In an effort to try and find some more information on Windows Live Events and Calendar, I looked through the Spaces help file, to see if that’s been updated with the information soon to hit the press… when I found this.

I personally think it’s a typo, and that Windows Update will not become Windows Live Update. I ran this by one of the guys at LiveSide to see what they thought - they thought pretty much the same as me. Could be something, most likely not. For a start, Windows Update is a computer based service, although runs as an online service. Now that Windows Vista has been released, the website version of Windows Update has now been ported to a Control Panel application, so it’s very doubtful that this is anything in-particular.

But just thought I’d bring it to light anyway

Brandon: Good point! In fact, if I was reading this, I couldn’t have put it better. Thanks for noting this, we’ll adjust accordingly and definately in future. We here at liveandbeyond.com listen and take heed to the blogosphere  

See this? This is the new Windows Live Home (http://home.live.com). For a while now it’s had the basic services, but now it seems to be adding icons for the Windows Live Calendar and Windows Live Events services, which are due to be launched almost imminently. 

With a bit of trickery, you can now access some parts of the new Windows Live services (Events and Calendar) from the main http://home.live.com address. Here’s how:

Make sure you are logged out from Windows Live ID. On the middle-right, you’ll see links to the different services. There’s a jump in the URL format, so obviously replace some numbers in the URL:

It’ll then ask you to sign in, and take you to an Access Denied page on Spaces, thus confirming that Windows Live Events is a Windows Live Spaces application.

Here’s the message you’ll most likely receive:

LiveSide will probably report on this soon - we’ll try and let you know what’s happening as soon as we get it.

Although I’d love to take credit for writing about SkyDrive… I’ll let Chris take it. Go check out Windows Live SkyDrive over at LiveSide.

Check out Windows Live SkyDrive
Read SkyDrive blog
LiveSide’s post

Note: Yes we’ve been away - we’ve either been very (extremely) busy and/or been on holiday. Sorry about the gaps, but it’s hard juggling a full working life and maintaining this and every other bloody blog in the Universe.

OK so this week has seen the release to a small group of testers (including myself, HA!) of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 beta. It’s around 550MB in size and seems to be only available for the x86 processor (at the moment…). Indeed, the build string as pointed out on a number of websites is 6001.16549(longhorn_sp1beta1.070628-1825). There are two kinds of testers - random ones selected from the Windows Vista beta of which have filed an extraordinary amount of bugs during the beta, and a number of participants from the Visual Studio 2008 beta so that certain things can be tested, of which Vista SP1 being a prerequisite.

Also around the same time, Windows XP Service Pack 3 being around 330MB in size, of which we don’t have access to I’m saddened to say, fixes around 900 bugs and problems with the existing Service Pack 2. The build string is 5.1.2600.3180 (xpsp.070718-2058) - according to Bink, people seem to think that the timing of these two beta’s being released, is that the final versions of the products will be released simultaneously.

From working at Microsoft myself - I can tell you, this is unlikely, as target dates are very rarely met.

Some sources: Bink.nu

Channel 8 is the next best thing to come from Microsoft Communities, designed for students, by students, and for students. It’s hosted on the MSDN website so it’s for students developing and getting their hands knee deep in code and suchlike.

It’s been in the works for some time now but it’s almost ready to kick off. Charles who runs Channel 9 says, “The most important aspect of Channel 8 is the Student, not programming languages. We want to provide a place for technical students to call their home on the web; a place to meet and share ideas with fellow thinkers, and this means Channel 8 will be and provide, in time, many things that matter to students”.

See the splash scren - http://channel8.msdn.com.

A new addition to the Microsoft website, along the lines of security as Microsoft seems to be doing a lot of recently. This new subsection of the website devotes itself to displaying information on current threats and also allowing users to submit their own files which are deemed suspicious.

You can search through a vast encyclopedia of information regarding almost every threat under the sun - it even has up to date information on the latest definition files relating to Windows Defender and Microsoft Forefront Client Security, so everyone can keep their systems up to date whether in x86 or x64. This website’s great, you must check it out.

Go and see the Microsoft Malware Protection Center.

Just when Microsoft had customers, partners and competitors all believing that it was going to delay the first service pack for Vista — not releasing a first beta of it until just before year-end — the company is set to deliver Beta 1 of Vista SP1 in mid-July.

Word (from various sources who asked not to be named) is Microsoft is gearing up to drop Vista SP1 some time the week of July 16. And despite what Microsoft seemingly led Google, the U.S. Department of Justice and other company watchers to believe, the final version of Vista SP1 is sounding like November 2007.

(November 2007 is also the release-to-manufacturing target for Windows Server 2008, sources say. Microsoft won’t provide an RTM date for Windows Server 2008, other than to say it is still on track to RTM before the end of 2007.)

Source: Bink.nu

According to Microsoft, the Internet Explorer 8 Beta is set to begin when Vista SP1 ships later this year. There is no information on when the exact date would be. However, since mainstream support for XP doesn’t end until April 2009 Microsoft will support IE 8 to Windows XP users.

But in the same way that IE 7 was released, there will be 2 versions: one that is built on the security settings of Vista, and the other one on the settings of XP SP2 or SP3.  More info will be posted when available.

Source: Bink.nu

This one is really easy - miss having the administrator on the Welcome screen? You can really easily put it back on there with a command from Run.

1. Go to Start, and in the Search box type in cmd.
2. Right click the Command Prompt at the top of the Start menu and select “Run as administrator”.
3. At the command prompt, type in net user administrator /active:yes then press Enter.
4. Log off and you should see the administrator sitting there on your Welcome login screen.

Source: VistaBase

It seems that Windows Sideshow, one of the coolest things to come out of Windows Vista, will offer devices running the software for as little as $80 (£40). Some of the more higher end devices might cost a bit more, around $150 (£75) but a little device containing all the vitals of your everyday life, it’s brilliant.

Source: Gizmodo