Windows Live Gallery retired

If you happen to visit gallery.live.com in search of gadgets, plugins don’t get surprised with this page instead -

The Windows Live Gallery has been retired. In order to focus support on the much richer set of opportunities available for the newest version of Windows, Microsoft is no longer supporting development or uploading of new Gadgets. However, some of the most popular and highest-rated gadgets are still available on the Gadgets page of the Windows Personalization Gallery.

With Windows Developer Preview, developers can create rich app experiences where customers focus on their important tasks. Apps are at the center of the Windows Developer Preview experience and are alive with activity and vibrant content. Users immerse themselves in your full-screen app while Windows gracefully gets out of the way.

Windows Developer Preview allows you to leverage your existing skills and code assets so you can create great experiences for your customers. Gadget and web developers can now use their HTML5 and CSS3 skills to build native Windows apps. .NET Developers can use XAML, C#, and Visual Basic to build beautiful Metro-style apps. Game developers can use the power of DirectX 11.1 to build amazing, immersive gaming experiences. Driver developers benefit from increased productivity with the new, integrated Visual Studio development environment.

With Windows Developer Preview, you’re ready to imagine, build, and sell the next great app.

Hoping to see this for the better !!

(HT to TheWindowsClub )

Windows Live Plug-ins site launched !

The plug-ins are one of the most useful additions to various Windows Live products. These enhances the usefulness immensely. Now a new , neat , clean  site has been created featuring these plug-ins.

http://plugins.live.com/ 

 

For various Windows Live App , it provides many plug-ins arranged category wise, tag cloud and languages which can be arranged in various ways making it very easy.

 

Check out the various plug-ins  from http://plugins.live.com/

 

It also provides information for Plug-in Submission Process, so that if you are a developer , you can submit your plug-ins.

Add Windows 7 Countdown gadget to your blog, desktop

As you know Windows 7 has already RTM’d and is also available to MSDN/TechNet Subscribers since Aug 6th but Windows 7 will be in retail stores and shipping on new PCs starting October 22nd. So how about a Countdown Widget of Windows 7 for it Public Launch? I had to search for a nice third party widget as official widget which can be put on blog/site was not there. Although one can find gadgets on Windows Live Gallery which can be used to put on Sidebars of Vista/Windows7 desktop. Recently I came across a widget which I liked very much and configured it to display it on my blog as shown.

This widget is available at yourminis , one can configure it by clicking on edit me> edit event and filling out the date (22nd Oct), time, event name and link URL. One can also customize the appearance of the widget by clicking on the color picker icon to change the background color, text color, shape and size. Also one can add a skin image URL to provide a skin image. And it provides a Live preview, so whatever you change can be seen there. You can also change the size just by dragging the bottom right part of widget.

if you want to put the same widget as I have, then just click on the ‘copy me’ button (which appears as you mouse over on the top of widget) in my blog, which will provide lots of embed code options to be put on blogger, facebook, bebo, you can mail it also, Vista sidebar, mac dashboard, Yahoo widget and many more. (This code only be put only on blog which supports it and may not be accepted by blogs like Spaces.)

This is the best Countdown widget I have come across and if you also like it , copy the code or configure yourself and put a Windows 7 Countdown Gadget on your Blog, site or Vista sidebar. Get it now !

Windows Live What’s New Sidebar Gadget

In the new Windows Live, one of the best things is the ‘What’s New’ available at Home.Live.com, where you can get the latest updates from Windows Live and other web activities of your network. This is available when you sign-in to your Home.Live.com. Just now I came to know from Angus Logan’s Blog about Windows Live What’s New Sidebar gadget for Windows Vista. Using this gadget one can get all the ‘What’s New’ feed on your desktop. You can receive real-time updates on what your friends are doing, when your friends uploaded new Photos, posted comments, posted new blog posts, what your friend has twittered and many many more web activities across multiple social networks right from your desktop.

Get the Windows Live ‘What’s New’ Sidebar gadget (Beta) from the Windows Live gallery now ! Just download and install it to get it into your Vista Sidebar.

 

Once you sign-in with your Live ID -

 

And if you Undock it from Sidebar, you can view full post

Scroll delay can be set from the options, looks nice when the updates gets scrolled. Also you can go back/forward with the buttons provided. At top it still says Windows Live Beta, so this was created when  Windows Live was in Beta, So expect to remove the Beta tag in the next ver. of the gadget which itself is in beta. The major portion of the work in preparing this gadget was done by summer interns from 2008, informs Dare Obasanjo.

Now talking of New Windows Live, If you haven’t yet checked the new Windows Live’s Home.live.com, check it now.

The Best thing about ‘What’s New’ feed is the level of control to manage these updates:

ShutterSpeed Episode 02

Check out the ShutterSpeed episode #2, an excellent series on Photography and Cameras. This 40 min. video edition covers Photosynth,Microsoft Pro Photo Tools with Geotagging ,What is Metadata and why is it important for photography and Hands-On: Using Windows Live Photo Gallery to import digital photos directly from the camera and much more... Get the opinion, tips from the experts. If you are interested in Photography then do not miss the ShutterSpeed Series. Even if you are not interested watch it to get interest.

ShutterSpeed Episode 02

Beautiful Silverlight Watch

Check this amazing piece of work, created by Michael S. Scherotter (Beauty with Silverlight) in Silverlight 1.0 - The Trainmaster Cannonball watch, a three-dial watch with working night/day, chronograph, and full-screen mode.

Michael worked in Expression Blend and a little JavaScript (It uses Silverlight 1), and came up with: http://xmldocs.net/ball 

 

 

Amazing !! Click on various controls and see how the watch works. The best part is the change to day/night effect, it looks superb. Various controls are shown here:

 

Its also available as Windows Live Gadget and is available at Windows Live Gallery. So this gadget can be put in your Windows Live Spaces or other blog , go here to get it. Thanks Michael !

In fact, you can embed it into any page  using the following html code:

<iframe width="250" height="250" src="http://xmldocs.net/ball" frameborder="0"  scrolling="no" >
    </iframe>

The Silverlight 1.0 application starts up quickly (231k of XAML compressed into a 59k zip file) and takes very little processor power to run.  This entire application shown in the vector graphics format of Silverlight, XAML, with no images. He has also provided the source code and explained how the second hand ticks in.

Please check Ticking in Silverlight Clock + Source Code and

Beauty with Silverlight for more details.

 

Really beautiful and amazing !