Helmers Blog

This year I won’t be reporting live from Tech-Ed, but Microsoft will be broadcasting the Tech-Ed Europe Keynote Live from Berlin!

Just check out the Microsoft Tech-Ed Global Virtual Pressroom for the feed, or watch it below

Xbox LIVE invites you to Xtival ’07: a three-day extravaganza of FREE Xbox LIVE Gold gaming. For 72 hours you’ll be able to play your favourite games against your mates, wherever they are – or you can jump in and enjoy Xbox LIVE on your own. Don’t miss our exciting competitions, Developer Jam Sessions and loads more free gaming goodness. So stick it in your diary and get ready for the gaming event of the year.

Just check the Xtival homepage for more information (and the line-up), I think the Xtival event is only happening in Europe (yeah it’s a European festival only as you can read on the Ubisoft website).

More info about Xtival ’07 (English)

If English isn’t your native language, visit one of the links below for info in your own language : Meer informatie over Xtival ’07 (Dutch) Plus d’information plus de Xtival ’07 (French) Mehr Info vorbei Xtival ’07 (German) Più Info sopra Xtival ’07 (Italian) Más Info encima Xtival ’07 (Spanish)

Now Sabeer has decided to challenge the cash cow (Microsoft Office) of the same company that made him a millionaire.

Today he has launched Office Live Documents – an online+offline Office suite of programs similar to Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Like Zoho Office and Google Docs, Live Documents lets you create, edit and share Office documents in the web browser.

All your edits are automatically synchronized with all other copies of the documents.

And if you own a copy of Microsoft Office, you can download a Live Documents toolbar that makes it easy to upload documents from your Office programs to the Live Documents cloud (very similar to Office Live Workspace).

Live Documents is done in Flex so should work on any system that has the Flash plug-in. Overall, Live Docs sounds like a good concept but they are definitely up against some heavyweights notably Google and Microsoft.

Request invite for Live Documents here. Official site: live-documents.com

Source : Digital Inspiration

No sooner has the Windows Live Wave 2 suite been released than the first Wave 3 beta begins – Windows Live Messenger v9. Unlike the betas that have just finished, the Messenger v9 beta is being run from Microsoft Connect as a private beta, meaning that, for the moment at least, unless you receive an invite, you won’t be able to participate.

For the moment it looks like most previous Windows Live testers are getting invites, so stay tuned to your inbox. With such a popular beta like this, you better sign up quick.

So what’s new? While the goodies aren’t yet available, we’ve heard about Multiple Points Of Presence (MPOP) support, which allows you to signin from multiple devices, ie be online at two places at once.

More coming soon!

Source : LiveSide.NET

A few weeks ago Microsoft launched the new Windows Live Toolbar (the same toolbar you need to use Windows Live Translator). On of the cool new (is it new?) features of the toolbar is the Favorites button. Through this feature you can easily synchronize your Favorites to the Windows Live Favorites server. How does it work?

Step 1 : Download the new Windows Live Toolbar and install it.

Step 2 : Click the Favorites button and click on Sign in

Step 3 : You can synchronize your favorites by selecting Synchronize now from the pull-down menu.

Step 4 : If you like you can change sychronize settings through the Options menu (same pull-down menu).

In the options menu you can let Windows Live Favorites automatically synchronize your favorites with the Windows Live Favorites server.

If you’re at a location and you want to use your favorites, just go to http://favorites.live.com and logon with your Windows Live ID and there they are!