Using SkyDrive Explorer

After running the downloadable executable, you have to connect to SkyDrive by clicking on the icon that appears in your Windows Explorer window and signing in with your Windows Live ID.

After that’s complete, you can then navigate through your SkyDrive folders and move content around through copy and paste operations. You can also rename or delete groups of objects – something that’s much easier to do from within an Explorer window than on the web. 

Another handy feature is the ability to right-click on SkyDrive files or folders to access the SkyDrive URL which points to its online location. This URL can then be shared with anyone you choose.

The complete list of features in this application include the following, according the the SkyDrive Explorer website:

• View the structure and contents of folders in SkyDrive
• View files information (type, size, creation date in GMT format)
• Create new root folders and subfolders
• Copy files into the storage
• Delete files and folders
• Copy files from the storage to the computer
• Copy folders and subfolders from the storage to the computer keeping their structure
• Use Drag & Drop for files operations
• Rename files and folders
• Create links to SkyDrive™ folders on your computer
• Copy URL of the selected object(s) to the Clipboard
• Automatic check for the latest version
• Bidirectional languages support

SkyDrive Explorer is a free download for Windows XP, Vista, Windows Server 2003/2008, and Windows 7 PCs (32-bit and 64-bit versions). However, the software is still in beta, so all the typical caveats apply.

Still in Beta

When I asked around on Twitter about it the other day, I got some mixed reviews. Some people said it was slow and it crashed on them while others said it was pretty good. My experience so far is that it does seem a little buggy. Some folders come up with all their files intact while files in other folders seem to have an unknown file extension making them unreadable, even when copied down to your PC. (This only happened with a few image folders so far, though).

There’s still some room for improvement in the application, too. For example, an expanded right-click menu for your online files would be nice. At the moment, it only offers “copy,” “rename,” “delete,” and “copy URL.” It would be nice to see “open,” “print,” and “properties” added. And for the image files, it would be useful to see thumbnail previews.

However, these complaints are minor given the overall usefulness of the application. The service was fast enough and hasn’t crashed on me (yet). And hopefully, future updates will offer even more improvements. In any event, SkyDrive just got a whole lot more useful for me.

You can download SkyDrive Explorer for yourself from here.

(SkyDrive is a free online storage service that provides 25 GB of storage space in the cloud).

But now there comes the easiest way yet to use Bing’s backgrounds as wallpaper: a Windows 7 theme that’s already been created for you. This time, you don’t have to make the file yourself, you just have to click to install it. The Bing theme, discovered on Blogsolute and blogged about on .Net Devhammer is incredibly simple to install. Here’s how:

1. Download the file Bing.theme (Right-click & choose “Save as”)
2. Double-click the downloaded Theme File.
3. Select the Download Attachments option so images are downloaded automatically when Bing RSS updates.

That’s a much easier way than anything else I’ve seen before and I had the theme up-and-running in seconds after install. The only downside is that the images hosted on Bing.com aren’t in the correct size for desktop backgrounds, so the theme centers them instead. However, you can go into the settings and change the background color if desired. You can also set the images to fill the screen, but you’ll lose a little resolution in the process. 

On Newegg, Windows 7 Home Premium OEM is $99.99, Professional OEM is $134.99, and Ultimate is $174.99.

(via ZDNet)

Now, with the multi-touch support, such as that which is included in Windows 7, you can interact with all of BumpTop’s components without using your mouse or keyboard – you can simply touch them. There are tons of gestures you can use including a circling “lasso” gesture for creating piles, gestures to scrunch and shove items aside, ways to zoom in and out, pan or rotate the view, flicking gestures, and even a way to crop photos prior to sharing on Twitter and Facebook.   

The end result is sort of like turning your plain ol’ Windows PC into something that’s more the equivalent of a Microsoft Surface computer.

In order to use the new features, though, you’ll need a Windows 7 PC that supports multi-touch. There are several models to choose from already, including the HP TouchSmart All-in-One PCs, the HP TouchSmart tx2 Tablet PC, the Dell Latitude XT Tablet PC, and Lenovo’s T400s laptop and X200 tablet PCs, to name a few.

With the new algorithm, the researchers were able to reconstruct the city using the photos downloaded from the site. To do so, it matches common points found in the images. The process unbelievably only took 21 hours.

To see the technology in action take a look at this model (see video below) of the Colosseum constructed using 2106 photos. In the video, you’re seeing the overall view, but you would normally be able to zoom into individual images too.

Besides Rome, the researchers are also working on constructing models of Dubrovnik, Croatia and Venice, Italy. They plan on presenting their paper at the International Conference on Computer Vision in Kyoto, Japan next month.

For more video demos, check out this page.

(via TechFlash)

MoTweets

As one reviewer noted in their post, the two best things about moTweets is that it’s the only app they’ve found that lets you “smoothly scroll” through your timeline on a touchscreen phone and it lets you delete tweets. That last one is a feature not too many applications, both mobile and otherwise, tend to offer. And it’s especially useful on a mobile client where an accidental finger slip can result in a partial tweet getting posted before complete.

You can also configure audio notifications or set them to vibrate in moTweets.

The Twitter app is available as a free ad-supported version or if you would rather forgo the ads, you can purchase the app for $3.99 instead.

Thanks Angus Logan for the tip!

Don’t be afraid – despite what you may have heard, it’s not really that hard. It just takes more time. If you’re about to embark on this adventure yourself, check out the steps below for what I think is the easiest and most painless way to go about doing this.

1. Make a List

A clean installation of an operating system can be time-consuming, but in this case, “upgraders” don’t really have a choice. It’s the only way. However, there’s nothing like a clean install for really starting fresh with your computer. I have done this myself from time to time – most recently when I purchased a new hard drive for my laptop. It’s amazing how many programs I had downloaded over the years that I didn’t ever use or need. Since so much of my activity is done online these days, I really only had to re-install a handful of apps which included, of course, Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Windows Live Essentials, and Skype. Before reinstalling your OS, you too should check your Start Menu for applications and make a list of the ones you really need. Then, go locate the CDs and the registration keys before getting started.

2. Get an External USB Hard Drive

For a computer you’ve hung onto for a long time, you probably have a lot of files saved on the hard drive. Likely more than can be burned to a single CD or even a single DVD. I think the absolute easiest thing to do is to get an external USB hard drive for your backups. You’d be surprised how affordable these drives are nowadays, and, after upgrading, you’ll also have a good backup of your data in case anything ever happens to your PC. If you don’t already have a backup of your data, now is as good a time as any to make it happen. And depending on the size of the drive, you’ll probably even have room left over so you can continue to use it for additional storage and backups in the future. Believe me, this is incredibly useful. (Especially if you have a habit of purchasing entire TV seasons from iTunes or Zune. Wow, do those eat up disk space!)

3. Run the Easy Transfer Wizard

With your hard drive connected to your XP computer, pop in the Windows 7 DVD and browse to \support\migwiz\migsetup.exe on the DVD. Run this executable. It’s the Windows Easy Transfer Wizard and it’s an essential step to preparing your computer for the “upgrade” (aka wipe). The Transfer Wizard walks you through the process of backing up your User Accounts, Documents, Music, Pictures, Email, Favorites, Videos, and more. When you are prompted with the question “What do you want to use to transfer items to your new computer?” by the wizard, the answer is simple:“external hard disk or USB flash drive” is the third choice in the list and the one you want.

While the wizard runs, go do something else. For a while. A loooong while. Backing up your entire computer is going to take time. Maybe an hour. Maybe more? You can keep checking the status along the way, though.

4. Install Windows 7 and Your Applications

When it’s finished, you now can install Windows 7 on your computer. Pop in the DVD and follow the prompts. The easy wizard walks you through the process. Of course, you can get all technical if you’d like and create and delete partitions, but for most users simply installing the new OS is all that’s necessary. However, since you’re given the opportunity, I suggest you go ahead and reformat the hard drive while you’re at it. Considering as how you’ve been on Windows XP for a while, your hard drive is probably a little…how do I say this?…junked up. You may as well just start fresh. When you’re prompted to create a user account by the wizard, there’s no need to re-create all the accounts for your family members – just create one Admin account and be done with it. The rest will re-import when you run the Easy Transfer Wizard again.

Before re-importing all your data, now is a good time to re-install your applications. Refer to your list from before. Depending on your personal setup, the length of time this requires will vary. Before downloading any apps from the web, though, make sure your computer is up-to-date with any necessary security patches from Windows Update.

5. Run Easy Transfer Again

When that part is done, launch “Easy Transfer” from the Start Menu to get started with re-importing your data. Obviously, you’ll answer “This is my new computer” when asked by the wizard.

Choose the “Customize” option if you want to map the new Admin account to your old Admin account from Windows XP installation. Otherwise, just follow through with the wizard’s default settings to re-import everything that you had originally backed up. You’ll point the wizard to your file saved on your USB hard drive of course.

The wizard will run for a long time again. Probably as long as it took to back everything up the first time. But when it’s done, everything will be back to normal. All your files, all your data, all your email.

Conclusion

This “clean install” process isn’t as fast as a traditional upgrade, but it’s really not that hard.

Obviously, there are many other ways you could do a re-installation, but this is the way I’d do it (and will do it on my sole remaining XP PC when the time comes). I think it’s easy and straightforward enough for anyone to handle. If you have other suggestions, feel free to share them in the comments.

Just follow these steps:

1. Download the file Windows7-DreamScene.exe (mirror). There’s also an alternative called Windows7-DreamScene-Enable.exe which doesn’t require you to have Admin Rights. 

2. Run Windows7-DreamScene.exe as Administrator. It will copy DreamScene.dll to %WinDir%\System32 folder, DreamScene.dll.mui to %WinDir%\System32\en-US folder and add the required registry keys and values. Then it will then automatically restart Explorer.

3. The installer also creates a Windows DreamScene folder in %WinDir%\Web\folder. You can place any video file that you want to set as DreamScene background wallpaper here.

4. To set a video clip (.WMV or .MPG) as your background, right click on the file and choose “Set as Desktop Background” from the context menu.

That’s it! Because DreamScene isn’t officially supported in Windows 7, you won’t find options for configuring it in the Personalization and Desktop Background configuration page. However, all the DreamScene features including Play, Pause, and audio are supported.

(Thanks to MyDigitalLife for this info!)

RobotVision

In case you haven’t heard, “Augmented Reality” is a term which refers to technology that layers data on top of the real world. It’s starting to make its appearance in modern mobile phones by accessing the phone’s camera, compass, and built-in GPS to determine location then displaying contextual data about what it is you’re seeing on top of your phone’s viewfinder.

According to ReadWriteWeb, RobotVision works by accessing Bing’s API to pull in info including reviews from sites like CitySearch, Judy’s Book and Yelp. With Bing’s search engine, these reviews are aggregated to produce an star rating for the business in question. RobotVision incorporates the reviews along with local tweets and flickr photos to deliver a data-rich picture of your location. You can also easily access more info from Bing including the detailed individual reviews, phone numbers, and driving directions.