Entries tagged with plugins - Channel 10

YouSendIt Now Integrates With Microsoft Office

sarahintampa — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:38:00 GMT

Although many of today’s email programs allow for large attachments, you never know if the person on the receiving end is using an email program that can receive them. This is especially true if you’re trying to send a file to a corporate email account, as most email admins put limits on attachment sizes that can be both sent and received. If you’re unsure, you’re better off simply using an online service to send the large file instead of trying to email it yourself…especially if the file is time-sensitive.

The online service YouSendIt is a favorite for sending large files over the internet. The service offers three versions: a free personal account that allows sending of files up to 2 GB, plus Business and Corporate accounts that offer additional file security, tracking, and deployment tools.

Today, YouSendIt offers a variety of plugins that integrate with the applications you use everyday, including Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Office. With these plugins installed, you can seamlessly send files from within the program itself, without having to go online and browse to the yousendit.com web site.

The Outlook plugin has been around for awhile now, having made its debut back in March 2008. Since then, the plugin has been downloaded 261,209 times. IT admins love the plugin because it deploys easily, reduces strain on email servers, and users tend to adopt it right away with little training required.

The Outlook plugin offers a resumable upload feature that handles network interruptions – so even if you’re on a flaky Wi-Fi connection, a timeout won’t mean you have to start all over – your upload will just continue where it left off.

The YouSendIt Microsoft Office plugin is new. This plugin also handles network interruptions while offering 25% faster uploads than the web application. It even lets you add additional files and folders to one upload batch to save you time when you need to send multiple files. The plugin includes all standard YouSendIt features like password protection, certified delivery, and file expiration control, too.

YouSendIt AddIn In Office 2007

Once installed, the plugin provides a new option from the “Send” menu of Microsoft Office - “Send by YouSendIt.”

Registered YouSendIt users can download this plugin for free from here.

Find And Replace For Windows Live Writer

sarahintampa — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:19:00 GMT

I sometimes wonder how I even managed to blog before the invention of Windows Live Writer. It is absolutely one of the best blogging software programs out there. No, scratch that. It is the best. One of the greatest things about this software, though, is its extendibility through the use of plugins. We’ve highlighted several of our favorites before, but we’ve neglected to mention one of the best: Search and Replace. This plugin is very much like what you see in Microsoft Word as it allows for advanced options like matching the case and supports regular expressions.

Another developer also recently created a similar, but much simpler, Autoreplace plugin which will replace any words you enter into the editor. To install this one, click here and save the file into your plugins folder. For the Search and Replace plugin, this is the download here (.msi file).

LiveUpload For Facebook

sarahintampa — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:30:00 GMT

LiveUpload for Facebook is a new plug-in for the Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta that lets you upload your photos from your PC directly into the social networking site, Facebook. Besides making it extremely easy to get photos off your PC and onto the net, the absolutely coolest thing about this plugin is that it also persists the tags you added in Photo Gallery when the pictures are added to Facebook. This includes any “people tags” that you’ve added using Windows Live Photo Gallery. What that means is that when you tag your friends in Windows Live Photo Gallery, those tags will also appear on Facebook if you’re Facebook friends with those people.

Photos uploaded with this plugin can be added to an existing album on Facebook or they can be added to a new one you create on the fly. You can even use the plugin with multiple Facebook accounts – which is perfect for those families who share one login on the home’s PC.

If you're interested in building your own plug-in, there’s a development resource page on the Windows Live Digital Memories Experience Team. Also, check out the Windows Live Photo Gallery Publishing Plug-in Platform Overview over on MSDN and the Sample Plug-in for Flickr.

The LiveUpload for Facebook plugin also works in the beta version of Windows Live Movie Maker, too. If you want to download the LiveUpload for Facebook plugin, just click here.

Taglocity Brings New Features To Outlook

sarahintampa — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:58:00 GMT

Do you live in Outlook but wish it had a few of the features that your webmail program has? Features like conversation threading and automatic tagging, for example? Well now the Outlook email plugin, Taglocity, delivers those features and more. With the latest version, Taglocity 2.0, Outlook users can take advantage of enhanced search functionality, conversation threading, tagging, and automation. Instead of moving messages to folders, email can be tagged with any number of labels and, based on those labels, certain tasks and actions can then be automated. For example, Taglocity can automatically turn email into calendar appointments or move messages into different folders.

Although some of the functions in Taglocity can already be done with crafty use of Outlook’s rules and views - not to mention Outlook 2007’s labels -the plugin aims to make that process easier. This is especially true for the conversation threading feature which displays emails in chronological order with all the related conversations grouped together. Some Outlook 2007 users won’t see the need for this addition, but for users of Outlook 2003, this plugin delivers some great additional features. You can check it out for yourself here.

Convert Anything With Zamzar’s IE Plugin

sarahintampa — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 23:18:00 GMT

Zamzar, the home of the popular online file conversion service, also offers a browser plugin that’s a must-have for any Internet Explorer user. The Zamzar web browser button is a bookmarklet you can add to your bookmarks toolbar folder in your web browser. With the bookmarklet installed, you’re then able to convert any files you find on the web and download them to your computer. To use the web browser button, just click on it when you’re on any website that contains files. Zamzar will auto-detect all the files on the page that can be converted and will highlight them for you. You can then choose which ones you want to convert and what format you want them converted to. You can even use the button to convert online videos from sites like YouTube. (A full list of supported video sites is here). I love this plugin, but I’m not a fan of all the pop-up ads on Zamzar’s website – so be warned. However, I don’t get pop-ups when using the plugin – only when visiting the Zamzar homepage. Still, the plugin is worth the annoyance, I suppose, at least until something better comes along.

My Movies Plugin, Now For Home Server

sarahintampa — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 12:57:00 GMT

The upcoming My Movies plugin for Windows Home Server has a lot of people excited. Already available for Windows Media Center users, the plugin will soon allow Home Server users to organize their extensive movie collections and use their Home Server as more of a media server. According to a new post on the We Got Served blog, the plugin will function as a standard server for My Movies clients, will include an automated “Disc Copier,” will automatically monitor movie folders added to or located on a WHS share, and will function as a metadata provider without the need for a My Movies client for Microsoft DVD library, Niveus Movie Library, Open Media Library, Media Portal, and hopefully soon XBMC. The plugin isn’t available in its final form just yet, but if you just can’t wait to try it out, a pre-release version is now available for download from here.

Three Flickr Plugins You’ll Love

sarahintampa — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 07:11:00 GMT

If you’re a flickr user, there are three plugins that you need to know about: Flickr4Writer, Flickr4Outlook, and Flickr4Word. I had mentioned the Flickr4Writer plugin before when I blogged about some of my favorite plugins for Windows Live Writer - it helps you to insert flickr photos into your blog posts. However, thanks to gHacks, I learned that there are also similar plugins for both Word and Outlook. Like the WLW plugin, they give you easy access to your flickr photos from directly within the application. You can also use the built-in search feature to find photos from other flickr users that match the tags you enter in the search box. The Outlook and Word plugins only support Office 2007 installations (Word 2007, Outlook 2007). All of the plugins are available from their respective sites (linked above) as free downloads. Hey, does this count as software+services? I think it might!

WHS Outlook Beta

sarahintampa — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:48:00 GMT

Mike Craven has been working on a way to put Outlook on your Windows Home Server through the creation of a WHS add-in. The WHS Outlook Beta add-in will let you use Outlook right from the Windows Home Server Console to check your email, switch between Outlook profiles on-the-fly, access all of your RSS Feeds, create new tasks or appointments, and more. You will get all the power of Outlook right through the WHS Console application. The add-in will require that you use Outlook 2002 or newer and you’ll be able to customize where your PST file is stored – either on the system partition or on the network shares. This add-in has not been released yet but a working beta should be available soon. If you’re interested in testing the beta, visit this thread on the WGS Forums and let Mike know of your interest. Active beta testers will receive a copy of the add-in at no charge when the beta period is over, but for everyone else the software will sell for $29.95 (U.S.) when ready. (Thanks to We Got Served for the tip!)

My Movies Media Center Plugin

sarahintampa — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:51:00 GMT

WeGotServed has the scoop on another new plugin for Media Center - and it’s one of the more useful ones we’ve seen, too. This plugin, called My Movies, adds an extra tab to the “TV+Movies” button in Media Center and shows a list of all the ripped movies stored on your Windows Home Server, including cover art, cast and crew info, and even a link to a trailer. Of course, we can't condone ripping DVD's, but there is plenty of info on the subject.

With My Movies you are able to index your movies, browse them, stream them for viewing, share your movie database with multiple clients, and configure each client with its own parental control limitations. You can download the MyMovies plugin from here.

Coming Soon: Get Facebook on Media Center

sarahintampa — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 13:50:00 GMT

It seems that lately I’ve just been finding more and more Windows Media Center plugins. The latest one I stumbled across (Thanks Ian!) is a way to get Facebook on Media Center. This is thanks to a soon-to-be-released application called Photato, which will be available in beta later this month. It looks like the Photato app will focus on bringing Facebook photos to your Vista Media Center – both those belonging to you as well as the photos that your friends are sharing. At the moment, the website for the application hasn’t launched yet, but for those interested in beta testing the application, you can email photato.beta@armchairware.com. (image thanks to Ian Dixon’s Blog)

TV Manager Beta for WHS

sarahintampa — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 05:42:00 GMT

There’s a new plugin for Windows Home Server users called TV Manager which copies your recordings from a Vista Media Center PC over to your Windows Home Server for storage and management. The plugin, still in beta, actually has 2 parts to it – one part for the WHS and one for Media Center. After the plugin copies the recording to the WHS, the original is removed from the Vista PC, freeing up valuable disk space on your machine. However, the plugin allows you to still watch the recordings just like you would normally watch “Recorded TV” in Media Center. The part of this program that runs on the Home Server displays a console for managing the recordings and deleting the ones you don’t want to keep. This plugin was created by Brent Friedman of We Got Served, where you can read in more detail about the features, requirements, and updates in the latest version of this beta software. (Image courtesy of WGS)

3 Ways To Stream Netflix Movies From Your PC to TV

sarahintampa — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 09:47:00 GMT

Last year, Neflix started offering the ability to stream movies over the internet to your PC. Of course, for Windows Media Player enthusiasts, the next logical step was to port Netflix into Media Center by way of a plugin. Luckily, there's a pretty active developer community for WMC, so we ended up with not one, but three, Windows Media Player plugins from which to choose: vmcNetflix, MyNetflix, and NetflixMC.

But which one is right for you? Let's compare:

MyNeflix

System Requirements: Vista MCE, .NET 2.0, Netflix WatchNow player
View Netflix queue
Manage Netflix queue
View history
View recommendations
Browse movies by title, genre, or top 100
Browse "Watch Now" movies
Play movies in full screen
Nice interface, very responsive
Does Not Work With Extenders
Download MyNetflix

vmcNetFlix

System Requirements: Vista MCE and Netflix WatchNow player
View Netflix queue
Manage Netflix queue
View history
View recommendations
Browse movies by genres; sort by title or year
Browse "Watch Now" movies
Keyword Search
Play movies in full screen
Support for x64 and x86
Support for Netflix Instant Queue
Support for Episode Listings
Prevents standby/sleep mode while downloading
Clean interface, easy to browse, runs smoothly
Works With Extenders
Download vmcNetflix

NetflixMC

System Requirements: Vista or MCE 2005 and .NET 2.0 or 3.5
Browse movies by genre
Browse "Watch Now" movies
Fast, Real-time "Watch Now" search
Bookmark "Watch Now" movies
TV Series episode selection
Image caching stream speed settings
Menu Personalization
A bit slow, still a “beta” app
Runs on extenders but WILL NOT play WatchNow videos
Download NetflixMC

So which one should you choose? The quick answer here is that if you have Windows XP, you only have one choice: NetflixMC. For Vista users, both MyNetflix and vmcNetflix are nice, but the extender support that vmcNetflix has makes it the clear winner. You can download vmcNetflix here.

Put a Digg Button on Your Blog With WLW

sarahintampa — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:56:00 GMT

Frank Arrigo recently revealed his trick for adding Digg buttons to the posts on his blog: he does it with Windows Live Writer. If you haven’t seen that option in your version of Windows Live Writer, that’s because the option is only available in the recently released Windows Live Writer Technical Preview. Essentially, this release is a beta app, so if you’re not one for trying out products before they go gold, then you’ll want to wait a bit. However, if that doesn’t phase you, I would definitely recommend that you check it out – I’ve been using it since its release and haven’t run into any issues yet. Besides, it comes with cool tools like that Digg button as well as a ton of other new features (see a full review here). There are even great plugins available that can take advantage of its new feature that lets plugins run after you hit publish – like this plugin to send out a tweet (a Twitter update) after posting. To get your hands on the new Windows Live Writer, you can download it from here. The “Digg It” button will be available right from the “Insert” menu.

Insert a Screen Capture to Windows Live Writer

sarahintampa — Tue, 27 May 2008 13:52:00 GMT

There's a new plugin for Windows Live Writer that will help you easily insert a screen capture into your blog post. There's no installer for the plugin yet (next week it will be in the Gallery), but it's easy to implement. You just need to download this file and copy it to C:\Program Files\Windows Live\Writer\Plugins directory. Then re-open Live Writer and you'll see an "Insert Screen Capture" link in the sidebar. Thanks to Joe Cheng for this plugin! (via/img courtesy of Digital Inspiration)

A Notepad With Plugins

sarahintampa — Fri, 09 May 2008 18:48:00 GMT

Despite all the advances in word processing tools, sometimes, a simple Notepad will do - especially if you use it for coding. However, if Notepad turns out to not be enough tool, you can always upgrade to Notepad++. I just learned something even cooler about this software from gHacks: Notepad++ has plugins! Martin recommends these: XML Tools, Hex Editor, Compare Plugin, FTP Synchronize, Multi Clipboard, and the Windows Manager, but there are 26 more to choose from on the plugin page.

Automate Your Home with Your Windows Home Server

sarahintampa — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:33:00 GMT

For home automation enthusiasts, comes a plugin for Windows Home Server called "Embedded Automation's mControl for Windows Home Server." With this WHS plugin, you can configure and control everything in your home from lighting to AC to thermostats to security cameras from directly within WHS or from any other networked devices like Vista Media Center, Xbox 360, Windows Mobile phones, or any of the new Windows Media Center v2 Extenders. mControl can be used to control a couple of devices or it can be expanded to control all aspects of your home with no need to purchase additional software packages. All you need is mControl. You can download a free trial of mControl for WHS from here to try it out.

Polaroid Picture Plugin for WLW

sarahintampa — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 17:36:00 GMT

The Polaroid Picture plugin is a Windows Live Writer plugin that lets you add pictures to your blog that resemble Polaroid pictures. With the plugin, you can tilt you picture to the left or right as well as add a text caption to the pic. With Polaroid Picture, you can also make the picture's background transparent and create custom sizes in the "Size" drop-down list of WLW. You can download the plugin from the Windows Live Gallery here. Gotta love the WLW plugins! (via meraTechPort)

New Live Writer Feed Insert Plug-In

sarahintampa — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 05:28:00 GMT

From Josh Legard comes an alpha release of a new Windows Live Writer plugin that makes it easy to pull multiple RSS or Atom feed items into a blog post. The plugin can be used to insert RSS items or even del.icio.us links into your blog post. The download includes an installer which also installs the source code in the WLW plugins directory on your computer, if you want to delve into it. To get started, download the plug-in from here: http://ledgards.com/files/folders/610/download.aspx. After installing it, you'll see a new option to "Insert Feed Content" on your insert menu to insert a feed. Enter the URL of the feed you want to insert in the pop-up and click "OK." The contents of the feed will be inserted into your blog post. (via BufferOverrun)