Microsoft Introduces Social Lightbox Zoom.it from Live Labs and Silverlight
Microsoft Live Labs has released an early version of a free tool for easy sharing of high-resolution Web- images. Enter a URL at http://zoom.it and it will spit out a short link and embed code for a basic but sleek image viewer that lets you zoom around an image or image of a website.
The tool is usable and it looks great, reminding us of the fun and zoomy Street Slide feature Microsoft recently introduced in Bing Maps.
The tool converts any image to Silverlight's Deep Zoom format and is ideal for bloggers, photo galleries and any situation in which people would want to share high-quality images on the internet. It holds promise for e-magazines and social readers like the blockbuster iPad app Flipboard.
8/09/2010
Microsoft Zoom.it Live service
6/18/2010
How to access Microsoft’s Live services
Live Web Service
- Live Home: http://home.live.com , http://windowslive.com
- Live Space: http://home.spaces.live.com
- Live Hotmail: http://mail.live.com
- Live Photo: http://photos.live.com
- Live SkyDrive: http://skydrive.live.com
- Live Club: http://groups.live.com
- Live Profile: http://profile.live.com
- Live Family Safety: http://fss.live.com
- Live Calendar: http://calendar.live.com
- Live Office: http://office.live.com
- Live Alerts: http://alerts.live.com
- Live ID: http://logon.live.com
- Live Messenger: Access from Live Home
- Live Sync: http://sync.live.com
- Live Mesh: http://mesh.live.com (Beta stage)
- Live Development: http://dev.live.com
- Windows Live Essentials package: http://explore.live.com , http://download.live.com
Windows Live Essentials package(download from http://explore.live.com)
- Windows Live Photo Gallery
- Windows Live Mail
- Windows Live Movie Maker
- Windows Live Messenger
- Windows Live Writer
- Windows Live Family Safety
- Windows Live Toolbar
- Microsoft Office Outlook Connector
- Microsoft SilverLight
- Microsoft Office Live Workspace
Microsoft Live Labs (http://www.livelabs.com)
- Pivot: http://www.getpivot.com
- PhotoSynth: http://www.photosynth.net
- Seadragon: http://www.seadragon.com
6/10/2010
Microsoft Office Web Apps - How to Use
| Microsoft finally launched the Office web application officially. If you have a Windows live account then you can access Microsoft Office web version on your browser now. It lets you create new documents, edit them, share them with friends and much more. The storage space needed is provided by Skydrive. It’s 25 GB in total. How to use Office LiveGo to office.live.com. Login with your Windows Live ID. If you don’t have an ID then sign up for it.
How to upload office documentsOn the web, click on “Add files” link as shown below.
Click on “New folder” to create a new folder. If you want to upload your document to an existing folder then click on each folder.
Now click on “Choose file” button to select a file. After selecting the file, click on “Upload” button. All the documents you upload will be saved in your Skydrive account. Note that file size should not be greater than 50 MB.
How to edit Office documents OnlineWhen you hover your mouse over an uploaded document, you’ll get options. Now, click on “Edit in browser” option.
The document will open in your browser. You can edit it just like you edit in the desktop version of Microsoft Office. There are a number of editing options available.
How to create a new Office documentIf you want to create a new office document then click on “Office” tab given at the top. On the drop-down menu, select “New Word document”. Similarly you can create a Excel workbook, a PowerPoint presentation and a OneNote notebook.
Also, if you are on Office homepage, you’ll find 4 icons as below. To create an online document, click on icons.
Next, give a name to the new document. After giving the name, click on “Save” button.
Now start typing text on the Word document. You can perform as many basic activities that you do in desktop version Office.
Open Microsoft Office on your mobile phoneIf your mobile phone is connected to the internet then go to your mobile phone browser and visit Office.live.com. You can easily view Word and PowerPoint documents without any extra software.
Messenger and online collaborationEven if you don’t have Windows Live messenger installed on your computer, you can chat with your friends while editing an office document. You can share the document (when you hover your mouse over any file, a share link appears). Online collaboration is quick and easy.
There is a version history feature to go back to previous edits of your document. Also, there is an enhanced search box to find all your documents created or uploaded by you and those shared by others. According to Microsoft, this is just the start. In future, you’ll find new features in Hotmail and web office, like better integration of web office version with desktop tool, offline editing features etc. Let us know what you think of the new ms office web apps. Office is now live on SkyDrive! [via Windows Live] Similar Posts:
Original post: The Complete Guide To Microsoft Office Web Apps is a post from: Guiding Tech |
6/04/2010
Preview of the new Windows Live Essentials
This video is the preview of Windows Live Essentials 2011 suite (Windows Live wave 4).
6/03/2010
Microsoft Image Composite Editor
If you enjoy making panoramas with your photos, Windows Live Photo Gallery offers this feature. You can refer it from “creating panoramic photos in Windows Live Photo Gallery”. If you want more features, you can create amazing panoramas for free with the Microsoft Image Composite Editor.
Microsoft Image Composite Editor is an advanced panoramic image stitcher. Given a set of overlapping photographs of a scene shot from a single camera location, the application creates a high-resolution panorama that seamlessly combines the original images. The stitched panorama can be shared with friends and viewed in 3D by uploading it to the Photosynth web site. Or the panorama can be saved in a wide variety of image formats, from common formats like JPEG and TIFF to the multiresolution tiled format used by Silverlight's Deep Zoom and by the HD View and HD View SL panorama viewers.
If you want to know how to create advanced panoramas with Microsoft Image Editor, please click here.
References
New features in the latest version 1.3.3
- Accelerated stitching on multiple CPU cores
- Ability to publish, view, and share panoramas on the Photosynth web site
- Support for "structured panoramas" — panoramas consisting of hundreds of photos taken in a rectangular grid of rows and columns (usually by a robotic device like the GigaPan tripod heads)
- No image size limitation — stitch gigapixel panoramas
- Support for input images with 8 or 16 bits per component
Additional features
- State-of-the-art stitching engine
- Automatic exposure blending
- Choice of planar, cylindrical, or spherical projection
- Orientation tool for adjusting panorama rotation
- Automatic cropping to maximum image area
- Native support for 64-bit operating systems
- Wide range of output formats, including JPEG, TIFF, BMP, PNG, HD Photo, and Silverlight Deep Zoom
Support
Microsoft Image Composite Editor is provided free of charge and without official support. However, if you have questions or issues with Image Composite Editor, you may find help at the Image Composite Editor Forum, which is monitored by the developers and provides community-based support.
5/25/2010
The New Bing Bar Provides Easy Access to Searches and Microsoft Live Services
Bing Bar Installation
After it’s installed, you can easily start searching using their default buttons. In this example we’re looking at Business news, and the popular headlines show with a brief description and picture. You can also search Bing from the search box located at the of the window.
It allows you to customize the buttons you want to show on the bar. You can also slide them around to different positions, similar to how you can in the Taskbar in Windows 7.
It let’s you check the weather, videos, entertainment and a lot more directly from the toolbar.
You can customize it with different colors and themes to match customizations.
The Safety Center will prevent pop-ups and included Phishing protections.
It provides private browsing with the click of a button.
It makes it easy to access different services with your Windows Live account like your photos, email, and SkyDrive.
Sign in to your Live account and it will allow you to check your email messages directly from the bar.
Here is an example of how it looks in Firefox. One thing that takes getting used to is the large Bing search box. It would be nice if there were a way to resize or customize it more.
Unfortunately it installs itself into Firefox by default, so you’ll need to go into Add-ons and disable it.
Conclusion
The Bing Bar is a drastic improvement over the MSN Toolbar and is nicely laid out and using it is pretty fluid. One problem I noticed is sometimes it can cause your browser to load slow while it connects to the services. If you find that it’s taking up too much real estate on your screen you can always hide it, then display it when you need to use it. I didn’t find it too appealing when using Firefox but in IE it’s actually kind of neat. It’s definitely not something that everyone will want in their browser (Firefox users come to mind), but if you’re a regular user of Bing and Microsoft Live services, you might want to give it a try. It works with XP, Vista, and Windows 7. You’ll need IE 6 or later or Firefox 3.0 or later.
