If you’ve been reading my blog for very long you’ll probably know that I’m quite the fan of Windows Live OneCare. It’s done everything I’ve needed and asked it today and has protected me with no problems whatsoever.
I’ve installed the application on every machine I have immediate control over as well as recommending it to numerous friends, relatives and clients. Everyone that I’ve recommended it to has had no problems that I’m aware of either. Since I serve as their computer support and IT department, I’m sure I would have heard about it if they did have problems.
I guess …read more

I just saw this commercial while watching TV tonight. Do you think it’s really this easy? Or, do kids just pick up things related to technology much easier and faster than us older people realize?
Who’s using Windows Live Photo Gallery. What do you think? Is it this easy?

Ahhh, MSN, the Microsoft Network. My first experience with it was when it was a ISP for my dial-up account after purchasing a new Compaq computer a number of years back.
Part of the community that was MSN was the MSN Groups. I never really participated in them that much, there was always another option that I was either already involved in or just nothing of interest to pull me away from something else.
Microsoft has announced recently that they will be shutting down the MSN Groups Service as of February 21, 2009. In the email I received this is the …read more

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The International Consumer…
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The International Consumer Electronics Show…
LAS VEGAS – JANUARY 07: Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer delivers the keynote address at the Venetian during the 2009 …read more

 
I was just doing some research on Google and noticed that "Zune" was a popular search keyword. Perhaps not too surprising given the recent news of the problems Zune users have been experiencing.
15% of all searches conducted on Google during the time period were somehow related to the Zune music player. Makes you wonder how much traffic someone is getting that may have purchased the Zune keyword.
Image: Snagit of Google Hot Trends website results

Did you know that 2008 was a dual leap year? Probably not since I made up the whole "dual leap year" tag, but what I do mean is that we had a February 29th this year and we’ll also have an extra leap second added to our clocks tomorrow night.
The problem is that Microsoft won’t really catch up with that second until later.
It turns out the deal is that Microsoft doesn’t recognize (or ignores) the alert in the atomic time codes that says a leap second is being added to the time adjustment. When the leap second is …read more

I continue to be a huge fan of offline blog editors. My favorite being Windows Live Writer. I found out today from Scobleizer that there was a new version available so I immediately jumped over to the Windows Live Writer site to download the update.
Of late I’ve noticed that some of my complaints with Windows Live Writer is that it does some weird things with renaming files and adding some HTML that I’d rather they wouldn’t. Not surprising from Microsoft, but one of those things I wish they’d really thing about performing their own little cease & desist option. …read more

There’s a new risk on the Internet right now if you’re using just about any version of Microsoft’s web-browser Internet Explorer.
Microsoft says it has detected attacks against IE 7.0 but said the "underlying vulnerability" was present in all versions of the browser.

I don’t use IE7 that much right now, mainly just to review some sites and applications I’ve developed where the clients using them are completely contained in an IE7 user environment.
Many "experts" are suggesting that users find an alternate browser to use instead of Internet Explorer, at least until Microsoft gets the patch available. Microsoft people are saying …read more

Image: Microsoft and Yahoo Corporate Brand Identities
My friend Dean commented recently that he bet Yahoo was wishing they had accepted Microsoft’s offer to buy the company not so long ago. When he made the comment, Yahoo stock was at $14.50.
I just looked today and Yahoo stock is at a whopping $8.95 according to Market Watch. Microsoft’s offer was $33/share when Yahoo and Jerry Yang said no to the offer and felt rebuffed that they would be offered so low a price and would never sell to a company the likes of Microsoft.
I still think Yahoo should sell to Microsoft. …read more

If you haven’t heard, Microsoft is now letting you earn money by using Microsoft Live Search instead of Google (or any other search site for that matter).
The only catch is that you also can’t be the type of person that uses Firefox (or any other browser except Internet Explorer) as their browser of choice.
To earn value for your searches and join the SearchPerks! promotion you must have Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher to participate. Copy this URL and paste it into Internet Explorer:
http://www.getsearchperks.com
Sign up for SearchPerks! and start earning tickets towards exciting prizes whenever you search the Web …read more