The main search page for Google has always tried to have a minimalistic design. However, recently, Google seems to have taken a page out of Bing’s playbook and now offers a way for users to customise the background of their Google main search page.

In order to make best use of this, you need to be logged into your Gmail/Google account.

Once logged in, there is an option on the bottom left hand corner of the screen to “Change Background Image”.

This allows the user to change the background with a picture from their Picasa Web Albums, or uploaded from their computer or from a public gallery.

In order to use your own pictures, the minimum image size is 800×600. The image is scaled as the window is resized.

The results are still displayed against a white background. It is a bit flaky and doesn’t “feel” like Google. But hey, if anyone wants to, here is it :)

Up till now, Google Doc’s has been a free service that gives the user an ability to create, maintain and store various documents online. It had functionality to allow the user to upload and read Microsoft Office documents as well.

Microsoft has now struck back by releasing free online versions of its Office Suite and giving the users an alternative to Google Docs.

Called Office Web Apps, this suite is a cut down version of the desktop applications and allows for document viewing, sharing and light editing.

The consumer version of the tools are free and store the documents on Live SkyDrive. The corporate versions can get self hosted versions of the applications using Sharepoint.

Being online applications means that the applications will work regardless of the operating system and have been tested in Windows, Mac’s and Linux based machines through various internet browsers.

If you have Office 2010 installed, then Office Web Apps takes advantage of offline and online editing and can present a richer experience for users.

Office Web Apps are also supported via mobile browsers and allows the user to view documents saved onto their Live SkyDrive account directly on their mobiles.

Read below on how to use Office Web Apps.

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The newest version of one of the more popular blogging applications, Windows Live Writer  is now out.

Version 14.0.8117.416 is part of the new Wave 3 suite of the Live Essentials package.

Most Windows platforms are supported, however the installer still complains when trying to run via Windows 2003 Server.

I’ve extracted the MSI package for Writer and placed it on my Live SkyDrive in case you need to install it for Windows Server 2003. Read below for instructions and download links.

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An increasing number of phishing emails are getting sent out asking people to verify their World of Warcraft credentials. The sad thing is that more people are falling for this every day resulting in forum posts like this:

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In my previous articles, I’ve listed of ways to get the best use out of Windows Live SkyDrive. This has consistently been one of the most read posts on my blog especially around using Gladinet to set up Live SkyDrive as a network drive on your computer.

Recently, a new product has come into Beta, that allows for the same level of functionality and allows the user to set up their SkyDrive account as a network drive without going through extended configuration steps that Gladinet takes us through.

In all fairness, connecting via Gladinet offers many more options such as connecting to other types of cloud storage at the same time (for example,  Google Picasa, Amazon S3 and Google Docs). SkyDrive Explorer only connects you to Live SkyDrive.

SkyDrive Explorer is a free product and is easy to use. It requires little to no configuration and allows the user to use their SkyDrive just like any other folder on their computer….

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I don’t know about you, but I find the mouse over ad’s on Windows Live Messenger extremely annoying. Every time I accidently move the mouse over the ad, it keeps popping up forcing me to move my mouse all the way to the top to close it.

As you can see on the left, it can get quite annoying and almost made me stop using Windows Live Messenger. To top it off, the ad’s appear OVER other applications if they are on top of (and overlap) Messenger.

While I don’t condone removing advertising from free products, this was one exception I had to make simply to save bandwidth as well as stop me from uninstalling an otherwise excellent application.

In order to remove the ads follow the steps below:

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From time to time, all bloggers like to tune their blog via a new theme or style sheet etc. Windows Live Writer has an excellent functionality to allow a blogger to preview what their post will look like before they publish their article. This is done by clicking on the Preview tab in Windows Live Writer.

When a blog is set up first in Windows Live Writer, the theme and style sheet is automatically downloaded from the blog to provide this preview functionality.

If the theme or style sheet is changed, you will need to manually refresh in Windows Live Writer to get the latest version to ensure that the preview remains accurate. Its a few simple steps to do this…

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Windows Live Writer is currently one of the most popular applications for blogging. It is an easy to use application that allows anyone to quickly post articles to their blogs in a WYSIWYG fashion. With live previews, its possible to see exactly how your post will look like before you publish the article.

This article will show you how to configure Windows Live Writer to work with your WordPress blog.

Prerequisites

The requirements before you start is that you have downloaded Windows Liver Writer and have it installed on your machine and also that you have a hosted WordPress installation somewhere. It doesn’t matter if the blog is a self-hosted one or one that is hosted on wordpress.com, the steps are the same…

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If you try and install iTunes 8.2 or above on Windows Server 2003, you will most likely get an issue during the install where it complains during installation of one of the components (namely, Apple Mobile Device Support). The error looks like “Apple mobile device support requires that your computer is running Windows XP SP2 or newer”.

iTunes will complete its install, but when you plug in your iPhone or iPod, it will not get recognized and as such, won’t allow you to synch.

If you are having difficulty getting your IPhone or IPod recognized by Windows Server 2003, try the following:

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I use both Google Chrome and Firefox for my main personal browsing. I love both browsers and think each of them does some things better than the other, so I tend to switch between the two depending on my requirements.

I love the development add-on’s that I can get for Firefox so most of my design type browsing is performed on there. However, there is one thing that I would love to have seen on Firefox that Chrome does really well. The New Tab functionality in Chrome results in a webpage dashboard that lays out my most common websites, recent book marks and recently closed web pages all in an easy to read manner. I miss that the most in Firefox.

Well, obviously someone else did too, and there is now an experimental add-on called JumpStart for Firefox that does exactly that!

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