Microsoft Unveils a New Look

In advance of one of the most significant waves of product launches in Microsoft’s history, today we are unveiling a new logo for the company.

It’s been 25 years since we’ve updated the Microsoft logo and now is the perfect time for a change. This is an incredibly exciting year for Microsoft as we prepare to release new versions of nearly all of our products. From Windows 8 to Windows Phone 8 to Xbox services to the next version of Office, you will see a common look and feel across these products providing a familiar and seamless experience on PCs, phones, tablets and TVs. This wave of new releases is not only a reimagining of our most popular products, but also represents a new era for Microsoft, so our logo should evolve to visually accentuate this new beginning.

The Microsoft brand is about much more than logos or product names. We are lucky to play a role in the lives of more than a billion people every day. The ways people experience our products are our most important “brand impressions”. That’s why the new Microsoft logo takes its inspiration from our product design principles while drawing upon the heritage of our brand values, fonts and colors.

The logo has two components: the logotype and the symbol. For the logotype, we are using the Segoe font which is the same font we use in our products as well as our marketing communications. The symbol is important in a world of digital motion (as demonstrated in the video above.) The symbol’s squares of color are intended to express the company’s diverse portfolio of products.
Starting today, you’ll see the new Microsoft logo being used prominently. It will be used on Microsoft.com – the 10th most visited website in the world. It is in three of our Microsoft retail stores today (Boston, Seattle’s University Village and Bellevue, Wash.) and will shine brightly in all our stores over the next few months. It will sign off all of our television ads globally. And it will support our products across various forms of marketing. Fully implementing a change like this takes time, so there may be other instances where you will see the old logo being used for some time.
We’re excited about the new logo, but more importantly about this new era in which we’re reimagining how our products can help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential.

How to setup an email account in Outlook 2010

This step-by-step tutorial will guide you through setting up an email account in Microsoft Outlook 2010. If you have upgraded from Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007 your email settings will automatically be configured. If you are installing Outlook for the first time please use the instructions below.

Step 1

Click on the “File” tab, then click “Info” and “Account Settings“.

 Step 2

Click: “New” to add a new email account. Select “POP3” as your mail account and click “Next“. Select Email Account and enter your “Name“, “Email Address” and “Password“. Outlook will then try to automatically configure your account.

 Step 3

If automatically configuring the settings doesn’t work try Manually configuring the server settings. Here are the settings required:

1. Enter your “Name” and “Email Address“.
2. Incoming Mail Server: mail.yourdomainname.com.au
3. Outgoing Mail Server: mail.yourisp.com.au (Whilst your outgoing mail server will normally bemail.yourispname.com.au, check with your Internet Service Provider for the name of their outgoing/SMTP mail server.)
4. Your “Username” is your full email address.

 Congratulations, you have now setup your email address with Outlook 2010.

Inside Skydrive

A new modern SkyDrive.com, updated apps, and Outlook.com at 10 million users

• SkyDrive.com - New, modern design for desktop and tablet browsers with instant search, contextual toolbar, thumbnail multi-select, drag-and-drop organization, and HTML5 sorting
• SkyDrive for Windows desktop & OS X - Faster uploads for people around the world and tons of bug and performance improvements under the hood
• SkyDrive for Android - A new app that lets you access, upload and share from Android phones
• SkyDrive for developers – Apps built using our SkyDrive API can now store or access any type of file in a person’s SkyDrive, plus there's a new, easy-to-use file picker API for websites (similar to our file picker for Windows 8 apps)

With these updates and continued improvements to our back-end infrastructure, we’re excited to leave preview and unlock new possibilities for a billion customers with the upcoming releases of Windows 8, the new Office, and tons of devices and apps that connect to Sky Drive.

SkyDrive: unlocking possibilities

Why is versatility in cloud storage so important? We believe that your files are not just bits to be synced—and they're certainly not to be scanned to serve advertising. Your files represent possibilities. The unfinished term paper that stands between you and graduation. The family vacation pictures that may find their way into a photo book for your grandparents. The brilliant (or not so brilliant) business plan ideas that you jotted down at the coffee shop.
For each person, the possibilities are different. And so is how you capture, organize, access and share across devices and apps. If you're a student, you might organize homework and notes from each class into subfolders. If you're a real estate agent, you might keep photo slide shows and documents for each listing together. Or maybe you’d rather just see your recent Office docs or camera roll without worrying about files and folders.
And when it comes to the devices you choose for work (or play), you might be a journalist who's inspired to write (at home or work) using Word on your Windows PC or Mac. But when you’re out on assignment, you may only have your phone to take notes on, and an Internet café to finish your write-up and share it.
We think personal cloud storage should create new possibilities, not limit them. So no matter who you are, or what you do, we’ve designed the new SkyDrive for you.

New, modern design for SkyDrive.com

As you've seen with the preview of Outlook.com, we're bringing a fresh approach to how we design our web experiences. With the update to SkyDrive.com that's rolling out over the next 24 hours, we've taken the same DNA from the SkyDrive Windows 8 app and brought that to the web. We've updated nearly 100% of the SkyDrive UI to provide a fast and fluid web experience on all browsers and devices.
It all starts with the SkyDrive home page, where we now default to a tile-based layout of your folders and files.

However, some of you prefer the details view, and that’s just a click away (details view is also the default view for Recent docs and Shared).

In addition to the new design, we’re introducing a bunch of new features.

Instant search

You can now quickly search for a file anywhere in your SkyDrive, including the content of Office documents such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

For example, here is a search I did in my SkyDrive for documents and photos of “Olympics.”

Contextual toolbar to make common actions and commands easier

With this update to SkyDrive, we simplified how you interact with your stuff, by moving many of the common commands into the toolbar at the top of the page. For example, creating folders and docs, sharing, and common file operations are more easily available.

Folder operations:

File operations:

Multi-select and drag-and-drop

Now you can select multiple files in thumbnail view, rearrange your photos the way you want, and drag and drop files and folders.

Sorting improvements

We’ve gotten a lot of feedback on sorting over the past year, and we’re happy to provide quite a few new sorting options.

As many of you know, Windows Phone users can have all the photos they take on their phones automatically sent to the SkyDrive camera roll folder. I have 1411 photos in this folder, and it used to be a pain to get to the most recent photo. We now default to sorting by newest to oldest, which should make viewing your camera roll much better.

Similarly we introduced a feature that allows you to customize and save the sort order for any folder

And we’ve built rearrange directly into the viewing experience so that you don’t have to navigate away from your photos to arrange them the way that you want.

Update to SkyDrive for Windows desktop & OS X 

With this update, which will gradually roll out over the course of the week, we’ve made SkyDrive faster and more efficient for a couple of key scenarios, based on your feedback. We focused on photo uploads and looking for changes in your local SkyDrive folder. As with any performance discussion, “your mileage may vary,” as actual performance depends on a variety of factors including hardware, connection upload/download speed, network congestion, content type, distance to the service data center, and other factors.

Photo upload

You love syncing your photos to SkyDrive. After any great event, you end up with a bunch of new photos you want to share with your friends and family. So, we streamlined the photo upload path resulting in a faster bulk photo upload experience. Using an example from my home PC, I tried out a before and after with the 388 photos I had on my camera. I dragged these photos into my SkyDrive folder, let them sync, and measured the completion time before and after the change. In this case, the photos uploaded 1.7 times faster with the update.

Looking for changes

When you add files or make changes in your local SkyDrive, you want them picked up quickly for upload without impacting other apps on your device. If you have a lot of files or older hardware, this can take time. So, we focused on minimizing CPU time while looking for changes, which has significantly reduced the total work that we do on every scan—meaning a much faster sync experience and more time for your CPU to tackle its other tasks. For this one, I synced about 40,000 files and restarted SkyDrive to kick off a full scan. As it started up, I measured the total CPU time of the scanner before and after the change. In this case, we were able to reduce the total CPU time by 165 seconds.

For a visual example of the performance improvement, take a look at the following charts. And remember that actual performance does depend on a number of factors and everyone’s setup is different.

 

A side note on “choosing what to sync”

We’ve heard feedback that some people would like to specify which folders in their SkyDrive sync to their PC. This can be due to space constraints on their laptop or tablet, or because they don’t want personal files syncing to their work PC. We’re working on a solution to this problem but can’t give specifics yet—stay tuned!

SkyDrive for more mobile devices

Back in December 2011 we released the original versions of our SkyDrive apps for Windows Phone and iPhone. Since December, almost 4 million people have used our mobile apps to access their SkyDrive from their mobile phone—and we’ve released a number of feature updates as well as fixes and improvements over that time. 

Today, as part of making sure SkyDrive is available to all Windows customers, we’re excited to announce thatan official SkyDrive app for Android phones will be available in just a few weeks. The Android app is similar to our mobile apps for Windows Phone and iOS and allows you to browse your SkyDrive, upload files to SkyDrive, as well as share SkyDrive files with “Send a link.” You'll also be able to open SkyDrive files from other apps, as well as upload, save, and share to SkyDrive from other apps.

Watch our Twitter feed (@SkyDrive) for a notification when the app becomes available in a few weeks!

SkyDrive for developers

It’s been almost a year since we first announced the revamped developer platform for working with SkyDrivewhich made it easier to integrate SkyDrive into mobile and web apps. Since then we’ve gotten consistent feedback on two key places where we could improve our developer story.

1. No more file restrictions and full control over photo upload resolution There are no longer any restrictions on the types of files that your application uploads to SkyDrive. Additionally, you can now upload images in their full resolution.
2. Open and Save pickers Our API now includes a SkyDrive file picker for opening and saving files to SkyDrive by adding a few lines of JavaScript to any website.

With these changes we’ve addressed a few of the top items of feedback from our developer community and can’t wait to see the interesting innovations that our customers will get to enjoy, now that this functionality is available. We’ll cover these changes in more detail in a follow-up blog post.

As always, we hope you enjoy all the updates and improvements to SkyDrive across the web, desktop, mobile, and developer support. And keep the feedback coming!

How to fix the windows 7 single sign on issues

Click Start, Run, type regedit, and press Return/Enter.
Navigate to and select the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings

In the right pane, right click EnableNegotiate, and select Modify.
Change the Value data to 1 and click OK.
Clear stored user names and passwords:
Click Start, Run, type cmd, and press ENTER.
Type the following command and press ENTER:

control keymgr.dll

In the Stored User Names and Passwords dialog, delete all stored user names and passwords and click Close.
In the command window, type the following command and press ENTER:

gpupdate /force

Log off and log back onto the client.

Simple Solutions to Common Windows Problems

Fix Windows Problems with Free Tools

Q1. I am trying to delete a file from my desktop but the computer won’t let me do that. Instead, it throws me an error message saying that the file /folder is in use by another program or user.
A: You can either reboot your computer in Safe mode to delete that file or, if you want something more simple, get Unlocker. It’s a free utility that will let you close all the processes that have possibly locked the file and once they are closed, you can then safely delete the file.
Q2. I am trying to play a video file on my computer but the media player says that I am missing certain codecs.
A: You can use a tool like Video Inspector to determine which audio and video codecs are required to play the video file on your computer. Alternatively, you can download a codec package like the K-Lite Pack that will let you play virtually any audio and video format on your computer.
Q3. I am running out of disk space on my Windows computer. How can I remove all the unnecessary files from the computer and recover some disk space?
A: There are three things you can do here:

• Open the Run box and type “cleanmgr” to open the built-in Disk Cleanup utility. It will remove all the temp files and the unnecessary system files that you no longer need.
• Use WinDirStat to determine where all your disk space has gone. Sometimes files are hidden in sub-directories that you can safely move to other drives or even delete them permanently (more options).
• Use Duplicate Cleaner to identify and delete all the duplicate files on your hard drives. You can move the duplicates to the recycle bin or, if you want to play safe, to any another folder from where they can be easily recovered.

Q4. My computer takes lot of time to boot-up. I checked the “start-up” folder in the Windows start menu and there aren’t any applications out there.
A: Type “msconfig” in the Run box to open the “System Configuration” tool and then switch to the “Start-up” tab. Disable all the programs that you don’t need to run during start-up. If you are a power user, you may also switch to the “Services” tab and disable all the unnecessary services.
Autoruns is another excellent utility that shows you what programs are configured to run during system bootup or login.
Q5. I am trying to uninstall a program from my computer but the standard add-remove programs is not letting me through.
A: You can use the free Revo Uninstaller utility to remove every single trace of any program from your computer. Revo can also remove entries from the Windows Registry that may have been left by previous un-installation routines.
Q6. My Windows crashed with a “Blue Screen.” Why?
A: You really need to get in touch with a geek to debug the cryptic Blue Screen errors (aka “Blue Screen of Death”) but if you are lucky, a free utility called BlueScreenView can provide vital clues. Blue Screen View will scan the Windows dump files to determine the device drivers that possibly caused the crash.
Q7. It takes ages to copy files in Windows from one folder to another. The situation is marginally better in Windows 7 (over Vista) but still, is there a way to copy files faster?
A: You can use an external file copying utility like TeraCopy or even RichCopy – they’ll not only copy /move files across drives faster but you can also resume broken file transfers (similiar to FTP operations).
Q8. I think I deleted a file by mistake. Can I recover it?
A: Recuva is a free software that will scan your hard drives, USB stick and other external drives for any deleted files that it can possibly recover. It may not work in all cases especially when you securely deleted a file.
Q9. Every time I copy something new to the Windows clipboard, the previous content gets erased. Can I make it permanent?
A: You can use Ditto, a free utility that sort-of adds memory to your Windows Clipboard. You can copy anything to the clipboard and it will stay there as long as you want.
Q10. How do I protect files and folders on my computer?
A: While there are free tools like Hide Folder that let you easily protect files and folders with a password, use TrueCrypt if you want a more secure solution. The obvious downside with a program like TrueCrypt is that if you forget the password, it is nearly impossible to retrieve the protected files

The 101 Most Useful Websites

01. screenr.com – record movies of your desktop and send them straight to YouTube.
02. bounceapp.com – for capturing full length screenshots of web pages.
03. goo.gl – shorten long URLs and convert URLs into QR codes.
04. unfurlr.come – find the original URL that’s hiding behind a short URL.
05. qClock – find the local time of a city using a Google Map.
06. copypastecharacter.com – copy special characters that aren’t on your keyboard.
07. postpost.com – a better search engine for twitter.
08. lovelycharts.com – create flowcharts, network diagrams, sitemaps, etc.
09. iconfinder.com – the best place to find icons of all sizes.
10. office.com – download templates, clipart and images for your Office documents.
11. followupthen.com – the easiest way to setup email reminders.
12. jotti.org – scan any suspicious file or email attachment for viruses.
13. wolframalpha.com – gets answers directly without searching  – see more wolfram tips.
14. printwhatyoulike.com – print web pages without the clutter.
15. joliprint.com – reformats news articles and blog content as a newspaper.
16. ctrql.org/rss – a search engine for RSS feeds.
17. e.ggtimer.com – a simple online timer for your daily needs.
18. coralcdn.org – if a site is down due to heavy traffic, try accessing it through coral CDN.
19. random.org – pick random numbers, flip coins, and more.
20. pdfescape.com – lets you can quickly edit PDFs in the browser itself.
21. viewer.zoho.com – Preview PDFs and Presentations directly in the browser.
22. tubemogul.com – simultaneously upload videos to YouTube and other video sites.
23. dabbleboard.com – your virtual whiteboard.
24. scr.im – share you email address online without worrying about spam.
25. spypig.com – now get read receipts for your email.
26. sizeasy.com – visualize and compare the size of any product.
27. myfonts.com/WhatTheFont – quickly determine the font name from an image.
28. google.com/webfonts – a good collection of open source fonts.
29. regex.info – find data hidden in your photographs – see more EXIF tools.
30. livestream.com – broadcast events live over the web, including your desktop screen.
31. iwantmyname.com – helps you search domains across all TLDs.
32. homestyler.com – design from scratch or re-model your home in 3d.
33. join.me – share you screen with anyone over the web.
34. onlineocr.net – recognize text from scanned PDFs – see other OCR tools.
35. flightstats.com – Track flight status at airports worldwide.
36. wetransfer.com – for sharing really big files online.
37. hundredzeros.com – best-sellers that are currently free. More ways to download free Kindle books.
38. polishmywriting.com – check your writing for spelling or grammatical errors.
39. marker.to – easily highlight the important parts of a web page for sharing.
40. typewith.me – work on the same document with multiple people.
41. whichdateworks.com – planning an event? find a date that works for all.
42. everytimezone.com – a less confusing view of the world time zones.
43. gtmetrix.com – the perfect tool for measuring your site performance online.
44. noteflight.com – print music sheets, write your own music online (review).
45. imo.im – chat with your buddies on Skype, Facebook, Google Talk, etc. from one place.
46. translate.google.com – translate web pages, PDFs and Office documents.
47. kleki.com – create paintings and sketches with a wide variety of brushes.
48. similarsites.com – discover new sites that are similar to what you like already.
49. wordle.net – quick summarize long pieces of text with tag clouds.
50. bubbl.us – create mind-maps, brainstorm ideas in the browser.
51. kuler.adobe.com – get color ideas, also extract colors from photographs.
52. liveshare.com – share your photos in an album instantly.
53. lmgtfy.com – when your friends are too lazy to use Google on their own.
54. midomi.com – when you need to find the name of a song.
55. bing.com/images – automatically find perfectly-sized wallpapers for mobiles.
56. faxzero.com – send an online fax for free – see more fax services.
57. feedmyinbox.com – get RSS feeds as an email newsletter.
58. ge.tt – quickly send a file to someone, they can even preview it before downloading.
59. pipebytes.com – transfer files of any size without uploading to a third-party server.
60. tinychat.com – setup a private chat room in micro-seconds.
61. privnote.com – create text notes that will self-destruct after being read.
62. boxoh.com – track the status of any shipment on Google Maps – alternative.
63. chipin.com – when you need to raise funds online for an event or a cause.
64. downforeveryoneorjustme.com – find if your favorite website is offline or not?
65. ewhois.com – find the other websites of a person with reverse Analytics lookup.
66. whoishostingthis.com – find the web host of any website.
67. google.com/history – found something on Google but can’t remember it now?
68. aviary.com/myna – an online audio editor that lets record, and remix audio clips online.
69. disposablewebpage.com – create a temporary web page that self-destruct.
70. urbandictionary.com – find definitions of slangs and informal words.
71. seatguru.com – consult this site before choosing a seat for your next flight.
72. sxc.hu – download stock images absolutely free.
73. zoom.it – view very high-resolution images in your browser without scrolling.
74. scribblemaps.com – create custom Google Maps easily.
75. alertful.com – quickly setup email reminders for important events.
76. picmonkey.com – Picnik is offline but PicMonkey is an even better image editor.
77. formspring.me – you can ask or answer personal questions here.
78. sumopaint.com – an excellent layer-based online image editor.
79. snopes.com – find if that email offer you received is real or just another scam.
80. typingweb.com – master touch-typing with these practice sessions.
81. mailvu.com – send video emails to anyone using your web cam.
82. timerime.com – create timelines with audio, video and images.
83. stupeflix.com – make a movie out of your images, audio and video clips.
84. safeweb.norton.com – check the trust level of any website.
85. teuxdeux.com – a beautiful to-do app that looks like your paper dairy.
86. deadurl.com – you’ll need this when your bookmarked web pages are deleted.
87. minutes.io – quickly capture effective notes during meetings.
88. youtube.com/leanback – Watch YouTube channels in TV mode.
89. youtube.com/disco – quickly create a video playlist of your favorite artist.
90. talltweets.com – Send tweets longer than 140 characters.
91. pancake.io – create a free and simple website using your Dropbox account.
92. builtwith.com – find the technology stack of any website.
93. woorank.com – research a website from the SEO perspective.
94. mixlr.com – broadcast live audio over the web.
95. radbox.me – bookmark online videos and watch them later (review).
96. tagmydoc.com – add QR codes to your documents and presentations (review).
97. notes.io – the easiest way to write short text notes in the browser.
98. ctrlq.org/html-mail – send rich-text mails to anyone, anonymously.
99. fiverr.com – hire people to do little things for $5.
100. otixo.com – easily manage your online files on Dropbox, Google Docs, etc.
101. ifttt.com – create a connection between all your online accounts.

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