Hello All,

I wanted to share my NXE Avatar from my Xbox Live profile.

Another Fable 2 video from the Tokyo Game Show.  In this video, we get a walkthrough of how magic will functionally work in Fable 2.  It seems fairly interesting, if you can get the hang of it (which may be easier said than done).

Here is the second video:

GameTrailers.com has jus uploaded some new videos from TGS 2008.  They look very cool, I can’t wait to get my grubby hands on Fable 2.

Here is the first video about abilities and weapons:

MSN has release a new site that features a collection of wallpapers that you can choose from and cycle through on your computer.  Nice way to get a variety of wallpapers for your desktop. It’s in beta, so standard caveats apply.

Here is the URL: http://wallpapers.msn.com

 Awesome news in my opinion.  Amazon Web Services allows developers to build scalable web apps.  I'm glad they have decided to start using Windows and SQL.  I'm going to consider moving http://misharis.com from my hosting provider to Amazon until Microsoft gets a comparable solution.  Very cool.

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Talking about Amazon Web Services Blog: Coming Soon: Amazon EC2 With Windows
The 32 and 64 bit versions of Windows Server will be available and will be able to use all existing EC2 features such as Elastic IP Addresses, Availability Zones, and the Elastic Block Store. You'll be able to call any of the other Amazon Web Services from your application. You will, for example, be able to use the Amazon Simple Queue Service to glue cross-platform applications together.Existing EC2 tools will be able to launch Windows-powered EC2 instances. Once launched, you can use the Windows Remote Desktop or the rdesktop tool to access your instances.

Hi all,

There are new Windows Live betas available here for the following existing Windows Live client components (get the betas here http://download.live.com/):

• Messenger
• Mail (desktop)
• Writer
• Photo Gallery
• Toolbar
• Family Safety
• Also…Microsoft Office Outlook Connector

There is also a new addition to the Windows Live desktop suite, Movie Maker.  That’s not Windows Movie Maker, but Windows Live Movie Maker.  Yup, that’s right – a new version of Movie Maker.  This version of Movie Maker has a completely new design.  It’s also got direct support for MSN Soapbox for easy upload of videos online.

Also, check out the new Messenger that features multiple points of presence, which basically means you can be signed on in two or more places at once.  The screen shot below is for the new themes in Messenger, they are cooler than they look..

  Very cool - listing of some very interesting animals and the records that they break.

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Record-Breakers Of The Natural World-MSN Environment UK
Delving into the latest edition of the Guinness Book of Records, we highlight some of the most astonishing record breakers from the natural world. Life on earth really doesn’t get more extreme than this. These champion jumpers, swimmers, stingers and survivors can make some human world records seem very feeble indeed.So prepare to be surprised and find out more about each record breaker below.

Photo collages celebrate important events and themes in our lives. Pick a folder, press a button, and in a few minutes AutoCollage presents you with a unique memento to print or email to your family and friends.  Very nifty little program that creates awesome looking photo collages using some cool research from Microsoft Research in Cambridge.  For more information check out http://research.microsoft.com/autocollage/Default.aspx. 

Hello,

This is the video from our henna video, check it out:

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YouTube - Farheen & Saud's Henna Video
  

This is probably the best add for a razor I have ever see.  Forget Tiger Woods and Henry for Mach 5 – instead what daddy and baby.  Check it out:

I just stumbled across this very cool beta from Microsoft Research and a bunch of space agencies, named Microsoft WorldWide Telescope. It’s like Google Earth but for outer space.  It has images from “including the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center, the Spitzer Space Telescope or others” all in a cool DirectX 3D view.  It features 3D views of all the planets and the dwarf planet (or whatever the heck Pluto is right now) along with major Jovian moons.  Screen shots of Jupiter and Neptune:

It also has panoramic views of alien vistas as captured by various landers, rovers, and other robotic exploration vehicles.  Check out the picture below:

You can also click on particular celestial body and pull up details of object such as research information via Wikipedia and SIMBAD, declination, altitude and azimuth (so you can find it using your analog telescope). You can also find the Rise, Transit and Set time for the object.

You can also search for any celestial object and get the WorldWide Telescope to pan and zoom straight to the object.  The search function can also plot the results in the night sky.  WWT provides multiple imagery sources for the the night besides visible light, including Infrared, various Microwave bands, X-ray and Gamma radiation.

WWT also allows connection to a digital telescope control so you can very easily identify what you are looking at in the night sky. There is also a Community function that allows you to connect with other people to share the fun of WWT.

In additional to all of the above these is a very cool Guided Tours function. This function contains various custom made tours of the night sky from the ‘Center of the Milky Way’ to view of Dark Matter to cosmic dust clouds that show starts forming to the X-Ray Sky to Mar landing attempts over the years to view of the Earth’s lights at Night.

Enjoy! :)

Hi,

Thought I'd share the Wii Fit official trailer, in case you haven't seen it.  Soon the machines will control all of us... ;)

Hi All,

I've recently had all kinds of problems with DTC on a VPS Windows Server 2003 SP2 installation.  Well, it turned out to be a simple file mismatch.  The error was "MSDTC.EXE - Entry Point Not Found : The procedure entry point MtxCluGetDtcRegValue could not be located in the dynamic link library MTXCLU.DLL".

All I did was replace MTXCLU.dll with the correct version.  The version I had was a 2005 version, while the version included with Service Pack 2 was at 2007.  Just a simple copy from C:\Windows\ServicePackFiles\i386 into C:\Windows\System32 of the MTXCLU.dll along with MTXDM.dll (didn't receive an error relating to this, but the version mismatched so I figured what the hell).  I also did the standard, rename the msdtc log file, msdtc -uninstall, msdtc - install process after this.  Not sure if this is required to solve the issue, but I figured what the hell.

This also cause the following error in SQL Server 2005's installation: Failed to load SqlSpars.dll.

Hope this helps.

 Hi,

I wanted to let y'all know about the i'm program from Windows Live & Microsoft.  It's a very cool program, that donates money to various causes when you send instant messages through Windows Live Messenger.  All you have to do is add the name of your selected charity to your display name.  In my case, it was unicef so I added *unicef to my display name.  Your contact's won't see the *unicef but the i'm icon (see below's image).

To date, Microsoft has donated 854,397.63 USD since March 2007.  Not bad for doing not a whole lot.

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Hi,

Talk about taking things a little too seriously...  

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Game, set, smash


Check out Mikhail Youzhny as he smacks himself in the head with his tennis racket several times during a match against Nicolas Almagro.

Microsoft's new spring lineup is out and available here:

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/community/promotions/2008/spring/default.htm

A beautiful picture of Prince William Sound in Alaska.  NASA's Earth Observatory site @ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/.  They post new images from various imaging platforms that are looking at Earth.  Most images deal with environmental issues and climate change. They also have an RSS feed available at http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/eo2.rss.

EO Newsroom: New Images - Swirling Sediment in Gulf of Alaska

Hi,

IE8 Beta 1 is out.  Was going to post some interesting stuff about it, but as I was writing in Windows Live Spaces, I had a DEP-crash in IE8 Beta1.

Anyway, I will to to write up that stuff again if I get around to it.  For now just see the below link, or click this link to downlod IE8B1: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/readiness/Install.htm.

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Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit