Tag Archives: Microsoft

Microsoft, Tech

Microsoft counted as key Linux contributor, for now anyway

Microsoft’s work on the Hyper-V driver accounted for a significant chunk of recent Linux kernel development

For the first time ever, and probably only temporarily, Microsoft can be counted as a key contributor to Linux.

The company, which once portrayed the open-source OS kernel as a form of cancer, has been ranked 17th on a tally of the largest code contributors to Linux.

COME AGAIN? Microsoft: ‘We love open source’
The Linux Foundation’s Linux Development Report, released Tuesday, summarizes who has contributed to the Linux kernel, from versions 2.6.36 to 3.2. The 10 largest contributors listed in the report are familiar names: Red Hat, Intel, Novell, IBM, Texas Instruments, Broadcom, Nokia, Samsung, Oracle and Google. But the appearance of Microsoft is a new one for the list, compiled annually.
MCTS Training, MCITP Trainnig

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training
at certkingdom.com

Overall, Microsoft contributed 688 changes, or about 1.0 percent of the accepted changes to the kernel, since version 2.6.36. Company engineers also signed off on 2,174 changes, or about 1.1 percent of all the changes in this review period.

Much of the work Microsoft did centers around providing drivers for its own Hyper-V virtualization technology. Microsoft’s Hyper-V, part of Windows Server, can run Linux as a guest OS. Linux kernel developer and LWN.net editor Jon Corbet, a co-author of the study, estimates that Microsoft’s involvement peaked around last year’s 3.0 release of Linux and will diminish over time. “Even the [hypervisor] drivers can only need so much cleaning up,” he wrote in an article explaining the influx of Microsoft contribution.

For the Linux Foundation, Microsoft’s involvement in Linux shows how widely used the OS kernel is these days. Microsoft must work with Linux to be part of the larger enterprise computing ecosystem.

In the time period covered by the report, more than 1,000 developers from nearly 200 companies contributed to the kernel. Lone contributors provided the largest number of changes, 11,413 changes or about 16.2 percent of all the changes in this review period. Among contributions from companies, Red Hat provided the most changes, or 7,563, or 10.7 percent of all changes. After Red Hat, Intel provided the next largest batch of changes, 5,075, or about 7.2 percent of all changes.

On average, between 8,000 and 12,000 patches are added to each new kernel release, which, overseen by Linus Torvalds, come out every two or three months. The vast majority of these changes are developed by outside parties.

In addition to Corbet, Linux kernel maintainer and Linux Foundation fellow Greg Kroah-Hartman, and Linux Foundation Vice President of Marketing and Developer Services Amanda McPherson co-wrote the report.

The Linux Foundation is a nonprofit organization devoted to further developing and maintaining the open-source Linux kernel. It is funded by companies that use Linux in their products and services, including Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Novell and Oracle.

Microsoft, Tech

Outlook 2010 cheat sheet

How to find your way around Microsoft Outlook 2010 and make the most of its new features

Computerworld – If you’ve just upgraded to Outlook 2010 from an earlier version, expect to see some very big changes, most notably the ubiquity of the Ribbon interface. The Ribbon first made its appearance in Outlook 2007, but in a relatively minor way — on the main Outlook screen there’s no Ribbon, but when you open or compose an email, the Ribbon appears. Now it’s everywhere.

There are other significant changes in Outlook 2010 compared to earlier versions, including integration with social media networks like Facebook and improved handling of threaded messages.

Whether you’re coming to Outlook 2010 from Outlook 2003, 2007 or a different email client, we’ve got you covered. This cheat sheet shows you how to get around; it also explores features that are brand new in Outlook 2010.

MCTS Training, MCITP Trainnig

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

Microsoft, Windows 8

Yes, Microsoft wants Windows 8 to compete with iPads

Yes, Microsoft wants Windows 8 to compete with iPads
Windows development blog shows how to translate iPad apps into Metro apps

If there was any doubt that Microsoft wants to grab some of the iPad market, there’s none any more: Now Microsoft has a web page that shows developers how to translate iPad apps into Windows 8 ones with a Metro style look and feel.

“In this case study we want to help designers and developers who are familiar with iOS to reimagine their apps using Metro style design principles,” says the blog. “We show you how to translate common user interface and experience patterns found in iPad apps to Windows 8 Metro style apps.”
MCTS Training, MCITP Trainnig

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com
TEST YOURSELF: Do you know the New iPad?
Why would anyone want to do that? “To learn more about the business opportunity of Windows 8, see Selling Apps,” the posting says early on. Ultimately that leads to a site with this enticement: “With successful apps on Windows, you’ll make more money than the industry standard, earning 80% of every customer dollar, after an app makes more than 25,000 USD in sales. For the first 25,000 USD of an app’s sales, you get the industry-standard 70%.”

Money aside, the case-study post shows how an iPad photo journal application was adapted to fit with Metro style. Both Windows 8 and iOS on iPads cater to touch commands and navigation, but where iPads rely on icons and toolbars, Windows 8 centers around words on tiles and hiding toolbars.

In converting to Windows 8 the first thing to go from the iPad app is the “chrome” – the navigation bar, pagination controls and the bottom control bar, resulting in a less cluttered application surface. In the Windows 8 version, they are gone but are less necessary because the navigation hierarchy is flattened.

For example, the hub screen for the iPad app shows a single photo for each of the 12 months, with a tab to switch to comments about the photos.

In the Windows 8 version the hub screen is a single month with a featured large photo for the month with other, smaller photos from that month displayed next to it. About a third of the same screen is devoted to comments. For more comments, tap (it’s designed for touchscreen) the Recent Comment header. For more pictures, tap the This Month header.

A second navigation alternative involves pinch to zoom – making a pinching gesture while touching the screen to pull out hierarchically from a single photo to sets of 12 squares or tiles, each set representing a different year. Users can, for instance, go from a photo from March 2012 to a photo from July 2010 by pinching the March photo, zooming out to the sets of tiles, tapping the one for July 2010 and sorting through the photos that are brought up. There is no navigation bar.

With the iPad app, the same transition calls for tapping a Years button on the navigation bar at the top of the screen, selecting the year as it appears in a popover box and then sorting through that year.

Similarly, commands are hidden off screen and can be drawn up from the bottom or down from the top with a finger swipe. The commands shown depend on what object on the screen is designated. So if a photo is highlighted, the commands might include delete or upload.

In the iPad app, that is done via the always visible navigation bar.

On the iPad app, search is done via a search window on the app’s home page. With Metro, it’s always available on the charms bar – a bar of a consistent set of icons that can be swiped out from the right hand side of the screen. It searches the application that the user is inside of.

The features go on and on, including sharing content between applications and to various social networking sites.

mcitp certification, MCITP Training, MCSE Certification, MCSE Training, MCTS, MCTS Training, Microsoft, Tech

Microsoft 70-668 Q & A / Study Guide

MCTS Training, MCITP Trainnig

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

 

 

 

QUESTION 1
What is the minimum number of servers required in the SharePoint farm to meet the technical
requirements?

A. 2 servers are required.
B. 4 servers are required.
C. 6 servers are required.
D. 8 servers are required.

Answer: B

Explanation:

QUESTION 2
Which of the following solutions should you configure to prevent users printing confidential
documents stored in SharePoint sites?

A. You should configure SQL Server administrative roles.
B. You should configure SQL Server permissions.
C. You should configure Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS).
D. You should configure Active Directory Rights Management Services (AD RMS).

Answer: D

Explanation:

QUESTION 3
Which of the following database solutions should you recommend to meet the technical
requirements?

A. You should recommend Network Load Balancing (NLB).
B. You should recommend database mirroring.
C. You should recommend database snapshots.
D. You should recommend SQL Server backups.

Answer: B

Explanation:

QUESTION 4
Which of the following solutions should you implement to meet the Excel Services technical
requirement?

A. You should perform in in-place upgrade.
B. You should perform a database attach upgrade.
C. You should export all lists that contain Excel files then import them into the new SharePoint
2010 environment.
D. You should upgrade Microsoft Office Excel 2007 on all computers to Microsoft Office Excel
2010.

Answer: A

Explanation:

QUESTION 5
How many content databases are required to meet the technical requirements?

A. 1
B. 2
C. 25
D. 26
E. 50

Answer: D

Explanation:

 

MCTS Training, MCITP Trainnig

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

IE9, mcitp certification, Microsoft, Tech

Microsoft: Switch to IE9, get free stuff

Tries to pump up new edition’s numbers on Windows 7

Computerworld – Microsoft on Friday launched a promotion to convince more Windows 7 users to adopt Internet Explorer 9 (IE9).

 

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

 

Windows 7 users who download Microsoft’s newest browser, then “pin” any of seven different websites to their taskbars, receive offers that range from a free month of Hulu Plus to a $5-off Fandango movie ticket.

Some of the offers are available immediately, while others launch later this month and during December.

When people running alternate browsers such as Google’s Chrome or Mozilla’s Firefox on Windows 7 visit the promotional site, they see the message, “Where’s the love? … Upgrade to Internet Explorer to pin these sites and get the free stuff.”
Browser wars

Microsoft: Switch to IE9, get free stuff
Microsoft’s IE posts biggest share drop in three years
Google pays record $26K in Chrome bug bounties
Chrome bug no security threat, argues Google
Mozilla bashes Microsoft’s browser security test
Microsoft pans Chrome, Firefox security
Mozilla relies on search deals for 98% of revenues
Update: Mozilla to prompt Firefox 3.6 users to ride rapid-release train
Mozilla aims to add silent updating to Firefox 10
Google updates Chrome to restore browser after Microsoft blunder

More: Browser Topic Center

Pinning, introduced in IE9, lets users add website shortcuts to the Windows 7 task bar for the same kind of easy access as locally-stored programs.

Users running Mac OS X who visit the free offers site see a different message: “Oh Nooooooo… You’re using Mac OS which doesn’t support Internet Explorer 9 and Site Pinning.”

Windows XP users — still the most widely-used version of Microsoft’s operating system — cannot upgrade to IE9. Microsoft has defended that ban even as IE’s share has continued falling, calling the decade-old OS the “lowest common denominator” and not worthy of future browser development.

Microsoft has been aggressively pushing IE9 as the best browser for Windows 7, and has regularly touted that edition’s gains in usage share even as other versions lose ground to Chrome and Apple’s Safari.

According to Web metrics company Net Applications, IE9 accounted for 22.5% of the browsers running worldwide on Windows 7 during October, an increase of 1.4 percentage points from the month before. Only Microsoft’s own IE8 sported a higher share.

Last month, IE overall lost the largest amount of usage share in three years, falling to 52.6%, putting Microsoft’s browser in danger of slipping under the 50% mark as early as January 2012.

Google, MCITP, mcitp certification, MCITP Training, MCSE, MCSE Training, MCTS, MCTS Certification, MCTS Training, Microsoft

Microsoft slams ‘Google’s graveyard’

Along with other interesting analogies

A Microsoft spokesperson has slammed Google for its ‘see if it sticks’ approach to product development, claiming that the ‘Google graveyard’ full of defunct programmes shows that the search giant isn’t able to provide reliable services for business users.

Tom Rizzo, director of Microsoft SharePoint products and technologies, wrote a blog post likening Google’s product management to cooking spaghetti:

“Google releases experimental products and tracks adoption to determine whether to continue providing them. Its products are like spaghetti, Google throws them up against the wall to see if they stick.”
Hasta la pasta

To illustrate the point, he cites Google Wave, Google Aardvark and Google Buzz as three examples of non-stick spaghetti.

“It is clear that Google’s product management practice is haphazard and noncommittal, resulting in its deliveries often falling short of expectations,” he said before going on to extol the virtues of Microsoft’s product support system.

What is it with Microsoft and weird tech analogies this week? First it was search being like Buffy and Knight Rider, now it’s Google Buzz being like undercooked pasta. A bar’s been set here, Microsoft – better get those thinking caps on for the next one.

 

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

Facebook, Tech, Twitter

Free cooling lures Facebook to Arctic’s edge

Data center in northern Sweden will use outside air year-round to cool machines, draw on renewable hydroelectricity for powerIn a move that will further bolster Facebook’s green data center credentials, the social networking giant plans to build an enormous new 120MW data center in Luleå, Sweden, just 62 miles south of the Arctic Circle. The company will make the official announcement Thursday, according to the Telegraph.

 

Best Microsoft MCTS Training – Microsoft MCITP Training at Certkingdom.com

 

The allure of the locale is three-fold: First, it’s a prime location for taking advantage of free cooling — that is, using outside air to chill machines instead of running costly CRAC (computer room air conditioner) units 24/7. Second, dams on the Luleå river generate an abundance of renewable electricity — enough so that half is exported — so Facebook needn’t worry about an energy shortfall any time soon. Third, Sweden has a dense fiber-optic network, which means data can flow reliably and easily through Finland and on into Eastern Europe and Russia.

For the past few years now, organizations have struggled with strategies to cut costs and energy consumption within their data centers. Free cooling has proven a paricularly desirable technique as the cost of generating artificially chilled air can be quite considerable. Facebook employs free cooling at its data center in Prineville, Ore., for example, though the AC sometimes needs to be turned on during the summer. That contributes to the facility’s remarkably low PUE (Power Utilization Effectiveness); Facebook claims the figure is 1.07.

This new Luleå facility — the first Facebook data center to be built outside the United States — could be cooled freely throughout the year: The average temperature in the region is around 35.6 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the Telegraph, and the temperature has not exceeded 86 degrees for more than 24 hours for the past 50 years. ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers) recommends operating data centers at a temperature range of 64.4 to 80.6 degrees.

Notably, server vendors are taking note of the growing trend toward using outside air to cool datacenters. Earlier this year, Dell began to warranty servers running in temperatures as high as 133 degrees.

The abundance of renewable energy is another boon for Facebook, as it earns the company eco-points by reducing its overall carbon footprint. Other data center operators, too, have turned to alternative energy to cut operation costs and to improve cut emissions. Google, for example, has a huge solar installation, while Fujitsu installed a hydrogen fuel cell at its Sunnyvale, Calif., campus.

MCTS, Microsoft, Tech

Microsoft CRM App Update Adds Social Networking Features

Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) has delivered an update for its Dynamics CRM on-premise and cloud applications, adding new social networking features and a way to administer the CRM Online applications in conjunction with the Office 365 cloud application set.

 

Best Microsoft MCTS Training – Microsoft MCITP Training at Certkingdom.com

 

The on-premise Dynamics CRM and cloud-based Dynamics CRM Online are currently used by some 30,000 customers with 2 million users, said Seth Patton, senior marketing director for Dynamics CRM, in an interview. More than 1,200 solution providers are now certified in the CRM competency within the Microsoft Partner Network program.

Dynamics CRM Online has been gaining “huge market momentum among customers and partners” since Microsoft made it available worldwide earlier this year, Patton said, with two out of three new customers choosing the cloud-based applications and one-third going with the on-premise version.

Microsoft is in heavy competition with Salesforce.com in the market for cloud CRM services, as well as with Oracle (NSDQ:ORCL), SAP (NYSE:SAP) and others in the CRM arena.

When Microsoft launched the 2011 release of Dynamics CRM earlier this year the company committed to updating the software twice a year and the November 2011 service update fulfills that promise, Patton said.

Microsoft’s strategy for adding social networking capabilities to Dynamics CRM includes integrating it with other Microsoft collaboration applications, such as SharePoint and Lync, and adding new capabilities directly into the CRM applications. Patton said that approach is more productive for users than Salesforce’s Chatter social networking application.

“It’s not about being more social. It’s about creating better customer interactions,” Patton said.

The November 2011 update includes a new activity feed capability that provides configurable, real-time notifications on significant relationships and business events. And those activity feeds can be seen on Windows Phone 7 devices through a new application developed for that mobile operating system.

The new Dynamics CRM release also offers new micro-blogging and conversations capabilities, the latter for posting questions, observations, suggestions and status updates.

While Dynamics CRM is already integrated with Office 365 from a user standpoint, the Dynamics CRM November 2011 update is based on the same administrative, provisioning and billing platform as Office 365, simplifying those chores for IT administrators. Patton said the unified administrative interface should make it easier for channel partners to sell the Dynamics CRM Online service.

Also new in the November 2011 release are improved disaster recovery features with in-region replication for data protection and business continuity.

MCITP, mcitp certification, MCITP Training, MCSE, MCSE Certification, MCSE Training, MCTS, MCTS Certification, MCTS Training, Microsoft, Tech, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Azure, Windows XP

Windows 8 Tiles Metro-Style UI on Windows 7

Windows 8 would ditch the Windows 7 Aero interface in favor of Metro UI,  which exists on Windows Phone today. If you love the MEtro style tiles and interface, you can get the Metro UI on windows 7 using Zetro UI.

Zetro UI is very simple to install and configure. Extract the zip after downloading the theme from the link below. When done, follow the below two simple steps:

Opening the Extras folder, running the Theme Patcher, and clicking on all three “patch” buttons contained within.
Opening the Theme folder and copying both of the files inside it to C:\Windows\Resources\Themes.

When finished, Open the Control Panel and “Change the Theme” under Appearance and Personalization. The Zetro theme should be available in “Installed themes”.

metro-ui-windows7
The look and feel of the theme makes you windows 7 look simple with white all over the place, which might look a bit odd for the first few minutes. You can tweak it using the extra tweaks available in the readme file that comes along with the zip.

Extending the tweak further, feel free to blend it with something like the Metro-inspired Omnimo 4 theme for Rainmeter.

 

Best Microsoft MCTS Training – Microsoft MCITP Training at Certkingdom.com

Facebook, Google, Tech, YouTube

Google, Facebook promise new IPv6 services after successful trial

Google leaves IPv6 on for YouTube; Facebook adds IPv6 to developers’ site; Yahoo sees ‘minimal risk’ to IPv6
One day after completing a successful 24-hour trial of IPv6, Facebook, Google and Yahoo said at a joint press conference that they would begin permanently supporting this upgrade to the Internet’s main communications protocol on some of their key websites.

 

Best Microsoft MCTS Training – Microsoft MCITP Training at Certkingdom.com

 

 

Joined by two content delivery networks — Akamai and Limelight, which also pledged their commitment to IPv6 deployment — these popular websites proclaimed the World IPv6 Day trial to be a resounding success. All three companies said they had handled a significant increase in IPv6 traffic on June 8 without suffering serious technical glitches.

IPv6 features an expanded addressing scheme, so it can handle vastly more devices connected directly to the Internet than its predecessor called IPv4. However, IPv6 is not backward compatible with IPv4, which means website operators have to upgrade their network equipment and software to support IPv6 traffic.

Google said it has decided to leave its main YouTube website enabled for IPv6 for the time being. Since 2008, Google has supported IPv6 on separate websites — such as www.ipv6.google.com — rather than on its main websites.

“We saw 65% growth in our IPv6 traffic on World IPv6 Day,” said Lorenzo Colitti, IPv6 Software Engineer at Google, who pointed out that Google added IPv6 support to several new services including Orkut for the trial. “This event has really been successful in galvanizing the community.”

“At Facebook, we saw over 1 million of our users reach us over IPv6,” said Don Lee, senior network engineer at Facebook. “There were no technical glitches in this 24-hour period. We were encouraged by the many positive comments on our blog. … It is really interesting to see how passionate people were about IPv6 around the world.”

Because of the positive results from World IPv6 Day, Facebook has decided to support IPv6 on its Website for developers, which is www.developers.facebook.com.

“We will continue to adapt our entire code base to support IPv6,” Lee added. “IPv6 will allow the Internet to continue its amazing development.”

BY THE NUMBERS: IPv6 traffic surges at launch of World IPv6 Day

World IPv6 Day was held yesterday and was sponsored by the Internet Society. The event attracted 400-plus corporate, government and university participants that deployed IPv6 on more than 1,000 websites for the day.

Leslie Daigle, chief Internet technology officer for the Internet Society, said World IPv6 Day was designed to motivate service providers, website operators, hardware makers and software suppliers to test-drive IPv6 and to identify any remaining technical issues that need to be resolved with this emerging technology.

“It was perceived to be quite a successful day,” Daigle said. “It was an amazing display of cross-industry participation. … It’s an important step in the Internet’s progress. We are running out of IPv4 addresses, and IPv6 is definitely the way to move forward to make sure the Internet is a platform for innovation.”