There are no lack of websites to do this, in fact Netflix currently has one of the best recommendation engines, but unfortunately is only available for people in the US.

A couple of other notables come up, including Movielens, Flixter and Criticker. However by far the best service I’ve discovered is Jinni, a new movie recommendation engine in public beta.

I really won’t go into too much detail about the site, I suggest you go sign up yourself, but I will say this; Jinni provides the most useful recommendation service I’ve ever used and is also unique in inclusion of the long tail into the system. Many services notoriously suffer from simply sending people to the same popular movies which in turn makes them more popular and more likely to be recommended. On Jinni you’ll get the popular, the obscure and the unlikely.

The engine is based around the Movie Genome, a similar idea to the Music Genome Project used by Pandora.

“Jinni’s social search-and-recommendation engine uses our Movie Genome, a big, ongoing project with the Jinni community to describe video more complexly. Using proprietary technology, a Jinni search takes you inside plot elements, atmosphere, and more – for search that reflects how we think and talk about movies”

Because Jinni is using a much richer set of data than the recommendation system at Netflix, it can consequently create much better results and even solve the problems Netflix has with predicting indie if people will like certain indie movies like Napoleon Dynamite.

Also, if you are a big Netflix user – Jinni integrates well with the service including the importing of Netflix data and ratings and the ability to add a movie from Jinni to your Netflix account.

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FeedDemon is the most popular program due to the whole set of services Newsgator has created for connecting feeds and devices. NewsGator Online is the web-based service which provides a central repositry for your feeds which can then be synced to various PCs, Outlook, Mobiles, iPhones and Macs.

Nick Bradbury has just released beta 1 of FeedDemon 2.8 which the object of simplifying the interface and improving social and sharing features:

Looking back at early versions of FeedDemon, it’s obvious that I was raised in the Microsoft Office school of user-interface design.  Namely, fill your application with toolbuttons, the majority of which most people will never use

What on Earth was I thinking?  There were so many toolbuttons showing that I had to stack toolbars on top of each other to fit them all.  At the time I thought I was giving customers the features they wanted, but what I was really doing was scaring people away by overwhelming them with far too many choices.

Each version since then has been an exercise in killing toolbuttons.

…

Each article in a FeedDemon newspaper has a series of icons beneath it, and over time the number of icons has grown to the point that they’ve become a serious distraction.  For example, with the addition of the sharing and tagging icons in the upcoming FeedDemon 2.8, each article would have 10 icons beneath it.

Most customers use only a few of these icons, so I’ve removed most them by default in FeedDemon 2.8.”

…

The reason so many people miss FeedDemon’s sharing feature isn’t due to “user error,” of course, but because I made it too geeky and too hard to find.  In order to share an article in the current version of FeedDemon, you have to copy it to a “clippings folder” that has an RSS feed – and as you can see, it’s far from obvious how to do this:

1. Create a clippings folder
2. Choose to share it as an RSS feed
3. Click an obscure icon under the article’s headline to display a menu of clippings folders
4. Choose the clippings folder you want to copy the article to

Not exactly the simplest approach, huh?

So I decided to rectify this in the upcoming FeedDemon 2.8 by adding a single, obvious “Share” link – which is how I should’ve done it in the first place.

Aside from these changes there is also some bug fixes. The 2nd beta now out and the second is coming soon.

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Granted, someone will need to die before you can purchase this gift, however if you’re willing to wait than you too could brighten someone’s day with this pencil box full of pencils made out of human carbon. You also get the deceased’s name printed on the side of each pencil as you can see from the screenshot.

This is the brainchild of Nadine Jarvis who likes to create death inspired design work, or ‘work in post mortem’ if you prefer.

That’s not all though, you don’t just use these pencils until their gone, the box is designed so just one pencil can be removed at a time and are sharpened back into the box so it becomes an urn for the remains.

If you would like to be useful even after dying than perhaps this is the way to go.

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You may read Make Use Of, if you don’t then it’s one of the larger tech blogs dedicated to webware and software reviews and has over 25, 000 daily subscribers.

You hear about hacking stories and security alerts all the time around the internet but you never really expect it to happen to you, however Make Use Of certainly wasn’t taking any risk, I’ll give you the summary of what this hacker did:

A certain Al Ferank of Dubai hacked Aibek, MakeUseOf’s owner and editor’s Gmail account, it’s worth noting that Aibek was using a secure scrambled password of 15 characters, if it’s that easy to gain access to Gmail perhaps their security needs to be looked at.

Within the account he than set up an email filter to forward GoDaddy communications to another email account, using these details he called up GoDaddy directly and identified himself as Aibek, he simply stated the username and password of the account and requested the domain be transferred, this was carried out within the hour.

Viewers of MakeUseOf where suddenly greeted by a static page filled with nothing by paid links and advertisements, editor Mark O’Neil found out via Twitter shortly afterwards and contacted Aibek.

As they where trying to figure out what happened they received a charming email from the man himself:

I said it very simply and very easily !

2 K !

Deal or not ?!

You own the domain I get the money…

Regards

Make Use Of was hacked and the domain stolen within an hour, the process of getting it back took significantly longer:

Aibek contacted NameCheap – the hosting company the domain had been transferred too and they agreed to lock the domain down while they and GoDaddy investigated the situation, although they warned it might take between 20 hours and 3 days. In the end after much back and forthing between Aibek, GoDaddy legal and their PR department the whole process of getting the domain back took about 15 hours, getting MakeUseOf online again took another day or so.

I can actually think of no way this could have been avoided on MakeUseOf’s part, however I definitely think Gmail needs to look at their security measures, obviously a ‘strong’ password isn’t strong enough.

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I haven’t actually purchased any of their product although I have tried the free version of ObjectDock and played Sins of a Solar Empire. Why I found this I have no idea, but just a few weeks ago the annual StarDock customer report came out and for some reason I decided to read it, you can download it here.

The report is short and concise and written by StarDock CEO Brad Wardell, normally this is the last kind of document I would waste my time reading, but If you do take a look I think you’ll see why. Brad Wardell provides an overview of everything StarDock had achieved over the past year and provides a frank and honest assessment of their strengths, weaknesses and future plans.

Even though I don’t have an interest as such in StarDock myself it was great to see a company so open and honest with their customers and without any feeling of PR bulldust.

The other thing which interested me is StarDock’s new Impulse software distribution system which I think it brilliant, although it does need a lot of work done such as considerably more content and some stability improvements.

If you take a look at Impulse you’ll see the kind of modern, internet focused software distribution application that Microsoft should be providing with their Windows Marketplace and Digital locker. I won’t go into any detail but I recommend you checking it out just for interest sake, their really isn’t much content at this point but the Customer report outlines plans to really improve on that over the next year.

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Although no official objections where ever made to the companies and individuals selling services like premium WordPress themes I believe there was always a little controversy. Some free software proponents feel the effort put into these kinds of services would do better being put back into the whole WordPress community so everyone benefits seeing as the community was the ones who made this kind of business possible.

Personally I think these services have done nothing but good for the WP community. Better premium themes has inspired free theme creators to release better themes and to give credit where its due, most premium authors also release their themes for free in either basic version, separate complete releases or whenever they retire an older theme.

Interestingly though one of the biggest premium theme creators, Revolution themes, have decided that from now on they are changing their business model and releasing their themes for free.

In a move that would make any free software proponent proud they are instead betting on making their money through service subscriptions which you can purchase for several hundred dollars.

Their latest release of themes, Revolution 2, is a fantastic set of free themes and if you use WordPress for your blog I really recommend checking them out.

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It would be fair to say that Google and Apple have provided the most unique design directions over the last 10 years, Google with it’s minimalist user interfaces and Apple with it’s glossy Aqua theme. While I think Vista stands on it’s own design-wise there are definite Apple inspired decisions made.

Over the last few months however I’ve been noticing the new direction Microsoft design has been going in and I’m really liking it a lot. The first indication was the Microsoft.com redesign which I noticed went to a much more minimal design than previously and was followed by redeisgns across most of the Microsoft websites. Next the Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 came out and notably has lost the ‘gloss’ of IE7. The  Windows Live wave 3 followed and introduced a similar but more toned-down interface with no icons and was predominantly white, finally the online services began to be updated and introduced a great new theme which can be seen here. The Microsoft Software + Services strategy website also got a nice minimal theme.

I personally love this direction, the design is minimal, perhaps inspired by Google and yet much more attractive while avoiding the glossy, ‘web 2.0’ look which has so dominated design for the last decade and was present in the previous wave 2.0 incarnation of Windows Live.

What do you think about this change in design?

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The Nokia PC Suite is the standard set of software for managing your phone and multimedia and was recently updated to version 7.0 which was a marked improvement on the previous version. While it’s an improvement I would describe the software as ‘adequate’ rather then good. It does the basics, sometimes a little more but generally does little to impress, especially the media management tools and performance.

What Nokia has been working on however which is fairly impressive is the Nokia Ovi Suite which has been designed from scratch and will eventually replace PC suite totally I presume. I think it’s only being released in a few countries at the moment, if it’s not released in yours you may have to change your system language settings.

Ovi is a great example of the ‘software + services’ concept going through most of the technology industries and inspired by the success of Apple’s iPod + iTunes system.

Ovi includes all of the PC suite functions and features while having additional features and generally improving substantially upon everything including predominantly a far more intuitive and attractive user interface. The software is also connected to the online Ovi services for uploading, download and sharing media such as music, images and games.

If you’re currently using PC Suite I would really recommend giving this a try, it is an improvement in every way, even including performance.

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The new 8.10 release is called Intrepid Ibex and has 10 days to go before an official release. Currently you can download the beta to try from the Ubuntu website.

I have to admit, I was a little disappointed with this release. Primarily the difference between this release and Hardy Heron is a lot of bug fixes, some performance improvements, better hardware support, improved ‘connectivity’ features and a fairly horrible new ‘human theme’.

In essence it’s the kind of ‘service pack’ release that Microsoft provides. I was actually hoping for some dramatic interface improvements, however I can only assume these are still being developed. Mark Shuttleworth (the founder of Ubuntu) has made the comment that he doesn’t yet feel Ubuntu is ready for the average end-user at this point.

He strongly believes in open-source software, but until Ubuntu provides the kind of experience Windows or Apple does he would not recommend people to try it for the first time:

“There’s also recognition for the scale of the challenge that faces us. When I laid out the goal of “delivering a user experience that can compete with Apple in two years” at OSCON, I had many questions afterwards about how on earth we could achieve that. “Everyone scratches their own itch, how can you possibly make the UI consistent?” was a common theme. And it’s true – the free software desktop is often patchy and inconsistent. But I see the lack of consistency as both a weakness (GNOME, OpenOffice and Firefox all have different UI toolkits, and it’s very difficult to make them seamless) and as a strength – people are free to innovate, and the results are world-leading. Our challenge is to get the best of both of those worlds.”

“All of this has me tapdancing to work in the mornings, because we’re sketching out really interesting ideas for user interaction in Launchpad and in the desktop. The team has come together very nicely, and I’m thoroughly enjoying the processes, brainstorming and prototyping. I can’t wait to see those ideas landing in production!”

All of this must mean that Ubuntu’s new interface is still coming, perhaps for the next 6 monthly release, I look forward to when it does. Till then Intrepid Ibex provides some good under-the-hood updates, the rapid boot time and lightening fast shut-down are particularly impressive.

Hardware support, Linux’s biggest issue, has for most purposes been solved. Now the focus is on the next biggest problem – the interface and user experience, something I’m confident they will eventually solve equally well.

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…a freeware program I recently came across that I quite enjoy is Acer GridVista.  It allows you to split a monitor into multiple sections.  For example, I have my 17" split into two.  In one virtual pane I have the dissertation open on which I am working, and in the other I have the code or information that is relevant to the section I am writing.  It makes it easy to keep all your open windows tidy.  It is not as cool as actually having two monitors, but it would be especially useful if you had a 22" or larger.  If only I could afford it….

I tried it out and it really is extremely useful!

I’m getting pretty used to freeware extensions being pretty buggy, however this is rock solid and you shouldn’t find any issues whatsoever. It’s easy to use, works great and even looks okay, in fact it adds a couple extra buttons to the windows as you can see in the screenshot below:

Not sure what it’s like in XP.

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Microsoft has been pretty tight on leaks up to now so we haven’t had a great deal of information about the upcoming OS, however here are some of the features which you will see introduced with Windows 7:

Evolutionary changes.
This means substantial performance improvements, UI changes and security improvements. Windows 7 basically will improve on all of Windows Vista’s real and perceived shortcomings.

Virtual Drives
This is just speculation at the moment although Long Zheng has some good reasons to suggest it. Native support for disc images is definitely coming with Server 2008 R2 and may also come with Windows 7.

Sensors
Support for contextually aware applications which can detect the location of you and your device.

Windows Credentials
This sounds great and is something I’ve been wanting for ages… a secure ‘vault’ to store logins and registration details for any server, website or program. Windows will be able to log you in automatically anywhere.

Changes to UAC
Windows 7 will introduce a control panel setting which provides a ‘slider’ and 4 different settings for the UAC, essentially ‘most annoying’ to ‘least annoying’. What’s ironic is that Norton Labs have created an alternative UAC which actually does the whole job a great deal better.

Customisable Installation
Bundled Windows application are being removed and replaced with downloadable Windows Live services including Movie Maker, Mail, Photo Gallery, Writer and Parental Controls. There will also be the introduction of a system to control which applications are installed and which aren’t.

Windows Solution Center
Basically an improved Security Center, but with an improved UI and access to all system maintenance and troubleshooting tools.

Home Group Networking
Another Longhorn concept which is now making its way into Windows 7. Easy home networking for sharing files and media.

Updated Applications and UI
Applications like Paint, Calculator and Windows Media Player are all getting a new version and in the case of WordPad and Paint, the office ribbon interface. Paint is now actually pretty decent, a half-way point between the current Paint and Paint.NET.

Unspecified Taskbar Improvements
All that has been mentioned is that a lot of time has gone into improving the Windows Taskbar, and that support for the taskbar over multiple monitors is almost certain.

Improved Games Explorer
Now checks for Game updates and patches which is a great addition.

Virtual Desktops
Finally! Windows gets virtual desktops or ‘workspaces’ which is going to be a huge improvements.

Windows Mobile Device Center
I thought the point was to remove a lot of the unnecessary applications, for some reason the decision was made to include Windows Mobile Device Center rather than as a separate download.

Themes
Not custom visual styles unfortunately, but the kind of themes you could make with Windows 95 and 98 – saving the background, sound scheme and colors.

Multi-Touch
You know this one.

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For those of you who didn’t see the article, Extensions for Windows is a set of tools and applications designed to ‘upgrade’ Windows whilst fully integrating with the existing features and functionality. As far as achieving this goal goes, I would say Extensoft gets part-way there… great tools, but the integration isn’t perhaps as comprehensive and seamless as may be expected.

Winners of the competition are:

Bullitt – “One thing I would like for Windows to have built in is a program that keeps your software up-to-date, much like Ubuntu has.”

Agreed, after using Ubuntu I too wanted this functionality in Windows very much. Hopefully with time Windows Update will eventually encompass more software.

Will – converter (that can convert audio and video to the required format). I’m sick of using 20 different applications to perform the required task.”

I couldn’t agree more, although Windows Vista does come with Windows Media Encoder it’s slow and often error-prone.

Mike Martin – The one thing I would love Windows to have out of the box is a powerful dual pane explorer like the excellent Total Commander. Also I would appreciate the ability to use custom window themes without having to hack DLL’s.

Unfortunately it doesn’t look like Windows 7 will include this (although I was hoping it would), but luckily Extensions for Windows has a great dual pane and tabbed explorer you can try. I agree with the custom visual themes as well, Windows really needs them.

Emyol – Real Powerful Shortcut manager with Function touch replacement.

Luckily for you, Extensions for Windows includes a great Shortcut manager, although not Function Touch replacement =P

Carl – This looks pretty slick. Having virtual drives and file conversion built into windows would be fantastic!

Extensions includes a virtual drive manager and creator, PDF converter and Image converter. Enjoy.

As you can see from the comments above and on the original article, this set of tools has been chosen well, in fact most of what people requested is included as part of it.

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Extensoft released their brand new product, Extensions for Windows only a few months ago after intensive beta testing for over two years, in fact I believe some leaked screenshots led people to think what they where seeing was Windows 7.

What is it?

Extensions for Windows is a set of tools and applications which are designed to ‘upgrade’ your Windows installation with new features and functionality, the kinds of things power users find themselves wanting on a regular basis.

I asked Eugene Zvyagintsev, Extensoft’s project manager a few questions,

You’ve been working on this project for about 2 years. Did the idea for this release come about from Windows Vista’s release and a perceived lack of ‘power user’ features?

[Eugene] Actually we came up with the idea 4 years ago.  Windows XP was a mature product then, but was still lacking sufficient features and flexibility. We started tinkering with some concepts and ideas and then accelerated the development since we felt more confident that we could provide a useful product at a great value. When Vista came along, we could see that it was still lacking in many areas while being quite confusing to some XP users.

How did you come up with the initial set of tools and applications? Any scouring of message boards involved? Or were these features which you constantly found yourself wanting when using Windows?

[Eugene] Probably the latter.  As Windows power users ourselves, we feel what the majority of Windows users feel. However, we validated many of our ideas by reading blogs and articles that often praised Windows, but also pointed out its flaws and issues.

Perhaps the biggest thing for many users is the fact that a lot of the features provided in this suite can be found for free in other products. Eugene thinks it’s not that simple,

[Eugene] The main question we asked ourselves was what someone would choose if Microsoft released a sensible and functional Windows upgrade at a reasonable price? Would Windows users choose to continue looking for and download a variety of free tools?; Or would they rather choose to install a better version of Windows with the same features?”

And what should less technical users do? There are those who don’t know how to look for, what to download, and how to use such software. Many of us, experienced users, act as technical support among friends and family. We often get phone calls from friends asking us how to resize an image, how to create a PDF document, another time how to open or convert a document.  This can go on and on. And we tell them: download this, install that, and then call me back so I can explain to you how to use it.  Wouldn’t it be much easier for everyone if Windows simply included more functionality that is immediately accessible and feels familiar?

Therefore, we wanted to create a single and standardized product that we could recommend to all our friends and families…then only to occasionally answer basic questions from them. The thing Extensions really does for them is it gives them peace of mind.

He has a good point, but it’s up to you to decide. The product is sold for $50 for a one year license, that license provides unlimited upgrades, support and access to new products over the year. The current plan is to “polish things up” before releasing an additional 3 products to bring the “total number to 15 by the end of the year”.

I’ve been using them myself now for a few months and my personal opinion is that these tools are still a little rough around the edges. Performance is very good normally, however a couple tools (such as the task manager extension) caused some CPU spikes when running in the background, hopefully things like this will be fixed with time.

Anyway, to win 1 of 5 free licenses simply comment below telling us what you would want if you could choose one feature to be added to Windows… just one.

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2009 is slated to be the release of Windows 7, possibly as early as October, maybe a little later. Whatever the case it’s going to be a significant release as Microsoft has to overcome their negative image brought on by Vista, tackle Google head-on with their various online initiatives and hopefully prevent Apple making any more inroads into their consumer sales.

The global economy however is going into recession, and no matter how much better a release Windows 7 is than Vista, nothing reduces interest in technology like the fear of losing your house, or job…

However, bad though a recession is for huge companies like Microsoft, it could actually be better for them than their main competitors, Google and Apple.

Google’s revenue is based solely on advertising which could be hard hit as the economic outlook worsens. A lot of Apple’s revenue is from high-end consumer goods, or luxury items such as iPods and iPhones. The advantage Microsoft has here is that they cover all basis, from dirt cheap computers all the way up to the high end stuff.

Of course, this is a very simplistic way of looking at it.

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All I can say is it was completely worth it.

The bad thing for Microsoft is it’s taken 3 years to get the Zune to meet it’s initial expectations, the good thing is that I really don’t care because it’s a fantastic product. I have to admit I have never wanted an iPod primarily for the reason that I don’t want what everyone else has, and also because I don’t like iTunes.

The Zune software is perhaps Microsoft’s most under-appreciated work. I’ve been using it for a few months now, ever since the 2.5 release, and like it a lot, but it wasn’t till I actually had a Zune myself that the whole experience opened up and I realised how great the software is. What I love most about it is that Microsoft has not taken the approach of meeting the iTunes head-on, feature for feature. Instead they’ve worked on creating a great experience, so that even if the Zune lacks something Apple provides, users are willing to make the compromise.

I had to find and download a hack from somewhere to get access to all the Zune features and online services, but everything is working perfectly now.

The Zune itself looks great, feels great and has a awesome navigation pad which I prefer to the ‘Click Wheel’. It’s not quite as good for scrolling long song lists, but much better for skipping up or down by a couple songs at a time, something I find the Click Wheel not so good at. The screen however is horrible for attracting smudges and finger prints. Also the provided headphones are pretty crap, I replaced them immediately.

Anyway, up to this point I would be hard pressed to name another product which really wasbetter than the iPod, although a few did come close (Creative Vision:M and Gigabeat S series). The Zune 3.0 however I can honestly say provides a better experience and product than Apple and the iPod (classic).

Also Microsoft’s strategy of providing updates and new features to all Zune owners, no matter how old the product is really fantastic.

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I play occasionally, but when I do I’m generally only interested in Real Time Strategy (RTS) titles such as Age of Empires III, Command and Conquer 3, Settlers, Rise of Nations etc

RPG’s are possibly my least favourite games and for this reason I have never got into any kind of MMORPG games like World of Warcraft finding them little more than a huge waste of time. Occasionally I do feel like playing some online games, but all too often what puts me off is the learning curve, the time necessary to become part of the community and the need to spend so much time on them to achieve anything.

Then I found Travian.

I love this game already even after only a few days of playing. It’s a little hard to describe because it’s really quite unique as far as online strategy games go.

Kind of a cross between Age of Empires, Risk and Diplomacy. It’s technically ‘real-time’, but plays so slow it’s more like a board-game or turn-based strategy. For example the building of one woodcutters house takes 20minutes or more.

It sounds bad, but this is one of the greatest things about Travian. It’s a game which is incredibly easy to get into and doesn’t absorb to much time at all. You can just check in for a few minutes a day and see how your village is going, construct a few more buildings and leave again.

The game is supported by ‘Plus’ and ‘Gold’ accounts which provide some really useful benefits if you play the game a lot, they’re also very cheap – just a few dollars for a Plus account for a week.

It’s fun, check it out!

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Okay, partly because it’s one of FeedDemon’s default feeds but also largely because  Jeff Atwood just writes interesting stuff that anyone can understand, programmer or not.

His blog however is really nothing more then a side interest, his latest project which has been occupying most of his time is a resource site for coders called StackOverflow.

“So what is stackoverflow?

Stackoverflow is sort of like the anti-experts-exchange (minus the nausea-inducing sleaze and quasi-legal search engine gaming) meets wikipedia meets programming reddit. It is by programmers, for programmers, with the ultimate intent of collectively increasing the sum total of good programming knowledge in the world. No matter what programming language you use, or what operating system you call home. Better programming is our goal.”

To that descriptive list I would also add ‘Yahoo Answers/Forum/Newsgroup’ type community site.

It’s true there is nothing totally unique about Jeff’s ideas, but the site he has created really manages to pull all the ideas together and create an incredibly easy to use site which is fantastic for beginners like myself and advanced programmers.

In many ways it’s just an update on the web forums which proliferated the web during the 90s and early 2000s. It was here that many people learnt the skills associated with an interest or job (coding, design, SEO etc) and in turn taught others.

The issue with Forums however is that valuable information is easily lost. A lot of threads are full of comments which don’t contribute anything and archives vanish rapidly never to appear again. By creating a similar kind of community, yet organising the information, categorizing it and create a valuable resource for any newcomer to discover without having to initially get involved is a great idea.

The barrier for entry is also low as anyone can ask or reply to questions in just the same way as a blog, by providing a name and email without registering. If you wish to become more involved you can register later and associate the questions you have previously asked with your new account.

It’s a great new site and a great growing community. I recommend you check it out if this kind of thing interests you.

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For all our criticisms of Microsoft they have been pretty decent with the software they provide for free (Windows Live is a good example).

The Visual Basic Studio Express versions are good solid software packages and can be downloaded from here. These include Visual Basic 2008 Express, Visual C# 2008 Express, Visual C++ 2008 Express, Visual Web Developer 2008 Express and various resources and samples which are really useful. I don’t write C or C++ so for the standout here is the Visual Web Developer which is great.

Even better, if you’re a student, is the Dream Spark giveaway:

You’ll need to be attending a university then you’ll need to enter your student account number and password before being accepted, but most Universities around the world have signed up for this so I think you should be fine.

After being verified you can download all of these if you so desire:

Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
A set of tools for web development (ASP.NET, AJAX), Windows, Office, SQL Server and devices running Windows Mobile.

Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition
If you need this, go for it =)

Microsoft Expression Studio
Expression Studio is Microsoft’s answer to Adobe’s products for designers and developers. I’m not sure how popular they are as I haven’t heard much about them. I’m still trying them out for myself.

• Expression Web
• Expression Blend
• Expression Design
• Expression Media

Xna Game Studio 2.0
Build games for Windows and Xbox 360 using .NET and custom managed code libraries. Includes support for Xbox and Window Live support for the creation of multiplayer games.

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The New UI

I’m a little undecided on the new look for the Windows Live suite.

On one hand I don’t like to critique design changes until I’ve had a real chance to play around, get used to it and determine whether or not it is actually for the better. The Wave 3 UI however isn’t dramatically different from the Wave 2 ‘aero’ theme however it’s now much lighter and a bit sleeker, it also removes all icons from the toolbar which is what I don’t like at all.

What I don’t like about the new theme is that it brings with it a whole new load of UI inconsistencies between applications and services, something I hope successive releases would work on improving, not accentuating. Now the Live services contain a range of themes ranging from the original ‘Flair’ UI through to the new Wave 3 UI which itself contains two different themes – the new Live Messenger UI and the rest of the applications.

So my conclusion is the new UI is nice, but unnecessary and brings perhaps more annoyances then benefits.

The Live Suite Applications

As far as the applications and new features go this is a great release. The standout of course is the calendar synchronisation across Windows Live which is something we’ve been missing for years now.

Yes it’s a beta release so there are bugs. The customisation button for changing colours isn’t working very well right now, Writer has the occasional problem with refreshing blog themes, Windows Live Photo Gallery spikes the CPU when scanning for photos or detecting faces and also sometimes fails to fully shut down the process when closing the program. The ‘unread’ counts in Live Mail are also pretty buggy as I’m sure you’ll notice and experience when using the application.

Aside from those minor issues which are expected in a beta release, the applications are actually considerably faster and more responsive – particularly Live Photo Gallery which I was most impressed with.

Windows Live MovieMaker

The odd one out is the new Windows Live MovieMaker which is actually so basic as to be not even worth using, however it is worth taking a look at as obviously over the next year it will be improved upon in the same way the other live applications have.

I really don’t understand however why this application which has been rumoured for years now is so lacking… how can the biggest software company in the world take so long to create something like this? I hate to go on so much about it considering it is a beta release, but seriously Windows MovieMaker was basic to begin with, Vista barely improved it and now for Windows 7 we are essentially going to get exactly the same product but this time as a downloadable app rather then bundled.

So Moviemaker is at the same place it was at 10 years ago?

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I’m typing this is as I sit here waiting for the 134mb file to download so I can’t give you my opinions on the update yet but here are some views from nerds others who stayed up all night waiting for a software download for a scoop:

The surprising Live MovieMaker is sporting the Ribbon UI:

“Making its first appearance in the Windows Live suite, Movie Maker Beta is a solid new application lacking in basic features to make it actually useful.” – LiveSide

The vastly improved Live Mail:

We’ve been using Windows Live Mail to manage our LiveSide email for our individual accounts and for feedback and tips, and it already has been far superior to Outlook, even with the Connector, for managing multiple Hotmail accounts.  Now with better performance and a new calendar, we’re even happier” – LiveSide

The fantastic Live Writer:

Alot of what is in this new beta was seen in the Live Writer CTP back in June, like the SDK we have already discussed, and nothing is new from that point of view. Obviously the UI has changed to look more in line with the rest of the Wave 3 products” – LiveSide

The elegant Live Photo Gallery:

Photo Gallery had been a solid tool that does what it should do, and with additional features that helps you to better manage your photos and share them with the rest of the world… The software, although still in beta stages, is quite stable and functional. However, it is quite disappointing that it doesn’t have the consistent look and feel with the other Wave 3 application” – LiveSide

It also includes a new API which is going to be great if developers and online photo haring services begin taking advtanage of it:

brand new, simple framework that enables developers to create photo and video publishing plug-ins. The framework defines a set of interfaces that facilitate communication between Photo Gallery and the plug-in. The plug-in developer has creative control of the user interface of the plug-in and handles the details of communication with the 3rd party service” – LiveSide

The less advertising focused Live Messenger 9.0 has too much new stuff to describve in just a few sentences so download it yourself if you’re that interested!

looks awesome, despite reports about Microsoft backing away from a supposed WPF-based design” – Paul Thurrot

There are also updates to the Windows Live Toolbar and Family Safety software, but who cares about them?!

Haha, anyway enough of that. My download is finished so I’m closing Writer down to update and trying all of this for myself!

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