I am Microsoftie 4 ever (18+ years) working in Windows Services and Content team in the UK, my blog is mainly focused on the Windows family of products and trying to provide help pointers and resources for customers on our products.
You may be aware of the new Windows Live Search, well there are some viral videos as always to go with it:
Rob
I was asked yesterday what the best landing page for getting Windows XP SP3 was. So I had a quick hunt around and couldn’t find anything specific, there where lots of downloads and comments and posts on the various forums. The overall advice though is to wait till you get it via automatic updates, but if you need it in some other format see the links below.
Rob :)
If you like your windows in Nynorsk (a dialect of Norwegian, the other being Bokmål apparently) then you can download the new Windows Nynorsk Language Interface Pack (or LIP for short)
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0e21eb7b-e01a-4fcc-b7f1-30e419da7f5b&displaylang=nn
to find out more about Nynorsk – check this from Wikipedia
For a more UK feel you can also have Windows Vista in Welsh
Pecyn Rhyngwyneb Iaith Windows Vista
Not sure how long this has been live but thought I would give it a little plug as it is quite a cool little app from the UK Windows Live team:
http://specials.uk.msn.com/liveSpacesVision/default.aspx
“Live Space Vision is a stream of global updates to the Windows Live Space network of local market sites in near real-time. Live Space Vision joins FlickrVision, TwitterVision, and WikipediaVision in the vision map genre. This was achieved by using the publicly available Changes Feed and Virtual Earth SDK.
Evangelised by Rick Stock and Jason Christie in London, UK. Developed by Cyokin Zhang and Jamie He in Shanghai, CN."
There is some information here http://windowslive.uk.msn.com/spaces/guides/article.aspx?cp-documentid=8302095, and as it says it can be a great time waster just watching the sites that are being updated and the spinning globe.
You can now order Windows Vista Sp1 on a DVD, it will cost £5.98 for each copy and you can order up to 4.
Go to the Windows Vista Service Pack 1 DVD ordering page and follow the on screen instructions.
For more information about SP1 please see the following links
Updated 23/03/2009 to updated URL
I am not sure if this is something new but if you select Print Preview from the option in Internet Explorer, and then click on the help icon it takes you to a page on the Windows Help and How-to site:
Preview the appearance of a printed webpage
I ask because since the 13th of May it has gone from consistently having 1-4 page views a day to now having over 200! I won’t get the satisfaction scores for this page for a while so let me know what you think of it.
And if you know which update made this change I would be interested in that as well. I did get the following updates over the last few days.
Rob :S
My French counterpart JP sent me this earlier in the week, I don’t think you need to be able to speak French to understand the funny videos on the web site
Depuis que j'ai Messenger sur mon Mobile – Windows Live Messenger
Games for Windows is one of the common search terms we see for people visiting the Windows Help and How-to site, and we have a lots of content available from our Windows Vista: Games page about all the games that come with Vista, such as Minesweeper & Mahjong Titans.
However over on the official Games for Windows web site (US Version) you can get the demo of LEGO® Indiana Jones™: The Original Adventures DEMO for your Windows PC. This is the ONLY place you can get the download at the minute as it is an exclusive deal they have got running it.
So try it out (I think the download is 450-500 Mb)
Just a quicky linky to an article in today's Times Online about Live Search
Microsoft: we'll keep 'chipping away' at Google - Times Online
Tomorrow should see the changes going live and it will be good to check out the changes, including the Celebrity xRank :) It may not be the ‘killer app’ as the article says but it is strange how sometimes little things like this can have a big effect, and it will be interesting to have a look at it and the other changes to see the improvements :)
When I looked at the data for April for the most visited pages on the Windows Help and How-to site for the UK the top 10 articles where the same as last month (March most viewed), although not in the same order so I thought for April I would provide the 11-20 most visited articles:
However just because they are highly viewed doesn't mean they are rated highly, giving you the user steps such as:
'Go to the printer manufacturer's website and search for a printer driver that is compatible with your version of Windows.'
Followed by:
'Follow the instructions on the website to download and install the driver.'
Are not always that helpful which is why we also have more magazine like articles such as The hunt for drivers, How to find Windows Vista drivers for all your hardware.