I have been using Windows Live for a little over a year now, and it’s clear that Windows Live offers a phenomenal and underrated suite of services and applications. Here are the services I use the most on a daily basis.

Windows Live Spaces has the potential to be the social networking service. Unlike other social networking services, it really is a space on the web in that it can easily be tailored to personal interests. MySpace and Facebook allow commenting and blogging, but if you’re really into photography, for example, it’s really not possible to focus your profile around it. Spaces offers templates that allow you to showcase exactly what you’re interested in, whether it’s blogging, photography or gaming and provides modules around these. At the same time, Spaces also allows a fantastic amount of customization of colors while maintaining the overall Windows Live feel.

At 5 GB of storage, Windows Live SkyDrive offers an incredible amount of storage while others charge money for over 1 GB.

Unfortunately, Windows Live Favorites is probably going to be discontinued, but it was a fantastic way to store and access favorite webpages from multiple computers. The Windows Live Toolbar made it perfect since favorites were instantly stored online instead of on the local drive.

Windows Live Office is basically it’s like SkyDrive with an emphasis on storing Microsoft Office documents. You can create task lists, notes, workspaces, etc. and upload all your Office documents to the web. The best part of this feature is the fantastic integration with Microsoft Office, as it allows you to save directly to Office Live. By installing an addon, you can have the option of saving all your documents to Office Live. I’ve used this for several school projects and it really simplified everything. Before I used this, our group was sending different versions of a PowerPoint file back and forth. The workspace feature was perfect, and it simplified the process greatly because we were able collaborate on just one file.

The best part of all of these services is that you only one account. Plus Windows Live allows linked accounts. This is so useful for managing separate accounts for personal or school/business use. A single click allows you to switch between accounts and manage all related services. Plus with Live Wave 3 just around the corner, I can only expect that all of these services will get even better.

I don’t really remember how this happened, but suddenly I wanted to play Chip’s Challenge. What a great game. It came with my first PC (first computer was a Macintosh LCIII), a Pentium II Packard Bell with around 5 GB of hard drive space. This was back in the day when not all the Microsoft software bundled with Windows was trial software. The games came with the Best of Microsoft Entertainment Pack. Those were great games, and needless to say I had to relive part of my childhood. Plus, I never beat Chip’s Challenge.

But anyway, I’ve compiled all of these awesome games from the Microsoft Entertainment Pack and they are free for download from my SkyDrive. I’m assuming this stuff is all abandonware by now so, here are these great games in all their retro glory.

Chip’s Challenge

I never beat it, but now that I’m older, hopefully I can beat it this time around.

Download Chip’s Challenge

Link 1 – Link 2 – Link 3

SkiFree

What a weird game. No matter how fast you skiied, a little grey monster would always come down and make you its dinner.

Download SkiFree

Link 1 – Link 2

PipeDream

Okay game. Never really got into it, and it was kind of repetitive. Unfortunately, I could not find the correct version to download.

Link 1

Rodent’s Revenge

A rather interesting game about a super strength mouse squishing cats into catcakes with blocks.

Download Rodent’s Revenge

Link 1

The other games were pretty boring – just card games, so I didn’t include those. Here are links to the Best of Microsoft Entertainment Pack and an archive of old games.

Search engines are outdated. All other web based services have improved and developed over time. Webapps have become more like desktop applications with fancy animations, drag and drop and all sorts of great features, but search engines still retain the basic format they had when they first appeared.

All search engines are pretty much the same in terms of how the results are delivered. They are static pages with a list of text results, a search box on top and additional pages on the bottom. Obviously there’s a great deal that can be improved. Some search engines are much more innovative in the way information is presented, such as ask.com and the much hyped cuil.com.

ask.com has many notable features. It’s the only search engine (that I know of) that actually detects your screen resolution and takes advantage of wasted space. All other search engines simply leave swaths of wasted space if you are one of the many who have higher resolution monitors. It also displays helpful suggestions to narrow and expand your search on the left, and, if you’ve got enough pixels, widget like blocks with news, images, dictionary, synonyms, and encyclopedia terms related to a search term. In addition, instead of scrolling the engine page, search box and all, the navigation acts like a toolbar, allowing easy access when at the bottom of the page. The only thing that could be improved is if they extended this concept to the search pages. It also has a very useful preview feature that allows you to scope out a page before clicking. It’s also got a useful search history, which is useful, for lack of better ways to expand upon the idea.

cuil.com is that much hyped new browser created by former Googlers. The search is pretty bad, but I’m only focusing on user interface for now. Cuil has a refreshing user interface and is much more fun to use than boring text results like the other search engines. Its design seems rather forward thinking in that it takes advantage of horizontal screen real estate more than Google, Yahoo and Windows Live. After all, if you can set options to show results as text or icons on your computer, why not on the web? It functions much more like Windows Explorer in the way the results can be displayed, as results can be sorted into columns. However, it does not allow the option to change into text results, which can be a problem.

There’s a few other sites such as Yahoo Alpha and Searchmash that implement a customizable sidebar, but the customization options could be much improved.

But really what these search engines have done is just the tip of the iceberg. So much more can be done to improve search. Here are just some ideas for improving the feature set of search engines.

1. Stationary navigation and search box. When you search on the computer and scroll through the results, does the navigation disappear? It stays on top so you can easily modify your search. Cuil gets this right.
2. Modifiable sidebar. Ask gets this right. Windows Live tries, but the implementation isn’t nearly as good as Ask’s. But a sidebar could do so so much more. Essentially you could add custom search widgets. For example, if you want a glance of images along with your results, add an image widget. Users can also submit custom widgets for their sites or for well known sites like Wikipedia. Some other widgets could be definition, antonym and synonym, encyclopedia, or news.
3. Easily accessible advanced search . All search engines create a huge disconnect when users want to select advanced search. Most lead to another page, and Ask creates an irritating popup which disappears. The problem is that for all of these advanced search features, the advanced search box just disappears after searching, leaving less skilled users with custom tags like -,”", +, site:, link: etc. Few are familiar with all of the modifiers to fully take advantage of the features. Advanced search options should slide down from under the search box, much like Vista’s advanced search, and it should remain until the user chooses to close it.
4. Search suggestions. Every search engine needs them.
5. Search other sites. Suppose you search many different sites, you can add options to search other sites from within the search engine.
6. Results view option. The ability to switch between thumbnails and list view would be great. I’m tired of text.
7. Some sort of self improving cloud thing – Like Apple’s Genius feature, but with search. Basically instead of improving a music selection algorithm (lame), it would improve search. I’m not quite sure how this could work, but it’s possible.
8. Stationary advertisements on the left. It would improve visibility and clicks, so everyone benefits. Results would stay in the middle.
9. Change results per page. Use a slider like the magnification on in Office 2007.
10. Notepad. Windows Live, Google and Tafiti have one, but each only works for a particular search, such as images or web. This feature should be available for all kinds of search, and could be stored along with a web history.

If I had the skill I would definitely try to throw something together. These are great (I think) ideas that would really improve web search.

The new iPod Nano has been revealed, and I can’t help but feel that the designers were completely out of ideas. This new generation iPod Nano was marked by, aside from much needed storage and value improvements, more superficial modifications. Genius music suggestions (sells more songs), “nanochromatic” colors (seems like a last resort to get people to buy one), accelerometer (only useful on the Touch and iPhone) and touts regarding its environmental friendliness (which isn’t a bad thing). All of these seem like nothing more than gimmicks.

Take the accelerometer. It’s key function is to allow for the Cover Flow feature to work when the iPod is flipped horizontally. Both the last generation Nano and new one have the same screen resolution, and the only difference is that the new one has been reoriented to be vertical. If they had left the more squarish design, the accelerometer wouldn’t even be necessary. But then they slapped on a frivolous “shake to shuffle” feature to make it seem useful. If the screen was larger at all, the accelerometer might make sense, but it’s not.

In terms of value the new Nano is catching up with its competitors, but I’m still not ready to buy it yet. I’ve been spoiled by the fantastic voice recorder and FM radio on my Sandisk Sansa. Until then, the value proposition just isn’t there. I’d still readily buy a Sandisk View or Zune. I will admit that the color gimmick is working great, because that two tone orange looks incredible.

The web is buzzing about Google’s foray into the browser arena with Google Chrome. With all the development of web applications and such, Chrome has potential to gain some significant market share since it is apparently designed with those in mind.

Yes, a browser, which many people – incorrectly by the way – consider a substitute operating system is definitely a better move than the once-rumored “Google OS.” – PC Mag

With all this talk about cloud computing and speculation that computers will become nothing more than portals to the web, this response seems way off the mark. Google’s browser could essentially become the operating system, since a browser would be the only software needed to run web apps in this future of computing. In addition, the way Chrome is described in the comic creates the impression that it is almost like an operating system of some sort since it handles each task separately and has its own task manager. If Chrome is successful, every other browser will start to take on OS qualities.

What happened to the old fashioned way of creating a larger user base through actual improvement of the service or software? That’s how Microsoft did it in the past with Office, and it has dominated the market through being the best product.

Now it seems their  prevailing tactic of increasing market share is by throwing money in the form of prizes at the problem. Microsoft Live Club entices users to use Windows Live Search through prizes, Live Search Cashback gives cash back for purchases and Windows Live for Mobile is running a summer giveaway for sending emails with the service. While I’m not complaining about the opportunity to win free swag like Zunes and such, this seems like a highly ineffective tactic. After playing games at Live Club, my impression of Live Search was not any better than before playing the games, because its service just was not as good. After all, when has Google ever run a “summer contest” for using Gmail mobile? Ultimately, I still end up using Live.com only for its definition search, because it is actually better than Google’s.

While the prizes are just a drop in the bucket, wouldn’t all that effort be better spent improving the service itself? Google seems to be able to constantly churn out fantastic updates to its services like Gmail and Docs, while Windows Live services such as Spaces, Favorites, and SkyDrive just seem to sit neglected with no apparent updates. I would much rather use Live Search if the effort spent redesigning the Club homepage was spent adding even the simplest new feature to Live Search itself.

Why buy overpriced Apple products when there are plenty of superior alternatives? Buy This, Not That was inspired by the book Eat This, Not That and Michael’s tech products wishlist. So here are some alternatives to those overhyped Apple products.

Instead of an iPod Shuffle

Just about every music player is superior to this one, and there is absolutely no reason to buy a Shuffle. It has no screen, negligible memory at a premium and is nothing more than an expensive flash drive. The only notable feature is a headphone jack that doubles as a dock connector. Get the Sansa Clip instead, which matches the Shuffle feature for feature and then some. It is just as small as the Shuffle, comes with more memory at a lower price, actually has a screen and adds a radio. Plus, who can turn down that stylish blue on black?

Instead of an iPod Nano

Sure it may seem like a good buy, but as usual it is outmatched by underhyped competitors. Get the Samsung Y Line. As usual, these have the same stats as the iPod and more features all at a lower price. All this comes in a sleeker package and a sweet screen with the same resolution as the Nano’s.

Instead of an iPod Touch

$100 premium just for a touchscreen? Get a Samsung YP-P2JAB instead. The price looks good, the design looks good, there’s no reason you should be getting the Touch. The only bad feature on this player is the crazy alphanumeric moniker.

Instead of an iPod 80GB

It’s better than last generation’s, but the Microsoft Zune has caught up. Every one of the iPod Classic 80GB’s features are matched or topped by the Zune’s. Get a Zune 80GB, which has a bigger screen, radio, WIFI sharing features, better and a superior user interface! Plus you can receive free custom etchings on the back to customize it!

Instead of an iMac

Just try customizing the iMac with the same specs as the Touchsmart. Get an HP Touchsmart 2. The newly released Touchsmart is thinner, faster, and just plain better than the first generation. And of course there’s always those awesome multi-touch features. It’s the iMac for the Windows user, and your wallet will thank you.

What is the name of yet another time waster? Lively. With Google Lively you can create a virtual avatar for a virtual world to customize to communicate with other virtual characters. As if there is enough time to do that in reality, you can customize the virtual world to your liking.

This is probably the first time Google has spit out such a horrible product. All of its other services are top of the line and virtually indispensable, and suddenly, it slapped some kiddy game into everybody’s faces. As of now, I can’t really see any real methods they can profit through this. Maybe they will start selling virtual items to the people who use this service? After all, Facebook peddles virtual gifts that certain people actual buy with real money, which never ceases to amaze me. Maybe all this virtual junk does have potential.

As it turns out, WordPress theming is not all that difficult. WordPress comes with a great built in theme editor, and creating a new theme is hardly any different from editing basic webpages. The only difficulty is determining what all the classes and ids in the CSS file are referring to, considering the names are obscure and confusing. These are some useful tools and resources that sped up the learning process for me. A WordPress Theme Generator, the Theme Development Codex and the 5 Minute WordPress Theme Guide.