Mother's Day is fast approaching and what better way to show your Mom you care than to enter her in a photo contest!  While I'm still working to get my Mom to join the online community, we have a fun way you all can recognize your own Mom and help her learn how to share all those family photos on her PC with the family and friends! Portraits of Mom is a contest that lets you showcase Mom using Windows Live by either posting her picture to Windows Live Spaces or visiting one of our temporary retail locations to have her photo taken by a professional. Anyone who doesn't work at Microsoft can enter their Mom's photo into the contest for a chance to win awesome prizes.

Visit http://www.portraitsofmom.com/ and use Windows Live Photo Gallery to upload your favorite photo of your Mom. Show off your photo on your Windows Live Space, and tell your Mom she's featured along with all the great Moms on the site. Then get her friends and family to vote for her picture posted on http://www.portraitsofmom.com/. If you don't have Windows Live Photo Gallery, you can download it for free along with the rest of the Windows Live suite at http://get.live.com/.

If your Mom or members of your family are in New York or San Francisco over the next two weeks, take them to visit the Windows Live Portrait Studios, a temporary "photo studio" where they'll be treated to a professional portrait sitting. After a quick stylist make-over, she can include the family, a pet or friends in her personal portrait...and the best part is that it's all for free!  For location details, click here.

If you're in Seattle, bring your Mom to the Woodland Park Zoo on May 10 and 11 and get a free photo taken by our Quick Snaps team.  Just find the Quick Snaps team - who will be wearing lots of Windows gear- and they'll snap a photo of Mom and her family or friends.  She'll get a free copy of the photo on the spot, complete with instructions on how to sign up for a Windows Live ID and participate in the Portraits of Mom photo contest!

So come on, celebrate Mothers Day by showing your Mom some love!

In Part 1 of my 4 part series of blog posts looking at the Origami Experience 2.0 software, I am going to talk about one of the most important new experiences in the new release: browsing the web directly in Origami Central. Origami Central, one of the three apps in the Origami Experience, has the built in capability to browse webpages just as you would in IE7. ActiveX controls work just fine in the browsing experience of Origami Central - as does Flash and Silverlight (demo video below!).

In Origami Central, the browsing experience is tied to the toolbar that auto-hides at the top of the window.

Because the toolbar auto-hides, I get a full screen web browsing experience and with a UMPC running at 1024x600 resolution without toolbars and other things taking up useful screen real-estate.

Just like in IE7, I can use the address bar in Origami Central to do web searches. But in Origami Central, when I type something in the address bar (a phrase or URL), it searches through the history of websites I have already visited. I typed in "windows" into the address bar and these 3 previously visited websites came up:

To do web searches, Origami Central provides a really unique way of searching the web using Live Search. When I type in a search term, it provides a list of popular searches that change depending on the term of course. It also provides previous searches I've made.

Basic functionality for web browsing such as adding favorites also exists in Origami Central. In the toolbar, when I click the gadget-looking icon a list of options appears over the website I am on. Those options allow me to add the site to my favorites (which uses the same favorites as IE), add the site's RSS to my RSS feeds, take a snapshot of the site, or use the zoom capabilities.

When I take a snapshot of a website, it takes a complete "freeze" of the page I am at. I can go back to that site and read the site or access links etc. I can even scroll down to view other parts of the site (as long as it's on the same page of course).

My favorites, history, and snapshots are all available in my "Library" by clicking the star icon in the toolbar.

Origami Central also has touch capabilities as well but I think perhaps my demo video will be better at showcasing that feature (as well as the above mentioned features of web browsing in Origami Central. Take a look!

Web Browsing with Origami Central

In the demo video, I utilize the touch capabilities in Origami Central to navigate Photosynth from Microsoft Live Labs. You can also see the overall experience of browsing the web via Origami Central first hand.  I apologize in advance for some parts of the video (like where it sounds like I said "stylist" instead of stylus).

Stay tuned for Part 2 in which I discuss the new RSS capabilities in Origami Experience 2.0 with Origami Central.

The Speech Components Group has announced the availability of Windows Speech Recognition Macros (WSRMacros) Technical Preview. The WSRMacros is a tool designed to extend the Windows Speech Recognition capabilities already in Windows Vista today using Macros. These Macros are triggered using spoken commands using Windows Speech Recognition in Windows Vista.

Download: Windows Speech Recognition Macros Technical Preview

These Macros can perform a single task or a series of tasks. These tasks can be very complex using custom JScript/VBScript actions or as simple as inserting your email address someplace.

You can send feedback on Windows Speech Recognition Macros to listen@microsoft.com. Your questions and comments will help make Windows Speech Recognition Macros even better!

In the next couple weeks, I'll be doing a 4 part series on the Origami Experience 2.0 which was announced at CES this year. The Origami Experience software is a "pack" of applications designed specifically for the Ultra Mobile PC (UMPC) running Windows Vista.

The Origami Experience 2.0 software comes with 3 applications that do specific tasks on the UMPC. I'll give a quick overview of these applications in which I'll go into greater detail in my 4 part series of posts about the Origami Experience 2.0.

Origami Central:

Origami Central provides quick access to your Media Library on your UMPC. That means your music, photos and videos. Origami Central lets you play your music, watch your videos and watch photo slideshows. On top of letting you access your media, it also gives you quick access to favorite programs on your UMPC like Microsoft Office OneNote 2007. In the Origami Experience 2.0 - Origami Central comes with a brand new browsing experience. You can now browse the web using Origami Central is full-fidelity web browsing - 100% compatible with IE7. That means you can browse sites that use Flash and other ActiveX controls. It also comes with a RSS feed reader also new to this release.

Origami Now:

Origami Now is a brand new application for the UMPC with the release of Origami Experience 2.0. It is designed to bring you information useful to you very quickly without much interaction. It does this by giving you the ability to customize "tiles". You can navigate between these tiles and their information. What kind of information can be in the tiles? You can configure tiles for weather, email, RSS and more. 

Origami Picture Password:
You can use Origami Picture Password to login to your UMPC.

I'm using the Samsung Q1 Ultra UMPC to run the Origami Experience 2.0 on (exact model number and specs here). It works wonderfully for me.

So I've broken up my 4 part series on the Origami Experience 2.0 software into the following parts:

Origami Experience2.0 Part 1: Web Browsing
Origami Experience 2.0 Part 2: RSS
Origami Experience 2.0 Part 3: Media
Origami Experience 2.0 Part 4: Origami Now

Expect part 1 soon!

Today Microsoft is unveiling a technology preview to a really neat new software+services platform called Live Mesh. Live Mesh is a brand new platform that helps your devices act together through the internet enabling users such as you and me to manage, access, and share their files and applications from nearly anywhere. By bringing user's files, applications, and devices together along with the combination of social networking (such as with news feeds) - Live Mesh creates a unique platform experience.

First and foremost Live Mesh is a new platform.  The first phase of the technology preview process provides a foundational experience that exposes core concepts and functionality of the platform.  In the near future developers can expect to be able to take advantage of Live Mesh to extend their software to the Web, and their services to the desktop and devices.

Today's technology preview is a pre-Beta release designed to get early feedback to make the platform even better.

I've been lucky to be given the chance to play with Live Mesh for the last couple weeks. I've had a great experience with Live Mesh so far and thought I'd share my experiences with you.

So the first thing I did was logged in to http://www.mesh.com/. Live Mesh of course supports Windows Live ID. After logging in with my Windows Live ID - I am taken to the screen where I can add/remove devices to my "mesh".

To set up folders to sync with my devices in my "mesh" I need to go to my Live Desktop. This is essentially your device in the cloud where I can manage all my Live Mesh Folders when I'm not in front of one of my usual PC or mobile. You create folders in your Live Desktop and choose which devices you want to sync them with (after you add them to your Live Mesh of course). You'll notice I have three PCs added to my Live Mesh.

On my Live Desktop I have three folders I've created. The first Live Mesh Folder I created was the one you see here called "Mesh". I use this folder to toss files that get synced to the Live Mesh cloud - and then synced to all my Live Mesh devices. You'll notice that the Live Mesh folks have tried to present a familiar approach to file management. You can even drag the folder window to any place on your Live Desktop.

After creating a folder on my Live Desktop, I can choose to sync it with specific devices in my Live Mesh. I chose to sync with all devices. Because the Live Mesh client was installed on my PCs, the "Mesh" Live Mesh Folder automatically appeared on the desktop of all of those PCs I chose to sync with.

When I open the "Mesh" Live Mesh Folder on any of my Windows Vista PCs the standard Windows Explorer window opens but with a Live Mesh addition on the right-hand side. The Mesh Bar on the Windows Explorer window lets me access my Live Mesh information for that folder.

Each Live Mesh Folder has a News Feed where it displays a history of information like when files were added, when they were removed, as well as who added them and notes. This experience exists both on my Windows desktops as well as my Live Desktop.  

A Live Mesh client sits on my Windows PCs in the taskbar. I can use it to quickly access my Live Mesh "stuff" (Live Mesh Folders, devices and news).

I have three tabs that you can switch between my news feed for all my Live Mesh Folders, my Devices, and my news.

From the Devices tab, I can use Live Mesh Remote Desktop to easily access any of my PCs. Building on the awesome Windows Remote Desktop technologies - I can login to any of my PCs running Live Mesh. You'll see that Live Mesh Remote Desktop also has a Mesh Bar.

I can also login to my PCs remotely using Live Mesh via the website as well.

I continue to use Live Mesh for syncing data and the overall all-out access to my information and devices. The above is just a quick overview of my experiences. To quickly recap - Live Mesh provides me with a way to manage and interact with all my data, devices and people.

You can read more about today's Live Mesh Technology Preview announcement from Amit Mital who is the General Manager for Live Mesh on the Windows Live Dev Blog. Keep your eyes on the Live Mesh Blog as well. Noah Edelstein, Group Program Manager for Mesh Platform Experiences, has a in-depth post discussing Live Mesh and possibly answering your questions about Live Mesh - like why you should care about this platform experience.

Channel 10's Nic Fillingham has a great hands-on video of Live Mesh worth checking out! Watch it here in Silverlight bliss:

Hands on with Live Mesh

I believe this is Nic's first video since joining the Channel 10 Team. I look forward to seeing more from Nic in the future.

Oh and Jon Udell over on Channel 9 got a chance to sit down with Ray Ozzie to discuss his role as Chief Software Architect and discusses Microsoft's overall software+services strategy.  

You can sign up to get an invite to test Live Mesh for yourself here by logging in with your Windows Live ID.

Today I've got some pretty neat new Sidebar Gadgets to tell you about for Windows Sidebar.

If you're into Baseball, you'll like this new Gadget. Fox Sports on MSN is offering a Fantasy Baseball Gadget brought to you by People-Ready Business from Microsoft.

With this Gadget, you can check up on Fantasy Baseball news, check player stats, and create your own roster. This Gadget requires Adobe Flash so if you're running Windows Vista x64 (like me), you'll need to run Windows Sidebar under 32-bit. To do that in Windows Vista x64 - just go to C:/Program Files (x86)/Windows Sidebar and execute sidebar.exe from there.

Download the People-Ready Fantasy Baseball Gadget here.

Another new Gadget to check out is the brand new MSN Video Gadget for Windows Sidebar. The MSN Video Team announced its availability today along with some highlights as to what you can do with the Gadget on their blog.

Download the MSN Video Gadget here.

Got a Sidebar Gadget recommendation? Would love to hear them!

Brandon Paddock, who works on the Windows Shell Team here at Microsoft, wrote a Windows Sidebar Gadget that displays the status of the Windows Search Indexer.

Download the Indexer Status Gadget here.

I don't know about you but I think it's kind of neat being able to see how many files Windows Search has indexed on my PC right from my desktop. For folks giving the Windows Search 4.0 Preview a try, you can enable "Index Now" functionality (which is reflected in the above screenshot).

Brandon Paddock developed this gadget on his own time and isn't officially supported by Microsoft. Brandon also developed the Start++ search add-on for Windows Vista.

We're announcing quite a few new languages available of the Windows Search 4.0 Preview today.

The following languages are available for download for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008:

• Arabic (Only for Windows Vista/Windows Server 2008)
• Brazilian Portuguese
• Bulgarian
• Chinese - Simplified
• Chinese - Traditional
• Croatian
• Czech
• Danish
• Dutch
• English (There is no MUI pack for English)
• Estonian
• Finnish
• French
• German
• Greek
• Hebrew (Only for Windows Vista/Windows Server 2008)
• Hungarian
• Italian
• Japanese
• Korean
• Latvian
• Lithuanian
• Norwegian - Bokmål
• Polish
• Portuguese
• Romanian
• Russian
• Serbian - Latin
• Slovak
• Slovenian
• Spanish
• Swedish
• Thai
• Turkish
• Ukrainian

Please take note that the following languages are available on Windows XP/Windows Server 2003 only with an MUI pack:

• Bulgarian
• Croatian
• Estonian
• Latvian
• Lithuanian
• Romanian
• Serbian - Latin
• Slovak
• Slovenian
• Thai
• Ukrainian

Got feedback on the Windows Search 4.0? We've got several places that you can go to leave your feedback:

• For general discussion with Windows Search engineers and team members you can head over to this MSDN Forum.
• For developer discussion, head over to this MSDN Forum.
• For general (no-reply) feedback on Windows Search, you can submit feedback here.

As you may have read, the Beta release of Windows Live OneCare 2.5 is now available on Microsoft Connect for folks to start testing. I of course went ahead and installed Windows Live OneCare 2.5 to give it a spin myself. So what's new with Windows Live OneCare 2.5? After installing the Beta myself, I didn't notice anything different over the non-Beta version. I decided to ping the Windows Live OneCare team to see what we can expect with Windows Live OneCare 2.5. They tell me that the Windows Live OneCare 2.5 release is mainly what they call an "under-the-hood" release. That means that we won't see any big  new features like the great OneCare Circle introduced in 2.0.  Going forward with the Windows Live OneCare 2.5 Beta - continue to expect the improvements and changes to remain "under-the-hood" and not very noticeable in the UI.

In testing the Windows Live OneCare 2.5 Beta, I noticed after installing it on one of my PCs and signing in with my Windows Live ID that contains my OneCare Subscription - it was not displaying my OneCare Circle. This was because I was running the non-Beta version of Windows Live OneCare on my other PCs. When signing in with your Windows Live ID that contains your OneCare Subscription in Windows Live OneCare 2.5 Beta - it creates a new subscription for testing purposes. In order for me to take advantage of my complete OneCare Circle, I will need to install Windows Live OneCare 2.5 on my other PCs. I don't have to worry because this won't affect my OneCare Subscription in any way and I can always uninstall Windows Live OneCare 2.5 Beta and go back to the non-Beta version of Windows Live OneCare.

Interesting in giving Windows Live OneCare 2.5 Beta a try? Just click here to go to Microsoft Connect and fill out the short survey. All feedback for Windows Live OneCare 2.5 Beta should be submitted via Microsoft Connect.

Remember - it's important to stay "green" with Windows Live OneCare. And by that, we mean keeping your OneCare status green ;-)

For the last week, I had been using one of the photos I took on my recent trip around Washington State as my desktop wallpaper. It was an image I took in the Columbia River Gorge near an abandoned railroad track. I got down really close to the railroad track for a really interesting shot. I think it looks really neat as a desktop wallpaper so I thought I'd create a range of different sizes of the image to share with you - the readers of the Windows Vista Team Blog - to use as your desktop wallpaper on your PC.

I've created a range of sizes of the wallpaper for you to download depending on your display resolution via Windows Live SkyDrive:

The shot was taken using the Certified for Windows Vista DSLR Canon Digital Rebel XTi.

Let me know what you think!

Yesterday, our friends on the Windows Mobile Team have announced Windows Mobile 6.1 at CTIA Wireless 2008 in Las Vegas. Windows Mobile Program Manager Mel Sampat made the announcement on the Windows Mobile Team Blog which also includes information on devices and carriers that will get upgrades to Windows Mobile 6.1. Keep your eyes on their blog for more Windows Mobile 6.1 information in the near future. You can also watch Microsoft President of Entertainment and Devices Division Robbie Bach's CTIA Keynote from CTIA Wireless 2008 by clicking here!

I've had the pleasure of running around with Windows Mobile 6.1 on my Samsung BlackJack II for the last few weeks and would like to share some notable improvements and new features I've taken notice of with you.

The first thing I took notice of with Windows Mobile 6.1 was the new Home Screen. The Home Screen has been redesigned to accommodate easier navigation with "tiles". This is pretty much my most favorite feature and improvement in Windows Mobile 6.1.

Windows Mobile 6.1 Home Screen Demo

By default, I had tiles for my clock, communications (missed calls, emails, etc), Appointments, and Settings. I can scroll up or down on my BlackJack II to access different tiles and when I'm on a specific tile - I can then navigate left or right to access different parts of that tile.

As you see in the above screenshots - I can navigate to both my Hotmail and Outlook email in the same tile. I'm calling the tile my communications tile because it essentially handles all my communications like missed calls, voicemails, text messages and email - not an official name by any means. When this tile isn't selected, the UI is designed to display everything in a single line. That means at quick glance I can always see how many emails, voicemails and text messages I have.

The Settings tile allowed me to quickly change my ringtone or background as well as quickly access Wireless Manager. It also showcases the brand new Task Manager in Windows Mobile 6.1.

The new Task Manager allows me to quickly stop apps I have running on my phone to clear up some memory. The new Task Manager is slick but honestly - I've not used it much.

 However I can tell you about another feature I do use quite a bit: threaded SMS messaging.

This is awesome especially when sending text messages back and forth to the same person.

So what else is there? I've experienced improved performance and battery life after going to Windows Mobile 6.1. I could definitely feel a performance change after going from Windows Mobile 6 to 6.1 which is great.

Windows Mobile 6.1 also comes with improved Windows Live for Windows Mobile integration. Matter a fact, as you saw in the video above - there is a specific tile for Windows Live. This tile displays your Messenger display picture and personal status message. Your Hotmail isn't the only thing that gets synced - your Windows Live Contacts are synced to your phone as well. I rely on the close Windows Live integration extensively. I'm going to talk about Windows Live on Windows Mobile and syncing my Windows Live stuff to my Windows Mobile phone more in-depth in a later post.

Overall, I find Windows Mobile 6.1 an exciting release. It has certainly improved my mobile device experience. Windows Mobile 6.1 devices should work just fine with Windows Mobile Device Center. I use Windows Mobile Device Center quite a bit to get photos of my Windows Mobile phone into Windows Live Photo Gallery or to throw a song or two on to my phone. You can download Windows Mobile Device Center 6.1 for Windows Vista here.

Another announcement that happened at CTIA Wireless 2008 is that a new version of Live Search for Windows Mobile is on its way. Phil Holden, a Director here at Microsoft that works on the marketing group responsible for the Live Services on Windows Mobile (such as Live Search), has a detailed blog post explaining the new things we can expect in the upcoming new release of Live Search for Windows Mobile. Some of the new features coming in the new release is the ability to map your contacts using Live Search Maps, access your Live Search Maps Collections, and Weather. I use the current version of Live Search Maps for Windows Mobile on my phone today and love it. It helps me quite a bit - especially in regards to traveling and tracking traffic with Live Search Maps.