I’ve previously written about the goodness that is RSS, and even commented on how the Windows Live properties, such as Spaces, are rife with various feeds for just about anything you’d ever care to share. Today, I want to draw your attention to another simple but effective way that Windows Live integrates RSS: Shared Favorites. …
Pull the plug
Has your Windows Live Spaces page become unmanageable? Or are you rediscovering your passion for blogging after an extended hiatus? Sometimes, you just have to know when to throw in the towel and get a fresh start. Luckily, Spaces allows you to completely wipe out your space with surprisingly few clicks. On your space's main …
Heads up
I finally decided to spruce up my Windows Live space by giving it a touch of personal branding. I’ve always maintained a simple layout, but I’ll admit it was pretty boring. It was important to me to keep my main page looking neat, uniform, and consistent with the rest of my Windows Live pages, but …
Put on a happy face
Perhaps the most exciting and forward thinking features of Windows Live are the underused and poorly understood web activities. These allow you to publish updates from other services, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, to Windows Live. The net effect is that these updates appear seamlessly on the home pages of your Windows Live friends …
Gimme some space
Spaces is one of the most flexible and quirkiest members of the Windows Live family of services. Perhaps that’s why it’s so often misunderstood…and misused. With a myriad of applications, it’s a venerable tool for newbies and pros alike. Most users initially set up a space to keep a blog, but it also provides a …
iSore
Ok, so pretty much everybody already knew exactly what Apple was going to announce today. The iPad was bestowed upon us mere mortals by his Steveness. If you haven’t seen it, take a gander. Be sure not to stare directly at it for too long. Maybe I’m just being a Luddite, but it looks like …
Take a picture
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but that’s assuming other people can see it. While well-placed pictures are often the best way to provide a quick demonstration or example to someone in a discussion, the Windows Live Groups discussion editor is sadly a little anemic in the picture department. Oh, it’s possible …
From benchwarmer to MVP
To welcome in 2010, the fine folks at Microsoft have decided to bestow on yours truly the mantle of Microsoft Most Valuable Professional, or MVP. For those of you who aren’t familiar, the Microsoft MVP is an annual award presented by Microsoft to exceptional technical community leaders around the world who have voluntarily provided their …
Countermeasures
Blog spammers insert comments that contain a bunch of keywords and hyperlinks back to their sponsor's site. In the old days, search engines would crawl across your page, and build indexes based on those relationships. So if a thousand blog posts included comments that said "toshiba laptop battery" and included a link to http://www.buymybatteries.com, then …
Really specific syndication
You may already know a lot about RSS, the technology that empowers consumers to subscribe to a data source (such as a web page) and receive updates via a reader or news aggregator. You may know that it's a great way to follow a popular blog, because those updates are pushed to you each time …