You can learn more about these plugins and download them here.

The SyncFriend plugin creates a menu that appears at the top of your Outlook inbox, where you can access your account information as well as start and stop your syncs. If you prefer, you can choose to just sync a specific contact folder to the service, instead of the whole thing.

Other features of this service include mobile clients, address book de-duping and calendar sync between Outlook and your phone. You can register for a free account here.

If you’re an existing Windows Live Spaces user, there’s no need to panic! You have six months to make the move over to your new home, and you’ll find tons of support available to help you get there as well as migration tools which will make the move as easy as possible.

I’m sure you’re keen to check out what your new site will look like at Wordpress, but with six months to make the move, why not take some time out to revamp your blog?

One of the great things about Wordpress.com is that there’s a huge population of developers out there creating beautiful themes, and awesome widgets and plugins which extend the features of the core platform – many of which can be used with free Wordpress.com accounts as well as self hosted blogs.

Before pushing the button to migrate, check out some of my favourite features:

1. Wordpress Themes & CSS Editing
   You’ll find over 75 free themes available to radically change the design of your blog. You can change colour palettes, switch between single and multi-column layouts and insert custom header images to truly personalise your blog. If you’re a dab hand with CSS (or want to learn through experimentation), then you can tweak your design to your heart’s content (via an upgrade).
   
   
2. Sidebar Widgets
   Developers have been busy creating hundreds of sidebar widgets for Wordpress, which can be dragged and dropped into your blog’s sidebar to add new features. Photo sideshows, video players, Twitter feeds and a whole lot more are available to add content into your blog.
   
   
3. Works Well With Windows Live Writer
   If you’re yet to discover Windows Live Writer, then this is your opportunity to check it out. WLW is a fantastic post creation and editing tool that allows you to write your posts offline, add images, embed videos, tags and set categories before uploading and publishing live to your blog when you’re ready. Check out Windows Live Writer’s Plugin Gallery too for hundreds of additional features from the developer community. Windows Live Writer is freely available as part of the Windows Live Essentials Suite, and once configured with your Wordpress.com account details will quickly become your best friend. Find out more about plans to integrate Wordpress.com into Windows Live Writer.
   
   
4. Spam Canned
   Blog spam can very quickly turn the fun of writing a blog into an administrative nightmare. Fortunately, Wordpress.com’s Akismet feature blocks spammers from leaving comments and trackback spam on your blog.
    
5. A Fresh Start
   Having moved my own blog a few times, I’ve found it gives you the opportunity to step back, have a good think about your writing, and make a few changes and improvements. Migrating to Wordpress may provide the impetus to take your blog in a whole new direction, or simply make a few tweaks here and there. 

Once you’ve found your feet with Wordpress.com, you may want to go the extra step and host your blog on your own server. Wordpress runs on Windows, courtesy of the Microsoft Web Platform Installer, which will install key components such as Internet Information Services (IIS), SQL Server Express, .NET Framework and Visual Web Developer. If you’re running  IIS with SQL Server or SQL Azure, there’s a patch available to get Wordpress working with your setup too.

Have fun creating your new blog at Wordpress.com.

Media Browser will also pull the latest movie trailers and video podcasts from the Internet, comes with a number of high quality themes for changing the colour scheme and layout of content and best of all, is completely free!

Head over to mediabrowser.tv to learn more about the latest release of the app, which has been released this week. It convinced me to cut the cable and go with Media Center full time in the living room as our DVR, and we haven’t looked back since. 

For example, a tag using several of the options would look like this:

[sl-bingmaps background="transparent" width="100%" height="300" NavigationVisibility="1" CopyrightVisibility="1" LogoVisibility="1" ScaleVisibility="1" ZoomLevel="5" Mode="Aerial" StartLocation="48.8756271_2.3493838" Pushpin="48.8756271_2.3493838" Culture="fr_FR"]

or:

[sl-bingmaps background="transparent" width="100%" height="400" NavigationVisibility="1" CopyrightVisibility="1" LogoVisibility="1" ScaleVisibility="1" ZoomLevel="17" Mode="Aerial" StartLocation="51.50809105417733_-0.07589511573314667" Culture="en-GB"]</p>

In order to use this plugin, you’ll need to first create a Bing Maps Key here. For further instructions, check out Kebeck’s post.

Vista users can continue to use the older version of the plugin, though. The developer says that two-thirds of the plugin’s users are on Windows 7, so he made the decision to make improvements the majority can enjoy.

So what’s new in this release?  Things users have been asking for, including:

• A new popup screen for managing the TV programs, allowing you to play the program, set a timer recording to record other showings of the program if you have a TV tuner configured, and if the program supports it you can add it to a playlist or download it (the last two work for BBC WMV programs, but not flash).
• When playing flash content, sometimes the mouse didn't click in the right place. Now you can mode the cursor round the screen with the remote by pressing the cursor keys, and OK to click. This allows you to play even the most troublesome programs.
• The interface is now touchscreen enabled, so if you have a touchscreen media center you can easily navigate through the screens.
• Plugins are now directly available within the application. When you go to preferences you will see a list of plugins. When you pick one, the system will take care of installing and updating it to keep you up to date with your favorite content.
• MSN has been removed. This is because there is now a native media center app to support MSN.
• Improved memory management - only one instance of TunerFreeMCE will be active at any one time

If you’ve never tried TunerFreeMCE before, I recommend checking it out. It’s a great plugin for watching streaming Internet video on your PC and Media Center extender, including BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Five for UK users and Hulu support for US users. Believe it or not, the plugin is actually free. However, donations are accepted.

(via Ian Dixon)

“You can create dynamic maps that allow your visitors to pan and zoom, or static maps that don't have those features,” it reads. You can choose from Road maps, Aerial maps, Aerial maps showing the road labels, or a 3D Birdseye map.

To use the plugin, you just add a shortcode to your post like this, for example:

[bingMap location="Buenos Aires, Argentina" zoom="13"]

Or a more complex shortcode using all the available attributes may look like this:

[bingMap location=”Seattle, WA” width=”250” height"=”250” title=”Bing Maps Rocks” type=”dynamic” maptype=”AerialWithLabels” zoom=”15” pp1=”Seattle, WA”]

To use the plugin, you’ll first need a free Bing Maps Key. Then you can download and install the plugin from here.

But I have a little secret for you: you don’t have to wait until 2011 to watch Hulu on your Xbox. There are several ways Media Center users can gain access to Hulu right now. It’s been awhile since I last tested these (posted here), but the one I liked the best was PlayOn, which still supports Hulu, Netflix, CBS, YouTube and more. It’s kind of pricey though – $39.99 for the first year and then $19.99 afterwards. But as a “cancel your cable” alternative, it’s an investment worth making since its yearly price is comparable to what many pay monthly for their cable TV.

With the launch of the Kylo Browser Beta 0.7, a new plugin for Media Center lets you browse the web via your HDTV after launching the browser from within Media Center. What’s even better is that you can easily close it and return to Media Center when you’re done surfing the web. That’s a big plus.

The browser requires no hardware keyboard for text entry – an onscreen keyboard does the job. It also lets you zoom, pan and bookmark sites. Onscreen targets, fonts and the cursor are made larger for better viewing too.

One thing it won’t do: play Hulu videos. This worked at first but Hulu quickly blocked it. But for light TV-based web surfing, it does the job.

As always, note the beta label and proceed at your own risk!

You can browse videos by subject or category or you can use the included search feature to search for videos by keyword. Search works via remote, too. After your results display on the screen, you can further drill down by date, ratings, views and relevance.

The project is still in beta, but is available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Plus, if you head over to the GreenButton forums where it was discovered, you’ll see developers are pitching in with suggestions and additional features. For example, on this post, there are SkyDrive-hosted files for adding Onion News and News of the Absurd podcasts to the app.

You can grab the beta download itself from here.

To get started, you’ll first need to create an account at MadeForMediaCenter.com, then download either the 32-bit or 64-bit version of the addin. Once installed, the addin will prompt you for your credentials upon first launch. After entering in your info (username and password), you can browse the available third-party media center apps and install them immediately.

This addin is still in beta format, so report your issues in the Made for Media Center forum or to the @4mediacenter Twitter account.

Also, may I just say this to the developers: thank you for this awesome project!

(via The Digital Lifestyle)

First up: the Tweetmeme “follow” plugin. This plugin adds the Tweetmeme follow button to your post. The button comes in three styles: compact, normal and square and displays your Twitter icon plus a “follow” button and follower count, depending on which version you use. With the new plugin, WLW users can choose the button style, size and placement. It only works on blogs that support Javascript.

One blog platform that doesn’t support Javascript is Wordpress.com. For these users, there’s a different WLW plugin that takes advantage of the Wordpress tag option that uses a ‘shortcode’ to place the ReTweet button into a blog post. This plugin lets you configure options like button version, placement, Twitter name, URL shortener and whether or not it should appear in the RSS feed.

Also, anyone using the original TweetMeme plugin should go upgrade to the new version which now supports hashtags.

To try this new plugin, visit the SenderOK homepage here to download it for free.

The beta release is intended primarily towards the developer community, notes the Nokia Beta Labs blog post. Developers will want to get their hands on both the plugin and the associated developer tools, available for direct download here:

• Download Silverlight for Symbian – Beta Developer Tools
• Download Silverlight for Symbian – Beta (device installer)

Other plugin features include the ability to get updates on your contacts and their companies within Outlook, a search feature for easily locating email, links, and attachments, and a drag-and-drop method for sharing news from your contacts via email or Twitter.

Click here to in you’re interested in trying the new Outlook plugin. Note that you’ll need to have signed up with Gist first before you can use it.

Now why would you want to do that considering that Posterous is already one of the easiest platforms to publish to? Well, maybe you want to send the same post to both your traditional blog or website and your Posterous blog at the same time. If you create the post in WLW, that’s possible. You would just write the post once, publish it to one site, then switch blogs to publish it a second time to the other site. Or maybe you just prefer WLW’s interface over anything else (I know I do!).

In order to support Posertous publishing, you’ll need to grab the Writerous plugin from Codeplex. Once installed, you access the new settings via Tools –> Options –> Writerous from WLW’s main menu. Here, you’ll have to provide your Posterous login info and site name (the latter if you maintain more than one Posterous blog). You can also configure your Posterous posts to autopost to Twitter and Facebook, too, by checking the box next to that option.

For more details on how to configure and use the plugin, check out the project’s page here.

In the updated version of the plugin, there’s now support for widescreen viewing, an optional day/night (sun/moon) forecast indication next to the location title, as well as some other tweaks and improvements to the visual style.

Windows 7 users can download the new plugin from here for 32-bit systems or here for 64-bit systems.

(via/img credit: GeekTonic.com)

In addition, new enhancements have been added to the Cooliris Internet Explorer plugin to improve performance. According to the company, image searches’ performance have improved up to 30% with the updated plugin.

The company also reports that they will soon support Bing Video searches, too, but have not revealed an exact date yet.

To download Cooliris, visit the company homepage here: cooliris.com.

The first plugin lets you easily change the title and tagline of your blog (by default, it reads “Just another Wordpress.com weblog”). While that’s handy, the coolest part about this plugin is that it integrates with Twitter so you can use your current Twitter status as the blog’s tagline. Only status messages that are not @replies or those that contain links will be used.

The second plugin is designed to help you manage blog comments from within Windows Live Writer. Comments are categorized as “New,” “Approved,” and “Spam.” New comments are those awaiting moderation. Below each comment listed in this view, you can click links to approve, spam, or delete the comment as desired. You can also click to view the blog post in case you want to respond to the commenter on your site.

The third and final plugin is a bit more complex. It lets you add custom fields to your blog. In Brandon’s example he has added fields like City, Language, Mood, and Music. After the initial setup, the dialog box will show the custom fields across the top as links you can click on. From that point forward, every time you publish via WLW, you can select from the available custom fields and include them in your blog post.

All three plugins are available for download here.  Developers can also access the source code here. And if you haven’t installed Window Live Writer yet, you can download it from here.

Via the Nubli toolbar, you’re provided with a handful of “quick action” buttons which let you take some sort of action with the email in question. You can adjust the email or contact priority, archive the email if nothing needs to be done with it, flag it for follow up, or set a reminder to deal with the email later. Of course, you can still reply or forward the email instead.

From the integrated Nubli dashboard, you can track all of the email processing you’ve done so far to see which items need follow up as well as a list of unread emails sorted by priority.

In addition, Nubli also uses an intelligent tagging system which automatically assigns tags or labels to new email conversations. Initially, you have to train the system by tagging items yourself but after some time, Nubli figures out what tags should be used and assigns them for you. This saves a lot of time for users who can then use the tags to search for both emails and attachments.

If you want to give Nubli a try, you can download the plugin for either Outlook 2003 or 2007 from the Nubli homepage.

Now you can add Twitter to the list of Xobni features. In the latest version of the Xobni plugin, you're able to see the most recent tweets from the person whose email you’re reading. The plugin acts as a mini Twitter client as well, allowing you to reply directly to users, tweet, retweet, follow/unfollow, and view Twitter profiles all from within the Xobni sidebar.

Although you can manually enter in the Twitter name of the email contact you’re viewing, Xobni will attempt to locate the person’s Twitter account automatically. To do so, it performs a search for possible matches based on their name and you can choose the right one from the list provided. 

In order to access the update, existing Xobni users must download the latest version of the Xobni plugin.

Other improvements available in the update include numerous bug fixes, tweaks, and speed improvements. The latest version now officially supports Windows 7, too.

The first plugin is a Yammer Outlook plugin which works in Outlook 2007. Once installed, Outlook users can post status updates, view feeds, reply to messages, upload attachments, send messages to Yammer groups, and invite colleagues to join Yammer – all from within their inbox. Essentially, the plugin offers everything you would expect from a full-featured desktop client but is now easier to access for corporate users who “live” in their inbox. (Click here to download).

Also new is the Windows Mobile application. It can also do everything described above while also adding the ability to call your Yammer colleagues right from their profile. The application works on any Windows Mobile 6.x phone running the .NET framework. You can either install it over the air on via the PC. Click here for more details.

The plugin is available for download now from the Windows Live Gallery, which by the way, is an excellent place to seek out new extensions for Live Writer.

Recently, the YouSendIt announced a new feature for the Outlook plugin that makes file sharing via email even easier than before. With their latest Outlook plugin, you now have the ability to send entire folders via email with just one click. These folders can be as large as 2 gigabytes in size, too! You’re also able to configure Outlook to automatically send files over a certain size via YouSendIt or you can have it prompt you instead.

According to a June 2009 study from Osterman Research, the average worker sends and receives 44,700 e-mails per year, 29 percent of which have file attachments.  Of those attachments, 45 percent are larger than 10 MB, so there’s a clear use case for implementing YouSendIt in a business environment.

However, for users of Microsoft’s Windows Live Writer blog publishing software (no doubt my favorite desktop app ever!), there’s an even easier way to add the button to a post: with the Tweetmeme plugin.

With this little add-in, you can configure various button settings including whether to use the permalink or not, whether to use compact version or not, where the button should appear (top or bottom), and whether it should use your own Twitter name.

Apparently, this plugin has been available for a while in the Windows Live Gallery thanks to Scott Lovegrove who coded it at fellow blogger Steve Clayton's request, but I just now heard of it!

If you have any feedback about the Tweetmeme plugin, you can send @scottisafool a message on Twitter. To download the plugin, go here.