I caught up with Deryl McCartney, Marketing Manager for the Windows Vista Logo Program, to get a general update on Certified for Windows Vista product as of today.

Just to re-cap: Certified for Windows Vista products are products that carry the above logo. This logo represents a group of applications and hardware that have gone through an extensive certification process that means they work great with Windows Vista. We want users who are looking for devices, applications, or PC components to easily be able to identify the ones that will give them the best experience in Windows Vista today. When I go into a store looking for something for my PCs I always "look for the logo".

As of April, we currently have over 5,000 products that are Certified for Windows Vista. Since last July, the amount of Certified for Windows Vista products has almost doubled!  As you can see - we've seen quite a bit of growth with new Certified for Windows Vista products entering the market.

Deryl is very excited about some of the new Certified for Windows Vista products hitting the market today and wanted me to share a few with you:

• Logitech Quickcam Ultra Vision SE & Logitech Quickcam Orbit AF (Logitech has quite a bit of Certified for Windows Vista webcams)
• Philips Webcam SPC900NC
• Gigabyte GA-EX38-DS4 Motherboard (perfect for building your own PC)
• Epson Stylus Photo R1900
• Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio PCI Express Sound Card

He also tells me that there is a special section off http://www.windowsvista.com/ designed to showcase all the great Certified for Windows Vista products (right-hand side) worth checking out.

And there is even a Sidebar Gadget for you to add to your Windows Vista desktop that keeps you up-to-date with all the Certified for Windows Vista products and lets you search for specific products to see whether they are certified or not. Download the Gadget here.

I've covered my experiences with several Certified for Windows Vista devices here on the Windows Experience Blog recently:

• Roadtrip around Central Washington with Canon Digital Rebel XTi (with several panoramic shots created with Windows Live Photo Gallery).
• ATI TV Wonder 600 USB to watch TV shows in Windows Media Center.
• Logitech Cordless Desktop S 510 (keyboard and mouse set).
• Microsoft LifeCam VX-7000.

I expect to be talking about some hot new Certified with Windows Vista devices in the very near future. And of course I expect to get regular updates from Deryl too!

And stay tuned as I have something else planned in regards to Certified for Windows Vista I think you'll like as well.

Microsoft Pro Photo Tools also allows photographers to use geotagging for their photos. Geotagging is the ability to "tag" something with location information - and in the case of photos the location of where your photo was taken. You can quickly add location data from a GPS device or Live Search Maps to a photo's metadata.

Download: Microsoft Pro Photo Tools V1 (x86)

I use Windows Live Photo Gallery to manage all my photos. I'd like to note that changes in any specific photo' s metadata using Microsoft Pro Photo Tools will be reflected of course in Windows Live Photo Gallery - including title and tags.

You'll see here I've added a title, description, and keywords (aka tags) in Microsoft Pro Photo Tools to one of my photos.

In Windows Live Photo Gallery, you can see the title and tags I've added in Microsoft Pro Photo Tools are displayed in the Windows Live Photo Gallery UI (specifically in the Info pane). The metadata is also in the photo's properties as well.

In Windows Live Photo Gallery currently, the UI doesn't call out metadata for geotagging. But by geotagging your photos in Microsoft Pro Photo Tools now - it's in the metadata so in the future, that metadata can easily be called out by any app designed to call out geotagging from photos.

It's great to see us making investments in creating a better experience for photographers using Windows.

For further background on Microsoft Pro Photo Tools - CNET's Stephen Shankland was able to talk with Josh Weisberg, Microsoft's director of digital imaging evangelism, in a really nice in-depth post looking at Microsoft Pro Photo Tools including its origin and its future.  

In Origami Central, the browsing experience is tied to the toolbar that auto-hides at the top of the window.

Because the toolbar auto-hides, I get a full screen web browsing experience and with a UMPC running at 1024x600 resolution without toolbars and other things taking up useful screen real-estate.

Just like in IE7, I can use the address bar in Origami Central to do web searches. But in Origami Central, when I type something in the address bar (a phrase or URL), it searches through the history of websites I have already visited. I typed in "windows" into the address bar and these 3 previously visited websites came up:

To do web searches, Origami Central provides a really unique way of searching the web using Live Search. When I type in a search term, it provides a list of popular searches that change depending on the term of course. It also provides previous searches I've made.

Basic functionality for web browsing such as adding favorites also exists in Origami Central. In the toolbar, when I click the gadget-looking icon a list of options appears over the website I am on. Those options allow me to add the site to my favorites (which uses the same favorites as IE), add the site's RSS to my RSS feeds, take a snapshot of the site, or use the zoom capabilities.

When I take a snapshot of a website, it takes a complete "freeze" of the page I am at. I can go back to that site and read the site or access links etc. I can even scroll down to view other parts of the site (as long as it's on the same page of course).

My favorites, history, and snapshots are all available in my "Library" by clicking the star icon in the toolbar.

Origami Central also has touch capabilities as well but I think perhaps my demo video will be better at showcasing that feature (as well as the above mentioned features of web browsing in Origami Central. Take a look!

Web Browsing with Origami Central

In the demo video, I utilize the touch capabilities in Origami Central to navigate Photosynth from Microsoft Live Labs. You can also see the overall experience of browsing the web via Origami Central first hand.  I apologize in advance for some parts of the video (like where it sounds like I said "stylist" instead of stylus).

Stay tuned for Part 2 in which I discuss the new RSS capabilities in Origami Experience 2.0 with Origami Central.

The Origami Experience 2.0 software comes with 3 applications that do specific tasks on the UMPC. I'll give a quick overview of these applications in which I'll go into greater detail in my 4 part series of posts about the Origami Experience 2.0.

Origami Central:

Origami Central provides quick access to your Media Library on your UMPC. That means your music, photos and videos. Origami Central lets you play your music, watch your videos and watch photo slideshows. On top of letting you access your media, it also gives you quick access to favorite programs on your UMPC like Microsoft Office OneNote 2007. In the Origami Experience 2.0 - Origami Central comes with a brand new browsing experience. You can now browse the web using Origami Central is full-fidelity web browsing - 100% compatible with IE7. That means you can browse sites that use Flash and other ActiveX controls. It also comes with a RSS feed reader also new to this release.

Origami Now:

Origami Now is a brand new application for the UMPC with the release of Origami Experience 2.0. It is designed to bring you information useful to you very quickly without much interaction. It does this by giving you the ability to customize "tiles". You can navigate between these tiles and their information. What kind of information can be in the tiles? You can configure tiles for weather, email, RSS and more. 

Origami Picture Password:
You can use Origami Picture Password to login to your UMPC.

I'm using the Samsung Q1 Ultra UMPC to run the Origami Experience 2.0 on (exact model number and specs here). It works wonderfully for me.

So I've broken up my 4 part series on the Origami Experience 2.0 software into the following parts:

Origami Experience2.0 Part 1: Web Browsing
Origami Experience 2.0 Part 2: RSS
Origami Experience 2.0 Part 3: Media
Origami Experience 2.0 Part 4: Origami Now

Expect part 1 soon!

If you're into Baseball, you'll like this new Gadget. Fox Sports on MSN is offering a Fantasy Baseball Gadget brought to you by People-Ready Business from Microsoft.

With this Gadget, you can check up on Fantasy Baseball news, check player stats, and create your own roster. This Gadget requires Adobe Flash so if you're running Windows Vista x64 (like me), you'll need to run Windows Sidebar under 32-bit. To do that in Windows Vista x64 - just go to C:/Program Files (x86)/Windows Sidebar and execute sidebar.exe from there.

Download the People-Ready Fantasy Baseball Gadget here.

Another new Gadget to check out is the brand new MSN Video Gadget for Windows Sidebar. The MSN Video Team announced its availability today along with some highlights as to what you can do with the Gadget on their blog.

Download the MSN Video Gadget here.

Got a Sidebar Gadget recommendation? Would love to hear them!

The following languages are available for download for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008:

• Arabic (Only for Windows Vista/Windows Server 2008)
• Brazilian Portuguese
• Bulgarian
• Chinese - Simplified
• Chinese - Traditional
• Croatian
• Czech
• Danish
• Dutch
• English (There is no MUI pack for English)
• Estonian
• Finnish
• French
• German
• Greek
• Hebrew (Only for Windows Vista/Windows Server 2008)
• Hungarian
• Italian
• Japanese
• Korean
• Latvian
• Lithuanian
• Norwegian - Bokmål
• Polish
• Portuguese
• Romanian
• Russian
• Serbian - Latin
• Slovak
• Slovenian
• Spanish
• Swedish
• Thai
• Turkish
• Ukrainian

Please take note that the following languages are available on Windows XP/Windows Server 2003 only with an MUI pack:

• Bulgarian
• Croatian
• Estonian
• Latvian
• Lithuanian
• Romanian
• Serbian - Latin
• Slovak
• Slovenian
• Thai
• Ukrainian

Got feedback on the Windows Search 4.0? We've got several places that you can go to leave your feedback:

• For general discussion with Windows Search engineers and team members you can head over to this MSDN Forum.
• For developer discussion, head over to this MSDN Forum.
• For general (no-reply) feedback on Windows Search, you can submit feedback here.

For the last week, I had been using one of the photos I took on my recent trip around Washington State as my desktop wallpaper. It was an image I took in the Columbia River Gorge near an abandoned railroad track. I got down really close to the railroad track for a really interesting shot. I think it looks really neat as a desktop wallpaper so I thought I'd create a range of different sizes of the image to share with you - the readers of the Windows Vista Team Blog - to use as your desktop wallpaper on your PC.

I've created a range of sizes of the wallpaper for you to download depending on your display resolution via Windows Live SkyDrive:

The shot was taken using the Certified for Windows Vista DSLR Canon Digital Rebel XTi.

Let me know what you think!

On the road, I focused mostly on photography. Many of the places we visited didn't really work well for video and I didn't feel me standing in front of the camera playing "tour guide" would be of any real value. I relied heavily of course on Windows Vista and Windows Live Photo Gallery to import and manage my photos. Because the Canon Digital Rebel XTi is Certified for Windows Vista - it was hassle free to import sometimes up to 400 pictures into Windows Live Photo Gallery. And the photos themselves averaged about 3MB each as I was shooting in the highest quality possible at 10.1 megapixels.

In using Windows Live Photo Gallery, I have the ability to create a panoramic stitch from the photos I took - probably my most favorite feature in Windows Live Photo Gallery. In shooting photos - I made sure I was shooting with the intent to create stitches. What does that mean really? I would take a picture from one angle, then the next, then the next - which would then allow for Windows Live Photo Gallery to create excellent stitches. I'll probably do a video on exactly how I shoot for stitching later on.

So now I have a few really cool panoramic stitches to share of the places we stopped on our roadtrip. I go through them in chronological order with some commentary to add context to each photo.

While in Seattle, we ended up walking down to the waterfront from the Space Needle. I took this shot on the roof of the Bell Harbor Conference Center:

Later on, we decided to head on up to the observation deck of the Space Needle. I was able to get several awesome panoramic shots of Seattle from the top of the Space Needle. Here is the first series of shots I took - looking northwest out toward Puget Sound:

Then I took some shots to create this shot overlooking Elliot Bay:

This is Seattle and probably my favorite panoramic stitch of the Seattle bunch:

And finally this is looking east towards the Cascade Mountain Range. You can see Lake Union on the lower left:

The next day - we headed over the Snoqualmie Pass toward Central Washington State and the Grand Coulee Dam. Up over the pass, it got quite snowy which was a nice (and interesting) change of scenery:

About 100 miles later we were here overlooking the Columbia River near Vantage, WA:

Back on the road heading to Grand Coulee Dam - we ended up stopping in the middle of nowhere for this shot:

In Central Washington, there is quite a bit of interesting geological features (part of why we headed out here). Here is a panoramic shot of Dry Falls. Dry Falls about 10,000-15,000 years ago was a huge water fall carved out by ice age flooding. You can read more about the history of Dry Falls here. But to be here and see it in person was absolutely amazing:

We finally reached Grand Coulee Dam. It's pretty big. They say it is the largest concrete structure in the United States. And you can see - there is quite a bit of concrete! We wanted to get a dam tour but it so happens that the very day we drove hundreds of miles to see the dam was the day they decided to do maintenance on the elevators for the tours. This is another one of my favorite shots from the trip:

Our trip ended the next day on Oregon Coast outside Tillamook, OR:

Hopefully you've enjoyed seeing these panoramic stitches of some of these amazing places. Creating your own stitches in Windows Live Photo Gallery is really easy too - all you need is a digital camera and to be able to import into Windows Live Photo Gallery. You can download Windows Live Photo Gallery, part of the Windows Live suite, here.

I'd like to give a shout out to Canon for loaning me the Canon Digital Rebel XTi for the trip. It is a pretty slick camera and as these shots show, it takes some pretty good photos. If you are looking for a DSLR - definitely take a look at this camera.