News: Microsoft Touts Azure Cloud Services

 

Bob Muglia, President of Microsoft's Business and Tools Division, used his speech at the Professional Developers Conference Microsoft to boost the company's Blue screens as a platform as a service. He introduced some new features, introduced a series of new demos and examples, and talked about how he thought Blue was the only platform used as a service and how it is changing cloud computing software development.

Windows Azure is "operating system for PaaS," he said, with a large number of services, with all sorts of things such as authentication, caching. He said Microsoft has been working on these looks for a long time, saying that "there is a ragged set of operations acquired in the last 12 months. He talked about how Microsoft tools based on the products created for traditional servers and re -designed for the cloud, for example, talked about how SQL Server is designed to run on a single server or a cluster;. but SQL Azure runs on thousands of servers across six data centers worldwide, so that developers do not have to think about it.

Muglia also announced the Windows Azure market, including market data (formerly Dallas) with over 40 partners who provide monitoring tools now.

Muglia also talked about a "service composition", which has all services available in Blue or elsewhere on the Internet to create the "backbone" of an Azure application. James Conard shown that demonstrate the addition of linking multiple services in Visual Studio 2010 through the composition AppFabric service.

This year's Professional Developers Conference was different than in previous years. It was held at Microsoft itself, and therefore has far fewer participants live, only 1,000. However, it is oriented towards the Microsoft web site saying that there were 30 thousand people in line.

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Windows Power Management.

Compared to earlier versions of Windows, Windows 7 offers new power management options so you can lessen the energy consumption of your computer.

To use the power management function:

• Go to Start menu.
• Type “Power Options” in the Search field and press Enter.

On the Power Options windows, you’ll see three preferred power plans: Balanced, Power Saver, and High Performance.

• Select which power plan you would prefer by ticking the circle.
• Adjust the settings of your preferred power plan by clicking on “Change plan settings”.

If you don’t like your newly-defined settings, you can always go back to the default settings by clicking on “Restore default settings for this plan”.

You can also create your own custom power plan by clicking on “Create a power plan” on the left portion of the window.

On the Create Power Plan window, select the power plan that best suits you and give it a name. Click on the Next button.

On the next screen, choose the time that the monitor turns off the display and the time the computer is put to sleep. Click on Create and you’re done.If you click on “Change plan settings” and “Change advanced power settings” you’ll be presented with a lot more options to change the power settings. This, however, should only be changed if you have full knowledge about power setting configurations as this might cause your computer to not work properly.

Once you have created your own custom power plan, it will now show in the Power Options window under Preferred Plans.

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Changing the drive location of My Documents

Tags: Windows tips, Win7 Helps, Win7 Tips, DVD to iTunes, Win7 Tutorials, Windows Live

You have the ability to open your My Documents folder directly via your Windows start menu but if you don’t have enough physical storage for your document then there´s only one smart solution to access the folder quickly and that is to change the location.

Normally this is located in "C:\Users\<Username>\My Documents". To do so, browse to "C:\Users\<Username>" using Windows Explorer (Press WINDOWS KEY + E to access this). Then, right click on My Documents and select Properties.

Now, click the Location tab at the top, then click Move which allows you to select the new location for your My Documents folder.

Windows will ask if you want to move the current files from your My Documents folder to the new location. Select here yes or no. (Depends on your needs).

Now you should have a new My Documents folder with enough free space.

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Using the Windows 7 desktop gadgets

Windows 7 has mini-programs called gadgets, which provides information in a quick look. Information and tools are readily accessible and to simply illustrate this is just like keeping your eye on world headlines and not stop what you are currently doing.

To easily access and start playing with Desktop Gadgets, just right-click on your desktop and you will easily find Gadgets.

Then this should lead you to this very elegant-looking page, our Desktop Gadgets. The default list should include Calendar, Clock, CPU Meter, Currency, Feed Headlines, Picture Puzzle, Slide Show, Weather and Windows Media Center.

For you to place your chosen gadget(s), just right-click on the item and click on Add or simply drag the specific gadget to your desired location in the desktop.

Once on your desktop, you may right-click on the gadget and choose from a variety of options like closing it or changing the size, putting it on "Always on top" of other applications, changing its Opacity and of course move it wherever you desire it to be.

Closing a gadget is super easy. Simply click on the Close (X) button in the top right corner of the gadget when you over it.

Some desktop gadgets can be enlarged so you can see information better. You will be seeing an extra button like this (shown below with arrow pointing outward) which you can click.

To revert back to the previous/smaller gadget, you will have to click that same button but this time the arrow is pointing inward.

To free your desktop from gadgets all at once, all that you have to perform is right-click on your desktop, go to View and uncheck the option for "Show Desktop Gadgets".

To revert and show the gadgets again, follow the same process but check the option "Show Desktop Gadgets" this time.

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Windows 8 Will be Ready In 2012?

The celebration of Windows 7′s first birthday with decent sales record was just some days ago. But many people have already turned their eyes towards the next one after Windows 7, willing to know what have Microsoft planned for us next. To date, though MS have been rather silent on the news of their future operating system, MS Netherlands seem to have a news leak. Just by the time it was celebrating the 1st birthday of Windows 7 on the official news site of MS, they somehow let slip that they were planning to introduce Windows 8 to the market in 2012.

For the folks who cannot understand Dutch, Google translate will help to know the basic meanings of the following message. Even with this badly translated passage it's quite clear what the message is about:

The first update of Windows 7 is the new version of Windows Live Essentials (explore.live.com) became available in mid-June. Furthermore, Microsoft is of course the next version of Windows. But it will take about two years before 'Windows 8' on the market.

So long as MS have not changed their plans of releasing Windows 8, it will make 3 year gap between the Win 7 and next OS. In order to compensate for the disappointment of Vista, MS released Win 7 ealier than anticipated and they did get folks back on their side. Therefore, I am wondering the success of Win 7 may gain them adequate time for preparing the Win 8? In that case, will 2 years be enough for them to develop an edition OS better than Win 7? If Win 8 gets into the market so soon, what will it look like? Let's just wait and see.

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Creating and minimizing your startup programs

When you are always using the same programs it can be helpful to load them automatically as soon as you start up your system.

I'll show you first how to let them load automatically.

The program I always want to have running is the software SpeedFan. SpeedFan is a program that monitors voltages, fan speeds and temperatures in your computer. The software is installed as usual and it is running as always.

This is very simple, just follow the next steps.

• Go to Start menu
• Go to All Programs
• Open the program folder
• Click and hold the exe. File and drag it to your startup program folder

Now it will load automatically when you are starting up Windows 7. The only problem now is that you'll see an open program each time you startup you system and to me that's pretty annoying.
Just follow the next Tips to get it out of the way.

• Go to Start menu
• Go to All Programs
• Open the Startup folder
• Right-click on the program that you'd like to minimize
• And select Properties
• Here you'll see a Run option; select Minimized and click OK and you're done

Now you don't see SpeedFan when you start up your system but it is running.

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Limit the number of rotating flip 3D windows

There are several cool features in Windows 7. One of them is the rotating 3D Windows to choose a new program window. If you want to use this action you need to hold down TAB + Windows Button at the same time. It performs the same action as ALT+TAB but now you see the Windows rotating (for those that didn’t know this).

While this can look pretty cool, it can sometimes be a problem. If you are like me and most of the time you work with lots of programs running, then these rotating windows don’t look very nice. It’s also a problem for slower computers, rotating several windows can use a lot of power from your system.

To solve this problem we need to edit some things in the registry. We are now limiting the number of flip 3D Windows.

• Go to Start menu
• Select All Programs
• Go to Accessories and open Run (or simply press the hotkey WINDOWS KEY+R)
• Now type in “regedit” and press OK (you can also do this by typing “regedit” on the Search field of the Start menu and then pressing Enter)

Your Registry Editor is now opened and you should go the following Registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USERS\Software\Microsoft\Windows\DWM.

• Now go to the Edit menu or right click in the right window.
• Choose New>DWORD (32-bit) Value to create a new entry.
• Name this entry Max3DWindows.
• Now right-click and choose Modify.
• Now you can set the maximum amount of windows you want to have rotating. For people with slower computers 5 might be the way to go. Click OK and that's it!

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