Windows Live "Suite" - the old dog gets some teeth

A couple of weeks ago I heard a very interesting interview by some chap hading up the Windows Live team. He spoke quite enthusiastically about various principles ("North Stars") guiding development of the free applications for mail, photos, etc.

I've tried the Live Photo Gallery and it looks great - I'm now using Live writer to make this post.

Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks - these are impressive tools, and clearly aimed at beating Google at their own game - good to see them finding some teeth, and the competition bringing innovative products to the consumer.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft,Google,Windows Live,Blog,Blogger,Blogspot,Live Writer,Live Photo Gallery,Live Messenger,technoliogy,innovation,competition

PC Spring Clean - Malware be gone

I had a virus sneak on to my XP machine a few days ago - here are a few good tools to purge Windows of such nasties (use in this order makes sense to me)...

XP's Disk Cleanup
CCleaner
CWShredder
Rogue Remover
Spybot Search & Destroy
Ad-Aware
AVG Anti-Spyware
AVG ant-virus

AVG anti Virus and spybot offer downloads / updates, and stay resident - which are not too bad for freebies.

Kumail Sweeps the Board with Exam Success

We got fantastic news last week - Kumail was offered places at all three private schools he applied, and sat exams for. He also got scholarships offers, one of them ‘major’, from two of the three.

I don't think I've ever seen his mum so happy.

Today ("A- day") we got more great news - he was offered what is probably the most sought after school in North London - Q.E. Boys School - the pick of the remaining (state) schools.

The lad has put us in a quandary with all this choice - we need to decide soon – time to do some maths and weigh up pro’s and cons!

Private Schools

St Albans School	Scholarship offer
Merchant Taylors' School	Offer
Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School	Major scholarship

State Schools

Queen Elizabeth’s School	Offer
Watford Grammar School for Boys	Deferred (2nd choice - state schools)
Parmiter's School	Deferred (3rd choice - state schools)

Kumail impressed Merchant Taylors' at interview with his blog but I guess it was not good enough to swing a scholarship offer there :-(

Kudos for Manor Lodge School that Kumail has been at for just over a year now - 22 scholarships for their pupils this year - a bumper crop never to be beaten no doubt.