Microsoft Answers Launches Beta
There’s a new web site just for Windows Vista users: Microsoft Answers (beta). On this site, designed as sort of a cross between a Q&A answers service and an online tech support forum, you can get your computer questions answered or you can share your own knowledge with the community. To use the site, you can do one of three things: search the site, browse the top questions and answers, or you can pose a new question to the community:
The site has the same clean and simplistic design that we’ve come to expect from all the new Microsoft services, like Windows Live for example. Thanks to this aesthetic, Microsoft Answers is very easy to use.
Why This is Awesome
Until now, getting computer help has meant searching the web for keywords only to stumble upon tech support forums where answers are often hit-or-miss (or sometimes even answered by very unhelpful trolls!). To get actual support from Microsoft professionals, the only other options has been delving into the more I.T.-friendly sites from Microsoft like TechNet. But with Microsoft Answers, getting help finally has a consumer-friendly face…and it’s staffed by actual Microsoft employees! Really! If you browse to this page and click on any of the folks listed under “Meet the Microsoft Answers Team,” you’ll see that that they are listed as Microsoft employees. That should certainly make you feel more comfortable about the quality of answers you receive.
If you end up asking a question, you don’t have to keep returning to the web page to see if it’s been answered. Instead, you can subscribe to your question to get automatically updated via your browser or email program (or RSS reader, of course!). How convenient.
If you have any burning computer questions, you should check out Microsoft Answers and see if they can help.
Source- Channel 10 Blog
Download System Center Data Protection Manager 2007 Service Pack 1
DPM 2007 SP1 maintains DPM 2007 as the new standard for Windows backup and recovery by introducing new workload capabilities, performance enhancements, features and options.
New workload capabilities include host-level and guest-level protection for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Microsoft Hyper-V Server. DPM SP1 also enables protection of SQL Server 2008, Windows SharePoint Services and SQL Server mirrored databases, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 indexes, and Exchange Standby Cluster Replication (SCR). DPM SP1 also enhances Windows SharePoint Services catalog backup performance.
DPM 2007 with SP1 can protect data across multiple Active Directory® forests (with two-way trust) as well as Hyper-V and file data stored locally on the DPM server. DPM SP1 also bundles features introduced in previous updates such as Windows Server 2008 System State and SQL Server 2008 protection, tape library sharing, and improved tape utilization.
Installing DPM SP1 adds functionality relevant to the new Data Protection Client Management License offering. This offering provides existing DPM Client protection at a preferred price.
With DPM SP1, DPM 2007 provides an integrated approach for backing up DPM data to the cloud. This new option is delivered in conjunction with a solution provider that provides a backup and recovery service in the cloud specifically designed to support DPM. To enable backup to the cloud, in DPM Administrator Console, go to “Manage online protection” in the Protection task area.
For release details for DPM SP1, please refer to Knowledge Base article KB959605: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=137147.
DPM SP1 Release Notes can be found at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=135756.
For detailed information on features available in SP1, please visit http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=132612.
Download the 32 bit version here and 64 bit version here
Deep Earth Released Into the Wild
The open source project dubbed Deep Earth has been officially released. The project puts Microsoft Virtual Earth in a Silverlight UX allowing for incredible visual and scalable geospatial data visualization.
DeepEarth is a mapping control powered by the combination of Microsoft’s Silverlight 2.0 platform and the DeepZoom (MuliScaleImage) control. At its core, it builds on these innovative technologies to provide an architecture for bringing together layers for services, data providers, and your own custom mapping elements together into an impressive user experience. Also featured are in depth examples of how you can leverage Virtual Earth Web Services to take advantage of advanced GIS service functionality. This is what you need to get an interactive, native Silverlight 2.0, map into your application today.
You can see a working version of the application on the Deep Earth Soul Solutions web site.
Here are some of the features:
- Fully implemented map control with property and event model
- Fully templated set of map navigation controls
- Layers for inclusion of Points, LineStrings and Polygons (OGS)
- Conversion library for Geography to Screen coordinated systems.
- Geocoding (find an address)
- Reverse Geocoding (getting an address from a point on the map)
- Routing (Directions)
- Marque zoom selection (default Ctrl-click and drag or from menu toggle)
- Map rotation
Source- MSDN Blog
Microsoft Expands Exchange ActiveSync Licensing Program
Microsoft Corp. today announced it is expanding its Exchange ActiveSync Intellectual Property (IP) Licensing program, facilitated by Version 1.0 releases of technical documentation for protocols built into Exchange ActiveSync, which Microsoft posted on the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) earlier this month. The posting of this documentation completes the set of Exchange ActiveSync protocols Microsoft committed to publish as part of its Interoperability Principles announced in February 2008 (http://www.microsoft.com/interop/principles/default.mspx).
“The Exchange ActiveSync IP Licensing program is another example of how we are continuing to deliver on our commitment to increased openness and collaboration,” said Horacio Gutierrez, vice president of intellectual property and licensing at Microsoft. “This technology is being sought out by our partners and competitors alike because it enhances their value proposition to their customers, and we believe that to be a testament to the innovation taking place at Microsoft.”
Source- Microsoft Press Release
An Update on Messenger for Mac
I wanted to take a moment and share with you the progress we are making with Messenger for Mac. This year we successfully delivered Audio and Video (A/V) support in the corporate service (works with Office Communications Server) of Messenger for Mac 7. We are now on the path to implement A/V support in the personal service (which will work with Windows Live service), and uses the same protocol as the corporate service.
I’m glad to say that the upcoming release of Windows Live Messenger, currently in beta, delivers the new A/V protocol that enables us to deliver A/V support in Messenger for Mac. It is cross-platform compatible and will work with Windows Live Messenger. This is a huge milestone that will enable us to continue moving forward with Messenger for Mac development.
We are very excited to be able to bring A/V support to the personal service. Our plan is to deliver a beta version of A/V in 2009. We are also working on additional features in both the personal and corporate service of Messenger for Mac for the next version of Messenger. We’ll provide more updates and details in a future blog post.
Source- MAC Mojo
Public beta of Windows 7 from January 7
winfuture.de , a german website reports that it has learnt from it sources that the Windows 7 beta would be available to the public on January 7 the next year,though the beta version would be available to the TAP partners from tomorrow itself.
The beta version would start from the 7K series and the build would be 7000.0.081212-1400,and adding to it,the build would be available in many other languages too.
The site also says that it has unconfirmed news that the Windows 7 would be available on preconfigured computers from November 2009 and would be available for retail in January 2010 almost exactly after 3 years the release of Windows Vista.We too have some unconfirmed news from our sources that Windows Server 7 would be even available for beta release in January next year,so indeed a lot more is coming in January along with the release of Internet Explorer 8 and probably the release of the final versions of Windows Live Wave 3 products
Source- win7.in
Windows Live Writer 2009 new features: Release Candidate
We’re excited to announce the release candidate of Windows Live Essentials which includes a new version of Writer that is available for download today.
Windows Live Writer 2009 (Release Candidate)
Version 14.0.8050.1202
New Features
Here are the new features available in this version:
- “Instant photo” border treatment
- Insert multiple photos
- Insert and upload Windows Live photo albums
- Insert and publish video to YouTube
- Spell checking in: Arabic, Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, English (Australia), Estonian, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Turkish, and Ukrainian
- Server-side tagging (support coming soon to WordPress.com and BlogEngine.NET)
- Type-down filtering in the Open dialog
- Improved blog account setup
- Windows Live Spaces inline preview support
- Support for bidirectional languages
- Updated look and feel
New plug-ins
Accompanying this release are three new Writer plug-ins that will be available for download from Windows Live Gallery:
FLICKR UPLOAD
Uploads an image to your Flickr account and inserts an inline picture into your post.
DIGG THIS
Automatically adds a DiggThis badge to your blog post after you publish it from Writer.
TWITTER NOTIFY
Automatically generates a TinyURL and sends a Tweet about your blog post after you publish it from Writer.
Since this is a release candidate we’ll be using your feedback to work through any last remaining bugs before we do our final release.
Source- Windows Live Writer Blog
Microsoft Office Outlook Connector 12.1 out of beta
Microsoft Office Outook Connector 12.1 is finally out of beta and is available for download here though it’s also available in the Windows Live essentials pack
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.
Note to Premium Subscribers:If you are currently using MSN Calendar service, the Outlook Connector 12.1 will automatically migrate your calendar to the new Windows Live Calendar service. Once upgraded to Windows Live Calendar, you will be able to synchronize multiple calendars, including shared calendars to Outlook! However you will no longer be able to access MSN Calendar through Microsoft Office Outlook.
In order to make sure that all of your calendar items on the MSN Calendar service are correctly migrated to the Windows Live Calendar, you should follow these steps:
- With Outlook Connector 12.0 installed, synchronize your calendar in Microsoft Office Outlook with the MSN Calendar service one last time.
- After synchronization is complete, do not create new items on the MSN Calendar site. If you do, you will have to synchronize again using Outlook Connector 12.0 before migrating to Outlook Connector 12.1.
- Install Outlook Connector 12.1.
- Start Outlook. At this point, the Outlook Connector 12.1 will upload all of your appointments and meetings to your new Windows Live Calendar.
