Daily Archives: July 29, 2011

Microsoft, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Azure

4 power tools for students

Your kids can do a great job on even the toughest school projects with just a computer running the Windows operating system and the right information resources. Research no longer requires a trip to the neighborhood library, because a whole world of information—and the tools to put it all together—are right at home on your family computer.

 

 


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Here are four homework power tools that can turn your children’s ho-hum project into A+ work:

Microsoft Math 3.0

Microsoft PowerPoint 2010

Microsoft OneNote 2010

Microsoft Office.com images

Using these four tools can enrich your student’s learning experience and help them produce high-quality work.

You can find more tips for using these and many other tools for learning at Microsoft Education. Check out the Microsoft Student website for software offers and discounts, creative educational games and competitions, tips for staying organized, a student newsletter, lounge, and Facebook page, along with other resources to help students of all ages and abilities to make the most of their learning experience and to have fun doing it.

Microsoft Math
If your middle-school or high-school student is looking for just one resource to help them save time and complete high-quality math and science homework, Microsoft Math is it. From basic math to precalculus to physics, Microsoft Math helps students visualize and see mathematical and scientific concepts as they’ve never seen them before. It gives them step-by-step instructions to help them tackle even the most difficult problems, while gaining a deeper understanding of fundamental concepts.

Microsoft Math includes:

Step-by-step instructions to help solve difficult math problems with the Step-by-Step Equation Solver.

A full-featured graphing calculator, with large two-dimensional (2-D) and enhanced three-dimensional (3-D) color graphs to better illustrate problems and concepts.

The Formulas and Equations Library—a resource with more than 100 commonly used equations and formulas to help you identify and apply the right one for your problem.

The Triangle Solver—a graphing tool that helps you explore and better understand triangles and their parts.

The Unit Conversion Tool—a handy tool that quickly and easily converts units of measure, including length, area, volume, weight, temperature, pressure, energy, power, velocity, and time.

Ink Handwriting Support that recognizes handwritten problems and works with Tablet PCs and ultra-mobile PCs.
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Microsoft PowerPoint 2010
PowerPoint 2010 can help your kids put all the information they gather together into a dazzling presentation that their classmates and teachers will appreciate.

An easy-to-use but sophisticated program, PowerPoint 2010 includes dozens of ready-made slide templates to choose from in many categories, such as academic (now including Spanish class presentations), animals, nature, astronomy, conservation, and world culture. Your students can simply choose a design template, plug in their information, select the slide transitions they want, and be ready to give their presentation to the class. It also allows students to design their own look and feel for their slide presentations.

PowerPoint 2010 includes many new and improved features, many of which students will especially appreciate. For example, you can now automatically save versions of presentations, embed, edit, and play videos in presentations, use transitions with 3-D motion graphics effects, and turn your presentation into a video. For students on the go (and who isn’t these days?), the new PowerPoint Web App is a great advantage. They can store their presentation on a web server and work on it from anywhere, just by opening the presentation in their web browser. That means they can work even when they’re away from home, and they can easily collaborate with other students on group projects, even if their schedules and locations don’t overlap. All Office Web Apps are available by signing in to Windows Live.

If you’re switching from an earlier version of PowerPoint and you want to get up to speed fast, visit the PowerPoint Getting Started site to learn the basics, find the commands on the new ribbon, or take a brief introductory training course.
In Editing view, in PowerPoint Web App, you can add and delete content and format text. You can also add, delete, duplicate, and hide slides.

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Microsoft OneNote 2010
Students have to gather and organize data from multiple sources, in addition to working on group projects with classmates and juggling classes, meetings, volunteer work, and social activities. OneNote 2010, a note-taking program that makes it easy to take, organize, manage, and share notes, can help simplify all these tasks.

Unlike paper systems or word processing applications, OneNote 2010 combines the ability to capture typed and handwritten text, diagrams, drawings, webpage content, and audio notes in one place, with the flexibility to organize and reuse them any way you want. There are many ways OneNote 2010 can help your kids in their studies. Kids can use it to record lectures, create outlines, take notes when they do research online, and organize their notes by page and section. After they’ve done their research, they can quickly create To Do lists and summaries of other tasks from the note tags. OneNote 2010 has many new features that students will love, including the familiar Office ribbon for commands, the ability to create and display equations, touch support, a mini translator, and automatic linking to the notes you’re taking, so they’ll never lose a reference. OneNote 2010 Web App is also new. Students can use it to sync their notebooks to the cloud using Windows Live and then read and edit them anywhere from any computer, using a web browser.

With OneNote, your kids can’t lose their notes or notebooks, they don’t have to carry heavy backpacks, and they can easily share notebooks with their classmates or teachers. Read Top reasons to use OneNote 2010 in the classroom.
You can capture many different kinds of sources in OneNote and keep all related information together on one page. Note tags help you keep track of your To Do list, questions, definitions, and much more.

Whether you’re new to OneNote or you’re switching from an earlier version, you may want to visit the Getting Started page to help you learn basics fast, find commands on the new ribbon, or take a short training on the new features.
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Microsoft Office.com images
No presentation would be complete without some kind of art—a photo, drawing, cartoon, or media clip.

Your students can search for and insert clip art right from PowerPoint 2010. If they want even more choices, they can access more than 150,000 pieces of art, photos, sounds, and animation on the Microsoft Office.com images site download what they want, and then insert it.

To access clip art and other images from PowerPoint:On the Insert tab, in the Images group, click Clip Art.

In the clip art pane, in the Search box, type what you are searching for.

In the Results should be box, select the check box for the kind of media you’re looking for—Illustrations, Photographs, Videos, Audio, or All Media Types.

Click Go.

Browse the images, and double-click the one that you want. PowerPoint immediately inserts it in your presentation.

Note: If you don’t see what you want and you want to search for more images on the Office.com site, all you have to do is click the Find more at Office.com link at the bottom of the clip art pane.

To download free clip art and other images from Office.com:Go to the Office.com images site.

Search the clip art categories for something you like.

Double-click the image. On the new page that opens, you can click Copy to clipboard to paste it in the board on the left while you continue to browse, or you can click Download if you want to use the image. If an image is close to but not exactly what you’re looking for, click More in This Category, or click See Similar Images to view a one-screen collage of similar images that you can browse. Double-click any thumbnail to add it to the clipboard on the left.

In the File Download dialog box, click Save. Navigate to where you want to save the image on your computer, and then click Save.

To insert the image in your presentation, on the Insert tab, in the Images group, click Picture. In the Insert Picture dialog box, navigate to the image, and then double-click it to insert it in your presentation.

PowerPoint 2010 gives you even more creative choices for using clip art in your presentations than previous versions—your kids can apply artistic textures and effects to the clip art and other images in their presentations, and they can copy and paste animated effects from one shape to another.

Each of these four tools makes it easy for your student to research and create high-quality school projects. But even more important, these homework power tools can open your children’s minds to a world of curiosity, ideas, inspiration, and creativity.

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iPad 2 Tips Tricks and Shortcuts

While some might argue that it can almost replace a full-fledged computer, the iPad was designed to be simple. Even if you have very little tech savvy, you can probably pick up Apple’s latest tablet and master the basic features in a matter of minutes. And the longer you spend swiping your way around the touch-based iOS, the more you’ll learn. Like it is with any operating system, though, there are just some things that aren’t obvious. You could (gasp!) pore through the 22-chapter iPad 2 User Guide (it’s got three appendices too), to make sure you’re not missing anything, but where’s the fun in that?

 

 

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After almost a month of testing and using the iPad 2, we’ve learned some cool tricks and we want to share. In the slideshow, you’ll find general tips that apply to multiple applications, along with those specific to Safari, Maps, iPod, and Photos. Whether you’re a seasoned Mac or iOS user, or even an Apple newbie, there’s something here for you. Have a tip of your own to share? Let us know in the comments below.

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10 hot areas of expertise for IT specialists

My recent article 10 Ways to become an IT superstar generated a lot of feedback. Quite a few IT pros out there apparently want to increase their visibility (and paychecks). One thing that drew a lot of attention in the piece was the advice to specialize. Okay, readers replied, but what area should I specialize in? They wanted to know which subsets of skills are the easiest to master and/or which ones will deliver the most bang for the buck. So in this follow-up, I’ll look at some of the IT specialties that are likely to be in demand in the near future.

Note: This article is also available as a PDF download.

1: To the cloud
You saw this one coming, didn’t you? All the major technology companies seem to be “all in” with cloud computing — Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Dell, CA Technologies, and more. According to recent surveys, at least 50% of organizations are already using some form of cloud computing, and Gartner says the adoption rate is increasing by about 17% per year. According to Dice.com, the number of ads for cloud computing jobs has grown by 344% over the last two years.

2: Virtually speaking
Virtualization has been hot for a while, as companies jumped in to reap the cost and management benefits of consolidating their servers and delivering virtualized desktops and applications to their users. Virtualization is also the foundation of cloud computing, so those with expertise in deploying virtualized IT environments will be in demand both in the public cloud arena and with those organizations that plan to stick with private clouds for now. Dice.com’s data showed a 78% growth in the number of jobs related to server virtualization.

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3: Mobile computing and consumerization integration
Everyone knows mobile computing is hot. Smartphones and tablets, along with laptops and netbooks, are the driving forces behind the increasing consumerization of enterprise IT. There are plenty of advantages for the company: Because employees are willing to buy their own devices, the organization saves money. Because those employees can stay in touch with work, read and respond to email, view attachments, and create documents no matter where they are, they become more productive.

But when employees purchase their own equipment, the downside is that you lose the standardization that comes with company-issued devices. You end up with many types of devices, made by different hardware vendors, running different operating systems and different apps, configured differently. Getting them to seamlessly connect to the company network can be a challenge. Getting them all connected to the company network without putting the network at risk is even more of a challenge. IT pros who have expertise in integrating these new devices into the network and managing them once they’re connected are likely to be in demand by many companies.

Application lifecycle management (ALM) will become increasingly important as the environment becomes more complex with some functions in the cloud and some onsite. Bob Aiello believes configuration management (CM) will evolve into ALM, and the outlook is bright for those with these expanded skills.

4: It’s all about the apps
As Toni Bowers reported in a recent blog post, the hottest job category for 2011 (according to CareerCast.com) is that of software engineer. But it’s a position that’s a bit different from the programmer of yesteryear. On the programming side of the fence, it’s all about apps these days. As smartphones and tablets become ubiquitous, companies will need to develop their own specialized apps for those devices — just as they’ve needed to develop proprietary software for desktop systems.

In addition, cloud-based applications will be big in the coming years, and that means software engineers will need new skills to design, develop, and implement programs that run in the cloud environment. Those who are familiar with Windows Azure, Google App Engine, VMware’s Spring Framework, Force.com, and other cloud development platforms will be a step ahead of the game.

5: Security and compliance
With cybercrime on the rise and increasing concern over the possibility of cyber terrorism and/or cyber warfare, security specialists are likely to continue to be in demand for the foreseeable future. There is a saying in the law enforcement community regarding job security: Thanks to human nature, there will always be criminals — and thus, there will always be a need for the police. That same dark side of human nature ensures that there will always be those who misuse computer technology to attack, intrude, and otherwise attempt to do harm to computer systems. That means there will always be a need for computer and network security specialists.

In addition, more and more government regulation of the Internet and networks, as well as regulatory provisions concerning data privacy, mean security is no longer optional for most organizations. Those who specialize in regulatory compliance are likely to see their job prospects increase as more industries come under the regulatory umbrella.

6: Four to six
When the IPv4 address pool was created in the 1980s, it was thought that the more than 4.2 billion unique addresses possible under the system would be enough. However, the creators didn’t foresee the Internet boom or the possibility that one day, we would be connecting not just multiple computers per person, but printers, phones, and even household appliances to the Internet. This month (February 2011), IANA announced that it has allocated the last batch of remaining IPv4 addresses.

The solution to the problem has been around for a while: IPv6. The new version of the Internet Protocol supports a whopping 340 undecillion (2 to the 128th power) addresses. But IPv6 deployment is not an easy task; working with it requires learning a whole new IP language. IPv6 addresses don’t even look like their IPv4 counterparts; they’re notated in hexadecimal instead of dotted quad. IPv6 is also much more sophisticated than IPv4, with many new features (including built-in security mechanisms). Most important, IPv6 does not interoperate with IPv4, so transition technologies are required to get IPv4 networks to communicate with IPv6 networks.

Obviously, now that we’ve reached the end of the available IPv4 addresses, more and more organizations will be forced to migrate to IPv6. Because of the complexity, there is a shortage of IT personnel who have mastered and really understand IPv6. If you’re one of the few, the proud, who specializes in this area, you’re likely to have plenty of business in the upcoming years.

7: Business intelligence
Business intelligence (BI) refers to technologies that are used for reporting and analyzing data, including recognizing trends and patterns, to make better strategic business decisions. BI uses techniques such as data mining to extract and identify patterns and correlations in large amounts of data.

According to a recent study of midsize organizations that was done by IBM, BI/analytics is the second most popular IT investment (after infrastructure) that companies have planned for 2011. This indicates that specializing in the BI field can be a lucrative strategy and a good investment in your future.

8: The social network
Social networking started as a consumer-driven technology, but the use of social media is now being embraced in a big way by businesses. It can be used to connect with customers, colleagues, and partners to build solid business relationships. That doesn’t mean you’ll automatically be a hot property on the job market just because you tweet and update your Facebook page regularly. But it does mean organizations are looking for people who know how to integrate social media into the business environment in a way that furthers the goals of the organization.

Many companies are looking to develop their own social sites that give them more control and let them target their audiences more precisely. Specialists in social media are sure to find many opportunities as more and more companies stop seeing social sites as just time-wasters that should be blocked and start to recognize the potential for business use. This article offers more information about exactly what a social media specialist does.

9: Public sector computing
On the one hand, many state and local governments are cutting back on their budgets and laying off personnel. On the other hand, governmental agencies are depending more and more on technology to perform their functions more efficiently with fewer personnel. That means specialists in public sector computing can likely find a home in one of the many thousands of town, city, county, state, or federal government agencies that exist in the United States alone.

Although salaries for government jobs are often smaller than those in the private sector, they sometimes offer better benefits, more time off, and a less pressured work environment. There are a number of IT subspecialties in the public sector, as well. These include computer forensics investigators, criminalistics analysts, and personnel who specialize in secure mobile communications technologies for public service agencies.

10: To your health
The healthcare industry is in a state of flux in the United States. Government mandates are predicted to result in cost reduction measures that may result in personnel cuts and/or discourage young people from entering medicine. At the same time, the baby boomer generation is aging and requiring health care. Technology may be one way to fill the gap.

An IDC report published late last year showed that the U.S. healthcare market for IT was valued at $34 billion and was predicted to increase by 24% over the next three years. That translates into a demand for software developers and IT professionals who understand the healthcare industry and its special needs and who know how to integrate technology into the caregiver’s world without dumping a steep learning curve onto people already working in an understaffed and overworked environment.