The Shamrocks theme brings to desktops a few wallpapers that are bound to resonate with Irish nationals more than with other users of Windows 7. As the theme’s label implies, the content features a lot of green and the shamrock, both symbols of Ireland. Saint Patrick’s Day, also referred to as St. Paddy’s Day or even Paddy’s Day, is an annual celebration of Saint Patrick, without a doubt the most prominent patron saint of the island.

Historians claim that St. Patrick’s Day was celebrated well ahead of its introduction in the Catholic Church’s calendar, however, the event was a religious holiday at core for over two centuries after it was officially recognized by the church in the 17th century. Only in 1903 did St. Paddy’s Day become a public holiday. At this point in time, March 17th is celebrated around the world in countries with citizens that have an Irish heritage, such as the US, Australia, Canada, etc.

The three-leafed clover theme is available just in time to allow Windows 7 users with Irish blood to personalize their desktops in accordance with the upcoming Saint Patrick’s Day. As all content on the Windows Personalization Gallery, the Windows 7 Shamrocks theme is offered completely free of charge.

The Windows 7 Shamrocks Theme is available for download here.

The theme pack in question is available for download, as many others, free of charge via the Windows Personalization Gallery, the company’s central hub for offering themes designed to allow customers to customize their Windows 7 desktops.

“Bizarre, beautiful nature from Discovery Channel,” the short description of the Life theme, which will leave users with a feeling that the images should have been accompanied by more information, reads. Of course, the same is not the case with many themes on the Windows Personalization Gallery, but this specific example feels like it needs the added touch of the Bing wallpaper hotspots.

The images are indeed breathtaking and Microsoft should have worked with its partners to offer users various details on the content displayed, maybe in conjunction with a Windows 7 gadget. The Redmond company is running a pilot designed to allow companies to advertise their brands on the Windows 7 desktops via themes released on the Windows Personalization Gallery, and obviously the Discovery Channel and BBC are taking advantage of the program.

The only shortcoming I see with the Life theme pack might in fact be an advantage for some users. All the images included in this theme, which can be viewed below, are tailored to large-screen monitors, and large-screen monitors only. This implies that customers with older screens will have to be content with a less-than-perfect experience, setting the background images to either stretch to fit the resolution or just fit the screen as best as they can.

Windows 7 Life Theme is available for download here.

“I am happy to announce the addition of seven new languages to our translation service. As always, they will be immediately available for your use through the APIs and all the products that consume the service. Here is the list of languages that have been added in the latest release. In addition there have been several updates to the Haitian Creole language since [January 2010],” explained Vikram Dendi, senior product manager, Microsoft Translator.

The latest languages added are as follows: ROM – Romanian, NOR – Norwegian, HUN – Hungarian, SKY – Slovak, SLO – Slovenian, LTH – Lithuanian, and TRK – Turkish. Dendi has also been hard at work on solving a problem with Bing Translator. With the increase in the number of supported languages, Microsoft Translator is running out of space to display them properly. Of course, this is a problem which, along with the fix, Microsoft is bound to welcome, as it only illustrates the evolution of the machine translation engine developed inhouse.

“We continue to work on adding even more languages to the service, so please keep sending us feedback and stay tuned for other announcements on this blog,” Dendi stated. “With the addition of these new languages, the approach I recommended in the short term is visible in the translation toolbar – the language list uses a smaller font size. In the future, we intend to move to either a multiple column list, or another style of display for the list. I will look forward to more such problems, since it means we are meeting more expectations from you – our users.”

What better way to celebrate the year of the tiger, than with a theme pack from Microsoft? Users running the Redmond company’s latest iteration of the Windows client can now download a new theme via the Windows Personalization Gallery. A Windows 7 ‘Year of the Tiger’ theme pack is available from the software giant free of charge, and can be integrated seamlessly into the operating system.
The six new background images feature tigers, no big surprise in this regard, obviously, given the leitmotif chosen for the theme.

The year of the tiger draws its origins from the Chinese zodiac involving a total of 12 animals. It is a Chinese tradition to associate years with animal archetypes, in cycles of 12. The tiger is third in row in the enumeration which is repeated once every dozen of years. In addition to the tiger, the Chinese zodiac also contains the following animal symbols: rat, ox, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and pig.

Taking into account the dates in the Chinese Zodiac, the year of the tiger has already started as of February 14th, and it will end on February 2nd, 2011. The Chinese believe that people born this year will inherently share the same characteristics as the animal that governs their sign, in this particular case the tiger. With the Windows 7 ‘Year of the Tiger’ Theme, users can at least bring some extra roar to their desktop background images, Chinese Zodiac or no Chinese zodiac.

In addition to the new theme, Windows 7 customers can also download the Zune Tiger wallpaper. Obviously, the standalone background image is also designed to celebrate the year of the tiger. And for users that have more love for pets rather than for wild animals, Microsoft is also offering the Cats Everywhere and Dogs in Summer themes, also for Windows 7.

“Microsoft Security Essentials is a free download from Microsoft that is simple to install, easy to use, and always kept up to date so you can be assured your PC is protected by the latest technology. It’s easy to tell if your PC is secure — when you’re green, you’re good. It’s that simple. Microsoft Security Essentials runs quietly and efficiently in the background so you’re free to use your Windows-based PC the way you want—without interruptions or long computer wait times,” Microsoft noted.

One thing that did change is the version of Microsoft Security Essentials. While the previous release of the security solution was 1.0.1611.0, with the latest iteration, it has jumped to 1.0.1959.0. Judging strictly by the difference in build numbers, Microsoft is bound to have introduced only minor changes in the antivirus, and nothing more.

Announced at the end of 2008, Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0 was delivered in concert with the latest version of the Windows client, Windows 7. MSE is set up to kill off and replace Windows Live OneCare, while offering not a fully-fledged security suite, but rather a solution with very basic functionality. Customers still need to be running a genuine version of Windows in order to install Microsoft Security Essentials. The antivirus is compatible with both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7 and Windows Vista and with 32-bit Windows XP.

Microsoft Security Essentials is available for download for XP or Vista/7.

“Although we are just at the beginning of this process, we have reached an exciting milestone,” said Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer. “I believe that together, Microsoft and Yahoo! will promote more choice, better value and greater innovation to our customers as well as to advertisers and publishers.”

Microsoft claims that the search agreement was announced in late July 2009, but the company has been flirting publicly with Yahoo for a total of over two years, but there’s no way of telling just how much time had Ballmer actually spent on this deal ahead of the start of 2008. The debut of February 2008, brought with it an unsolicited offer of $44.6 billion from Microsoft, which at the time was trying to acquire Yahoo. Making sure that the deal fell through was Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, then occupying the position of CEO.

It was only after Yahoo Chief Executive Officer Carol Bartz took the helm of the Internet giant that the discussions with Microsoft were rekindled, leading to the search alliance made public in 2009, which received green light from antitrust regulators this week.

“We appreciate the thorough reviews conducted by the DOJ and the Commission and we welcome the thoughtful decisions reached by each agency. We also commend the collaborative efforts the regulators undertook to understand the search advertising market. Likewise, we are grateful for the efforts of regulators in Australia, Brazil and Canada who previously cleared the agreement, as well as those regulators we continue to work with in Korea, Taiwan and Japan,” noted Brad Smith, Microsoft senior vice president and general counsel.

Microsoft and Yahoo plan to start implementing the deal in the coming days. Essentially, the search alliance involved the transitioning of Yahoo’s algorithmic and paid search platforms to Microsoft. Yahoo users will start searching the Internet with Bing, instead of Yahoo’s own search engine, while Yahoo will still control relationship sales force for the duo’s premium search advertisers worldwide.

According to the January 2010 U.S. Search Engine Rankings provided by comScore, Google accounted for no less than 65.4% of the search market, while Yahoo owned 17.0% and Bing 11.3%. With their two search shares combined, Yahoo and Bing will be up to 28% of the search market, still less than Google. But the gap between the Mountain View-search giant and other players on the search market is even steeper on non-US markets.

“We believe this agreement promotes choice, value and innovation for consumers, advertisers and publishers. Today, one company dominates more than 75 percent of the search advertising market in the U.S. and more than 90 percent of the market in Europe. We’re hopeful that this agreement is a first step for a viable competitor to emerge,” Smith added. “As we said when we announced the deal last July, the agreement required regulatory clearance in the U.S. and Europe before it could close. Now that we’ve received those approvals, we will begin the work of implementing the agreement. And we will continue to work with regulators in other relevant jurisdictions to ensure they have the information they need to evaluate the deal before it takes effect in those specific markets.”

“We are super-excited to bring the design and user experience and feel of the phones really forward. We like to think that what we’re doing is building and delivering a different kind of phone that’s modern and takes advantage of people’s complex lives and their personalities to deliver something that’s unique and individual. And we think about two parts to this. (…) First, we want a smart design that puts the user at the center of their experience and moves beyond the phone as a PC-like item, that moves beyond separate applications and brings together some of the key things that are most important to people,” Belfiore stated.

Microsoft presented an ample demonstration of Windows Phone 7 at MWC 2010, but also provided additional content for end users. The video embedded at the bottom of the screen, featuring Belfiore is essentially a demonstration of a prototype phone like the devices that end users will be able to buy ahead of the 2010 holiday season. Belfiore covers a variety of topics, including the new user experience, social networking integration, Internet Explorer browsing, media, email and texting, GPS and maps, Bing Search integration and hardware.

“And then second, we wanted to design integrated experiences, which become destinations for your most common tasks, things like pictures, and music and video, and productivity, so that users have one simple place to go and access their Web services, access the functionality in their applications, access the data on their phones. Those are the fundamental ideas behind this new user experience,” Belfiore added.

Samsung is the latest company to take advantage of a pilot program run by Microsoft Advertising and designed to let customers take advantage of the Windows Personalization Gallery and Windows 7 for brand advertising. Windows 7 users are also able to download themes featuring content from CocaCola, Pepsi, Ducati, Ferrari, Infinity, Porsche, etc. One thing that users need to be aware of the Samsung Winter Sports theme is the fact that the wallpapers contained are tailored to wide-screens.

Of course, the Samsung Winter Sports is not the only way in which Microsoft is making the 2010 Olympic Games available to end users. The Redmond company has worked with NBC on putting together the NBCOlympics.com. Via Silverlight, sports fans will be able to watch on-demand and live video of the games in high definition.

“It’s really been amazing to see that partnership and friendship with NBC grow over the last year and a half,” Jason Suess, principal technical evangelist for Silverlight, said. “I expect many more events as our partnership gets tighter and tighter.”

Microsoft also provided access to online coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games for NBC for 52.1 million people, who watched 9.9 million hours of video. Now, with the combination of Silverlight and Smooth Streaming, NBCOlympics.com is capable of delivering video content in resolutions of up to 720p. “After Beijing, what we heard loud and clear was if you can provide a higher quality experience, users will definitely spend more time in that experience,” Suess added.

Themes are personalization items unique to Windows 7, and not available for previous releases of Windows operating systems. Essentially, the packs feature multiple wallpapers, which can be scheduled to swap one another at specific intervals, but also color and sound schemes for the platform. This is the case of Lacy Hearts.

Users must, however, be warned that the theme is in no way tailored to all audiences. There are enough pink, or shades of pink, and heart symbols in the theme to last you for a lifetime. Of course, the various nuances of pink might actually be just what Cupid ordered for Windows 7 users that have found love. Nonetheless, I still believe that it is a tad too much for perhaps at least half of Windows 7 users, especially those that would much rather opt for Windows 7 themes involving content from Ferrari, Gears of War or Forza Motorsport.

While the Redmond company is using the Windows Personalization Gallery and the Windows 7 desktop as vehicles for serving brand advertising via Microsoft Advertising, with such partners as Coca Cola, Pepsi, and Porsche, fact is that the software giant is also delivering generic content. The Windows Personalization Gallery has been steadily growing with additional content, and it is a great place to start for users that want to customize their Windows 7 desktops.