Microsoft Research and Disney•Pixar’s WALL•E Explore the Real Universe
Microsoft Research teamed up with Disney•Pixar to create a virtual tour of the universe hosted by none other than WALL•E, the animated robot from Disney•Pixar’s latest film, “WALL•E,” which is available in stores today on DVD and Blu-ray Disc. Anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can take the tour and view the universe from WALL•E’s perspective by visiting http://www.worldwidetelescope.org. A teaser for the tour can also be seen on the DVD and Blu-ray Disc.
Along for the adventure with WALL•E, Academy-Award-winning director Andrew Stanton narrates the tour. “Using Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope, WALL•E takes you on a real ride through space,” Stanton said. “After watching the movie on DVD, the whole family will be inspired to learn more about the world in which we live and the universe beyond.”
WorldWide Telescope is a rich Web application that brings together imagery from the best ground- and space-based observatories across the world to allow people to easily explore the night sky through their computers. WorldWide Telescope has been embraced by the astronomical and education communities as a compelling, astronomical resource for students and lifelong learners.
Source- Microsoft Press Release
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Microsoft LifeCams and Windows Live Messenger: The Perfect Holiday Side Dishes
With holiday-related travel costs already up 25 percent over last year,1 people are looking for alternative ways to connect with distant loved ones this holiday season. When it’s not possible to attend that family gathering in person, Microsoft LifeCams offer an easy, fun and affordable way for people to connect with friends and family all over the world — with high-quality video, crystal-clear audio and versatile designs. When users pair a LifeCam with the latest version of Windows Live Messenger, they can now experience a higher-quality video call with full-screen VGA video for clearer, sharper video.
LifeCams and Windows Live Messenger: The Price Is Right
An online survey from Zoomerang found that many people are cutting back their travel this year — in fact, almost half say the weakened U.S. economy will have an impact on their holiday travel plans.2 Now connecting across the miles with video calling is better than ever when LifeCams are paired with the new Windows Live Messenger. Users will experience true VGA video (640×480) at up to four times better resolution than the current solution in Windows Live Messenger when they switch to full screen, as well as faster connection time to initiate a video call and a new attractive user interface. Users will need a Microsoft LifeCam, the latest version of Windows Live Messenger, and a PC with a dual core processor and broadband Internet connection to experience a true VGA video call.
Microsoft Corp. offers a full line of webcams that deliver high-quality video calls at varying price points to fit consumers’ budgets, including the two newest Microsoft webcams to hit the market, LifeCam Show and LifeCam VX-5500.
Source- Microsoft Press Release
Upload Photos to Facebook with New Windows Live Photo Gallery Plug-in
Michael Palermiti, Program Manager on the Windows Live Digital Memories Experience Team (the awesome people responsible for Windows Live Photo Gallery and Windows Live Movie Maker), has posted about a new plug-in for Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta that allows you to upload photos directly to Facebook. Using LiveUpload to Facebook, users can configure multiple Facebook accounts to upload photos to in Windows Live Photo Gallery. Upload to Facebook supports the ability to upload photos to existing albums on Facebook or create new ones.
Download: LiveUpload to Facebook
What’s even better about the LiveUpload to Facebook plug-in is that it takes advantage of Windows Live Photo Gallery’s new People Tags feature. That means if you tag a person you are also friends with on Facebook – once you upload the photo to Facebook that tag will automatically appear on the published photo.
You can download the Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta, along with Betas for the rest of the Windows Live Essentials suite, at download.live.com today. The plug-in only works with the Beta.
Source- Windows Experience Blog
Exchange Online and SharePoint Online Out of Beta and Ready for Purchase
Today, at a launch event in San Francisco, Stephen Elop, president of the Microsoft Business Division at Microsoft Corp., was joined by customers and partners to announce the availability of Microsoft Exchange Online and Microsoft SharePoint Online for businesses of all sizes in the United States. These subscription services offer businesses a new way to purchase, deploy and manage the industry-leading e-mail and calendaring solution, and the industry-leading solution for portals and collaboration.
“Customers are embracing Microsoft’s software and services strategy en masse because of the choice and flexibility it gives them,” Elop said. “Today, we bring business-class communications and collaboration technologies to the cloud, and we are committed to delivering more capabilities in the months ahead. No one has done what we are doing at this scale, and I’m certain that our customers will continue to take on these solutions as our offerings grow.”
Businesses can buy or try the new services at http://www.microsoft.com/online. As part of the Microsoft Online Services product family, Exchange Online and SharePoint Online are available separately or as a suite together with Office Live Meeting for conferencing, Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services and Microsoft Office Communications Online for instant messaging and presence.
Source- Microsoft Press Release
New Xbox Experience releases tomorrow
In 1954, the introduction of color TV heralded the dawn of a new era in entertainment. On Nov. 19, more than 50 years after that dramatic shift, a new era in home entertainment begins with the New Xbox Experience, as millions of Xbox 360 consoles will transform in an instant through the power of software. A bold new future begins now, where high-definition (HD) entertainment is delivered in an instant, the best games share the stage with the best movies and TV shows, and every experience is shared with friends and family in the same room or around the world.
By the end of this month, Xbox 360 will reach another industry-defining milestone:
25 million Xbox 360 consoles sold worldwide. It has taken the leading next-generation game and entertainment console just three years to eclipse the total lifetime number of original Xbox consoles sold.
“The future of home entertainment is Xbox 360 — it’s on-demand, it’s high-definition, it’s always social, it’s all in one place,” said Don Mattrick, senior vice president for the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft Corp. “With the New Xbox Experience, we will reach the next generation of Xbox owners, 25 million and beyond. We are at a watershed moment, backed by the largest entertainment brands, with an incredible lineup of entertainment unmatched in any industry.”
Source- Microsoft Press Release
Microsoft Expands Virtualization Initiatives With HP
In support of HP’s Virtual Connect announcement, this morning Microsoft announced product, sales and services initiatives with HP designed to help businesses more easily adopt and deploy virtualization to help lower IT costs and make IT more efficient. Microsoft and HP have expanded their work together to sell and market storage, server and networking consolidation solutions, and desktop virtualization solutions, to small, medium and large business customers worldwide. Companies such as MLS Property Information Network are already using Microsoft and HP virtualization technology to more easily meet their business needs.
Today’s announcements include the following:
- In the U.S., Microsoft is working with HP to offer products, training and deployment services for storage, networking and server consolidation that are designed to help customers decrease costs, increase business agility, improve data access and protection, and increase employee productivity.
- Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 and Microsoft System Center are supported on the new industry-standard HP Virtual Connect 10Gb Flex-10 module, which works with the Flex-10 NIC on the recently introduced HP ProLiant BL495c virtualization blade server. Together these technologies enable customers to significantly lower costs with their server and network consolidation, business continuity and dynamic datacenter projects.
- The HP and Microsoft Frontline Partner Program in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) has registered 60 percent of eligible partners across 36 countries to receive access to virtualization training, sales tools, marketing materials, workshops, and incentives targeting small and medium-size businesses.
- Performance and Resource Optimization (PRO) features will be delivered in the HP ProLiant PRO Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manage, running on HP ProLiant and BladeSystem servers, in December 2008. PRO is a feature of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 that enables dynamic management of virtual machines and the associated host platforms.
- HP Business Service Automation will enable automation of change and configuration management processes across virtual and physical environments for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V environments, and will integratewith System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 for managing advanced platform capabilities, while decreasing downtime associated with uncontrolled change. HP is scheduled to release a beta in Q1 2009.
For more information please visit Microsoft PressPass.
Windows Server 2008 IIS7 Media Packs
IIS Media Pack 1.0 provides media-specific extensions that make delivering media from IIS simple, and cost-effective. Building on the security, reliability and manageability of IIS 7.0, IIS Media Pack protects media assets as it increases scalability by supporting more concurrent users per server. IIS supports all media file types, including WMV, FLV, and MP4, and provides a great way to use your existing Web infrastructure to deliver compelling rich media content to clients such as Microsoft Silverlight.
With IIS 7.0 and IIS Media Pack 1.0, you can:
- Save bandwidth costs by throttling the speed at which content is downloaded
- Decrease network traffic by metering your media deliveries
- Monetize media assets with Web playlists that personalize content and prevent ad skipping
- Intelligently deliver multiple media formats from a single server, including .wmv, .flv, and .mp4 files
Get the 64bit pack @ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=93d59f79-9555-473d-a07a-e21020d1fc25&DisplayLang=en.
Get the 32bit pack @ http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2cf81f25-1692-41f7-b916-db5c7e44e6ea&DisplayLang=en.
Source- Technet Blog
A note about Hotmail, SkyDrive and Photos storage space
In the latest Windows Live documentations, it mentioned several details about the storage spaces that are available throughout Windows Live services:
- Hotmail’s minimum storage space will be 25GB and this will be ever-increasing as required at the end of each month, making it basically unlimited storage (subject to abuse control)
- The ability to download e-mail attachments from Hotmail into SkyDrive - allowing these attachments to be shared with others or just kept private in your online folders
- SkyDrive’s storage space will also be 25GB, as reported previously, in addition to Hotmail’s storage space
- SkyDrive will allow uploading of up to 1000 new files stored per month - note that this only applies to newly uploaded files during that particular month, so total storage can well exceed 1000 files (it is unsure whether this also applies to Photos and those Hotmail e-mail attachments downloaded into SkyDrive)
- Photos, although its storage space is supposed to be shared with SkyDrive, will only offer 5GB for storage of photos. (However this may be subject to change - at least we certainly hope so. Perhaps someone forgot to update it in the documentations?)
Source- Liveside
