Windows Phone 7, the Microsoft’s next mobile operating system, is about to be expected available in the market on October 2010. Many people seems to like what they see on the Technical Preview. It looks very impressive.

I just compiled some lists of Windows Phone 7 Official Technical Preview Video you may wish to take a look.

Here are the videos. Enjoy!!

The Windows Live team announced today that the upcoming Windows Live Hotmail email service will be included with several security enhancements.

“Security remains the number one concern of people who use email and a top priority for all Microsoft development efforts, products, and services – Hotmail included.” said John Scarrow, the Partner Group Program Manager of Windows Live.

Here are a few particular security enhancements they have made:

Account recovery

The new security platform elements that built up around Hotmail now enable you to use your cell phone or other items as proof of account ownership. For example, if you lose your password, or, worse, if your account gets compromised, the system can now send you an account recapture code via SMS to regain access to your account.

Single-use codes

This new security feature is designed to further protect you when you sign in from a public computer, such as those found in internet cafés, airports, and coffee shops.

Full-session SSL

In addition to providing SSL encryption at login for all accounts, the new Hotmail will soon support the option to maintain SSL encryption between you and our servers during your entire Hotmail session.

Trusted senders

Hotmail will help you to visually identify trusted senders in your inbox, particularly banks and other institutions commonly used for phishing scams. We put safety logos next to only those senders that we recognize as legitimate so that you can more easily spot malicious imitators.

For more details about the upcoming Hotmail service can be found in a post in the Windows Team Blog.

Windows 7 Enterprise claimed as the most advanced Windows operating system for business PCs, designed to meet the evolving needs of the users and IT professionals in your organization—both in and out of the office.

With exclusive features and benefits, Windows 7 Enterprise drives lower total cost of ownership by helping your users stay productive anywhere, enhancing security and control, and simplifying PC management across your organization.

Unique Features

The Windows 7 Enterprise operating system (OS) is available to Microsoft Software Assurance customers. With Windows 7 Enterprise, you can take advantage of the following features that are not available in Windows 7 Professional:

• DirectAccess: Give mobile users seamless access to corporate networks without a need to VPN.
• BranchCache: Decrease the time branch office users spend waiting to download files across the network.
• Federated Search: Find information in remote repositories, including SharePoint sites, with a simple user interface.
• BitLocker and BitLocker To Go: Help protect data on PCs and removable drives, with manageability to enforce encryption and backup of recovery keys.
• AppLocker: Specify what software is allowed to run on a user’s PCs through centrally managed but flexible Group Policies.
• Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) optimizations: Improved user experience for VDI with multimon and microphone support, which have the ability to reuse virtual hard drive (VHD) images to boot a physical PC.
• Multilingual user interface: Create a single OS image for deployment to users worldwide.

You can download and get the 90-day trial by following the download button at the bottom page of this link.

Microsoft said on Wednesday that it is ready with an updated test version of the next compute cluster version of Windows Server.

The company released Beta 2 of Windows HPC Server 2008 R2, the version aimed at the kind of computing clusters used in education, the life sciences, finance and other areas. Among the features in the new beta is the ability to use Windows 7-based desktops as nodes within a compute cluster and take advantage of the processing power of graphics chips within a cluster. Microsoft is also adding broader support for Excel with a set of high-performance computing services for Excel 2010.

“It’s an exciting time for high performance computing at Microsoft as we work to put supercomputing power in the hands of those who need it most,” product unit manager Ryan Waite said in a blog posting.

For more details see here.

Windows 7 SP1 has finally leaked and should be available in the usual areas soon for anyone who wants to give it a try.  I have gotten my hands on this build of SP1 and will show off a few shots for your viewing pleasure.

First off, this build is very recent, with a compile date of March 27th.  The full build string is as follows:

6.1.7601.16537.amd64fre.win7.100327-0053

The install process is much of what you would expect from a service pack installer, but one thing I noticed is the installation is MUCH faster than the install process for service packs on Vista was, which is a very welcome change. Some screenshots can be found here.

[Via]

IPWireless is a pioneer in developing and delivering next generation wireless solutions, including silicon, software, and network infrastructure, based on 3GPP, the world’s leading mobile standard. They provide some of the world’s largest mobile network operators, governments, and device vendors with innovative solutions that deliver the performance, reliability, and compelling business economics they require so they can stay ahead of their competition and offer their subscribers the value-added services they demand.

Their 3GPP based mobile broadband network equipment has been deployed in over a dozen networks around the globe including T-Mobile Czech Republic, one of the world’s most successful and largest mobile operator broadband networks. Their mobile broadband network equipment also serves as the underpinnings for some of the largest government agency city- and countywide-communication networks, including New York City’s NYCWiN and SGRITA. IPWireless’ mobile broadband base stations and subscriber terminals provide the speed, reliability and performance necessary to support critical lines of communication between a city and its public safety agencies, such as police, fire, sanitation and anti-terrorism departments, that are necessary for keeping their consitutencies and communities safe not only in the event of an emergency but in day-to-day life.

One of their User Equipment (UE) is P1D modem that has RJ45 and USB connector. This tutorial will try to install the modem on Windows 7 using USB connector. Currently the dialer is only support for Windows XP/2000/2003 and does not support Windows Vista/7 by default. When you run the setup file, if you are using Windows Vista/7, you will be prompted that the existing OS is not supported yet. But we can install it using a simple trick.
You just need to set the ‘setup.exe’ file to run in compatibility mode for Windows XP (SP2 or SP3).

Then re-run the setup file to begin installation the drivers and dialer.
This trick is only applicable on Windows Vista/7 for 32 bit and using USB connector modem. It will not work on Win Vista/7 for 64 bit neither using USB nor RJ45 connector.
The installation should complete without error, you need to reboot the system to make sure that the drivers installed successfully.

After restarting the OS, go to “C:\Program Files\IPWireless Inc\IPWireless PC Software” (where the IPWireless PC Software was installed) and do the same thing with compatibility mode to the ‘uestatus.exe’ file.

And you are ready to run the dialer to connect to a local partner of IPWireless network in your country.

If you successfully connected to the network operator, the modem dialer will be minimized in a tray icon on the bottom right taskbar.

You just upgraded your Windows version to the newest Windows 7 and want to install Huawei E220 USB 3G/HSDPA Modem to access internet? If you use Slackware 12, Centos 5.4 or Fedora 12, click the link to follow the tutorials.
It is very easy to do it. As we know that Windows is the most used and familiar operating system around the planet. Just plug the modem into a USB port, it will automatically detect the device. For the driver, it will be installed automatically when you install the dialer of the modem.

In Windows XP, it will run the Autorun file of the modem to install the dialer and drivers several seconds after we plug the modem into a USB port. In Windows 7, we need to manually run the Autorun file by exploring to the storage inside the modem. The installation process should appear.

Click Next and just accept the default for the installation process. The installation should completely finish.

Now it is the time to run the dialer. There should be a ‘Mobile Partner’ icon in your Desktop. Double-click that icon to run the dialer.

As you can see above, there is no Profile Name already configured. We need to create and configure the profile first. This profile must match to your account with your cellular operator. I use Indosat M2 Broom in Jakarta for example.

To create a profile name, click menu Tools > Options > Profile Management. In the Profile Management section, click New button to create a new profile.

You can create multiple profiles here depends on which provider you want to connect to. Click Save to save the profile.

Now it is the time to dial the modem to connect to access internet through you provider. If authenticated, everything is done.

Bing, the Microsoft’s search engine to fight with Google, was bringing twitter search to you since October 21, 2009 to provide real-time search Twitter status update. It’s still in beta version.
To try out Bing’s beta version of Twitter search you have to go to Bing.com/twitter. At the top of the page is a tag cloud with the top keywords on Twitter, and below that are sample tweets from those hot topics as well as links to see further results.

While Bing had unveiled its real-time search since Oct 21, 2009, Google just lunched its real-time search this month on December 7, 2009.
On Google search engine, you have to expand the ‘Show options’ under the search field to see the real-time search.
Today I tried both Bing and Google real-time search and below are the screenshot. It’s very very wonderful and really really real-time and the search real-time search war has begun

By default the Administrator account (the super user) is disabled on Windows 7 and you have to create a general account (with Administrator privilege) during installation. It will make your system is not harmful this way.

However, sometime you need to edit a file located in ‘C’ drive or system files and it would not be done if you are not using Administrator account. So how to enable the Administrator account on Windows 7? Here are the steps by step:

Click Start menu (bottom-left Windows logo) and then ‘Control Panel’.

Then click System and Security > Administrative Tools

On the ‘Administrative Tools’ window, double click ‘Local Security Policy’

On the ‘Local Security Policy’ window, expand the ‘Local Policies’ and click on ‘Security Options’.

On this window you can see whether the Administrator account is disabled or enabled.

You need to create a password for the Administrator account to have the account able to log in to the system.

(ComputerWorld)

Guessing what eye-popping growth figures Microsoft Corp. will trumpet for SharePoint, its popular portal and collaboration app, has become an annual parlor game for fans and detractors alike.

At Microsoft’s first global conference for SharePoint in May 2006, which 1,300 people attended in Seattle, Microsoft said the software had 75 million licensed users.

That number grew a year later to 85 million licensed users, generating $800 million in annual revenue.

Last year, Microsoft reported more than $1 billion in SharePoint sales and more than 100 million users.

At this week’s sold-out worldwide SharePoint conference, which has drawn 8,000 to Las Vegas, Microsoft said SharePoint is defying the company’s slump, growing more than 20%, to $1.3 billion, according to Jeff Teper, corporate vice president for SharePoint.

Teper hinted that SharePoint’s licensed user base may be as high as 130 million today, saying its year-on-year growth was “roughly in relation to our revenue.”

Windows’ replacement?

That would seems to provide compelling evidence that SharePoint is preparing to enter Microsoft’s pantheon of ubiquitous platforms along with Windows and Office. CEO Steve Ballmer has called SharePoint Microsoft’s “next big operating system.”

It’s even more impressive considering the software’s short history. First introduced in 2000 under the name Office Server Extensions as a tool for hosting Microsoft Office documents on the Web, the software underwent several minor name changes, reflective of Microsoft’s changes in positioning against incumbent collaboration and groupware apps such as Novell’s GroupWise and IBM’s then-dominant Lotus Notes.

Early on, SharePoint had the reputation of being a jack-of-all-trades that, out of the box, was a master of none, said Michael Sampson, a consultant and former analyst at Ferris Research.

“In 2001, I wrote a report that said, ‘Don’t touch it.’ In 2004, I wrote the same thing. It wasn’t until 2007 that I said, ‘It’s good enough,’ ” Sampson said.

Despite the zig-zagging, SharePoint grew quickly. A year and a half after the release of SharePoint Portal Services, the software had 7 million users.

Two years later, the software, now called Windows SharePoint Services (WSS), had more than quadrupled to 30 million users in January 2005.

Eighteen months later, that number more than doubled again to 75 million users, by which time the software had a new name, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS), with WSS kept only for the free version.

Bundling pays off

One constant is that since 2001, Microsoft has bundled SharePoint’s Client Access License (CAL) as part of its Core CAL Suite, said Paul DeGroot, a licensing analyst at independent firm Directions on Microsoft.

CALs are licenses that Microsoft requires companies to buy for desktop users of a server application.

“Even though a lot of customers didn’t know what SharePoint was at the time, they bought the Core CAL Suite because it included CALs for Windows and Exchange, which they did use, and Systems Management Server [now called System Center Configuration Manager], which a few more used,” DeGroot said.

“So there’s no question that in the early days, SharePoint’s ‘momentum’ was illusory. Many people were getting the Core CAL, and almost accidentally getting SharePoint CALs,” he said.

Those buyers of SharePoint never deploy the software, turning it into shelfware. “There are no doubt a lot of SharePoint licenses that are, at minimum, underused,” DeGroot said.

Sampson wrote a widely read blog post in March 2008 decrying Microsoft’s announcement of its 100 million users and its $1 billion revenue figure.

“Licensed users does not equal real users,” he said, estimating that the percentage of SharePoint licensees actually using the software is “more than 40% but less than 70%.”

It could be even lower. An IDC poll of 262 enterprise IT managers published this month found that an average of 22% of corporate employees were actively using SharePoint.

Microsoft’s Teper said while discussions of SharePoint-as-shelfware “might have been a valid source of discussion” five years ago, that is not so today.

“Eighty percent to 90% of the companies that have licensed SharePoint are actively using it, and the majority are using it broadly,” Teper said.

He cited large enterprises with major active SharePoint deployments, including Tyson Foods (104,000 users), Kraft Foods (98,000) and Coca-Cola Enterprises (72,000), as well as oil and pharmaceutical companies with 50,000 to 100,000 SharePoint users, though Teper declined to name them.

Also, government is a strong user base, he said. “Most of the major military organizations around the world are avid SharePoint users,” Teper said, including the U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine Corps.

Teper strenuously denied that SharePoint remains a “throw-in” for many companies looking for a discount.

“If you talk to customers, if you talk to the Microsoft field sales, if you talk to Steve Ballmer, they would all say that SharePoint is one of the lead dogs in any CAL licensing discussion,” he said. “We do not see shelfware.”

Rosier than reality revenue?

Teper also strongly denied a more serious charge that had been floating around the analyst community: that Microsoft allocates discounts given to buyers of the Enterprise CAL Suite mostly to products such as Windows Server, Exchange or System Center Configuration Manager, rather than to SharePoint, aiming to pump up SharePoint’s revenue to demonstrate the software’s momentum.

“I can’t reveal accounting stuff, but that is absolutely not true,” Teper said.

IDC analyst Melissa Webster, who has closely studied SharePoint’s sales and user ship figures, said, “I didn’t believe them in the beginning either.” But after going over the discount allocation issue with Microsoft “using a very fine-tooth comb,” Webster said she’s convinced Microsoft is not inflating its SharePoint revenue.

“As a public company, Microsoft is governed by pretty darn strict laws, that have only gotten stricter,” she said. Also, the product groups inside Microsoft are highly competitive fiefdoms that are unlikely to sacrifice their sales to pump up SharePoint, she said.

Even if SharePoint’s actual use today is overstated, most analysts feel the product’s impact on the market isn’t.

Sampson described SharePoint as a “juggernaut,” while DeGroot called it “the most successful noncore product ['core' being products like e-mail, file and print, for example] that Microsoft has come up with.”

“Microsoft may oversell its success, but that should be considered normal corporate behavior, and there is some fire underneath the smoke,” he said.

“I go to a lot of places where the IT department says that SharePoint usage is just growing like a weed,” said Alan Pelz-Sharpe, an analyst at CMS Watch. “So it’s possible there are actually more SharePoint users than are actually licensed for it. But nobody really knows.”