Ian Moulster's blog

I pointed out the great London Underground image on Bing’s UK site today commemorating the opening of the world’s first underground railway system in London in 1863. He asked where the photo was taken – it’s easy to find out. Just hover over the copyright...

Having had my Windows Phone 7 for a while now I've come across a number of features that weren't obvious to me from day 1. You may already know some or all of these (I have seen some on other sites) but take a look and see what you think. If you have...

I'm sure you haven't missed that with the newly-released Internet Explorer 9 you can now pin websites to the taskbar in Windows 7 and, if the site supports it, get access to jumplists for easy access to areas of the site. While this is a really useful...

Once again I am honoured to be a judge in the annual .NET awards, run by the excellent .NET Magazine , the primary magazine for web designers and web developers. There’s a good list of nominees once again and I encourage you to get voting! Start here...

Desktop virtualisation is a hot topic right now. It seems wherever I go and whatever I read about the desktop and where it’s headed, virtualisation is something that people want to talk about. Often these conversations are about VDI (virtual desktop...

It’s easy to lose track of how many add-ons you’re running in IE8 and how they can slow things down. An interesting experiment is to use the “-extoff” flag to disable all add-ons and see how zippy IE8 becomes. To do this, create an icon for IE on your...

I've been playing around with my Zune HD and having great fun with it. I was interested to see how well the radio would work in the UK and the answer is "not too bad". Assuming you adjust the radio options in the settings menu to "Europe", you get reasonable...

Ebay have just published a new IE8 web slice that I really like. Why? Because it’s a great example of what a web slice should be (if you need more info on web slices read here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/features/easier.aspx?tab...

With the recent news of email accounts being hacked there seems to be plenty of advice floating around for avoiding falling victim to scams and other attacks. One of the pieces of advice is to use a strong password .Even though there’s no evidence that...

I didn’t realise until recently that you could search your hotmail inbox using keywords to narrow the search. I’m talking about the web version of Hotmail, not when you’re accessing it via a client application like Outlook. For example, let’s say you...

The latest Zune player has been reviewed in great depth elsewhere so I’m not going to go into it in huge depth here, other than to say it’s not just a pleasure to use but is very, very cool and aesthetically pleasing too. But I did want to point out...

Over at the UK ISV blog they have just posted a really useful list of resources relating to Windows 7 application compatibility. If you’re an ISV it’s well worth a look: http://blogs.msdn.com/ukisvdev/archive/2009/09/23/windows-7-application-compatibility...

I've been using XP mode on Windows 7 for a while and it has been proving useful to have an old XP copy available for things like compatibility testing. One issue I had is that it comes configured with only 256MB of RAM available to the virtual machine...

This year, once again, I have the honour of being a judge in .NET Magazine’s awards. I’m sure you know .NET magazine – nothing to do with Microsoft .NET, the name is just a coincidence – as a world-class web developer magazine. Voting is open now so take...

Someone asked me how they could tell which build of Windows 7 there were on, as they “inherited” a machine from a colleague and weren’t sure if they were still on beta, RC or RTM. You can find out via the registry, so click the orb in the bottom left...

We’ve recently launched the UK version of isvappcompat.com (see www.isvappcompat.com/uk ), a one-stop-shop site for ISVs to either get their application compatible with Windows 7, or help tell the world about it if you’re already compatible. Three specific...

When I installed Windows 7 RTM on my machine at home I decided to go for a clean install rather than an upgrade because I like the cathartic feel I get from wiping my hard drive and starting from a fresh, clean install. It also meant that I could take...

I’m approaching 10,000 unread emails in my hotmail inbox. And amazingly there is not much spam in that (hotmail seems pretty efficient at removing my spam), it’s just the result of having the same email address for 10 years and not bothering to delete...

Do you sell an application that is already supported on Windows 7, or will be by October 2009? Are you UK-based? If the answer to both of these questions is “yes” then why not tell us about it? We’re compiling a directory of UK ISV applications that are...

I’ve started to receive some photos of how people are using the Bing stickers I sent out. I sent out about 30 to various people around the world and I still have some more pending requests – I’m running very low now despite getting a few more in. And...

Not sure if this is a sign I’m committed, or should be committed…but I am now sporting a Bing sticker on my car. I think it’s looks pretty good. If anyone else wants to be committed drop me an email and I’ll send you a sticker as long as you promise to...

When bing.com was announced recently you may recall that while a full service was made available immediately in the US, a more limited beta service was provided in the UK while the team built out some UK-specific features so that the UK experience could...

As you may well have heard, Windows 7 will include an XP mode which allows you to run legacy applications in a virtual machine seamlessly. You also may be aware that the virtualisation technology used for XP Mode requires that the chipset supports virtualisation...

Do you have questions on any of these topics: Account Problems Hotmail Sending Limits How can I stop receiving spam? I can't send attachments I forgot my password Mail and Settings Mail Clients WebIM These any many more questions answered on the Hotmail...

My colleague Mike Ormond has created a handy, short (<10 min) video on how to create add-ons for IE8. See this link . Especially handy if you’re thinking of entering the developer competition to win an Xbox Elite…