Microsoft Media Center
My Web News
My Weather
My File Manager
My Special Folders
My Menu Editor
My Music/Videos/Recordings
My Translation
MCE Outlook

Version August 31^th 2008

Version August 31^th 2008

My Web News/MCE Outlook can also be downloaded from some other internet sites. Many times these are beta versions and still contain bugs and errors. To be sure you have the latest version, download from this site.

About once a week there will be an update with fixes of reported bugs and errors.
I also like to get feedback with a wish list from the users.

For comments and discussion go to The Green Button or MCE-Community.

The My Web News software package is a Menu system with which you can extend your Media Center in a very flexible way. It started as an RSS Feed application, but during the time many features have been added. The latest feature, MCE Outlook, is available now.

My Web News is designed as a flexible menu system with support for RSS Feeds through customizable filters. You can create your own menu structure and this way organize the programs you have installed on your MCE and the RSS Feeds. The total number of news feeds or menu items is unlimited and news feeds and menu items can be mixed. A menu item can be any html page or url, but within MCE its preferably a hosted html application. As an example the alternative Start Menu page is added to Applications, with which you can reach all the menu items of MCE (this is part of the MCE SDK, but now in MCE style). You can add, modify and delete items under Settings in My Web News. 

My Weather shows you the weather, including a 10 day forecast, in your favorite cities. You can change your location for the weather under Settings in My Weather. My Weather has some extra features like My Map Viewer that shows you almost every map the Weather Channel supports, with up to date satellite photos and My World Weather showing you animations of global satellite photos.

My File Manager is also located under Applications. With My File Manager you can browse through your folders and view ASCII, image and shortcut files or listen to audio files or watch video files. 

With My Special Folders you can go directly to many special folders like My Favorites and use it as an alternative browser within MCE.

With My Music (a special version of My File Manager/My Special Folders), you can listen to music, but also play video files. You can use your directory structure to choose the song desired, which is convenient if you have a large amount of music files. This way you can organize music and video the way you want it (and not the way MCE and Media Player want it). My Music uses the default music directory of Media Player and in fact uses the Media Player to play the music and videos.

With My Menu Editor you can change the names of programs in the Start Menu, More Programs and Internet Radio. You can also add and delete programs.

With My Translation you can translate words or small sentences between 32 language combinations, including English, Dutch, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. It is based on Alta Vista Babelfish translations.

MCE Outlook is  designed as  a front end for MS Outlook. It enables you to browse through the MS Outlook folder structure and view Mails, Contacts, Appointments, Tasks and Notes. It also works well with Hotmail accounts in Outlook. The current version supports the creation, editing and delete of Appointments, Contacts, Emails, Tasks and Notes. It functions within the possibilities of MS Outlook.

The Setup Program

My Web News works well on MCE 2005 (1280x768) and also on Windows XP (1280x1024) without MCE. It is designed however for (1024x768). The first time you run My Web News, you may get a message of programs like Norton Security, because Web News uses WScript.Shell, just allow My Web News to run and the message will not appear anymore.

My Web News has filters for BBC, CNN, Reuters, Elsevier & Nieuws.nl, but you can add your own filters as well.
My Web News can also be used as an alternative menu system.
My Weather is based on information of The Weather Channel.

After installation you can fully customize My Web News to your own needs.

My Web News and My Weather can have multiple instances by adding "?instance=description" after "webnews.htm" or "weather.htm", when you define this new instance as a category (go directly to URL).
For example: "weather.htm?instance=mycity"
For example: "webnews.htm?instance=mymenu"
Don't forget to make an entry to go back to the primary My Web News instance with: "webnews.htm?instance=0"
This way you can have weather forecasts for multiple cities, while the menu system of My Web News has unlimited possibilities to function as a nested menu structure.

I want to give credits to Danee de Kruyff of My WebMedia and Ryan Hurst of My Weather, for allowing me to use their products.
And I want to thank Stefan Raudonis for translating MCE Outlook in German, doing a lot of testing and giving many good suggestions.

For comments and discussion go to The Green Button or MCE-Community.

My Web News/My Weather/My File Manager/My Special Folders/My Music/My Menu Editor/My Translation/MCE Outlook is free of charge but if you like the plug-in please donate to keep the development going.

Have fun,

Sape Miedema (Info@MCE-Software.com).

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