Want to try out for yourself what made Robert Scoble cry? Tonight, Microsoft Research has made available the Spring Beta of WorldWide Telescope.

Download: WorldWide Telescope Spring Release

WorldWide Telescope is an application designed to turn your PC into a "virtual telescope" by stitching together terabytes (soon to be petabytes) of high-resolution images of the universe. Massive amounts of data are generated by the various scientific and research facilities and WorldWide Telescope brings the catalog of that data together for anyone to access using the power of the Internet. This new application is particularly exciting for me being someone really heavy into astronomy.  You can also use WorldWide Telescope and connect an ASCOM-capable Telescope to your PC to watch the night sky.  

WorldWide Telescope lets me connect to Communities, access Collections of celestial objects such as the Solar System or Constellations, or take Guides Tours.

Using my mouse, I can navigate the cosmos zooming in and out to any object in the rich catalog of celestial objects. I can right-click to access quick information on any celestial object.

I can

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Last week I posted an update on Certified from Windows Vista products in which at the end of the post I mentioned I had something else planned in regards to Certified for Windows Vista. Here at Microsoft in Redmond, the Windows Vista Logo Team made a poster that was put up around campus showcasing the Certified for Windows Vista logo. I thought the poster was really neat so I asked Deryl if he wouldn't mind if we released it as desktop wallpaper here for you to add Certified for Windows Vista to your desktop.

Below are links to download the Certified for Windows Vista wallpaper for your desktop (depending of course on your screen resolution) courtesy of Windows Live SkyDrive:

Enjoy the wallpaper!

For those not really interested in this wallpaper - you might check out another wallpaper of mine I released last month. I also hope to create some more wallpapers for you here in the coming months.

Windows vista has a new indexing services which enables a faster desktop search.Vista keeps on indexing your files which makes your system slower and if your the person who does not search for the files on the computer then its recommended to disable Vista`s Desktop search indexing.

• Simplest way to do this is to press (Win key + R) that would bring on Run.Type in Services.msc and search for Windows Search.Right click on it and select properties.Choose Disabled at startup type and then stop the service just choosing Stop.

• You can also go to Control Panel>System and Maintenance> Indexing Options.Remove all the locations from there,you can keep some if you want to if you use it frequently.

• One more way is to disable indexing for a certain drive or vice-versa. Go to my computer, right click on the drive that you want to enable/disable indexing on.

After you install Windows Vista on your PC or you change the password of your user account, it is a good idea to create a password reset disk. This disk will be of great help if you forget your password for some reason.Here is how you can go with it.

1. Click on Start and then Control Panel.
2. Click on the User Accounts and Family Safety link.Note: If you’re viewing the Classic View of Control Panel, you won’t see this link. Simply double-click on the User Accounts icon and proceed to Step 4.
3. Click on the User Accounts link.
4. In the task pane on the left, click the Create a password reset disk link.
5. When the Forgotten Password Wizard window appears, click NextNote: You will need some kind of portable media before being able to create a password reset disk. This means that you will need a flash drive or a floppy disk drive and blank floppy disk.
6. In the I want to create a password key disk in the following drive: drop down box, choose the portable media drive to create a password reset disk on.Click Next to continue.
7. With the disk or other media still in the drive, enter your

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The data speaks for itself. At the top of the list is Windows Vista 64-bit, while at the bottom is XP SP2. In the middle we have XP RTM, XP SP3, Vista 32-bit RTM and Vista 32-bit SP1 fighting it out.

Read More @ Zdnet Blog

In Part 1 of my 4 part series of blog posts looking at the Origami Experience 2.0 software, I am going to talk about one of the most important new experiences in the new release: browsing the web directly in Origami Central. Origami Central, one of the three apps in the Origami Experience, has the built in capability to browse webpages just as you would in IE7. ActiveX controls work just fine in the browsing experience of Origami Central - as does Flash and Silverlight (demo video below!).

In Origami Central, the browsing experience is tied to the toolbar that auto-hides at the top of the window.

Because the toolbar auto-hides, I get a full screen web browsing experience and with a UMPC running at 1024x600 resolution without toolbars and other things taking up useful screen real-estate.

Just like in IE7, I can use the address bar in Origami Central to do web searches. But in Origami Central, when I type something in the address bar (a phrase or URL), it searches through the history of websites I have already visited. I typed in "windows" into the address

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