Author: jay f

 

Microsoft Money Plus will not be available for purchase after June 30, 2009. All purchased Money Plus products must be activated prior to Jan. 31, 2011.

With banks, brokerage firms and Web sites now providing a range of options for managing personal finances, the consumer need for Microsoft Money Plus has changed. After suspending annual updates of Money Plus in 2008, Microsoft is announcing today that we will no longer offer Microsoft Money Plus for purchase after June 30, 2009.
We would like to thank the many dedicated users who have been enthusiastic supporters of Microsoft Money over the years, as well as our partner financial institutions who helped pioneer a digital vision of financial management.

Microsoft remains committed to helping customers chart a course to financial well-being. The MSN Money Web site will continue to provide personal finance information and advice plus comprehensive market news and quotes. We will continue to evolve and enhance the online MSN offering in the coming months.

Current Money Plus customers who have questions or concerns can find additional information here.

As posted on the Microsoft Site

The World’s Premier Student Technology Competition

"I wish there had been an Imagine Cup when I was growing up. It gets people involved in seeing that software is changing the world."

–Bill Gates                        
Chairman, Microsoft Corp.

Everything that the world may become "someday" lies in the hands of young people today. As they look at the road ahead, their close relationship with technology enables them to dream in ways we never have before. Put the two together, and you have young minds holding the tools that can make their vision a reality.
This is the recipe that inspired Microsoft to create the Imagine Cup. What begins with a burst of inspiration and a lot of hard work can become a future software breakthrough, a future career, or a flourishing new industry. The Imagine Cup encourages young people to apply their imagination, their passion and their creativity to technology innovations that can make a difference in the world – today. Now in its seventh year, the Imagine Cup has grown to be a truly global competition focused on finding solutions to real world issues.
Open to students around the world, the Imagine Cup is a serious challenge that draws serious talent, and the competition is intense. The contest spans a year, beginning with local, regional and online contests whose winners go on to attend the global finals held in a different location every year.  The intensity of the work brings students together, and motivates the competitors to give it their all. The bonds formed here often last well beyond the competition itself.

This was taken from the site http://imaginecup.com/

 

So now here the link to the finalists http://imaginecup.com/Competition/Finalists.aspx 

 

Office Live Workspace lets you securely store documents on the Web and share large files with anyone you want from virtually anywhere. Now with 5GB of storage!

For FREE….

go here https://signup.workspace.office.live.com/signup/default.aspx

 

SharePoint Online—Evaluating Software-plus-Services
The Infrastructure Planning and Design team has released a new guide: SharePoint Online—Evaluating Software-plus-Services.
Considering an online solution for your organization’s collaboration services? The SharePoint Online—Evaluating Software-plus-Services guide presents a clear comparison of SharePoint collaboration technologies across on-premises, standard hosting, and dedicated hosting scenarios. It is designed to be used as a framework for evaluating the business and technical feasibility of moving to Microsoft SharePoint Online. It identifies key SharePoint workloads, and provides a customized assessment to help the organization determine which offering best meets the organization’s requirements.
Download the guide by visiting http://www.microsoft.com/ipd and selecting “SharePoint Online–Evaluating Software-plus-Services” under the IPD One-click Downloads, listed on the bottom right of the page.
Infrastructure Planning and Design streamlines the planning process by:

• Defining the technical decision flow through the planning process.
• Listing the decisions to be made and the commonly available options and considerations.
• Relating the decisions and options to the business in terms of cost, complexity, and other characteristics.
• Framing decisions in terms of additional questions to the business to ensure a comprehensive alignment with the appropriate business landscape.

Tell your peers about IPD guides! Please forward this mail to anyone who wants to learn more about Infrastructure Planning and Design guides.

Microsoft has announced a beta of the IIS Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Toolkit, a set of new tools that help Web developers, hosting providers, and server administrators improve their sites’ relevance in search results by recommending how to make them more search engine-friendly (read: more Bing-friendly). To install the toolkit, you’ll need the Microsoft Web Platform installer for use with IIS 7.0 and IIS 7.5.

The release candidate (RC) of System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 R2 is now available for public testing, Microsoft announced on Monday.

The application can be downloaded at the Microsoft Connect portal here, using a Windows Live ID. The RC is the last test version before final product availability.

This version of SCVMM 2008 R2 contains about six new features since the beta was released in March. Those features include storage migration, live migration queuing, rapid provisioning, host compatibility checks, Microsoft’s announcement.

To get the RC code go to connect.Microsoft.com

 

Microsoft Hardware will launch several new features for Windows 7 in the coming months for its peripherals; the first of which is a timesaving feature called Taskbar Favorites that gives Microsoft keyboard users a smart new way to access their most frequently used programs and documents. Taskbar Favorites will map to the location of applications on the improved Windows taskbar. The applications in the taskbar can be easily rearranged just by clicking and dragging, and Taskbar Favorites will automatically adapt to the applications’ new locations. Additional new benefits of the Microsoft Hardware and Windows 7 connection include the following:

• Device Stage. Microsoft Hardware mouse and keyboard products will support Device Stage, a Windows 7 feature that gives customers quick and easy access to common tasks, including product information, registration, settings and more for popular device categories such as cell phones, cameras, printers, portable media players and input devices.

• Windows Flip. Microsoft mouse and keyboard users can easily see a thumbnail preview of all open windows with the press of a button. A full-screen preview of the application will automatically display, enabling the user to better identify and select the desired application.

• Windows Live Movie Maker and Windows Live Photo Gallery. LifeCam users will be able to do more with photos and movies. With Movie Maker they can start a movie project with one click, and then upload video to social networking sites. Photo Gallery access will enable them to easily upload a photo that they can edit, tag and share with friends and family.

Beta versions of Microsoft mouse, keyboard, controller and webcam software are available now for Windows 7. Final versions of product software, which include Taskbar Favorites, Device Stage, Windows Flip, Windows Live Movie Maker and Windows Live Photo Gallery, will be available June 26 for mice and keyboards and July 31 for LifeCam products. For people currently using the Windows 7 release candidate, beta versions of software can be downloaded at http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/windows7/support.mspx.

 

How to add a boot from VHD to Windows Server 2008r2 or Windows 7 computer

Batch file follows

We will be backup up your current Boot configuration to c:Boot _backup

and store VHD in the c:vhd

for this demo we use the name with the actual file name of

Win7Ult.vhd

and add entry in the boot manager of "Windows 7 Ultimate – VHD Boot of Windows 7 Ultimate, 32 bit"

—————————–

@echo off

Echo : This command should be run from an elevated command prompt, and you should

Echo : have administrator rights on your local system.

Echo :

Echo : *** You should have Windows 7 installed as the base OS on your system. ***

Echo :

Echo : Your existing boot configuration will be backed up to c:boot_backupBCDBACKUP.

Echo :

Echo : One new boot entry will be created.

Echo : Windows 7 Ultimate – VHD Boot of Windows 7 Ultimate, 32 bit.

Echo :

Echo ————————————————————

Echo Press CTRL+C to cancel, or

Pause

Echo Backup BCD Database

BCDEdit /Export c:Boot _backupBCDBACKUP

IF NOT EXIST c:Boot _backupBCDBACKUP. (

Echo BCD Backup Failed

Echo Press CTRL+C to cancel or

Pause

) Else (

Echo BCD Backup Completed

)

ECHO Testing to verify VHD Files Available.

IF NOT EXIST c:VHD Win7Ult.vhd.VHD (

ECHO NOT FOUND: Win7Ult.vhd

Echo Press CTRL+C to cancel or

Pause

)

Echo Creating VHD Boot Entry for Windows 7 Ultimate

Start /W c:VHDBoot2VHD Win7Ult.vhd "Windows 7 Ultimate – VHD Boot of Windows 7 Ultimate, 32 bit"

 

Some good web sites

1. Secunia .com – Up to day security post of software and hardware security issues.

2. Seatguru.com – See what see are good on the plane you are flight you are taking. Sort by airline and aircraft.

3. Xe.com – Currency converter look up US dollars to euros or whatever currency easy and quickly.

4. Farecast.com – Searches multiple sites to get best airfare and also predicts fare prices.

 

It is not a question that should need to be discussed as we all need backups. You need a backup to protect you from what WILL happen! Your hard drive will die, you will get a virus, or your will just delete some by mistake. I do lot talks and when I ask when the last time you backed up I always get Hum… Let me think about that. Ask yourself when you backup last. Yesterday, Last week, Last month, Never? Why do user never back up is it too hard, is it I do not thing about It, or I am lazy? I believe no one taught you to back up! So here you go my top 5 reason to backup.

1. Backup because it protects you

2. Saves you Time

3. Because you have document you cannot replace

4. Because you have photos you cannot replace

5. Backups will save you MONEY

Yes not having a backup will cost you lots of money and time, just think about the cost of going to a computer shop and having them rebuild your computer from scratch. What do they get an hour $ 100.00, $ 150.00 or more? How many hours would it take to rebuild your computer 3, 6, 8 hours, do you have the original disks? Some people just buy a new computer as it cheaper than the labor charge but what about the software and data, you need to have a backup process and run it regularly.

Now that I explained what backup let talk what you can do.

My solution is two steps.

Step 1 make an Image copy of your computer this means make a full copy of your computer so if you have a major issue you can rebuild your computer quickly, (Great for hard drive failure) for example there are other solution I just showing you one, that you could use.

Reflect Free – Here a solution that free and make an Image file of your computer so that if you lose your computer you can quickly re-image it and be up in running in minutes not days. You need to make updated Image every time you install new hardware or software then you can just use another backup process to back up the changed data. This is a free product, Reflect Free can be found here at www.macrium.com

Step 2 run a backup at least once a week, daily would be better. You use programs like to do this (you could use the built-in backup program that come with your operating system

Or

If you have a spare USB drive you can also use Clickfree transformer or the Monster cable version, this hardware product connects your computer to the USB drive and automatically backs up all your data files.

There is a Solution that combines Step1, and step2 into 1 process you can purchase a hardware solution that will automate the complete solution. For example Seagate Replica you buy this solution, for 1 computer or you can but a version that protects multiple computers you connect via USB and it does all the work for you ( make a backup and keep any change you make to you system backup in real time!

Do the above steps and you can sleep knowing your computer is backed up, if you do not want to do this then at least do this use a USB flash drive and copy your important files to that so if you need a copy you have them. You can also use online backup services to backup you DATA not you applications, example of these services include www.box.net, or www Idrive.com.

Do yourself a favor pick a solution, and start NOW and backup.