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.

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.

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.

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)

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)

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 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.

Since the tool was originally built back in 1999, it may look a little…uhhh…retro by modern standards, but don’t let the appearance fool you – this may easily be the most useful Outlook plugin you’ve installed in a long time.

Of course, anyone choosing to use the tool must do so at their own risk because – be warned! – it does delete email. That’s its purpose. For that reason alone, the legal department at Microsoft was hesitant about it being released to the public.

Note that Microsoft does not support the tool nor can they be held responsible for what it does.

That said, you can get the Microsoft Outlook Thread Compressor for free from here: http://threadcompressor.co.uk/default.aspx. You’ll find installation instructions and more information on that site, too.

But still there’s more coming. The latest tip comes from The Media Center Blog, where we learn that the beta version of the TunerFree MCE plugin delivers Hulu to Media Center, too. Why choose this one over the others? Well since developer Martin Millmore is in the UK, his plugin also offers some of the best British IPTV content, including BBC News, ITV, Channel 4 and 5. You can download his plugin (beta) from here.

Photos uploaded with this plugin can be added to an existing album on Facebook or they can be added to a new one you create on the fly. You can even use the plugin with multiple Facebook accounts – which is perfect for those families who share one login on the home’s PC.

If you're interested in building your own plug-in, there’s a development resource page  on the Windows Live Digital Memories Experience Team. Also, check out the Windows Live Photo Gallery Publishing Plug-in Platform Overview over on MSDN and the Sample Plug-in for Flickr.

The LiveUpload for Facebook plugin also works in the beta version of Windows Live Movie Maker, too. If you want to download the LiveUpload for Facebook plugin, just click here.

Although some of the functions in Taglocity can already be done with crafty use of Outlook’s rules and views - not to mention Outlook 2007’s labels -the plugin aims to make that process easier. This is especially true for the conversation threading feature which displays emails in chronological order with all the related conversations grouped together. Some Outlook 2007 users won’t see the need for this addition, but for users of Outlook 2003, this plugin delivers some great additional features. You can check it out for yourself here.

I just saw that PayPal has an IE plugin that lets you pay for anything on the web with your PayPal account – even on sites that don’t take PayPal! I immediately thought “wow, this is cool!”  - but I then realized that this could also lead to some dangerous impulse shopping. Sometimes the only thing holding me back from a purchase is the fact that I would have to get up and dig through my purse for my credit card. No more! Assuming you have a PayPal account, you can install this plugin, which uses PayPal ‘single use’ credit card numbers to pay for your online purchases. You can also use the plugin to save and print receipts, enter addresses with 1 click, check your PayPal balance, and avoid fraudulent websites. To get access to the plugin, you have to first login to PayPal and go to your profile, where you’ll see a link to “PayPal plug-in” on the menu on the left.