Keeping up with your friends blog posts.

We all like to keep tabs on all of our friends blogs and to be able to read their latest posts as soon as they are published. However, this can often mean trawling around blogging sites, or in the case of WordPress, subscribing to them and then keeping up with reading all of our subscriptions.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if every time a friend published a new post to their blog we could not only be informed but read it straight away on our computers?  Well you can do exactly that! Without leaving your desktop, you can see all of your friends blog updates and read their posts just as if you were online! Here’s how.

Windows Live Essentials 2011. Windows Live Writer.

Of all the programs included in the Windows Live Essentials suite, Live Writer was probably the most obvious one to benefit from the use of the ribbon interface. Before this update, it was amazing just how many had been using Live Writer for their blogs and were not aware of many of the features contained within it. To give one example many users did not realise they could add a watermark to their photos from within Writer or alter their photos by applying different effects. These features were all tucked away out of sight under the ‘Advanced’ area in the sidebar originally, but now that they are offered to the user in easy to see icons across the ribbon when they click on a picture or photo, they are constantly visible and only one click away to access.

Windows Live Essentials 2011. Live Movie Maker.

Windows Live Movie Maker has already received both the ribbon interface and lots of new features during the past year, so compared to the other applications in  Windows Live Essentials suite, it hasn’t really had all that many new features added in its 2011 incarnation. However the new addition of Auto Themes is a really great feature that allows anyone who has never created a Movie before to be able to make a fantastic and professional looking movie with just one click from the ribbon interface is a stroke of genius in my opinion.

Windows Live Essentials 2011. Live Photo Gallery.

 

As with all of the other applications in the Essentials suite of programs for your desktop, Live Photo Gallery has received some very welcome new features in the new 2011 update. Beginning with the use of the Ribbon Interface to make finding all of those really great features much easier, to a brilliant new addition to the Create tab, there is now a multitude of editing and creative things you can do with your entire photo collection. Here are just a few of my favourite new features.

Windows Live Essentials 2011. Windows Live Messenger.

 

Windows Live Messenger has undergone some very extensive changes in Windows Live Essentials 2011. . It is now far more than just an instant messaging program, it is a fully functioning social networking centre which brings together all of your connected social networks inside the Messenger Social  window so that you don’t have to visit all of those different websites which often means having  to create yet another account..  Whether your family and friends are on Facebook or MySpace or any of the other services that you have chosen to connect to. You can see all of their updates, comment on them,  share photos and videos with them without leaving your desktop in order to do so.  Messenger has now become the ultimate social dashboard for staying in touch whilst eliminating the noise. Here are just a few of my favourite features.

Windows Live Essentials 2011. Windows Live Mail.

I have used Windows Live Mail as my only method of writing and sending out emails since its first appeared many years ago, and I consider it unequalled in its ease of setting up your email accounts, requiring no knowledge whatsoever by the user of any settings.  Windows Live Mail copes with just about everything that you need to read or access on your computer and does so in an easy to use format and now that it has received the ribbon interface, its even easier to use because all the most important features that the average user is likely to need  are presented in readily available icons across the top ribbon needing just one simple click to access.

Windows Live Essentials 2011. An Introduction.

One important feature that you might have noticed after purchasing  a new PC running Windows 7 or upgrading your current PC is the lack of any email program included with the operating system. In order to rectify this, you can download a set of programs called Windows Live Essentials. This is a package of free programs from Microsoft which includes an email program Windows Live Mail, a Photo editing program Live Photo Gallery, a program to construct and make videos Live Movie Maker, the Live Messenger program, Live Writer which is a blogging editor for composing and publishing to your blog, Windows Live Mesh and also Family Safety to help you keep track of any family members usage when they use the computer.