Microsoft is no longer a software company, it's now a web services company.

Windows Live and Microsoft Office Live launched a couple of weeks ago and these sites will be the centre of Microsoft's new direction. Microsoft Office Live, currently being trialled, will provide businesses with a web site, domain name and email accounts for free with extra features paid by subscription.

You can start using Windows Live now so let's see how you can put it to work. Basically Live delivers to you what information you may want to access instead of you having to chase around a whole lot of sites.

Once your browser loads www.live.com, you'll see a sidebar on the left, a welcome message and a section to add content. Looking around the page you'll also notice that you can hide/show the sidebar, there's a search box, and on the right, settings, what's new and hide functions. Up on the top right, you can sign-in to your Passport account (e.g. Hotmail or MSN account). If you've already signed into MSN Messenger, Live will automatically sign you in when you click sign in.

When Live reloads, you'll see that the contents of your Hotmail inbox will be listed. Clicking on an unread email takes you to your Hotmail inbox. Alternatively you can use the links in this section of the page to go directly to your Hotmail inbox, contacts or compose a new email.

To add some information to your Live page, use the weather section to add Rushworth or any other number of towns and cities to have up-to-date forecasts delivered and displayed - they're periodically updated without you needing to do anything.

At this point you should click on the what's new link to go the Windows Live Ideas page to read about what services are on the way, for example Windows Live Mail (the new version of Hotmail), and Windows Live Messenger (what would have been MSN Messenger version 8). Not mentioned on the what's new page is Foldershare, a service to enable sharing of files between users. Make use of the Learn more and View blog links to catch up on the latest information about these new services from the people who are creating them.

Back on the Live page, move your mouse around and you'll see it change to a four-headed arrow - that means you can move content sections around the page and position it to your own wishes. As well a large X will appear at various point - this enable you to delete a complete content section (e.g., weather forecasts) or just one item (e.g., a town's weather forecast).

Windows Live knows your country of origin and language (that's why you can add Rushworth to your list of weather forecasts) and with a click on News under Categories you'll find ABC News listed. Clicking ABC News opens a list of different ABC news sources so choose one, say Politics. To see what the latest political news items are, drag and drop the Politics item over to the right on your page and it'll display the latest five news items.

You can use the add content feature to put up information from sources other than those already provided. For example, you'll want to get the latest items from webDotWiz Spaces. So click add content, then Advanced options to open the Subscribe box - just type in spaces.msn.com/members/webdotwiz/ and Live will add webDotWiz to your list under My Web. From there you can use drag'n'drop to keep an eye on what webDotWiz is adding to his space.

webDotWiz has applied to join the trial of Windows Live Mail so hopefully he'll soon hear he can start using it. That and other ways to use Windows Live will be in the next webDotWiz column.

How many times have you read or been told to make sure your computer is protected with up-to-date anti-virus and anti-spyware tools so personal information on your computer is not stolen by criminals? So what does one of the world's largest media companies (Sony-BMG in this case) do? They use a technique, known as a rootkit, to hide their music CD copy protection software and thus open computers to trojans and viruses that enable criminals to steal bank passwords and other personal details.

The saga began just a couple of weeks ago when Dr. Mark Russinovich, a Windows expert who wrote software to detect rootkits, was doing a periodic scan of his computer and found a rootkit. After extensive investigation, he found the rootkit had been installed when he played a new music CD he'd recently bought.

You can follow most of the saga at webDotWiz Spaces, including the list of twenty or so CD titles infected, and there are links to some articles in this week's sites.

Some good news is that anti-virus programs are being updated so that the rootkit will be removed. As well, Microsoft Anti-spyware will be updated and the December Microsoft and Windows update will run the Malicious Software Removal tool to detect and remove the Sony-BMG rootkit if it's found on yourc omputer.