All Things Nerdy | allthingsnerdy.com

Have you heard about this new service? Yes it is from the company that Linux lovers would rather puncture their ear drums than hear here the name…Microsoft. Live Mesh is the perfect blend of Windows Live Sky Drive and Windows Live Folder Share. You can sync between computers, access select files online, and add permissions so that others can share and access these items as well.

AllThingsNerdy, what would it take to make this the unstoppable app? Well grasshopper, a limit of 5GB of online space takes out the option of using this as a one-stop shop for backup and synchronization unless your have a remote backup computer that you can leave connected.

Bottom line, is AllThingsNerdy using this on his/her computer right now? Oh, yeah.

Do you know Plaxo?  You should. 

Plaxo is an online address book, calendar, and task manager that syncs with Microsoft Hotmail, Google Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, AOL, Mac, Thunderbird, Microsoft Outlook, and your mobile phone. 

The initial idea behind Plaxo was to have other contacts signed up for the service as well and therefore your address book would be updated automatically if the person ever made any changes to, for example, their phone number.  Oh but it can do so much more than that.

There is no need to mention their excellent online interface because as soon as you get Plaxo set up you won’t even noticed that is working.  It seamlessly works in the background to sync all of your data.

I currently sync Plaxo to Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Hotmail, Work Outlook - Exchange Server, and Home Outlook.  My Home Outlook is then used to sync to my PDA/phone (T-Mobile Dash: excellent phone by the way).  It works like a dream and cannot imagine my life without it. 

I definitely will not neglect to tell you all of this is covered under their free service!  See the Free vs. Premium services breakdown below.

Let me weigh in my thought on the Yahoo!/Microsoft talks. Although it sounds like for the time being that the talks are over and Yahoo! is not interested, this did raise a lot of eyebrows. You can read other articles on the clash or benefit of the potential Microsoft and Yahoo! merger but I would like to think about an alternative: Google buys Yahoo!.

This partnership seems to be more in-line with both companies cultures. At least more in-line than a Microsoft/Yahoo! merger. A couple of creative powerhouses (Google -> Yahoo!) more concerned with innovative and pleasing customers and letting the money follow rather than forcing customer into things and thus sucking the bucks right out them (Microsoft). Don’t get me wrong I think Microsoft has done some great things as of late with their web initiatives, but they are just not quite on the same page as a Yahoo! or a Google.

 This open source operating system is a ground up build of Windows XP.  If you are building a new computer and wanting to do it on the “cheap”, there are many alternatives for buying software is this is a great one. 

You get the benefit of a familiar user interface and the cost effectiveness of free.  Many major software packages you are currently using are available for use with ReactOS and many more are untested and could work.  Games, Microsoft Office, and more all work.

Of course before diving into ReactOS you should be aware of what you are doing and read up on compatibility of apps and hardware that you use.

Happy computing.

I am, in fact, writing this post in Windows Live Writer.  This is a new blogging tool that allows you to use a powerful editor, that is beautiful to the touch, to create and maintain your blog. 

Although this tool is from Microsoft and the wonderful Live initiative, it can be used with many different blogs other than Spaces (obviously since you are reading this on wordpress).

After a short install and a no-brainer setup, I am happily blogging on a WYSIWYG editor that appears just like my web site’s theme.  You can throw in images and easily manipulate them on the fly.

Simple, Simple, Simple.  I love it.  This is a must try for Windows users.  This tool will make you want to blog again.

Photosynth looks like photo stitch on steroids! Wow, freaking cool.

It will take a bunch of your photos and stitch them together into a…get this…3-d world! That is sweet. You can then fly through gigapixels of images in your 3-d world.

After watching the tour video I feel like I have just seen the future of the computing. Could this be the way we navigate everything and everywhere? I am simply awestruck.

Microsoft Live Labs: Photosynth

The Windows Live initiative is growing with leaps and bounds. Each time I check the site they have quietly rolled out a new beta of their web based app conglomeration 'Windows Live'. They now have competing apps for Yahoo! Answers, Google.com/ig, Craigslist, Norton antivirus….etc.

Also if you haven't had a chance to check out their new search I would go out of your way to try it out. While I do not use it myself (I try to use all things Yahoo! whenever possible just because I like to keep all my tools in one place) it is definitely a great search user interface, dare I say 'search experience'. They also have an academic search that is cool as well.

All and all, Microsoft is coming up with some cool apps and they are all seemlingly very well designed. Bravo.

Windows Live Ideas – Homepage

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For those too lazy to goto the above site here is a list of the offerings on this page:

• Windows Live
  • Search
  • Messenger
  • Toolbar
  • QnA
  • Mail Desktop
  • Shopping
  • Product Search
  • Expo
  • Mail
  • OneCare
  • Local
  • Safety Center
  • Academic
  • Favorites
  • Search - Mobile
  • Custom Domains
• Live.com
• Microsoft Office Live

After a format I decided to install OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office 2003. After quite of bit of time and struggle and have just come to the realization…I don't have to fight OO anymore I have a license for M$ Office. Duh. OpenOffice is bulky, the features don't work as you would expect sometimes, and often things don't translate even with the support of saving in Word doc format.

Well the experiment has taught me this. While open software is great for the technology community and the cash strapped but when you have a polished piece of software at your disposal…USE IT.

Bottom line, I am sorry Microsoft I hope you still like me. Can I come home now?

Whatever I am supposed to call it. I was granted access to try out the beta version of Live Mail. Here is the low-down:

1. It works like Microsoft Oulook in your browser
2. Its sweet
3. But only if you use Internet Explorer (Firefox, so they say is coming soon)

Well…what does mdblogger think of this? Great job! But I always find myself going back to Yahoo in the end. Yahoo is buying up great companies such as del.icio.us, flickr, syncing software - itellisync, and konfabulator. Yahoo is going to be coming out with its new mail version soon too.

Bottom line I think I am going to finally choose a side and put all of my eggs in the Yahoo basket! This of course does not mean I will not be trying out other apps but I am going to try and become a full fledged yahoo man.

Firefox is kind of a benchmark I use. If you can’t write a webapp that will work in this browser then I will not be using your site. I am placing bets that new Yahoo mail, (acquired oddpost for the basis of the system) will be Firefox compliant. If not. I am sure they will beat M$ to the punch.

Any thoughts on all this?

Microsoft bought FolderShare, probably so that they could use it in the up and coming live.com, so it is now free. I use it to sync my computers together. It automatically syncs in the background when the two computers have an internet connection. It is now my most favorite synchronization software. You can also use it to share/sync files between friends.

With any software you should use creativity in order to use it to its full potential.

P.S. Live.com now supports firefox and replaced google.com/ig as my homepage. It has "gadgets" that allow you to customize your page. My favorite gadget is Microsoft Favorites Live. So you can keep you favorites list online (Although I am also tinkering with http://del.icio.us).