http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/06/windows-live-messenger-wave-4-almost-excellent-fatally-flawed.ars

Take a look at that video; it’s a bit long, but it gives a good sneak peek at the upcoming Windows Phone 7 Series. Perhaps I’ll jump back over to the WinMo camp; there are a couple features (integrated calendars, integrated UI) that really interest me!

I just picked up Bioshock, Fallout 3, and The Orange Box (Halflife 2, HL Episode 1, HL Episode 2, Portal, and Team Fortress) for approximately $50 cdn.

Go check this out! There are 35 games to choose from while supplies last.

I Googled it a few times with no luck, but then I came across the “Display Detection” feature, which with NXE you’re able to disable. Display Detection basically reads the EDID of your TV/Monitor and sets the appropriate audio/video output for the 360; however, the 360 doesn’t always read the correct information and therefore selects the wrong output.

Under the “system settings” panel open up “console settings”,  “display”, then look for “display discovery” – set this to “disabled”, your 360 will restart. Magically everything is now lo-fi 480i and stereo 2.0. Go back into “display” and now into “HDTV settings” to set your appropriate screen (480i – 1080p). Go back to the “console settings” panel and open up “audio” then select your appropriate “digital output” – stereo, Dolby digital, Dolby w/ WMA Pro.

That should do it; no more annoying display detection errors. Have fun playing with your properly tuned Xbox360.

I recently, for no apparent reason, was greeted by this message when trying to login to my WHS box via the desktop console. I have done some research on the issue and apparently it is caused by your computer being on a different domain than your WHS box. As to why it happened all of a sudden, I’m not sure. It worked fine for me for over a month.

Anyway, here is your fix… you have to add your WHS  box to your computer’s host file. In order to do this you need to first assign your WHS box a static IP address using your router. Since each router is different, I cannot explain how to do this, you’re on your own here. It should be in the documentation for your router.

Once you have setup a static IP on your router for your WHS box the next step is on the computer with which you are having connection issues. Navigate to this address in Explorer: “C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc” and open the file hosts using Notepad.

Once you have the hosts file open you need to create a new entry between the lines “127.0.0.1 localhost” and “::1 localhost” for your WHS box in the following format: <whs static ip address> <whs box name>. As you can see in the picture below, the static IP for my WHS box is 192.168.1.106 and the name of my WHS box is grendel; obviously the IP and name of your WHS box will be different so fill it in appropriately.

Once you have the new entry made, save and close the hosts file. If you followed the steps correctly you should now be able to connect to your WHS box again!

Bonus points for anyone who can tell me what “Grendel” is.

The idea of this article is to run uTorrent on an always-on machine in your house. The WHS is typically on 24/7 so you might as well use that. Then you can schedule uTorrent to only soak up your bandwidth in the wee hours of the morning and not have to worry about having multiple computers on all the time. Once we are done here uTorrent will run on your WHS box without having to have a logged-in user. Read on to find out how this works!

Create the New User

First of all we need to create a new user on the server. This is done for security reasons as we do not want to install uTorrent under the default Administrator account. Once this step is completed you may continue with the following.
Install and Configure

Connect via the Remote Desktop Connection as the user you have just created e.g. “WHS” and your newly created password.

Download the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit Tools and install rktools.exe using the default options.

Next install the latest version of µTorrent and install using the default options.

If this is the first time you have installed uTorrent on your server then a dialogue will appear asking if you want to associate .torrent files with µTorrent. Click Yes. If a Windows Security Alert pops up asking if you want to Block or Unblock uTorrent Click Unblock and if the Speed Guide appears set your Connection Type and the Current Port that you would like to use.

You will now need to forward the port you selected above into your router. Details of router setup screens can be found at portforward.com (select your router and then uTorrent)

In uTorrent select Options then Preferences. Make sure your General screen matches this one:

Make sure that your directories screen matches the one below. You can change the location for your Put new downloads in but do NOT use a server share. It has to be under a drive letter on the WHS otherwise the Drive Extender Migrator Service will cause data corruption errors as it tries to move the file onto another drive while uTorrent is in the middle of writing to it, or just before uTorrent tries to open the file to write to it again. The Move completed downloads to can be changed to any server share location. The Automatic load torrents in directory location can be changed to any server share location. This setup enables uTorrent to monitor this specific folder for .torrent files and start downloading them automatically. All you have to do to start a download is place the .torrent file in that folder and uTorrent will do its stuff.

Using the Scheduler tab you can set your downloads to occur during “off-peak” periods by setting up a schedule if you so require.

As below, under Advanced Web UI Enable Web Interface and configure a Username and secure Password of your choice.

Click the OK button and close uTorrent.

Next download the uTorrent add-in for the Windows Home Server Console. Do NOT run it but place it in your Add-Ins Shared Folder (\\SERVER\Software\Add-Ins). Log In to your WHS console and go to Settings, Add-ins the Available tab and then click Install under “Windows Home Server – uTorrent”.

Once the console re-starts log back in to the console and go to Settings, uTorrent and for Server type in http://YourIP:Port/gui/ e.g. http://192.168.1.110:22345/gui/
YourIP is your server name or IP address and Port is the uTorrent Port that you set up earlier.

Next insert your User Name and Password as set up earlier. You can press Test Configuration to check all is OK. Red is not and green is fine. You may now OK out of the Settings and close the Console.
Create the User-Defined Service

From your Windows Home Server (Remote Desktop Connection) click Start then Run and type cmd. In the window that opens type the following which is all on one line, including the quotation marks.

“c:\Program Files\Windows Resource Kits\Tools\instsrv.exe” uTorrent “c:\Program Files\Windows Resource Kits\Tools\srvany.exe”

NOTE: Cut and paste will not work, instead highlight and copy the above line and then right-click in the open CMD window and select paste.

Press Enter on your keyboard. Once the screen displays The service was successfully added! you may close the cmd box.

We need to now create a .Reg file using notepad and paste in the 3 lines of code below.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\uTorrent\Parameters]
“Application”=”C:\\Program Files\\utorrent\\utorrent.exe”

When saving make sure that Save as type is set to All Files *.* and save as service.reg. Double click on this saved file to import the settings into the registry on your server.

Now click the Start button and then select All Programs, Administrative Tools and then Services. Find uTorrent right-click and select Properties.

Select the Log On tab. Click the This account button and enter WHS as the This account and enter the Password you setup earlier for this user account and confirm the Password.

OK out and close the Services dialog.

Click Start, Shut Down then Restart.

That’s it job completed. You can now connect to uTorrent either via the web interface using your browser using the format http://YourIP:Port/gui/ or via the WHS console (uTorrent heading).

All you have to do to start a torrent download automatically is place the .torrent file in the \\SERVER\Public\Torrents folder and forget about it.

I finished installing my copy last night, so far no issues at all… I’ll keep you posted.

Download Windows 7 RC1 HERE.

Check out the screencast which I have created below. You can enlarge it to full screen mode by clicking the expand button below the play button.

Enjoy!

I wanted to quickly remind everyone that this week general availability for the Windows 7 Beta will be ending:

February 10^th: Starting at 12am Pacific Time, no new downloads will be available. If you have already begun downloading the Windows 7 Beta, you have until Feb. 12^th to complete the download.

February 12^th: Starting at 9am Pacific Time all downloads will no longer be available for the Windows 7 Beta. If you have not finished your download, you will be unable to do so.

After February 12^th, folks will still be able to register for product keys for the Windows 7 Beta.

The above schedule does *not* apply to TechNet and MSDN Subscribers.

From: Windows Team Blog

It basically works by turning your phone into a barcode (tag) reader and allowing you to “scan” the tags using your phone’s camera. There are endless possibilities for an application like this. Movie previews/trailers right on your phone when you scan the tag of a movie poster. More detailed/insider information on advertisements, or as I have done, the ability to download someones contact information in the form of a vCard.

Go ahead and download the beta here then give each of these tags a try and see what they do!