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Microsoft tops the list as the best global workplace

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 09:58:00 +0000

Microsoft has been ranked as the number one global workplace by the great places to work institute.

The software giant topped the list this year based on its 90,819 global employees. “Being recognized as the number one global workplace by the Great Places to Work Institute is an honor,” said Microsoft’s chief people officer Lisa Brummel, in a blog post on Thursday. “Our investments in our employees and the opportunities for them have not gone unnoticed. We are particularly proud of the work people get to do every day, and the impact we have on the world around us.”

Brummel praised Microsoft’s Xbox group as an example of great opportunity and innovation. “Ten years ago, we had only a fledgling PC games business,” explained Brummel. “Since then, as a company and with the talented people in that group, Xbox has grown to be one of the most valued platforms in the entertainment arena.” The great places to work institute found that the average age of Microsoft employees is 38.5 and that the company offers flex time, telecommuting and jobs sharing. Microsoft Canada employes are allowed 40 fully paid hours per year to devote to volunteer activities. Employees time can be spent helping out at orphanages, setting up a soup kitchen or various other activities.

“Microsoft is a great community, and the voice of the employee will continue to drive us forward,” said Brummel. “Today, we’ll celebrate being the number one best global company to work for.”

Microsoft unveils amazing new vision of the future video

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 09:54:00 +0000

Microsoft has created a follow-up to its “Office 2019″ video and the latest concept of the future provides some amazing insights into how technology will impact our lives in the future.

The latest video builds on Microsoft’s previous concepts of touch based computing anywhere and everywhere. The video opens with a business woman visiting Johannesburg and having the audio around her translated in real time thanks to some futuristic glasses. Other scenes in the video feature highly personalised experiences and touch computing on every surface. Microsoft previously created an “Office 2019” video which also features the same opaque smartphones and touch walls.

Microsoft’s future vision is designed to show what the world might look like in the next five to 10 years.GeekWire’s Todd Bishop managed to speak to the videos creators at Microsoft in a recent interview. “We see an expanded definition of productivity where it’s not just about getting things done,” said David Jones, Microsoft’s director of envisioning. “It’s also about doing the right things, and doing them well and enjoying the process with other people in a very natural way.”

Microsoft believes that most of the technology in the video exists in some form or another today. “All of the ideas in the video are based on real technology,” explains Microsoft’s Office chief, Kurt DelBene, in a blog post on Thursday. “Some of the capabilities, such as speech recognition, real time collaboration and data visualization already exist today. Others are not yet available in specific products, but represent active research and development happening at Microsoft and other companies.”

Check out the video below and let us know in the comments what you think the future of computing will be in the next five years.

Nokia unveils Lumia 800 Windows Phone

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 09:51:00 +0000

NOKIA LUMIA 800

Nokia CEO Stephen Elop took to the stage at Nokia World in London on Wednesday to reveal Nokia’s first Windows Phone.

The Nokia Lumia 800, codenamed Searay, is Nokia’s first entry into an increasingly busy Windows Phone market. Elop revealed the device to the world on Wednesday. Elop described the Lumia as “the first real Windows Phone” before unveiling the specifics of the Lumia 800. The Lumia 800 includes a curved 3.7-inch ClearBlack LCD display and will be available in black, cyan or magenta colors. The Lumia 800 also features a 8-megapixel camera that includes an f2.2 aperture, and is designed for low-light environments. Nokia described the camera as one that’s for “ordinary people, under ordinary circumstances.”

Nokia has invested heavily in navigation, music and sports. Nokia’s Lumia 800 will include full voice guided turn-by-turn navigation with Nokia Drive. The Nokia Drive application includes an optimized horizontal view and will allow users to navigate whilst in their cars or on the go. Nokia’s Music application is an easy way for users to discover new artists and music. The headline feature is mix radio that provides pre-setup mixes of full length music for Nokia Windows Phone users.

Microsoft demonstrates touch screen for any surface [video]

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 09:43:00 +0000

Microsoft OmniTouch

Microsoft is developing a new technology in its research labs that will allow users to touch any surface as if it were a touch screen.

The technology is called OmniTouch and was born in Microsoft’s Research labs. The software giant has created a prototype unit that is wearable and projects images onto various surfaces. The interactions can take place on the go with no calibration required. Imagine holding up your hand and dialling a number in the palm of your hand, that’s how OmniTouch works. ”We wanted to capitalize on the tremendous surface area the real world provides,” explains Hrvoje Benko, of the Natural Interaction Research group. “The surface area of one hand alone exceeds that of typical smart phones. Tables are an order of magnitude larger than a tablet. If we could appropriate these ad hoc surfaces in an on-demand way, we could deliver all of the benefits of mobility while expanding the user’s interactive capability.”

The custom camera works in a similar way to Microsoft’s Kinect system but has been modified to work at short range. A user simply carries the camera on their person and the system will project user interfaces onto various surfaces. “We wanted the ability to use any surface,” Benko says. “Let the user define the area of where they want the interface to be, and have the system do its best to track it frame to frame. This creates a highly flexible, on-demand user interface. You can tap on your hand or drag your interface out to specify the top left and bottom right border. All this stems from the main idea that if everything around you is a potential interface, then the first action has to be defining an interface area.”

Microsoft is demonstrating the technology as part of its presentation during UIST 2011, the Association for Computing Machinery’s 24th Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, being held Oct. 16-19 in Santa Barbara, California.

Microsoft launches developer preview of Windows Server 8

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 09:15:00 +0000

Microsoft introduced its new Windows Server 8 operating system on Wednesday.

Windows Server 8

Server and Tools Business President Satya Nadella detailed Microsoft’s Windows Server 8 improvements in a keynote speech at the company’s BUILD developer conference on Wednesday. Windows Server 8 is designed with the cloud in mind. The company has taken its work of building and operating the Windows Azure service and optimised Windows Server 8 for high availability and high-performance virtualization. The new operating system includes over 300 new features and some heavy changes to the underlying architecture of Windows Server 8. One of the visual changes in Windows Server 8 is the inclusion of a Metro style server manager and Windows Phone-like tiles.

Under the hood, Microsoft is continuing its support of PowerShell throughout Windows Server. Version 3.0 of PowerShell is now included which ships with over 2,000 commands to allow system admins to easily script and manage all of their servers. Windows Server 8 also includes the ability to script workflows with Powershell to make it an easier to patch multiple servers while maintaining great uptime.

Hyper-V 3.0 is also included which includes VHDX support. The new VHDX format is capable of supporting disks much larger than the current 2TB restriction of VHD. Microsoft has created VHDX which is capable of supporting disks up to 16TB in size. The new format can only be used in Windows OS versions starting at Windows 8.

“With Windows Server 8 we are delivering high availability and disaster recovery at a much better price point,” said Microsoft’s server and cloud corporate VP Bill Laing in a blog post on Wednesday. “We are giving customers access to high-end storage capabilities that before required specialized hardware, such as device pooling, disk virtualization, and thin provisioning, in Windows Server 8.”

A complete virtualization platform that delivers a fully isolated, multitenant environment with tools that can guarantee service-level agreements, enable chargebacks through usage-based billing, and support self-service delivery.
Increased scalability and performance through a high-density, highly scalable environment that can be modified to perform at the optimum level based on your needs.
Connectivity to cloud services using a common identity and management framework for secure and reliable cross-premises connectivity.
Continuous availability: New and improved features offer cost-effective, high IT service uptime. They are designed to endure failures without disrupting services to users.
Management efficiency: Windows Server 8 helps automate an even broader set of management task and simplifies deployment and virtualization of major workloads, which provides a path to full lights-out automation.
Cost efficiency: Windows Server 8 leverages commodity storage, networking, and server infrastructure, as well as offering increased power efficiency for superior acquisition and operating economics.
Flexibility to build on-premises and in the cloud: Developers can use the same languages and tools to build on-premises and cloud applications, allowing them to build applications that use distributed and temporally decoupled components.
An open web platform: Windows Server 8 combined with Internet Information Services (IIS) offers a solid platform for both open-source web stacks and ASP.NET, opening up a wide range of choices for application development.
A scalable and elastic web platform: Hosting providers can use new features in Windows Server 8 to increase density, simplify management, and achieve higher scalability in a shared web-hosting environment.
Access anywhere on any device: Seamless, always-on access to virtualized work from anywhere, including branch locations and public connectivity services.
A full Windows experience anywhere: By enabling a personalized and rich user experience from any device while adapting to different network conditions quickly and responsively.
Enhanced data security and compliance: Central audit and access policies enable granular access to data and corporate resources based on strong identity, data classification, and simplified administration for remote access.

The Windows Server 8 developer preview is available to download at Microsoft’s MSDN developer center.

Windows 8 Developer Preview now available to download

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 08:59:00 +0000

Windows 8 Start Screen

Microsoft’s Windows 8 Developer Preview is now available to download.

The Windows developer center is now live and Windows 8 available to download in the following flavours:

Windows Developer Preview English, 64-bit (x64)

DOWNLOAD (3.6 GB)

Sha 1 hash – 79DBF235FD49F5C1C8F8C04E24BDE6E1D04DA1E9

Windows Developer Preview English, 32-bit (x86)

DOWNLOAD (2.8 GB)

Sha 1 hash – 4E0698BBABE01ED27582C9FC16AD21C4422913CC

Microsoft also supplied some system requirements for the Windows 8 Developer preview:

1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
Taking advantage of touch input requires a screen that supports multi-touch

Windows 8 really does change everything, it’s mind-blowing

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 08:53:00 +0000

Windows 8 Start Screen

Microsoft is welcoming around 5,000 developers to its BUILD conference today to unveil the most significant change in the PC space since Windows 95.

“It’s a launch,” explains Windows chief Steven Sinofsky. “It’s a launch of an opportunity for developers. That’s a lot, it’s a big deal to do today and tomorrow,” he says during an opening address to media and analysts in Anaheim California. You sense the sense of excitement in the room and the realisation that windows 8is a really big deal for Microsoft, a deal that cannot go wrong.

“We are very very excited about what we have to do,” says Sinofsky. Microsoft is only at the beginning of its discussions on Windows 8 after kicking off the product planning in June 2009, five months before the release of windows 7. It’s clear that Microsoft is doing huge amounts of work behind the scenes for Windows 8. Sinofsky highlights the work in Windows 7 as a foundation for the building of Windows 8. “Windows 8 makes windows 7 even better,” he claims before explaining that Microsoft has designed Windows 8 with Windows 7 in mind, everything that runs on Windows 7 runs on Windows 8.

Approaching 450,000,000 copies of Windows 7 sold
Windows 7 usage greater than Windows XP
1,502 seamless non-security product code changes delivered
Internet Explorer 9 is the fastest growing Windows 7 browser
542,000,000 people signing into Windows Live Services

“Windows 8 is a bold re-imagination of what windows could be,” according to Sinofsky. The “re-imagination” starts immediately from when a user switches on their Windows 8 PC. Microsoft has overhauled windows lock screen to match its Windows Phone one and it makes the experience functional and simplify beautiful. As you unlock a Windows 8 PC you’re immediately presented with the new Start Screen interface with its bold colors, live tiles and stunning look and feel. The interface replaces the aged Start Menu in Windows and hints at the future of Windows and computing in general. The simple fact that Microsoft has removed the Start Menu and created this unique and compelling interface is an incredibly risky strategy for the company. You immediately understand why Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, described the product at the company’s riskiest bet.

Microsoft isn’t leaving this risk to total chance however. The company has been validating all of the changes with Windows customers. The company showed some consumer research videos where every day folk get a hands on with early copes of Windows 8 and say what they see. “It looks cool,” says one female customer as she describes how she has to search for apps on her current desktop. One college student is excited at the prospect of Windows 8 as she can snap Facebook to the side of the screen during class whilst she uses Excel on the right hand site. The personalisation and customisation of Windows 8 is what will strike at the heart of end users. The experience of setting up a Windows 8 PC turns into an emotional attachment where your data is no longer static and hidden in apps but flows freely from app to app in a beautiful and well thought out way. Microsoft loves the idea of apps but in Windows 8 the company has an opportunity to reimagine how they work with each other.

Some of the most game changing work with Windows 8 arrives in the form of a new application model for developers. Microsoft’s new APIs will let developers share their app data in a secure and managed environment to fellow applications and the operating system as a whole. Microsoft is introducing the idea of “contracts” that app developers virtually sign-up to. The contracts allow developers to take advantage of some of the new features inside Microsoft’s metro interface. Developers from C++ to C# or HTML/CSS and JavaScript will be able to code Windows 8 Metro applications thanks to a set of new Windows RunTime APIs (WinRT). The immersive experience is truly engaging. Every pixel of the screen is reserved for the application, gone are the days of chrome and its status bars and clutter. Microsoft wants apps to shine in Windows 8.

The sea of change in Windows 8 is breathtaking and overwhelming. It’s difficult to understand how Microsoft will pull this off. The company is often accused of not being agile enough to switch directions or truly innovate. That certainly isn’t the case under Sinofsky. The clean and secretive development schedule of Windows 7 and 8 have created a new buzz around Windows. The world is waiting to see and hear what will be unveiled today, a historic day for computing and Microsoft. The software giant will show a number of features that aren’t baked into the developer preview build that attendees will receive but they demonstrate how much work the company is undertaking. This is a bigger vision than Windows Longhorn and a much bigger concept than Windows 95. Windows 8 is simply mind blowing.

dns-the-interface-between-human-computer-view-in-network.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 03:54:00 +0000

As we all know that the computers communicate using IP Addresses to identify each other on the Internet.

209.85.149.105
69.63.181.12
74.125.95.93
69.147.125.65
173.192.48.10

DNS

Humans, Computer Users, don’t remember IP Addresses, so they use words, which are called as Domain Names.

google.com
facebook.com
youtube.com
yahoo.com
himanshpal.com

The DNS or Domain Name System combines the two together and takes you to your destination.

google.com (209.85.149.105)
facebook.com (69.63.181.12)
youtube.com (74.125.95.93)
yahoo.com (69.147.125.65)
himanshpal.com

So let’s see, how this Domain Name System works. The user types a web site address ordomain name in his browser’s address bar.

http://www.Himanshpal.com/

The search for the IP Address starts. First step, it goes to the Root NameServer. It gives theNameServer address of Top Level Domain’s NameServer. In our case, it is .com. It finds and reaches the .com NameServer.

After reaching the TLD NameServer, it finds and reaches the himanshpal.com NameServer.

From here, it gets the IP Address or Virtual Host of the WWW of himanshpal.com and displays the contents to your browser.

All these actions take a maximum of 500 milliseconds, approximately half a second!

Bhopal’s Dilip Rai invents ‘Jugaad Programming Concept’.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 03:37:00 +0000

Jugaad

Bhopal: Dilip Rai, a Computer teacher in Bhopal, has developed a Jugaad Programming Concept’ of programming.

Dilip deleted the space which is occupied in RAM in the form of variable because of which the programs, which are compiled in C and C++, performs in zero variables.

Dilip has sent this achievement to Guinness Book of World Records and he has also received the claim ID. He is now gearing up for its presentation in ‘Jugaad Programming Concept Conclave 2011’, which will be held on June 11

Dilip, a resident of Kailash Nagar, said the programs that are run on a computer, they occupy some space in the RAM, which is known as variable. Each program requires a variable. A normal application uses 1000-5000 variables, thus lowering down the Computer’s speed and causes it to hang.

Jugaad Programming Concept

This technique takes less time in loading than the current operating system (UNIX, Linux, and Windows). The operating system developed with this technique would allow the system to take 20 per cent less time to load in comparison to the other operating systems.

Dilip said, “I am a graduate in Biology. I wanted to stand out from the clutter and wanted to do something unique. I bought a computer in 2001 and learnt C language. I used to stay awake the whole night while I was learning C language. I worked as a lab assistant in a company and also taught Aptech to students.”

“These days, I am providing corporate training at the Bhopal branch of C-DAC (New Delhi. Jugaad Programming Concept is the outcome of my 8-year-long research and hard work,” he added.

Introduction to Office Web Apps.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 17:28:00 +0000

Microsoft Office Web Apps extend your Microsoft Office experience to the web browser, where you can work with documents right there on the website where the document is stored. Office Web Apps are available for personal use in Windows Live, for organizations that have installed and configured Office Web Apps on their SharePoint site, and for professionals and businesses that subscribe to selectOffice 365 services.

Microsoft Office Web Apps

Office Web Apps work in some of the most widely used browsers, and are officially supported in Windows Internet Explorer 7 and later, Safari 4 for the Mac, and Firefox 3.5 for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

INTEGRATE SEAMLESSLY WITH OFFICE

You use Microsoft Office to create documents that present information, collect thoughts, and help you and your colleagues make decisions. You store these documents on your computer, on a removable storage device, on a server. Office Web Apps provides a new way to store your documents so that they can be viewed and even edited in the browser. By using Office Web Apps, a website becomes a new storage device for your Office documents: a storage device that makes your documents easy to access and easy to share.

In Microsoft Office 2010 programs (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote), you can start using Office Web Apps by saving your document to your SkyDrive or your SharePoint library.

Now, your document is available to view and edit in the browser, or re-open in Office.

NOTE Documents don’t need to be created in Office 2010 to be opened in Office Web Apps. For best compatibility, use Office 2003 or later, or use Office for Mac 2008 version 12.2.9 or Office for Mac 2011. If you’re using Office 2003, install the most recent service pack and save documents on your computer in the Office Open XML file format (for example, .docx, .xlsx, or pptx files). Then upload the document to a SharePoint site where Office Web Apps are configured, or upload the document to SkyDrive.

BROWSE DOCUMENTS

With Office Web Apps, your documents are like web pages because they are stored on a website and displayed in the browser. To view the document, you click it. To share it with other people, you send a link.

It doesn’t matter whether your version of Office matches what your friends or colleagues have. There’s no need to download a viewer. Your documents look the same in the browser as they do in the Office programs.

EDIT ON THE FLY

Beyond viewing documents, Office Web Apps enable you to edit a document’s content in the browser.

Browser-based editing is optimized for situations when you want to rewrite some text, enter some data, add a slide, or jot down notes. If you’re already viewing the document, you click Edit in Browser in the Office Web App, make your changes, and you’re done. In most cases your updates are saved automatically (in Word Web App, click Save).

CO-AUTHOR IN REAL TIME : EXCEL WEB APP & ONENOTE WEB APPLICATION

In Excel Web App and OneNote Web App you can work with other people on the same document at the same time.Collecting information is often a group activity. Use Excel Web App to collect information in a structured way, or be free-form with OneNote Web App. The file is stored in a central location where everyone who needs to can access it. There’s no waiting for one person to finish with the file before the next person can get in. There’s no e-mailing multiple copies that later need to be reconciled.There’s no special command for real-time collaboration. You simply edit the file in the Office Web App while you colleagues are doing so.

TRANSITION TO OFFICE, SEAMLESSLY

Sometimes you want to make substantive changes that require the feature-rich Office desktop applications. In these situations, you can seamlessly transition to the corresponding Office desktop application directly from the Office Web Apps. If you have a document open in an Office Web App, click the Open command to open the file directly from the browser into the Office program that is installed on your computer. When you are finished, click Save in the Office program, and the file is saved back on the server (in the OneNote desktop application your changes are saved to the server automatically).

NOTE : Opening documents directly from the browser into an Office desktop application is supported in Firefox, Internet Explorer (Windows), and Safari (Mac) browsers. In Windows, you must also be using Office 2003 or later to use this feature. OneNote Web App requires OneNote 2010 to use this feature. On the Mac, this feature requires Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 version 12.2.9 or Office for Mac 2011, and the OneNote desktop application is not available.

Windows Thin PC goes RTM, will be available for download.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 16:13:00 +0000

Windows Thin PC

Microsoft announced that Windows Thin PC has now released to manufacturing (RTM).

Windows Thin PC (WinTPC) is a new version of Windows 7 designed specifically for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) customers. Windows Thin PC is a smaller footprint, locked down version of Windows 7 designed for virtualised environments to rebuild their existing PCs as thin clients. PCs with WinTPC will not require the VDA license that regular thin clients will need to access VDI desktops according to Microsoft.

The final version of Windows Thin PC will be available to SA customers to download on July 1. Microsoft is ending its CTP program, effective June 6. The release candidate (RC) build of Windows Thin PC will still be available to download at the CTP site with associated documentation until July 1. In an email to testers, Microsoft thanked its early tester community. “We thank you for all the feedback and evaluation provided in helping make the Windows Thin PC a success in the Windows community.”

Microsoft is not planning to charge customers for Windows Thin PC. Instead, the company will offer it as part of Microsoft’s Software Assurance offerings for customers. Microsoft’s software assurance Licensing allows businesses large and small to spread licence costs over multiple years and receive “free” upgrades to newer versions during the licence period.

Windows Thin PC

Bing starts testing IPv6 version in preparation for World IPv6 day.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 16:00:00 +0000

Bing

In February we brought you the news that Bing had plans for a one-day test of IPv6 connectivity in June. Today Microsoft announced that the Bing IPv6 experiment, which is in conjunction with World IPv6 Day, will commence at 5 pm PST.

The test will last 24 hours, concluding at 5 pm PST on Wednesday, June 8th. IPv6 will be enabled for users around the world who can support the protocol. Users who cannot will continue to use the IPv4 version of Bing without interruption.

The Microsoft search engine stated that a “complete migration [from IPv4 to 6] will take years.” All of the possible IPv4 addresses have been distributed, pushing forward the cause of IPv6 rapidly.

Unlike with IPv4, the chance of running out of IPv6 addresses is very low. According to the same Bing blog post there are “300 trillion trillion trillion [IPv6] addresses available.” If the world ever reaches that level of need, we suspect that it will not still be using IPv6.

WinRumors has a fun explanation of just how many IPv6 addresses will be available:

Microsoft’s Windows operating systems have had IPv6 support for years and it’s now the turn of Internet Service Providers to future proof the Internet. Internet Protocol 6 supports 340282366920938463463374607431768211455 addresses (340 undecillion, 282 decillion, 366 nonillion, 920 octillion, 938 septillion, 463 sextillion, 463 quintillion, 374 quadrillion, 607 trillion, 431 billion, 768 million, 211 thousand and 455) addresses.

Microsoft, in the same blog post, did state that “[a] small fraction of users (<1%) may have difficulty accessing Bing and other sites participating in World IPv6 Day during the test flight.” The company promised to report back after the test with analyzed results to share.

E3: Microsoft confirms Voice Search coming to Xbox LIVE

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 11:35:00 +0000

Xbox LIVE Voice Search

We’re still a few hours away from Microsoft’s official E3 press conference but someone inside Redmond is a little eager.

The software giant has leaked out a number of E3 announcements at its official press page for E3 2011. One particular gem (featured above) is the revelation that Microsoft is planning to include voice search in Xbox LIVE. There’s not much more information on exactly how this would work but it sounds like Bing might be coming to xbox live.in some form.

Microsoft planning built-in “Chatter” video service for Windows 8?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 11:32:00 +0000

Microsoft might be preparing its own “Chatter” video service inside Windows 8.

References to “Chatter” have been discovered in early leaked builds of Windows 8. Forum users at MDL spotted a DLL named ConsentUX.dll which includes the following:

100,Do you want to allow %1 to use your %2 ?
101,CapabilityName
102,DisplayName
1600,Block
1601,Do you want to you allow Chatter to use your video ?
1602,Allow
1603,Always Allow

The current speculation is that the references point to a feature that Microsoft may have inadvertently revealed during its Windows 8 preview earlier this week. Manan Kakkar points out that the lock screen of Windows 8 includes video, messaging and group icons. Kakkar speculates that the icon could be the signs of Microsoft’s Skype and Windows Live Messenger integration. The icon for the group of people appears to be the same that’s used in Windows Live Messenger. Chatter even appears to have its own icon:

Chatter?

If Microsoft is building its own video calling service then it’s likely in response to Apple’s FaceTime product. Chatter could be used to unify several video calling services already available from Microsoft’s products and provide one easy route for Windows users to communicate over several Microsoft owned platforms. Microsoft purchased Skype in early May for $8.5 billion. The company says Skype will support Microsoft devices like Xbox and Kinect, Windows Phone and a wide array of Windows devices, and Microsoft will connect Skype users with lync, Outlook, Xbox Live and other communities. Chatter could be the unification of said services. It’s also possible that the references are to an experimental feature, created before Microsoft’s Skype deal.

Windows 8 lockscreen

Microsoft details Windows 8 hardware recommendations.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 11:28:00 +0000

Microsoft revealed some hardware “considerations” for its Windows 8 operating system on Thursday.

The software giant unveiled a number of Windows 8 ARM-based tablet prototype devices during a technical demonstration at Computex on Thursday. Mike Angiulo, corporate vice president of Windows Planning, Hardware and PC Ecosystem at Microsoft, also revealed some hardware details for Windows 8 partner.

Windows 8 touch considerations

Microsoft has some recommendations on bezel sizes for Windows 8 slate and tablet devices. The company showed a slide, named Windows 8 Touch considerations, during its partner preview event, detailing edge to edge glass and first pixel sensitivity. Microsoft wasn't clear on whether these are requirements for ARM tablets, Acer complained earlier this week that the company wanted to “control” the whole process.

Windows 8 display considerations

Microsoft also detailed minimum resolutions for its new user interface. 1024×768 will be the absolute minimum for the new user interface, anything lower will run in the classic desktop mode. The company says that 1366×768 is the optimum resolution for devices.

Finally, Microsoft also detailed support for OEM activation 3.0 and new sensor support. The new technology will further protect devices against activation hackers.Illegal copies of Windows have been widely circulated thanks to mechanisms created to bypass Microsoft’s OEM activation certificates. Windows Vista and Windows 7, which both rely on OA version 2.0, have fallen victim to activation cracks and bypass methods.

Windows 8 hardware

Windows 8 includes a sensor control panel that is believed to provide greater use of existing hardware to act as a sensor for the operating system, including support for new hardware sensors that OEMs can incorporate into future products.

Microsoft confirms its Windows developer conference is named BUILD.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 11:15:00 +0000

Microsoft will hold a special Windows developer event later this year.

The software gaint unveiled the final naming for the event on Wednesday during a Windows 8 demo. BUILD is a new event that Microsoft describes as showing “modem hardware and software” taking advantage of the future of Windows:

Learn how to work with the all new touch-centric user experience to create fast, fluid, and dynamic applications that leverage the power and flexibility of the core of Windows, used by more than a billion people around the world.
Hear how the UI was designed to work seamlessly with a diversity of devices and form factors. Go behind the scenes and learn all about the new app model that allows you to create powerful new apps. All while retaining the ability to use your existing apps. Web-connected and web-powered apps built using HTML5 and JavaScript have access to the power of the PC. Touch-optimized browsing, with the full power of hardware-accelerated Internet Explorer 10 transforms your experiences with the web. BUILD is the first place to dive deep into the future of Windows.

The BUILD conference replaces Microsoft’s professional developer conference, typically held every year. The company is expected to deliver an early beta copy of Windows 8 at the conference and fully detail its plans for the next-generation of Windows. More information can be found at buildwindows.com

BUILD developer conference

Watch the new Windows 8 user interface demonstration [video].

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 11:10:00 +0000

Windows 8 Tile UI

Microsoft unveiled a new Windows 8 user interface on Wednesday.

The software gaint also posted a full demo video of the new interface, see it below. For more information on the new Windows 8 user interface please see a full overview article here.

Microsoft reveals new Windows 8 user interface.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 10:47:00 +0000

Windows 8 start UI

Microsoft’s Windows chief, Steven Sinofsky, took to the stage at All Things Digital’s D9 conference on Wednesday.

Sinofsky unveiled a taste of Windows 8 to the world, devices running Windows 8′s new user interface. Microsoft revealed a number of details of its new interface for Windows 8 to All Things Digital. Windows 8 supports two types of applications, classic desktop Windows apps and HTML5 web apps. Windows 8′s new interface uses Internet Explorer 10 as the heart to power several widget style applications for checking the weather, stocks etc. Microsoft’s new start screen includes easy touch icons to allow users of touch based devices to easily navigate Windows.

“We really did take a step back after Windows 7,” Sinofsky said to All Things Digital. “We were clearly influenced ourselves by phones.” Microsoft has also improved its classic Windows desktop look and feel to enable users to touch it more easily. The company wants classic applications, designed for mice and keyboard input, to work well with touch.

Windows 8 weather widget

The UI (see screen shots) will be driven by Microsoft’s Metro based design language. Microsoft will include a new application model codenamed “Jupiter” that will allow developers to create web based applications, deployed as AppX packages (.appx). The packages will be part of a new Windows application store, pre-installed with Windows 8.

Sinfosky also revealed that Windows 8 will not require any additional hardware requirements above and beyond Windows 7. The operating system will run on both Intel and ARM chips. The company is calling it Windows 8 for now but considered a number of codenames, including Firestorm. Microsoft is also implementing live tiles inside Windows 8, similar to the company’s Windows Phone 7 operating system. Judging by the demonstration video (embedded below) the interface appears to seamlessly interact with legacy applications. One audience member at D9 asked if the new user interface was simply just “another layer” on top of Windows. Sinofsky explained that it’s always there in the background, “it’s just part of the way that it works,” he said. Sinofsky refused to say when Windows 8 would be available but said “I can tell you it won’t be this fall.”

Microsoft summarized the main elements of its new user interface:

Fast launching of apps from a tile-based Start screen, which replaces the Windows Start menu with a customizable, scalable full-screen view of apps.
Live tiles with notifications, showing always up-to-date information from your apps.
Fluid, natural switching between running apps.
Convenient ability to snap and resize an app to the side of the screen, so you can really multitask using the capabilities of Windows.
Web-connected and Web-powered apps built using HTML5 and JavaScript that have access to the full power of the PC.
Fully touch-optimized browsing, with all the power of hardware-accelerated Internet Explorer 10.

Microsoft also announced its new BUILD developer conference, kicking off in September. WinRumors will be live from BUILD to bring you all the latest on Windows 8. It’s an exciting six months ago so stay tuned.

Bing Maps Streetside view updated to include Street Slide project imagery.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 10:42:00 +0000

Microsoft launched a new version of its Bing Maps street side view on Tuesday.

The company has now integrated Microsoft Research’s Street Slide project into Bing Maps. Street Slide allows users to simply slide along street level imagery, sideways. “The view of the sidewalk is seamlessly constructed including an overlay of business listings, street names and store fronts,” says Microsoft’s Chris Pendleton.

The technology makes it easier to navigate between store fronts and streets. “This new style keeps the immersive experience but adds smooth left/right panning navigation that makes it easy to find what’s nearby more quickly,” says Pendleton. “The street flows by as a series of smooth ground-level photographs so now you simply pan up and down the street to see the neighborhood and find what you are looking for.”

Bing is only enabling the technology in certain locations. Check it out in a flat, straight, New York street, or a steep, twisty, San Francisco one.

Bing Maps Streetside view updated

Microsoft Offers Students Free Xbox With $699 PC Purchase.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 14:10:00 +0000

Microsoft is offering what may be its strongest incentive yet for students to buy a Windows PC: a free Xbox.

Starting May 22, the company will give a free Xbox 360 4 GB console, valued at $199, to high school and college students who buy a Windows PC priced $699 or more. Verification of student status has to be provided in-store (where a student ID is required) or online (where you need a “.edu” email address). The deal will be available at Best Buy, the Microsoft Store, Dell.com and HP.com. Microsoft announced the deal on its Windows Blog on May 19.

Though it may seem strange that Microsoft is offering a deal aimed at students at a time when school is letting out, a rep says late May is a big purchase time for prospective college students. “Students have told Microsoft that they want technology that gives their person life fun and entertainment and also allows them to manage their school work and life with ease,” the rep says. “Windows delivers that.”

The deal also comes after Microsoft reported weak sales for its consumer PC unit last quarter, partially due to the introduction of Apple’s competing iPad 2.

To get the word out about the deal, Microsoft has also released this video featuring a Spartan supersolidier from the Halo series attending a high school graduation:

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Microsoft Reserachers let you leech torrents while your PC is sleeping.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 19 May 2011 17:11:00 +0000

Some folks at Microsoft Research of all places have come up with a clever way for you to save electricity and increase your ratio: The researchers have built the prototype of a new network adapter called Somniloquy that can download data via Bittorrent and even offer basic Instant Messaging capabilities while the PC is in sleep mode. A PDF detailing their research is available here.

How is this possible? Somniloquy uses a secondary, low-power processor that can handle basic tasks even while a PC is asleep. It's also capable of better wakeup triggers in the case that someone calls your Skype account. From a recently published paper about the network adapter:

"Experiments using our prototype Somniloquy implementation, a USB-based network interface, demonstrates energy savings of 60% to 80% in most commonly occuring scenarios. This translates to significant cost savings for PC users. BitTorrent and large web downloads, in the background. In existing systems, these applications would stop when the PC sleeps."

Somniloquy uses ctorrent for all its torrent downloading needs. Media files are temporarily stored on an SD memory card, and the PC occasionally starts up to copy those files and free up the space on the SD card. The researchers tested the interface's Bittorrent capabilities with torrents from Legaltorrents.com, and it seemed like the device was fine as long as only one torrent at a time got transfered.

So how green is Somniloquy? Your potential personal energy savings of course depend on the time your PC has to sleep, as well as the size of your "cache" SD card. Somniloquy's developers did however test a few scenarios, and came to the conclusion that a network card like this one could theoretically lead to energy savings of up to 91% for a large web download. Bittorrent download are expected to lad to similar results.

Facebook utilizes Microsoft PhotoDNA technology to combat child porn.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 19 May 2011 17:02:00 +0000

Microsoft’s PhotoDNS technology

Microsoft and Facebook announced a unique new partnership on Thursday.

The social media giant is taking advantage of Microsoft’s PhotoDNS technology to identify online child pornography. Microsoft’s technology can track pictures even if they are altered or cropped and uploaded to online services. The technology is based on Microsoft’s Research investments. Facebook is the first service to start using the free technology.

Facebook has started using PhotoDNA to track down thousands of images uploaded to its servers every day. The social networking site has around 200 million images uploaded by its users every day. PhotoDNA works by creating a unique identifier for an image known to contain child pornography. The identifier represents the image and allows Microsoft’s technology to scan large data sets in a similar way to how antivirus programs operate.

The New York times, who first reported the partnership, note that Microsoft has tested the technology on its own SkyDrive, Windows Live and Bing services during the last year. The software gaint compared 10 million images to an inventory of 10,000 illegal photos and found around 125 hits per day. “We’re very passionate about PhotoDNA because we’ve seen it work,” said Brad Smith, Microsoft’ s general counsel. “We invented it through Microsoft Research, and we are trying to give it away free, including to our competitors.”

Facebook will host an online press event at 3:00 p.m. (ET) on Friday to explain how it’s using the technology.

Tags: Winrumors

Internet Explorer avoids memory leak flaw affecting Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 19 May 2011 16:58:00 +0000

Internet Explorer 9

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser has escaped a huge memory leak flaw affecting rival browsers.

The flaw was posted to the Chromium issue tracker earlier this month. Internet Explorer 7, 8 and 9 are not affecting by the issue according to initial developer testing. The Next Web reports that Chrome is affected, alongside Firefox and Safari. Opera’s browser has not been tested.

The memory leak occurs when an image result contains a “Cache-control:no-store” attribute as it loads. Browsers are supposed to load the images and then free the memory up post load. The bug means memory is never freed and constantly in use by the system. The developer that discovered the flaw has created a test page to demonstrate the memory leak in action. You can test the memory leak in your favorite browser here.

In related news, Microsoft recently revealed that Internet Explorer 8 and 9 block up to 5 million daily malware attacks. Microsoft’s new Application Reputation warnings in Internet Explorer 9 have blocked more than 20 million additional infections per month according to the software giant.

Public testing Windows Thin PC Release Candidate Version.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 14 May 2011 14:07:00 +0000

Microsoft has released an updated community technology preview (CTP) of its Windows Thin PC product.

The release candidate (RC) of Windows Thin PC is now available at the company’s Connect testing site. The RC build is 7601.17514 (win7sp1_rtm_embedded_pos.110420-1302). Microsoft also revealed on 2May, 2011 that it plans to RTM Windows Thin PC within this quarter (Q2 CY2011). “We have seen tremendous interest in the product with thousands of downloads of the software,” said Microsoft’s Karri Alexion-Tiernan. “So, we would like to take this opportunity to recognize our enthusiastic community of well over 12,000 customers and partners who have signed up for the Technology Preview program.”

Microsoft is not planning to charge customers for Windows Thin PC. Instead, the company will offer it as part of Microsoft’s Software Assurance offerings for customers. Microsoft’s Software assurance Licensing allows businesses large and small to spread licence costs over multiple years and receive “free” upgrades to newer versions during the licence period.

Windows Thin PC.

Kinect + Skype = Future of Video Calling.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 14 May 2011 11:13:00 +0000

Imagine your body is the controller when making calls online? You can video chat on any big screen television using broadband-connected XBox 360/Kinect? Any device can be used for truly for immersive video conference calls? The future is exciting!

“You can make and receive high-quality video via the big screen televisions using broadband-connected Xbox 360 with Kinect and Microsoft Messenger. Replace the Messenger with Skype, and suddenly Kinect-based calls can go anywhere.” said Om Malik from gigaom
“They can start at home and end up on any device: Android, iPhone, iPad and someday on Windows Phone 7-powered phones as well. Same goes for calls emerging from your phones and ending up on the big screen.” Om added.