Today is Microsoft’s own Steve Ballmer’s 54th birthday. Steve has been the CEO of Microsoft since January of 2000. Before that, he was Microsoft’s 30th employee joining before Windows 1.0 back in 1980. For those that haven’t seen this guy selling Windows 1.0, he’s quite the salesman!
Happy Birthday, Steve!
Microsoft has announced that it has released the new Windows Intune, a service that allows you to remotely administer several tasks on end users PC’s. It is designed for small businesses and a 30 day trial is available.
Your employees depend on you to keep their PCs running at their best, whether they are in the office or on the road. Windows Intune simplifies and helps businesses manage and secure PCs using Windows cloud services and Windows 7. The Windows Intune cloud service delivers management and security capabilities through a single Web-based console so you can keep your computers and users operating at peak performance from anywhere. Give your users the best Windows experience with Windows 7 Enterprise or standardize your PCs on the Windows version of your choice. Windows Intune fits your business by giving you big tech results with a small tech investment. The result? Less hassle, and peace of mind knowing that your employees’ PCs are well-managed and highly secure.
After 3 months on the market, there is finally a demo on XBox Live for Zumba Fitness for the Kinect. My wife does Zumba in person, and it’s supposed to be extremely exhausting and worthwhile.
Join the party with Zumba Fitness®, a one-of-a-kind, dance fitness workout set to sexy, high-energy Latin and international music! Find your rhythm and let go as Zumba instructor fan favorites Gina Grant, Tanya Beardsley and Zumba’s creator Beto guide you through 30 routines that will work you into a sweat and make you forget you’re even exercising. Featuring exclusive music and choreography, Zumba Fitness® for Kinect lets you see yourself on screen and naturally dance controller-free in an ultra fun interactive fitness party that’s focused on the joy of movement!
Microsoft has filed a lawsuit against Barnes & Noble for their use of the Android operating system being used in their Nook and Nook Color. I haven’t really followed the previous lawsuits with Android and how they infringe on Microsoft’s copyrights, but apparently, they have come to agreements with others.
Other users of Android, including smartphone maker HTC, have licensed the Microsoft technology, Gutierrez noted. "We have tried for over a year to reach licensing agreements with Barnes & Noble, Foxconn and Inventec," he said. "Their refusals to take licenses leave us no choice but to bring legal action to defend our innovations and fulfill our responsibility to our customers, partners, and shareholders to safeguard the billions of dollars we invest each year to bring great software products and services to market."
A new Halo: Reach update is coming to XBox Live on March 29th (apparently). It brings in new game types and more custom maps designed by the Halo fans in the community.
As for the update, the April Matchmaking revision will see a laundry list of changes to Halo’s online universe. These updates include the addition of new game types and more community-made maps into the multiplayer hopper, as well as the implementation of a list of minor tweaks.
Rumors are flying that Microsoft is getting ready for their new entry into the next generation of video game consoles for release in 2015. Since the XBox 360 was released in 2005, it has sold over 50 million consoles, with over half with XBox Live memberships and 20% of users with a new Kinect accessory. With success like that, I can see why Microsoft has decided on a 10 year lifespan for the 360. Now, I am sure between now and the new machine there will be MANY different rumors on specifications, designs, etc., and I can’t wait for the speculation.
Ben Peterson, a graphics designer, posted his online web portfolio recently. Peterson details several projects he is working on, including one for Microsoft. “Collaboration with Microsoft’s IEB design group investigating future user experiences and hardware for 2015,” states Peterson’s entry earlier this month. ZDNet spotted the web portfolio and believes that Peterson has been drafted in by Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business (IEB) to create concept designs for a new Xbox. Peterson also posted an image alongside his portfolio that is difficult to judge. The image appears to show a black device with sharp edges (see below).
Bing Maps has a new application where you can view Japan before and after the March 11th, 2011 earthquake. There is definitely a lot of difference between pre-earthquake and after the destruction. There is also a link to find out how you can help the Japanese in this time of need.
The Internet is full of great information, and anything is available from music to movies to books and everything in between. However, with all that great knowledge and entertainment there is also the bad and the ugly. For those with children in the house that also use the family computer, this could be a recipe for disaster. Thankfully, Microsoft has seen the dark side of the Internet and being a family oriented company, they have included a set of Parental Controls within Windows 7 (it is also available for Windows Vista).
There are a lot of options available to keep your family safe while online and offline. Parental Controls can limit what sites your child goes to with a whitelist and a blacklist, limit what games they can and cannot play, limit when they can use the computer and what programs they are allowed to run. There are a few initial steps to configure before you can set all the options, however.
First, you need to make sure your main Administrator account is password protected. This makes it so that your child cannot access your account and turn off Parental Controls. Next, you need to make sure you have another account made for the person that you are going to enable Parental Controls. This can all be done from the Parental Controls icon within the Control Panel.
Now that the hard part is over, it is time to setup the actual Parental Controls, which is pretty self-explanatory. You can access the Parental Controls through the Control Panel.
You set time limits for computer usage for any time day or night. This isn’t the best way to control access to the PC for the kids, but if you want to make sure they go to bed on time, get their homework done, or only like to allow them a certain amount of time online, this is a great place to set a limit on when they can use the PC. The one thing that you cannot do is limit the duration of time online. You can only limit the hours and days which they can or cannot use the PC.
Most kids enjoy gaming on the PC, from the basic Solitare to the newest Crysis. But, some games are not appropriate for all ages. You can set limits on what games can be played based on the ESRB rating. This can keep the kids from downloading and playing a Mature rated game without your knowledge.
You can also limit or block which games have certain content, rather than the rating. If you want to have any game other than those with drugs and alcohol, that option is available. There is a long list of items you can block. This will block the entire game from running under the Kids account, not block the actual content of the game itself. You can also block individual games from running that are already installed on your computer.
The last feature of the Windows 7 Parental Controls is the ability to block individual applications. The best way to do this is to enable all and only disable the few that you do not want them to be able to access. Some are dependent on others, and some are easily overlooked that could interfere with legitimate usage.
After all is said and done with Parental Controls, your kids will be limited as to what they can do. But, there are weaknesses in the built in controls. Microsoft has recognized this and added an Additional Controls which allows you to select other providers to compliment the built in settings. The one that is available from the start is the Windows Live Family Safety, part of Windows Live Essentials. This allows you to monitor more of their online activities including who they can chat with, what websites they can and cannot visit, and get reports on what sites they do visit.
While no parental control program is completely secure and able to protect your family from everything, Parental Controls definitely takes a step in the right direction. Coupled with Windows Live Family Safety, you will have peace of mind of your childs safety while on the PC.
Resources:
Windows Live Family Safety 2011: http://explore.live.com/windows-live-family-safety
PC users are always looking for ways to speed up their systems, looking for that one magical setting to make everything run smooth, fast and stable. Unfortunately, there is no single magical setting. There are many factors that go into making your PC faster using your current hardware. Sure, you could spend hundreds of dollars to upgrade to the fastest, newest hardware, but we want to get the most for our money and our existing hardware. For that, there is a program called TuneUp Utilities. I will be reviewing their latest version, TuneUp Utilities 2011 today.
TuneUp Utilities packages multiple tools into one package, allowing you to get the most performance from your PC with very little work. Of course, that is the claim. I aim to see if this is in fact true, if there are any noticeable improvements in speed and usability. I have never owned or used an all-in-one maintenance tool for my PC, this will be my first experience with one.
Setup is very simple, very similar to other applications. Once the initial setup is complete, you are presented with a 1-Click Maintenance window. You can run an initial scan that cleans and defragments your registry (registry defragging is still considered snake oil by some), deletes temporary files, fixes broken shortcuts and defrag your hard drive.
The main window of the program has five tabs to help you tune your PC for maximum performance, as well as scheduling routine maintenance.
The Tuning status can help speed up your system using tweaks and registry changes. You go through a series of questions that help the program improve system and network speed. It also suggests which programs to remove if you haven’t used them in a selected period of time. There are programs on systems that you run once and are done, but they still sit there using system resources. The people at TuneUp have tested thousands of programs, installing and uninstalling to find out which ones use the most resources and how much performance you gain by uninstalling the program.
The Program Deactivator can enable and disable certain programs that present a higher load on your system. You can disable the high load programs until they are needed to gain more speed.
Another great feature that I love about this program is the Live Optimization, which increases the priority of your running program to make it a bit faster. This does its work on the fly when your application needs more CPU resources.
The built in Turbo Mode shuts down certain processes to make your PC faster, which comes in handy when you are playing a game or other high processor use. It does things such as shut down automatic defrag, automatic updates, device detection, media sharing, and other resource hogs. Does this really speed things up? In theory, yes. I didn’t notice any FPS gain at all, but for those that could use the extra few percent increase in speed, it may be worth it.
So, does TuneUp Utilities really make your system faster? In short: yes. It frees up RAM by disabling programs that you don’t use, clears your temporary files, defrags your hard drive, and fixes errors that cause problems. Yes, you could do this by yourself, but it would take many hours to get everything the way that TuneUp does it, using quite a few separate programs.
TuneUp Utilities does this all automatically, in the background after the initial setup. I take care of my system using several different tools, which are supposed to do the same thing that TuneUp does, but there were still quite a few issues that TuneUp was able to diagnose and fix. There are many settings to tune your performance using the program, and it can take quite a while to manually do everything to your liking. The good part is that the automatic optimization works very well.
Yes, TuneUp Utilities costs around $50USD, but the money is well spent. The amount of time that is saves is well worth the money (time is money, they say!). There are a lot of places that try to sell you programs that do the same thing, but with a lot less features, commercials on television that promise to make your PC faster, but TuneUp Utilities delivers on that promise. My first thought of this program, like the others, was that it was a lot of snake oil, that makes you think your PC is faster, but nothing really improves. I was proven wrong this time. There are many ways to make your PC faster, and upgrading hardware is usually #1, but to get the most of your current hardware, I recommend a software product like TuneUp Utilities.
A Microsoft team in cooperation with the US Federal agents have taken down a major botnet, which was one of the largest out there: Rustock. Spam stopped from the botnet for quite a while, but it is probably only temporary.
The raiders brought a copy of the federal order allowing Microsoft to seize computers thought to have been taken over by the spam network, and that were relaying instructions to a million or more computers in the U.S. and elsewhere. Hard drives and computers were seized in the raids at the hosting providers. Much of the equipment had been leased by companies in other countries, according to Microsoft.
