One of the big problems with the proliferation of spyware and bots is that using a computer that has not been in your possession or control 100% of the time could result in bad things happening when you log into a website. Basically your password can get stolen and your account hijacked. If it’s your email or Facebook account that this happens to, a lot of really unfortunate things can happen to your data, and your friends can get spammed.

This is why I never use anyone else’s computers but my own, and I insist on taking my iPhone and laptop with me when I travel and using either Wifi or International data to get my email, log into Facebook etc. However there are cases where you need to get to your email account from a computer that’s not yours (like a hotel to print out a boarding pass, get important documents in your email etc). For this reason, the folks that work on Windows Live ID built a single-use code login feature.

The way this feature works is that when you type in www.live.com or www.hotmail.com there is an option to Sign in with a Single-use code.

Selecting that option will send an SMS message to a mobile phone number with a numeric code that you can then use to log in.

This feature requires that you previously registered this code with Windows Live, which you can do at http://sms.live.com

Here is what the SMS message looks like.

I hope more services add these really useful safety features.

Question: How many times did you take a bunch of pictures of people only to find that not everyone had their eyes open or were looking at that camera in a single shot? Rather you had to pick the best shot from a bunch of imperfect shots?

Answer: For me, this happens a ton, and when you have a toddler, it happens a lot more.

Well, to solve this problem, the fine folks who work on Windows Live Photo Gallery created a feature called Photo Fuse to fix this. To illustrate how cool this is I’ve got an example below where my family was at a Mariner’s game.

In picture one, my daughter is not looking at the camera.

However, in picture two she is.

But I like the my smile from picture one. What to do?

Select both photos in Windows Live Photo Gallery and from the Create menu select Photo Fuse, and then pick what you want from the selected photos.

And here is the final result.

Just another innovation from Windows Live…

Get the Essentials beta here.

Now that we’ve released the new version of SkyDrive (and soon Hotmail) I’ve shifted a lot of my photo sharing activities there. There are a few reasons for this. The first is a new feature coming soon to Hotmail called Photomail. It’s simply hands down the easiest and best way to share photos with friends and family. The emails are beautiful, and are backed by an even better web backed album with a kick ass slide show and wonderful commenting system.

But it gets better if you use our Windows Live Messenger app for the iPhone. The Photo experience is actually one of the best kept secrets in that app. Below are some screen shots of an album I created on SkyDrive of our recent trip to Legoland (side note, if you have a toddler, Legoland is probably one of the best theme park experiences you can get).

Here is a screen shot of the album on the iPhone:

You can use your fingers to pinch an zoom the photos and the layout is dynamically modified. Very slick.

In the photo below I click the comment bubble:

And my favorite feature is now comments are presented. Unlike the Facebook app the Messenger app does this in a super unobtrusive way.

I love the polish here.

Pretty excited that our 2 day old Windows Live Messenger for iPhone is
#2 in the App Store. Not bad for 24 hours :-)