I've been slacking off my posts this week, and I'm sorry. Really I am. But, you see, something's come up: Me and a few other writers and editors here, well, we've gone Hollywood.

Yup. Hot sets, last-second script rewrites, long mornings in makeup...pesky geekarazzi. All right here on the Microsoft campus.

In the coming months, you'll start seeing the results of all this activity: a new collection of how-to videos on Microsoft's Windows Help and How-to website.

We're all really excited about this project—and hope you will be, too. Especially once you've seen all the cool videos we have in the works. (A few of them hosted by yours truly.) For a preview, check out the video below. That's my colleague, Dave Johnson, there, explaining how to burn a CD in Windows Vista. 

We're all frankly still learning this new medium, figuring out what works and what doesn't. That's where you could really help. 

What did you like about our first effort? What would you change? Are there other tech videos out there on the web you enjoy? Go on, you won't hurt our feelings. Finally, what topics would you like to see us cover in the coming months?

<Michael Stroh>

My seven-month-old daughter Maya has dual nationality. Recently, I've been struggling to make her a passport photo that satisfies the Japanese government's ridiculously exacting demands.

In theory, passport photos seem like one of those things ideally suited for making at home on a PC. After all, why should I pay someone ten bucks to take a bad headshot?  I'm perfectly capable of taking my own unflattering digital photos, thank you very much.

In practice, however, the task isn't so straightforward. The challenge: getting the size just right. 

That's where ePassportPhoto comes in handy. Simply snap a headshot against a white wall, upload the image and ePassportPhoto automatically resizes it to government specs. Then you can either save it back to your computer for printing or have it processed online. The site handles both U.S. 2-by-2 inch photos and the 3.5-by-4.5 centimeter standard found in many Asian and European countries.

But creating a properly-sized print is only half the battle.  Most countries also require the head to be a specific size relative to the photo. I thought the U.S. was strict. At the Japanese embassy, they whip out a ruler that looks more suited to sizing up semiconductors. If anything is off by more than two millimeters, your hard-won headshot gets tossed.

To pass this test, I turned to Adobe Photoshop and this passport photo tutorial (modifying it for Japan).

The result? Tweaking my original photo of Maya laying down on a white towel took an hour or so. But it only cost 56 cents to print eight copies at my local Rite-Aid. Maya's first Japanese passport is on its way.

<Michael Stroh>

Have tips or tricks for making passport or visa photos at home?  Share them with other Click readers in the comments section.

Next time you stroll the computer aisles at Best Buy or Costco, pay attention to the desktops on those gleaming new PCs. If they all match, it might not be coincidence—or store clerks—at work.

Last week I posted three Windows Vista wallpapers, including the one at left, and posed a question: what do they have in common? 

If you caught my short profile of Microsoft programmer Steve Fu last week, you probably deduced the answer:

All three photos were snapped by Microsoft employees.

Fu took the grand prize in a company-wide Vista photo contest held last year. But Dina Taylor, a product manager in Microsoft's mobile division, was close behind. Her winning entry shows a dew-moistened field near downtown Seattle.  She shot it on her way to work with a Canon PowerShot G6.

Until now, only a handful of friends and family were in on the secret. But some have been waging a quiet campaign to make her contribution to Vista more visible.

"I have a couple friends who take a few minutes to change every machine’s background image to mine when they are at Costco, Fry’s, etc.," Taylor told me in an e-mail. (By coincidence, evidence of one such Costco covert op arrived in her in-box a few days after we spoke—that's her friend, Neil, there on the right working the Windows Control Panel.)

Taylor finds it amusing, but says she doesn't encourage the "guerilla background changing." Considering that Vista now runs on 60 million computers and counting, her friends have a lot of mouse clicking left to do. 

Taylor also has competition.

Gustavo Siqueira, who works at Microsoft Brazil in Sao Paulo, says his friends and co-workers have been doing the same thing on his behalf. Siqueira shot his winning Vista wallpaper off the northern coast of Brazil in 2005.

He and some friends were exploring a ship wreck when they encountered a school of fish. Siqueira captured the moment with a Canon PowerShot S60 (housed in a marine case) and an underwater strobe.

"It’s a little part of Brazil in every PC around the world," he says.

It's easy to forget that behind every computer or cool gadget is a bunch of real people, each with a story to tell. Maybe I'm weird (don't answer that) but even a button on my dishwasher can inspire me to wonder: Who designed that? Why is it square, not round? Did its creator ever lose sleep over it? Is that person proud?

As I write this, a few thousand people in the surrounding offices are already sweating over the next version of Windows.  With luck, in the months ahead, I'll be able to share some of their stories.

<Michael Stroh>

More Windows trivia: The Vista start-up jingle was recorded by legendary King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp. If you're curious, check out this cool behind-the-scenes video shot by my colleagues over at Microsoft's community site, Channel 9.

Digital music lovers had a lot to digest today. First, Wal-Mart announced it would join Apple in selling digital music free of copy protection. But what really made me perk up was news that MTV's URGE music service was merging with RealNetworks' popular Rhapsody service.

I've been subscribing to URGE for a few months and have grown totally addicted. In case you haven't been following the fast-evolving digital music scene, here's a quick primer:

URGE, like Rhapsody, allows you to buy or rent music. I'm a renter. For $15 a month, I get full access to thousands of albums, which I can download to any of my PCs or my Creative Zen V music player. (The latest version of Windows Media Player even has the service built right in.)

The caveat? All these tunes are copy protected. Once I stop subscribing, all my downloaded music goes permanently silent.

Which is why today's merger news initially made me jittery. My PCs and portable music player are stocked with literally hundreds of rented URGE recordings. What's going to happen to all this stuff?

Thankfully, it turns out the answer is: not much. According to the company's hastily-updated FAQ:

Your account will continue to be managed by URGE until it is fully transferred over to the new Rhapsody. In the interim, you can access both URGE and Rhapsody using your active URGE sign-in information

Meanwhile, Rhapsody's equally hot-off-the-presses FAQ adds: 

All of your library that is available in the new Rhapsody will be transferred over when your account is transferred from URGE to the new Rhapsody

Whew. Now that's really music to my ears.

<Michael Stroh>

What do you do when all the good geek names are taken? When there's already a Vista and a Google on the playground? 

One Chinese couple hit on a novel solution: Baby "@"

Says dad:

...the whole world uses it to write e-mails and, translated into Chinese, it means ‘love him'...

I planned to say something snarky.  But as someone pointed out recently, I've also unwittingly fallen prey to the trend.  We called our 3-year-old son Yoshi.

<Michael Stroh>

If you own Windows Vista—even if you've only seen ads for it—then you've probably run across this stunning landscape. It's one of the free images that come with Vista to decorate the computer desktop.

Maybe it's even staring you in the face.

An Ansel Adams, perhaps? National Geographic?

That was my guess, until I was headed to a meeting on campus not long ago and spotted a poster-size reprint on the wall. On it was a note congratulating someone name Steve Fu.  

Steve who?

Fu, it turns out, is not a professional photographer but a 39-year-old computer programmer at Microsoft. 

He may lack the name recognition of Ansel Adams or Annie Leibovitz. But you could make the case that this single image has made Fu, at least momentarily, just as successful. Vista now runs on more than 60 million PCs worldwide.  I'm willing to bet that a good number of these people are gazing at Fu's photo even now.

Of all the photos that come with Vista, this one is also my favorite. So I couldn't resist e-mailing Fu to find out where he took it and how it wound up in Windows. "It is a bit of an interesting story," he wrote back.  A few weeks ago, I dropped by his office to hear it.

Born in China, Fu is an expert in the once obscure area of virtualization, basically a technique for conjuring one computer within another. (Some people, for example, now use virtualization software to run Windows on a Mac.) Most days you'll find him coding in his small office—bare except for seven desktop computers, three LCD monitors and a laptop or two. The only framed photo in sight is of his 6-year-old son. 

Fu says he took up photography seriously only about seven years ago. Not surprisingly, he takes an engineer's approach to his hobby: He recently gutted an old laptop and turned it into a digital picture frame. It now hangs on the wall of his suburban Seattle home.

Fu took his Vista photo in 2003 during a camping trip to the Enchantment Lakes Basin, a glacier-etched paradise nestled in eastern Washington's Cascade Range.  It's also a big draw for shutterbugs.

Getting the Vista photo, he says, took some work. Visiting the park where the Lakes are located requires a reservation, which Fu and his companion didn't have. Only a last minute cancellation by another group saved their trip. Then, Fu spent two days lugging 30 pounds of camping and camera gear to the lakes.

More hardships followed. Fu badly wanted a shot at daybreak, when he knew the light would be best. But the weather initially was miserable. 

Finally, the day before he planned to head home, Fu got his break.

He woke up at 5 a.m., mounted his Nikon D100 atop a tripod, attached an 18-35 millimeter lens and opened the shutter. "I knew I had the shot," he says. Like he does with many of his photos, Fu came back and put it up on his computer screen. A few co-workers marveled at it.  But Fu soon swapped it out for something fresh. "I forgot about it," he says.

Then, in January 2006, as development of Windows Vista was winding down, Microsoft put out a call to company shutterbugs. The company typically buys the images it includes with Windows from stock houses such as Getty or Corbis.  But for Vista, officials decided to see what employees could come up with.

More than 1,300 entries flooded in.

When he heard about the contest, Fu thought of his trip to Enchantment Lakes. His wife, who is also a serious photographer, urged him to pick something else. It's too dark, she told him.

Fu submitted it anyway. A few weeks later, he learned he won the grand prize: a $1000 gift card.  But, Fu says, for him that wasn't the real reward.

"People keep asking me, 'Did Microsoft pay you money?' And I say, 'Are you nuts? I'd do it for free. It's like I'm immortal. My photo is immortal for the next decade.'"

These days, Fu confesses to having grown a bit weary of the photo. (I had to ask him to put it up for the picture I snapped of him.)

Well, maybe not totally weary.

Last month, another fan weighed in. "To Steve, Nice Shot" read the autographed print.

It was signed Bill Gates.

<Michael Stroh>

You can see more of Fu's work at his online gallery. (If you really want to make your stomach growl, check out the ones labeled "Jian's Test Kitchen"!)

UPDATE 28 Aug 2007: Windows wallpaper fanatics should check out the website of Hamad Darwish, a contract photographer commissioned by Microsoft to take photos for Vista.  On the site you can download high-res versions of his official Windows images, as well as ones from the Vista shoot that didn't make the cut.

Recognize these? Yup, they're three of the gorgeous photos that come with Windows Vista for decorating your desktop. Now the real stumper:

These pictures have something else in common. What is it?

I'll reveal the answer later this week. Meantime, take your best shot in the comments section. Or just tell me what's on your desktop.

<Michael Stroh>

(Want to spiff up your desktop with one of these images—or perhaps a snapshot of your own?  This Windows Help article shows you how.)

A Click reader named Alan writes:

I've just hooked up my laptop and desktop to my home network. How do I setup the folders on my laptop and desktop to sync up? (I'm running both on Windows Vista Home Premium.) I've read that I need to use Sync Center. Please help.

  

Great question, Alan! I think sync—short for synchronization—is going to be one of the big digital-age headaches in the years ahead. Basically it comes down to this: As the number of computers and gadgets in our lives proliferates, how do we ensure they're all on the same page—that each device knows what the others know?

Right now, it's a big hassle. If I bookmark a website or subscribe to a RSS newsfeed on one of my six computers, I'm forced to manually update all the others. The same is true of address book contacts, Word documents, my Pictures folder...the list goes on. The unfortunate reality is that Windows doesn't yet have an innate way to synchronize files and folders across multiple PCs. (It almost did, but the feature got pulled late in the game.)  

Unfortunately, Sync Center won't be much help, either. This feature is really designed to synchronize information between Windows Vista and hand-held gadgets like digital music players, PDAs, and Smartphones.

The one exception is the "offline files" feature in Sync Center. A great tool, but it's not something you'd normally use at home. The feature is aimed more at road warriors and other workers who need to keep files on, say, a company laptop in sync with ones housed on a corporate network server. Plus, it's available only in the Business, Ultimate and Enterprise editions of Vista. (Learn more in this Windows Help article on offline files.)

So what can you do to keep your PCs in sync ? Here are some tools that I've found helpful:

One is SyncToy 1.4. This neat little Microsoft utility, recently updated for Vista, is simple and elegant. You select the folder pairs that you'd like to keep in sync, and then choose one of five options for how you want SyncToy to update them.

For example, some options allow you to sync files in one direction but not the other. This could be useful for backing up your pictures or tax files to either an external hard drive or another computer on your home network. For classic syncing, tell SyncToy to mirror the contents of your folders.

SyncToy is very cool. But know this: if you're planning to sync folders located on two different computers on your home network, you'll first have to configure those computers and folders to share. I won't lie: This can be tricky business in Vista. If you're unsure what to do, check out this handy Windows Help video.

Another option for synchronizing your data is Microsoft's FolderShare, a web-based application I wrote about not long ago. I love FolderShare. In my mind, it also has one big advantage over SyncToy: You don't have to do anything special to the computers on your network to use it. 

All you do is create an account on the FolderShare site, download and install a small software program on each computer you want to use with the service, and then pick some folders to sync. The service, part of Windows Live, is still under development (hence that "beta" label next to its name), so it's not fancy and lacks some of the SyncToy syncing options.

But it gets the job done.

If anybody out there has other tips or tricks for syncing, or has questions that other Click readers might want answers to, let's hear 'em!

<Michael Stroh>

I.

An old friend flies up from northern California to see me the other day. Since he's never been to Microsoft, I invite him to campus for a tour. He e-mails back, "Should I leave my MacBook at home?" He's semi-serious, worried he'll get us booed off the property.

Next story. I'm in a suburban Seattle coffee shop ordering a latté. "Gawd, I'd love one of those," a woman says to her MacBook-toting tablemate. "But the stuff I use for work won't run on it." The woman with the Mac nods sympathetically.

II.

Like the rest of the world, my buddy had seen the now-famous PC guy ads and assumed...well, you can probably guess what he assumed. He assumed that the Microsoft campus was littered with the carcasses of confiscated iPods or Steve Jobs dart boards.

I couldn't really make fun of him; before I started here last February, I'd been wondering some of the same things. Could I bring an iPod to work? Would I get ribbed—or worse—if I admitted to fantasizing about ditching my boring old Dell for a sexy Mac?

Would I have to remain in the Apple closet?

Feels pretty silly, thinking back. My first week on the job I noticed the guy I work for had an iPod playing on his desk. Soon after that, a link to the latest PC-guy/Mac-guy spot landed in my in-box. But the clincher came when a guy who had worked in the Mac Office division here reminded me of perhaps the biggest reason why Microsoft loves Mac.

We make and sell a lot of software for it.

III.

Especially since those crafty Apple engineers in Cupertino decided to switch from IBM-made microprocessors to Windows-friendly Intel chips. It's no longer an either/or proposition. Now you can have your sexy Apple hardware and run Windows, too. This is the news the woman in that Seattle coffee shop obviously hadn't heard.

In April, I finally ditched my old Dell laptop for a gorgeous pearl-colored MacBook. (Fear not, oh valued Microsoft corporate partner to the southeast! I still own two of your very fine desktop PCs.) 

The first thing I did after it finally arrived?  I installed a fresh copy of Windows Vista Ultimate. (Okay, first I gawked and pawed, then I installed.)

IV.

One is to configure your Mac to "dual boot." That's geek for installing multiple operating systems on a single computer.  When you power up, you choose whether you want Apple OS X or Microsoft Windows. Apple even makes it easy for you to dual boot. Just download a free software utility called Boot Camp from the company's website and follow the instructions. That's what I did, and it works fantastic.

There's another option: buy and install "virtualization" software on your Mac. You'll still need to buy a copy of Windows. (Note: You can only use the Business and Ultimate editions of Windows Vista with virtualization software.) The advantage of virtualization is that you don't have to turn your computer off and on to flip between operating systems.  You work in Windows and OS X simultaneously.

On Monday, VMware announced a new virtualization product called Fusion that enables Macs to run Windows. (I haven't tried it, but the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg took it for a test spin.) Fusion joins SWsoft's Parallels Desktop 3.0 for Mac, the granddaddy of Mac virtualization software (pictured above). Friends who use it rave; PC World liked it too.

V.

It took five weeks to sell more copies of Vista than all of the Apple computers now operating.

<Michael Stroh>

In case you missed it, The New Yorker had a fun piece on spam by Michael Specter in its August 6th issue. I'm a huge fan of both the magazine (which I typically renew in three-year increments) and Specter's writing. 

I'm not a fan of spam—although the cat-and-mouse element of it does fascinate me. Spamophiles might find the piece ho hum—there's nothing really new in it— but it's a good read about the history and scope of the spam problem. Specter also includes some nice quotes from John Scarrow, general manager of anti-spam technologies at Microsoft. Not to mention these spamtastically interesting facts:

• Year the first unsolicited electronic message was sent: 1978
• Number of people who were "spammed" in that year: 600
• Contents of first spam message:  a new computer announcement by Digital Equipment Corporation
• Percentage of spam-related Internet traffic in 2001: 5
• Percentage in 2007 (on some networks): 90
• Number of unsolicited messages sent every day on the Internet in 2007: >100 billion
• Average amount of time it takes a person to recognize and delete a single spam e-mail: 5 seconds
• Spam traffic isn't constant but ebbs and flows with the seasons
• Season with least amount of spam traffic: spring
• Season with most: fall
• For every one million junk e-mail solicitations, number of people who respond: 15
• For every one million junk postal solicitations, number of people who respond: 3000
• Of the 4 billion e-mails processed by Hotmail each day, number of e-mails deemed legitimate: 1 in 6 
• Number of Hotmail "honeypots"—accounts maintained by Microsoft solely for use in its anti-spam efforts: 130,000

  <Michael Stroh>

UPDATE:  History buffs can read the first-ever spam—and see how people responded—here.

I know what you're thinking. Cute blog, dude, but you—ahem—work for Microsoft. Why should I believe anything you say? You wouldn't bite the hand that feeds.

Fair point. In fact, you wouldn't be the first to make it (see The Seattle Times' Aug. 2 review of Click, for example).

What can I say? It is true I'm legally bound to keep mum on certain subjects, like the company's wickedly-cool plans for Windows 7, say. Or the jokes Bill G. cracks when we lunch together. (Just kidding, big guy!)

But on Click, I vow to keep it real. To prove it, I offer this:

I think file sharing in Windows Vista kinda stinks.

Of course, this isn't exactly news. A bunch of you have been grumbling for months about the same thing on Microsoft's networking and sharing discussion group.

Sharing is too confusing, you say. Too hard to set up. Too unreliable.

I wish I could disagree. But when it comes to sharing, well, let's just say Vista and my three-year-old kid have a lot in common. After months of coaxing, I still can't get the computers on my wireless home network to "see" each other and swap files reliably.

To be fair, networking and sharing are among the most technically-challenging areas of computing. It also doesn't help that my four home computers collectively run three different operating systems: Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Apple OS X.

But c'mon. Is PC-to-PC digital diplomacy really too much to ask for in 2007?  Why can't computers today just all get along?

I could go on. But my goal in this post isn't to grouse. Rather it's to steer you to a fantastic but little-known Microsoft online service that's solved my sharing problems and made life fun again. It's called FolderShare, and it frankly does everything I wish Vista could.

The free service, one of several "beta" products under development for Windows Live, makes synching and sharing files among multiple computers a breeze. (Don't, by the way, confuse FolderShare with Microsoft's recently announced online storage service, Windows Live Folders.) 

To get started, simply create a FolderShare account and download a small software program on each computer you want to share or sync. The program, which works on Windows and Apple's OS X, runs silently in the background whenever you're online. Next, tell FolderShare exactly which files or folders on each machine you want to put into play.

And that's pretty much it. As long as your computers are powered up and online, you can access your shared stuff from any web browser through the FolderShare site. I've been using the service for a few months now and love it. It's solved many of the annoying issues that can crop up when you live the multiple PC lifestyle.

So far, I've used FolderShare to keep my web bookmarks in sync across all my machines; to share video footage of my old blues band, Blind Willy, with my buddies; to play tunes archived on my MacBook from my Windows Vista PC; and to grab forgotten files stashed on my work computer from home. I no longer have to remember to e-mail stuff to myself, or to pocket a USB flash drive every time I leave the house.

FolderShare isn't perfect, of course. The service is still under development, so the site lacks some polish. Also, FolderShare places a two gigabyte limit on shared files (still plenty for most of my needs). Finally, FolderShare doesn't encrypt your files when it transfers them, so you'll need to exercise caution with anything sensitive.

Still, FolderShare is great. If you wind up trying it, be sure to report back and let Click readers know what you think and how you use it. (Here are ideas others have come up with.)

Or just let me know what else is on your mind.

<Michael Stroh>