James Gray

Social Media Integrated into WL Messenger

I downloaded Windows Live Essentials beta to checkout the new features and it's very cool to see all of my social media updates from Facebook and other sites right inside of Messenger.  I also like the ability to make status updates and comments from Messenger.  Photos from Facebook are also very visible including the ability to view an entire photo album in slide show mode.  I usually have Messenger online all the time and I have to say I view Facebook content updates more often with this new feature.  Also check out the photo editing tool updates that make it easier to edit and post photos online.  Overall there are some great updates to Essentials including Sync for synchronizing data across multiple devices.

Google Custom Search for Your Personal Website or Blog

This weekend I had a chance to explore Google Custom Search.  One of my boys manages a blog site and the amount of content has grown significantly making it difficult to locate content quickly.  My basic requirement was to include a search box on the site to provide relevant results for only websites that I selected such as the blog site and his YouTube site.  Google Custom Search provided the ability to configure indexing specific sites while also customize the search results page.  For example, instead of spawning another browser window for the search results, the results can be directed to a page on your website.  This provides a great user experience and keeps users on your site.

This free search engine service does include advertisements, but this is acceptable for personal use.  You can also monetize the search results by signing up for Google AdSense.  Ads-free results pages are also available for a fee.  

I would also recommend improving indexing by submitting a sitemap for your site using Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools.

<InfoTechLeader.com>

Add a Bing Search Box to Your Blog or Website

It's easy to bring the power of Bing to enable users to quickly search your blog or website for relevant content.  Use the Bing wizard to automatically generate the code you need to add a Bing search box to your site.  You can easily customize the search box to only search your site, multiple sites, as well as the web.  I use Bing on the the InfoTechLeader.com blog site as shown in the screen shot.

I would also recommend you become familiar with the Bing Webmaster Tools site to submit a sitemap and review search statistics.  The Webmaster Tools site can be used to view when your site was last crawled, top search pages, and how your site will respond to keywords.

I Bing, U Bing?

<InfoTechLeader.com>

Accessing PC's Remotely with Live Mesh

I am known by my family and friends as the "IT guy" and along with that comes requests to provide advice on purchasing tech gear and fixing computer problems.  One of the challenges to troubleshooting PC's is the ability to actually "drive" the machine to review the issue.  Recently I attempted to troubleshoot a PC for a family member in New Orleans and quickly found it difficult and time consuming to make progress by asking my sister-in-law to take actions to my verbal commands.   Luckily I was successful in evangelizing the virtues of Live Mesh to this family member and remembered I could use the Live Mesh Remote Desktop feature to remotely log-on to her computer and troubleshoot the problem from Seattle.  The ability to transport yourself to a remote PC in your mesh is a very cool feature and I was able to quickly fix the problem.  

You can easily connect multiple PC's to your Live Mesh and access any of them using a web browser.  Give it a try and you will be amazed how Live Mesh can sync, share, and access the information you care about—wherever you happen to be.

<InfoTechLeader.com> 

Live Mesh To The Rescue When Hard Drive Crashed

In one of my last posts I talked about how Live Mesh enabled access to files using multiple devices.  Well last week while I was traveling, my hard drive crashed and my PC was inoperable.  Luckily I had backed up my machine just a few days prior to my trip and would plan to restore my machine once I returned home.  My challenge though was to access and update Office files that I had luckily I had placed in our "family" mesh.  I was also fortunate that my son brought his PC for the trip so I logged onto Live Mesh and easily accessed my Word, Excel and OneNote files.  I also accessed my Office files in the mesh from my Windows phone when we were away from our hotel room.  Wow Live Mesh really saved the day!

I would also recommend using Live Mesh to uploaded pictures from your phone as it easily enabled quick distribution to my family members.

<InfoTechLeader.com>

Synchronize Life with Live Mesh

These days we all use multiple information devices (e.g. home PC, work PC, laptop, Mac, mobile phone) although we often struggle to share files across these devices.  Emailing files to yourself is a common way to get a file from one device to another or carrying a small USB drive.  Microsoft Live Mesh changes all of this by automatically synchronizing files across the devices you have connected to your "mesh".  

I use Live Mesh everyday to edit documents using my home PC and work laptop and behind the scenes Live Mesh synchronizes the files to be certain that I am always using the latest file.  I also use Live Mesh to share documents and pictures with friends and family using a Live Mesh folder that is controlled by security.  Files are automatically synchronized in the Live Mesh folder across the devices for all users.  This enables authorized users to collaborate on documents and seamlessly share files such as pictures.  The Live Mesh folder tracks all history so users have a clear view to who has changed what files and when. 

I have also started to use Live Mesh from my mobile phone to upload pictures to folders and access Office documents.  I no longer have to worry about if I have documents stored on my phone as I can always access files from a web browser.  Live Mesh includes 5GB of free storage to synchronize and share files.  Another cool feature is the ability to use a computer remotely so you can access files and programs as if you were sitting in front of that remote computer.

Live Mesh is a great solution for synchronizing your information no matter where you or what device you are using.

<infotechleader.com>

Enable A Windows Live Experience for Your Domain

Want to use the world's best e-mail platform and web services with your custom domain name?  Well you can for free using Windows Live.

Configuration can be completed easily assuming you already own a domain name.  I use godaddy.com for hosting my domain names and have found their service easy to use, cost effective, and reliable.

Steps for enabling Windows Live Hotmail email for your domain name:

• Step 1 - Navigate and login to the Windows Live Admin Center.
• Step 2 - Provide your domain name.
• Step 3 - Read and agree to the terms of condition.
• Step 4 - Review the DNS information that must be used to configure the MX and TXT records in your domain settings.  I have provided an example of the settings using GoDaddy's Domain Manager.
• Step 5 - refresh the page to confirm that the DNS configuration settings are correct and working (note it may take up to 48 hours for your registrar to propagate these changes to the internet).
• Step 6 - After step 5 has successfully confirmed the settings, click on "Member Accounts" in the left hand menu to begin adding email accounts.  Click on "Add" and complete the required information for each email account (note that the "Member Accounts" item will not appear in the menu until the configuration has been confirmed in step 5).
• Step 7 - logon to Windows Live and start using your new email account.

There is no need to pay for e-mail services with your custom domain when you can get Windows Live Hotmail with an integrated Windows Live Calendar service for free.

There are other Windows Live services that can be used with your custom domain such as maps, spaces, and search.  For example, http://maps.yourcustomdomain.com could point to a specific location at maps.live.com.