How-to: Show emoticons in Messenger conversations

You wonder why no emoticons are showing up in chats with your friends? Here’s a solution. - Open Messenger, and sign in with your Windows Live ID. - In Messenger’s main window,...

Facebook Messages merges e-mail, SMS and chat

Unlike expected, Facebook has not unveiled a new webmail service competitive to Gmail. Instead, we will see a new inbox generation, combining messages from different channels,...

Internet Explorer 9: Watch out for the fake update

Fake security updates for Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 3 are currently spreading as malware on the web. The malware programmers use spam e-mails to spread their work. What you...

How-to: Change your name in Messenger 2011

Starting from Windows Live Messenger 2011, your friends will always see your real name when talking with you. In order to unify the experience, the development team says, the...

Google adds preview thumbnails to results

Since this week, Google has added a new useful feature: On entering a search term, you may discover a small magnifying glass next to each result. Clicking it causes Google to...

Project Titan – can you soon use username@facebook.com?

Facebook might plan to unveil a new service for all 500+ million users on Monday: the ability to send and receive e-mail through Facebook. Until now, Facebook is quite dependent...

How-to: Block Windows 7 SP1 from installing

Microsoft has provided the Windows Service Pack Blocker Tool for Administrators. With this tool, you can block Windows 7 Service Pack 1 from getting installed automatically...

How-to: Enable full SSL encryption for your Hotmail session

Microsoft’s web mail service Hotmail, part of Windows Live, now supports SSL encryption throughout your session. Before, SSL was only used for the sign-in process. SSL includes...

How-to: Reset IE browser settings

If Internet Explorer crashes often or gets painfully slow, resetting its settings may help. Resetting IE deletes all personal settings and restores the browser to the state right...

Uninstall old Microsoft Office versions

Reinstalling Microsoft Office is sometimes not trivial. When trying to restart the setup, a message might appear stating that Office cannot be removed. Even in the Control Panel,...

Introducing Hotmail for your own e-mail address

Windows Live Hotmail gets a new feature: Now you can access other e-mail accounts from Hotmail. For example, you can send and receive Gmails within Hotmail’s interface. In the...

How-to: Use Windows Live in your favorite language

Did you know that you can switch languages in Windows Live without having to reinstall the Essentials suite? In this tip, let’s take a look how this works: 1. Exit any running...

Welcome to Streetview, Oberstaufen!

7,225 inhabitants, idyllic position in the German Alps with mountains and cows—that’s Oberstaufen. At once, this small town gets highly popular, as Google starts its Web service...

Messenger Plus 4.9—just an in-between solution

Messenger Plus! is getting near to its fifth version, planned for release in December 2010. Plus! 5 will have complete support for Messenger 2011 (Wave 4). However, in the...

Windows 8 in about 2 years, says MS NL

Dutch Microsoft managers have talked about the Windows 8 roadmap. They also mentioned details about the release of Windows 7 Service Pack 1. Microsoft’s Dutch corporate blog...

Available soon: Messenger Plus! 4.9

Since Windows Live Messenger 2011 (code name “Wave 4”) was released last Thursday, I received some questions as to when Messenger Plus! will be updated to work with the new...

How-to: Minimize windows with keyboard in Windows 7

You like using your keyboard for managing everything in Windows? In Windows 7, minimizing and maximizing windows got easier. Instead of accessing the system menu with [Alt] +...

Google: Use encrypted search

Terms you enter at Google can be captured with ease. Everything you enter is unencrypted, so not only Google, but also your Internet service provider knows what you are looking...

Questions and answers: Migrating your Space to WordPress

As a Windows Live Spaces blogger you must have read that Spaces is now shutting down and that you will now have to migrate your Spaces blog to WordPress, sometime soon. While this...

Messenger for iPhone 1.1

Microsoft has released an update for its Windows Live Messenger App for iPhone. It is the first update since the iPhone App was first released back in June 2010. The update fixes...