A couple of hours ago Microsoft Research released the first public beta of Worldwide Telescope since it’s debut last month. The software is a seamless combination of various state-of-the-art Microsoft technologies including Live Lab’s Photosynth and Seadragon with of course the magical high-resolution pictures from numerous imaging satellites including the Hubble. Those who’ve played with it already will probably agree with how breathtaking the experience is.

Sooner or later you’ll probably want to share some of the galaxies you’ve visited. Whilst you could design and distribute your own “Guided Tour”, pictures are probably still the safest bet. Here’s a couple steps to make sure you get the most out of your pictures.

Step 1: First and most obviously is to find something interesting in the universe. A good place to start are the galleries on the top. Once you’ve found something, play around with the zoom and pan to get it perfect.

Step 2: In the “Settings” tab, move the “Image Quality” slider to “Sharper” and tick “Auto Hide Tabs” and “Auto Hide Context”. This will maximize your view to get a much wider picture.

Step 3: In the “View” tab, untick “Figures”, “Boundaries”, “Ecliptic”, “Reticle/Crosshairs” to remove any artificial lines or overlays in your image.

Step 4: Maximize your window (and wait for any image tiles to update), and then click the sub-menu in “View” and click “Copy Current View to Clipboard”. Wait a few seconds, then paste it in Paint or your favorite image editor.

Voila. Fit for a wallpaper or just send it to your family and friends to show off your new astronomy skills.

Not too long ago, users on the Neowin.net forums started complaining about not being able to send YouTube links to their contacts on Windows Live Messenger. I was skeptic at first, but it didn’t take me very long to confirm that is indeed the case.

As you can see, any messages that contain in text or links to “www.youtube.com” fails to be delivered.

Curious as a cat, I loaded up a network packet sniffer to find out exactly what’s going on behind the scenes. Technically, the message packets are in fact sent to the Messenger servers (so it’s not being blocked at your client), but the server sends back a negative acknowledgment (NAK) packet instead of an acknowledgment (ACK) packet. Simply speaking, the server is refusing the message.

As some people may recall, in 2006 there was a report quoting MSN Sweden admitting Microsoft is “censoring” messages it deems a security threat. How it does this is by matching messages with a known list of text strings which are commonly found in phishing and malware sites such as “download.php”. Microsoft doesn’t publishes which strings are on this list for obvious reasons, but a comprehensive list of known blocked strings can be found here.

We all love a good conspiracy, but I don’t think anyone at Microsoft was dumb enough to do this deliberately to undermine Google. On the other hand, even if it was an accident, how do you ever trust this system?

Update (11/5/08): Not surprisingly YouTube links are working again.

Update 2: The Windows Live Messenger blog published a post admitting the problem which they claim was entirely controlled by a third party and their process of blocking harmful URLs. Another good reason to outsource.

The Microsoft Zune team has officially become “region control” extremists. First, they locked down the Zune Originals site with geographic IP blocking so you couldn’t even fantasize about the cool and stylish new Zunes if you didn’t live in the United States. If that wasn’t enough, they’re also blocking enthusiasts from populating their Zune Card with play lists. Now comes a third restriction which hides the Zune Marketplace in the latest version (2.5) of the Zune software.

If you installed version 2.5 of the Zune Software and you don’t live in the United States, this is what you see. There is no “Marketplace” button in the menu bar.

After some digging around, I’ve found a quick and dirty, but effective, workaround anyone can use to restore the Marketplace back in the Zune software, until at least the Zune team realize there are people outside of the North American continent who share a passion for music too.

To apply the workaround, find the “Regional and Language Options” settings in your Control Panel. Vista user can get to this by searching for “regional” in the Start menu. Under the “Locations” tab, select “United States” as the country. Apply generously.

If you now launch the Zune software, you should be in business.

As far as I know there’s little or no side-effects to this workaround because the “Locations” setting is not widely utilized. At most you’re losing a bit of national pride. Perhaps one day you won’t have to lie about your nationality to discover some music on Zune.

Several hours ago Microsoft released the Zune Spring 2008 Update with a new Zune software package (version 2.5). Embedded in the resource files is an interesting image of a new red “Scorpius” (4/8GB) Zune. Instead of the model available today with a silver backing and red touchpad, this had a black backing and black touchpad.

(Left) New red Zune with black backing and touchpad. (Right) Existing red Zune with silver backing and red touchpad.

The last time a “Scorpius” Zune with a black touchpad was discovered, it turned out to be a commemorative 16GB edition exclusive to the Zune staff. I would assume a commemoration only happens once, so could this be a new 16GB Zune for everyone else?

For any skeptics out there, the two images have notably different positioned logos which confirms these are not the same images colored differently.

If by now you still don’t understand what Microsoft’s Live Mesh is, then let this short 60-seconds promotional video originally featured at the Web 2.0 Expo explain it to you in ultra-slow-motion.

While you’re at it, see if you can spot and name all the third party products and brands. All I can say there’s a-plenty. Bonus points for identifying the model of the car. Special thanks to “Avatar X.” for uploading the original high-quality video.

In a couple of hours, the four-month long “It’s not cheating” Facebook competition hosted by Microsoft is going to end and it’s going to be a close call.

Some of you might remember me promoting the istartedsomething.com group all the back in December where I promised to give away the prizes to whomever joined the Facebook group.

I’ve kept my promise and has already given away a Smartphone to a lucky member in the first round, but we’re a few members short to win the final round with the prize of an XBOX 360 bundle with 3 games. I’m not too sure if GTA IV is one of them, but at least you could score a free console to play it on.

At the time of writing, there’s another group who’s in the lead with 669 members, compared to 627 members in the istartedsomething group. That group promises to give the XBOX360 away to charity for fund raising which is a notable cause so I won’t discredit them, but I think it’ll be a shame for everyone to have so far and lose in the last mile.

I know it’s always hard to ask people to invite others into a competition which in fact reduces the chance for themselves but some is still better than none. As a matter of fact, one in seven hundred chance of winning an XBOX 360 is still pretty decent for clicking a link.

If you know someone who’s not already in the istartedsomething.com “It’s not cheating” Facebook group, get them to sign up and one of you could very well be playing on a new XBOX 360 and perhaps GTA IV in a matter of days.

Update: With about an hour to go, the other group is till in the lead with ~80 people.
Update2: It’s over. The other group has won.