Apple Announces iTunes 8
Apple® today announced iTunes® 8, the next major release of Apple’s ubiquitous music and video player for Macs and PCs which is seamlessly integrated with the most popular online content store in the world (www.itunes.com). iTunes 8 includes the new breakthrough Genius feature, which lets you automatically create playlists from songs in your music library that go great together—with just one click. Genius helps music fans rediscover favorite songs in their existing music library and suggests related music on the iTunes Store they might want to add to their music collection. iTunes 8 features new ways of viewing your music and video libraries, and adds television programs in stunning high definition for sale on the iTunes Store.
Using Apple’s breakthrough Genius feature is easy—select any song, click the Genius button, and iTunes instantly creates a playlist of songs that go great together from your own library. You can preview the playlist Genius creates, refresh the list to choose different songs and save Genius playlists to enjoy again later. You can even create Genius Playlists on-the-go with the new iPod® classic, iPod touch, iPod nano and iPhone™. The Genius sidebar appears right in iTunes and recommends music from the iTunes Store that you don’t already have, based on the songs you select.
Source- Apple Press Release
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Apple Introduces New iPod touch
Apple® today introduced the second generation iPod® touch featuring an amazingly thin contoured metal design, a gorgeous 3.5-inch widescreen glass display, 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi wireless networking, integrated volume control buttons, a built-in speaker for casual listening, a built-in accelerometer and other advanced sensors, and Apple’s revolutionary Multi-Touch™ user interface. iPod touch, now available for just $229 for the 8GB model, is perfect for playing music, movies and games, with millions of songs, thousands of Hollywood movies and hundreds of games available on the iTunes® Store.
The new iPod touch is smaller and lighter than the original, with a sleek new design that features a contoured metal enclosure with integrated volume control buttons and a brilliant 3.5-inch widescreen glass display. With its rounded edges, flush display and curved, more compact design, the new iPod touch is more comfortable to hold and more portable than ever.
Pricing & Availability
The new iPod touch is available immediately for a suggested price of $229 (US) for the 8GB model, $299 (US) for the 16GB and $399 (US) for the 32 GB model through the Apple Store® (www.apple.com), Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers. iPod touch requires a Mac® with a USB 2.0 port, Mac OS® X v10.4.10 or later and iTunes 8; or a Windows PC with a USB 2.0 port and Windows Vista or Windows XP Home or Professional (Service Pack 2) or later and iTunes 8. Existing iPod touch users can update to the latest 2.1 software for just $9.95 to add the new Genius feature. iPod touch owners who already have the 2.0 software get the 2.1 software update for free. Simply download the latest version of iTunes onto your Mac or PC, and purchase the 2.1 software update via iTunes.
Source- Apple Press Release
Microsoft and Partners Help Customers “Get Virtual Now”
Kicking off a global series of “Get Virtual Now” events that will reach more than 250,000 customers and partners, Microsoft Corp. today announced strong customer and partner adoption of Microsoft virtualization software, new tools and programs to drive partner success.
Microsoft also announced the upcoming availability of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 and the new Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 as a no-cost download during today’s keynote addresses streamed live at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/virtualization/default.mspx.
Microsoft executives will further outline virtualization solutions for customers and also demonstrate the live migration capabilities of the upcoming release of Windows Server 2008 R2.
“Now is the time for customers to get virtual,” said Bob Kelly, corporate vice president of infrastructure server marketing within Microsoft’s Server and Tools Business. “With desktop and datacenter virtualization offerings available from Microsoft and its partners, customers are adopting Microsoft solutions because they have better value and will make IT operations more dynamic. At a lower cost than other datacenter virtualization solutions, Microsoft software meets customers’ needs from the desktop to the datacenter in an integrated offering on the platform they know.”
Source- Microsoft Press Release
Windows Media Components for QuickTime
With Windows Media® for QuickTime, by Flip4Mac™, you can play Windows Media files (.wma and .wmv) directly in QuickTime Player and view Windows Media content on the Internet using a Web browser.
Optimized for High-Definition Playback:
Windows Media® Components for QuickTime has been highly optimized for Power Mac G4 and G5 and Intel computers and supports playback of high-definition Windows Media video files.
Upgrade to Advanced Features:
Windows Media playback is provided for free. By upgrading, you can import Windows Media files for editing and create Windows Media files for distribution. To learn more about these advanced features, visit the Flip4Mac Web site.
Download it here
Technet Magazine for October 2008 released
Virtualization: An Introduction to Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008
The introduction of Hyper-V makes virtualization an even more compelling solution for IT environments. Get an overview of today’s virtualization market and see how Hyper-V improves the manageability, reliability, and security of virtualization Rajiv Arunkundram
Virtualization: Manage Your Virtual Environments with VMM 2008
System Center Virtual Machine Manager provides a consolidated interface for managing your virtual infrastructure. The latest version adds support for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, as well as for VMware virtual machines. Explore the new features and get an overview of using VMM to centralize your management tasks. Edwin Yuen
Virtualization: Getting Started with Microsoft Application Virtualization
Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) allows you to deliver virtualized desktops to client systems throughout your organization. This simplifies system management and liberates employees from their desktops. Take a close look at how App-V works and discover how you can deploy it in your organization. Anthony Kinney
Virtualization: Achieving High Availability for Hyper-V
Consolidating servers onto fewer physical machines has many advantages, but it is extremely important that you plan for your systems to be highly available. Here’s a guide to using Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering to bring high availability to your Hyper-V virtual machines. Steven Ekren
Virtualization: Backup and Disaster Recovery for Server Virtualization
Virtualization brings significant changes to disaster recovery. Here’s an introduction to how the Microsoft virtualization platform factors into your disaster recovery plan, as well as a deeper look into backup and restore options and considerations for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. Adam Fazio
Virtualization: Essential Tools for Planning Your Virtual Infrastructure
Is your infrastructure ready for virtualization? The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit, a network-wide infrastructure assessment tool, can help you better understand your IT infrastructure and determine whether your systems are ready for upgrade or migration to a variety of technologies, including virtualization. Jay Sauls and Baldwin Ng
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/default.aspx
Windows Live Messenger translation bot now available!
The Microsoft Translator team is excited to announce the new translation bot for Windows Live Messenger! This Messenger bot does translations for you. Just add mtbot@hotmail.com to your contacts and start chatting. You can have one-on-one conversations with the bot, or you can invite a friend and chat in different languages with the bot translating for you. As usual, remember that machine translation isn’t perfect – slang especially will give the engine trouble.
You can also access Windows Live Messenger on your smartphone to use the bot to translate simple sentences while you’re traveling to other countries!
The translator bot is localized into all of the languages for which we have translation support on www.windowslivetranslator.com:
- English to/from:
- Arabic
- Chinese Simplified
- Chinese Traditional
- Dutch
- French
- German
- Italian
- Japanese
- Korean
- Portuguese
- Russian (RUS->ENU only)
- Spanish
- Chinese Simplified <-> Chinese Traditional
Source- MSDN Blog
System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2 released!!
As confirmed here SCCM 2007 R2 has just gone RTM. This is a long awaited released as it delivers significant functionality lifts in two key areas:
1) Integration of Microsoft Application Virtualization (aka Softgrid) so that you can deliver (stream or transfer) virtual applications via the same infrastructure as traditional MSI apps.
2) Expansion of the OSD (Operating System Deployment) functionality to provide a solution to deliver OS’s to previously unseen machines via PXE boot. This is the ideal scenario if you’ve just received in a bunch of new machines from your hardware vendor and you want to plug them into your network and have them build themselves.
Source- Technet Blog
Windows Vista SP1 is now being deployed by Microsoft’s auto-update service
Microsoft announced on Wednesday that they have begun to deliver Windows Vista Service Pack 1 via an automatic update. Windows Vista SP1 will be automatically downloaded and installed on machines who have Windows Update. Starting first will be important patches, hotfixes, and other updates which will be sent via automatic updates. From there, Microsoft will begin to automatically distribute Vista Service Pack 1.
A Microsoft spokeswoman stated "Today, Microsoft will begin automatic distribution of SP1. This means the users with the Automatic Update feature turned on will automatically download SP1 to their PCs."
While all customers will not receive Vista SP1 immediately via Automatic Update, there’s no time line offered as to when they would all receive it eventually. Microsoft claims to have opted for staggered distribution to prevent mass occurrence of driver incompatibility and other such issues. The automatic delivery will be rolled out to English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish versions first.
Source: Half Life Source
