Microsoft Corp. today announced that the Platforms & Services Division (PSD) will be split into two groups: Windows/Windows Live and Online Services, with both groups reporting directly to CEO Steve Ballmer. Microsoft also announced that PSD President Kevin Johnson will be leaving the company. Johnson will work to ensure a smooth transition.
“Kevin has built a supremely talented organization and laid the foundation for the future success of Windows and our Online Services Business. This new structure will give us more agility and focus in two very competitive arenas,” Ballmer said. “It has been a pleasure to work with Kevin, and we wish him well in the future.”
Effective immediately, senior vice presidents Steven Sinofsky, Jon DeVaan and Bill Veghte will report directly to Ballmer to lead Windows/Windows Live. The Windows organization recently announced strong annual sales, with more than 180 million copies of Windows Vista sold globally, and it has driven more than 100 million installs of its Windows Live suite. The organization’s innovation pipeline includes a new version of Windows Internet Explorer, the next version of Windows and the next generation of the Windows Live product suite.
In the Online Services Business, Microsoft will create a new senior lead position and will conduct a search that will span internal and external candidates. In the meantime, Senior Vice President Satya Nadella will continue to lead Microsoft’s search, MSN and ad platform engineering efforts. Microsoft recently announced a strategy to redefine search through innovations in the user experience and business models. As an example, the company’s cashback search program, announced in May, is already generating strong momentum among online shoppers and advertisers.
Source- Microsoft Press Release
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With Microsoft Office Outlook Connector, you can use Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 or Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to access and manage your Microsoft Windows Live Hotmail or Microsoft Office Live Mail accounts, including e-mail messages, contacts and calendars for free!
Outlook Connector enables you to use your Live Hotmail accounts within Outlook:
* Read and send your Office Live Mail/Windows Live Hotmail e-mail messages.
* Manage your contacts in Windows Live Hotmail.
* Use advanced options for blocking junk e-mail messages.
* Manage multiple e-mail accounts in one place.
* Manage, and synchronize multiple calendars, including shared calendars to Windows Live Calendar from Outlook.
Download here
Microsoft Visual Studio Middle School Power Toy 1.0 is a software package particularly designed by Microsoft to help middle school students learn computer programming. It consists of the following five components:
- Visual Sort Designer Control is a supplementary teaching tool developed for middle school students to learn the basic concept, algorithm and implementation of the computer sorting. It supports bubble sorting and insertion sorting. It generates initial value automatically and demonstrates intermediate state of the sorting process, and can also generate sorting source code for both Visual Basic and C#.
- Visual Search Designer Control is an assistant teaching tool developed for middle school students to learn the basic concept, algorithm and implementation of the data structure search. It supports binary search and sequential search. It generates initial value automatically and demonstrates intermediate state of the searching process, and can also generate source code for both Visual Basic and C#.
- Visual Variable Declarative Designer is an intuitive variable declaration designer designed for middle school students. During the design process, not only do the students can declare various generic types of variables, but also generate the source code at the same time. Visual Variable Declarative Designer allows variables to be declared in a visual design method. Teachers in IT fields can use it as a good educational tool to make students understand the basic concepts of the variables declaration easily, such as variable name, access modifier, variable type, initial value and so on.
- Assistant Class Designer is a visual class designer designed for middle school students. During the design process, students can see the processes of adding classes, properties, methods and events. These processes generate the source code at the same time, and the corresponding modification can be reflected into the source code immediately. By using this class designer and code generator, teachers or students can easily create and configure complicated classes. Assistant Class Designer provides intuitive, interactive class design method, not only does it become an excellent teaching assistant to teachers in the IT fields, but also helps students to better understand the object-oriented concept, create classes and object-oriented applications. It supports many important concepts in object-oriented programming, such as class, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism.
- Visual Programming Flow Chart is a supplementary teaching tool developed to help middle school students to learn program control flow. It can generate flow chart of functions, and save it as JPG picture format. It can be easily ran from the integrated development environment (IDE) by simply putting mouse cursor in the function where the flow chart needs to be generated, and choosing the command. After that, you will get the flow chart of the source code, and you can also customize colors and other effects. This visual demonstration allows students to have an intuitive feeling about the flow of the source code, make them have clearer programming ideas and easily find the logical errors in the source code.
Download here
This update for the Microsoft WebDAV Extension for IIS 7.0 fixes several issues that occur when using the extension.
Microsoft has just release a new guide for running BizTalk Server 2006 R2 in a virtualized environment under Hyper-V.
The purpose of this guide is to provide guidance for using Microsoft BizTalk Server 2006 R2 with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. The emphasis is on BizTalk Server, but the performance evaluation methods and performance testing scenarios are useful for analyzing the performance of virtualized server applications in general. This guidance will be of interest to both the IT Pro and Developer communities.
BizTalk Server 2006 R2 Hyper-V Guide
Source- Technet Blog
During the keynote address today at the Gamefest 2008 Microsoft Game Technology Conference, Microsoft Corp. revealed that it will allow anyone to turn the hobby of game-making into a full-fledged career. Through what is now officially called “Xbox LIVE Community Games,” Microsoft makes its marketplace of millions available to members of the XNA Creators Club to create, sell and share in the profits generated by their unique creations.
Microsoft has already opened up game development to the masses by offering the easy-to-use, affordable XNA Game Studio toolset. With this newly announced business model, Microsoft will have truly democratized game distribution by enabling XNA Creators Club members to participate in the multibillion-dollar-a-year console gaming industry.
Newly appointed to his role as chief technology officer of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business Group, Chris Satchell said the business model was designed to create the best possible experience for both consumers and developers. Community games that have been submitted by XNA Creators Club Premium members and have successfully passed a rigorous peer-review system will be added to the Xbox LIVE Marketplace catalog for sale to consumers. Creators will be able to choose from three suggested preset retail price points varying from 200 to 800 Microsoft Points to sell their creations and will receive up to 70 percent of the total revenue generated by their game.
Source- Microsoft Press Release
From Microsoft Research, there comes a new UI for your Windows desktop. Instead of simply minimizing applications or switching through them either via Alt+Tab or Windows+Tab as you do now, there’s a new task management called Microsoft Scalable Fabric that lets you interact with your windows in a whole new way. With this app, you define a central focus area for your desktop where the main window that you’re working within will be located. Other windows are visible off in the periphery of the screen. So, instead of minimizing an app, you drag it outside of the central focus area. The closer you drag the app to the edge of your computer screen, the smaller it becomes.
Source- DownloadSquad
Introducing Games for Windows – LIVE, the free gaming service built for Windows that makes great Windows games even better. With Games for Windows – LIVE, you get an online identity – called a gamertag – and a friends list that works across multiple games, the XBOX 360, and even the Zune music service. You can easily find and communicate with your friends online with text and voice chat. Earn achievements and Gamerscore that lets you track and compare your accomplishments.
Play multiplayer games with your friends, or play against new opponents online using our exclusive TrueSkill™ matchmaking system – with other Windows® players or with or against XBOX 360 players (in supported games.)
All of this is possible today – and at no charge.
Source- Gamesforwindows
Ankur Mittal July 24, 2008
