The micro-blogging service plays an important role for communicating successfully, for example in critical countries such as Iran, Egypt or Libya. Sharing stories of freedom and organizing people has become part of Twitter’s success.

Twitter Stories at stories.twitter.com talk about the less turbulent lifes of ordinary people. A single tweet, in 140 or fewer characters, can change whole lives. Some of the presented stories are introduced with well-done short intro movies.

The Twitter users—“Tweeps”—decide what is interesting enough to spread the word about it. You like something you read? You will probably retweet it, thus sending the tweet to your own Twitter followers. If enough people do this, a snowball effect will start, causing a single tweet to reach hundreds of thousands of readers. Popular U.S. celebrities like Ashton Kutcher have more than eight million readers.

Twitter Stories tell such stories, some in movies, some for reading. The movies are English, while the texts are translated to multiple languages, like German.

Let’s take the example of Maureen Evans. She sends complete recipes as tweets. This means: She needs to watch the 140 characters limit, sometimes not an easy task. Nearly every day, Maureen tweets a new recipe. Her Haiku commitment and her talent to reduce recipes to their essential ingredients allow her to share recipes with others via Twitter. Her followers reply with their own creations and comments and thus participate in talking about recipes of the world. Some of Maureen’s recent recipes included Biscoitos de Canela, Broccolini alla Romana, Raspberry Cranachan, Croquettes D’Espinacs and Crêpes.

Twitter Stories help to get what Twitter stands for. Getting loyal readers is not easy. Right after signing up for Twitter, you won’t have a single follower. But as you start following people, they will start following you back. And as you start writing about interesting things affecting or inspiring other people, the mentioned snowball effect will get you more followers.

One thing to remember: Your texts on Twitter—“tweets”—are usually public: anybody may read what you write about. This includes search engines walking through the messages. It is also possible to show what a Twitter user wrote in the past, and when. With the time, a chronological timeline builds up, a history, a profile.

Finally, you can also send photos via Twitter. These photos are then cached on servers, and a short URL is created for each photo. These web addresses can be embedded into tweets—and Twitter will show the images.

Twitter Stories prove one thing: Twitter is a phenomenon of the Web. To move things, you just know how to make use of it.

1. Select the file or folder using the mouse or arrow keys.
2. Press the keyboard shortcut Alt + Enter.
3. The “Properties of” dialog opens instantly.

You prefer using your mouse? Hold down the Alt key, then double-click the file, folder or application icon.

The social network Google+ will soon allow people to use pseudonyms. Until now, Google has enforced Google+ users to enter their real names. You were not allowed to use a pseudonym, even company names were forbidden. Yet, this attitude has caused much critics.

The opposers argued: Nobody can enforce people to use their real names on the Web. In some countries, it is even dangerous to use your real name on the Internet. In any case, many people don’t like to go online with their real-life name – for example while talking about diseases or other personal matters. This attitude should be respected.

Google and other people against pseudonyms in the Web argue that browsing the Web with your real name increases the discussion quality. Furthermore, people on the Web can be identified easier if necessary. Yet this advantage was no real one, as Google did not check whether the “real name” that you entered were really correct.

Now on San Francisco’s Web 2.0 Summit, Vic Gundotra, Senior Vice-President of Social Business at Google, declared that in the future, Google+ is going to allow pseudonyms and other forms of identity. Possibly being company and artist names. The manager did not add information about when this change will be applied.

Starting in January 2010, Google had introduced SSL encryption for its Gmail website. Within the coming weeks, many users having a Google account will be redirected to Google’s encrypted web search. Search terms and the result pages are sent via SSL. You may access the encrypted version directly by browsing to https://www.google.com/.

Skype had delivered its Windows installation file bundled with the Google toolbar, and offered Chrome upon updating. Skype’s Raul Liive explained that the partnership with Google has been quit.

In this Skype release we have removed Google product offers from the Skype install flow.
We have also released the same update for Skype 5.5 for Windows.

By bundling its products with popular third-party software, Google tries to increase their popularity, like Google Chrome. Skype’s large user base has given Google a good chance to inform millions of Windows users about the alternative browser.

Like any program, the Control Panel has a jumplist. On right-clicking the Control Panel icon in the taskbar, its jumplist shows the last used Control Panel components. Would you like to add additional elements to the jumplist and pin them permanently?

Here is how to do this:

1. Click Start, Control Panel to open it.
2. Look for the element that you want to add to the jumplist permanently.
3. Click it and pull it onto the Control Panel icon in the taskbar, until the text “Pin to Control Panel” appears—then release your mouse button.
4. If you now right-click the Control Panel icon in the taskbar, the element will show up permanently in the Pinned section.
5. To remove the added entry, open the jumplist and click the pin on the right side of the element.

Hey @Skype: Should we do this thing?

October 14, 2011 07:08 via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@Microsoft

Microsoft

Yeah. @Microsoft: Let’s flip the switch!

October 14, 2011 07:13 via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@Skype

Skype

After this short dialog on Twitter, Skype and Microsoft now announced that their deal has now been completed. Valued some $8.5 billion USD, Skype is making Microsoft one of the leading providers for Voice-over-IP phone services.

Skype CEO Tony Bates is now the president of the Skype Division at Microsoft. Bates expects his company to grow along with Microsoft. “This represents a huge leap forward in Skype’s mission to be the communications choice for a billion people every day,” he stated. Microsoft stresses that Skype is going to be integrated into other products. Yet, the VoIP application will still be offered for all platforms that have clients currently. This includes Android and iOS, being competition to Windows Phone, as well as Linux and Mac OS.

Originally founded in 2003, Skype was taken over by Ebay in 2005. Four years later, an investor group bought the company. Besides the large number of people who have Skype installed, its strategic advantages include a partnership with Facebook, a key factor in competing with similar service providers—like Google+ Hangouts, GTalk and Yahoo! Messenger.

On April 1, 1976, Steven founded the well-known Apple Inc. In 1983, Apple presented one of the first commercially available operating systems with a Graphical User Interface. In 1984, the success history of Mac OS began, being the OS for all Macintosh computers. Even today, Apple products are the best-looking computers available.

U.S. president Barack Obama stated:

Steve was among the greatest of American innovators—brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it. … [He] was fond of saying that he lived every day like it was his last. Because he did, he transformed our lives, redefined entire industries, and achieved one of the rarest feats in human history: he changed the way each of us sees the world.

How would a world without Macs, iPods, iPhones and iPads feel? To be honest, I cannot imagine. Steve Jobs’ ideas have truly made me Think Different.

Rest in peace, Steve.

Users had been counselled to delete the chrome.exe file. After the patch had been released, numerous users in Google’s support forum as well as on Twitter talked publicly about the issue. A Microsoft spokeswoman declared that in 3,000 cases, Google Chrome was uninstalled by one of the mentioned security tools.

Google tells users to install the patch fix first, then to reinstall the browser. According to a Google blog post, an update is going to be published fixing the error automatically.

Some time ago, the SkyDrive website had been redesigned. New features and advancements are now integrated. However, this is only the beginning of a set of updates coming soon. On top of the planned SkyDrive clients for the mentioned systems, an integration of Windows Live Devices is planned.

Shortly, you will be able to use SkyDrive for accessing and viewing files synced to the web storage from any linked device. Added devices will show up in SkyDrive’s menu, below the “Groups” entry. We don’t know yet whether each device will be able to access SkyDrive’s 25GB storage, or if the current 5GB limit will still be used. The storage systems of Windows Live Mesh and SkyDrive might in fact be merged together soon.

This correlates with a statement made by Mike Torres, Group Program Manager for SkyDrive Devices and Roaming:

We know [the connection of SkyDrive and Mesh is one of the] top asks (and that we can improve the usability of the site) and we are hard at work on SkyDrive as we speak.

Concludingly, more big changes are on the way, targeting further “top asks” from the community. Which features would be top for you?

This week I finally had the chance to set up my Mac. One of the first applications I installed was Messenger for Mac 8.0.1. Yet I discovered that Messenger for Mac has its own icon set – and old emoticons. All icons except for the buddy icon represent the Wave 3 style still. Have a look yourself:

Why would Messenger for Mac not be up-to-date concerning its emoticons?

See this photo:

Instead of multiple user tiles and two check boxes per account (one for “Remember me” and one for “Remember my password”), now there is a streamlined page focused on one account and one check box to “Keep me signed in”.

Why has the sign-in screen been simplified? Eric Doerr, Group Program Manager for Windows Live ID, explains:

• Changing trends in device ownership: As more people bought laptops and smartphones (which tend to be used by just one person), we heard more feedback that the tiles just got in the way, and what people really wanted to do was to just get to the service without interruption. We knew from our telemetry that fewer than 2% of users were using the tiles, but 100% of our users were interrupted by them in the old design.
• Consolidation on a primary account: Increasingly, customers are consolidating their Windows Live usage into one primary account. It used to be common for one person to have multiple accounts. As we’ve integrated Windows Live ID across other products like Xbox, Windows Phone, SkyDrive, and Office –the core account has become more valuable, and it’s become less necessary to switch between accounts.

In a future post, I will highlight easy solutions to common problems now arising, such as:

• My Windows Live password used to be stored in a tile. Now I don’t remember it.
• How can I manage multiple Windows Live IDs?

Wave 5, being the code name for the upcoming Windows Live version, is being developed at Microsoft right now—simultaneously with Windows 8. That is no coincidence. In the future, Windows and the Live services will cooperate even tighter.

For one year, Windows Live has been part of Microsoft’s Windows division. This shows how important the Web and data in the cloud are for Windows 8. According to a report by the news service WinBeta, Windows Live Wave 5 is currently in Milestone 2 stage, and parts that are already done are being integrated in Windows 8. More news about the cloud features in Windows 8 are sure to come out next week on the Worldwide Partner Conference. And then, there’s still the BUILD conference in September 2011 (formerly known as PDC).

Especially with synchronizing and storing data in the cloud using your Windows Live ID, Windows 8 will work for you. According to the current plans, features from SkyDrive and Windows Live Mesh are going to be built right into the operating system. I am looking forward which additional new Windows Live services are presented soon.

Arthur de Haan, Windows Live Test and Service Engineering, summarizes the changes:

• Mail: We fixed a sorting issue in the Sent items folder and improved the upload reliability and instrumentation in Photo mail.
• Messenger: We fixed a couple of stability issues and made various changes for improved voice and video quality. We fixed an issue that was causing sound to be lost after upgrading, and we improved performance when displaying the MSN Today page in the main window.
• Photo Gallery: We implemented various bug fixes for crashes related to launching Photo Gallery through Autoplay and facial recognition.
• And more: We made many other usability, performance, and stability improvements across the suite of Windows Live Essentials apps.

Download Windows Live Essentials 2011 15.4.3538.0513.

She was like, “Was this e-mail really sent by my friend?  It is a different sender address *wondering*?”

I explained her that the person used Hotmail to send the e-mail. Hotmail uses its own servers to send messages. Since you can use your own e-mail address with Hotmail, problems might arise if a message appears to be sent from your e-mail address, but not from your server (from Hotmail’s server instead).

This is why Hotmail is respecting the sender authentication and is using both the From and Sender headers to indicate that the mail was sent correctly. Yet, using these headers results in the On behalf of view in some e-mail programs, including Microsoft Outlook. The On behalf of line, however, is what makes people like my mom wonder what this is all about.

Yet, there is an easy solution to fix this. How? To get an idea, let’s take a look at how Google has solved it with Gmail. Look at this photo:

Instead of sending messages through Gmail’s servers, you may choose to send e-mails via your own SMTP (outgoing mail) server. This way, there is no authentication problem, as messages are only sent from the “correct” server.

Question being—why doesn’t Hotmail offer the custom SMTP feature? You may well receive messages from other accounts using POP, so why not send them via other accounts using SMTP? That’s one of the unanswered questions I have in mind.