I've been using PortableApps for a while as a way to keep a copy of FileZilla and Firefox close to hand with my preferred settings.

Like most PortableApps users I used to use a USB key to carry them around - but recently I've been less attached to that dongle and started relying on the cloud storage and synchronization capabilities of Live Mesh to make sure the utilities are always to hand.

Because PortableApps doesn't install anything on the host PC (it's more like an OSX or Linux app in that regard - no registry changes, no INI files squirreled away in user directories) it's a perfect fit for a Mesh folder... and really easy to set up.

I created a new Mesh folder on my test machine and called it PortableApps (imaginative I know, but I wanted to be able to find it easily!). I then installed the base PortableApps version ("Platform Only") into that folder to get everything initialized. Once that was installed I added the three apps I wanted - Filezilla, Firefox and the PortableApps updater (useful to keep things at the latest version - no Windows Update for these apps sadly!) and tested they were working.

Just for good measure I added a shortcut for the Portable Apps launcher to my Windows start folder so it would run automatically when I logged in.

I then sync'd the folder to machines where I knew I wanted to run those apps (my Windows Home Server and my laptop) and also shared the folder with my wifes Mesh so that I would always have the apps there if I was using her machine for anything.

Now my settings follow me around, and if I update something on one machine a sync later it's everywhere I need it.

... is this the start of everything living in the cloud and being available on every connected device I can authenticate on?

There's a lot of stuff on the web, and managing it can be a real pain.

Thumbtack is an easy way to save links, photos, and anything else you can find on bunch of different Web sites to a single place.  Grab the stuff you want, put it into a Thumbtack collection, then get to it from anywhere you can get online. 

You can share a collection with your friends, or just keep it for yourself. It’s way easier than sending a bunch of links in an e-mail, and even easier than setting lots of favorites in your browser.

It works with both Firefox and IE and with both bookmarklet and accelerator support it's really easy to set up and get going.

If you've ever used something like Del.icio.us to collect bookmarks to things on the web you'll appreciate how easy it is to use - and the fact you can actually include snippets of the content, not just a link to the page makes it so much more useful.

Once you collect the information there are gadgets that you can run which (for instance) can automatically parse out addresses and create links to a map so you can see where they are - useful if you're planning places to visit on a vacation, or looking at apartments to rent and want to share the list with your partner.

Are there times when you just want to find an answer to a simple fact? You could go look it up (apparently some people do still use books!) or even phone a friend, but Live Search offers some really cool Instant Answers to many common (and not so common) questions.

• Lost and confused? Just ask “where am I?”
• Watching your weight and need to know how many “Calories in a moose” or less obscure “Calories in a Turkey” (it’s almost Thanksgiving!)
• Want to solve an equation …. this will give you an answer for X where “X^2+2*X+0.5=0”
• “height K2”, “height Mt. St. Helens”
• Have you ever wondered the “weight of an elephant”… well the answer is there at your fingertips.
• Ever wondered “what size is the pentagon?” Now you know.
• You can track any UPS, FedEx etc. package just by entering the tracking number
• Want to get away from the weather – check out a “flight from Seattle to Miami” .
• Curious about some world facts? Just ask for the “Population Arizona”, “life expectancy China”, “literacy rate South Korea”, or even “population per physician USA”
• “define loquacious”
• “traffic”
• “weather”
• Did you ever wonder who the “Prime Minister of Canada” or the “Queen of England” was?
• It even has “the answer to Life the Universe and Everything”

As you can see, there are many sorts of questions that Instant Answers can help you with. They use the power of the Live search engine to make sense of the information available (and you even get to say if it’s useful or not to help improve the quality of the results).

Take a tour of Live Search to see what other cool things it can do that you never knew about :)

Meantime don’t forget the other great Live Search services like Cashback and SearchAndGive as well as Live Search for Mobile…

A short while ago Live Search allowed you to sign up to get something back when you bought through participating vendors you found when using Live Search

Now you can contribute to good causes every time you do a search

By signing up at www.searchandgive.com, you can start donating one-cent to more than 100,000 schools and 900,000 non-profit organizations worldwide, every time you use the Internet to find whatever you’re looking for. Once you’ve signed in and set your default recipient you can set Search and Give as your default search provider for your browser.

You can also convert the tickets you earn playing games on Microsoft’s Live Search Club, into donations for those same schools or charities, and make donations just for chatting with Windows Live Messenger.

So what are you looking for? Find it at www.searchandgive.com

The search engine wars are heating up with shopping a prime mover … why advertise or try to get your search results higher if you don’t want to promote something after all.

Apart from helping us find things search hasn’t traditionally been a very “giving” process. The search engine providers, advertisers and folks creating pages to serve us click-through's are the ones making all the money.

Now that’s set to change with the introduction of Live Search CashBack. The idea is simple… you look for something you’re interested in and… you have the option of buying it from someone who will put money back into your pocket (via PayPal, bank transfer or check) just for shopping with them. Everyone gets part of the reward, advertisers get more customers, users get value, Live gets more search and everyone is happy.

The service was announced at Advance08 and has already received some positive reactions.

I had a quick play for the first time today… sign-up is quick and simple, and the process fairly straight forward. Give it a try…

If you use a Blackberry Smartphone and wish you could be like the cool Windows Mobile folks who have access to Live services well… there’s some good news for you - Microsoft and RIM announced Windows Live Services for Blackberry.

This brings both Instant Messenger capabilities as well as access to Hotmail via Blackerry’s familiar push technology to keep you in touch with personal as well as business contacts on the go.

This adds to the existing Live Search capabilities already available for Blackberry.

Just because you use a Blackberry doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of Live services

I’m a fan of Live Maps – since getting to the US I’ve used them a lot to find my way around strange cities (even used them to get a look of my office before I went for interview!)

There is always work going on with the Virtual Earth team to improve the quality of the product and they’ve just rolled out another release.

This update is much bigger release than originally planned – it includes three full sprints of development (the milestones used by the team). As always the changes visible in the user interface only scratch the surface of the dozens of improvements across the application tiers including Geocoding enhancements, browser compatibility (Safari and IE8), parsing improvements, reverse geocoding, printing improvements, integration with GPS devices, Map Cruncher integration, 1-click “party” directions and tons more.

For sites that host their own functionality on top of Live Maps the team have also released an upgrade of the Map Control to version 6.1 for developers.

Get the full scoop on the update on from the Virtual Earth blog.