Windows Live: "
Windows Live is really a collection of applications and online services that are offered in three ways: desktop, web and mobile. There are more than 40 all together great services offered by Windows Live for free to all that have the Windows Live ID. One cool thing about the Windows Live ID is that it can accept various kind of IDs; Hotmail, XBOX Live, Live Messenger and Zune Pass, and if you don’t have one of those, you can even use any kind of email address (Yahoo!, Gmail etc.) as your ID during the sign up.
Windows Live Essential is a package of desktop applications that offers great stuffs from 4 main aspects: IM & email, photos & movie, blogging, and web browsing.
For IM & email, Windows Live offers Live Messenger and Live Mail. If you already familiar with MSN Messenger or Windows Messenger, Live Messenger 2009 is really a great update for both previous messenger clients. You can play games, share pictures, video chatting and many more with this new Live Messenger. The features are pretty much like the Yahoo! Messenger, but it lets the user customize their appearance with very creative and intuitive themes and scenes. You can also receive the update of your contact made on their Live profile right on the Messenger. Next, lets talks about the Live Mail. The mail service can support multiple mail account like Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Plus & more. Because the application is installed directly onto your desktop, you can access your mail offline! You can also compose a reply offline and then sync it online once you’re connected. It also features multiple calendar capability build into the application where you can make changes to your calendar while offline and the application will automatically sync them once your are online, and plus your can share them with your contacts.
Windows Live Photo Gallery is my favorite. It can handle large volume of photos (12,000+ in my case) with ease. It automatically arranges the photos according to the folders, dates, tags, and people. The reason why I love this application is that it allow us to tag the people in the pictures according to their names, just like Facebook! When we share the pictures, other people will also be able to see the tags that we make on their desktop. Isn’t that cool? Talking about Facebook, with proper plug-in, this photo gallery is able to sync the pictures directly to site like Facebook, Flickr, Photosynth etc. You can also make special effects, photo straightening, collages and panoramic stitching using this gallery. Window Movie Maker Beta offers some basic video making capabilities; combining videos, photos and music in one place. It also got a direct web publishing straight from Movie Maker to MSN Soapbox.
Just so you know, I’m writing this blog using one of the application in the Essential package which is the Windows Live Writer. I really love Windows Writer because it lets me write even when I’m offline. Other thing that make it a cool application is that it can support almost any blog service, including Windows Live, Wordpress, Blogger, Live Journal, TypePad, SharePoint, Community Server, and many more. While you were writing using Writer, it lets you preview your entry;fonts, spacing, colors, and images, straight from Writer before publishing it. You can add images, video, maps etc and even edit them straight from Writer, with the help of its cool plugs-in.
For parents, Windows Live provides you with Family Safety pack to lets you control the internet environment in your house. Features like content filtering, activity report and contact management are available in this pack. You can also access the setting anywhere through the web. Live Toolbar lets you get an instant update of your friends and family, straight from your browser even when you are not on Live web pages. You can also make favorites and check the email easily with this toolbar.
Windows Live also provides lots of great web base application for its user. Windows Live Home gives you essential information like weather, calendar updates, and contacts update information, and navigate to other Windows Live sites and services. One other great service by Windows Live is the SkyDrive. SkyDrive is a password protected online file storage and sharing with a massive online storage capacity of 25GB! You can upload and share the file with people you are selected for free. One more online services by Windows Live is the Cashback. You can get cashbacks from your purchases made via cashback live search up to 25 to 30%. I’ve tried it and I already got the cashback, even it takes time like 60 days.
Well I’m not going to elaborate more about those 30+ services provided by Windows Live in this post. Even I not done yet exploring all the services. Final word from me, thanks to Windows for all those great services (plus its free!) and for that, “That Why I’m a PC!”
And before I forget, if you want to download the Windows Live Essential package. please make sure your Windows OS is not a pirated one, or else you’ll get busted (like my gf, well, almost =p)
ps: Be sure to check out the new Internet Explorer 8 RC1. Well you don’t want me to start on that.
0 comments:
Post a Comment