Windows Live Hotmail is great: it’s fast, reliable and doesn’t require me to install any client application but a browser.  But there are also things in Hotmail that annoy me.

Marking mail as junk

The Junk filters in Hotmail are very good, as they filter most unsolicited e-mail I receive.  However, some e-mail gets delivered to my inbox nevertheless, and when I try to mark it as junk, it just—fails.

See yourself:

Wrong character encoding

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Permalink: Hotmail annoyances

This is the first interview in the Windows Live and You summer edition.  I’m sure that my conversation with Frans-Willem Hardijzer, who developed the Messenger add-on StuffPlug, and is also known as “The Blasphemer”, will be especially interesting for you.

mynetx: I find it great that you got some minutes to talk with me about Windows Live and You.
Tell me a bit about yourself.  Is your life directly or indirectly involved with Windows Live?

Frans-Willem: I’m not as much involved with Windows Live as I used to, mainly because studying and everything around that (yes, drinking and having fun) takes up a lot of time, but Windows Live Messenger is still my primary means of day-to-day communication with friends.

mynetx: How were you involved with Windows Live?  What is your history, that is, how did you come to Windows Live Messenger?

Frans-Willem: Well, I don’t quite remember how I got in touch with Windows Live (or at that time MSN) Messenger.  I do remember what got me started on developing though.  Back in the time of Messenger 5 or 6, Patchou suddenly launched a plug-in architecture for Messenger Plus!.  I’d always been interested in writing programs, but I’d never gotten round to serious development with C, mainly because command line was so incredibly boring compared to the forms that you could get with Visual Basic.  But then suddenly I *could* make fun things with C.  I started out with some simple code to convert text for you, e.g. leet speak, but as I kept finding out more things, I kept adding more and more stuff to my plug-in.  That’s mainly how StuffPlug got it’s name: It was a plug-in without a clear goal or feature set, it was just a plug-in with all the stuff I’d written: StuffPlug.

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Permalink: Windows Live and You: “Hmm, I wonder if I can do this better” (Frans–Willem Hardijzer)

Messenger Plus! Live 4.82, one of the last updates to version 4, has been released.  It features complete support for the current Windows 7 Release Candidate as well as some other interesting news, like these:

• The settings of your scripts and skins can now be exported from the preferences panel and re-imported back.
• The workaround for displaying long chat logs in the Log Viewer for IE8 has been removed, as the bug present in beta versions of IE8 has been fixed in IE8 Final.
• This release is contest-ready!
  • In this version, you will see a new golden icon in your Messenger toolbar. Those who participated in the contest 2 years ago will probably remember what this is.
  • A “Play and Win” menu has been added in the contact list.
  • The 2009 Contest is not open yet, it will be in about a week from now. Remember to give it a try in July!

Free download: Messenger Plus! Live 4.82.368 (; 694 downloads)

I will post more details on the contest as soon as they are approved to talk about publicly.

Permalink: Messenger Plus! Live 4.82 supports Windows 7

The Windows Live team has announced the end of life for MSN Web Messenger.  Since Windows Live now supports instant messaging integrated into both Hotmail and People, there is no need to maintain 2 web messengers at the same time.  Additionally, site owners are free to get their own web messenger running, powered by the Windows Live Web Toolkit launched a few months ago.

MSN Web Messenger was started in August 2004 and never updated to match the Windows Live design.  With the redesign of MSN in mind, Microsoft is starting to clean up old services, and MSN Web Messenger is one of them, retiring on Tuesday 30 June 2009. The team states:

Instant messaging from Hotmail makes it easier to communicate and share in new ways in comparison to MSN Web Messenger. For example, our integration with the suite of other Windows Live services allows you to see when your Messenger friends are online while reading an e-mail and immediately start a chat to clarify something in your friend’s e-mail message.

Get started with Messenger in Hotmail/People

1. Just browse your Messenger contacts.
2. At the top right, you see an entry “ Messenger”.
3. Click it, and choose “Sign in to Messenger (Web)”.
4. Then click any of your contact’s display pictures and choose “Send an instant message”.
5. A popup window opens, and you can start your conversation.
   

Permalink: End of life for MSN Web Messenger: 30 June 2009

These days, with increasing temperatures, we had some severe thunderstorms already.  Rain, clouds and sunshine are all facets of the upcoming summer, a time of less work, more free time, enjoyment, … fun.  The last days and weeks, we started preparing for this year’s summer vacations, and Windows played a quite big role in it.  How so?

Well, using online map services like Bing Maps is really fun, especially when there is Bird’s Eye view of the location you are interested in.  We visited our home town virtually and were simply amazed at the accuracy and level of details you can see in those photos.

When we had checked out locations, we thought about how to get there.  How good that you can check trains and their timetables online!  We just entered our departure and arrival locations, date, number of people, hit ‘Submit’—and instantly got our train connections.  Then it was only a matter of seconds to hit ‘Print’ and get some tiny PDF files containing the site, using a PDF printer.

After our vacation, we will probably plug in the SD card of our digital camera and let Windows Live Photo Gallery do the rest. 

Long story short—what would we do without our computer?  It has become part of our daily life.

What are your plans for the summer?  I’m curious.

Permalink: Summer in the city

Yesterday I presented Opera Unite to you, an add-on in the latest Opera 10 builds enabling you to use your web browser as server.  After my post, I received some opinions about Opera Unite.  Let me quote one of these statements, a quite hard conclusion:

I might be wrong, but to me it’s another ‘company’ trying to make something never thought of before, that isn’t going to make it, and it doesn’t looks secure at all. I don’t see Opera Unite getting anywhere.

I mean, Opera is used by 1 to 3% of all the people online? And they really think that they can pull this off? More importantly, with that small sized company with no serious skills will be able to secure files etc? It’s just one big joke.

Today, Lawrence Eng, product analyst at Opera, talks about some details on what Opera Unite is designed for, why it was invented, and what it is not.

We don’t hate social networks and big-server computing. The point I tried to convey is that users should have a choice–freedom to decide how and where their data resides and is used. In some circumstances, they may choose Facebook or Flickr, but in other (equally legitimate) circumstances, they may choose to host it themselves. Opera Unite is our way of removing people’s reliance on the big datacenter solution, not because big servers are necessarily bad, but because they’re not enough.

Millions of people are comfortable with other people hosting their data, but there are also plenty of people who aren’t so comfortable, either because it’s a hassle, hard to use, or because of privacy concerns. I share photos online (Flickr, Facebook, and My Opera) but that doesn’t mean I want to share all of my “stupid digital photos” on the public web. Just today, I used Opera Unite to share some content with close friends that I wouldn’t necessarily want to put on Facebook, Flickr, etc.

When possible (depending on one’s router and the design of particular Unite services), Opera Unite supports UPnP (enabled by default) so that users can bypass Opera’s proxy service. Even when that proxy service is used, the data that passes through it is not stored by Opera.

At the end of the day, Opera Unite is still a work in progress, and we need informed, critical voices as well as enthusiastic ones to make it all work. Your feedback has been valuable, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to clarify some issues (even if some points of disagreement persist). People have always counted Opera out, but the company has been around for 15 years, and we’re going stronger than ever on multiple fronts (including the desktop). We did make ambitious statements about Opera Unite, and big claims paint a target on our back, but we think it’s better to aim high and not give up, even if we stumble a little out of the gate. Maybe I’m just an idealistic American, but I think the best is yet to come.

Did you have a look at Opera Unite yet?

Permalink: Follow-up on Opera Unite: What it is, why it is, and what it is not

In this post of the series “Windows Live and You”, I am asking you to tell me about your favorite memories with Windows Live Messenger.

• When did you first start using Messenger?
• What’s your most memorable Messenger conversation?
• When certain features were introduced over the years, which ones really stood out for you?

Tell me about your memories—whether it is just two sentences or half a page! 

Permalink: Your most emotional moment with Messenger

Flock, the “social Web browser”, has been updated to 2.5 (download Flock 2.5).  This version adds support for Facebook Chat right in the browser: you will see the chat toolbar on any website you are currently browsing, as long as you are signed in at Facebook in the background.  The chat bar design was not updated to the latest changes Facebook did, but nevertheless it is a great enhancement and helps staying in touch with your friends.

These are the services that Flock supports natively:

Flock is just a fine example of how user-generated content can be incorporated into a browser interface.  It seems that the browser as the user’s primary web tool, is a fine place for adding access to social networks right at your fingertips.  What I asked myself though when looking at the Flock 2.5 Release Candidate some 1 or 2 weeks ago was, why does Flock not support Windows Live?

Permalink: Flock 2.5, with better Twitter and Facebook Chat support

Opera Unite, released as Beta on 16 June, can transform any computer into a web server. How might the underlying idea this affect our daily web usage?

Once upon a time, web servers were invented.  These used to serve first static, then dynamic content to clients, to us.  The basis was simple: a small group of people, the providers, created web content, while the vast majority of us were consumers, readers, downloaders—users. Web servers and clients were designed to suit just these needs.

Then, Web 2.0 came up, along with the idea of contributing to form the web.  The idea behind it changed from producers and consumers to “Everybody is a contributor”; the web starts to become a huge whiteboard.  Web servers and client browsers do not match the idea anymore—if everybody can be a contributor, every web browser should be able to be a web server.

This is where Opera Unite kicks in.  Once Opera runs and once you are connected to Unite with your Opera ID, everybody can access the services you launch.  Of course, you can define which people can access which services.

Opera Unite features

• File Sharing of any folder you choose,
• Whiteboard messaging (“Fridge”),
• Media Player streaming any music you choose from your disk,
• Photo Sharing of your newest albums,
• integrated chat room module (“The Lounge”),
• and a small Web Server for your convenience.

Opera Unite and Windows Live Wave 4—what are we going to see?

Could Opera Unite get a competition to Windows Live?

Sharing your own content easily was the goal behind Opera Unite.  Sharing your content easily, and access it from anywhere—that’s the goal behind Windows Live Mesh, that will get integrated into the next release of Windows Live programs for your computer, called “Essentials”.  What are the differences between Opera Unite and Windows Live Wave 4?

*) Please note: Windows Live Wave 4 is the code name of the next release that the Windows Live Team is currently working on.  As it is a product in development, the information might be incomplete or erroneous and is subject to change.

Permalink: Opera Unite vs. Windows Live, or: How will the client-server future look like?

This evening, C.N., a friend, told me about a problem with USB devices on Windows XP (SP3).  Whenever she wanted to connect a device with one of the USB ports, she could not use it—whether it was her mouse, her webcam or her digital camera.  She couldn’t even access her external hard drive, as it did not show up in “My Computer”.

When I told her to open device manager with Start, Run…, devmgmt.msc, she stated that “Unknown devices” were listed there, with yellow exclamation marks.  I was wondering where to get their drivers, even asked for the original CDs in hopes to grab the needed drivers from there.  However, there was one thing I learned tonight: Simply let Windows do the search. My friend right-clicked the unknown device and chose “Update driver…”; then she clicked “Install software automatically”.  And voilà: the driver was found—something I would never have expected, as normally the system would have detected the devices automatically.

Surprisingly, this worked even for new devices.  When a camera was plugged in, the drive didn’t show up instantly, only an Unknown device.  Only when my friend used device manager to install the drivers (without having to browse for the driver file manually; automatic discovery was sufficient), everything worked.  Nearly.  Because—auto-play doesn’t work; that is, the Scanner and Camera Wizard does not open automatically on plug-in, although the settings in the device properties (“AutoPlay” tab) are correct.

Summary

• Plug & Play does not work.  (The “Plug & Play” system service is “Started” and “Automatically”.)
• Manual driver setup with automatic search does work.
• AutoPlay does not work.

Any tips appreciated…

Permalink: USB device doesn’t work anymore in XP? Manual driver installation might help.