I am unable to modify/delete anyone on my friends list and get an error, 'Unable to update friend information'. Is it just me or anyone else getting a similar error?

Sometimes you need to send a text message, but you forgot your phone, or you have poor cell reception, so what can you do? Or you just prefer the comfort of the full keyboard to the crammed one on your phone? No problem, we’ve got 10 sites to help you get started with staying in constant contact with your friends, families and even your customers.

Bloove.com - Get your phone contacts on the Bloove site, and then log in and manage them as well as send them text messages directly from the site.

ClearSMS.com - A professional SMSing service for businesses to send out mass messages to their customers to alert them about specials and sales. All messages are assigned a value in credits an you purchase more as needed.

GizmoSMS.com - GizmoSMS lets you send texts to users in over 50 countries an a slew of carriers inside each of those. While it is free to use, it does not allow space for identifying yourself except inside the body of the text.

Group2Call.com - Allows you to import your contacts, break them up into groups and send all the free texts you want to them. Also offers the chance to broadcast voice messages, but you have a limited supply of those.

Jaxtr.com - This one requires the person you wish to text to have the widget (like the one pictured above) installed on their blog or social networking profile, but if it’s there, you can text the member if they live in one of any 38 countries.

OhDontForget.com - Not only can you text people, you can schedule them for later delivery.

SMSGupShup.com - A system to allow you to send one text message to a number and they will then resend it out to every member that belongs to your group, up to 5,000 people in size.

Swaggle.mobi - A service for small groups to SMS each other at once; accessible via iPhone as well as by the web.

Yahoo Mobile - Yahoo Mobile lets you send and receive phone text messages; you will not be charged for sending the SMS; but the recipient might be charged the standard messaging rates for receiving or replying.

Yellowpipe - Mainly a web host, but they happen to offer a quick and easy SMS feature when you just have to get out a text quickly. They do allow you to enter a return number.

Source: Mashable

Over the past few months I have noticed an increase in spam comments on my blog. Maybe it is just my blog but I am getting sick of it.

An example of the most common spam comment on my blog:

At first it was ok and I used to manually delete them but in the past few weeks I have been getting more than 10+ comments a day which is a real pain to delete one by one. I reported this to the Report Abuse link and got in touch with the support team. I was told how to delete comments at first and when I replied I know how to delete comments they told me that appropriate action has been taken against the spammer after I supplied all the details to them. But soon after I send them the email I get another spam comment by the same person. I again send an email telling them about it and I get a reply saying please fill in all the details although in the email I sent them I had put in the blog entry where the spam took place. I am tired of filling details all the time and it having no effect on the spam comments on my space so I decided that the problem lies not with the support team but with the way the Live spaces commenting feature is designed.

You need a Windows Live ID to sign in and comment. This was done I believe to decrease spam and also that Microsoft can track people who violate their TOS or abuse other peoples spaces. I am sure the support team must have deleted the spammer's account but it is not hard to create a new account and start spamming again. I hope the following methods I outline below if implemented can cut down on spam.

Ability for a user to block a visitor:

A Live Spaces user should have the option of blocking visitors they do not want commenting on their space or block visitors they think are spamming their space so that specific visitor cannot comment on their space while  they are signed into their account which is required by Live Spaces in order to post a comment. The visitor will have to create a new account in order to spam again which I am sure is more of a hassle. Multiple blocks by different users can send a red flag to the spaces team and they should investigate wether to delete the account of the spammer or block his IP.

Well blocking IP can sometimes make other people suffer as well so I think the method below used in other blogging services could be more appropriate.

Introduction of a Akismet type feature into Windows Live Spaces:

Akismet is a plug-in used widely in WordPress blogs to cut down not only on spam comments but spam trackbacks too. When a comment is made on your space, Akismet checks it against know spam comments and will decide wether to mark the comment as spam or not and let the comment get published or stay hidden in the spam folder just like how you webmail junk/bulk inbox works. You can see the spam comment box and decide if a comment has been put there by mistake and mark it as not spam. The system learns and in the future will not mark a comment by that person or that type of comment in your spam box. You can also mark spam comments that get published as spam and the system will update its database and learn from it. Too many 'mark as spam' from different users for a type of comment will make sure that in future whenever a comment like those being made on my blog everyday go straight to the spam box. An appeal system for a visitor/user should also be in place incase a group of spacers decide to make someone a target and keep marking his space/comments as spam.

I am surprised that Spaces does not have a feature like this already as I have so many spam comments and hundreds of viagra pills trackbacks on blog entries like 'How to add music'. It will also be easier to implement such a feature on spaces as visitors have to sign in with their Windows Live ID to make a comment and spammers can easily be tracked or their accounts deleted.

What are you thoughts on this matter? Any suggestions to improve the above two ideas are welcome or if you can think of a way to tackle spam on spaces you are welcome to email me or comment below.

Update: 15/4/2008

Wow, just got like 20+ comments, what pain having to delete them manually from different blogs.

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Gizmoz lets you upload pictures of yourself and it turns you picture into a 3D avatar with which you can make short clips with voice recordings and other things.   
<A clip of myself>

• Go to http://www.gizmoz.com/ and sign up for an account.
• After you sign in the navigation and creation of content is pretty self-explanatory. Just make sure you have a decent passport photo of your self.
• After you create your content and publish it, Gizmos will give you an option to Post it on Live Spaces. Click on the Live Spaces link in the Post it section...

• Clicking on the link will add a gadget to your space through which your clip can be seen by all your visitors.

If you want to embed this clip on your blog...

• Don't click on the Live Spaces link but rather copy the code given by Gizmoz. (see the code below the orange box in the picture above)
• You can add this code to a new or existing blog entry by the embed video link.
  • Add a new blog entry or open an existing one in edit mode.
  • Click on the Embed Videos link found near the Add photos link. See picture below:

  

  • Paste the Embed code of your Gizmoz clip you copied earlier and click Save.
  • You will notice the video is now in your blog entry. You can adjust the height, width of the video with your mouse. Also you can use the blog editing tools to make further adjustments like alignment.
  • After you are happy with the changes, publish your blog entry.
  • Preview your Space!

You can add this to a HTML module as well.

Done!

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Looking for some new RSS icons for your blog?

You can use the icons for private and commercial projects, blogs and web-sites for free. However, please take a closer look at the license agreement — e.g. it’s forbidden to sell the icons and in order to use them, the designer asks for a backlink.

Click here to download the RSS icon package.

----------------

For new users:

What is RSS?

How to add images to your space. 1, 2.

After reading the RSS and adding images tutorial I think you will be able to put up and RSS icon linked to your RSS feed on your front page via a HTML module.

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Spaces maps suffered a database problem and unfortunately all the data was corrupted and it could not be repaired. I am going to try to get a new hosting service so that this does not happen again. Bluehost where it is hosted did try to help but they really weren't much help.

The service is back up again and the only way we could do it was to reset the stats and do a clean start. I apologize for any inconvenience caused. Hopefully it will not occur again.

I have been really busy with a few things and now a days I get less time for spaces but I will try to put up a few tutorials in the coming days.. till then let me know how spaces maps is working for you and any feedback is welcome.

On an another note, I will try answering the messages and emails that you have sent me in the past two weeks.

Good day!

- Dev

First, thanks again for all of your feedback. There's nothing like receiving comments and ideas directly from some of our 115 million monthly Spaces users worldwide.

Based on what we've heard from you, here's the latest round of changes we've made:

• You now have the ability to remove updates from specific people in the what's new area of your Spaces home page.

At the bottom of your (signed-in) Spaces home page, you now have an “Options” link.

Clicking “Options” will take you to a “What’s new Options” page where you can choose who of your Spaces friends and Messenger contacts show up on your home page.

• We've added back your list descriptions for all lists when they are displayed in the narrow column
• The font for custom lists is no longer bold by default
• We changed the Sponsored Results module to reflect the transition of our partnership with Kanoodle
• We've made some additional smaller changes which you won’t see but which will further improve the Spaces service

We hope you enjoy these changes. As always, keep the feedback coming. We are listening.

- Chris
Product Manager, Windows Live

Technorati Tags: Windows Live Spaces,Windows Live

This is not related to spaces but it is an absolute must see. Never give up!

Link to original video

Update: Wes just notified me that the Spaces team are going to re-enable list descriptions in the coming week, so carry out the following tutorial only if you cant wait and have to put a description for an important link.

After the recent updates to spaces, the descriptions on custom lists (when placed to the sides) do not appear. Many users have been unhappy with this. Through this simple procedure you can get descriptions onto the side as before...

First,

• Sign into your space and click on the edit link found on any custom list that is on the side or create a new one.
• Click on the Add item link and enter the description you would like to have for the link you are going to add to the list. Put this description into the link name field and leave everything blank as it is and click Save as show in the picture below...

• Now click on the Add item link again and this time enter the link name and the link web address/URL in their respective fields and then click on the Save button.

• All done! Now preview your space and your custom list placed on the side will have links with descriptions.

Note: Always enter the description item first and then the link info later on via a new item. Although this (your list) might not look good as before it is at least useful when you have to put a description to an important link.

Thanks to Spence in Space for this tip.

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My HP laptop fell down and along with a broeken screen my hard disks were damaged beyond repair. Although sad at losing all my data from the previous two years (pictures, music) a lot of it not backed up due to me being lazy and taking my laptop for granted I am quite happy at having for a new laptop.

It is a expensive but the quality and the specs of the laptop with the good looks being a bonus make it worth the price.

The Asus Lamborghini VX2S laptop:

Specs:

Asus 15.4" VX2S-B2B Notebook --Intel Core 2 Duo Processors T7700 2.4 GHz, 15.4"WSXGA+ (1680x1050) ,2GB DDR2 +TM1G,NV8600GT 512MB ,200GB 7200RPM HDD, Docking,Vista Ultimate.

More details and pictures here.

For the past few months I have seen an increasing amount of comments which have URL's starting with cid. I just made a new dummy space and saw that Live Spaces does not give the option of choosing a space URL at the sign up stage like it used to before. Instead after signing up for a live ID you are given a space with a URL like: http://cid-8c5b859909977f69.spaces.live.com/.

You are also presented with a Getting Started/Welcome to your space module through which you choose the URL of your space. I think many people who are new to blogging or casual Internet users might miss this. I have also seen most of these spaces are set to private and comments cannot be returned which is an annoyance.

If you don't know what a URL is, click here.

Click here to learn how to make your space public so others can comment back on your space.

To change the cid url into something more memorable such as http://d3vmax.spaces.live.com , read on...

First,

• Sign into your space with your windows live ID / email and click on the Your Space tab and enter your space.

• Click on the Choose web address icon found on the Welcome to your space module that is present on your space.

• Enter a space address/URL that you think is easy to remember so that it is easy to give it to your friends or family or just choose something cool and click on the Check availability button to see if it is available as someone might have already taken it. If it all good then click on the Save button and you have created a web address for your space which any one on the Internet can access. (If you have set it on public: Recommended)

Now go through the basic tutorials listed on this space and started learning about spaces and customisations.

Good luck!

-Dev

p.s. Note in case you don't have the Welcome to your space module you can get it from Customize >>  Add modules or you can get your web address from Options >> Space settings. Once you have selected your space web address/URL, you cannot change it. If you want to change it you will have to delete your space and create a new one (again from space settings) but do not that you will lose all your blogs/photos and just about every data you put on your space including comments.

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A few months ago I did a presentation at Microsoft UK on getting the best out of Windows Live Spaces.

Click here for the Powerpoint presentation files (Click on any and see which one works for you)

I hope you find it useful and it helps you getting started with spaces.

- Dev

My friends lists has hit 1000 friends and Live Spaces does not permit me to add anymore friends. Therefore anyone on my friends lists whose space is set to private will have to be removed (sorry :) in order to make space for future public space friend requests.

Regards,

Dev

At the end of last week, we released some new features for Spaces and Windows Live Events. Here's the low-down:

New in Windows Live Spaces

Friends of your friends
When you're signed in and you visit another person's space, you can easily see the friends you have in common.

Multiple photo modules
More than 8 million photos are uploaded to Windows Live a day, so we figured you might like to have more ways to showcase your photos on your space. Now you can! Just add more than one photo album to your space from the Customize page.

Additional markets and additional storage for Windows Live SkyDrive
In addition to the US, UK, and India, SkyDrive is now available to users in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Finland, France, Guatemala, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Portugal, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Turkey.

In addition, SkyDrive users will also have more room for storing files because the limit is being raised from 1GB to 5GB. So now you have five times the space you had before — that’s 5GB of free online storage for your favorite documents, pictures, and other files. SkyDrive is a great way to make sure your files are available to you from any computer, without having to carry them around on a flash drive. It is really useful for sharing files that may be too big to send in e-mail.

For Spaces users in the countries above, you will see a link on your Spaces home page which will allow you to upload files directly from Spaces to Windows Live SkyDrive. Just click on the Share Files link at the top of the Spaces home page.

You can also learn more by visiting the SkyDrive team blog.

New in Windows Live Events

We added new features to Events to make it more personal. When you create an event on Windows Live, your own name and e-mail address appears on the invitation instead of the automatically generated e-mail address. In addition, any public events you organize will show up in your Windows Live profile and Events homepage so your friends and Messenger contacts will know when and where it's happening.

As always, let us know your thoughts and keep sending us your feedback. We are listening.

-Chris
Product Manager, Windows Live

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In the past week(s) there have been a few updates on spaces.

1. Common friend
2. List descriptions removed
3. Updated spaces on the spaces community page have a more detailed description (when not signed in)

While I was in London I had suggested the common friends list indicator and am happy that it has been implemented finally weather or not it was due to my suggestion or not. The funny thing is when you are signed into your space and preview your space (i.e. not in edit mode) you can see that you have all your friends as common friends.

I don't like the way the description of lists have been taken off when you put the lists on the side columns. I think it should be up to the space owner to decide wether to remove the descriptions or not. The links have also become bold making it look ugly.

The third one wont make much difference but it can help you discover random spaces.

Do you know of any more? What do you think about this updates? Please comment....

Zamar lets you convert music, videos, pictures and documents into different file formats without having to download any software. It is free, quick and very easy to use.

It also lets you convert Office 2007 documents into different file formats. You don't have to sign up but if you do you get a bigger file upload capacity and save your converted files.

Click here to see all the different conversion types supported by Zamar.

Lifehacker has a nice entry on how to unlock your iPhone and use it on any network you want.

Click here  to read it.

Sometimes you just need to do things on the run, and you just simply don’t have access to Photoshop, so that’s where a GIF animating site like Gickr can come in handy.

Via Mashable

Also...

Build your own attractive business cards online with free webapp Deyey. The site's built-in templates are attractive, simple to use, and easy to customize.