Ultramon (beta) for Windows 7 Available

Posted By: Larry Larsen | Feb 5th @ 1:47 PM | 5,199 Views | 0 Comments

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There have been some problems in the past getting the incredibly useful utility Ultramon to run correctly on Windows 7, looks like that's now a thing of the past with a new beta version of Ultramon (3.0.9) available.

If you've never used it, Ultramon is a great way to extend the benefits of using multiple monitors in Windows 7 including adding a taskbar to the secondary displays and some extra controls to the top right corner of applications for things like moving an app to another display. Granted some of these functions are now built in to Windows 7 (you can flip applications to another monitor with Windows Key + Left/Right arrow). Download Ultramon here.

Tag: Multi-Monitor

Kodu Tips Available

Posted By: Larry Larsen | Feb 4th @ 10:53 AM | 5,574 Views | 0 Comments

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A couple weeks ago I wrote about Kodu being available on the PC. If you'd like to find out more about using Kodu, or you know a young potential dev who needs help getting ramped up, the Microsoft Research Blog has posted some tutorials on using Kodu. Tutorial #1 covers Basic Navigation, tutorial #2 covers the Edit Mode Tools, #3 goes over the features on the Load Level menu, and tutorial #4 goes over the Main Menu Options.

Tags: Kodu, microsoft research

Have You Seen Bing Map Apps?

Posted By: Larry Larsen | Jan 29th @ 11:37 AM | 7,529 Views | 0 Comments

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Here's a tip you might not have seen yet. If you go to http://www.bing.com/maps/explore, you'll see a panel on the left. At the bottom of that panel on the right edge you'll see a button called "Map Apps". If you click that you'll find 19 applications that run on top of Bing. Some of the apps include:

Twitter Maps updates from Twitter are applied to Bing maps around the world.
Photosynth 3D photo browsing through synths inside Bing...

[Click to read the full post

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Tags: bing, Bing Maps, photosynth

A Look at Seesmic Look

Posted By: Larry Larsen | Jan 29th @ 8:26 AM | 7,448 Views | 0 Comments

14 minutes, 54 seconds

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Seesmic recently launched Look, a Twitter client aimed toward tech novices and people who want a very clean, simple Twitter experience. TechCrunch called it A Tablet-Friendly Twitter Client For The Oprah Crowd, that's a good description. The UI of Look allows for a comfortable touch experience and WPF gives Look a polish that really makes it worth having even if only as a second Twitter client.

Seesmic Look organizes groups of Twitter feeds into a "Channel". For a company like TIME, they can have a single landing page with bigger graphics where you can see all of their Twitter accounts like CBS News and GMA. Look also allows you to follow Tweeters without having a Twitter account, which means you can follow without anyone knowing you're following them. Microsoft Sr. Platform Strategy Advisor Daryll McDade stopped by to give us a peek at Look and tell us more about it. You can download Seesmic Look here.

Tags: Seesmic, Twitter

All About Windows XP Mode in Windows 7

Posted By: Larry Larsen | Jan 27th @ 1:26 PM | 8,095 Views | 0 Comments

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One of the things I really like about Windows 7 is the inclusion of a virtualized Windows XP. I use this at home quite a bit for playing very old games and as a quarantine sandbox for suspect files.

Well if you ever wanted to know much more about Windows XP Mode, Ars Technica has a great in-depth look at XP Mode and covers what it is, how it works, and who it's for.

Tags: virtualization, Windows 7, Windows XP

Nitin Bhandari on Skyfire's 1.5 Update

Posted By: Larry Larsen | Jan 27th @ 12:29 PM | 4,518 Views | 0 Comments

3 minutes, 16 seconds

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Nitin Bhandari from Skyfire was in town and stopped by the Channel 9 studio to talk to us about their latest release, version 1.5. As Gizmodo so boldly put it, version 1.5 has "more speed, less ugly", so it has that going for it. Along with that, Skyfire includes full VGA support for VGA and wVGA resolutions, fat finger UI changes, smooth (kenetic) scrolling, a full screen mode sans chrome, as well as some perf improvements on both client and server (pages are first rendered on Skyfire servers).

Skyfire is still the only mobile desktop browser, and by that I mean you can enjoy almost any file type you would on a desktop machine on your Windows Mobile phone, including Flash (v.10) video, Silverlight (1.5) video, QuickTime and full AJAX support.

Get it at http://get.Skyfire.com.

Tags: mobile, Skyfire, Windows Phone

Get Tech Help on Channel 9 Live Wednesday 1/27

Posted By: Larry Larsen | Jan 26th @ 11:58 AM | 5,945 Views | 0 Comments

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Tomorrow, Wednesday January 27, we will be doing a live show on Channel 9 where you can "call in" (technically Twitter or email) to a panel of Windows problem experts and we will troubleshoot these problems live on air. The host of the first show will be Chris Pirillo, and you can send your questions via Twitter to @ch9live, or email ch9live [at] microsoft [dot] com. Watch us live at 2PM Pacific Standard Time (5PM on the East Coast US) on Wednesday. Go to http://live.ch9.ms to watch.

Tags: Channel 9, Channel 9 Live, Help Desk

Show Us Your Tech: Juan Goni Edition

Posted By: Larry Larsen | Jan 26th @ 10:48 AM | 5,493 Views | 0 Comments

19 minutes, 20 seconds

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Juan Goni is a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft in the Exchange Online Deployment group and invited us over to take a look at his home setup. Juan has some of the same challenges many of us do, for starters he's got a bunch of machines and one set of speakers, here he uses a mixing board to control the audio from each. Juan also controls lighting through his PC and uses Media Center and extenders throughout his house to distribute video and music.

Tag: SUYT

A Look at Lenovo's 2010 Lineup

Posted By: Larry Larsen | Jan 21st @ 10:17 AM | 7,052 Views | 0 Comments

15 minutes, 7 seconds

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Closing our CES 2010 coverage, this is a look at some of the hardware that Lenovo currently has or will be offering this year. It includes everything from the typical business machines to contemporary all-in-one machines, even a laptop that lets you game in 3D (they tell me all DirectX games are 3D compatible.)

Tags: CES2010, hardware

Build a CableCard MCE PC with Ceton TV Tuner

Posted By: Larry Larsen | Jan 19th @ 11:33 AM | 6,770 Views | 0 Comments

3 minutes, 57 seconds

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Last year Microsoft announced that we would let people add their own digital TV Tuners to their computers to create their own Media Center PC's. (The big difference with CableCard and the TV Tuners you can get today is the ability to record pay channels like HBO in HD.) This was great news, except the number of CableCard based TV Tuners is.. well, almost non-existent.

That's going to change in Q1 with Ceton's TV Tuners. This PCIe card will let you install a CableCard in your PC and record up to four HD channels at once. At one booth at CES, they were running two of these cards in one PC, and who wouldn't want to record 8 HD channels at the same time? I met up with Gary Hammer, the President and CEO of Ceton Corporation at CES and asked him some questions about their new TV Tuner.

Tag: Media Center