I’m always on the lookout for the latest web trends, so I keep an eye on CNET’s Webware, a tech site about “cool web apps for everyone.” They review fun and innovative web tools, and forecast the latest online trends.

So I was pleased to see that for the third year in a row, several Windows Live products have been nominated for their annual Webware 100 Awards. If you aren’t familiar with these awards, each year, Webware readers nominate outstanding products in ten categories of Web 2.0 services. The Webware editors then select the 300 finalists, and invite readers to vote on the final picks.

This year, five Windows Live products have been nominated, among a total of 13 Microsoft products.  In the Communication category, they’ve nominated Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Hotmail. In the the growing category of Infrastructure and Storage, Windows Live Sync, Live Mesh (Beta), and Windows Live SkyDrive have all been nominated. Several great Live Search and Microsoft Office Live services were also nominated, along with Internet Explorer 8 and Microsoft Silverlight.

And this is where you come in. Vote for us!

If you love chatting with your friends in Messenger, or depend on Hotmail to stay in touch, vote for us in the Communication category. If you can no longer live without all of the remote access, sharing, and synchronization features of Windows Live Sync or Live Mesh (Beta), or your 25 GB of free online storage on SkyDrive, then vote for us in the Infrastructure & Storage category.

Here are all of this year’s Microsoft nominees:

Communication (Vote!)

• Windows Live Messenger, chat, play games, or swap photos with friends.
• Windows Live Hotmail, fast, easy, reliable e-mail, with storage that grows as you use it.

Infrastructure & Storage (Vote!)

• Windows Live SkyDrive, with 25GB of free online file storage and sharing.
• Windows Live Sync, peer-to-peer file synching and sharing, plus remote access to multiple computers.
• Live Mesh (Beta) ties together your network of devices, synchronized folders, and cloud storage.
• Microsoft Silverlight helps developers “light up the web” with richly interactive web applications that work across platforms and browsers.

Search & Reference (Vote!)

• Live Search gives you fast, relevant results… plus gorgeous photos on the Search page.

Browsing (Vote!)

• Internet Explorer 8, faster, easier, safer browsing—and have you tried the new Accelerators that provide instant driving directions, translations, and more?

Location-based Services (Vote!)

• Live Search 411, a free directory assistance number (1-800-CALL-411) that can also send maps, movie listings and more right to your phone.
• Live Search Maps, if you haven’t tried their bird’s eye view yet, prepare to be wowed.

Commerce (Vote!)

• Live Search Farecast (Beta) helps you find the best airfare deals by predicting when prices are likely to rise or fall for your destination.

Productivity (Vote!)

• Microsoft Office Live Workspace (Beta) is your online place to save, access, and share documents and files.
• Microsoft Office Live Small Business helps your small business get off the ground with free website hosting, e-mail addresses, online document storage, and more.

You can also check out last year’s winners, (Windows Live Home, Hotmail, Messenger, and Live Search were all winners), and the 2007 Webware 100 (Hotmail, Messenger, Live Search, and Microsoft Virtual Earth took home prizes).

Be sure to vote in all categories, and soon, because voting will end on April 30, 2009, at noon Pacific Time.

- Antonia
  Windows Live team

UPDATE April 22, 2009:  Good news! These favorites features are now available everywhere SkyDrive is.*

If you made me—but please don't make me—pick the one aspect of Windows Live I get the most excited about with the least amount of prompting, it's what Windows Live can do with your Internet Explorer favorites. While I advocate on behalf of them, I will try to keep my enthusiasm to a dull roar, because a showy display is not The Favorites Way. To the contrary, this aspect of Windows Live is so low-key that you might never have noticed it, or you might have poked it a few times after installing Windows Live Toolbar, found it didn't do anything flashy, and forgotten all about it.

Are you social? Broadcast and share your faves

There are a few sites I return to again and again that my pals would also be interested in. Rather than send Yet Another E-mail with Yet Another Hyperlink That They Will Lose, I add them to my shared favorites using the Share button on Windows Live Toolbar.

I click the Share button to add a new shared favorite

If my pals happen to be paying attention to what's new, they'll notice that I've shared a couple of favorites recently.

My network sees that I shared some favorites

If they aren't paying attention, they can still see what I've shared anytime in my Shared favorites folder on SkyDrive.

The people in my network can see my Shared favorites on SkyDrive

You automatically have two favorites folders on SkyDrive already: Shared favorites (which is shared with your network by default) and Favorites (which is for your own eyes only). If I set up Toolbar to sync my favorites , all of my personal favorites are on my SkyDrive, all the time, in my personal Favorites folder. This comes in handy when I use a public or shared computer. So let's talk about setting up your favorites to sync.

Got better things to do than compulsively organize your web links? Favorites sync has your back.

I love, love, love favorites sync on Windows Live Toolbar because I love, love, love collecting favorites and then completely ignoring them. All I want is for them to be exactly the same on every computer I use, all the time, without me having to organize them more than once. Is that too much to ask? Toolbar says nope, it's not.

It's just a matter of getting this set up to do it automagically. If you haven't set up favorites sync yet, you'll see a Favorites Sync icon on Windows Live Toolbar.

Click the icon to start the wizard to set up sync

Just click this icon and follow the steps shown on the screen to get everything set up. Do this on each computer where you use Internet Explorer (and sign in with the same Windows Live ID), and those favorites will always be the same.

If you have lots and lots of favorites, the first time you sync it may take a few hours for all of them to sync up. After that, they’ll sync every 90 minutes, or every time you change your favorites in Internet Explorer.

If you've set sync up once, that icon goes away. If you set up sync, turn it off, and want to turn it back on, right-click the toolbar, and then click Toolbar Options.

Right-click Windows Live Toolbar to check or change your sync settings

When the Options window appears, click Sync your favorites and see what you get. If you see a button that says Start Automatic Sync, that means you—accidentally, I'm sure—turned sync off and need to turn it on again by clicking the button. If the button says Stop Automatic Sync, that means sync is on. Leave everything alone.

Click the button to start sync again. Do it now! Hurry!

You can start and stop sync anytime, but why would you want to? Having your favorites sync automatically keeps them occupied and frees up your obsessive-compulsive organizing time for something Windows Live can't help you with, like endlessly refolding and restacking your T-shirt collection by color, fiber, state of wear, person you were dating during purchase … or is that just me?

- Lisa Andrews, OCD editor, Windows Live team

* Those places are: Arabia, South Arabia, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong SAR, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, United States, United Kingdom, and Vietnam.

I don’t know about you, but remembering birthdays has always been tough for me. And now being 7+ states away from my family, it’s even tougher. Mom’s not around to drop those little hints about [Dad/Sister/Uncle/Grandmother/Niece]’s upcoming birthday into everyday conversation. With the Birthday Calendar in Windows Live Calendar, I don’t need to worry about forgetting another birthday. And with event reminders, I even have enough time to find that perfect gift (or find out from Mom what the perfect gift is) and get it in the mail.

See birthday events when the Birthday Calendar is selected

So how do birthdays magically appear in calendar? Birthday events are included in the Birthday Calendar for:

• Your network (profile and Messenger) contacts, or at least the ones sharing their birthday info with you.
• Your “regular” contacts (contacts on your People page that aren’t network contacts) if you’ve added their birth dates to their contact details.

It takes a little while for birth dates that you add to your ‘regular’ contact’s details to appear on the Birthday calendar. Browse the web, think about a great gift, check your calendar after a few hours, it should be there.

Add reminders

Reminders are sent 12 hours before a birthday event by default. But if you’re like me, you may need a little extra lead time. Luckily, reminders can be set anywhere from 2 weeks before, to no reminder at all for each birthday event. Since the birthday event is set for a day, not a particular time during the day, the event “occurs” at the beginning of each day, or 12am. If you leave the default reminder of 12 hours, then you’ll get the reminder around noon the day before a person’s birthday. To change the reminder, open a birthday event and select an option in the Send reminder list.

I need to get this reminder as soon as possible

Select reminder delivery options

You can also choose how you get reminders: in Windows Live Messenger “toasts”, e-mail messages, text messages on your mobile phone, or any combo of the three. Before you start spamming yourself with event reminders, it’s important to know that your reminder delivery options apply to all of your calendars, not to specific calendars or individual events. So while it may be great to get reminders about someone’s special day sent to you everywhere, realize that you’re going to get reminders for all your other events as well.

To change where your reminders are delivered to:

1. On the Options menu, click More options.
2. Under Set your reminder time, click Change how you get reminders.
3. On the Windows Live Calendar alerts page, click the Basic Delivery tab and choose one or more options.
   -or-
   If you want your change your reminder delivery based on your Messenger status, click the Custom Delivery tab.
   To receive reminders in a text message, you may need to set up SMS for Windows Live. Click Set up an MSN Mobile account to start. (Sometimes the web moves faster than we do—we’re working on updating this page to match our latest release.)

So with a little updating of your contact details and maybe changing some reminders, you’ll never forget another birthday too! OK, now I have to IM my Mom and find out what I should buy. I hope it’s something I can buy online—I don’t I have time to go to the post office.

-Dawn Hollingsworth

The Windows Live Team

Update: Unfortunately, Windows Live Calendar is experiencing some unexpected issues with birthday calendars and calendar subscriptions. Some users are unable to view or update the Birthday Calendar. And some users with calendar subscriptions have reported problems with missing data or delayed updates.

The Windows Live Calendar team is working hard to resolve these issues as soon as possible.  We apologize for any inconvenience. (March 24, 2009)

Update 2: The subscriptions issue has been resolved. (March 25, 2009)

Update 3: The birthday calendar issue has been resolved.  We’re sorry for the interruption and any inconvenience it might have caused. For some users, after you sign in, it might take up to 4 hours to see your updates to the Birthday calendar. (May 7, 2009)

The web has been a real learning experience for my family. The kids learn about geodes and where Dora lost her friendship bracelet, while I learn about malware and phishing. Fortunately, Windows Live Family Safety lets me block the sites I know are dangerous for them and allow the ones I know they like and are safe. And if the kids try to do an end-run around mom and check out other sites, I know right away with activity reports.

But even with all this great defensive planning, there are hackers out there working just as hard to find new ways to do their own end-run. Family Safety and Internet Explorer work great together because their always-evolving security features help me guard against these new hacker tactics.

Today, the new Internet Explorer 8 is being released with some great new ways to protect against hackers. There’s SmartScreen that helps protect my family from socially-engineered attacks like malware and phishing, and other technologies that help protect my PC from drive-by attacks like cross-site scripting and ClickJacking.

SmartScreen helps me protect my kids from more malware than ever before. Malware is hard enough for adults to identify; kids have an even harder time. A game site is a game site to them. Free stuff is endlessly alluring.  How are they supposed to know that the cool screensaver they are downloading isn’t really a cool screensaver, but a covert, potentially harmful piece of software that they are putting on the family computer where your banking information is located, right next to the LEGO blueprints and the sledding pictures? 

Internet Explorer 8 works against ClickJacking and cross-site scripting technologies to prevent Junior from clicking on a picture of a Pokémon and being taken to another website without realizing it.  When Junior thought he was clicking Pikachu, he may have actually clicked something else: buying something from another site, changing settings on your browser or computer, or being shown inappropriate advertisements. It’s complicated, but Internet Explorer 8 lets website developers protect their sites from these kinds of attacks by preventing their legitimate pages from being “framed.” All these new features in Internet Explorer 8 work together to help identify threats for you and your kids, block them, or just warn you so you can avoid a digital disaster. Once Internet Explorer 8 is installed, there’s nothing more to configure, nothing extra for you to buy or download or install, it just works. Downloading and upgrading to Internet Explorer 8 only takes a few minutes! 

If all this has made you curious about the new security features in Internet Explorer 8 and the new kinds of malicious software technologies that they guard against, you can also read this white paper for all the details.

Oh, and by the way, I am also posting this on the Windows Live Family Safety blog, which has more great info for keeping your family safe online.

- Sylvia F., Mom and writer, Windows Live Family Safety

Over the last few months, you’ve seen some major upgrades to services across Windows Live. This includes a new set of web experiences, a revamp of Windows Live Essentials free downloadable programs for your PC, and new Windows Live services on your mobile phone.

This week at the MIX conference, we’re announcing even more for Windows Live customers. This time, we’re focused on how developers and website owners can easily bring even more of Windows Live to their own websites through our APIs (application programming interfaces = bits of functionality from Windows Live that web developers can add to other websites outside Windows Live). There’s a lot to this, and you can find out more at http://dev.live.com/messenger/, but today I want to focus on some of the new Messenger capabilities. Let’s first start with why we think this is great for consumers and for website owners.

If you’re a Windows Live Messenger customer, you’ve probably downloaded Messenger to your PC and can easily chat with your contacts from there. But sometimes, you’re away from your PC – you might be at school or work or somewhere where you can’t install new programs (like at an Internet kiosk). And at other times, you might be surfing websites and want to start a chat right from the webpage, without having to open a new window. The new Windows Live Messenger web bar is an easy way to get to Messenger straight from a website through a small bar that the website can add to the bottom of their pages:

At the right end of the Messenger web bar, you can click the user tile to see both:

• Your usual Windows Live Messenger contacts
• Your contacts and friends from that website

And for any of your available contacts, you can start up a chat that will be tabbed along the bottom – like the chat with Diego shown below.

You’ve probably already built up a network of friends that you chat with using Windows Live Messenger. You’re used to their names and the groups you’ve created for them, seeing their pictures and being able to send them an instant message when they’re online. That’s great when you’re using Windows Live, but what about when you’re reading news, watching videos, or doing any of the hundreds of other things you do online? Well with the new Windows Live Messenger Web Toolkit, we’re making it easier for any website owner to add this capability and allow you to chat wherever you are.

Are you a web developer or website owner? Angus Logan over on the Live Services team has a great blog post that explains a bit more about how this works on your end: Reach your people everywhere, in real time!

- Dharmesh Mehta, Director of Windows Live Product Management

Hi, I’m Kaarin, and I’m a writer on the Windows Live team. I love my day job, but I don’t exactly save lives every day at work, so I try to do my part in other ways to make the world a better place. Here are a few quick and easy ways I use Windows Live to support charitable causes.

The i’m initiative

Whenever I send someone an IM in Windows Live Messenger or an e-mail message in Windows Live Hotmail, Microsoft donates money to the cause I selected (UNICEF). One of the nicest benefits I get from working at Microsoft is that the company matches my charitable donations and volunteer time. The i’m initiative is even easier—it’s free money. If one of the many causes in the i’m initiative has your heart, download a panel for your blog, the theme pack for Messenger, and a button or banner to add to your e-mail signature.

Search and Give

Another source of free money is Search and Give from Live Search. You can select a cause from over 800,000 non-profit organizations and 100,000 K-12 schools in the U.S. Then you can set Search and Give as your home page or your default search engine. Every time you search, Microsoft donates 1 cent to your cause. It may not sound like much, but it adds up, particularly if you get the word out and all your friends start using Search and Give for their searches, too. To earn more for your charity or school, you can even play fun free games on Live Search Club. One of my favorite ways to waste time!

At this time, the i’m initiative and Search and Give are available to people living in the 50 United States and the District of Columbia. Let’s say you live somewhere else, or your cause isn’t part of the i’m initiative. All is not lost. There are lots of other ways to use Windows Live to raise awareness for your favorite cause.

Add a signature in Hotmail

You never quite know how many people your e-mail messages reach, especially if you like to forward stories, jokes, and such. Your signature is a great way to spread the word about your favorite cause.

1. Go to Windows Live Hotmail, click Options, and then click More options.
2. Under Customize your mail, click Personal e-mail signature.
3. Describe your cause (adding links if you want), and then click Save.

Add a signature in Windows Live Mail

1. Open Windows Live Mail, click Tools, click Options, and then click the Signatures tab.
2. Select the Add signatures to all outgoing messages check box.
3. Click New.
4. Under Edit Signature, click Text.
5. Describe your cause (adding links if you want), and then click OK.

Share the website of your favorite cause

If you have a blog or space on Windows Live, make sure to share the website for your cause there, too. And make the webpage a shared favorite on Windows Live by clicking the Share button on Windows Live Toolbar. When you add the favorite, it appears on your What’s new list for everyone in your network to see.

Customize your display picture and personal message

You can state your cause (and even include a link) in the personal message you show in Messenger and on your profile page. You can even use your display picture to illustrate your cause. You can change both of these from your profile details page.

Create a volunteering group

I want to instill the value of community service in my preschooler, so I’m setting up a group of other moms in my neighborhood who have young kids. Then, I plan to create a calendar with a volunteer event for each month. Some months, we’ll pick up litter in our neighborhood, others we can go door-to-door to collect food for the local food bank. We’ll see how it goes!

If you like these ideas, please spread the word!

- Kaarin

Windows Live team

We have been getting frequent comments lately from readers of this blog who’ve received a suspicious e-mail message asking for their password and other personal information and claiming to be from the Hotmail or Windows Live team. It says that their account will be closed unless they reply with this information within 24 hours, 2 weeks, or something similar.

If it looks anything like the e-mail below, then yes, it is a scam! Please don’t reply or click any of the links. Your account will not be closed. 

Here is a sample of this fake e-mail notification (there are several similar variations being circulated):

Dear Account User

CONFIRM YOUR WINDOWS LIVE ACCOUNT SERVICES. VERIFY YOUR FREE HOTMAIL ACCOUNT NOW !!!

This Email is from Hotmail Customer Care and we are sending it to every Hotmail Email User Accounts Owner for safety. we are having congestions due to the anonymous registration of Hotmail accounts so we are shutting down some Hotmail accounts and your account was among those to be deleted. We are sending this email to you so that you can verify and let us know if you still want to use this account. If you are still interested please confirm your account by filling the space below.Your User name, password, date of birth and your country information would be needed to verify your account.

Due to the congestion in all Hotmail users and removal of all unused Hotmail Accounts, Hotmail would be shutting down all unused Accounts, You will have to confirm your E-mail by filling out your Login Information below after clicking the reply button, or your account will be suspended within 24 hours for security reasons.

* Username:
* Password: 
* Date of Birth:
* Country Or Territory: 

After following the instructions in the sheet, your account will not be interrupted and will continue as normal. Thanks for your attention to this request. We apologize for any inconveniences.

Warning!!! Account owner that refuses to update his/her account after two weeks of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently.

Sincerely,
The Windows Live Hotmail Team

Spot other scams

There are a lot of other e-mail scams out there. How can you tell if an e-mail is legitimate?  Most e-mail scams have a few telltale signs that can help you spot them.

1. It sounds too good (or bad) to be true. It probably is a scam.  This is a rule of thumb that applies to almost every e-mail scam out there.
2. It asks for your personal information. Microsoft will never ask you to provide your username, password, date of birth, country, credit card information, etc. via e-mail. Never enter your password anywhere besides the official Windows Live ID sign-in page.
3. It looks unprofessional. Telltale signs are incorrect English grammar, random capitalization of words in the middle of a sentence, like “Email User Accounts Owner,” or graphic images that don’t match those shown on the official website of the company referred to in the message.
4. It’s urgent. Scammers want you to feel that you need to make a decision quickly, so that you won’t have time to research the legitimacy of the message.
5. It promises you free money. You’ve supposedly won money in a foreign lottery, or there is unclaimed money from an inheritance due to you. If you didn’t enter that lottery, or aren’t related to the person the message says you’ve inherited money from, it’s probably a scam.
6. The “From” name doesn’t match the actual e-mail address. This is not the case for every e-mail scam, but when it occurs, it is a pretty sure sign. For example, it may say it is from the “Microsoft Promotion Team”, but if you look at the e-mail address, it came from somebody @ example.com or another completely unrelated address.
7. It looks like it’s from real friend of yours, and asks for money. If your friend has fallen for a phishing scam, someone may have taken over their e-mail account and is now trying to get cash from everyone in their contact list, including you. This is what phishing scams are all about. If the story doesn’t sound like your friend, or if you aren’t sure, call your friend (don’t e-mail them) before you do anything else.

What should you do?

If you receive a message that you suspect of being a scam, here’s what to do.

1. Investigate it.

• Check for similar e-mail scams listed on http://windowslivehelp.com/solutions/safety/default.aspx
• Check for similar scams listed on http://www.snopes.com
• Never click a link within the e-mail. Instead, search for the website of the company that it claims to be from, and then contact their customer service reps to verify the validity of the e-mail. Or if it claims to be from a friend of yours, call your friend and ask.

2. Report it.

• In Hotmail, click Junk, or better yet, click Mark as, and then click Phishing scam.
• If you want to provide more details to Hotmail, send a message to abuse@hotmail.com.
• If the scam claims to be from another known and legitimate company, contact that company to inform them of the scam (but don’t click any links in the e-mail… see the last point under “Investigate it”).

3. Protect yourself and your computer.

• If you think someone has accessed or stolen your Hotmail account, if the Windows Live ID sign-in page looks fraudulent, or if you receive an e-mail that tries to confirm a password change you didn’t authorize, please follow these steps from the Hotmail Support team. (Updated March 17, 2009)
• Help ensure that your PC has not been infected with a virus or malware by running a free full-PC scan.

Look out for these scams, too

Here are some more scams that are going around, all researched and explained on Snopes.com, which is a terrific resource for this sort of thing:

• Ebay account suspension notices that ask you to verify your account information.
• Paypal needs you to resubmit your credit card and bank account information.
• A fee will be charged for Hotmail.
• Get cash or other free items from Microsoft or other companies for forwarding an e-mail.
• Internet petition to keep Messenger a free service.
• Medical appeals usually involving injured or sick children.

For more info, see this article on the 5 most common types of e-mail scams or this one on protecting your identity online.

Stay safe!

Antonia
(From the real Windows Live team)

Brandon Le Blanc has a new post up on the Windows Experience blog explaining how Windows Live helps complete your PC experience. Those of you who’ve tried out the new Windows 7 beta know first-hand how Windows and Windows Live can help bring together what you do on your PC with what you do on the web. 

Brandon explains that when you download Windows Live Essentials, you get a bridge from Windows to Windows Live and other web services. In Windows Vista, several of these programs were part of Windows itself, but in Windows 7, their successors have become part of Windows Live Essentials, a set of free programs that help complete what you can do with your PC, including Windows Live Mail, Messenger, Photo Gallery, and more.

Plus, as Brandon puts it, “by adding programs to Windows Live Essentials that were originally part of the Windows operating system, we feel we are in a better position to innovate on those programs and enhance your experience as a PC user and at a much quicker rate.”

Get the whole story in his excellent blog post: Completing the Windows experience with Windows Live.

We are aware that some of you may be experiencing difficulty accessing your Windows Live Hotmail accounts right now. We’re actively investigating the cause and are working to fix this as quickly as possible. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience and disruption this may be causing you.

Please check the Hotmail team blog or the Hotmail Online Solutions Center for further updates.

- The Windows Live team

UPDATE: The Hotmail team reports that "service has been restored" and they are "taking steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again."

Please report any new Hotmail loss of service to http://windowslivehelp.com/Default.aspx or https://support.live.com/default.aspx (select Hotmail in the list of services), so that the team can investigate and resolve each problem as soon as possible.

PC World came out with a nice little article last week about 5 great Microsoft web services you probably don't use. We DO use them, thank you very much, and have long suspected that once you try them, you will too.

Here are the 5 services they picked for the article, and a sample of what they say about each:

• Windows Live SkyDrive (where you can store and share files online)

“How's this for a deal: Get 25GB of online storage, at no cost, with no strings attached.”

• Windows Live Sync (sync folders directly between multiple computers without storing anything “in the cloud”)

“If you have more than one PC and you want to keep files and folders on them synchronized, you need this service. Since it involves no online storage, it puts no limit on the amount of data you can sync.”

• Windows Live Mesh (lets you sync your files, but also includes cloud storage, and fine-tuned controls)

“You have an exceptional amount of control over the synchronization, too--for example, you can choose to synchronize only the files modified in the last 30 days, or those under 500MB.

• Office Live Workspace (an online collaboration space, integrated with Microsoft Office)

“One big, exclusive benefit is its direct integration with Microsoft Office… On top of that, the template-driven approach to creating documents and workspaces is superior to anything you'll find in Google Docs or Zoho.”

• Microsoft Virtual Earth 3D (a plug-in you can use with Live Search Maps)

“The views are richer and more compelling than what Google has to offer, so if you're looking for great 3D mapping, this is the service to try.”

Read the whole article here. What would you pick as your favorite, underrated web services? Let us know!

- Antonia B.
Windows Live team

If you haven't tried creating a panorama using the panoramic stitch feature in Windows Live Photo Gallery, you should. What this feature does with a series of photos is nothing short of amazing.

The panoramic feature in Photo Gallery “stitches” together a series of photos to create a large composite. To do this, Photo Gallery looks for similar patterns in a series of photos that appear to match up, and combines them. Most of the time you can predict what the resulting stitch will look like, however occasionally you’re rewarded with something unexpected, surreal and sometimes oddly beautiful.

I really like how Photo Gallery distorts and mangles pixels to make a panorama. Photo Gallery doesn’t know or care how the finished photo will look, it just connects the photos the best it can based on its internal algorithm. Because a photographer’s vantage point is never perfectly aligned with each photo in a series, Photo Gallery has to curve lines and create gradations to join up elements in each photo.

This panoramic gives Amsterdam an even more woozy quality.

Notice how the transitions between sky and water aren’t perfect and the odd curved quality of the composite? This is because of the slightly different vantage point, lighting and shutter speed my camera used for each shot in the series.

My photographic style involves leaving my camera on “automatic” and quickly taking more photos than I ever plan to keep. I’m more interested in capturing a moment, the point of view and in the composition of a photo than fiddling with shutter speed, lenses and other technical stuff. This means I end up throwing a lot of photos away. Probably more than I keep. I still end up with tons of photos and some pretty interesting ones that I wouldn’t have otherwise. Using Photo Gallery’s tagging and organizational features makes sorting the ones worth keeping pretty quick and easy.

Horizons and perspective

When stitching together photos, Photo Gallery looks for patterns to connect. Those patterns don’t have to be aligned across a horizon. Try taking a grouping of photos vertically as well as horizontally. If there is enough overlap between the photos, Photo Gallery will connect them. Take a look at this example of 12 horizontal and vertical photos I’ve stitched together:

Don’t try using this fire escape in a hurry.

A wide angle lens effect

As interesting as it is to join dozens of photos together to create a panorama, consider connecting just a few to create the illusion of a wide angle lens. Here are a few photos of my dogs in the Redwood National Park. Notice how the first photo in the series doesn’t include the dogs? That’s because I (sorta) used the rule of thirds in composing it.

Now those same photos stitched together and cleaned up with a little cropping:

Ah, isn’t that the sweetest?

Photo Gallery generally recognizes and eliminates redundant things in photos and eliminates them.

Fake out Photo Gallery

Another interesting experiment is to fool Photo Gallery into creating scenes that don't really exist. Here’s a panorama I created by stitching together a couple separate panoramas and including a third photo afterward:

Looks a little like a 70’s department store portrait, huh?

Here are the composites I stitched together to get this weirdness:

If you get an error that says Photo Gallery can’t stitch together your photos because they don’t match closely enough, don’t give up. Sometimes you can correct the problem with careful cropping, or a slight contrast, exposure, or color adjustment. Start with a small selection of the photos that you intend to stitch together, and work your way up until you isolate the issue.

Sometimes things go pleasantly wrong

Sometimes Photo Gallery gives up trying to stitch together photos and returns an error, other times it bungles the job in pretty terrific ways. In this panoramic stitch of my living room, Photo Gallery recognizes that these photos belong together, but it can’t figure out how. Its algorithm doesn't seem to account for gravity.

Behold. A room that Dali would approve of.

No matter how you use Photo Gallery, it's got lots of features that you can use to make your photos look better — or at least more interesting. Because taking digital photos is essentially free, and editing photos in Photo Gallery is risk-free (you can always revert back to the original, even after you save changes), I take tons more photos and have more fun experimenting and being creative with them. If I don't like the way a photo turns out, I either undo my changes and try again, or if the photo doesn't continue to hold my interest, I just throw it away.

Check out this fun video showing how easy it is to create a panoramic stitch.

- Brad Wright
  The Windows Live team

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Windows Live Movie Maker (beta) is a first generation product. That is, instead of adding new features to the original Windows Movie Maker, we started over and have been building the all new Windows Live Movie Maker from the ground up to meet the changing needs of working with digital photos and videos today. 

When Microsoft built the original Windows Movie Maker, it was designed to help you work with video you recorded with a camcorder, because that was what a lot people were using back then.  But these days, with so many devices that can record video, we needed to create a program that could work with movies using lots of different kinds of video. To do this, we really needed to start from scratch.

So, for the beta release of Windows Live Movie Maker a few months ago, we focused on making sure we had these key functionalities running smoothly first:

• adding digital photos and videos easily
• making editing commands easier to find with the new Ribbon user interface
• publishing movies quickly and easily

We know we still have a lot of work to do to get Windows Live Movie Maker ready for final release. We’ve been reading your feedback and comments on the first Windows Live Movie Maker beta post and are working to add more of the features and functionality we hear you asking for. Rest assured, there’s lots more good stuff to come.

If you haven’t tried it yet, we hope you’ll download Windows Live Movie Maker beta. We’d love it if you’d let us know what you think about our work so far, and what else you’d like to see in the final release. We’ll share more information about the final release of Windows Live Movie Maker as soon as it becomes available.

JP Wollersheim
Product Manager, Windows Live