spaces maps plots your blog’s visitors on a map. This is for Windows Live Spaces only as the map is added via a gadget and it also uses Windows Live Local / Virtual earth map, where your visitors are plotted as push-pins and you can zoom in/out.

With no code pasting required, you can get a map on your Space in a couple of minutes. This is still in beta and be prepared to see a lot of changes to it. Give spaces maps a try and any feedback is welcome…

From Bink.nu

The US military is blocking troops from using certain websites for sharing photos, video clips and messages. A memo from General BB Bell, US Forces Korea commander, says use of YouTube, MySpace and 11 other popular sites via US military portals will be blocked. The US says the use is taking up too much bandwidth and slows down the military’s computer system. But a US Strategic Command spokesman said a “secondary benefit” was to help operational security.

BBC defence and security correspondent Rob Watson says the decision could stop thousands of soldiers from communicating with friends and loved ones. For many US soldiers serving overseas, YouTube and other similar websites are a popular way of keeping in touch, he says.

The spokesman for US Strategic Command and Joint Task Force-Global Network Operations said: “As these sites have become more and more popular, they’ve had an impact on bandwidth resources and network availability and we’re having to restrict use of some of them.” He denied that the military was unhappy with the nature of content being posted. “We’re not stopping anybody looking at anything. It’s not the nature of the stuff being posted.”

However, he added: “Wherever you have sites this popular, you have the potential for malicious activity. A secondary benefit of restricting use of these sites is for operational security.” The block on accessing such websites will not affect those soldiers with their own personal computers. Those, though, are few and far between in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, our correspondent says. The Pentagon only recently started posting its own videos on YouTube, showing soldiers in action in Iraq in a move designed to reach out to a younger audience and to show the successes of the US military.

In two months, the Multi-National Force-Iraq channel has climbed to 16th in YouTube’s most subscribed-to listing and has, the military says, just passed the one million video-views mark. The BBC’s Laura Smith-Spark in Washington says the channel is also a belated attempt to counter the influence of Islamist extremist groups, that have used the internet to post footage of hostages or attacks on US forces.

Source: BBC News

That’s right, pictoral evidence concludes the long lost wait for the name of Windows Server “Longhorn”. As discovered on the Microsoft France website, here we have, the logo for Windows Server 2008.

Source: http://zacks.spaces.live.com

I’ve just written a post on how big Windows Live is (basically my way of spreading a few links that aren’t very well documented around the web. It’s worth a look, there are at least 7 there which you might not even know exists.

View at source.

Windows Live Folders is the front end view for what is to become Live Drive (note, there’s no Windows to prefix this, such as Live Search and Live Maps), which is a central storage system for your files and important documents. Using Windows Live ID, you can sign in and upload/download and modify your files, whilst allowing only yourself to view certain files and letting others including the world view others.

Personal folders include files and folders which is only for you and your eyes only. You can access this by signing in and accessing your personal documents, backups and contacts.

Shared folders is there to enable you to share documents with other users, friends and family. You’ll need to sign in to access these if you’re a third-party person and if you’re on the access list then you’ll be able to get access to this folder.

Public folders are for everyone, so you can look in anyones public folders.

It’s far from ready yet - I can’t access my files and folders due to a .NET Framework error message (standard problem) so there are a few things to iron out, but in due time the storage will expand to an expected 5/10GB and rumour of a desktop application and a mobile site coming soon.

Note: US users only - however you can work around this - go to Windows Live Account and change your region to “United States”. Wait around 4 hours for this to take affect and you should be well on your way.

Go to Windows Live Folders
More information

Update: Thanks Chris, you’re a good man, you uncovered the story nicely. Big thanks to Chris at LiveSide for making this known to the world. But I’m not linking back to you

IE7Pro is a plug-in for Internet Explorer 7 (duh!). But I must say I was pretty sceptical about using it as I don’t really like plug-ins.  There is something different about this… It is easy to download and install, no spy-ware and above really makes IE7 easier and  maybe fun to use.

I like the Super Drag and Drop and the Mouse gestures features and I was thinking why didn’t IE7 integrate these features when it released? The  userscripts integration (similar to Greaskmonkey, FF) and save ‘Current Tab to Image‘ option was very useful and did save quite a bit of time. So there you go everyone… Go download IE7Pro  and enjoy your IE7 as it should be.

Visit http://www.ie7pro.com/ for more details and a list of all the features.

Google News gave me such a terrible summary and definetly not related to the article. Looks like they are trying to integrate adsense to their news story? (jk)

There are two new websites we feel you should know about, which seem to be targeted at British users in the UK. The first is www.newhotmail.co.uk which tells you a bit more about Windows Live Hotmail and some of the history to it. You can also update your Hotmail to the new interface with all the jam packed new features of the Windows Live Hotmail product as well.

The second one is www.emailbritain.co.uk which is a promotional site for Windows Live Hotmail, where as the website states, “is creating the first ever national archive of emails in conjunction with the British Library. The Email Britain book, recording a snapshot of British life by email, will be permanently archived for generations to come.” So submit your emails to them and have them listed in the British Library Email book.

Hotmail has been around for… 6, 7 years… oh for a bloody long time, but the time has come at long last! Windows Live Hotmail has replaced MSN Hotmail for the good of the good of the electronic mail community. But never fear! All the old email addresses being hotmail.com and hotmail.co.** with the two asterisks indicating the country domain, uk for the United Kingdom, jp for Japan, nz for New Zealand and so forth - they stick and you’ll always be able to use them from now on.

Windows Live Hotmail will be rolling out around about now. Those who want to stick with some reference to the old Hotmail style design… you can’t, but you can use the “Light client” which lets you browse through your messages in the old sluggish way that Hotmail users are used to.

“Windows Live Mail” will be the new name of Windows Live Mail desktop, and Windows Mail and Outlook Express are being phased out. Don’t worry, it’ll be alright for you new users - change is good sometimes