Tag Archives: MCITP Trainnig Best Microsoft MCTS Certification

Android IceCream Sandwich 4.0 Features

Android IceCream Sandwich 4.0 aka ICS is finally announced and its packed with features. Galaxy Nexus is the flagship device that would run ICS.
ICS basically brings Android 3.x Honeycomb features to phones. Lets go through the features quickly:

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

30minutes Video demo of IceCream Sandwich

Android 4.0 ICS Features:

Updated Settings:  Revamped Settings screen organization. Items are arranged much better now.
Disabling Apps:  ICS adds the ability to disable an app outright. Don’t like an app that came preinstalled? Disable it! Its resources never run and its launcher icon is gone until you re-enable it.
Improved Download Manager.
Support for Encryption for Phones:  Honeycomb added full-device encryption, but ICS brings it to phones.
Audio Effects:  There’s a new audio effects API. Better media players coming!
New Font, Roboto: Droid Sans font is now gone for good.

OnScreen buttons, no hardware buttons: You dont need any hardware buttons for running ICS device, all the buttons: back, home are on-screen. Like Honeycomb, the buttons go invisible, smartly, to let you enjoy full screen video.
Resizable Widgets, Folders, Favorites: Dragging apps and contacts on top of each other create re-arrangeable folders. Users can stow their favorite apps, links, and folders into a new Favorites tray for quick and easy access
Screenshots: Hold down the power button and the volume down button to take a screenshot.
Notifications Revamped: Music controls have been integrated, and notifications can be dismissed by swiping
Improved Copy & Paste
Face Unlock
Enhanced Talk-to-Text: It’s more accurate.
Browser Tabs, offline: Upto 16 browser tabs. You can also save web pages offline
Gmail: Gmail now supports two-line previews, and sports a new context-sensitive action bar at the bottom of the screen. Gesture support allows you to swipe left and right between emails.
Contacts – People App: Contacts get re-vamped by showing contacts from Google+, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Data Usage: You can now look at the details of what app is doing what with your data usage. Best part: The ability to limit data usage to a certain threshold.
Camera: Image stabilization, improved autofocus, and integration with other apps for sending photos or instant upload to Google+, built-in face detection, panorama and time lapse modes, and on-the-fly photo retouching and enhancements.
Android Beam: An secure NFC-powered sharing platform that lets users share nearly any kind of content, save for applications (in that case, a link to the Market is sent instead)

Lightning strikes Thunderbird with a little Microsoft Outlook

Mozilla has released the first stable build of its Thunderbird add-in, Lightning 1.0, which adds various organizer tools to Thunderbird, including a calendar, to-do list and events manager, giving it a more Outlook-like feel.

 

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

 

Version 1.0 represents the first stable release of the product, and is fully compatible with Thunderbird 8.0, which has just been released.

Lightning can be downloaded as a separate XPI file and installed manually, or you can open Thunderbird and locate it via the Tools > Add-Ons menu. Once installed, a new Events and Tasks menu appears in Thunderbird as well as an Events pane that can be tweaked to show a list of events, tasks or combination of both for the currently selected day.

A separate calendar view, which opens in its own dedicated tab, can be accessed either from the Events and Tasks menu or by hitting [Ctrl] + [Shift] + [C], while a Tasks tab is also accessible.

Lightning evolved from the Mozilla Calendar project, which began life as a standalone calendar application called Sunbird. Although still available as a separate download, Mozilla has ceased development on Sunbird, which remains in beta, and recommends users switch to Thunderbird and Lightning instead. One publicly stated goal is to eventually fold Lightning into Thunderbird into a single standalone application capable of competing with Microsoft Outlook.

Android’s Biggest Fan Is Microsoft, of Course

 

“Even if Microsoft were able to extract Danegeld for every Android device …, every license sold is one less WinPhone sale, one more mobile device using Google instead of Bing, one more customer lost to Android apps, one less customer for Microsoft’s mobile gaming and other services,” said Slashdot blogger Barbara Hudson. “Microsoft is basically selling a ‘license to kill’ — to kill WinPhone7 dead.”

The world’s leading SSL certificates now offer more protection and security. Now from Symantec. Download your free trial of the world’s leading SSL certificates at verisign.com/ssl/free-30day-trial.

It’s been obvious for some time now that Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is a big Android fan, thanks to the tidy sums of cash the software giant has managed to extract from the companies that use it.

What wasn’t necessarily apparent until recently, however, is just how far Redmond’s devotion goes.

With last week’s addition of Compal Electronics to Microsoft’s Android licensing lineup, it’s becoming truly clear. It doesn’t seem premature, in fact, to declare Ballmer et al. Android’s biggest fans *ever*, so passionately dedicated have they become.

MCTS Training, MCITP Trainnig

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

 

Compal was the 10th victim of Redmond’s lucrative new licensing line of business, of course, and its acquiescence means that Microsoft now gets a piece of more than half of all Android devices out there.

If that won’t inspire a little adoration, Linux Girl doesn’t know what will!

Redmond’s lawyers have surely been doing the Happy Dance all week. As for those in the Linux blogosphere? Not so much.
‘A License to Kill WinPhone 7 Dead’

“I think this is yet another data point (as if anyone needs any more proof) that Microsoft’s mobile strategy is on the ropes, if not down for the count, and can’t compete in the marketplace,” opined Barbara Hudson, a blogger on Slashdot who goes by “Tom” on the site.

“And just to rub salt into the wound, even if Microsoft were able to extract Danegeld for every Android device manufactured by anyone for sale anywhere instead of just the US market, every license sold is one less WinPhone sale, one more mobile device using Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) instead of Bing, one more customer lost to Android apps, one less customer for Microsoft’s mobile gaming and other services,” Hudson added.

“Microsoft is basically selling a ‘license to kill’ — to kill WinPhone7 dead,” she asserted. “This is not the way to get the critical mass of users needed to start a ‘virtuous feedback cycle’ for your product.”
‘Like Squeezing a Chocolate Bar’

Eventually, Microsoft is “going to have to bite the bullet and start giving away WinPhone licenses, and even that is probably too little, too late,” Hudson told Linux Girl. “Apple and Android have a solid lock on the market.”

Making matters worse is that “licensing fees are real balancing act,” she pointed out. “The strategy of trying to collect royalties is like squeezing a chocolate bar — squeeze too hard and you’re going to have a sticky mess on your hands as manufacturers look for alternatives.”

Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) has shown that “it’s possible to switch the underlying OS — they’ve done it several times,” Hudson noted. “In a worst-case scenario, BSD can replace Android’s Linux underpinnings.”

Meanwhile, “to milk the current situation as long as possible, Microsoft will have to be very careful not to exceed the manufacturers’ collective pain threshold,” Hudson warned. “But even that’s a loser’s game over the long term.”
The Problem With Patents

Roberto Lim, a lawyer and blogger on Mobile Raptor, saw it differently.

“If the Android manufacturers feel it is to their benefit to pay the license fees, we should assume that they do have a good reason for doing so, and not assume that Microsoft is milking Android,” Lim opined.

After all, “HTC paying license fees to Microsoft did not prevent it from having a banner year,” he pointed out.

Still, software patents — which are the foundation for Microsoft’s current licensing strategy — “do seem too broad,” Lim added. “If we applied this to technology that has developed in the past 30 years, it would have restricted innovation.”
‘Something Is Wrong With the System’

Imagine, for example, “if someone had patented clicking an image displayed on a screen to launch an application, or manipulating a television set with a remote device, or adjusting volume by sliding an indicator displayed on a screen,” he mused.

“There is a need to really look at the entire system of software patents and see to what extent they are necessary to protect investments in research and development for new ideas and to what extent patents are sought to try to create a monopoly,” Lim told Linux Girl. “Apple, for one, appears to be trying to utilize broad patents to create a monopoly.”

Today’s patent wars, in fact, are similar to domain name squatting, he concluded: “There are companies that do not manufacture anything, have no product other than patents, and obtained patents for the sole purpose of seeking royalties. When you start to see things like this, you really know something is wrong with the system.”
‘A House of Cards’

Indeed, “M$’s taxation of Android/Linux is an anticompetitive act propped up by bogus software patents,” agreed blogger Robert Pogson. “It’s all a house of cards which will fall when SCOTUS finally rules them illegal.”

For proof that software patents don’t promote innovation, one need only look at the “gridlock” that results, Pogson explained.

“Look at Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) v Google,” he said. “The judge is very busy and has to find a whole month to deal with it on top of the weeks already spent on the matter. The end result is that the legal fees will amount to more than the value of the so-called patents.

“In the high-tech world, patents are inhibitors of innovation,” he concluded. “These guys are not working out new ideas in their garages.”
‘They Spend Billions on R&D’

Slashdot blogger hairyfeet took a different view.

“Android DOES infringe!” hairyfeet told Linux Girl. “Have you SEEN how many patents MSFT has? They have tons, folks — they spend billions on R&D cranking out more every year.”

That, in turn, is why “FOSS needs badly to kill ‘free as in beer’ and make it, as RMS has said, ‘free as in freedom,’ because you simply have no way to build a sizable patent war chest,” hairyfeet asserted.
‘Have a Scary War Chest or Pay Up’

“Look at some of the companies that have died, like Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL) — how much better would it have been for FOSS if ALL their patents were now property of the community?” he added. “This is why, even when they were suing each other, AMD (NYSE: AMD) and Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) had cross licensing agreements, and even though they are rivals, AMD and Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA) have them as well.”

There are simply too many patents, in other words, to deal with them any other way, hairyfeet concluded: “You either have a scary enough war chest of your own that rivals want to do cross licensing, or you pay up — your choice.”

Google’s absence from Microsoft’s licensing campaign is “a strong sign that Microsoft is afraid of litigation in this area but trying to find some way of monetizing the competition,” suggested Chris Travers, a Slashdot blogger who works on the LedgerSMB project.
‘Every Incentive to Fight to the End’

“In other words, only the devices are licensed, not the allegedly infringing operating system,” he added. “The goal of litigation against Motorola and others is solely to flesh out licensing deals and not with the intent to bring anything to trial.”

Travers wonders, in fact, “if Google acquired Motorola Mobility (NYSE: MMI) solely to take over the patent litigation,” he told Linux Girl. “This increases the stakes considerably, and decreases the chance of an 11th hour, out-of-court settlement based solely on device manufacturing.”

Google has “every incentive to fight to the end,” he pointed out, “and Microsoft has important incentives not to.”

In the long run, “I think the only lawsuit that matters is the Motorola one,” Travers concluded.

Microsoft 83-640 Exam


QUESTION 1
You work as the network administrator at CERTKINGDOM.com. The CERTKINGDOM.com network has a
domain named CERTKINGDOM.com. All servers on the CERTKINGDOM.com network run Windows Server
2008.
Only one Active-Directory integrated zone has been configured in the CERTKINGDOM.com domain.
CERTKINGDOM.com has requested that you configure DNS zone to automatically remove DNS records
that are outdated.
What action should you consider?

A. You should consider running the netsh /Reset DNS command from the Command prompt.
B. You should consider enabling Scavenging in the DNS zone properties page.
C. You should consider reducing the TTL of the SOA record in the DNS zone properties page.
D. You should consider disabling updates in the DNS zone properties page.

Answer: B

Explanation: In the scenario you should enable scavenging through the zone properties because
scavenging removes the outdated DNS records from the DNS zone automatically. You should
additionally note that patience would be required when enabling scavenging as there are some
safety valves built into scavenging which takes long to pop.
Reference: https:://www.gilham.org/Blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?List=aab85845-88d2-4091-8088-
a6bbce0a4304&ID=211

 

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

 


QUESTION 2
You work as the network administrator at CERTKINGDOM.com. The CERTKINGDOM.com network has a
domain named CERTKINGDOM.com. All servers on the CERTKINGDOM.com network run Windows Server
2008.
The CERTKINGDOM.com network has a server named CERTKINGDOM-SR15. You install the Active
Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS) on CERTKINGDOM-SR15.
Which of the following options can be used for the creation of new Organizational Units (OU’s) in
the application directory partition of the AD LDS?

A. You should run the net start command on CERTKINGDOM-SR15.
B. You should open the ADSI Edit Microsoft Management Console on CERTKINGDOM-SR15.
C. You should run the repadmin /dsaguid command on CERTKINGDOM-SR15.
D. You should open the Active Directory Users and Computers Console on CERTKINGDOM-SR15.

Answer: B

Explanation: You need to use the ADSI Edit snap-in to create new OUs in the AD LDS
application directory partition. You also need to add the snap-in in the Microsoft Management
Console (MMC).


QUESTION 3
You work as the network administrator at CERTKINGDOM.com. The CERTKINGDOM.com network has a
domain named CERTKINGDOM.com. All servers on the CERTKINGDOM.com network run Windows Server
2008.
The CERTKINGDOM.com network has two domain controllers CERTKINGDOM-DC01 and CERTKINGDOMDC02.
CERTKINGDOM-DC01 suffers a catastrophic failure but it is causing problems because it was
configured to have Schema Master Operations role. You log on to the CERTKINGDOM.com domain as
a domain administrator but your attempts to transfer the Schema Master Operations role to
CERTKINGDOM-DC02 are unsuccessful.
What action should you take to transfer the Schema Master Operations role to CERTKINGDOMDC02?

A. Your best option would be to have the dcpromo /adv command executed on CERTKINGDOMDC02.
B. Your best option would be to have the Schema Master role seized to CERTKINGDOM-DC02.
C. Your best option would be to have Schmmgmt.dll registered on CERTKINGDOM-DC02.
D. Your best option would be to add your user account to the Schema Administrators group.

Answer: B

Explanation: To ensure that CERTKINGDOM-DC02 holds the Schema Master role you need to seize
the Schema Master role on CERTKINGDOM-DC02. Seizing the schema master role is a drastic step
that should be considered only if the current operations master will never be available again. So to
transfer the schema master operations role, you have to seize it on CERTKINGDOM-DC02.
Reference: https:://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/library/d4301a14-dd18-4b3c-a3ccec9a773f7ffb1033.
mspx?mfr=true


QUESTION 4
You work as the network administrator at CERTKINGDOM.com. The CERTKINGDOM.com network has a
single forest. The forest functional level is set at Windows Server 2008.
The CERTKINGDOM.com network has a Microsoft SQL Server 2005 database server named
CERTKINGDOM-DB04 that hosts the Active Directory Rights Management Service (AD RMS).
You try to access the Active Directory Rights Management Services administration website but
received an error message stating:
“SQL Server does not exist or access is denied.”
How can you access the AD RMS administration website?

A. You need to restart the Internet Information Server (IIS) service and the MSSQLSVC service on
CERTKINGDOM-DB04.
B. You need to install the Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS) on
CERTKINGDOM-DB04.
C. You need to reinstall the AD RMS instance on CERTKINGDOM-DB04.
D. You need to reinstall the SQL Server 2005 instance on CERTKINGDOM-DB04.
E. You need to run the DCPRO command on CERTKINGDOM-SR04

Answer: A

Explanation: You need to restart the internet information server (IIS) to correct the problem. The
starting of the MSSQULSVC service will allow you to access the database from AD RMS
administration website.


QUESTION 5
You work as an enterprise administrator at CERTKINGDOM.com. The CERTKINGDOM.com network has a
domain named CERTKINGDOM.com. The CERTKINGDOM.com network has a Windows Server 2008
computer named CERTKINGDOM-SR03 that functions as an Enterprise Root certificate authority
(CA).
A new CERTKINGDOM.com security policy requires that revoked certificate information should be
available for examination at all times.
What action should you take adhere to the new policy?

A. This can be accomplished by having a list of trusted certificate authorities published to the
CERTKINGDOM.com domain.
B. This can be accomplished by having the Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) responder
implemented.
C. This can be accomplished by having the OCSP Response Signing certificate imported.
D. This can be accomplished by having the Startup Type of the Certificate Propagation service set
to Automatic.
E. This can be accomplished by having the computer account of CERTKINGDOM-SR03 added to the
PGCertificates group.

Answer: B

Explanation: You should use the network load balancing and publish an OCSP responder. This
will ensure that the revoked certificate information will be available at all times. You do not need to
download the entire CRL to check for revocation of a certificate; the OCSP is an online responder
that can receive a request to check for revocation of a certificate. This will also speed up certificate
revocation checking as well as reducing network bandwidth tremendously.

 

 

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

 

How do I get started?

Hi guys and Ladies of course, I have a computer science degree and i have been trying to get certified for a while did some personal Training  using Certkingdom Training videos but never get the confidence to take an exam.i did train for the MCSE MCDST CCNA and the A+.

My felllow IT professionel friends told me that i should prepare and take the exams but i guess i am scare of failure. And deep down i am sure as soon as i pass one of the exams i will be on the roll.
Any advice on how i should appraoch this?

 

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

MCPD for Windows Phone Developers

Microsoft has announced the Microsoft Certified Professional Developer Certification (MCPD) for Windows Phone Developers which helps to validate the candidate’s knowledge and skills on designing and developing Applications for the Windows Phone Platform.

 

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

 

To earn the MCPD for Windows Phone, the candidate should pass the below three required exams

70-506 : TS: Silverlight 4, Development
70-516: TS: Accessing Data with Microsoft .NET Framework
70-599: PRO: Designing and Developing Windows Phone Applications

Here is few important points to be noted about the MCPD – Windows Phone as per the Microsoft Certification site

The candidates / Developers can take up the exams at any time starting from mid July 2011 and earn the MCPD – Windows Phone Developer Certification by passing the required exams but the certification might not be visible on your transcript until September 2011.
Note that candidates who earn the MCPD: Windows Phone Developer certification will be required to show continuing ability to perform in this technology area by completing a recertification exam every two years.

The inside story of how Microsoft killed its Courier tablet

Steve Ballmer had a dilemma. He had two groups at Microsoft pursuing competing visions for tablet computers.

One group, led by Xbox godfather J Allard, was pushing for a sleek, two-screen tablet called the Courier that users controlled with their finger or a pen. But it had a problem: It was running a modified version of Windows.

That ran headlong into the vision of tablet computing laid out by Steven Sinofsky, the head of Microsoft’s Windows division. Sinofsky was wary of any product–let alone one from inside Microsoft’s walls–that threatened the foundation of Microsoft’s flagship operating system. But Sinofsky’s tablet-friendly version of Windows was more than two years away.

MCTS Training, MCITP Trainnig

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

For Ballmer, it wasn’t an easy call. Allard and Sinofsky were key executives at Microsoft, both tabbed as the next-generation brain trust. So Ballmer sought advice from the one tech visionary he’s trusted more than any other over the decades–Bill Gates. Ballmer arranged for Microsoft’s chairman and co-founder to meet for a few hours with Allard; his boss, Entertainment and Devices division President Robbie Bach; and two other Courier team members.

At one point during that meeting in early 2010 at Gates’ waterfront offices in Kirkland, Wash., Gates asked Allard how users get e-mail. Allard, Microsoft’s executive hipster charged with keeping tabs on computing trends, told Gates his team wasn’t trying to build another e-mail experience. He reasoned that everyone who had a Courier would also have a smartphone for quick e-mail writing and retrieval and a PC for more detailed exchanges. Courier users could get e-mail from the Web, Allard said, according to sources familiar with the meeting.

But the device wasn’t intended to be a computer replacement; it was meant to complement PCs. Courier users wouldn’t want or need a feature-rich e-mail application such as Microsoft’s Outlook that lets them switch to conversation views in their inbox or support offline e-mail reading and writing. The key to Courier, Allard’s team argued, was its focus on content creation. Courier was for the creative set, a gadget on which architects might begin to sketch building plans, or writers might begin to draft documents.

“This is where Bill had an allergic reaction,” said one Courier worker who talked with an attendee of the meeting. As is his style in product reviews, Gates pressed Allard, challenging the logic of the approach.

It’s not hard to understand Gates’ response. Microsoft makes billions of dollars every year on its Exchange e-mail server software and its Outlook e-mail application. While heated debates are common in Microsoft’s development process, Gates’ concerns didn’t bode well for Courier. He conveyed his opinions to Ballmer, who was gathering data from others at the company as well.

Within a few weeks, Courier was cancelled because the product didn’t clearly align with the company’s Windows and Office franchises, according to sources. A few months after that, both Allard and Bach announced plans to leave Microsoft, though both executives have said their decisions to move on were unrelated to the Courier cancellation.

The story of Microsoft’s Courier has only been told in pieces. And nothing has been disclosed publicly about the infighting that led to the innovative device’s death. This article was pieced together through interviews with 18 current and former Microsoft executives, as well as contractors and partners who worked on the project. None of the Microsoft employees, both current and former, would talk for attribution because they worried about potential repercussions. Microsoft’s top spokesman, Frank Shaw, offered only a brief comment for this story and otherwise declined to make Microsoft’s senior executives available.

“At any given time, we’re looking at new ideas, investigating, testing, incubating them,” Shaw said in a statement when word leaked in April 2010 that Courier had been cancelled. “It’s in our DNA to develop new form factors and natural user interfaces to foster productivity and creativity. The Courier project is an example of this type of effort. It will be evaluated for use in future offerings, but we have no plans to build such a device at this time.”

While the internal fight over Courier occurred about 18 months ago, the implications of the decision to kill the incubation project reverberate today. Rather than creating a touch computing device that might well have launched within a few months of Apple’s iPad, which debuted in April 2010, Microsoft management chose a strategy that’s forcing it to come from behind. The company cancelled Courier within a few weeks of the iPad’s launch. Now it plans to rely on Windows 8, the operating system that will likely debut at the end of next year, to run tablets.

Courier’s death also offers a detailed look into Microsoft’s Darwinian approach to product development and the balancing act between protecting its old product franchises and creating new ones. The company, with 90,000 employees, has plenty of brilliant minds that can come up with revolutionary approaches to computing. But sometimes, their creativity is stalled by process, subsumed in other products, or even sacrificed to protect the company’s Windows and Office empires.

‘Not a whim’
Courier was much more than a clever vision. The team, which had more than 130 Microsoft employees contributing to it, had created several prototypes that gave a clear sense about the type of experience users would get. There were still tough hardware and software issues to resolve when Microsoft pulled the plug. But an employee who worked on Courier said the project was far enough along that the remaining work could have been completed in months if the company had added more people to the team. Microsoft’s Shaw disputes that.

“There was extensive work done on the business, the technology and the experience,” said a member of the Courier team. “It was very complete, not a whim.”

Ballmer and Microsoft’s senior leadership decided to bet solely on Sinofsky’s Windows vision for the company’s tablet strategy. Though it crushed some innovative work from dedicated employees, that decision had plenty of logic to it. Corporate customers may be more inclined to use a Windows tablet than, say, Apple’s iPad, because those devices will likely include well-known management and security tools that should make them easy to plug into secure corporate networks.

A new survey by the Boston Consulting Group found that more than 40 percent of current tablet users in the United States want a tablet that runs Windows. That number jumps to 53 percent when non-tablet owners are included. The reason: familiarity with Windows, which still runs nearly 90 percent of all PCs sold.

“They think a common operating system will make this experience seamless across devices,” said Boston Consulting senior partner and managing director John Rose. “The products will be introduced, and they’ll be better (than the iPad) or they won’t be.”

Ballmer went out of his way to underscore Microsoft’s Windows strategy at the company’s financial analysts meeting last month, which it held concurrently with a conference where Microsoft wooed more than 5,000 developers to the Windows 8 platform for tablets.

“The first thing, which I hope is obvious, about our point of view is Windows is at the center,” Ballmer told analysts. “Certainly I can read plenty of places where people will question whether that’s a good idea or not. I think it’s an exceptionally good idea.”

But using Windows as the operating system for tablets also implies that Microsoft will update the devices’ operating systems on the Windows time frame, typically every three years. Compare that to Apple, which seems likely to continue to update the iPad annually, a tactic that drives a raft of new sales each time a new generation hits the market. By the time Windows 8 rolls out, Apple will likely have introduced its iPad 3. Moreover, Amazon’s much anticipated Kindle Fire tablet, which goes on sale November 15, will have nearly a year head start on the Windows-powered tablet offerings.

On the other hand, Courier, with its modified version of Windows, could have been updated more frequently than the behemoth operating system itself.

How far behind is Microsoft? Tablet makers sold 17.6 million devices in 2010, and are on a pace to sell 63.3 million more this year, according to industry analyst Gartner. In 2012, the firm expects sales to jump to 103.5 million devices. Just 4.3 million of those tablets, the ones that go on sale at the end of the year when Windows 8 debuts, will run Windows, according to the firm. Gartner expects Apple’s game-changing iPad to continue to dominate with a two-thirds share.

Building consumer muscle
Microsoft counted on Allard, more than any other senior executive in the last decade, to help it figure out how to reach the types of consumers who are now racing to buy iPads. Once an Internet wonk who helped a mid-1990s Microsoft wake up to the Web, Allard led the team that created Microsoft’s biggest non-PC consumer success story–the Xbox video game business. Always willing to stand up to leadership, Allard successfully argued that Windows wasn’t suitable to power the video game console, something Gates wasn’t initially keen on.

The success of the Xbox led Microsoft to create its Entertainment and Devices division under Bach. And Bach tapped the chrome-domed Allard to be his chief visionary.

Allard is a downhill mountain-biking maniac, who co-founded a cycling team, dubbed Project 529, whose name is intended to reflect the team’s after-hours passion, what they do from 5 p.m. to 9 a.m. He often used Apple products, such as the iPod or the Mac, much to the disdain of some Microsoft colleagues. While he has serious technology chops, Allard also appreciated the importance of design, creating studios, rather than traditional office space, where his teams toiled. A key Allard trait: challenging convention.

Gizmodo broke the Courier story in September 2009, posting leaked pictures of what the device might look like and how it might work. Rather than the single screen that consumers have come to know as a tablet, Courier would have had two screens, each about 7 inches diagonally. The device would have folded in half like a book. It would have supported both touch and pen-based computing. The gadget-loving site drooled over what it had found.

“It feels like the whole world is holding its breath for the Apple tablet,” Gizmodo wrote. “But maybe we’ve all been dreaming about the wrong device. This is Courier, Microsoft’s astonishing take on the tablet.”

The gadget was the creation of Allard’s skunkworks design operation Pioneer Studios and Alchemie Ventures, a research lab that also reported to Allard. (The lab took the German spelling of “alchemy” to highlight the stereotypical Teutonic traits of structure and regiment it hoped to bring to its innovation process.) The two groups were created to identify consumer experiences that Microsoft could develop and hatch.

“Our job is to incubate those and work with the product teams to bring them to market,” said Pioneer’s co-founder Georg Petschnigg in a video posted to Microsoft’s developer Web site last year.

Allard created Alchemie to focus on innovation process to make sure that the efforts of Pioneer were not scattershot. It studied best practices, both within and outside Microsoft, to “design a repeatable, predictable and measurable approach for building new business” for Bach’s division, according to the Alchemie Ventures Toolkit, an internal Microsoft book reviewed by CNET.

“If Microsoft wants to truly implement effective and sustainable incubation, we have to embrace rigorous, repeatable, and measurable processes–and make those processes available to everyone,” Alchemie’s general manager Giorgio Vanzini wrote in the book.

Courier was born from the minds of both groups. And while Apple was working on its iPad at the same time, Courier was designed to be something entirely different. The iPad is all about content consumption–surfing the Web, watching videos, playing games. Courier was focused on content creation–drafting documents, brainstorming concepts, jotting down ideas.

“We weren’t fearful of it,” a Courier worker said of the iPad. “We were doing something different.”

Early on, the group opted to use Windows for Courier’s operating system. But it wasn’t a version of Windows that any consumer would recognize. The Courier team tweaked the operating system to make sure it could perform at high levels with touch- and pen-based computing. What’s more, the graphical shell of Windows–the interface that computer users associate with the operating system–was entirely removed. So while it was Windows under the hood, the home screens bore zero resemblance to the familiar PC desktop.

Creating a new approach
The Courier group wasn’t interested in replicating Windows on a tablet. The team wanted to create a new approach to computing. The metaphor they used was “digital Moleskine,” a nod to the leather-bound notebooks favored in the design world. In fact, according to a few team members, a small group led by Petschnigg flew to Milan, Italy, to pick the brains of the designers at Moleskine to understand how they’ve been able to create such loyal customers.

“Moleskine was interested but a little perplexed,” said one executive who worked on the Courier project.

Designers working on Courier came up with clever notions for how digital paper should work. One of the ideas was to create “smart ink,” giving text, for example, mathematical properties. So when a user wrote “5+8=” on, say, digital graph paper, the number “13” would fill in the equation automatically. Additionally, if users selected lined digital paper, words would snap to each line as they were jotted down.

The phrase at the core of the Courier mission was “Free Create.” It was meant to describe the notion of eliminating the processes and protocols that productivity software often imposes on workers.

“Free Create is a simple statement that acts as a rallying cry, uniting the consumer’s core need and Courier’s core benefit,” reads a passage in an internal Microsoft book memorializing the Courier effort, reviewed by CNET, that was given to the team after the project was shuttered. “Free Create is a natural way to digitally write, sketch and gather inspiration by blending the familiarity of the pen, the intuition of touch, the simplicity of the book and the advantages of software and services.”

It’s clear there were substantial resources behind the effort. The commemorative book, designed to resemble the journal-like look of the Courier, lists the 134 employees who contributed to the gadget’s creation. Moreover, Petschnigg writes on his LinkedIn profile page that he “managed $3.5 (million) seed funding, (and) secured $20 (million) to develop this new product category.”

Those funds helped build a multi-disciplinary team. It included interaction designers, who worked on new interfaces using pen- and touch-computing. There were also employees who worked on software to synchronize data from the Courier to Web-based services. The project had moved far enough along that there was staff that worked on brand strategy, advertising, retail planning, and partner marketing. Courier even had a deeply considered logo, something of a squiggle that looks a bit like an ampersand, meant to evoke the doodling that often is the start of a creative process.

“The Courier logo expresses the free-flow and formation of ideas,” reads the description of the logo in the commemorative book. “It references simple scribbles that are often the beginning of new ideas.”

While the software prototypes ran on existing tablet PCs built by Microsoft’s partners, they didn’t meet the performance goals for Courier. So Allard’s team also worked with several hardware makers, including Samsung, to create hardware prototypes.

“It was not off-the-shelf tech,” said a Courier team member. “There is no commercial product today that meets the specs we had for it. It was highly demanding and innovative and no one partner had all of the pieces.”

When Courier died, there was not a single prototype that contained all of the attributes of the vision: the industrial design, the screen performance, the software experience, the correct weight, and the battery life. Those existed individually, created in parallel to keep the development process moving quickly. Those prototypes wouldn’t have come together into a single unit until very late in the development process, perhaps weeks before manufacturing, which is common for cutting-edge consumer electronics design. But on the team, there was little doubt that they were moving quickly toward that final prototype.

“We were on the cusp of something really big,” said one Courier team member.

In late 2009, before the iPad had launched, the Courier team recognized the market for tablets was ready to explode. It laid out a detailed engineering schedule and made the case to Microsoft’s top brass that Courier could be a revolutionary device that would define a new product category. The team put forward a vision that Microsoft could create a new market rather than chasing down a leader or defending an established product.

“J (was) incubating with his tribe, very much thinking consumer and very much thinking the next few years,” a former Microsoft executive said. “He was trying to disrupt Microsoft, which hasn’t been good at consumer products.”

In fact, one of the mandates of Alchemie was to look only at product ideas and business concepts that were no farther than three years into the future. The Alchemie book includes something of an innovation process road map that lays out four “gates” that ideas needed to pass through to move from incubation to product development. And a source said that Courier had made it through all four gates.

So why did Courier die? The answer lies in an understanding of Microsoft’s history and cultu

Windows XP is still pretty cool

Twelfth in a series. Here’s a dirty little secret: I’m still using Windows XP.

That’s right. A technology analyst — independent, mind you; not working for a firm that requires a specific load — and I’m voluntarily using XP. In fact, I’m writing this article on it. I’ve been using it so long, I almost stopped noticing, and as XP crossed the 10-year anniversary of its official launch this week, I thought some about my own experiences with it.

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

 

Now, before you condemn me as a total luddite, let’s be clear: I’ve got lots of Windows 7 and even Vista machines running around the office (and a couple of Macs, for that matter), and I use them as well, all synched up with SugarSync (the one they never mention these days when they’re talking about how cool DropBox is).

But the old AMD desktop powering two big monitors is still my base system. It’s odd, in a way, because I have not one, not two, but three Win7 desktops piled up next to this one, ready to go when it dies.

So, why do I cling to XP when most others have moved on? Here are a few of the reasons.

I like to have each folder view retain its own setting. So, in the My Documents view, I prefer to see midsize icons in alphabetical order. Down at the My Documents\vendors\Chip Companies\Intel level, I can see files in Details view in reverse chronological order (newest first). In the My Pictures view, I like thumbnails. I prefer the subfolders to stay out of the way when I’m viewing by chronology.

In Win7, all folder views change at once whenever I change any of them, which means I am constantly having to adjust my view — every time I want to see anything. Extra steps. Why can’t the folder just remember how I viewed it last time and stay that way? As it does in XP.

When I want to launch Word in XP, I hit two buttons: Start and the letter “w” and up comes a blank doc. In Win7, the sequence is Start, “w,” and Enter — three buttons. Extra steps.

In XP, I use the My Documents folder as my desktop. Sometimes I put files or folders in a certain order for specific reasons. A folder containing my work in progress may be on the bottom right, separated from the other folders, because I’m working on it. Files that I’ve saved out for further study are in the order I want to read them. In XP, these items stay where I put them.

But Win7 is much smarter than me, and it thinks they should be in whatever view I last told all my folders to be in. I cannot move things around on my desktop. Win7 has a death grip on all my stuff.

And while we’re on folder views, what the heck is the difference between arrange, sort and group? In Win7, I have all these “choices” and within each, more choices: arrange by author, sort by name, group by date modified. Who has time for all these extra steps? And anyway, once I’ve spent all this time (which I can’t bill back to Microsoft) setting my view just right, it simply changes next time I adjust my view somewhere else in the file system. Why go to all that trouble just to have the OS throw my work out?

Why break things that work? Why bother with extra steps? Why is Microsoft still developing software that is convenient for the company rather than for its users?

It’s not like there are no improvements in Win7. Maybe people, including me, have praised it extravagantly.

Windows XP takes a lot longer to boot, but it’s been years since I established a protocol of powering on before going into the kitchen to make coffee and coming back when SugarSync is finished scanning my hard drive.

Win7 has cooler utilities and media handling, but many of these apps are available through Windows Live, making XP still pretty cool.

If I may observe, the process of continuously developing software and obviating older software seems analogous to the process that movies go through. In 1969, Henry Hathaway made a John Wayne classic called “True Grit” that embodied Wayne’s persona as a tough, dry wrangler trying to do the right thing. Why, in 2010, should the Coen brothers remake the same movie, a retread which, while fine in its own right, will never be a classic? Why downgrade a work of art that was already all it could be?

Because living artists need to eat. Plain and simple. John Wayne is done eating, but the Coen brothers need to put that new pool house on the side deck near the recreation area. In the Maslovian hierarchy of needs, the Coen brothers are way beyond needing to eat. But you get the idea.

Microsoft brings out new editions of Windows because it needs to eat, not because users need better software.

I leave you with this YouTube video, a lovely low-production-value musing on the nature of operating systems and their continuous frenzied development:

Is Microsoft Firefox’s last, great hope?

Mozilla has faced considerable criticism for its decision to release a customized version of Firefox in which the default search engine and home page is Microsoft’s Bing. But if Mozilla is going to survive, that’s exactly what it needs to do, because with declining market share and a potential rift with Google, Microsoft may be Mozilla’s last, best hope.

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

 

The version of Firefox, called Firefox with Bing is based on Firefox 7.1. Neither Microsoft nor Mozillas is commenting on the financial terms of the deal, but you can be sure that Microsoft is paying Mozilla a pretty penny.

The non-profit Mozilla Foundation receives almost all of its revenue from contracts with search providers — 98% of all of its revenue in 2010 came that way, according to Computerworld. And most of that money comes from Google. Computerworld says that in 2008, 88% of search provider revenue for Mozilla came from Google.

That heavy reliance on Google represents a serious problem for Mozilla, potentially a near-fatal one. Mozilla’s three-year contract with Google expires next month. Given that Google competes against Firefox with its Chrome browser, the renewal of that contract is not a sure thing. And even if it does get renewed, Google will likely play hardball on the financial terms.

Google needs Firefox less than ever before, because Chrome is fast gaining on Firefox, and it’s only a matter of time before it becomes the world’s number two browser. Back in September, 2010, Firefox’s market share was 23.69%, and Chrome’s was 8.24% according to Net Applications. By September of 2011, Firefox’s market share had dipped to 22.48%, and Chrome’s had jumped to 16.2%, says Net Applications.

There are even worse problems for Firefox ahead, having to do with mobile. Google’s Chrome-like browser is the default for Android phones, Apple’s Safari is the default for iOS devices, and Internet Explorer is the default for Windows Phone 7. Few people bother to download an alternative browser on their mobile devices, which leaves Firefox out in the cold for the next great wave of browser growth.

So where does this leave Firefox? Between the proverbial rock and a hard place. This deal with Microsoft was the right move for Mozilla. It’ll likely lead to a solid revenue stream. And it may give Mozilla some leverage in the contract renewal talk with Google. So Mozilla deserves no criticism — it was only doing what it needs in order to try and keep Firefox a popular browser.

Nokia Tiptoes Back Into Smartphone Market but Steers Clear of US

The Lumia 800 and Lumia 710 are what Nokia calls its very first Windows Phone devices. The company hopes to begin selling them in Asia in Russia by the end of the year, afterwards expanding into other markets. The U.S. likely won’t see them for sale soon, or perhaps at all — Nokia’s stateside push may come in the form of a completely different line.

The world’s leading SSL certificates now offer more protection and security. Now from Symantec. Download your free trial of the world’s leading SSL certificates at verisign.com/ssl/free-30day-trial.

Nokia announced its first smartphones running Windows Phone at Nokia World 2011, being held in London through Thursday.

The Nokia Lumia 710

These are the Nokia Lumia 800 and Lumia 710.

MCTS Training, MCITP Trainnig

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

Both have social networking capabilities and 1.4 GHz processors, hardware acceleration and graphics processors. They will have access to a personal navigation device and a global music streaming application.

Nokia will release the Lumia smartphones in Asia and Russia toward the end of the year and expand to other markets next year.

The mobile phone giant will release new smartphones in the United States in early 2012, but it didn’t say whether they will be part of the Lumia line.

“While we cannot speculate as to which, or even if either, of the models introduced at Nokia World will be available in the U.S., many of the exciting elements that you have seen at Nokia World will be well represented in the U.S. portfolio,” Nokia spokesperson Karen Lachtanski told TechNewsWorld.
Illuminating the Lumias

Both the Lumia 800 and 710 include the Nokia Drive feature, which offers free turn-by-turn navigation and has a dedicated in-car user interface.

Both are roughly the same size and weight — about 4.5 inches by 2.5 inches by 0.5 inches and between 4.5 and 5 ounces.

Both smartphones use the 1.4 GHz Qualcomm (Nasdaq: QCOM) MSM8255 processor and are 3G devices using WCDMA.

The usual sensors, cameras, access to social networks and extended battery life are offered, perhaps to a greater or lesser degree than in the iPhone and Android smartphones, but the difference doesn’t seem enough to be truly distinctive.

Both devices run Windows Phone 7.5, a.k.a. “Mango.”

The Lumia devices are “generally a little better than their Android counterparts, particularly in terms of finish and ease of use, but [the iPhone’s] iOS still remains unchallenged at the top of the stack,” remarked Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.
The Sound of Music

Taking a leaf out of Apple’s (Nasdaq: AAPL) iTunes book, the Lumia 800 and 710 both offer excellent capabilities for music lovers.

Both have the Nokia Music MixRadio application. This is a free global mobile music streaming app that delivers hundreds of local music channels.

Nokia Music includes Gigfinder, which lets users search for live local music and share discoveries on social networks.

Later this year, Nokia will deliver an update to Nokia Music that will let users create personalized channels and buy concert tickets through their Lumia smartphones.
Where the Lumias Fit In

The Lumia smartphones are the first Windows Phone devices offered by Nokia following their strategic partnership announced in February.

They may be the partners’ last chance at being players in the smartphone market. Microsoft’s (Nasdaq: MSFT) fortunes have waned since Windows Mobile’s heyday, and Nokia’s getting its pants beaten off by the iPhone and Android smartphones.

Further, Nokia closed some of its factories earlier this year.

“If this doesn’t work out, Nokia is done and Microsoft will have another Zune,” Enderle told TechNewsWorld.

Zune was Microsoft’s attempt to take on Apple in the MP3 player market. After several iterations, it was finally withdrawn from the market earlier this year.

However, Vishal Jain, an analyst at the 451 group, contended that the launch of the Lumia line “marks the culmination of a highly anticipated Nokia reemergence.” Everything now depends on consumer demand, he added.
Coming to America?

Nokia appears to be staying away from the U.S. market for now because “Nokia is stronger in Europe and Apple comparatively weaker,” Enderle stated.

It’s likely that Nokia will introduce a different line of smartphones to the U.S. market, Al Hilwa, a program director at IDC, told TechNewsWorld.

“The U.S. market is crowded with many strong players and phones,” Hilwa elaborated. “To make an impact, a spectacular product riding on a strong ecosystem is needed, with near-flawless execution.”

Nokia has very little presence in the U.S., having closed its online stores in the country as well as in the UK earlier this year as part of a restructuring.

Microsoft and Nokia will miss the holiday sales season, when demand is traditionally strongest.

“It’s no great loss anyway,” Maribel Lopez, principal analyst at Lopez Research, told TechNewsWorld.

“You need to be in the market by September to make a brand new platform work,” Lopez added.