Order Now!
Windows 7 for XP ProfessionalsUpdating Support Skills from XP to Windows 7by Bink.nu's Raymond Comvalius
There are 45 guest(s) online.
There are 0 member(s) online.
The teachers had it reseeded, and the incident passed into memory. However, in the interval between the grass dying and the restoration work... Windows Live Maps....
The U.S. Coast Guard is conducting an extensive search for Jim Gray, a senior manager with Microsoft's Silicon Valley research organization, who failed to return from a sailboating trip Sunday off of San Francisco.
The Coast Guard said Tuesday that it was continuing to search 4,000 square miles of Pacific Ocean between San Francisco and the Farallon Islands, where Gray was reportedly headed in his 40-foot sailboat "Tenacious" Sunday morning. He was reported missing by his wife that evening when he failed to return to their home in San Francisco as expected.
Gray, 63, was hired in 1995 to run Microsoft's Bay Area Research Center, also based in San Francisco, where he researches databases and transaction processing systems, according to a biography of him on a Microsoft Web site. His particular focus is on using computers to make scientists more productive in the fields of astronomy, geography, hydrology, oceanography, biology, and health care, the site explains.
Gray, who has also worked at such technology companies as IBM, Tandem Computers and Digital Equipment, won the ACM Turing Award in 1998 for his work on transaction processing.
Continue At Source
Software giant Microsoft is setting up a research-and-development center in Shanghai for its online MSN service, its first such center outside the United States, sources familiar with the plan said on Wednesday.
The move came after Microsoft saw setbacks in its online services in China, including the resignation of a top executive responsible for the company's Windows Live unit in China late last year.
The center, which will cost up to $20 million, will also have a technical support team for Microsoft's online communication tool MSN Messenger, which has become part of everyday life for teenagers and young professionals in China.
"It's a clear signal that Microsoft won't give up its online MSN service in China even though it may have some problems in its local operations," said one source, who declined to be identified.
"Twenty million dollars is really small money to Bill Gates, but it's important to notice that Microsoft has chosen Shanghai for its first overseas MSN R&D center," the source added.
Microsoft drew the largest number of Web site visitors worldwide in December, a recurring accomplishment that makes the company's disappointing online ad business all the more disconcerting.
Close to 509 million unique visitors, ages 15 and up, went to Microsoft Web sites in December, comScore Networks said Wednesday. Google came in second with a little over 494 million, while Yahoo landed in third place with almost 477 million unique visitors.
Microsoft also led in March 2006, and its lead over Google was bigger. Microsoft had almost 539 million unique visitors to almost 496 million for Google. Third place went to Yahoo with little over 480 million.
However, the difference in online ad revenue between Microsoft and its two rivals is massive, a sign that, despite heavy investments in the past three years, Microsoft isn't close to matching their ability to monetize Web site traffic, especially Google's torrid growth in the search engine space.
Bryan Lee, corporate vice president at Microsoft's entertainment and devices division, also played a key role in shaping the Xbox game console business and the introduction of its Internet Protocol television software.
Lee is a key deputy of Robbie Bach, head of Microsoft's entertainment and device division. J Allard, a rising star within Microsoft and one of the early Xbox leaders, will now take full responsibility for the Zune business.
Lee plans to leave the company in the next several weeks to pursue personal interests, Microsoft said.
Microsoft is attempting to appease Office 2007 users who have been up-in-arms over the company's decision to change the rendering engine in Outlook 2007. But the Softies are stopping short of promising to make changes to the product in order to restore backwards compatibility.
Microsoft was caught off-guard by the outcry resulting from the Outlook 2007 rendering-engine changes, said Business Division Corporate Vice President Chris Capossela. Microsoft decided to make the Word 2007 rendering engine the default back in the beta-testing phase. Microsoft received overwhelmingly positive feedback from testers on the move, Capossela said.
Starting in early 2007, however, a number of bloggers began complaining vociferiously that the rendering-engine changes broke their e-mail newsletters.
Microsoft is preparing a new Knowledge Base (KB) article that will attempt to answer questions raised by the rendering-engine critics.
"In past versions, Outlook actually used two rendering engines – Internet Explorer’s engine was used for reading content, and then Word was used for editing content when a user was composing messages," according to the KB article, the final version of which Microsoft has yet to post to its Web site. "If you were replying or forwarding HTML emails, previous versions of Outlook would first use Internet Explorer’s rendering engine to view it, then would have to switch over to Word, the compose engine, when you were replying."
The article continues:
After 17 years with the company, Jim Allchin retired from Microsoft as of Jan. 30, 2007 – the day on which Microsoft officially released the Windows Vista operating system to consumers.
James (Jim) Allchin served as co-president of Microsoft's Platforms & Services Division from September 2005 until his retirement. In that position, Allchin shared overall responsibility with Kevin Johnson for the division of the company that includes the Windows and Windows Live Group, Windows Live Platform Group, Online Business Group, Market Expansion Group, Core Operating System Division, Windows Client Marketing Group, Developer and Platform Evangelism Group, and the Server and Tools Business Group.
Prior to September 2005, as group vice president of the Platforms Group, Allchin had overall responsibility for the product delivery, engineering and technical architecture for the Microsoft Windows operating system, Microsoft .NET, the Windows Server System and new-media technology. He was also responsible for delivering the best developer tools, framework and support to fulfill the promise of .NET. His group's mission was to build platforms software that consumers and businesses will make an integral part of their day-to-day activities.
Allchin was a member of the Senior Leadership Team, responsible for developing Microsoft's core direction along with Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates.
Allchin joined Microsoft in 1990 with the initial charter of driving the company's networking product strategy. He subsequently led the development and marketing efforts for a variety of Microsoft's operating systems and other server systems.
Before joining Microsoft, Allchin helped start Banyan Systems Inc., where he was the principal architect of the VINES distributed network operating system. He spent more than seven years at Banyan, holding numerous executive management positions in development and marketing. Ultimately, he became senior vice president and chief technology officer.
While completing his doctorate in computer science in the early 1980s, Allchin was the principal architect of the Clouds distributed transactional, object-oriented operating system. Before that, he helped develop the DX series of operating systems for Texas Instruments Inc.
Allchin attended the University of Florida, Stanford University and the Georgia Institute of Technology.
What may be news to you, however, is that you can easily extend the 30-day Windows Vista grace period to 120 days. No hacks required. This is an official, supported operation directly from Microsoft.
To extend the grace period another 30 days, simply start a command prompt as Administrator, and issue this command:
slmgr -rearm
Reboot for the change to take effect, and voila, you have 30 more days. You can only extend three times, so the total grace period for a Vista evaluation is 120 days.
Parents with kids who use Messenger like it’s some sort of life support system never fear - you will soon (very soon as a matter of fact) be able to choke your kids with the virtual rope of the Internet and the Windows Live Family Safety program - maybe not the most apt of descriptions but you see where I’m coming from.
I was there too, since I already have Vista, I ended up buying a Zune [:)] Thanks Terri for the picture, check http://thetabletpc.net/windowsvistalaunch-article=0129071.htm for more launch event pics
In the midst of all the excitement around the general availability of Windows Vista, it's almost strange to talk about IT Pro & developer tools, but if you are an IT Pro, or developer, this should be pretty exciting too. Today the final version of the Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.0 was released. If you are already familiar with ACT 5.0 make sure you download the new bits and the refreshed product guide here. If you want to learn more about the tools and resources around application compatibility for Windows Vista - please visit our TechNet site.
For people new to ACT, it is a single toolset that can help detect, diagnose, and mitigate compatibility issues found in Windows Vista. I think the single coolest feature of this tool is that you can deploy it in your current environment, Windows 2000 or Windows XP and get an inventory of your applications and see how they'll work with Windows Vista. Other highlights include the Standard User Analyzer (SUA) tool; there have been many changes made to improve overall security and reliability in Windows Vista, and this tool looks for possible issues resulting from those changes for users running as Standard Users, which is what every user in a business environment should be in this new paradigm we’ve delivered. There’s also the new Internet Explorer 7 Test Tool to test apps for use with the latest version of Internet Explorer, and the Setup Analysis Tool which detects any issues your setup packages might have with installing on Windows Vista. Finally, IT Pros can use the new and improved Compatibility Administrator to pull compatibility fixes from a database of existing fixes and apply them to apps one-by-one, or in predefined groups.
One of the key things that we focused on for Windows Vista was improving the experience for mobile (laptop) users. If you are like me, you spend quite a bit of time running around with a laptop. However, when I am in my office, I tend to use my desktop. The primary way that I share files between my desktop and my laptop is by storing them on a Windows Server (it's also the primary way that I make sure that my files get backed up). For example, at Microsoft we redirect the "Documents" folder (previously known as "My Documents" in Windows XP) to a share on the server (of course, we use access controls on the folders to make sure that I am the only person who can see my files).
By redirecting key folders like the Documents folder to a file share, my documents are available to me no matter which one of my Windows PCs I am using. The problem of course is what happens when I don't have access to the server -- such as when I am not on the corporate network or perhaps sitting on an airplane. Frankly, the same problem exists with any file share that I might try to access when I am not on the corporate network.
Well, as it turns out, we have had a very cool feature in Windows (actually, it's been there since Windows 2000) called "Offline Files." (We actually used to call it "Offline Folders.") As the name implies, Offline Files allows you to mark particular folders (and their sub-folders) to be available offline. When you are on the network, Offline Files automatically synchronizes the folders so that you have a copy of them locally on your hard disk. Then when you are offline (and don't have access to the actual server), Offline Files makes it look like you are online by simply accessing the locally cached copy. Later, when you do have access to the file share, Offline Files automatically synchronizes any changes you have made offline with the online version and vice-versa.Continue At Source