As I had promised yesterday in my little teaser, today (again at 2AM), I’m announcing the availability of “Flickr Search Connectr” for Windows 7. If you have a copy of Windows 7 and the tubes aren’t blocked, I encourage you to try it for yourself.

So what is this voodoo you might be asking? Well this is actually a combination of two components, both carefully put together in a couple of hours by amateur programmer yours truly. The first is a OpenSearch Description File generator (also known as the “Search Connector” in Windows 7) and the second is a Flickr web service. Combined, they allow you to search and access images on Flickr right in the Windows 7 Explorer using the new “Search Federation” platform.

Please note because I’ve implemented a man-in-the-middle solution, it carries obvious performance penalties and as such please be patient when waiting for the results to load.

What federated search is about is the ability to search remote file repositories on the local network or web. In Windows 7, this feature is implemented natively in the shell. And because Microsoft is the evil monopoly it is, it’s implemented using open standards OpenSearch and RSS2 so it’s simple for developers to take advantage of.

As a theory as to why not many people are excited about this, the example Microsoft used to promote this feature (on their website and at PDC08) was searching an online Sharepoint server. Practical, but not cool at all. It may be an enterprise feature by design, but I think it has legs as a consumer feature too which is why I built this Flickr as a proof-of-concept.

If you want to know what makes searching within the shell cool, it means you’re interacting directly with the file. It’s a little clunky in the M3 Build 6801, but even still you can double click a picture to open it in larger view or set it as your background.

Now imagine the possibilities. Searching the files on your remote Windows Home Server, searching your documents on Google Docs, finding music on Pandora, finding videos on YouTube, finding PDFs from your library. Basically anywhere with a repository of files.

I look forward to the full MSDN documentation (no documentation now) to outline what this platform can do. Also can’t wait to see what other and more talented programmer can mash-up and most of all, which first parties will be first (pun) to support this powerful platform.

Here’s a bit of fun. Take a good look at this screenshot to find out why I’m excited about the new find and organize features in Windows 7. See if you can figure out what makes this special and why there’s tremendous opportunities here for developers and end-users. More detail in the next couple of days. (P.S. Flickr API is fun.)

My favorite would have to be the simplistic yet iconic (pun) Live Photo Gallery icon, and least favorite the Live Spaces icon which is overly complex.

In a presentation titled “Video Improvements In Windows 7” at WinHEC 2008, Microsoft also revealed new encoding and similarly transcoding capabilities in Windows 7. The new “Media Foundation” decoders are as follows,

In Windows 7, encoding is extended to widely adopted MPEG-4 and 3GPP standards with H.264 video and AAC audio encoders built in, on top of the WMV, WMA and MP3 encoders built-in to Vista today - after all, hardly anyone uses Windows Media outside of the Microsoft ecosystem. Speaking of which the Zune even supports H.264 and AAC natively.

Bear in mind however these encoders are not a replacement for commercial alternatives. The limitations include simple profiles, maximum bitrate and resolutions.

With this new pool of decoders and encoders, Microsoft’s also doing some building in some interesting transcoding (decoding and re-encoding from one format to another) technology in Windows. From what I can at least gather from the presentation, transcoding is actually built right into the Windows 7 shell. That is, if you drag and drop a video from your desktop to your portable media player, the conversion will happen automatically. Personally, anything that removes unnecessary third-party bloatware to add content to portable devices gets my vote.

Microsoft also recognizes that software transcoding is less than ideal - a movie will usually take hours, so Windows 7 will also support a new breed of dedicated hardware transcoders which could ideally become a standard motherboard chipset feature. Here’s a particular one from Quartics.

If you’re particularly fond of the kinetic scrolling functionality that is implemented on the iPhone and Zune 3.0, then you have to get your hands dirty on Windows 7 since kinetic scrolling is now operating-system wide. The feature, officially implemented as “Panning”, was one of the many secrets unearthed by Rafael Rivera and can only be used if touch capability is detected.

The above demo was recorded on a Toshiba Portege M750 Tablet PC which is a tablet/touch convertible. A more in-depth review on that soon.

What this feature does (in build 6801) is allow you to use your fingers to “pan” or scroll any element with a scrollbar. The obvious examples include the start menu, Notepad and the help files. At the time of writing, browser windows including both IE and Firefox are not compatible which I assume is because the browsers implement their own scrolling behavior (ie. smoothscroll). And just like most other kinetic scrolling implementations, if you reach the barriers abruptly it’ll move the entire window as if you were pulling on it. There is also some inertia so content keeps scrolling if you swipe your finger.

If you’re looking to buy a notebook in the not too distant future to support Windows 7, bear in mind some of the cool touch and tablet functionality that will be enabled and decide if you want to touch your trackpad or your screen.

Update: Yes, I did use Aero Shake in the demo, very cool indeed.

If you really like Windows 7, and I do mean really like, then you might be interested in these “Windows 7″ t-shirts. These look different to the ones Microsoft staff were wearing at PDC08 which was just the Windows logo embossed - these however feature a stylized version of the internal Windows 7 logo screen printed on the side making it still somewhat authentic. The green one is gently worn, both extra large (so that rules me out). Now bidding from $6.99 on eBay. The seller seems to be quite the merchandise collector.

One of the most compelling features of the Windows Home Server is the automated image backup to the network share. However if you find a home server a little too much (or expensive) like I do, then you’d be glad to know Windows 7 will make the job of making “Windows Complete PC Backups” at least half as easy by allowing you to backup straight to a network share.

Whereas in Vista you could only do a complete backup to hard disk or DVDs (with files you could backup to network share), taking it one step further to the network share makes it much easier to do backups especially since you can’t backup to the same drive as the operating system. And I don’t think anyone will juggle 71 DVDs to backup their 500GB hard drive. I guess now’s as good a time as any to buy a NAS device.

If the sound of helping family friends troubleshoot their computer problems makes you weep, then you have one more thing to look forward to in Windows 7. No, it won’t help novice users find that obscure “any” key, but Windows 7 will actually diagnose and fix many of its critical components as part of the new “Windows Troubleshooting” functionality.

For users who are currently using the 6801 build of Windows 7, you might have already noticed the “Troubleshooting” link in the control panel. However if you do try to click on any of the actions an error is prompted. But there’s another way. If you navigate to the “\Windows\diagnostics\system” directory, you’d find all of the troubleshooting files to manually initiate. Simply open a directory and double click on the file with the golden diamond.

For everyone who doesn’t have the build at hand, what this feature does is scan a number of predefined variables and offers actions to fix the problem. For example, this is the result of an attempt to troubleshoot power problems.

Before you brush this off as child’s play, like I mistakenly did, this is not your average Joe “click the green icon” troubleshoot. This tool doesn’t just flick a few switches, it actually dives into the nitty gritty core of Windows to do some pretty fine tuning.

For example, the above power troubleshoot actually adjusted my “hard disk burst ignore time”. I didn’t even know Windows could control that.

Now you’re probably left wondering how do they do it, and here’s where it gets even more interesting and potentially groundbreaking. The whole troubleshooting system runs on Windows PowerShell 2.0 scripting - the next-generation command line platform.

As proof, here is a snippet of the PowerShell script that was used to fix the burst time as indicated above.

If the lightbulbs hasn’t gone off in your head already, let me explain why I think this is groundbreaking. Windows now has the built-in capabilities to diagnose and fix problems not just limited to the select few the manufacturer (Microsoft) has defined, but any problem a third-party developer wishes to write the script for. I’m sure it’s a little more complicated than “find(problems);fix(problems);” but PowerShell is a pretty powerful platform and some of the troubleshooting scripts there already are quite elaborate.

I can’t wait till Microsoft releases more details about how this feature works and can be extended, but it looks they already have plans to update this over time. Imagine the day when all you have to do is send your uncle’s best friend’s brother a script to fix why he can’t watch his favorite DVD.

The man, the legend and the loudest person I know, Steve Ballmer is coming down under tomorrow for a special Microsoft 3-hour keynote event. With him are Gianpaolo Carraro and Tim Sneath presenting both Windows Azure and Windows 7 and how they fit in the fluffy cloud computing vision. If you’re like me and don’t care much for Azure, definitely still tune in for Tim’s presentation about Windows 7 and Live Mesh.

You can find Steve and co. streamed live from the website at 3:30pm Australian Eastern Standard Time and other timezones around the world. Like usual, join early to hear a selection of upbeat Microsoft pre-keynote music.

First noticed by the enthusiasts at JCXP.net, “PC Safeguard”, as it is called in the Windows 7 user account settings, prevents specified standard user accounts (cannot be applied to admin accounts) from making permanent and unwanted changes by removing all changes and files saved after the user logs off.

Credit where credit is due, this feature is not fundamentally new. Since 2005, Microsoft has offered a tool previously known as the “Shared Computer Toolkit” now “Windows SteadyState” to both Windows XP and Vista users to do exactly this function and a little more. The interesting thing however is that the feature is now baked into Windows 7 - making it more widely known to users as well as simplifying the process drastically.

To enable this feature, click on the “Set up PC Safeguard” link when managing a user account. Select the “Turn on PC Safeguard” option, apply and wait approximately 5 minutes whilst it ponders about the question of life. It might seem like it’s not responding, but trust me, the magic is happening.

If you’re big brother with a soft spot, you can also tweak the Safeguard feature to allow users to access individual hard drive volumes. One scenario where this might be useful is to set up a small 1GB partition where the user can secure their files without resorting to removable media.

Now when that user logs on, they are presented with this message window reminding them their files will be removed after log off. Also when they try to add files to their user folders, a popup appears, reminding the impending vaporization.

From this point on, the user experience is identical to any other standard user’s. They can access applications installed for all-users, change wallpapers and themes and download files. There’s no performance impact, nor additional restrictions. The difference however is that everything will be reverted to a blank state the next time they log in. Metaphorically speaking, it’s like IE8’s InPrivate or Google Chrome’s Incognito for user profiles.

I suspect this feature will be fined tuned in the coming Windows 7 builds to inherit some of the more advanced features of SteadyState (ex. time restriction and application blacklist) but I can already see this very popular with home and public computers.