One of my favorite things in Windows Vista is the DVD Maker application.  It’s available in either the Home Premium or Ultimate editions of the operating system.  Unfortunately, I don’t think many people take the time to explore this application as a great way to share pictures and videos through the now ubiquitous DVD player that seems to be in everyone’s home, car, and PC.  Here are the few quick and easy steps you can follow to use DVD Maker to create your own masterpieces.

Begin by locating Windows DVD Maker in the Windows start menu.  You can use the built-in search box on the start menu and just type DVD and you should see the application quickly appear in the list above the search box.  Start the application and after the initial welcome window, you’ll see the main part of the application:

The user interface here is very straightforward.  Just start by clicking Add items to bring in your pictures or videos.  Here is how the application looks after adding a few pictures and videos:

You’ll see it groups your pictures into a slide show and puts your videos one-by-one on the list.  You can reorder the items using the arrow buttons on the toolbar, and open up the slide show folder and reorder items there too.  Don’t forget to give the disc a title (at the bottom of the window) and if you want to adjust the display and burner options you can do that by clicking on the Options… link on the bottom of the window.

Click Next and now it’s it’s time to customize the DVD menu and add some music for your slide show.  You can choose from a variety of styles of menus on the right side of the application, and customize them menu text, and how the menu looks using the buttons on the toolbar.  Here, I’ve selected the Layers menu style:

After you get the menu the way you want it, click Slide show on the toolbar to add some music for your picture slide show.  You can change the picture length, transitions, and effects here too:

Click the Change Slide Show button when you’re done.  Then try clicking the Preview button on the toolbar to see what your DVD will look like when it’s played:

Try clicking on the buttons in the preview windows just like you would the buttons on your DVD remote to see how everything will look.  Click OK, and then if you’re satisfied with everything, click the Burn button on the main application screen.  After some time (how long will depend on how many pictures, videos, and music you’re burning), you’ll have a DVD ready to play in any player.

I hope you have as much fun with this as I do!

- Marcus, Windows Community Manager

One of the things I really like about Twitter is how fast you can learn about cool new things people are doing.  That’s exactly how I found out about Kelly Poe (pictured here) and his campaign to Release Windows 7.  Kelly’s tweet was picked up by Todd Bishop and others and it started spreading like wildfire. 

I recently had a chance to chat with Kelly about how he got started with Release Windows 7, his plans for a new YouTube channel, and the ideas he has next for the community he’s created.   I encourage you to take a listen, then visit Kelly’s website, check out his YouTube channel, and upload a video with your favorite Windows 7 features and why you’re ready to see the product released.

You can download this specific podcast in the format you prefer using the links below:

• Conversation with Kelly Poe (WMA format)
• Conversation with Kelly Poe (MP3 format)

Or subscribe to the whole podcast series using these RSS links:

• Windows Community Podcast Series (WMA format)
• Windows Community Podcast Series (MP3 format)

I look forward to seeing some of your videos on the Release Windows 7 YouTube channel and getting more feedback from Kelly and the community on this new version of Windows.

- Marcus, Windows Community Manager

We’ve just added another way to get some of the best contributions from the Windows Community into your favorite RSS reader (like Windows Live Mail for instance) or into an RSS component on your favorite website.  Now, you can get all the posts from a specific person using an RSS feed like this:

http://www.windowslive.com/feed/member/[profileid].rss

Where you see [profileid] you need to replace that with the a string of characters that represents the person’s profile on http://www.windowslive.com/explore.  For example, here is my profile on that site:

My profile ID is at the end of that URL, highlighted above, between the profile/ and the #1.  So the RSS feed for my posts would be:

http://www.windowslive.com/feed/member/9e61cc84-9091-416a-9387-85c364956946.rss

So as you find fun and interesting people in our community, why not subscribe to their RSS feed so you are always up-to-date on everything they’re posting?

- Marcus, Windows Community Manager

How many times do you send a link to a map, a movie, or a restaurant in e-mail?  Wouldn’t it be great if you could send something more than just a URL?  Thanks to a new feature rolling out now to all Hotmail customers, the “only lonely link” problem might finally be solved.  That new feature is called QuickAdd and many of you might already have it as part of your Hotmail account.  It’s part of a whole bunch of new Hotmail capabilities rolling out now.

To learn more about QuickAdd, I sat down with Chad Estes, a Senior Program Manager on the Windows Live team.  Take a listen to our podcast and you’ll hear more about how the idea for QuickAdd came about as well as some of the ways customers are using it.

You can download this specific podcast in the format you prefer using the links below:

• Windows Live Hotmail QuickAdd (WMA format)
• Windows Live Hotmail QuickAdd (MP3 format)

Or subscribe to the whole podcast series using these RSS links:

• Windows Community Podcast Series (WMA format)
• Windows Community Podcast Series (MP3 format)

Has your Hotmail account been upgraded with QuickAdd?  Please let me know if you’ve tried it and what you think.

- Marcus, Windows Community Manager

Have you seen the latest Windows television commercial?  Kylie is an amazing girl and shows off just how easy it is to share digital photos using Windows Live Photo Gallery and Windows Live Mail. 

Watch Kylie:

- Marcus, Windows Community Manager

Note: this was originally published on the Windows Live Wordsmiths Space, which no longer exists.  It’s so well done, however, that I wanted to repost it with some minor updates for the latest release of Windows Live.

Do you want to throw a house-warming party or invite your friends over for a casual dinner? Or maybe you're ready to tie the knot but you're stressed out about planning and organizing your wedding reception. Well, Windows Live Events can help. With Windows Live Events, you can plan your party, send and keep track of invitations, and then, all you have to do is, sit back and enjoy! After the party is over, your guests can even discuss the party, and post pictures.

Create your own event page

Windows Live helps you pull together your party in a snap. But first, you need to set up your personal event page. Here's how:

1. Go to your Windows Live Home page.

2. On top of this page (or any Windows Live web page), click More, then click Events.

3. Click Create an event at the top of the next page.

4. On the Create a social event page, type a title for your event.

While the title is the only item required on this page, it is a lot more helpful to your guests if you enter all the other details here, including:

• The name of the host.
• A contact number in case guests have any questions (or get lost).
• A template. Each template includes a different theme that customizes the look of your page with colors and background images.
• The date and time of the party.
• The location and address of the party.
• A map—you can automatically generate the map based on the address. In the Location name or Address box, just enter the name of the location (such as a museum or park) or the address of the party, and then click Add map.
• A brief description of the party, so that guests know what to expect.
• Permissions for who can see your event page. If your party isn't open to the public, set the permissions to Only people who are invited, so that only people who are invited can see it.
• A personalized web address, sometimes called a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). If you want to customize your web address, click Personalize the address, and then enter your web address. Click Check availability to see if the web address that you selected is available.

5. When you are finished entering all of the information about your party, click Create.

That's it! You have created your very own event page which includes the details of your event, a guest list, a photo album, and a discussion board. Now it's time to invite the guests.

Invite guests

You can't have a party without guests, so the next step is to fill out your guest list. Inviting guests is easy, here's how to do it:

1. On the event page that you just created, click Invite guests.

2. In the To box, type the e-mail addresses of the people you want to invite. Separate e-mail addresses with a comma (,) or a semicolon (;).

To invite people who are already in your contact list, click Add people from your contact list, select the contacts who you want to invite, and then click Apply.

3. In the Message box, type a message for your invitees, and then click Send.

Guests get your invitation and a link to your page, where they can let you know whether they can come to the party. They can also have conversations on the discussion board—for example, guests might want to set up carpools or coordinate other plans before the event. Plus, the fun doesn't have to stop just because the party is over. Your event page lives on, so that you can post photos and share memories.

- Marcus, Windows Community Manager

Many of us find we have lots of people in our Windows Live contact list, but we really spend our time “talking” to just a handful.  Sometimes it gets a little daunting to sort through all those contacts.  Fortunately, there are a couple ways to help organize your contacts:  Favorites and Contact Categories. 

Favorites are just what they sound like.  These are the folks you IM with the most or exchange e-mail with the most.  When you make someone a favorite, they go to the top of your Messenger list and are easier to find in Hotmail too.  To create a favorite, just click on the People link at the top of any Windows Live page, and then click on the star icon next to any contact.  The star will turn gold and that person is now a favorite.

You can think of Categories as your own personal contact groups, where you can decide how to slice and dice your contact list into more manageable pieces.  Categories make it easier to IM or send e-mail with groups of people all at once.  For instance, instead of typing in all seven of your family members names into an e-mail message that includes that great new photo you just took, you can just send to your “family” category. 

I know a lot of people create categories for family, friends, and coworkers, but how you do it is totally up to you.  You can see in the image above that I’ve created several categories – Comblu (a great company I work with), Community, Coworkers, Family, Friends, Partners, etc.

Here are the quick and easy steps involved in creating a contact category and sorting your contacts.

First, click on the People link on the top of any Windows Live page, then click on Manage categories.  Then you should see a page that looks like this, but yours might not have any categories listed:

Now, click on New to create a category.  Give your category a name, and then you can start typing in the names or e-mail addresses of the members you want to add to this category.  Windows Live will help you fill these in based on your overall contact list.  In my example below, I’m creating a new category called “Neighbors” with three people in it that live in my neighborhood:

Note how Windows Live found two contacts that started with “don”.  I just need to click the one I want.

After you’ve created all your categories and favorites, you’ll see them inside Windows Live products and services like Hotmail and Messenger.  For example, when composing e-mail in Hotmail, just click on the To: button, and you can select Categories or Favorites as your intended recipient:

With Windows Live Contact Categories and Favorites, it’s even easier to stay in touch with people.

- Marcus, Windows Community Manager

Our Windows Community is generating a lot of really great how-to tips and stories about using Windows Live, and soon we’ll be expanding with contributions around Windows Vista and Windows 7 too.  You can see the Windows Live content at http://www.windowslive.com/connect/posts, and we publish that out as an RSS feed at http://www.windowslive.com/feed/feed.rss.

But we have a few other RSS feeds that aren’t as widely publicized.  Until now. 

Did you know you can get feed for the latest community content for a particular product?  Try http://www.windowslive.com/feed/messenger.rss for example.  Just put a different product name in place of “messenger” to get a different feed, like this:  http://www.windowslive.com/feed/hotmail.rss for Hotmail.

How about a feed for a particular tag?  We’ve got community members starting to blog about Windows 7, and you can get a feed of those posts at http://www.windowslive.com/feed/tag/windows%207.rss.  The %20 is used in place of the space between “Windows” and “7”.   If you want a feed from any other tag, just replace “windows%207” with something else, like “vacation” for instance to get stories about vacations:  http://www.windowslive.com/feed/tag/vacation.rss

Here are a couple other feeds:

• http://www.windowslive.com/feed/top/mostviewed.rss for the posts with the most views.  Lots of posts from Jamie here.
• http://www.windowslive.com/feed/top/highestrated.rss for posts that have been highly rated by our community members. 

I hope you find these “secret” feeds to be a useful way to get some of the best our community has to offer into your RSS reader or onto your website.

- Marcus, Windows Community Manager

Wide screen, 16:9, HDTV, 720p, 1080p – whatever you call it, now it just seems odd to watch a video that’s not in a wide screen format.  Even YouTube has totally switched over to a wide screen format for their player.  So imagine my dismay when I added a wide screen YouTube video into Windows Live Writer and it didn’t appear in wide screen format.  Hmmmm.  Clearly, this is the stuff of which how-to tips are made.

There are a three different ways to make videos within Writer appear in wide screen format.

The first is the easiest.  Instead of using Writer’s normal Video insert wizard, copy the video embed codes onto your clipboard, and then use the Paste special… command (or Ctrl-Shift-V) to paste the embed code in as HTML, and it will show up correctly.

As soon as you click OK, you’ll see the video in your blog post.

The second way is to paste the embed code for the video into the Source tab inside Writer, as shown here:

The last way is a little more involved, where you need to edit the configuration files of Writer.  But it’s still not too complicated.  Here are the two simple steps:

1. Open C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Windows Live Writer\ResourceCache\live\VideoProvidersB2.xml replacing <username> with your user name.
2. Assuming you have the most up-to-date configuration files, on line 68 under the YouTube provider, change the default insert size to be:

There you have it:  three ways to get your videos to be the wide screen versions you want to show and your viewers want to see. 

- Marcus, Windows Community Manager