TECHNOLOGY TRENDS

Wall to Wall web(Internet Explorer 10)

2013-04-19T07:58:00.001-07:00

Fast and fluid

It starts and loads sites almost instantly. It brings a fluid responsiveness to the web that feels totally new. Everything you want to do on the web is a swipe, tap, or click away.Perfect for touch Internet Explorer 10 provides a touch first and a truly full-screen browsing experience. Navigation controls appear only when you need them and quietly get out of the way when you don’t. You can flip ahead or back through your websites with the flick of a finger. Tiles and tabs for frequently visited sites are oversized for easy tapping.Easy to use Smooth, intuitive controls work just as you’d expect. One box is both the address and search bar for speedier navigation. Pin your favorite sites to your Start screen and get to them as quickly as you access your apps.Safer and more private .The industry-leading Smart-Screen technology helps keep your PC and your information safer on the web and helps protect against socially-engineered malware. Privacy tools like Do Not Track are built-in and are easily enabled in just one click, so you have more control.

Why don’t toolbars and add-ons work?

Internet Explorer 10 provides an “add-on free” experience. It supports HTML 5 for video content, but you can't install toolbars and add-ons in Internet Explorer 10.If you are viewing a webpage that requires an add-on, you can view the content by opening the website in Internet Explorer for the desktop. To do this, swipe in from the right edge of the screen (if you're using a mouse, point to the upper-right corner of the screen), tap or click Settings, and then tap or click Use the desktop.

Where do I find my favorites?

Internet Explorer 10 doesn't use the traditional Favorites from previous versions. Instead, you can pin websites to the Start screen or open a list of pinned sites and frequently visited sites using New tab. If you open Internet Explorer for the desktop, you can use the traditional Favorites, but you can’t access the pinned sites from the Start screen.

How do I view a website in Compatibility View?
To view a website in Compatibility View, open Internet Explorer for the desktop, and then click the Compatibility view button in the address bar.

How do I set my default web browser?
1. On the Start screen, swipe in from the right edge of the screen, and then tap Search.
 (If you're using a mouse, point to the upper-right corner of the screen, and then click Search.)
2. Enter Default programs, and then tap or click Apps.
3. In the search results, tap or click Default Programs.
4. Tap or click Set your Default Programs.
5. Choose the browser you want from the list.
6. Select Set this program as default, and then tap or click OK.

I can't find the Internet Explorer 10 tile on the Start screen. How do I get it back?
Internet Explorer 10 might have accidentally become unpinned. To pin it back to your Start screen, follow these steps:
1. Swipe in from the right edge of the screen, and then tap Search.
 (If you're using a mouse, point to the upper-right corner of the screen, and then click Search.)
2. Enter Internet Explorer, and then tap or click Apps.
In the search results, swipe down on the Internet Explorer icon, and then tap Pin to Start.
 (If you're using a mouse, right-click Internet Explorer, and then click Pin to Start.)

Samsung S4

2013-04-19T07:47:00.002-07:00

The Galaxy S 4 has what you'd expect from a new smartphone a bigger screen and a faster processor. But Samsung didn't want to stop there when it presented the successor to its hit Galaxy S III. It loaded the new phone with a grab-bag of features that don't come together as a pleasing whole. The new additions could confuse users.
The Korean company revealed the S 4 for the first time Thursday at an event in New York, and provided reporters with some hands-on time with pre-production units. The final phones will be on sale in April to June period from Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile USA, US Cellular and Cricket, the company says. If history is any guide, even smaller phone companies will get it, if not right away. The phone companies will set the prices; expect this phone to start at $200 with a two-year contract.

Samsung has competent engineers, and hardware-wise the S4 is a solid successor to the III. The screen is slightly larger, at 5 inches on the diagonal compared to 4.8 inches for the III and 4 inches for the iPhone 5. It sports a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels, as much as you'd find on a high-definition TV set. This should mean that the resolution chase is over in the smartphone area: the eyes just can't discern any more pixels on these small screens. Competing top-line Android phones already have the same resolution, so Samsung isn't breaking new ground here.
The bigger screen is crammed into a chassis that's actually a hair narrower and thinner than the S III's. This is quite a feat. Samsung shrank the frame surrounding the screen to make room. Shrinking other internal components allowed it to make the battery 20 percent larger than III's, but Samsung isn't saying whether that translates into longer battery life - the added battery power could be eaten up by software and hardware changes.

The body is still dominated by softly molded plastic, and the S4 doesn't really advance the aesthetics of its predecessor the way competitors Apple, Sony and HTC have done with their latest phones. Apple and HTC, in particular, have put a lot of sweat into machining metal into jewel-like enclosures; Samsung doesn't seem to care all that much about looks.

Samsung does care about trying to push the envelope on what the phone does, but it may have poked through the envelope, tearing a hole or two in it. It's probably not a disaster, because most of its features can be turned off, but first-time users could be confused.

For one thing, Samsung is taking the whole "touch screen" thing further by now sensing when the user's finger is hovering over the screen. In other words, you don't even need to touch the phone to make it react. Hovering over a thumbnail of a picture in the Gallery will reveal a bigger thumbnail, and hovering over one email in a list will show a preview of its first lines.

The idea is similar to the "mouse hover" feature on a PC, which sometimes reveals things before the mouse is clicked. Implementing it on a smartphone is trickier, though. On the PC, you have to use the mouse, so you'll discover the hover functions in the normal course of use. But since the feature is new in a smartphone and there's normally no reason to have your finger hovering over the screen, users are likely to discover this feature by chance. That wouldn't be so bad if all applications responded to hovering in a consistent manner, but very few applications react to it all. On the S4, the "Email" app will show previews, but the "Gmail" app won't. The built-in "Gallery" app will show picture previews, but other photo apps won't. I suspect users will get tired of trying to hover with their fingers and give up on the whole thing.

The hovering feature also sets the phone up for another problem. In my testing, I found that the phone sometimes registered a close hover as a touch. In other words, the screen was overly sensitive, thinking I was touching it when I wasn't. This may be fixed by the time the phone is in production, but it's potentially an annoying issue.

The S 4 tries to divine your intentions in two additional ways. It has an infra-red sensor that looks for hand movements up to about 4 inches away from the phone, and it uses the front-side camera to figure out if it's front of the user's face. Thanks to the IR sensor, the phone's browser responds to an "up swipe" in the air above it with by scrolling up, and to a "side" swipe by jumping to another tab. This could be pretty useful when the smartphone is the lunchtime companion and you don't want to grease it up with foody fingers, but again, the "air swipe to scroll" shows up in only a few applications.

The camera is supposed to engage when you're watching a video, pausing playback if it thinks you're looking away. This didn't work in the preproduction unit I tested, but it's hard to imagine that this is a feature to die for.

The list of user interface innovations goes on, but they don't amount to a coherent new way of interacting with the phone. Nor do they turn the phone into something that's intelligently aware of what goes on around it. It's more like Samsung is throwing a bunch of technologies into the phone to see what sticks

Microsoft Visual Studio

2013-04-11T09:11:00.005-07:00

Microsoft Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft. It is used to develop console and GUI along with Windows Forms orWPE applications, web sites,web applications and Web services in both native code together with managed code for all platforms supported by Microsoft Windows, Windows mobile, Windows CE, .NET framework, .NET compact framework and Microsoft Silverlight

Visual Studio includes a code editor supporting Intelli sense as well as Code refactoring. The integrated debugger works both as a source-level debugger and a machine-level debugger. Other built-in tools include a forms designer for building GUI applications, web designer,class designer, and database schema designer. It accepts plug-ins that enhance the functionality at almost every level—including adding support for source control systems (like Subversion and Visual source safe) and adding new toolsets like editors and visual designers for domain specific changes or toolsets for other aspects of the software develpoment life cycle(like the Team foundation server client: Team Explorer).

Visual Studio supports different programming languages by means of language services, which allow the code editor and debugger to support (to varying degrees) nearly any programming language, provided a language-specific service exists. Built-in languages includeC/C++ , VB.NET , C#, and F#. Support for other languages such as M, Python, and Ruby among others is available via language services installed separately. It also supports XML/XSLT,HTML/XHTML, javascript and CSS. Individual language-specific versions of Visual Studio also exist which provide more limited language services to the user: Microsoft Visual Basic, Visual J#, Visual C#, and Visual C++.

Microsoft provides "Express" editions of its Visual Studio 2010 components Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual C++, and Visual Web Developer at no cost. Visual Studio 2012, 2010, 2008 and 2005 Professional Editions, along with language-specific versions (Visual Basic, C++, C#, J#) of Visual Studio Express 2010 are available for free to students as downloads via Microsoft's Dreamspark program.

Whats app

2013-04-11T08:10:00.000-07:00

Putting an end to the $1 billion acquisition rumors,whatsapp the popular messaging app said the company is not in any discussion to sell itself to anyone
Neeraj Arora, head of business development in WhatsApp, has replied to AllThingsD’s enquiry on the truth behind rumors. Eventhogh Neeraj killed the rumors with a “No,” he further declined to comment on the matter. It is the second time that WhatsApp is being dragged into acquision rumors. Last December, after strong reports on Facebook acquiring the app, the company had commented that the news were “not factually accurate.”

The popular cross-platform messaging app, which many see as a big hindrance to Facebook’s invasion into mobile phones, currently process around 17 billion messages in a single day. The app is available on most platforms including Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and the latest BlackBerry 10 where users enjoy the privilege of transferring anything from text to images to audio files without any hitch.

Lumia 620

2013-04-10T10:05:00.000-07:00

The Lumia 620 sports a 3.8-inch TFT WVGA display (800X480) with ClearBlack technology. It features a 5-megapixel rear autofocus shooter capable of 720p video recording and has a VGA front camera on-board as well.On the inside, the device is powered by a 1GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor with 512MB of RAM and has 8GB of internal storage with microSD support up to 64GB.

Windows Phone users can also make use of the additional 7GB SkyDrive storage.The smartphone boasts connectivity options like NFC, Bluetooth 3.0 and Wi-Fi. It comes with a 1,300mAh battery claiming up to 15 hours of talk time (2G).The company hadfirst launched the Lumia 620, along with the Lumia 920 and 820 in India, in January.

Nokia is betting big on the Lumia 620's 'dual-shot' technique, which helps in creating new colours and textures for this smartphone. So what this 'dual shot' actually does is cast two layers of polycarbonate, a single base layer and a second colour, in a transparent/ translucent layer, to produce depth effects and secondary colour blends. For example, yellow and cyan are combined to produce a lime green colour.

At the recently concluded Mobile World Congress (MWC), Nokia had also showcased its Lumia 520 and Lumia 720 smartphones. Nokia Lumia 720 sports a 4.3-inch display and its screen is protected by Gorilla Glass 2. Internally, the smartphone packs in Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 chipset with a 1GHz dual-core processor. It comes with 512MB of RAM and 2,000mAh battery.

Nokia Lumia 520 on other hand boasts of 4-inch screen with a display resolution of 480x800 pixels. Lumia 520 also comes with dual-core 1GHz Snapdragon processor with 512 MB of RAM. The internal storage available on the device is 8GB and can be expanded by another 64GB via microSD card.

Windows Azure

2013-04-10T08:40:00.003-07:00

Windows Azure is an open and flexible cloud platform that enables you to quickly build, deploy and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. You can build applications using any language, tool or framework. And you can integrate your public cloud applications with your existing IT environment.

Windows Azure enables you to use any language, framework, or tool to build applications. Features and services are exposed using open REST protocols. The Windows Azure client libraries are available for multiple programming languages, and are released under an open source license and hosted on GitHub.

(Source Microsoft)

Windows 8 tips

2013-04-10T02:21:00.000-07:00

Personalize the Start screen

Start is the heart of your PC, and you can customize it so it’s just the way you want it. You can pin your most used and loved apps, websites, friends, files, and folders to your Start screen, so you can get to them quickly. If you’ve used previous versions of Windows, think of the Start screen like your old Start menu, but the Start screen shows you a lot more.Some of the tiles on your Start screen will update automatically, so you can see things like the weather and status updates from your friends at a glance. You don't have to open the apps to get the information you're looking for.

Move tiles around

You can arrange the tiles on your Start screen in whatever way makes the most sense to you—put similar tiles together, group all your favorites, or create a "work" group for the apps you use for work. To move a tile, drag it up or down, and then drag it wherever you want.

Create a new group of tiles

You can create a new group of tiles by dragging one tile to an open space. When a gray bar appears, release the tile—this will create a new group, and you can drag more tiles to it. After you’ve grouped your tiles together, you can name the group.Swipe down on or right-click a group of tiles to select it, and then tap or click Name group.

Resize a tile

You can make tiles larger or smaller. To do this, swipe down on or right-click the tile to select it, and then tap or click Larger or Smaller.

To remove a tile from the Start screen

Swipe down on or right-click the tile to select it, and then tap or click Unpin from Start. (The app will still be available when you search, and you can re-pin it later if you decide you want it back on your Start screen.)

(Source Microsoft)

Microsoft surface

2013-04-10T01:59:00.004-07:00

A feat of engineering and a work of art, Surface is a revolutionary new tablet from Microsoft. With casing made from ultra-light and highly durable magnesium, Surface will change the way you work and play. Run Office apps, watch movies in dazzling HD, catch up with friends and family..Do it all on one beautifully and thoughtfully designed device.

Microsoft Surface is a series of tablets designed and marketed byMicrosoft. It was announced on June 18, 2012, by Microsoft CEOSteve Ballmer at Milk Studios in LosAngles.

The Surface comes in two versions: one with WindowsRT and another with Windows 8pro. The Windows RT model uses an ARM CPU while the Windows 8 Pro model uses an Intel.CPU. Both models are able to install new applications via the Windows store, however only the Windows 8 Pro model allows the installation of traditional third-party desktop programs.
(Source Microsoft)

Office 365 for Business

2013-04-10T01:50:00.001-07:00

Create a website that builds your brand

Use your own domain name for your site.
Connect with customers, affiliates, and partners wherever they are.
Add Share and Comment buttons to reach new customers on social networks.
Update customers with an easy-to-use blog.

Work better together with file sharing
Share securely with customers and partners.
Invite others to access files online.
You control who gets to see what.Keep teams in sync.
Access company bulletins, forms, and policies.
Add and respond to comments and status updates so everyone’s in the know.
Share ideas using blogs and wikis.
Security and privacy
Microsoft strives to be a leader in industry privacy, security, and compliance practices. By focusing on the following principles, Microsoft is consistently and proactively working toward earning your trust.
(Source Microsoft)