I noticed that the nominees for this year's Academy Awards in the "Best Live Action Short Film" category are downloadable on iTunes. Wow, so cool - I'm a fan of good film quality, and nothing beats the under-thirty-minute format for making a real impact, without the typical fluff and other Hollywood-formula junk.

So, I downloaded. And watched. And so here you go - my own impressions, which will hopefully inspire you to watch. It doesn't have to be in your local theater to be good. In fact, if it's in the local theater, well... Never mind. Let's just stay focused on these short films.

First of all, if you have iTunes and a spare $10 (like as in total - you can get them all for less than ten bucks), then my first suggestion is that you should download them and watch (links to iTunes music store). They range in length from about 14 to 28 minutes, there are five films in the category, and they're certainly worth watching. It makes for a great evening, and it's an easy, painless way to expand one's film horizons, just slightly.

The second thing is, you won't want to watch all of these with the little kids. There's nothing really gross or pornographic, but there is some explicit content (nudity, language and violence) in a couple of them, and the content in others can occasionally be a bit heavy or dark for some.

That said, here are five short films you should watch, and what I thought of each:

Our Time Is Up (in iTunes)

This is the story of an American psychologist who finds he has a short time left to live, and how that impacts his relationships with his patients. It's well-done and the main character is played by Kevin Pollak. I liked this film at times. It's funny in a smart kind of way, and it's well-shot and the direction is interesting. But in the end, something about it felt, well, thin. Kind of like the way fast food fills your stomach but leaves you wishing there was something more. Certainly worth watching, but probably not one I would vote for, given the competition.

Six Shooter (in iTunes)   UPDATE: Oscar Winner

From the opening line, this is a dark, confrontational Irish film, which won the Oscar in the category of Best Live Action Short Film. The story plays character off of character to show how people deal with death and emotion, and how those differences - in hyperbole - affect one another. It's a smart film, one that slaps your sensibilities in the face and challenges the viewer to stay with the film, in the same difficult way the characters either choose to stay or go, I suppose. This is one of the two short films that gets an explicit label, for the violence and language. Be forewarned - If you have a hard time with dark themes of death and violence, this one may not be for you. For me, knowing ahead of time was enough. It's well-shot and the direction is very good. A young actor named Ruaihidhri Conroy steals the scene later in the film. Be prepared for the violence and murder/suicide themes and you should do okay.

Cashback (in iTunes)

From the UK comes a great short that will leave you thinking and laughing. By the way, this is the other film that gets an explicit rating, but for a different reason: This time it's because of the camera imagery of the female body, and I will leave it at that. The contrast of the characters is very subtle and the premise if great. A young man works nights in a grocery store, and the film examines the others who work there and how the pass the time. It's clever and funny, very well-directed and filmed. Sometimes simple and clever combine in a writer's mind to create something special - this is one example. Again, there's full-frontal nudity in this (not really distasteful, just a hard-to-explain surprise if you're watching with the young kiddies) and that's not explained on iTunes specifically, so watch appropriately and all. I really liked this one, and I laughed out loud at the last line.

Ausreisser (The Runaway) (in iTunes)

This is a great film. Of them all, it's right up there with two others for my vote (If I had a vote, that is). This German film shows a one-day interaction between a boy and his father, who never knew he had a son and has never wanted one. But it's much more special than that, and writing anymore would just take away from the film itself. The little boy portrays the part well, the direction cuts the scenes craftfully to keep things moving effectively. It's a sad, happy, sad, happy, sad again film that leaves you wondering if it was really only 23 minutes long. Well-directed, well-acted and well-shot, the only people who won't like it will be those who find themselves sitting there at the end muttering to themselves "I didn't get it." I love a good smart, emotional, intimate and personal film about two people and what really matters, and this is it. Well done.

The Last Farm (in iTunes)

This film comes from Iceland and is an amazingly well-crafted set of visuals and character play that paints a vivid picture of a man in deep sorrow. You may know what's coming, but in the end, don't we all? I think that's the point, or at least it's one of them. This film does such a terrific job of conveying so many complex, intertwined messages in such a short time. It's very sad and quite touching. If nothing else, it shows the simultaneous detailed complexity and abstract simplicity of the human spirit and how one's spirit can be so tightly tied to another. Excellent film. (Note: the iTunes reviews seem to have some twelve-year-olds that are giving it one star because the preview is not helpful, which skews the overall rating of the film itself, which is quite positive) 

So, which one do I like best? Well, honestly the one that stands out in my mind the most is The Runaway. It's a personal story that connects. The others that I rated with five light bulbs (heh) are also terrific, and any of those I think should get the award. More important than which gets the Oscar, I think, is the fact that not enough people get to see these types of films. My intent here was not to convince someone which I think is best, but rather to convince people to watch all these great little films, ones that they otherwise might miss.

So, go buy your tickets - all of them for ten bucks - and watch!

If you happen to be in a really big city, you might be able to see them in a theater, too.

Okay, I just have to say something here. I can't help myself. Like CBS hasn't already done enough to ruin things for us in its own studios, now it's reporters are taking it to the streets, too.

You know, Fight Club used to be cool, one of the best movies of the last several years for sure, then these guys have to go and freakin' ruin it.

Grrr...

Let me put it this way: This is to Fight Club as "What are YOU doing???" is to "WAZZZZUUUUUUP?!?!?!?"

Someone should go find these guys and kick some @*$ for real for breaking the first rule. Where's Tyler when you need him? Not to mention what this does for the image of software engineers in our world. That's it, might as well just give up now.

Alright, anyhow, back to our regularly scheduled programming...

Want to know something about 25 powerhouse companies that are making big moves with the "next" wave of killer 'net apps? A list put together by Business 2.0 is a good place to learn more - The overall presentation and information summaries are well done.

Five list categories each showcase five leading companies, plus one "incumbent to watch." The categories are:

• SOCIAL MEDIA
• MASHUP AND FILTERS
• THE NEW PHONE
• THE WEBTOP
• UNDER THE HOOD

Check out the complete list here: The Next Net 25

DualCor will soon release their new cPC computer. Many are poised on the edges of their seats, waiting to see more, and many also can't wait to buy.

Digital Lifestyle Magazine has a new video with lots of good footage of the device being shown on by Steve Hanley, DualCor CEO. An external battery pack with 10 DAYS of battery life. Wow - cool.

See the video here and learn more about the new device.

Note: As mentioned here before, I am a DualCor technical advisor, so I am not exactly completely unbiased, but you have to admit, no matter what - this is great stuff.

You see a link to http://www.ie7.com/ and click it. What do you expect to see?

Oh...

Oops.

I've had just a bit of down time lately, and knowing it was coming, I figured this would be a good opportunity to watch all the episodes of the new Battlestar Galactica series (as opposed to the 1980's version) on my iPod that I have not yet seen. I downloaded all the episodes from iTunes and started watching the series a month or more ago whenever I was on air travel, and have become hooked. Before I had my surgery a week or so ago, I'd finished watching the original miniseries, which is made up of four shows, and about the first half of the first season. So, the remainder of that season and all of season number two were waiting on my iPod for me to sit down and watch.

Now, holding the iPod in your hands and watching video on the built-in screen with headphones is great on an airplane, but not so much when you're stuck in bed or on the couch at home. So I looked into how to connect my video iPod device to the TV at home. I could do the crazy Apple a la carte thing and buy the proper Apple dock, plus the special AV cables, plus an Apple remote, etc., or I could pick up a third party package. And the latter is the route I took.

I picked up the DLO HomeDock for iPod at a Target store after seeing it advertised in their Sunday circular recently. At about $80 in the store, it cost me less than the comparable individual Apple parts and is better integrated. It will hook to a computer via USB (powered) and provides composite or S-video outputs to the TV as well as left and right audio via RCA jacks. It also includes a AC power supply for use without the computer, which is how I have it set up in my living room. And it comes with a small remote to control playback of video, pictures and audio files stored the iPod right from the couch.

I really like this thing. Shortly after buying it, I found out the company, DLO, is about to ship their new HomeDock Deluxe, which will include on-screen menus and more-fully-featured remote. For my purposes, the regular HomeDock is doing the job nicely. I'm about half way through the second season of Battlestar Galactica now, and I've become a huge fan of both the show and DLO's dock.

By the way - If you haven't had a chance to see the new Battlestar Galactica on the SciFi Channel and you're a sci-fi fan (or maybe you liked the classic Battlestar Galactica series from the 80's, although the new one is much better), you should check it out. Heck, even if you're not a sci-fi fan you might like it, as it's a great story and adventure.

And if you're looking for a good dock/charger/AV connection and remote for a video iPod, you can check out the HomeDock.

The Office 12 system release has been formally named "Office 2007" by Microsoft. I'm running Beta 1 software and it's quite interesting and looks like some great changes. The new Outlook is terrific in design. I can't say anything (per NDA) on the server side of things, but prepare to be wow'ed.

Anyhow, here is a list (from Microsoft) of the MS blogs that cover the Office 12 components. If you know of any others, please post them in the comments.

Microsoft® Office Access What's New in Access 2007 (Eric Rucker)   Microsoft® Office Excel® What's New in Excel 2007 (David Gainer)   Microsoft® Office FrontPage What's New in FrontPage 2007 (Rob Mauceri)   Microsoft® Office OneNote® A User-oriented View of OneNote 2007 (Chris Pratley) OneNote General (Owen Braun)   Microsoft® Office Outlook® Outlook General (Will Kennedy, GM) Outlook Tasks and Time Management (Melissa MacBeth) RSS/Search/Sharing (Michael Affronti) Outlook Programmability (Ryan Gregg)   Microsoft® Office Project What's New in Project 2007 (Dieter Zirkler)   Microsoft® Office Publisher Publisher 2007, XPS and more (Jeff Bell) What's New in Publisher 2007   Microsoft® Office Visio Visio 2007 (Eric Rockey)

Microsoft® Office Word What's New in Word 2007 (Joe Friend)   Microsoft® Windows SharePoint Services Windows SharePoint Services (PJ Hough) Document Management, Workflow, & Records Management (Rob Lefferts)   Office 2007 New User Interface Office 2007 New User Interface (Jensen Harris)   Office 2007 New XML File Format Office 2007 New XML File Format (Brian Jones)   Publishing XPS Documents Publishing XPS Documents (Andy Simonds) Publisher 2007, XPS and more (Jeff Bell)   PDF Support in Office 2007 PDF Support in Office 2007 (Cyndy Wessling)   TechTalk with Steven Sinofsky TechTalk with Steven Sinofsky

Scoble posted a few days ago about the Microsoft-registered Origami Project web site. It's all the buzz around the net, people guessing and sometimes seeming to know a bit about what it is.

JK posts some info that is interesting and worth checking out... A video on Digital Kitchen's web site titled "Microsoft Origami."

Click on http://www.d-kitchen.com/launch_center.htm

• enter the site,
• click WORK,
• and then click BRAND THEATRE,
• you'll find the first entry says "Microsoft Origami"

Nice find by Kevin Tofel, who noticed it on the Engadget site in some post comments.

Recently a couple coworkers at Corillian turned me on to TextPayMe, which is a cool service you can use to send money to others (and even to a few online merchants). Click the banner below to check it out and sign up for free - They'll even deposit five bucks in your TextPayMe account when you sign up. For real. You don't even have to provide a credit card or bank account info unless you want to transfer funds into the TextPayMe account, so there's no risk. It costs you nothing.

And, if 35 people sign up via this link, I'll get a XBOX 360. You can do the same thing. nice eh?

TextPayMe services are used to send payments to (and receive payments from) people you know, using text messaging on your mobile phones or wireless PDAs (I'm using it on my Blackberry phone). Let's say you go to a restaurant with three friends. Instead of asking the waiter to split the bill, or even worse trying to find the right amount of cash to put in the pool and pay your part, one person pays the bill, and the other three send their part to the person who paid using TextPayMe. They send it to your cell phone number, nice and easy. And for the people sending the money, the security system (which is a two-factor secure system - nice) calls their cell as soon as they text the payment. They answer the phone and are prompted by the peppy IVR voice on the other end to enter a PIN (which you provide at the time you sign up). Only then is money sent.

So - a cool service to try, nothing to lose, and five bucks to gain! Click here to go to the TextPayMe site and sign up to give it a try!

Last week, while heading home from Seattle, we stopped briefly on the way out of town to pick up something at a mall. While there we saw a Brookstone store (I'm such a sucker for those places) and were pulled in by the magnetic gadgetness. Only Sharper Image compares in terms of pure gadget tractor beam power.

Anyhow, a minute or so after I entered the store, over walked an employee, nice guy. First words out of his mouth? Anything in the store you can touch on the floor - all floor models - 50% off (except massage chairs and tempurpedic mattresses, those were discounted 30%). Woah! So, I started looking around. It was almost too good to be true. And I just got my tax refund. Heh.

There were all sorts of cool things, and my mom and friend Mary Beth - they were there with me - picked up a few some stuff they liked. Me? Time to look for some electronics, baby. I was shocked to walk around a floor stand and find a Magellan Roadmate 760 GPS display - one of those displays where the device is security-sealed in a hard clear plastic frame, but it's a real, working model, you know? I call the sales guy over. Sure enough, half price, he says. He looks in the back to see if the box, papers and parts were anywhere to be found - and again, sure enough, he found everything. Score!

So, I bought it - essentially brand new for $450. Talk about luck. This is a GPS system that typically retails for around $750 to $900 in stores, sometimes more. It definitely pays to shop around. Froogle searching for new units shows you can get it for as low as around $700 if you look hard enough. Costco members can buy it online as of the time of this posting for $750 (after a $150-off coupon). I've been traveling a lot lately, and my job will have me traveling more and more in the future, so with all the unfamiliar cities and rental cars, having a GPS unit that does everything will be very useful.

Note: The RoadMate 760 has been around for something like a year now, and it's a terrific unit. The RoadMate 800 is pretty much the same device, only with a battery built into it, different color case, some button changes and whatnot - so you can use it without external power. And it costs a bit more.

It talks to you and gives turn by turn directions with street names (via a text-to-speech feature), has a bright touch screen display, and tons of cool features like auto dimming of the display at nights, auto color changing of the display at night, automatically increasing volume as you drive faster to account for road noise, and more. the pre-installed maps cover all of the US and Canada, and maps for Europe are pre-installed (you buy an unlock code to license those).

Having used mine a couple times, and with plenty of time to play with it (I'm a passenger when it comes to cars right now), I can say that the money was well-spent. The first time I plugged it in, it fired right up and found the GPS satellites. I created a route by entering the name "Olive Garden" into the locator as we were driving down the highway, and then instructing it to display destination results to me with the closest match shown first in the list. I selected the restaurant I wanted, and it displayed the address and phone number of the business (phone numbers - nice feature!), then I just clicked to create the driving route.

Almost immediately (this thing calculates routes very quickly), it started speaking the driving instructions and showed the route on the screen. As you drive, the map scrolls and updates, with your location in the center of the screen. I set the unit to display heading-up orientation, so that the top of the map is the direction of travel (you can also set it so that the top of the map is always north, but I didn't find that to be very intuitive). It warns you when you're two miles from a turn, then again at a half-mile, and one more time as you approach the turn. When you reach a waypoint in your route, it plays a sound (you can choose the sound, like a chime or beep, etc.) to let you know you've made it each step along the way. If you go off route it will immediately recalculate a new route and tell you where to turn, or if needed it will tell you to "make a legal U-turn" to get you back on track.

I'm a lucky guy to have found it at the price I did, but I can honestly say that after having used it for a day or two I would buy one anyhow at the available market prices. It makes driving and finding things remarkably easy and the routes it found were spot on. It will meet a real need with all my business and personal travel.

Features:

• Map Software: Ready to use detailed, seamless North American map (48 contiguous United States, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and all of Canada) loaded on internal 20GB HDD. Pre-loaded European maps may be unlocked for an additional fee - for more information see: http://www.magellangps.com/en/users/keysIntl760/
• User Interface: Touch Screen or dynamic keypad input
• Display: High Resolution TFT LCD full color touch-screen display automatically adjusts to lighting changes
• Display Size (H/W) 2.25" x 3.0"
• Route Calculator: Choose from four different route methods: Shortest Time, Shortest Distance, Least Use of Freeways, Most use of Freeways
• Turn-by-Turn Navigation: TrueView 3D screen shows upcoming turn while voice prompt politely gives turn-by-turn guidance in any of 11 languages (French, UK and US English, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Finnish)
• Route Recalculation: Automatically and quickly calculates new route when car deviates from the established route
• Multi-Destination Routing: Create and save multi-destination trips. Use route optimization to determine the quickest way between stops or choose your own order.
• Track Progress on Map: Dynamically tracks progress on the onscreen map - the map scrolls as you drive
• Choose heading-up or north-is-up map orientation
• QuickSpell Technology: Simplifies data entry by pre-determining letters from the available database when spelling street and city names
• Address Book: Holds 200 addresses per user — up to 600 total
• Points-of-Interest: Almost 7 million points of interest
• Portable: True plug-n-play in any region - just a 12-volt lighter plug
• Mapping Data: Provided by NAVTEQ
• Dimensions: 3.25" H x 6.5" W x 2" D
• Weight: 13 oz.
• Mounting hardware: Supplied with suction cup and fully-articulable snake arm, quick release mount
• Device antenna folds up, can be removed to attach external antenna if desired

Verisign's iDefense Labs has a program running that will pay you up to $10,000 if you submit a security vulnerability to them during this quarter that ends up being ranked as critical by Microsoft:

For the current quarter, iDefense Labs will pay $10,000 for each vulnerability submission that results in the publication of a Microsoft Security Bulletin with a severity rating of critical. In order to qualify, the submission must be sent during the current quarter and be received by midnight EST on March 31, 2006.

Well, there you go - if you gots the skillz, go gets some cash.

And by the way - the iDefense Labs site is a great resource for IT and security types to keep any eye on. They provide content on the site as well as webcasts with well-done content.

Everyone knows about - and almost everyone uses - Google's great search engine. And while it's great at searching for most content, it can't do everything.

The massive, battleship-class search engines have left certain gaps in their wake, gaps that are just waiting to be filled by niche applications. One great example of such a gap is a search engine specifically for developers. I mean, have you ever tried to use Google to search for actual programming source code?

What would life/work be like with a search tool that would enable developers to search for code or for developer-centric content? It would be easy and fast, and would search all the logical places - like SourceForge and other open source repositories, developer web sites, blogs, standards bodies, documentation repositories, etc. Even better, what if it allowed you to tag and write notes about specific code, and if you could save information related to specific code for others to use, or if you could just send them a link to your annotations?

That would be wicked cool, huh?

Enter Krugle - the search engine for developers. Your wish is their command. Well, starting sometime in March it will be, anyhow. That's when they'll likely launch.

So what's this all about? The Krugle web site explains it like this:

Krugle’s role

While the development world has changed, the tools that developers use haven’t kept up. Developers spend from 20-25 percent of their time looking for code and code related information – a frustrating situation for programmers, and an expensive problem for companies.

Current search engines are okay for finding web pages, but they don't crawl or find source code, whether in open repositories or within source code control systems (SCCS). They also don't leverage the inherent structure of code to support the types of searches programmers need.

Krugle vision

Krugle answers the need for a single place to find relevant code and critical technical information. By making it easy for anyone to find, elevate and communicate, Krugle fills a critical gap in todays technology rich environment.

Krugle's summary headlines effectively tell the high-level story: Krugle enables you to 1) quickly find and review source code 2) find code related technical information and 3) save, annotate and share your search results with others... all from within a single, easy-to-use, web application.

From Wired News:

The new service joins other source-code search engines like Koders and Codefetch, but Krugle intends to differentiate itself by allowing developers to annotate code and documentation, create bookmarks and save collections of search results in a tabbed workspace. Saved workspaces have unique URLs, so developers can send an entire collection of annotated code to a co-worker just by e-mailing a link.

In the future, the company plans to offer an enterprise edition of the software for use inside companies, to enable large teams of developers to better share code. That should be very interesting - something I'd love to get my hands on, for sure.

Check out all the details and some screenshots here, and sign up to find out when it's available by providing your email address here.

(via tech.memeorandum)

Microsoft has posted information regarding which apps will be included in each of the Office 2007 product suites, as well as pricing for the packages and individual apps/servers.

• 2007 Microsoft Office Suites
• 2007 Microsoft Office System Pricing Overview

In Word .doc format:

• 2007 Microsoft Office System Packaging (.doc file, 344 KB, February 2006)
• 2007 Microsoft Office System Pricing (.doc file, 300 KB, February 2006)

If you have not yet checked out BlogCode.com, I'd suggest you give it a try. It allows you to submit your blog, answer a few category ranking questions, and then see which other blogs are most like yours.

Alternatively, you can browse their listing for other blogs that have been "coded," look for your favorite blogs, and see other blogs that are similar.

The idea is that the blogs listed might be ones you'd like to read. Certainly there are other uses, as well.

I coded my blog the other day, and below are the closest-matched weblogs (as of the date this post is published) relative to the greghughes.net weblog. Per the folks at BlogCode.com, an 80% or better match is considered a very high score. Many of these blogs I already read or have read before, and some are new and unknown to me. I'll definitely have something to look around at for a while now.

Blog Name/URL (click each for blogcode results)	BlogCode Match
Scobleizer (http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/)	79.22 %
TechCrunch (http://www.techcrunch.com)	78.21 %
Agylen (http://agylen.com/)	77.96 %
Kevin Harder (http://kevinharder.com/blogs/kevin)	76.72 %
Ben Metcalfe Blog (http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/)	76.71 %
EvilSpudBoy (http://www.evilspudboy.net/)	76.43 %
Licence to Roam (http://blog.bibrik.com)	76.25 %
Newest Industry, The (http://newestindustry.org)	76.18 %
NeoThermic.com -- The well of information (http://www.neothermic.com)	75.95 %
FreeCashSpace (http://blog.freecashspace.com/index.html)	75.93 %
A Venture Forth (http://aventureforth.com)	75.89 %
Solution Watch (http://www.solutionwatch.com)	75.81 %
blogging.wurk.net (http://blogging.wurk.net)	75.64 %
Life On The Wicked Stage: Act 2 (http://wickedstageact2.typepad.com/)	75.43 %
PHOSITA ::: an IP law blog! (http://www.okpatents.com/phosita)	75.36 %
07Designs (http://www.07designs.com/)	75.12 %
Sunday Bytes (http://sundaybytes.com)	74.68 %
The Daily ACK (http://www.babilim.co.uk/blog/)	74.34 %
inluminent.com (http://inluminent.com)	74.29 %
adverblog (http://www.adverblog.com)	74.28 %
mathewingram.com/work (http://www.mathewingram.com/work)	74.26 %
integrating developer process (http://idp.shmarya.net)	74.24 %
View from the Isle (http://blog.larixconsulting.com/)	74.09 %
disambiguity (http://www.disambiguity.com)	73.72 %
Brandopia (http://brandopia.blogspot.com)	73.71 %
Creative Tech Writer, The (http://www.creativetechwriter.com)	73.65 %
Church Tech Matters (http://churchtechmatters.com)	73.62 %
Larry Borsato (http://www.larryborsato.com)	73.56 %
Linickx.com (http://www.linickx.com/blog)	73.49 %
brilliantdays.com (http://brilliantdays.com)	73.49 %
LaughingMeme (http://laughingmeme.org)	73.40 %
Superaff: The Affiliate Marketing Blog (http://superaff.com)	73.34 %
rexblog (http://www.rexblog.com)	73.30 %
Keith`s Inklings (http://talideon.com/weblog/)	73.29 %
Seven Degrees (http://sevendegrees.blogspot.com/)	73.27 %
StartupBoy.com - Journal (http://www.startupboy.com)	73.04 %
Vinny Carpenter`s blog (http://www.j2eegeek.com/blog)	73.00 %
A View Inside My Head (http://jasonf-blog.blogspot.com)	72.96 %
michael parekh on IT (http://mp.blogs.com)	72.79 %
Ninefish Tales (http://www.ninefish.com/blog)	72.54 %

On Friday Microsoft released a the latest version of their anti-malware product, which is now called Windows® Defender (Beta 2). This software replaces the product formally known as Microsoft Antispyware. There's both 32- and 64-bit versions available to download.

I've installed it and it runs just fine, but I get an error when it tries to update itself with the latest detection signatures. I'll try a reboot and see what happens a little later on. Hopefully that will help.

The new UI is nicely done, and I like the fact that you don't have to be an administrator to run Defender.

Defender information  on Microsoft.com: Windows Defender home Product information •  Beta overview •  FAQ •  System requirements •  Release notes Support and training •  Getting started •  Beyond basics Resources for software vendors Microsoft's focus on spyware

From the Windows Defender download site:

Windows Defender (Beta 2) is a free program that helps you stay productive by protecting your computer against pop-ups, slow performance and security threats caused by spyware and other potentially unwanted software.

This release includes enhanced features that reflect ongoing input from customers, as well as Microsoft’s growing understanding of the spyware landscape.

Specific features of Windows Defender Beta 2 include:

• A redesigned and simplified user interface – Incorporating feedback from our customers, the Windows Defender UI has been redesigned to make common tasks easier to accomplish with a warning system that adapts alert levels according to the severity of a threat so that it is less intrusive overall, but still ensures the user does not miss the most urgent alerts.
  
• Improved detection and removal – Based on a new engine, Windows Defender is able to detect and remove more threats posed by spyware and other potentially unwanted software. Real Time Protection has also been enhanced to better monitor key points in the operating system for changes.
  
• Protection for all users – Windows Defender can be run by all users on a computer with or without administrative privileges. This ensures that all users on a computer are protected by Windows Defender.
  
• Support for 64-bit platforms, accessibility and localization - Windows Defender Beta 2 also adds support for accessibility and 64-bit platforms. Microsoft also plans to release German and Japanese localized versions of Windows Defender Beta 2 soon after the availability of the English versions. Use WindowsDefenderX64.msi for 64-bit platforms.