http://plugins.live.com/ 

For various Windows Live App , it provides many plug-ins arranged category wise, tag cloud and languages which can be arranged in various ways making it very easy.

Check out the various plug-ins  at  http://plugins.live.com/

A new build (Build 15.4.3508.1109 ) of Windows Live Essentials 2011 has been released today. It’s a QFE (Quick Fix Engineering) update, that is to say, this build is for bug fixes and not UI changes.

This release updates all Essentials 2011 apps from Build 15.4.3502.0922 to Build 15.4.3508.1109 except Windows Live Mesh and Windows Live Family Safety

You can get this build from http://explore.live.com/windows-live-essentials?os=other  as web installer .

And you can get the Offline Installer from  http://g.live.com/1rewlive4-all/en/wlsetup-all.exe   Its size is 209 MB (English language ).

Though the web installer and offline installer version shows 15.4.3502.0922 but when you run this, it’ll prompt you for the upgrade to new build. Here, I can confirm as of now only for English ver.

For other language offline installer please check here.  PLEASE NOTE that I have tried only the English offline installer and other language installer may not be updated yet as there’s no official announcement from Microsoft.

As said this build being QFE, fixes bugs but the complete changelog has not been made available yet. I’ll be posting as I come across any changes in various Live Apps.

One of the bug this QFE fixes is in Live Writer. It fixes the AltGr shortcut issue for European Keyboards in Windows Live Writer

Here are details of this fix sourced from Aaron’s Blog –

“A new build (15.4.3508.1109) of Windows Live Writer 2011 was released today for the primary reason to fix an issue with using the AltGr key on many keyboards used worldwide.  Just about five weeks ago we started to receive reports that AltGr+1 or any number 1-6 or AltGr+V was not having the desired effect.  Here is what should have happened for a few different keyboards:

Instead of the expected character this would get mapped to the ribbon shortcuts since AltGr really is the equivalent to Alt+Ctrl.  For 1-6 it would map to changing your HTML style and for “V” it would do a paste special.  If you were trying to type an email address with the “@” symbol or type a currency symbol it would be very frustrating.  Overall this affected 103 different keyboards used in over 400 locations worldwide.

The built in virtual keyboards that come with the operating system do not generally show this issue and you needed to have a real keyboard with an AltGr key.”

Here’s the complete list of Keyboard Shortcuts for the final ver of Windows Live Writer 2011 –

(Source:Aaron’s Live Writer Blog)

No Network Activity Indicator in Windows 7: But Why?

If you are missing this feature in Windows 7 and want it to see in Windows 7, there’s a small utility for it, created by Igor Tolmachev.

Network Activity Indicator for Windows 7 – displays the old ‘two monitors’ icon in Windows 7 that flashed blue to show network activity on the System Tray.

Earlier when it was released as XP Style indicator, I had also blogged about it. XP style Network Activity Indicator for Windows 7

Unlike the original Windows XP utility (that has individual indicators for each interface), this program indicates outgoing and incoming network packets on all available interfaces.

You can get it from http://www.itsamples.com/network-activity-indicator.html   This utility is released as freeware.

Picture Courtesy : Wolfgang Herfurtner

Controlling Windows 7 using Kinect is one of the coolest things Kinect can do. This was made possible by the Evoluce software team that worked hard on multitouch and gesture control solutions supported by Microsoft.

“The software is based on the latest Evoluce Multitouch Input Management driver that offer many API´s like TUIO, Flash and Java. With the multi-gesture control mode for Windows 7 a natural user interface is created that will change the way we will communicate with the PC and consumer electronics in every day life.”

Here in the video you can see many Windows 7 programs being controlled just by hand gestures. Even two people are shown controlling separate objects.

“Multi-gesture and multi-user interaction unleashes exciting possibilities for a multitude of applications like gaming, consumer electronics, office, events, education, command and control, point of sale and medical systems. Soon you will plug in depth sensing devices like Kinect into your PC and you will start intuitive communication with your computer and other users.”

Source: Wolfgang Herfurtner  Multitouch and Gesture Computing Blog 

Also check – First Pictures of Gesture Control of Windows 7 with Depth Sensing Device

EDIT –  Here’s a new Video of Kinect giving Windows 7 Minority Report Treatment

The video shows how to navigate through websites and maps, click on icons and use the on-screen keyboard.

Holiday Lights – Brighten your desktop with sparkling images of holiday celebration and winter wonder in this Windows 7 theme.

Download here.

Microsoft is soon coming out with an award program called Microsoft Community Contributor Award for recognizing those who contribute to various Microsoft Technical Forums such as MSDN, TechNet and Answers.

Microsoft is going to recognize those who contribute in such Microsoft Forums in the areas of moderation, content, translation/localization and feedback. The Award is awarded based on previous year’s contribution and the Award last for a year.

Awardees will receive a customized certificate, program logo with the award year, and a complimentary online technical resource.

More information about the Microsoft Community Contributor Award program can be found at http://www.microsoftcommunitycontributor.com

How does Microsoft select recipients of the Microsoft Community Contributor Award?
More and more technology users are seeking ideas and solutions for enhancing their technology experience through online resources. Microsoft reviews the contributions of participants who offer their time and energy to online technical communities such as Answers, MSDN and TechNet to identify those who make notable contributions for possible recognition as a Microsoft Community Contributor. In addition, Microsoft Community Contributors can be recommended by Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals, who serve as deep technical experts and thought leaders in the community.

For more such FAQs, please check – https://www.microsoftcommunitycontributor.com/faq.aspx

When IE9 beta was released ,they had demoed Hotmail as example for pinning to taskbar. But at that time Hotmail jumplist  was not available to users. Now it has been updated and Hotmail also has jumplist. As you can see it includes Inbox, Calendars, Contacts, Send email.

To pin the Hotmail to your taskbar, Sign-in to  Hotmail, click the Hotmail favicon (icon to the left of the web address in the address bar) and drag it to the taskbar.  Do this while in Inbox, sometimes if you are in Hotmail Home Page, it may not work correctly. Once the icon is dragged to taskbar, Right click on it to get the jumplist. Remember if you have saved the password and when you click the icon later, the Hotmail will open . So its upto you to make Hotmail ‘Remember password ‘ or not.

The same thing when I tried with Gmail, got this – 

Gmail not yet taking advantage of this cool feature. May be in future it may also provide it.

Also note that once you pin any site/Hotmail to the taskbar and when you open it, the website icon appears at the top of the browser, so you have easy access to the website home page. The Back and forward buttons also gets the color to match the color of the icon. Very cool !

If you haven’t yet installed Internet Explorer 9 Beta yet , get it from Internet Explorer 9 Home

The Hotmail updates have been rolled out to all now, so you can try out this and many other cool features.

If you use Windows Live Writer, most probably you also have twitter Notify plug-in installed. Don’t get surprised, as twitter notify plugin starts requesting for sign-in credentials from today and it doesn’t work even if you provide with username and password. That’s because twitter today has changed the way you sign-in to twitter. And it doesn’t notify that you needed to update.

Twitter Notify has been updated to work with Twitter’s latest authentication changes by Live Writer team today . You have to just install it from Windows Live Gallery and it’ll start working again. You can get it from here.

Thanks to the tweets from Windows Live Writer and ABomb88 for letting us know.