Windows 7 is already RTM, its now time for the official Launch. Microsoft India is therefore conducting some webcasts on Windows 7 that targets Home & Office users. These Webcast Series will also serve as the official Online Community Launch for windows 7. 

Phishing is an industry-wide problem and Microsoft is committed to helping consumers have a safe, secure and positive online experience. Our guidance to customers is to exercise extreme caution when opening unsolicited attachments and links from both known and unknown sources, and that they install and regularly update their anti-virus software.”  If you believe you’ve been a victim of a phishing scheme, it’s very important that you update your account information and change your password as soon as possible. More information on what to do is available on this page at our support community.

Microsoft recommends customers use the following protective security measures:

• Renew their passwords for Windows Live IDs every 90 days
• For administrators, make sure you approve and authenticate only users that you know and can verify credentials
• As phishing sites can also pose additional threats, please install and keep anti-virus software up to date

Answers to a few general questions about phishing scams

Q: What should you do if you fall victim to a phishing scam? How should you respond? What steps should you take?

A: If you think that you may have responded to a phishing scam with personal or financial information or entered this information into a fake website, you should take four key steps: (1) report the incident to the proper authorities, (2) change the passwords on all your online accounts, (3) review your credit reports and your bank and credit card statements, and (4) make sure you are using the latest technologies to help protect yourself from future scams.

1. For the first step:
   • If you have given out your credit card information, contact your credit company right away. The sooner a company knows your account may have been compromised, the easier it will be for them to help protect you.
   • Next, contact the company that you believe was forged. Remember to contact the organization directly, not through the e-mail message you received. Or call the organization’s toll-free number and speak to a customer service representative. For Microsoft, call the PC Safety hotline at:
     1-866-PCSAFETY.
   • Then, report the incident to the proper authorities. Send an e-mail to spam@uce.gov to report it to the Federal Trade Commission and to reportphishing@antiphishing.org to report it to the Anti-Phishing Working Group.
2. The second step is to change the passwords on all your online accounts. The reason for this is that a lot of people use the same password for multiple accounts. Start with passwords that are related to financial institutions or personal information. If you think someone has accessed your e-mail account, change your password immediately. If you’re using Hotmail, go to: http://account.live.com.
3. The third step is to review your bank and credit card statements and your credit report monthly for unexplained charges, inquiries or activity that you didn’t initiate.
4. Finally, make sure you use the latest products, such as anti-spam and anti-phishing capabilities in e-mail services, phishing filters in Web browsers and other services to help warn and protect you from online scams.

Q: How can I recognize an e-mail scam?

A: There are several signs you should look for to identify a phishing e-mail: (1) Does it ask you to send your personal information? (2) Is it poorly worded or does it have typos? (3) Does it contain convincing details about your personal information? (4) Does it use phrases like “verify your account” or “you’ve won the lottery?”

• Any e-mail asking for your name, birth date, social security number, e-mail username, e-mail password, or any other type of personal information, no matter who the e-mail appears to be from, is almost certainly a scam.  Microsoft and most other businesses do not send unsolicited e-mail requesting personal or financial information.
• E-mails that are poorly worded, have typos, or have phrases such as “this is not a joke” or “forward this message to your friends” are generally scam e-mails.
• Phishing mail often includes official-looking logos and other identifying information taken directly from legitimate Web sites, and it may include convincing details about your personal information that scammers found on your social networking pages.
• A few phrases to look for if you think an e-mail message is a phishing scam are:
  • “Verify your account.”
  • “If you don’t respond within 48 hours, your account will be closed.”
  • “You have won the lottery.”

Q: What should people do if they think they have received a phishing e-mail?

A: If you think you may have received a phishing e-mail, you should take three steps: (1) take some time to check up on it and do not click on a link or give out your personal information, (2) make sure you have created a strong password for your account and (3) report the phishing scam.

• The most important thing to remember is do not click on the link or give out your personal information.  It is possible for your computer to become infected with malicious software simply by visiting a phishing site – without you even realizing it. If you receive a questionable e-mail, take some time and check up on the information. Often sites like snopes.com list common e-mail scams.  Go to that website of the company you received the e-mail from and contact their customer service reps via phone or online to verify the validity of the e-mail.
• Another thing you should do is create a strong password for your e-mail account by using more than 7 characters and having a combination of upper and lower case characters, numbers, and special characters, like the @ or # symbols. It’s also a good idea to change your password on a regular basis. The next time you change your Hotmail password, you can check “make my password expire every 72 days” to remind you to change it.
• Finally, help us identify new scams. If you use Hotmail and received a phishing e-mail, you can select the dropdown next to “Junk,” and select “Report phishing scam.” Whatever you do, do not reply back to the sender. You should also report phishing scams to the Anti-Phishing Working Group by e-mailing them at reportphishing@antiphishing.org.

Q: How common is this scam?

A: The most recent version of Microsoft’s Security Intelligence Report (Volume 6) shows that more than 97 percent of e-mail messages sent over the Internet are unwanted: They have malicious attachments, are phishing attacks, or are spam.

Q: Is Microsoft taking any proactive steps to prevent this from happening?

A: To help protect people from phishing attacks, Microsoft is providing education and guidance to customers, collaborating with other technology leaders, businesses and governments and supporting law enforcement actions against phishers.

• We provide guidance and information to customers about how to stay safe online at www.microsoft.com/protect and work with others in the industry and governments to educate people on online threats and safety tips.
• From a technology perspective, because so much phishing comes from spammers, our Hotmail spam filter, called SmartScreen, blocks over 4.5 billion unwanted e-mails per day by distinguishing between legitimate e-mail and spam.
• The Microsoft Phishing Filter, which is free as part of Internet Explorer 7, Internet Explorer 8, Windows Vista and as an add-on for the Windows Live Search Toolbar, also helps protect people from phishing attacks by identifying suspicious or confirmed phishing sites and warning customers before they reach them.
• Law enforcement also plays a big role here. Microsoft has supported 191 enforcement actions against phishers worldwide.  These include civil lawsuits filed by Microsoft, as well as civil and criminal actions by international government and law enforcement agencies for which Microsoft made referrals and subsequently provided support. 
• Microsoft is a founding member of the Anti-Phishing Working Group, a cross-industry association focused on preventing phishing. Microsoft also actively participates in DigitalPhishNet, an alliance between law enforcement and industry leaders in a variety of sectors, including technology, banking, financial services, and online auctioneering.  The group is focused on assisting law enforcement in apprehending and prosecuting those responsible for committing crimes against consumers through phishing. 

Q: Shouldn’t Microsoft be doing more to protect people from phishing?

A:  Combating phishing requires involvement from technology leaders, businesses operating online, law enforcement and governments. Microsoft plays a leading role in the Anti-Phishing Working Group, provides technologies to protect people from phishing and assists law enforcement to bring prosecutions against online criminals.

Source

Check them out :

LCD TV’s : http://www.consumermate.com/lcd-plasma-tvs.html

Mobile Phones : http://www.consumermate.com/mobile-phones.html 
So, when you do some shopping the most you  want is choices, models on display & the most competitive pricing & when it comes to electronics you do want someone reliable. As an asnwer to all these questions Consumermate.com Offers you everything you thought about. When on the website you can check out the buying guide, If you are stuck on some models from whom you want to pick out the best one,  just use the compare models section.
As per the reliablity is concerned, the products are tested & rated by the DIGIT TEST CENTRE , But when you come to Some decision making & want the best of prices, consumermate.com offers you the latest street level pricing & oh you have a doubt just use the ASK US Section & you will hear from them.

In my opinion, CONSUMERMATE is one of the best ways to shop around today. It might be LCD TV’s, Laptops or mobile phones, There is something you can rely on.

PressPass spoke with Ramji and Hanrahan to find out more about today’s announcement.

PressPass: Microsoft has gone to great lengths to engage the open source community. How does today’s news play into Microsoft’s overall open source strategy?

Ramji: We are seeing Microsoft communities and open source communities grow together, which is ultimately of benefit to our customers. The Linux community, for example, has built a platform used by many customers. So our strategy is to enhance interoperability between the Windows platform and many open source technologies, which includes Linux, to provide the choices our customers are asking for.

A central part of our strategy is the work done in the OSTC, which we opened about three years ago. The OSTC has a deep technical expertise in Linux, UNIX and open source technologies, along with strong social connections into open source communities. We have learned a great deal from the various community leaders about how to effectively work together, and are eager to continue the dialogue.

Our work in this area is all about providing more flexibility and choice, and requests from our customers and partners were really the impetus behind those efforts. We are hearing more and more customers and open source partners telling us they see some of their best value when they deploy new open source software solutions on top of existing Microsoft platforms. Today’s release would have been unheard of from Microsoft a few years ago, but it’s a prime example that customer demand is a powerful catalyst for change.

PressPass: So what exactly are you releasing today?

Hanrahan: Today we’re releasing Linux device driver code to the Linux kernel community. This is a significant milestone because it’s the first time we’ve released code directly to the Linux community. Additionally significant is that we are releasing the code under the GPLv2 license, which is the Linux community’s preferred license.

Our initial goal in developing the code was to enable Linux to run as a virtual machine on top of Hyper-V, Microsoft’s hypervisor and implementation of virtualization.

The Linux device drivers we are releasing are designed so Linux can run in enlightened mode, giving it the same optimized synthetic devices as a Windows virtual machine running on top of Hyper-V. Without this driver code, Linux can run on top of Windows, but without the same high performance levels. We worked very closely with the Hyper-V team at Microsoft to make that happen.

PressPass: How will customers benefit from the Linux device drivers?

Hanrahan: Many customers are looking into how virtualization can reduce the cost of deploying and managing their IT infrastructure through server consolidation and more efficient use of server resources.

Customers have told us that they would like to standardize on one virtualization platform, and the Linux device drivers will help customers who are running Linux to consolidate their Linux and Windows servers on a single virtualization platform, thereby reducing the complexity of their infrastructure.

Consequently, they’ll have more choices in how to develop and deploy solutions, while still managing their entire data center from a single management console.

PressPass: What motivated Microsoft to do this?

Ramji: The current economic climate has a lot of companies consolidating their hardware and software assets, deferring new software and hardware purchases, and reducing their travel and training expenses — doing everything they can to cut controllable costs to the bone and get the most out of what they’ve got so they can hang onto their skilled staff.

Many companies are turning to Microsoft more frequently to help them succeed in a heterogeneous technology world because we understand that reducing complexity is a key factor to reducing cost. We are seeing interoperability as a lever for business growth.

So there’s mutual benefit for customers, for Microsoft, and for commercial and community distributions of Linux, to enhance the performance of Linux as a guest operating system where Windows Server is the host.

PressPass: What are some other examples of Microsoft’s work with open source?

Ramji: Many people are surprised when they hear how much open source community and development work is happening across Microsoft. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that we’re focused on getting the work done, and engaging with communities on a one-to-one basis, rather than promoting it. We currently participate and collaborate on a number of open source projects through contributions of technical support and code.

Examples can be found in the work we have done with the PHP Community, which has involved contributing to the PHP Engine, optimizing PHP 5.3 to perform strongly on Windows, and working to improve the performance of numerous PHP applications on Windows. Then there is the ongoing participation in various Apache Software Foundation projects, such as Hadoop, Stonehenge and QPID. In addition to this, we worked to improve interoperability with Axis2 and provided support to the Firefox community to optimize Firefox for Vista and Windows Media Player.

Examples like these can be found scattered across the company, so there will continue to be many more on the horizon.

PressPass: What’s Microsoft’s road map for working with open source communities three to five years down the road?

Customers have told us that they would like to standardize on one virtualization platform, and the Linux device drivers will help customers who are running Linux to consolidate their Linux and Windows servers on a single virtualization platform.   –Tom Hanrahan, director, Open Source Technology Center

Ramji: We’re focused on building sustainable business strategies for open source at Microsoft.

Stemming from that we see open source playing into three key areas, one of which is the use of “inbound” open source and the open source development model to make our software development processes more efficient. Good examples of this include what we did recently with jQuery in Visual Studio 2008, the implementation of OpenPegasus connectors and adaptors into System Center Operations Manager, and work that the Microsoft High Performance Computing team did with the Argonne National Lab (ANL) to source its MPICH2 implementation, which is a portable implementation of the Message Passing Interface (MPI) used in cluster computing and super computers.

Another area is product evangelism — engaging people to adopt our technologies. For the past 34 years Microsoft has had an open-edge strategy where we provide open application programming interfaces and software development kits. Open source is the next level in our effort to create broad platform adoption. An example of that is the AJAX Control Toolkit. Our efforts in interoperability are also part of Microsoft’s product evangelism process, such as giving Windows functionality more visibility through PHP applications.

The third area is using open source to reduce marketing and sales costs or to try out new features that highlight parts of the platform customers haven’t seen before. The open source educational tools recently released for Microsoft Office are a great example. Specifically, the add-ins for mathematical and chemical notation are enabling teachers and students to see that they can use Office for a range of new things they weren’t aware of. In addition to using LaTeX, a powerful but complex documentation preparation system, to lay out mathematical problems, teachers are seeing the new value they can get out of Microsoft Word.

As open source is adopted on a range of platforms, understanding, engaging and supporting open source development will continue to be fundamental to enabling more customer choice.

Jussi Rantala of the University of Tampere in Finland along with colleagues have come up with a way to simulate a braille on the screen of a device, using vibrations. They simulated a braille character by representing a raised dot as an intense vibration, and the absence of a dot as longer but weaker pulsed vibrations. Braille encodes characters as a 2×3 grid of dots, where characters are represented based on which dots are raised. People trained to read braille can read the patterns using their finger and hence can read texts even without sight. This innovation promises to bring this marvelous.

To enable this they developed software for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet, which has piezoelectric¹ material built into the touchscreen. They tested two modes of operation for this virtual braille, one in which the reader places his finger on the left side of the screen and sweeps horizontally to read the rest of the dots, and the other in which the reader keeps the finger fixed on one location, and the dots vibrate in and out sequentially in that spot. The first one seemed to be quite difficult to read however. Much like many screen reading software read out the text displayed on the screen, they hope to present the screen content in braille form.

This is a wonderful innovation for touchscreens, as they can finally become more accessible to the visually impaired. This technology can have pretty interesting applications otherwise too. Using vibrations they can also indicate the presence of buttons and controls on the screen, allowing people to control their devices without looking at them.

Source : Digit

I hope to see many of you people there..

The two models i saw there were the N110 & the R470. As i first saw the N110 i was amazed to see the build quality and the interface which samsung has provided with the basic notebook series.
So, N110 being a netbook comes with 93% of original keyboard, 10.1 inches screen & 160GB harddisk& a GB of RAM .. the best feature was the 10 hour battery backup which drew my attention to it..the another great feature i liked was the SRS sound with 2.1 speaker system,  the other models in the league were N120 and N310..

http://netbookboards.com/tag/samsung-r470/

After the netbooks i went on for the R470.. it was love at first sight for me.. what a finish, the Gloosy 16:9 screen pattern with 14 inches widescreen display. looking at the configuration i found that it comes up with 2 Gb ram, the Core2 Duo T6400 Processor which runs at 2.0 Ghz Ghz  & 250 GB of HDD. This amazing notebook comes with the latest in mobile innovation the Nvidia Geforce 105 chip with 256mb DDr3 ram.. what else would you want for gaming ? This laptop came a 6cell battery pack , which was nicely utilized  and gave me approximately 2.5 hrs battery backup on normal usage.. which was pretty nice for me as i move a lot..

With all other basic features incuded like a webcam, a ODD, bluetooth, LAN, wLAN, this laptop gives you something more.. when it comes to connectivity & usability this one has a HDMI port, 3 USB, a SD-mmc card slot & the best is that i comes with HD sound( SRS 3d technology) with 3W stereo speakers as 1.5W x 2 . At last it comes up with Microsoft windows Vista home premium which completes the combo & gives you a 100% of what you want..

So if any of you are planning to buy this laptop or already has, Come and share your experience here. and lets discuss the oppurtunities. Comments are most welcome.

http://www.samsung.com/in/consumer/detail/spec.do?group=informationtechnology&type=notebook&subtype=rseries&model_cd=NP-R470-FS01IN&fullspec=F

If you want the perfect combo as i did you should take a look at this one..

Challenging market leader Google — which in turn is looking to break into Microsoft’s core software market — is a long-term project, said Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer.

“We have had some very good initial response,” Ballmer said at a conference in Detroit. “I don’t want to over-set expectations. We are going to have to be tenacious and keep up the pace of innovation over a long period of time.”

Microsoft grabbed 12.1 percent of U.S. Internet searches for the work week June 8-12, according to data released by industry tracker comScore earlier on Wednesday.

That is up from 11.3 percent in the June 1-5 period — the week in which Bing was launched — and up from 9.1 percent the week before that.

For comparison, Google got 65 percent of U.S. searches in May, the last full month for which figures are available, followed by Yahoo with 20.1 percent and Microsoft with 8 percent.

Analysts and investors are keenly awaiting data for all of June to see if Microsoft can hold onto early gains.

Ballmer acknowledged the tough task of beating Google, which he referred to as “a big dog competitor”.

The world’s largest software company has long been determined to play a major role in the lucrative Web search market after watching upstart Google take a stranglehold.

At the same time, Google is looking to take advantage of its popularity to launch software that competes with Microsoft’s, which has created a new source of tension between the two companies.

Microsoft ratcheted up that tension on Wednesday by claiming that Google’s new Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook software – which allows users to share data between their Outlook e-mail and Google’s online offerings — disables a key function in Outlook.

“The installation of the Google Apps Sync plugin disables Outlook’s ability to search any and all of your Outlook data,” Outlook product manager Dev Balasubramanian wrote on a Microsoft blog. “It is also important to note that uninstalling the plugin may not fix the issue.”

The problem, though relatively unimportant to users, represents a crucial struggle between Microsoft and Google for e-mail customers.

Google’s new product allows business users to continue using Outlook for email and other tasks, but the back-end functionality and data storage moves to Google, instead of residing on a company’s internal servers running Microsoft software.

Google acknowledged the Outlook problem identified by Microsoft, and several other issues where its software does not mesh well with others.

“We’re working with Microsoft and other partners to help fix these issues and support additional Outlook features like multiple calendars,” said Google Apps senior product manager Chris Vander Mey in a blog post. “We’ll keep you posted on our progress.”

Microsoft shares closed up just less than 1 percent at $23.68, while Google’s fell 0.2 percent to $415.16, both on Nasdaq.

source : ciol.com ©Reuters