In the good old days when XP ruled the world, my photo collection was one big mess. I had about 12.000 photos and videos from the past 5 years. They were all in their own folder, named something like 2002-08-20, to indicate that the pictures in that folder were taken the 20th of august 2002. It was actually quite hard to find a particular photo, if I didn't know the exact date it was taken.

Then... da da daaaa... Microsoft released Windows Vista including the brand new Windows Photo Gallery. After a few days many of my photos were tagged, so they were easy to find again. The great thing about tags in Windows Photo Gallery is that it allows you to create a hierarchic tagging structure. The way it is done, is that if I want to tag a picture from Nice in France, I tag it Location/France/Nice. Then in the left side of the program in the Tags category, it will show up with only Location. If I click Place, it will show me France and a click on France will show me Nice. Under Nice I can then see all my photos from Nice. Nice feature

My tag hierarchy consists of three main tags, Event, Location and People. A part of it looks something like this, except it's in danish:

• Event
  • Work
  • Holiday
    • Nice
    • Sunny Beach
  • Party
  • Birthday
    • Brian, 30
    • Lise, 23
    • Lise, 24
    • Niels, 25
    • Niels, 26
    • Niels, 27
  • Nature
    • Flowers
    • Animals
    • Sea
    • Sunset
    • Snow
• People
  • Work
  • Family
    • Lise
    • Hans Harald
    • Niels
  • Old friends
  • University
  • Friends
• Location
  • France
    • Nice
  • Bulgaria
    • Sunny Beach
    • Burgas
  • Monaco
  • Denmark
    • Århus
      • Home
      • Tivoli

With that kind of structure, it's quite easy to find exactly the picture I want to find.

Yesterday Microsoft released a new beta of their Live suite, including Windows Live Photo Gallery beta. And I can tell you it's a great program! I have a bunch of new features, but look like the good old Windows Photo Gallery. I especially like the new panorama feature. Just select two or more photos that are taken of the same thing right click and select Create panoramic photo. Then computer will then work hard for a few seconds to combine the selected photo into one big panoramic photo.

Here you can see 8 pictures from the harbor in Monaco combined to one giant photo and the cropped with the cropping tool in Windows Live Photo Gallery (click the photos to see them in full size - might take a while to load as they are pretty big):

And one more photo, combined of just two photos - still from Monaco:

I just love these features! I'm sure they are useful to you too... so why don't you go download Windows Live Photo Gallery?

As some of you already know, the 64 bit version of Vista is now ready for download on MSDNAA. Now you all know

A new version of the Cisco VPN Client is available. This is version 5.0.00.0340 and it seems like it actually works - amazing!

If you are studying at DAIMI and running Vista you probably want to connect to the DAIMI network during your daily work. To do this, you need the Cisco VPN client for Vista. You can download the client here: https://www.daimi.au.dk/~staff/VPN/clients-ssl/vpnclient-win-msi-4.8.01.0590-k9.exe

To setup the client, you need the following parameters:
https://www.daimi.au.dk/~staff/VPN/clients-ssl/params.html

In a few days, the DAIMI staff should have a nice guide you can follow, if you can't make it work yourself. The guide will be available here:
http://www.daimi.au.dk/local/system/accessing-the-network/getting-vpn

As the header tells, finally Vista can be found at e-academy.com It has now been available more than a week, but it is first now, it is possible to both do the download of Vista and request a license key at the same place.

So, if you want Vista (which I know you do) and you study at DAIMI, you can download it from the above link. If you have any problems downloading Vista or requesting a key, please contact microsoft *AT* daimi *DOT* au *DOT* dk

In my last post I said, that we expected Vista to be available on MSDNAA after the 11th of December 2006 - but it is still not available I'm sorry to say, that currently we don't know when Vista will be available on MSDNAA... but remember: I still have some Windows Vista Business licenses for people studying at DAIMI! Send me an e-mail, if you want one of these

My e-mail address: nlbeck *AT* daimi *DOT* au *DOT* dk

What a great day! Nearly 100 Vista Business licenses are now spread all over DAIMI Mark and I had invited the students here at DAIMI to come and hear a little about Vista and Office 2007. Michael Westergaard had brought his Mac on which he installed Vista yesterday. It was great to see, that suddenly a Mac could be useful

A lot of people dropped by and it got a little crowed when they all wanted to be the first to get a license to Vista. But luckily they all got a copy - Merry Christmas!

If you are studying at DAIMI, are participating in the MSDNAA program and didn’t get a license today – send me an e-mail and I shall see what I can do If, however, you read this after the 11th of December 2006, I expect that Vista is already on MSDNAA.

If you are the lucky owner of a tablet PC, you will love the new character recognition in Windows Vista. In Windows XP the recognition was not that good, but in Vista it's incredible how well it recognizes what you write.

Unfortunately it doesn't work if you set the input language of your computer to Danish So what you can do, is to use the language bar to switch between Danish and English. You can then switch between English and Danish using the good old Alt+Shift shortcut. Then you of course use Danish when you use the keyboard to enter text and English when you use the writing pad in tablet mode. This is not a good solution!

The best solution I know of is a bit strange, but it works very well. What you have to do, is you have to set the input language to English, but the keyboard layout to Danish. So how do you do that? Well, go to the start menu and use the new search box (I never use the "All Programs" anymore - always the search box). Type "regional" and the only item that should appear (at least on a fresh installation) is "Regional and Language Options". So press Enter to get the regional settings dialog. Go to the "Keyboards and Languages" tab and choose "Change keyboards".

So now we have to add English to the list of installed services. Click the "Add..." button. Find "English (United States)" on the list and under "Keyboard" you select "Show More...". Now you must find "Danish" in the list and mark it. Under the main "English (United States)" item you go into "Other" and mark "Ink Correction". Now you are done and can click "OK".

To make it all work well, you select "English (United States) - Danish" in the "Default input language" dropdown and click "Apply". Now it's possible to select "Danish (Denmark)" in the list of installed services and the click "Remove". That's it. Click "OK" and the "Writing Pad" will now work just as you expect it to do But remember, that the "Writing Pad" aren't made for Danish, so it will still use a English dictionary trying to figure out what you mean.

Of course this also work for other languages than Danish. Just do as described above, but replace every occurrence of Danish with the language you want to use when typing on your keyboard.

Hope this helps

Yes sir! Microsoft Windows Vista RTM is up and running on my tablet Nice to finally have the final version - now it's time for my Media Center to get rid of RC2  

Since Office 2007 beta 2 was released I've been using it on my primary computer. And I just love it! The ribbon bar is just great to work with.

Unfortunately Outlook 2007 has started coming with an error telling me, that there are errors in my .pst-file and that I can use scanpst.exe to repair the errors. I've tried using scanpst.exe, but it can't fix the errors The error appears when I try to move particular e-mails from my inbox to a folder. So also if I try to delete the e-mail I get the error (the e-mail must be moved to the "Deleted items" folder). The only thing I can do whith the particular e-mails, is to delete them permanently (Shift+Delete on the keyboard).

My assumption is, that it is Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC) Beta 3 that is causing the problem. I have never seen the error before I installed WMDC. If it really is WMDC that is causing the problem, I don't know why it's doing it, because I never synchronize my e-mails with my mobile...

I've been running Vista on my Media Center since beta 2 - and I just love it! When Vista RC2 came I finally took the chance and installed it on my precious tablet PC, which are the computer I use at work and at the university. I was a little afraid it would give me a lot of trouble, as beta 2 simply sucked on it (it wasn't beta 2 itself, but the crappy drivers).

Well, I must admit that RC2 is not just a good looking OS, but also a very fast OS. I have 1,5 Gb RAM in my computer, but after installing Vista RC2, it feels like I've upgraded the amount of RAM. My computer is actually a lot faster than it was in XP. I think it's because of better swapping algorihms - but who knows, maybe Microsoft just used their magic wand?

So, everything is fine... except of one small detail! I miss the "Ask me what to do"-option in "Power button and lid settings". When I have my computer in tablet mode, it's very easy for me to press the power button by accident. So - do you know how to get the "Ask me what to do"-button back? Please, ask me what to do...