Windows Live Wire: How to

Creating panoramic photos with Photo Gallery

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 02:40:42 GMT

Our friend Brandon LeBlanc just published a very cool blog post over on the Windows Experience blog. In it, he describes his trip around central Washington state, and posts some really stunning panoramas he created using the panoramic stitch feature in Windows Live Photo Gallery.

Like this one:

For more details on how to create your own panoramic photos by stitching together a series of photos that overlap, check out this easy how-to article.

If you don't have it yet, download Windows Live Photo Gallery, give it a try, and let us know what you think.

- Antonia

[Added 3/27/08] P.S. The Photo Gallery team also created a short video on how to make panoramic stitch photos. Thanks for the tip, Michael!

Technorati Tags: Windows Live,Photo Gallery,panoramas,photography,Windows

Avoiding e-mail scams

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 04:15:15 GMT

Ellie posted a great set of tips on the Hotmail blog today, about how to avoid scams from people who claim to be contacting you from Hotmail or Microsoft. She lets you know what sort of fake e-mail messages to look out for, and what to do when you get one.

Read the e-mail support blog for more info about malicious mail and websites that ask you for your Hotmail account name and password (or personal or financial information). Bottom line: Don't do it!! If it seems suspicious, it probably is. If you're not sure, send a description of the suspicious e-mail (subject line, who it is from, etc.) to Hotmail support.

Technorati Tags: spam,malicious,phishing,Hotmail,Windows Live

Moving your blog to a new space

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 00:23:14 GMT

I’ve been blogging on Windows Live Spaces for a while now, and life has been good. But I knew that by getting a fresher, shorter Windows Live ID, life could be even better. And now it is—12 keystrokes better every time I sign in. But while I did want to lose those keystrokes, I didn't want to lose the space I was slowly (very slowly) building with the old ID.

In a previous post, Kaarin explained how to move your photos from your old space to a new one, which worked out great for me. But I also had a few blog entries to migrate over. Thankfully, Windows Live Writer makes this step relatively easy, too.

Here's the skinny: Use Writer to download all of your posts from your old blog (on Windows Live Spaces or on another blogging service), and then upload them to your new blog (again, it doesn’t have to be on Spaces, but we recommend it!). That's pretty much it.

Get posts from your old blog

If you don't already have it (but of course you do!), install Windows Live Writer.
Add your old blog to Writer, either during setup, or by clicking Add Weblog Account on the Weblog menu.
To find the posts from your old blog, click More… under the Recently Posted list in the right-hand pane.
Click the name of your blog in the left pane. (You may need to click the Refresh Posts button if your blog has changed a lot recently.)

Add them to your new blog

Add your new blog to Writer, by (you guessed it) clicking Add Weblog Account on the Weblog menu.
Prepare to publish your old posts to your new blog by clicking More… under the Recently Posted list.
For each post that you want to migrate, double-click it in the list to open it.
At the bottom of the open blog post, select a category (you'll need to add your custom categories to the list), and then set the publish date to whatever it was on your old blog.
With the post from your old blog still open, point Writer at your new blog by clicking its name on the Weblog menu.
Then click Publish to add the old post to the new blog.

That's it. Some might say the physical actions required to migrate one's blog are so subtle that one could complete the task during the course of a routine meeting. Not that I would know anything about that.

Oh, by the way, the comments people have left won't follow your posts to their new home, so you’ll be making a fresh start in that sense. If you’ve formed a deep emotional attachment to the old comments, you may want to keep your old blog online and add a link to it in a custom module, as suggested at the end of Kaarin's post.

Happy blogging!

Lisa Andrews
Windows Live editor
http://perro-gordo.spaces.live.com/

Technorati Tags: Windows Live,Writer,blog,Live,Spaces

Introducing Linked IDs

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 18:42:12 GMT

Through your feedback, we’ve learned that many of you have more than one Windows Live ID. You may use different IDs for different online identities (if, for example, you have a couple different blogs), for different activities (one for sharing photos with your family on Spaces, and one for sharing documents with co-workers on SkyDrive), or for different groups of friends (your family, your friends, your professional contacts).

To make it easier to switch between these different identities, we recently introduced linked IDs. You can now link up to four Windows Live accounts together, and switch between them without a password.

What you get with linked IDs

Sign in once to access all your accounts. Once you've signed in to one account, you can instantly switch between all your linked accounts.
No need to sign out, no need to enter another e-mail address and password. Just click your name in the sign-in area in the upper-right corner, and then click the ID you want to switch to.
Easier switching between accounts from anywhere within Windows Live—Hotmail, Spaces, SkyDrive, whatever you use most.
Easier management of multiple identities that you use for different purposes or with different groups.

How to link an ID

You can easily add or remove linked IDs by going to Windows Live Account (https://account.live.com), or by using the link in the sign-in area on any Windows Live webpage.

To link a Windows Live ID from any Windows Live page:

Sign in.
Click your sign-in name in the upper-right corner, and in the drop-down menu, click Link other accounts.
One the resulting page, enter:
1. The password of the account you’re already signed into
2. The Windows Live ID you want to link
3. The password of your soon-to-be linked account
Click Link.

Change your mind?

You can easily unlink an account, without deleting or closing it.

Sign in.
In the sign-in area, click View your account.
On the account summary page, click Manage your linked IDs.
On the Manage Linked IDs page, click Unlink next to the account you want to remove.

We hope you enjoy this new flexibility. And as always, your feedback is welcome!

Miriam Daniel
Windows Live Account team

Technorati Tags: Windows Live,Live,profile,account,how-to

Moving photos to a new space

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 19:37:20 GMT

I was excited when I found out I could get a new @live.com account. Hotmail has been around so long (since 1996!) that a lot of the good e-mail names were taken already. With @live, I got to pick out just the e-mail address I wanted.

I didn’t have any problems switching over to my new account in Messenger, Hotmail, and Mail. (There are some pretty thorough instructions here.) But I have to admit that I didn’t catch on right away to the fact that I’d also be “getting a fresh start” on Windows Live Spaces. I didn’t have a lot of stuff on my old space, mostly photos and a looooong book list, but I was pleased with it and didn’t want to have to create it all over again.

Luckily, moving my photo albums from one space to the other was fairly easy, thanks to Windows Live Photo Gallery. I didn’t have to sort through all the photos on my hard drive to find the ones I wanted to publish again. Instead, I downloaded whole albums from my old space, and then uploaded them whole to the new one.

Here’s the detailed how-to:

Go to your old space, click a photo, and then click Download and Download album.
If you don’t have Windows Live Photo Gallery installed, you’ll be prompted to do so. It didn’t take me long to install.
If a message box appears, click Allow, and then sign in again with your (old) Windows Live ID, and click Download.

Downloading all the photos in an album

Photo Gallery creates new folders in your Pictures\Downloaded Albums folder, so you can easily tell which album and space the photos came from. The file names are the same as when you published the photos the first time (but unfortunately, it doesn’t save the captions).
To finish the transfer, sign in to your new space, click Add album, and name the album. Click Add photos and browse to the downloaded album you want (Pictures\Downloaded Albums\Your Space Name\Album Name). Click Select All, enter the photo captions, and then click Upload Now.

If you really do want to start fresh

An alternative to this whole routine is to simply keep the old space as a kind of archive, start a fresh new space with your new Windows Live ID, and check both spaces until the old one starts to become less useful. Here are a couple ways you can make the transition a little easier:

If you’re the only one who needs to see both spaces, you can link your Windows Live IDs and quickly switch between them.
If you want to make sure visitors can easily find both spaces, you can add a custom list module to each one, with a link to the other space.

A custom list module with a link to my other space

Here’s how to add the custom module:

Click Customize, and then click Add modules.
Click Custom list, click Close, and then click Save.
In the new custom list, click Edit list, and then click Add item.
Enter the link text you want and the web address of your other space. Then click Save.
To change the title of the module, click Edit list information.

Have fun, and leave a comment to let me know how this works for you!

Kaarin Shumate
Writer, Windows Live

Technorati Tags: Windows Live,Photo Gallery,Spaces,@live.com