Did you know you can add your Zune Card to your Windows Live Space? Yup, you can, and pretty darn easily too. 

• First, go to http://social.zune.net/profile/gadgets.aspx when signed in with your Windows Live ID and get the HTML snippet for the card you want. 
• Next, go to your Space and under Customize, choose Add Modules.  Scroll towards the bottom of the list, and select the Custom HTML module (you’ll find it in the Other category) and save your changes.
• Click the Edit link on the Custom HTML module you just created and paste the HTML from the Zune site in.

Pretty simple eh?  Problem is, it doesn’t look so hot.  Here’s my Space with my Zune card in a small region.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not a fan of this.  It just doesn’t look sleek enough for me.  Couple problems:  firstly, there is a title and a bunch of padding around the card that doesn’t need to be there, and secondly, the card is cut off on the right.  It’s hard to see from the picture, but if you had a longer name, you’d see it cut off.  Here are some quick things you can do to make it look a lot better:

Remove the chrome around the module.  To do this, click the gears icon on the top-right of the module to get into Customize mode.  Then, you’ll see a small down arrow icon on the top-right, where the gears were before.  Select Settings and turn off the border and title as shown.

The result will look more like this.  It’s still cut off, but looks a whole lot better already.

To make the card not cut off, go into customize mode again and this time, edit the HTML.  The change you need to make is in the HTML where it has the height and width.  To fit nicely in a small region on Spaces, set the values to width=182 and height=98.  The card will scale appropriately.  End result is below:

I think this looks a lot nicer.

To make the card fit in other regions, find out the width using a pixel ruler or something, and then adjust the height so that the aspect ratio remains the same.

Today is a big day for me, for several hundred employees and for all of you guys; we just released the new Windows Live (also known as Wave 3). This release represents a major step towards what our vision for what Windows Live is and we think that you will enjoy using it.

There are a lot of new things in Windows Live Wave 3 and it’s really not worth listing them all out here. Here are my top 10 new features in Windows Live.

1. Your new Profile page

Windows Live was always a social networking, but now, we’re really a social network. The profile page is really the core of the social network. Your profile page is a really fast-loading page that shows what’s new with you, as well as your friends and notes. Go check out your page and customize it a bit by picking one of our really nice new themes (see #9) by going to http://profile.live.com.

Having this as the #1 in my top features is somewhat biased…this set of pages is what my team and I built in this release, and we’re really proud of it.

2. New Photos Experience

One of the things people do most on a social networking site is share photos, and we feel that we’ve now done a great job balancing the social networking aspects of photo sharing with the beauty and speed of the experience of viewing the photos. The SkyDrive and Photos team did a great job here. Some quick highlights of photos in the new Windows Live.

• Simple, clean photos view
• Beautiful Silverlight-based slideshow. The background color here changes based on the colors in the photo.
• Really nice upload experience
• There’s a bunch more great stuff in here. Go play with it! Click on “Photos” on the left of your profile page.

3. “What’s New” in Messenger

We really wanted to pull Messenger more into the social network. We started down this path a few years ago with “Gleams” (the yellow stars next to your buddy list). We took this a step further this release by showing you what’s new with your friends right in the contact list window.

4. Web Activities

Don’t you just hate it when you have information in all kinds of different services with no good way for people to see a merged view of everything you’re sharing? For example, you have photos on FlickR, you use Twitter and you have a WordPress blog somewhere; how do your friends know where to go for updates? Well now, with “Web Activities” in Windows Live, you can register these activities so that updates you make appear on your Windows Live Profile page.

5. New Home Page

Where your Profile page is all about you, the new home page is all about your friends, groups and events. You can even customize it with some photos on the top of the page. Check it out at http://home.live.com, or click “Home” at the top of any Windows Live page.

6. Recent Comments

You can have comments on your profile (in the form of “Notes”), comments on blog posts, on photos, on files in SkyDrive and we now have a way to see a rolled-up view of all the comments people have left on someone’s content.

7. Windows Live Photo Gallery

Windows Live Photo Gallery is the free upgrade to the Windows Photo Gallery in Vista, and also works on Windows XP. This release merges the great usability of the previous Photo Gallery and adds Social Networking features like people tagging and showing you what photos your friends have shared.

You can also use the Photo Gallery to upload albums to Windows Live and also to download entire albums your friends have shared.

8. Groups

We finally did it!

In Windows Live 2.0, we added the notion of “Events”. In Wave 3, we’ve done a lot more work here and shipped “Groups”. Windows Live Groups allow you to create a place for clubs, teams, and other private groups to share. In this first release of groups, we’re supporting photo and file sharing as well as a discussion board. Check it out at http://groups.live.com.

Another cool feature of groups is that they show up in Messenger so that you can instantly chat with everyone in your group!

9. Dynamic Themes

I deserve a big “told you so” from Emmanuel here.

One of the things that was important to us in Wave 3 was to make sure the pages were customizable somewhat so that you could make them reflect your personality, but also that they should be beautiful pages. To that end, we created a small set of great themes. The gems within those themes are a set of “Dynamic Themes”. These themes are special in that they change based on the time of day and weather at your location.

Try one of these themes! You can pick one by selecting “More Themes” in the “Options” menu.

10. Comment SPAM Work

We realize that SPAM in comments is a problem, and we’ve done work in Wave 3 to help slow this problem down. I won’t go into detail here, but I expect we’ll see less SPAM in comments and notes on profile, as well as invites with this release.

There you have it, my personal top 10 features of Windows Live Wave 3. I really hope you give this release of Windows Live a try and tell us what you think. If you have feedback, please feel free to leave me a message on Windows Live.

http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/gov-palin-cold-open/773761/

Alec Baldwin was great.  "You're so much hotter in person".  Yup, that could be our VP.  Oyvey.

 

http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/update-palin-rap/773781/

 

http://www.palinaspresident.info/

Apparently I had some spare time this weekend.

Quote

Talking about A weekend of videos

Daddy had lots of time on his hands this weekend since I was such a great napper.  He even had enough time to make a second video.  This one is of me having fun at a park in Duncan on August 10.

   

Aaron's walking!  Finally got some time to put together a little video of Aaron doing all the adorable things Aaron does.

Quote

Talking about I'm Walking!

Well here I am walking!  I'm not too comfortable with it, but I'm getting better at it every day. 

      

Just got Windows Mobile 6.1 on my at&t Motorola Q9h this afternoon.  Overall, an nice step up from WM 6.0 that was on before, but so far, I’m not blown away by all the features. 

Home Screen

Pretty, but not as configurable as the old home screen model was.  I found that things like the time take up far too much space, and its harder to see at a glance how many messages you have.  The calendar plugin is pretty slick though.  You can page through your next set of appointments and the icons indicate if you Accepted or are Tentative for the meeting.  I also find that the new home page stuff (called CHome) is actually pretty slow on this device.

Another thing they got rid of was the MRU list.  Instead of recently used apps appearing on the home screen, they made the first click of the Start menu go to this recent programs screen. Not a huge fan of this.  Also, you can’t put this into list view.

You also can’t add extra custom plugins to the home screen if it’s using the new look and feel.  I miss my Oxios Tasks plugin.  Another nitpicky detail; when you click up on the d-pad, the focus goes to the top, and then wraps around to the bottom.  Don’t like this; I like being able to click up-up-up, and know I’m ending up at the top, which is my MRU list.

Ultimately, I went back to my old home screen. I have it configured so that all the data I want fits onto one screen.  Perfect. 

The new CHome system shows promise, but there needs to be some more customization options.  All I could find was here: http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2008/06/03/customizing-the-sliding-panel-homescreen.aspx.

Threaded SMS

OMG, I just luv threaded SMS!  (ahem…back to being 30).  Pretty slick UX actually.  Makes it feel like you’re in an IM chat.  Only thing that’s a bit odd is things like Twitter where you get many SMS from the same number, but they’re not really part of a conversation. 

Copy / Paste

Back in 1997, I got my first Palm Pilot; it had 256kb of RAM or something, a black and white screen, and copy/paste!  Only took us 11 years to catch up.  UX isn’t wonderful; hard to do on a non-touch device, but not bad:

IE Zoom

Haven’t played much with this yet, but IE seems to have a Zoom Out feature.  Frankly, kind of ridiculous seeing as it doesn’t render the content properly anyway.

In addition to the stuff above, there are some small niceties, such as the icon for having a new SMS message is different than for having a new EMail message.  They also merged SMS and MMS into the same account, so you have less accounts in the system.  It also seems that Internet Connection Sharing is now present in the start menu without you having to make a shortcut yourself.

I’m also noticing that Opera is loading faster than before…perhaps I may actually use it now.

This site is a proving ground for ideas that come from regular employees and interns who work anywhere in Microsoft.  Most of the code prototypes are developed by the Office Labs team in partnership with the teams that make the products.  After all, they produce most of the ideas. Some of the things you find here will be web-based, others are downloads.  Some will be a combination, something we call "software + services."

As always, Barbados was a great vacation.  It's not often that we have a Steinbok family reunion...I think this is the 3rd time in 20 years or so that all 6 of my dad's brothers and sisters were on the island at the same time.  At any rate, there's not much to say about the trip, other than it was excellent.  Best to simply describe in photos...

Aaron was a natural water baby.  He preferred the swimming pool at uncle Joe's because it was really warm, but he liked the sea too.

Four generations of Steinboks....pretty neat, or pretty scary...you decide.

A hilight for me was the Ocean Racing challenge.  Though not much of a race, or a challenge, I got to take the helm of an 80ft America's Cup racing yacht.  Not surprisingly, in the 15kts of wind we had, it handled very very nicely.

For those of you who use FolderShare, they've quietly released an update to the client as well as the website.  You can read more about it on their blog.

Quote

Introducing the new FolderShare!

Hello, and welcome to the blog for Windows Live FolderShare. It's a big day for us here at Windows Live HQ, and not just because we’re launching this new blog. We also have updated FolderShare, and published an all-new FolderShare website…at last!

Today we're unveiling:

• A new website designed to makes managing your FolderShare libraries and computers even easier.
• A new FolderShare with a better setup, a better system tray menu, and better performance on Windows Vista.
• Improvements on the backend to keep FolderShare running more smoothly and reliably.

(And of course, it's still free.)

To all the users who already have fallen in love with FolderShare, we thank you! We hope all the new users equally enjoy the features FolderShare has to offer: syncing files across your computers; sharing files with friends and family; and accessing your files from anywhere on the Internet. 

We’re proud of this release, and we really hope you like it. So without further ado, check out the new website, install the new FolderShare, and let us know what you think!

- The FolderShare Team

I remember back when I was in college if I wanted to use Visual Studio (er, Visual C++ at the time I suppose) you had to, um, acquire a copy of the software as it was just way too expensive to buy as a student.  Well, this all changes today as Microsoft is making the same toolset we use in house available for free to students.  The product list is pretty sweet and include Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2003, Expression Studio, and XNA Game Studio.

You can signup at download from https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/

There's more info as well as an interview with Bill at http://channel8.msdn.com/Posts/2047/:

How would you like a free copy of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008? How about the entire Microsoft Expression Studio? Not enough...... how about Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and more?

For once, something that sounds too good to be true really is this good and really is true. Starting today (or soon in some areas), students worldwide will be able to download our professional development and design tools for free! It's called DreamSpark and it is upon us.

I think we would all agree that game shows these days have gone downhill, but I saw this ad tonight on TV and I'm just shocked.  The quote from the ad was something like:

"Can this blonde outsmart a chimp?"

Seriously, wtf?

Found this on MSN Videos recently.  Worth a watch.

Quote

'Lost' - The entire series in 8:15


Find out everything you need to know about the first three seasons of "Lost" in just over 8 minutes. The new season premieres Jan. 31st at 9 p.m. ET/PT on ABC.

You can watch the 2008 CES Keynote on demand at http://www.microsoft.com/CES.

Bill Gates delivered his 12th and final keynote at the 2008 CES in Las Vegas; one of the portions of the talk had to do with staying connected with people using Microsoft technologies including Windows Vista, Windows Live and Windows Mobile.  So, I thought the segment would be all about Windows, but I was way off!  The entire segment focused on Windows Live and specifically:

Windows Live Calendar (27:50)

This part wasn't so exciting; they talked mostly about how you can overlay calendars....nifty.

Windows Live Events (28:15)

They talked about what the product is, roughly, and how, like Calendar, you can use your single Windows Live ID to access it and all of the other Windows Live services. Specifically, they showed off how easy it is to invite people, and the super-cool contact picker we wrote.

Windows Live Photo Gallery; how easy it is to find photos, and upload them to Spaces (29:30)

They showed off the photo stitching feature as well as how easy it is to fix images.  They also made a point of talking about how easy it is to upload to Windows Live Spaces

Windows Live for Mobile; and more specifically, the 1-click "upload to Spaces" option.

I've recently discovered this feature too; makes uploading to Facebook using MMS look complicated!  In fact, I didn't even know this feature existed until I was playing with the camera app on my new phone.  One criticism of the app I have though is that it doesn't make it clear that these new features exist; not terribly discoverable.

Nice to see your hard work featured like this.  So much of what we're doing in the future in software is focused on helping people communicate; which is exactly what we're focused on in Windows Live.  Watching this, and looking at the problems we're solving now, and how we're solving them, makes me extremely excited about what we're doing in Windows Live 3.0.

So I've been looking for a Windows Mobile 6 device to replace my not-so-old-but-failing Cingular 2125.  (It was a great device, but the build quality was only so-so.  My joystick stopped working reliably after a few months, so I got it replaced, and it's failing again.)  Anyway, I tried out the AT&T Tilt (see comment on Mike Torre's blog) but ultimately returned it as it was a great PDA, but a somewhat lousy phone, and was kinda bulky in my pocket.  I was also always worried about breaking the screen.  This leads me to looking for a Windows Mobile 6 Standard (no touch screen) device only...

AT&T recently released three such devices; Pantech Duo, BlackJack II, and the Moto Q9h.  The BlackJack and Moto are very similar devices, but I quickly passed on the BlackJack II because of the keyboard, and some early negative reviews.  The Pantech Duo was dropped because, well, I just didn't like the look of it so much, and with the dual-sliders, it feels a bit fragile. So, after much consideration, the device of choice is the Motorola Q9h (aka Q Global).

Highpoints:

• 3G - Fast network speed was a must-have.
• Great sound quality - 'nuff said
• Keyboard - The keyboard is surprisingly easy to type on, even though the buttons are very small.  I find it easier in fact than the larger Pantech and even to some extent the Tilt I had tried.
• Standard(?) Micro-USB - Doesn't have a proprietary port.  There is a small catch to this, in the lowlights section.
• GPS - Ok, so this is more of a gimmick than anything, but it's pretty cool to have one built-in.  Works great with Windows Live Search too.
• Decent Battery Life - Nothing stellar
• Spare Battery - Comes with a spare extended-life battery.  Nice to have when on vacation.
• Opera - Ships with Opera.  I turned it off as the default, but it's nice to have. 
• Brightness Sensor - Screen brightness auto-adjusts based on the ambient light.  Great battery saver.

Lowlights:

• Occasionally drops signal - Not sure if this is AT&T or the phone.  Need more time to try that out.
• No Office Mobile - Ships with Documents-to-Go.  Ugh.  I would prefer if it were more standard and ship with Office Mobile.
• Motorola "Enhanced" USB - Motorola has bastardized the USB interface somewhat on their devices.  You can use any ordinary USB cable to tether/charge the device when attached to a PC with drivers installed, but if you want to use a standard USB charger, or use the car charger from a different manufacturer, you're out of luck.  Now, if you go buy a Moto charger, well then, it will work with your other devices, but not the other way around.   They call their interface EMU; a decent article on it is here.
• Crapware/Crap-Settings - Again, this isn't specific to this device, but there were a number of things I needed to do/install/uninstall to get the device into a state that I feel comfortable with.  This includes: new home screen where I can actually see most of what I need without scrolling, start menu list-view (vs grid), removal of a bunch of AT&T crap.  Seriously, why do they make the device cater more to their advertisers and partners than to their customers!?!  Ok, so I know the answer, but it's still frustrating.  To have space taken up for things like "Get XPress Mail" and "Get TeleNav" is just frustrating.  Isn't it more important to have the number of emails unread?

All-in-all, awesome device.  The more I use it, the more I like it, and for the low (Microsoft) price of $100, you can't really go wrong.

Once you have this done, Sign Out, and then Sign In Again.  When you go to sites like Windows Live Spaces and Windows Live Events, you can click on the top-right of the Windows Live header bar (click on the down arrow next to your name) and you'll be able to instantly switch to any of your linked IDs.

A few quick security notes:

• Your linked LiveIDs are only as secure as your weakest password.  So, if you have one account with a strong password and one with a weak one, someone can log into the weak one and then switch accounts to the strong one.
• If one of your accounts is set to have you change your password regularly, or if one of the sites you visit requires a strong password, it will require that you change your password on each linked account.

This is a really cool feature that took coordination from a lot of teams to get done.  I'm thrilled to see the last piece ship so that users can now take advantage of this.

Tonnes of cool new features in this release!  The biggest one being the brand new Events product http://events.live.com.  Think of Windows Live Events as a combination of EVite and Spaces; you can set up a party, invite people, then host pictures online later, as well as a discussion board and other stuff.  You can heavily customize them just like you would your personal Space.

We also finally added the ability to add pictures to a blog entry inline in the entry!  About time, I know...

Ever go to someone's space and wonder what they've changed recently?  Well, now, if you look at their profile, you'll see a list of their recent activity in Windows Live!  Makes it very easy to see what photos or blog posts they added recently.

The other huge feature is the "What's New" feature, which is similar to the FaceBook news feed (but way prettier, and doesn't have ads mixed in).  To get to this, log into Spaces and click on "Spaces Home".

Lastly, this release more than most, we spent time going through our backlog of bugs and quirks and cleaned a bunch of stuff up. You should find this release more stable, has less quirks, and is faster than previous releases.  We really hope you like it.