Channel 10

Preview IE9 Now

Sarah Perez — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:04:00 GMT

At the MIX10 conference, Microsoft released the developer preview of Internet Explorer 9. This isn’t a full web browser like IE8 is - just a taste of what’s to come in IE9. Developers who have the preview browser installed, though, will receive updates bringing new code every 2 months until the beta release of IE9.

As previously announced, the new browser will support HTML5, CSS3, and hardware acceleration. It also sports a new JavaScript engine called “Chakra.” You can read more about its improvements and how to send feedback over on the IE blog here.

When you first launch the IE9 preview browser, you’re taken to the IE9 Test Drive website where you’ll find a series of tests ready to be run. There are speed demos for testing browser performance, graphics demos, and HTML5 demos for testing border radius, CSS2, DOM Style, and DOM events. There’s also an “HTML 5 T-Shirt Designer” app that uses HTML5 and XHTML to let you create your own shirt.

Watch Your Media Center From Anywhere

Larry Larsen — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 11:46:00 GMT

Now that there are some great options for Cablecard tuners in PC’s, the only obstacle keeping me from enjoying my recorded content is that whole distance-from-my-computer thing. Lifehacker has a great tip about a Windows application called Remote Potato that will let you watch and schedule recordings on your Windows Media Center PC. The interface for the software is Silverlight-based and while I haven’t gotten a chance to install it yet (I’m still at Mix10), apparently it allows you the same functionality remotely as you have locally.

Silverlight News from MIX10

Sarah Perez — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:55:00 GMT

With the kickoff of the designer and developer conference MIX10 yesterday, the Silverlight team made several announcements, including the release of a Silverlight Pivot control and the announcement of the Silverlight 4 RC, which is now available for download.

So what’s new with the latest version of Silverlight? Quite a few things, actually – the full list is here if you’re interested (scroll down on that page). However, these are the top items that stood out for me:

Webcam and microphone support
Multicast streaming
Multi-touch support
Copy & Paste and Drag & Drop
Offline DRM powered by PlayReady technology
Control over aspects of the UI
Read and write files to your My Documents, My Music, My Pictures, and My Videos folders
Ability to run other desktop programs (e.g. Office)
Full Visual Studio integration
Performance optimizations – starts faster and runs 200% faster than Silverlight 3
Silverlight for Windows Phones

As that last item shows, Silverlight will be available on Windows Phones, which will bring the following:

High quality video and audio using a wide range of codecs, DRM and IIS Smooth Streaming
Deep Zoom for enhanced reading and photo browsing experiences
Vector and Bitmap Graphics and animation
Hardware acceleration for video and graphics
Accelerometer for motion sensing
Multi-touch
Camera and microphone
Location awareness
Push notifications
Native phone functionality
Silverlight can also utilize the XNA Framework to support games using 3D and 2D sprite graphics.

Also new is the Silverlight Pivot control. Pivot, a data visualization technology demonstrated first at PDC, will be available as a Silverlight control by this summer. Silverlight developers interested in using this technology can begin the prototyping process using the Live Labs Pivot app which is available now.

Via MIX10: Windows Phone 7 Series Details

Sarah Perez — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:54:00 GMT

At yesterday’s MIX10 conference, we got a lot of new information about the upcoming Windows Phone 7 Series devices, including features, options for developers, how applications will be handled and marketed and more. If you weren’t able to attend the conference yourself or tune into the live stream, here’s what you missed:

Windows 7 Phone Series Features

According to the official press release, we learned that the phones would offer accelerometer support, a Microsoft Location Service, a Microsoft Notification Service (aka push notifications), hardware-accelerated video playback with DRM, IIS Smooth Streaming for live video, multitouch, camera and mic support.

For Developers:

Then later, from the conference itself, we learned that the phones will support .NET, XNA, and Silverlight. Also, it was announced that developers can use the following tools to build their WP7S apps: Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone, XNA Game Studio 4.0 for Windows Phone, a Window Phone 7 add-in for Visual Studio 2010 RC, Expression Blend 4 for Windows Phone (tech preview), and a Windows Phone 7 Series emulator for testing.

Mary-Jo Foley from ZDNet scoured for answers to some of your “burning questions” regarding these new devices. You can learn more about things like multitask support and the App Marketplace from her post here.

Apps Announced

Microsoft also announced a huge list of initial partners for the new phones, including:

Associated Press, Citrix, EA Mobile, Foursquare, Namco, Pageonce, Pandora, Seesmic, Shazam, Sling, Archetype International, AWS Convergence Technologies (WeatherBug), Clarity Consulting, Cypress Consulting, Fandango, frog design, Glu Mobile, Graphic.ly, Hudson Entertainment, IdentityMine, IMDb.com, Larva Labs, Match.com, Matchbox Mobile, Microsoft Game Studios, Oberon Media, Photobucket, PopCap Games, SPB Software, stimulant, TeleCommunications Systems, Touchality LLC and Vertigo Software.

The App Marketplace

Microsoft unveiled details about how the new Windows Phone 7 Series applications will be sold via the Windows Phone Marketplace. The full post is here, but here are a few highlights:

The Marketplace will organize apps from Mobile Operators and OEMs, all in one integrated experience.
It will offer Xbox LIVE games, applications based on latest Silverlight runtime, and millions of songs and podcasts from Zune
The Marketplace will be its own “hub” featuring content-specific marketplaces, the available application updates, and view a selection of editorially placed application, game and music content.
Marketplace now adds a new Trial API that gives every application or game developer the option, but not the requirement, to enable a single instance of their code to include trial usage limitations (like time or level) so that users can test drive the app/game they are considering.

Seesmic Shows Off New Silverlight Apps at MIX

Sarah Perez — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:52:00 GMT

At this week’s MIX10 conference, Seesmic showed off their new Silverlight-powered Twitter applications, one a desktop app and the other a mobile app designed for Windows Phone 7 Series devices.

A prototype of the cross-platform desktop client, which is similar to the current "Seesmic for Windows" app was demoed at the conference on Monday. Unlike the native Windows app, the Silverlight version works on both Windows and Mac platforms, allowing you to access multiple Twitter accounts, your Facebook account and LinkedIn.

The company also announced the launch of their Seesmic Desktop Platform (SDP), which will allow developers to build features or integrate their services into Seesmic’s suite of clients. For example, a new Bing mapping control plugin allows you to track geo-location and integrates trackable links at bing.com, notes Seesmic on their company blog.

Seesmic for Windows Phone was announced at the conference, too. Like the desktop client, the mobile app will use Silverlight technology and will fully integrate Bing maps and its geo-location features for plotting tweets on a map.

Add Spaces to your Taskbar

Sarah Perez — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:38:00 GMT

Over on the (unofficial) SevenForums site, one user has come up with a way to insert spaces into your Windows 7 taskbar so you can create separated icon groups. The trick involves creating some blank shortcuts that lead to a fake program and pinning those shortcuts to the taskbar.

To facilitate the process, he provided a zip file containing multiple “blank shortcuts” and blank.exe files. (Don’t worry – we scanned them with Microsoft Security Essentials – they’re safe. Other forum users tested them too).

After extracting the files, you’ll have a folder called “Blank” and a ReadMe.txt. Before pinning the Shortcuts to the taskbar, you have to move the entire “Blank” folder to C:\Windows. Then grab a shortcut and drag it to the taskbar. Now, instead of seeing a blank (white) icon, you’ll just see a space! The zip file contains four different “blank” shortcuts and you can only use one of each.

What a great trick!

How to Embed Twitter Maps on Your Site

Sarah Perez — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:37:00 GMT

According to a recent post from the Bing Search Team, the Twitter Maps application in the Bing Maps Application Gallery has been updated to allow for map embeds. The Twitter Maps app, if you’re unfamiliar, is a “mapplication” (map + app) that lets you see nearby tweets overlaid on top of a Bing Map. After loading the Twitter map on the screen, you can used Search Filters that let you narrow down tweets by location (address, location, or landmark), keywords or phrases, and Twitter usernames. You can also check a box to see tweets with an attached photo only.

Once you have the Twitter map displaying the way you want it, just follow these steps to get the embed code for your website or blog:

Select the map location either fixed (centered on a specific point) or anywhere (moves the map as the Tweets come in).
Specify the dimensions of your map (height and width).
Add search filters. These will be carried into the embed form if you’ve specified them to filter only tweets that meet your search criteria.
Copy/paste HTML into your web page.

Surface + Dungeons and Dragons = Surfacescapes

Larry Larsen — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 18:27:00 GMT

I met with the folks from Carnegie Mellon who created the Dungeons and Dragons game on Microsoft Surface called Surfacescapes, which is a double helping of geek. I asked them about some of the challenges they faced, some of the decisions they made (like virtual dice), and where they hope to go with it in the future. If you're a D&D or Surface fan, don't miss it at Penny Arcade on March 26th.

In this game, the DM sits off to the side with a laptop or touch slate while the application tracks combat states and statistics. Best of all you can still use your favorite miniatures on the table!

Push Notifications on Windows Phone 7 Series

Sarah Perez — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:52:00 GMT

At the Game Developers Conference, Microsoft has been giving attendees a deeper look at the Windows Phone 7 Series platform, specifically as it relates to gaming. Already we’ve seen how games can be developed using Visual Studio to run on Windows PCs, the Xbox 360, and Windows Phones.

Now, thanks to this video upload from the conference itself, we can learn more about push notifications on Windows Phone 7 Series devices. There are three kinds of push notifications available: raw, tile, and toast.

Raw notifications are when a cloud service notifies an application. If the app isn’t running the notification is discarded. The second type, tile notifications, are used when a user pins a tile to the Quick Launch menu (tiles are the new squares on the main screen). In this case, the cloud service will update that tile with an image URI. Finally, there are toast notifications which is when the cloud service send a title and a subtitle. You see toast notifications on the Xbox 360 today – it’s when a little pop-up appears to let you know one of your friends is online.

After giving an overview, the rest of the talk is devoted to explaining the technical aspects in more detail and providing examples of how developers can use these notifications with their games. The entire video is only a little over 6 minutes long, so it’s definitely worth a look if you’re thinking about developing for the new Windows Phone.

Kodu Updated!

Sarah Perez — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 16:52:00 GMT

According to recent news posted on the Microsoft Research site, there’s a new build of the Kodu game creator now available and with the release there comes a lot of new features. Some of the more notable changes include improved mouse controls, a new hint system and an automatic update mechanism. There are also a number of bug fixes and minor improvements which will make the overall Kodu experience even better than before.

The full list of changes includes the following:

Automatic updates: When installing the new version you have the option to opt-in to have Kodu check for updates each time it starts up.
Usage information: When installing the new version you have the option to opt-in to having Kodu send anonymous usage information to help us make Kodu better.
New privacy statement.
Add support for Cyrillic characters.
Added mouse control buttons to help screens.
Allow the ‘Home’ key to take you directly from the MainMenu to the HomeMenu. Note that this only works if you already have a level loaded, ie you’ve either loaded a level or resumed since starting.
Allow going from paused mode straight to the HomeMenu. This is great for creating nice thumbnails since you can pause the game, move the camera to where it looks best and then go straight into the HomeMenu to save the game.
New Hint system. When toast pops up you can either press <Y> on the gamepad, or F1 on the keyboard or left click with the mouse to bring up the modal version of the dialog. Created a handful of hints that work with the new system.
Fixed bugs with ToolTips being rendered underneath AddItem menu and over text editor.
Fixed bug where dragging a character with the mouse across the bottom of the screen would drop the character and activate the ToolBar.
Added HelpOverlay information for tag editing on LoadLevel and SaveLevel menus.
Fixed help overlay information for paused mode. BTW To get into paused mode, on the keyboard just hit the ‘pause’ key. With the GamePad you have to press both triggers AND boh stick-buttons at the same time.
Fixed end of game display so you can just click on the buttons on the screen as well as pressing them on the keyboard.
Fixed bug caused by transitioning between gamepad and keyboard/mouse modes while the AddItem menu is active.
Fixed a bug in the radio button UI element which was causing its value to be ignored.
Fixed a bug in the text editor’s handling of key caps.
Tuned the physics behavior of the apple, rock and soccer ball to be less infinitely bouncy. This should not affect already created levels.
Fixed a bug with how the SaveLevelMenu handles mouse input.
Modified more built-in levels to be keyboard/mouse friendly.

You can grab the latest release of Kodu for PC here.

Gist's New Outlook Plugin Delivers More Insights

Sarah Perez — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:46:00 GMT

Gist, the company behind the email mashup service of the same name, just updated their Outlook plugin. The new plugin now lets you see a contact’s profile information prior to sending them an email. To use this feature, you simply start creating a new message, and the profile info will display next to the email itself, in a sidebar pane. Specifically, the profile info shows things like name, title, company, and links to your contacts’ social network profiles on sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Other plugin features include the ability to get updates on your contacts and their companies within Outlook, a search feature for easily locating email, links, and attachments, and a drag-and-drop method for sharing news from your contacts via email or Twitter.

Click here to in you’re interested in trying the new Outlook plugin. Note that you’ll need to have signed up with Gist first before you can use it.

Wow, Where Did All These Themes Come From?

Sarah Perez — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:46:00 GMT

Rob Margel recently discovered a great March theme for Windows 7 users at download.live.com which features shamrocks and other spring-related imagery. I thought I’d go check out the Windows 7 Personalization gallery to grab it and whatever else was new, too. However, for some reason, the Shamrock theme isn’t there. No matter, since Rob posted the direct link for the download. However, I was surprised to see the gallery had a ton of new themes since my last visit only a couple of months ago. There are now several regional themes like Canada, Australia, Czech Spring, China, Baltic Beaches, France, India, Hungary, Germany, Italy, and a dozen or so others. Plus, there are new animal themes like “dogs in summer,” “cats everywhere,” and “Year of the Tiger.”

But lately, I have to admit that I’ve found myself addicted to Smashing Magazine’s Windows 7 theme collections which they release monthly. They offer themes made up of artistic backgrounds that come packaged as two different options – those with an embedded calendar and those without. I like to grab those without the calendar myself so I can reuse them later on when I’m ready for a change. You can grab the last collection here.

Techfest 2010: Mobile Surface

Larry Larsen — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:17:00 GMT

Every year at TechFest, Microsoft employees (and a few invited guests) get to take a look at some of the projects out of Microsoft Research. These aren't finished products--you'll see a lot of exposed wires and tape--and in fact, they may never become completed products at all, but each project shows what we're thinking--and maybe where we're going.

This year I met with a team from MSR Asia who have constructed what they hope will eventually be a pico-projector portable computer, and in this project you can see inspiration from Microsoft Surface and Second Light. The possibility I like best about this is the ability to touch your games while still seeing what is there. Additionally, if you use physical controls on apps, such as knobs, you can actually paint labels on the controls themselves.

HP MediaSmart Home Servers Link up with Tivo

Sarah Perez — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:33:00 GMT

HP just announced a partnership with home DVR system maker Tivo which allows MediaSmart Home Servers to connect with Tivo devices. The connection will be made by way of a free WHS add-in that lets you manage your recordings via the WHS console. The benefit for Tivo users is obvious: you can now record all the shows and movies you want without worrying about running out of space. Well, I suppose that you could, in theory, run out of room, but since the servers come with either 1 TB or 1.5 TB hard drives plus 3 available expansion bays, it would certainly take some time before you’re maxed out.

In addition to the extra storage, MediaSmart owners can watch the recorded shows on either a PC, Mac or TV by way of the Home Server’s remote streaming option.

XNA Game Studio 4.0 to Support New Windows Phone

Sarah Perez — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:33:00 GMT

Game developers attending GDC this week will get a first look at the latest version of the XNA toolkit – XNA Game Studio 4.0 – which provides the technology to create games for Xbox 360, Windows, and now, the Windows Phone 7 Series. Shawn Hargreaves posted on his blog about what’s new with this latest release:

New platform
- Windows Phone 7 Series
New features
- Integrates with Visual Studio 2010
- Dynamic audio output
- Microphone input
- BasicEffect has four new siblings
  - SkinnedEffect
  - EnvironmentMapEffect
  - DualTextureEffect
  - AlphaTestEffect
Improved portability and usability
- Collapsed graphics caps into just two profile levels: Reach and HiDef
- Many graphics API improvements
- This involves some breaking API changes
- Split Microsoft.Xna.Framework.dll into several assemblies, to make it more obvious which pieces are available on each platform

Michael Klucher also added a few answers to some people’s “burning questions,” noting “yes, we have hardware accelerated 3D API’s on Windows Phone 7 Series. Yes, we have Visual Studio 2010 integration with our toolset. We’ve even added buffered audio support to the Audio API’s that many of you have asked for.”

You can find out more about XNA news on the XNA Creators Club Online.

Sobees' Windows App Gets a Makeover

Sarah Perez — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:32:00 GMT

Sobees’ desktop Twitter client, a native app built using .NET technology, has just been updated with a fresh design and built-in real-time search, reports TechCrunch. The updated application looks a lot like competitor TweetDeck with its columnar interface, but it offers a few differences.

Llike TweetDeck, Sobees supports Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn in addition to Twitter. However, unlike TweetDeck, Sobees lets you drag and drop columns in order to reorganize them in the client’s layout. You can also preview tweets, translate them, view threaded conversations, and preview Twitpics within the app.

Also new in this version is the addition of real-time search which lets you search OneRiot, Twitter, FriendFeed, and FacteryLabs all at once.

You can get the new client app from the Sobees website here: http://www.sobees.com.

Use Windows Live Writer with Posterous

Sarah Perez — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:32:00 GMT

I just came across a great tip for Posterous bloggers on the LifeRocks blog. If you’re among those who prefer Posterous’s simplified blogging platform over the more complex options from Moveable Type, Wordpress and the like, you’ll be happy to know that you can use Windows Live Writer to post to Posterous.

Now why would you want to do that considering that Posterous is already one of the easiest platforms to publish to? Well, maybe you want to send the same post to both your traditional blog or website and your Posterous blog at the same time. If you create the post in WLW, that’s possible. You would just write the post once, publish it to one site, then switch blogs to publish it a second time to the other site. Or maybe you just prefer WLW’s interface over anything else (I know I do!).

In order to support Posertous publishing, you’ll need to grab the Writerous plugin from Codeplex. Once installed, you access the new settings via Tools –> Options –> Writerous from WLW’s main menu. Here, you’ll have to provide your Posterous login info and site name (the latter if you maintain more than one Posterous blog). You can also configure your Posterous posts to autopost to Twitter and Facebook, too, by checking the box next to that option.

For more details on how to configure and use the plugin, check out the project’s page here.

Bing Announces Earth Day Contest

Sarah Perez — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:32:00 GMT

Bing is kicking off another photo contest where the winner gets to decorate the Bing.com homepage with their winning image. This time around, though, the contest is limited to students only. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, the winning photo will grace the homepage on April 22nd (Earth Day). To qualify, the students must be in the United States as this is a regional contest.

Besides the grand prize, the top winners from four age groups (ages 5-10, 11-13, 14-17 and 18+) will also win a trip to Microsoft where they get to participate in a Bing editorial meeting where they pick future homepage images. All winners will also receive equipment from HP and Canon. Specifically, HP will be providing the winners with HP Pavilion desktops and a monitor.

In addition to the contest participants, those voting on the images can win, too. From April 13th to the 19th, Bing will give a $5.00 GivingCard for DonorsChoose.org to the first 20,000 people who vote each day. This money can be spent on classroom projects (like math, science, art, reading) at local schools. In total, Bing will donate up to $100,000 a day to help schools across the U.S.

You can find out more about the contest, its requirements, and the submission information here: http://earthdayphotocontest.com.

Pivot Demoed at TED

Sarah Perez — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:00:00 GMT

At the recent TED Conference, Gary Flake, a Technical Fellow and founder of Live Lab, demonstrated Pivot as can be seen in the video available here. This new technology, launched at last year’s PDC, lets you browse and manipulate images and data using Seadragon technology. It’s primarily meant to be a visualization tool for discovering patterns and insights by viewing datasets as thumbnail images. The visualization is done via the web using Silverlight, as opposed to using a software program installed on your computer’s hard drive.

In the demo, Flake showed how Pivot could be used to browse a magazine’s archives, Wikipedia, and even your own web browser’s search history. If you have five minutes to spare, the TED video is definitely worth a look.

Microsoft Demos Game Playing on Windows Phone 7 Series, Xbox, and PC

Sarah Perez — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:00:00 GMT

At TechEd Middle East, Microsoft's Eric Rudder showed the potential of Windows Phone 7 Series when he demoed a game that could run on the mobile phone, Windows PCs, and the Xbox 360. The game, in this case Indiana Jones, was created using Visual Studio which allows developers to share 90% of the game’s code across the three platforms: Xbox, Windows, and Windows Phone 7. The additional 10% of the code changes required are to implement features unique to each platform – like touch sensitivity and accelerometer support for phones or mouse support on PCs, for example.

What’s even more amazing, perhaps, than the cross-platform support was that Rudder was able to continue playing his game on the Xbox from where he left off on the mobile device. Amazing!

You can see a video of Rudder’s demo here.

Zune HD Facebook App Lets You Share Songs for Live Streaming

Sarah Perez — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:00:00 GMT

After a bit of a false start on Monday, the Zune HD Facebook application was relaunched on Wednesday and is now available for installation via the Zune desktop software. As you may expect, the app offers the typical Facebook features: a News Feed, the ability to post status updates, view photos, check out your friends’ profiles, and more. Plus, as PocketNow discovered, the phone offers a cool Zune-specific feature: it lets you post an update about the music you’re currently listening to. The app creates a link to the album and song and automatically posts a picture of the album art along with whatever text you input in your status update. When your friends click the link you shared on Facebook, they can stream the song right in their web browser via Zune.net.

You can see a video of the app in action here.

Microsoft and the Cloud: The Highlights from Ballmer's Speech

Sarah Perez — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:31:00 GMT

In case you missed it, Steve Ballmer spoke on Thursday about Microsoft and the company’s vision for its cloud services to a group of students from the University of Washington’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering. If you missed the speech, you can go watch it here on the Windows Team Blog.

However, if you just want the highlights, we’ve got you covered:

The New Website

A site dedicated to Microsoft’s Cloud Services launched at http://www.microsoft.com/cloud/

The Stats

70% of Microsoft’s workforce is working on cloud computing or cloud-related activities
Next year, that will be 90%
Windows Live ID’s identity and authentication system has 460 million users

The 5 Bullet Points

The Cloud creates opportunities and responsibilities: This made me think of the Spider-Man quote, “with great power comes great responsibility.” But that’s kind of what he meant. As SeattlePi summarized, “The industry must strike a balance between the immense power of cloud computing and the privacy concerns that go along with it…As a result of this interconnectedness and the cloud's relative ease of use, the ‘creators,’ as he called them, have all the power. ‘For the creator to have the opportunity to build a strong business,’ Ballmer said.
The cloud learns and helps you learn, decide and take action. Here he talked about how the cloud needs to learn in order to improve. The idea of machine learning was touched on.
The Cloud enhances social and professional interactions. No surprise here: social networks like Facebook, Xbox Live, and Twitter are big cloud businesses. Ballmer also mentioned how Office was moving to the cloud with Office 2010 and the Office Web Apps that arrive with it.
The cloud wants smarter devices. Here Ballmer talked about the 3 screens: TV, PC, mobile. The PC is represented by Windows, the TV is connected to Xbox and the mobile is now Windows Phone 7 Series – a device “really designed for the cloud.”
The cloud drives server advances that drive the cloud. As cloud technology advances, so will the server technology that supports the cloud. Things like scaling, rapid deployment, peak load, virtualization, and next gen servers were discussed. A containerized data center was shown – it actually sat outside the Allen Center where the talk was held. Inside the shipping container were servers, cooling systems and cabling.

A Round-Up of the Latest Outlook Add-ons

Sarah Perez — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:31:00 GMT

Microsoft Outlook is one of the top email software programs in the world, but there’s no email program out there that can protect you from the information overload of a busy inbox. Although Outlook has several great built-in features for managing your messages, appointments, contacts and tasks, it’s still easy to get overwhelmed. Luckily for us, there are a ton of Outlook add-ons that can help.

Some of the more recent add-ons integrate social networks into your inbox for a bit of social CRM while others focus on more advanced search and organizational tools.

Below are some of the more recent ones I’ve come across.

(One caveat: I haven’t used all of these in the list below myself. However, the ones I have used in the past – Lookeen, Xobni, and ClearContext – all worked well.)

NEO Pro 4.1 (www.emailorganizer.com) - Automatically manages your inbox and catalogs all email messages using virtual folder structure to significantly reduce email overload and boost overall productivity – with no manual upkeep, clicking, or dragging to folders.

Lookeen (www.lookeen.net) - Provides a fast search for all things in Outlook.

Xobni (www.xobni.com) - Helps find emails, conversations, contact info & attachments faster while integrating social networks and email analytics features.

ClearContext Professional (www.clearcontext.com) - Keeps messages organized by suggesting the right folders to instantly file messages and conversations with one-click.

Chilibase for Outlook (www.chilibase.net) - Easily search and track all contacts and conversation threads.

RedCritter (www.redcritter.com) - Plugs documents, tweets, messages, maps and more — all related to the message you are currently viewing — into Outlook.

SimpyFile (www.techhit.com) - Turns filing Outlook messages into a one-click action and suggesting the correct target folder.

Auto-Mate (www.pergenex.com) - Applies flexible rules to your Outlook folders periodically, automatically organizing your mail in the manner of a personal assistant.

Advanced Folders Watch (http://www.mapilab.com/outlook/folders_watch/) - Monitors new mail messages and posts appearing in Microsoft Outook folders and public folders on Microsoft Exchange Server.

E-mail Follow-Up (www.mapilab.com/outlook/email_followup/) - Reminds you if an email you sent did not receive a reply after a certain time, thus requiring a follow-up email.

Olympic Photosynths

Sarah Perez — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:31:00 GMT

Over on the Photosynth blog, they’ve rounded up the top contributions from users who submitted Photosynth’d collections from the recent Winter Olympics. Over the past several weeks, there have been over 40 different synths from the games added to the online gallery, including contributions from the following synthers:

Rick, beatnavy, fjcwhistler, siblog, cgsguy2, Mooseboys, MidnightFrog, rieskame, erickoo, BDsynth,Onyxmoon63, singalittlesong, kriskrug, GaryGlanz, brad_dennis, bal, jessica.glago, neilbl, msnbc.com,jimcseke, Lit, aeolien

(Click through on any of their names to see their Photosynth submissions.)

The top synths – aka the “most viewed” – included those featuring the sports themselves like luge, skating, curling, and skiing in addition to synths from Vancouver and those from other major events like the torch lighting, for example.

You can see some of these favorite synths in the image below:

For more Olympic action, head to the Photosynth site and search for Olympics.

Windows Phone 7 Series Themes for 6.5 Devices

Sarah Perez — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 19:31:00 GMT

The announcement about the next version of Windows Mobile Phones – Windows Phone 7 Series – has inspired some developers to create (unofficial) themes for their Windows Mobile 6.5 phones. Right now, Jaxbot on the XDA-Developers forum is working on a theme that resembles Windows Phone 7 Series’ new UI. So far, he’s been able to make a homescreen and lock screen with live tiles for SMS, mail, and weather. You can also set phone, text, Outlook, and People to a certain app, see upcoming appointments on the lock screen, and launch programs.

However, this theme is in alpha and has some issues that are still being addressed. The known issues include occasionally sluggish animations, problems with kinetic scrolling, and unlock problems.

Another developer, LeSScro, also from XDA-developers, has been working on a WP7S-inspired theme for WisBar Advance Desktop 2.x, the software program that lets you replace your existing Today screen and more. This theme offers time, data, and notifications on the lock screen, profile settings, transitional animation, hubs for games, media, and Office, and an apps launcher.

You can see a video of the first theme here and the second one here.

(via Engadget)