW Sidebar Options	F9

5) Set Blog Pings

Don’t you want your blog posts to get listed by blog search engines and other sites as soon as possible? It’s good for getting traffic since Google tends to rank a page using the time it was published for keywords that are gaining instant popularity on searches.

Go to Tools > Options > Ping Servers and check ‘Send Pings to the URL below’ and specify the ping URLs one by one.

Here’s a screenshot that lists two ping servers. The first one notifies Google Blog Search that a new blog post has been published, and the second one tells FeedBurner to update the feed with the new post:

Do you use Windows Live Writer? What settings are your favourites? Or do you prefer another blog editing tool? Let us know in the comments!

(By) Shankar Ganesh, a 16 year old Blogger and Freelance Writer from India. He writes about computers and software at Killer Tech Tips

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Getting Started

To get started, point your browser to SkyDrive and sign in. You’ll have to have a Windows Live (Passport) account to use their services. Once you sign in and accept the EULA, you’ll be able to get started uploading some of your important backup files.

SkyDrive Dropbox

The SkyDrive dropbox is easy to navigate and look at with all the shortcuts at a simple glance. Listed below are the folders I have.

The personal folders have a default setting of not sharing their contents. This is of course the security level that most users are going to want to stick with. One nice feature is the “Public Folders” section whereby you can upload anything and make it visible to the world or just a select few of your contacts. The default for the “Public Folders” is obviously, viewable to all.

As a matter of fact, each folder gives you that explicit ability….to add/remove anyone from your contact list or just by email as a reader or viewer of your documents.

Uploads

Uploading content to SkyDrive is as easy as uploading a picture to Flickr or any other upload site.

Just point your “Browse” button to any file on your hard drive or network drive and SkyDrive will take care of the rest.

The only drawback to this service is that you’re locked into only 50MB uploads per file. This should not be a problem for most users, but worth mentioning anyway.

Coming up soon on MakeUseOf.com, we’ll be reviewing lots of online storage web applications and their respected features. Stay tuned.

(By) Travis is a husband, engineer, entrepreneur, technology swami, visual communicator, and writer in his spare time. You can check out his personal blog at TQuizzle.com.

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Now it’s out, and Windows Live Writer is a great application with millions of users using it as their desktop blog publisher of choice.

Blog Services

Currently, Writer works with most of the major blog providers out there. Including but not limited to Windows Live Spaces, SharePoint, WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, Movable Type, etc. It really only takes a few seconds to get started thanks to Writer’s built-in automatic configuration that sets up your application, syncs your categories and downloads your blog’s template files so that you can see what your blog post will truly look like.

Post Preview

As mentioned above, Windows Live Writer gives you the ability to preview what your posts will look like by downloading the templates locally. This truly is as WYSIWYG as you can get. Once you’ve finished typing that long post, or in my case a simple Lorem ipsum dummy post, you can see what it looks like.

Publish Now or Later

Writer allows you to create blog entries and then post them to your weblog for further review. Alternately, if you’re without Internet access, you can save a local draft and post at a future time. An interesting feature of Writer is that you can set a particular post to publish at a certain date. Say you write your regular Friday-night article on Wednesday. Fine, just set your article, once finished, to publish two days later. Done. WLW will set the publish date for your article and Friday it should show up (If your blog service permits).

Extend WLW with Extensions

With the growing number of extensions, Windows Live Writer is even more powerful than ever. At the time of this article, there are 80 extensions available for Windows Live Writer including adding things like music feeds, picture galleries, emoticons, and even a Digg This plug-in.

One of my favorites is Flickr4Writer. As the title states, its an extension that allows you to access and interact with the Flickr™ API. You can browse photosets, search tags, and more.

Easy Does It

Everything you add to your blog entries, Windows Live Writer will post to your blog provider. This makes adding rich content to your blog entries a breeze. Just type, add pictures and other content, then click a button to publish…its literally that simple.

All in all, this is the best desktop blog publisher out there. I’ve tested a few of them, but Microsoft wins the gold prize for getting all the nice features most bloggers want.

Who uses Windows Live Writer out there? Let us know about your experiences and your favorite extensions for the best desktop blog publisher.

Hungry for it? Get it here.

(By) Travis is a husband, engineer, entrepreneur, visual communicator, web developer and writer in his spare time. You can check out his personal blog at TQuizzle.com.

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• (14)Get 5 GB of free Storage with Windows SkyDrive

(1) HealthVault
Service that many US families should find really useful. In simple terms, HealthVault is an online safebox for all your medical records. It’s not just a storage place to keep medical history but also to share records with doctors, place to where medical documents can be faxed and auto-archived, and lots more.

(2) Windows Live (Office Suite)
Long-awaited online office offering from Microsoft. I know, there are plenty of other online office suites, but many of us are still hesitant when it comes to compatibility issues. What if the document won’t open? What if text styling gets messy? … Well, who if not Microsoft can guarantee 100% compatibility with Microsoft Office. Although the service is yet to go public, you can opt-in now and get notified as soon as it’s launched. (Update: Some people have suggested that it’s going to more like a document storage and sharing service rather than online office suite)

(3) TellMe
Tellme is a free alternative to costly 411 directory service. Lets you quickly obtain contact details and directions to local businesses (repair shops, pizzerias, restaurants, etc.). You can access it via toll free number, text messaging, or TellMe mobile client. Check out TellMe video demo here.

(4) Windows Live (Safety Scanner)
Online Windows health check-up and maintenance center. Includes virus scan and removal, hard drive space recovery and performance tools. The only drawback, it doesn’t work with Firefox and thus you need IE to access it.

(5) Tafiti
Looking for a comprehensive research tool? Check out Tafiti. It’s a single application that integrates multiple search engines, visual search, webpage sharing, and a handful of other features for online research. Tafiti will work on any browser but you do need to have Microsoft Silverlight (free).

Software

(6) Win XP Powertoys – PowerToys is a set of tiny all-purpose apps that add to your Windows experience. Currently, the package counts 15 different programs, including ‘Alt+Tab’ replacement, all-in-one unit converter, right click image resizer, and virtual desktop manager.

(7) FolderShare – Simple and memory-friendly program with a bunch of cool features. FolderShare lets you access your PC remotely, share files with others, and synchronize files across multiple computers and mobile devices. It’s a pretty useful app to have on your arsenal.

(8) Sysinternals Suite – Over 60 troubleshooting utilities bundled in one suite. Most of the bundled apps are rather techy and may require technical skills. Although some of the apps are 100% automated. For instance, PageDefrag (excellent paging-file defragmenter) is one of such apps.

(9) ConferenceXP – Live screen sharing and collaboration application for groups. Highlights include local screen streaming, browser screen sharing, and live collaboration sketchboard.

(10) Windows Live Pack – Brings Windows Live services to your desktop. Cool part about it, you have an option to choose which services to get. Package includes, Family Safety suite, web photo gallery, online storage service, Windows Live Writer blogging tool, and some more.

Got another Microsoft goodie ? Let us know in comments!

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I have been using Microsoft’s Live Writer (Beta) for over 2 months now and I love it. My main reason that I probably use it for is that it’s not web-based. This allows me to work whenever I want on it, without browsing from one site to the other and fears of losing any information (WLW saves drafts just like MS Word). My other main reason for using it is that it allows me to publish to 2 blogs at the same time, with minimal steps.

My favorite aspects and features:

• So Easy to use and Setup
• Easily publish to any of my blogs from the same window
• Offline and on my Desktop
• Configures Automatically to your blogs settings (HTML and CSS)
• Plugins (like Insert Flickr pictures)
• Pinging services included

Features Requests (or what I would want in the non-Beta version):

• Sync Over Computers (between work and home, my Drafts and recently posted aren’t the same)
• Publish to 2 blogs at the same time (right now I just switch, change category and publish, but I’m lazy).

Resources:

• Download the Live Writer Beta, links to forums
• Live Writer Blog and Tips
• Live Gallery Plugins for Live Writer

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