Owners of Windows Mobile 6 phones can now read and edit Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents created in Office 2007.

Microsoft this week released Office Mobile 6.1, which fixes a glitch that had prevented users of the company's newest mobile operating system from accessing documents created by its best-selling productivity suite. Download the update here. (It's free as long as you already have Office Mobile on your phone.)

Another plus: the upgrade now lets Windows Mobile users view and extract compressed .zip files.

<Michael Stroh>

As a busy Microsoft program manager, I sit through a lot of meetings—some of which turn into yawn-inducing exercises in PowerPoint slide reading. When I was tapped recently to give my own presentation, I vowed: no yawns.

But how? And then it hit me: The Nintendo Wii.

I play my Wii so often I think I’ve developed Wii elbow (or is it Wii-itis?). What makes the console so much fun, of course, is its innovative controller. The “Wiimote,” as it's often called, has a built-in motion sensor. To hit, say, an on-screen ground stroke with the Wiimote, you go through roughly the same motion as holding a real-life tennis racket.

Suddenly I imagined myself walking around the meeting room, swishing my arm in dramatic arcs to cue the next PowerPoint slide. That would definitely add pizzazz. But would the Wiimote even work with Windows? The answer, Live Search quickly revealed, was yes.

Turns out I wasn’t even the first person to imagine the marriage; there's already a whole cottage industry of Wiimote hacks. Here’s how I pulled off mine:  

The Wiimote is a Bluetooth device, so first I needed a computer with a built-in Bluetooth interface or a USB Bluetooth adaptor. I just used my Bluetooth-enabled HP laptop. Then I needed to install BlueSoleil's free Bluetooth driver. When I did, the software automatically “discovered” my Wiimote. To complete setup, I simply double-clicked on newly-displayed Wiimote icon, right-clicked, and selected "Connect".

Next step: Install GlovePIE. This very interesting freeware program, written by a guy named Carl Kenner, allows you to control your Windows PC using just about any input device—from joysticks to exotic virtual reality gloves.

Or the Wiimote. I was in business.

Here’s where things get a little tricky. You need to feed GlovePIE a short program (called a “script”) that tells it how to interpret signals from the Wiimote—the button presses and whatnot. Luckily, lots of GlovePIE scripts are already floating around the Internet. For example, I found this one:

Wiimote.Leds=15

PageUp = Wiimote.Minus

PageDown = Wiimote.Plus

What does it do? The script tells Windows to interpret + or – button presses on my Wiimote as Page Up and Page Down commands on the PC. In PowerPoint, Page Up and Page Down navigate between slides. (For more scripts, check out this website and especially this one, which covers everything I've discussed here in more detail.)

When the time for my own PowerPoint presentation arrived, I decided to test my new trick.

What a difference. Wiimote in hand, I strolled around the room, flipping slides while bantering with my coworkers. Rather than burying their heads in their laptops, checking e-mail, they actually paid attention.

Of course, there are far easier ways to cue PowerPoint slides. Microsoft, for example, makes this cool mouse with built-in presentation buttons. But I’m still dreaming about tapping the Wiimote's motion detector capabilities to swoosh my way through presentations. All I need now is the right script.

<Gus Salloum>

About four months ago, my friend sent me an instant message to say she was engaged. I didn’t notice her big news for a week.

Welcome to the age of the digital faux pas, where you can offend friends and family at the click of a button. Instant messaging, e-mail, and social networking websites like Facebook make it possible to be in touch almost literally 24/7, but they also make it easier than ever to commit social blunders.

Most of us know the norms of offline social behavior, but online rules are still in their infancy. Sure, there are e-mail guidelines you can (and should) follow, and even several books (this and this, for instance) on various aspects of electronic-age etiquette. But fast-changing technology makes it hard to keep up. What’s the protocol for removing someone from your Facebook friends list? How can you tell whether an ignored IM indicates a pointed snub—or just a busy schedule?

In my defense, my own digital faux pas wasn’t entirely due to negligence: I was a victim of some truly horrible timing. My friend happened to get engaged during the hectic first week of my first post-college job here at Microsoft. I barely had time to glance at my smartphone’s display screen to check for new IMs.

But somehow this explanation didn’t quite fly with my irate friend when she called me a week later, wanting to know why I was ignoring her and her big announcement.

My initial response (something along the lines of “Huh?”) didn't exactly reassure her. As she launched into a rant about common courtesy, the length of our friendship, and my passive-aggressive disapproval of her fiancé (her psych degree tends to rear its ugly head when she’s mad), I quickly checked my phone’s instant messaging queue. And there it was.

Oops. 

After a lengthy apology, belated congratulations, and many reassurances that I really did like the guy she was marrying, I hung up. I felt like the world’s most socially inept online communicator. People my age and younger use instant messaging to avoid embarrassing social situations, not create them.

But that’s the thing about constant connectivity: it’s all fun and games until you receive an angry phone call.

If I’ve learned anything from my digital faux pas experience, it’s this: the Away message is your friend, the automatic sign-in feature is not, and when you want a guaranteed fast response to your big news, pick up the phone and call. And if you don’t hear back from your friends right away, give them the benefit of the doubt.

It’s a whole new world of social blunders out there, and we’re all just trying to figure it out—one IM at time.

<Brittany Knight>

Ed note: The popularity of Facebook is now inspiring its own etiquette angst, as this recent Slate article points out.

Amazon.com got heaps of press coverage today (here and here, for example) over its bid to ignite the electronic books market with a new wireless, 10.3-ounce e-book reader dubbed Kindle. In a letter to customers on the bookseller's homepage, CEO Jeff Bezos writes, "The book lover in me often has asked the nerd in me...Can something as evolved as the book be improved?"

Good question. What's your take? How do you read these days?

I'm a bibliophile with an inner nerd, too. And the geek in me has always really liked the idea of e-books. I actually go way back with the technology. Before coming to Microsoft, I spent nearly a decade covering science and technology for the Baltimore Sun newspaper and was one of the first journalists to try the early generation of e-book devices, the Softbook and Rocket e-book.

It was fun to reread that old review. In retrospect, I think I should have put my inner geek on a shorter leash: Despite my optimism in 1998, both devices are now resting quietly in High-Tech Heaven (where they have plenty of company, as Computerworld recently pointed out).

Some things about e-books haven't changed. With a $400 price tag, Kindle certainly isn't a cheap read. (Score one for tree pulp.) But in other ways, the technology has evolved. Like the Sony Reader, Kindle uses E-ink, an MIT-developed technology that's easier on the eyes than the glowing liquid-crystal displays found in laptops and first-generation e-books. The promise of e-book technology remains huge: Imagine backpacks full of textbooks reduced to a plastic-and-silicon device lighter than a can of Coke. (To see how Kindle measures up, check out this exclusive hands-on review by Newsweek's Steven Levy.)

Despite the improvements in technology and the significant economic incentive to read things in digital form—e-novels are often cheaper and online newspapers are free—I still can't wean myself off paper. I'm no Luddite: I devour plenty of blogs and other online-only material. But I also get the Seattle Times, the New York Times, Wired, the New Yorker, and a bunch of other publications delivered to my door. And when I want to relax on a Sunday morning or at night after the kids are asleep, it's paper I turn to, not pixels. 

It's probably an age thing. I'm 38. By the time the Internet and computer screens that didn't glow green came along, my reading habits were pretty well cemented. My 23-year-old office mate, Brittany, on the other hand, loves e-books. She often reads them at night on her laptop with Microsoft Reader, she says.

As Amazon was announcing its new gadget this morning, the National Endowment of the Arts issued a landmark new report on America's reading habits. The news wasn't particularly surprising: we don't read as much as we used to. Will e-books ultimately make a dent in that trend? Are the NEA's findings even true, given the explosion of blogs and websites now consumed daily?  I'll keep reading the paper to find out.

<Michael Stroh>

Pop quiz: How many photos have you got on your computer?

The more you have, the more you need an easy way to organize them. If they’re scattered across your hard drive in dozens of folders, they might as well be buried in shoe boxes under your bed.

I love using Windows Photo Gallery, which comes with Windows Vista, to organize and quickly find my own photos—all 20,000 of them. (No joke—I’ve been shooting digitally for almost ten years now, and I’ve also scanned thousands of old slides and negatives from my days as a film photographer.)

Photo Gallery automatically displays all the pictures I import from my camera, and it gives me lots of ways to sort, search, and arrange them. So when my wife asks for pictures of the kids for a family newsletter, I can display just the right collection of shots with a couple of clicks, no matter when I took them.

But now I think a newer, better, cooler tool for digital photographers has arrived: Windows Live Photo Gallery.

Live Photo Gallery, which Microsoft officially launched this week, works with both Windows Vista and XP and does all the stuff that Photo Gallery does. You can perform simple photo fixes like exposure and color adjustments, cropping, and red-eye removal. You can print or e-mail your photos. You can even tag your images with keywords to zero in on specific shots with a click or two. Forget where you stuck that photo of Uncle Jim’s 25th anniversary? Just click on your “party” tag to see all the likely candidates.

But there's also new stuff found exclusively in Windows Live Photo Gallery that I find especially cool. You can stitch a series of photos together into a seamless panorama, for instance. Or, if you ever accidentally shoot video with your camera turned sideways (and I know you have—at least, I know I have), fear not: Windows Live Photo Gallery can rotate it so your friends don’t have to crane their necks on playback.

There’s now even a histogram for correcting exposure, and a sharpening tool for improving detail.

Perhaps my favorite feature, though, is the new Publish menu. With it, I can grab a bunch of photos and upload them directly to my Flickr account (it also works with Windows Live Spaces). This is great because I’m a lazy guy. Ordinarily, I’d have to collect the photos I want to upload and then select them using some photo uploading web gadget. Now, I can just open Live Photo Gallery—where all my photos are anyway—select the ones I want to put online, and go.

<Dave Johnson>

Ed. note: See a demo of the new Windows Live Photo Gallery by the folks at Microsoft who created it.

 A friend recently sent me an article about how Best Buy has decided to stop selling analog TVs. My response: “Best Buy still sells analog TVs!?”

Now don’t get me wrong, here. I’m not saying analog TVs are useless and that you should throw yours in the dumpster this instant. Some people treasure their old sets. I couldn’t imagine watching The Price Is Right on anything other than my grandparents’ gigantic, wood-paneled beast of a television.

But if you’re in the market for a new TV, why in the world would you buy anything other than digital?

Okay, I do know one reason why: this brave new digital TV world is downright confusing. No question. So let me dispel a few myths some people—my grandparents, at least—have about the technology. For a more detailed primer, check out CNET's HDTV 101.

Myth #1: A digital TV is a high-definition TV 

Unfortunately, no. A digital TV is simply designed to receive picture information as a stream of binary ones and zeroes, unlike my grandparents' ancient analog set. High definition, meanwhile, refers to the resolution of the TV—how many pixels cram the picture screen. The more pixels, the crisper the image. At about 1 million pixels, the resolution reaches an industry-defined threshold known as "high definition". (Of course it's more complicated than that. This CNET explainer has the fuller story.)

So you can own a fancy new digital set, but still be seeing the same old "standard-definition" picture familiar to your parents and your parents' parents. To watch Jay Leno in high-def (okay, bad example), you need both a high-definition digital set and a high-definition digital signal via cable, satellite, or antenna.

Simple, right? Apparently my grandparents aren't the only ones baffled. USA Today reported yesterday that nearly 30 million owners of HDTV sets mistakenly think they're watching high-def programming when actually they're not. 

Myth #2: Digital TV sets are pricey

Nope. Best Buy stocks a 20-inch standard-definition digital tube TV for around 150 bucks. Even if you want the "HD experience" (as all the ads like to say), you still don't have to run out and spend five grand. Today, many quality HDTVs are in the $300 to $600 range. I recently splurged on an $800 37-inch Olevia. My only complaint: it’s almost too big for my living room. (I hope I don’t get kicked out of the guy club for saying that.)

If you’re still on the fence about analog versus digital, here’s the kicker: On February 17, 2009, broadcasters will stop transmitting analog signals. Forever. If you still own an analog TV then, you’ll need a digital-to-analog converter box to watch TV at all.

If you love your old wood-paneled, Price Is Right-era set and aren’t willing to give it up, more power to you. But please don’t go down to the electronics store tomorrow and replace it with another analog TV.

<Andy Myers>

I don't know about you, but I'm always feeling like my entrée into cyberspace came far too late.  Go to www.michaelstroh.com and you'll find some other Michael Stroh, a guy obviously much smarter and faster than I am. I don't know how much he wants to sell me back my vanity domain, but I'm sure it's more than I can afford. (Stroh.com is owned by a Wisconsin-based die casting company...whose CEO turns out to be—I kid you not—"Michael Stroh".)

And forget e-mail. Other Strohs (including some of my own blood relations!) long ago ruthlessly beat me to all the major e-mail providers, forcing me to accept various tortured and forgettable combinations of name fragments, numbers and obscure keyboard characters as my personal e-mail addresses.

If you're in the same boat, I suggest clicking as briskly as humanly possible over to this Windows Live ID sign-up page. In my opinion, one of the best (though far from the only) reason to sign up for the new Windows Live right now is that you can create a fresh new e-mail address ending in @live.com.

I now have mine, and words can't describe how good it feels to reclaim my name. I'm like some digital Adam: As far as Windows Live is concerned, I'm now the one and the only Stroh. Take that all you other slowpoke Strohs out there, and let the @live land rush begin.

<Michael Stroh>

Microsoft today released the next generation of Windows Live, which you can see and download at the suite's very slick new online home, www.windowslive.com. My colleagues on the Windows Live Wire blog provide a nice wrap-up of all the cool features and highlights. Read it here. The new Windows Live includes:

 <Michael Stroh>