Jean Belmont Blog

11 unforgettable Windows themes
Pardon the dust
Tendencias de búsqueda en América Latina: semana del 25 al 31 de julio de 2014
New limited edition Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500 features Master Chief from Halo
Windows Phone 8.1 Update brings Cortana to new markets + new features
Facebook Messenger for Windows Phone gets Video recording and playback

Posted: 01 Aug 2014 06:29 PM PDT

A day or two after I published my last blog post, I suddenly realized that I'd completely forgotten to mention one of the new themes I'd been the most excited to bring you – Panoramas of Europe! So this time, I'm making sure to talk about it first.

This theme is huge in several ways – it contains 21 massive double-width images designed to span dual monitors on the new Windows, and it includes photos from across the expanse of Continental Europe – and from the UK and Iceland, too. This dramatic shot shows Kirkjufell Mountain on Iceland's Snæfellsnes peninsula.

Kirkjufell Mountain takes on a new and otherworldly look when it is illuminated by the shifting veils of the aurora borealis. I hope you'll enjoy the glow of the eerie but beautiful atmospheric phenomenon in this set of wintry scenes from Iceland and Norway.

For views of Europe from a completely different perspective, try the Bing Maps: Europe theme. You'll feel like you're flying in a small plane over red-tiled roofs in Spain, patchworks of farmland in Germany, curving rivers in England, mountain formations in France, and colored tulip fields in the Netherlands. This shot is of boats and islands near Sardinia, Italy.

You can pilot your plane over the United States, too, from gardens in Oregon to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Pennsylvania, and from glaciers in Alaska to the Everglades National Park in Florida. This shot shows the Shoshone Falls at Twin Falls, Idaho.

One of the most well-loved features of Bing is the amazing selection of photography (and sometimes videos) featured every day on the Bing home page. It's hard to believe that Bing has been providing incredible images – and interesting info about each one – for more than five years! Bing's fifth anniversary was on May 28, 2014, and they released this theme to celebrate. This theme is different from all the rest of our themes, in that it uses Bing's installer which lets users on Windows Vista and Windows XP enjoy the images, too. The installer will also set Bing as your default search engine and home page.

For more ruggedly expansive views, check out the new Rock Formations panoramic theme. It includes dramatic locations such as the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland, Bryce Canyon in Utah, the Pinnacles at Nambung National Park in Australia, and the fairy chimney rock formations in Cappadocia, Turkey, shown here. This theme is designed to extend background images across dual monitors in the new Windows.

The rest of our new themes feature the works of contributors to the Open Call. First up is a tour through the serene beaches and harbor towns of Germany's Fischland-Darß-Zingst peninsula, by photographer Markus Janse, who previously introduced us to the shoreline scenery of Spiekeroog.

For a darker and more abstract aesthetic, take a look at the innovative photography in the new Light Painting theme from a talented artist who goes by the name of LayonerBeast.

The Community Showcase series of themes we launched earlier this year has been very popular – particularly the ongoing Aqua series. If you enjoyed Aqua and Aqua 2 I'm happy to announce that Community Showcase: Aqua 3 is here, full of beautiful images of water in all its forms – glittering dewdrops, rushing waterfalls, crystalline snowflakes, and pools that reflect the colors of the sky. It features the images of 21 different photographers, including Rowe Cierras, Grace Eggleston, Yatin Gambhir, and Alexa Brown. This golden sunset over Chott el Djerid in Tunisia was captured by Saša Petrović.

As with the Everyday Art and Everyday Art 2 themes, Community Showcase: Everyday Art 3 is a collection of images capturing moments of beauty or humor in everyday life. This theme showcases images by 21 different photographers, including Kemal Can Zeytünlü, Laura Hanna, Allan Richardson, and Monika Rosa. This moody photo of dead leaves fallen across the keyboard of an old piano was taken by Esikova Daria.

Flora and Flora 2 brought together the best garden, floral, and plant life photos from our community of talented contributors, and Community Showcase: Flora 3 continues in the same tradition with images from 21 different photographers including Alhassan Omar, Ekaterina Kokushkina, Horváth Timcsi, and Sarah McDevitt. This vivid marigold was captured by Ricardo Ferreira Ramos.

If you have an older version of Windows that can't use themes, or if you prefer to use a single image, we have new desktop décor for you, too. Here are just a few of our new wallpapers.

If you usually read to the end of my blog posts (thank you!) then you probably know I say this every time… but that's because I just want to make sure everyone knows that they can customize their Windows 8 or 8.1 lock screen – or Windows Phone – with wallpapers from the Personalization Gallery, too. I explained how in this blog post.

That wraps up the latest overview of new themes and wallpapers. I hope you'll remember to keep checking back on the Personalization Gallery for more great new imagery to keep your Windows PC or Windows Phone looking fresh – and unforgettable.

- Noticias ciencia y tecnologia computacion internet

Pardon the dust

Posted: 01 Aug 2014 02:32 PM PDT

Pardon the dust

Yeah, I know… really cliché blog post title but I couldn't think of anything better at the moment. So our blog received a pretty big upgrade today we're excited about. The upgrade brings a lot of back-end improvements (we're on Azure!) that will make blogging about Windows even easier for us. But the upgrade also brings a few things you will notice too. So let me tell you about those.

First off, you may have noticed that some blogs have disappeared. As part of this upgrade, we looked at reducing redundancy and the amount of blogs we had as part of our network. We have merged the Windows Experience Blog, Windows Phone Blog, and Extreme Windows Blog into Blogging Windows. For most of you, this blog will have all the stuff you're interested such as announcements like the Windows 8.1 Update and Windows Phone 8.1 Update. It will also be where we publish blog posts featuring tips and new apps and games for both Windows and Windows Phone. We will also publish blog posts about new devices from partners there too. We'll continue to publish blog posts relevant to business customers on the Windows for your Business blog. We have the Building Apps for Windows blog for developers building apps for Windows (w00t for universal Windows apps!). And the Internet Explorer Team will continue to publish about amazing IE experiences like Catan Anytime on the Exploring IE blog. We think we have a good core set of Windows blogs based on audience.

Choose a category and click apply to sort and get an RSS feed.

We know that a lot of people come to our blog looking for blog posts just for Windows Phone. With the upgrade, we have introduced a new filtering capability that allows you to sort blog posts by either PC, Tablet, or Phone. This is available on the site's homepage as well as on each individual blog. If you just want to see blog posts for Windows Phone, just choose the "Phone" category and hit the apply button. This will sort everything that is relevant for Windows Phone for you. It will also provide you with an RSS feed you can subscribe to in your favorite RSS reader (I highly recommend Nextgen Reader). For anyone who was subscribed to the RSS for the Windows Phone Blog, we have put in place a redirect that will continue to update with posts relevant only for Windows Phone so you don't need to do anything.

We have also done some work to refine the visual look and feel of our blogs but it's not too different from the previous design we had. We've made some changes so that we can feature blog posts with nice big images either on the site's homepage or on each of the blogs. Search is powered by Bing. And all blogs have buttons for Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn making it easy to share a blog post to the social network of your choosing. A lot of these changes are aligned to the designs being used on the recently upgraded corporate, Office, Bing, and Surface blogs.

On the site's homepage, we've brought back our Twitter widget that displays tweets from @WindowsBlog. Occasionally we'll tweet something out pretty cool that doesn't necessarily make sense to be a blog post. It will show up here on our site's homepage and will scroll automatically through the five most recent tweets.

And finally, the next big change you will notice but isn't live quite yet is with comments. We're bringing threaded comments so you can reply to someone's comment. And we're also requiring Microsoft Account sign-in to leave a comment. You can use the same Microsoft Account you use on your Windows devices as well as services like Outlook.com, OneDrive, and Skype to leave a comment on a blog post. Comments are turned off right now but will be turned on with Microsoft Account sign-in next week.

With these changes, we're excited to continue blogging about Windows for Microsoft!

- Noticias ciencia y tecnologia computacion internet

Tendencias de búsqueda en América Latina: semana del 25 al 31 de julio de 2014

Posted: 01 Aug 2014 11:15 AM PDT

Tendencias de búsqueda en América Latina: semana del 25 al 31 de julio de 2014

Tendencias de búsqueda analiza las consultas realizadas en Google para determinar su popularidad y crecimiento en el tiempo en diferentes países. En esta serie les compartimos los términos de búsqueda con mayor popularidad de la semana para algunos de los principales países de América Latina. Comúnmente estos términos nos dicen mucho de lo que llama el interés de las personas de la región que acuden a Google en busca de más información al respecto.

Estas son las tendencias de búsqueda de la semana:

Si quieren estar al tanto de las noticias que se publican en la web sobre su ciudad natal, su celebridad favorita, un tema complejo de investigación del cuál están interesados, o bien estar al tanto de lo que se publica en la web sobre su equipo de fútbol favorito: pueden utilizar Alertas de Google. Con esta herramienta podrán recibir novedades sobre estos y otros temas de interés que elijan, directamente en su correo electrónico. Pueden definir la temporalidad, relevancia, idioma, país y muchas cosas más para que se les entreguen los resultados a través de un cómodo paquete de actualizaciones directamente en su bandeja de entrada. Ahora es más fácil configurar una alerta, pruébenlas visitando www.google.com/alerts.

Ricardo Blanco +RicardoBlanco | @ricardoblanco

Hay una gran cantidad de productos de Google que habilitan a millones de personas en América Latina para poder realizar sus actividades cotidianas con mayor conocimiento, rapidez y facilidad. Ricardo trabaja, junto a un equipo de expertos en comunicación buscando acercar la información de estas herramientas a los usuarios de la región.

- Noticias ciencia y tecnologia computacion internet

New limited edition Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500 features Master Chief from Halo

Posted: 31 Jul 2014 12:36 PM PDT

New limited edition Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500 features Master Chief from Halo

Are you a Halo fan? You're going to want this. Today we're announcing the Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500 Halo Limited Edition: The Master Chief. This mouse gloriously features a highly detailed Master Chief in his two-tone green MJOLNIR Powered Assault Armor and iconic gold hued visor.

With this mouse, you get Master Chief and all the awesomeness that comes standard with the popular Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500 such as its ambidextrous design, snap-in nano transceiver, 2.4 GHz wireless technology, and two-color battery light indicator. You also get BlueTrack Technology that allows you to use the mouse on virtually any surface including granite, marble, carpet, and wood.

The Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500 Halo Limited Edition: The Master Chief will be available for pre-order from GameStop starting today and generally available in October 2014 for the estimated retail price of $29.95 (U.S.) at the Microsoft Store and other retailers.

- Noticias ciencia y tecnologia computacion internet

Windows Phone 8.1 Update brings Cortana to new markets + new features

Posted: 29 Jul 2014 07:30 PM PDT

Windows Phone 8.1 Update brings Cortana to new markets + new features

Back in April, you heard me talk about how we believe Windows Phone 8.1 is the world's most personal smartphone because of features like highly personal Live Tiles on your Start screen and the world's first truly personal digital assistant. Today I am in China to talk about how we're continuing this vision in the very first update to Windows Phone 8.1, which we're making available in preview form for developers next week. This update has some great new features for everyone around the world, and in particular we also included some that were completely customized for and by people in China. I'm going to tell you about a couple of the new features in this update.

Cortana:

We have been thrilled by the excitement around Cortana in Windows Phone 8.1. And we're excited to make her available for people in China and the UK with this update as a "beta" and in Canada, India, and Australia as an "alpha".

The huge Chinese market has a bunch of different expectations and needs than the US or other countries—so while Cortana (nicknamed "Xiao Na") generally works the same way in China as the US and the rest of the world, China did get some "special features". As you'd expect, in her notebook, she displays what she is tracking for you, so you can see and control it. You can set reminders and quiet hours with her. She understands the whole internet so she readily helps you find anything you need. But our team in Microsoft China developed a number of additional features specifically for China. She has an alternative form which has a different visual appearance, animations, and sounds. She supports Chinese (Mandarin) in voice, text, and speech. She also has specialized suggestions tuned specifically for people living in China, like air quality information in weather cards, information about driving restrictions, and the ability to track local TV shows and celebrities. She can look up English words in the Bing Dictionary for people looking to brush up on their English.

Of course fitting a local-market isn't specific to China! For the UK, Cortana has been tailored to support UK spellings and pronunciations and Bing-provided local data on sports teams (for the EPL), the London Stock Exchange, commuter conditions, and more. The voice and accent is, of course, local, and Cortana's personality in the UK has also been tweaked to be more locally relevant.

We're also bringing some improvements for Cortana in the U.S., including new natural language scenarios, snooze times for reminders, and a number of neat additions to her personality (try asking "do an impersonation" and see what happens). We've also added the ability to invoke Cortana hands-free in your car for phones connected to car Bluetooth kits that are integrated with your contacts list. If your car kit is integrated with your contacts, you can now treat Cortana as a contact to invoke her, simply saying "Call Cortana" and then talking to her as you normally would.

We know there has been a lot of enthusiasm about Cortana in many other markets, and we wanted to give more people the ability to start using Cortana. Therefore, we're also starting a new "alpha" program in three countries: Canada, India, and Australia. This early adopter program will be opt-in and give people the ability to try Cortana using English language models from the US and the UK.

Live Folders:

You asked for it! You can now organize your apps into folders on your Start screen! We call this Live Folders because the live tiles of apps appear in the tile of the folders—you won't miss tile updates because you group apps in a folder! To create a Live Folder, just drag a tile over another tile and then name the folder. Open the folder to change the folder name and arrange and size the tiles however you want.

Xbox Music: Faster and with more features

The Xbox Music app has been updated to deliver much better performance in areas like app load and list scrolling. It's also brought back features that were missing in the Windows Phone 8.1 Preview for Developers. From background sync of your collection, to swipe to advance, the product has been continually adding features in every two weeks for the past few months. And in the coming month, there will be a "quickplay" of recent playback activities, and support for Kids Corner. Some of these features/improvements are already there in the latest Xbox Music app with the Windows Phone 8.1 release, but some (Live Tile in particular) are specific to the Windows Phone 8.1 Update. More to come!

Store Live Tile:

We made it easier for you to see the latest info about the latest apps and games available in the Windows Phone Store through its Live Tile. If you have the Store pinned to your Start screen on your device, you'll get updates on the newest titles – refreshed every 6 hours – streamed dynamically to you throughout your day.

SMS merge & forwarding:

We have added the ability to select multiple SMS messages for deletion and forwarding, making it easier to manage your text messages.

Apps Corner:

With Apps Corner, you can specify which apps are displayed in a special "sandboxed" mode (like a protected Start screen) that restricts which apps are used. This feature is for businesses so they can allow access to select apps in cases where a full MDM solution isn't required. Apps Corner can also be used to boot straight to an app. An example of where this scenario would come in handy might be with employees at a distribution center using Windows Phone devices that go straight into an inventory app they use to scan products in the warehouse when they turn on their phone. Apps Corner can also be used to setup retail demos. Retailers can export the profile of Apps Corner on one device and import it on to other devices. And developers can get data on usage from inside Apps Corner too.

Enhanced privacy and security:

We've made some improvements in the Windows Phone 8.1 Update to keep your data and identity more protected on public networks. For example, we have added the ability for you to send and receive data through a virtual private network (VPN) when connecting to Wi-Fi hotspots giving you another layer of protection. If you're on your home wireless, creating a VPN provides anonymity to help shield your device from being identified by other devices on the network.

When can I get the Windows Phone 8.1 Update?

If you're already on the Windows Phone 8.1 Preview for Developers then this update should be rolling out next week. The Windows Phone 8.1 Update will roll out to consumers with devices running Windows Phone 8.1 in the coming months. As always, keep sending us your feedback here on UserVoice! Enjoy the update!

- Noticias ciencia y tecnologia computacion internet

Facebook Messenger for Windows Phone gets Video recording and playback

Posted: 29 Jul 2014 08:58 AM PDT

Facebook Messenger for Windows Phone gets Video recording and playback

Facebook has released an update for their Messenger app for Windows Phone that brings a few new features I think you will enjoy. This update introduces video recording and video playback so that you can send video messages and watch received videos directly within the app. A new sticker tab is also being introduced that shows recent stickers, as well as some sticker improvements to help save bandwidth. If you already have Messenger installed, you should begin seeing the update soon.