Steve Ballmer Live at IndiMIX 2010, Participate in Win-A-Minute contest

 

Join for the Keynote Address by Steve Ballmer and explore the wave of opportunities at the IndiMIX 2010. An exclusive Conference for Web Developers and Designers building some of the world’s most innovative Websites.

 

 

Event starts Today 28th May at 9:30 AM IST. For more details please check www.microsoftindimix.com

Apart from that , you can participate in WIN-A-MINUTE contest and win some Movie coupons every couple of minutes . For more details check the site. You can also follow @indimix

New Bing Ad- Adventures with Bing: Aggressive Octopus

Intrigued by the image and tidbit on the Bing homepage, a man decides to take an adventure to find an aggressive octopus.

 

Adventures with Bing: Aggressive Octopus

Hotmail Wave 4 Vs Gmail – Hotmail allows 10GB of photos and docs per message without stuffing Inbox

 

Vs

Hotmail Wave 4 has added lots of cool new features, one of them is its attachment size limits. It has made it  very  convenient for attaching large number of images. How large, read it on, you’ll be surprised! 

Suppose you want to email and share lots of pictures. We will compare this scenario in Gmail and then in Hotmail Wave4 -

Gmail has the limit of 25MB so you may have to send multiple mails if you want to send more photos. And when sending so many pictures , you might want to select and remove some of them but its pretty hard to do so in Gmail as it does not have preview.  So all this takes lots of time in Gmail.

And the receiver in Gmail will have the option of basic preview and has to download one at a time.

And if one decides to send it via Buzz, Gmail gives the option of sending upto 1GB of photos in Picasa album but can only share with those contacts.  So this is the story of attaching photos in Gmail .

 

Now let us look at what can be done with Hotmail wave 4-

Hotmail optimizes the experience with the type of content being sent , such as photos or office docs.

Hotmail wave 4 now has integrated with the Skydrive , so you can send lots and lots of photos, documents or other files in a Single email.

You can send upto 200 files of 50 MB each or 10GB per email can be sent.

Hotmail provides thumbnail previews so one can easily catch a photo you do not want to be included.

It automatically creates a photo album on the Skydrive and sends a link to everyone in the email. So its not filling up everyone’s Inbox.

It works also for documents and other files too. So you can send a Big Power point presentation without any problem.

 

Here are some of the exclusive screenshots of Hotmail Wave 4 -

 

 

By default this online Album will be available for 90 days on Skydrive, but you can change the expiration date.

 

 

And all this is demoed in this video, A must watch video -

Watch the video and decide yourself. I have been using this pre release version of hotmail Wave 4 since some time and more I use it , more I like it.

Now talking of the receiver – The receiver even if he’s on Gmail will get these photos as a great looking preview of photo album which will allow him to view a full screen  slideshow of all the photos or you can download all the original files in a single zipped file.

The received mail seen in Hotmail -

 

Even the Gmail user also views it in the neat same format -

 

The Slide show the receiver gets, looks stunning with color changing effects -

The best part is the convenience, ease and the beautiful SlideShow.

 

Contest- Win a License of Microsoft Office 2010 Home and Student Edition

Its my pleasure to announce that Microsoft India is providing to us a Copy of Microsoft Office 2007 Home and Student Edition as a Contest Giveaway prize and this will be upgraded to Microsoft Office 2010 for FREE when it gets released in June commercially. So all my blog readers, get ready for the contest.

 

CONTEST -

To Win the Office 2010 license, you need to follow these simple steps :

1. Subscribe to meraTechPort Newsletter by entering your mailID and click on ‘Subscribe’ button in the ‘Subscribe’ section of the Sidebar . A verification mail will be delivered to your Inbox, follow the mail to verify the subscription to complete the request.

2. You can also follow me on twitter to RT about this Contest.

3. And share your thoughts in couple of lines on one of your favorite features in Microsoft Office 2010  and reason. Also if you want any new feature to be added, please tell us in short. You can send this by clicking on ‘Contact Me’ in the sidebar of my blog. (Please use the same mailID, which you had used to Subscribe)

A random lucky winner will be chosen and the prize will be sent to him.Please Note –

• The prize can only be shipped within India. 
• The winners will be sent emails and they will redeem their awards via microsoftstore.co.in

If you haven’t been using office 2010 or its beta ver, you can download the beta ver from here.

(Thanks to Microsoft India for the Microsoft Office License )

 

 

DEEP DIVE INTO OFFICE 2010 -

So that was about the contest,but that’s not all, You are Invited for a Deep Dive into the new Microsoft Office 2010 -

The Office community is hosting a Virtual Launch Event for Office 2010 on May 25 and 26th.This event is FREE to attend. You can choose to come to the training centre closest to you or experience it virtually from your PC using Live Meeting. It’s a training workshop featuring demos and interactions with MVPs – over 2 days. Come discover what you can create with the familiar building blocks of the new Office.

For agenda and to register please visit: http://www.meraoffice.com 

Don’t miss this golden opportunity to learn about the new office 2010 and also win some goodies.

In June, limited cities will be hosting Community Launch Events for Office 2010. At the launch events, attendees will get to see Office 2010 in action and learn how to do their work better with Office 2010. The details are available on http://office.merawindows.com

 

UPDATE  16/06/10

****CONTEST IS CLOSED NOW, WINNER TO BE ANNOUNCED SOON****

 

UPDATE 17/06/10

Winner Announced -

The wait is over and the winner of Microsoft Office 2007 Home and Student Edition is Shaan ul Majid.

Congrats to Shaan !! Thanks to all the participants , Keep checking for more of such Contests, giveaways in the future.

 

================================================

 

I’ll be updating the Post with the Blog Reader’s Comments as and when received -

• Sender Name: Shaan ul Majid
  Sender Email Address: Removed for privacy

My favorite feature is the screen capture tool. It does not allow me to use any other tool to capture the screenshot or to press PrtSc and edit it using MSPaint.
I love it

 

• Sender Name: Sujay
  Sender Email Address: Removed for privacy

Thanks for this giveaway. I am using the beta version of MS Office for long. I like a number of features mainly paste preview, Backstage view, new image editor and ribbon interface.

 

• Sender Name: princeaniket
  Sender Email Address: Removed for privacy

i want to add 1 addition tool as " add or merge " two ppt's or word documents together..

 

• Sender Name: srikapardhi
  Sender Email Address: Removed for privacy

My most favorite feature in office 2010 is its appearance only and its UI.
it is designed with beautiful colours and also the powerpoint is having lot more features than the ppt 2007.
i love office 2010.

 

• Sender Name: Sairam Dinakar inguva
  Sender Email Address: Removed for privacy

Thanks for this giveaway. I am using the beta version of MS Office for long. I like a number of features mainly paste preview, Backstage view, new image editor and ribbon interface.

 

• Sender Name: chelluchanakyaraja
  Sender Email Address: Removed for privacy

I've been using Office 2010 Beta for a couple of months and haven't found any problems. The programs launch really fast - the biggest improvement I've seen over 2007 or any previous version. I feel like I save lots of time when Word docs open fast and save fast...not sure if it adds up to much time but it is a noticeable difference!
All the best for ur launch....

 

• Sender Name: pranay nigotiya
  Sender Email Address: Removed for privacy

hello
i love Ms office because it helps me 100% in my business and personal usage right from word, excel, to ppt , outlook, etc.. its a complete package and nothing can better than this.. cheers..

 

• Sender Name: Dhiraj Sinha
  Sender Email Address: Removed for privacy 

Hi there,
The feature that impresses me most is that one can now seamlessly collaborate on a project with one's coworkers using webapps over SkyDrive or Facebook.Besides,the "paste preview tool",which lets one assess how a copied content would look like while keeping the source formatting intact or stripped or merged without actually pasting it!!,is also very enticing.The more widespread usage of the ribbon interface now across all components of the office is also a welcome move.So keeping in mind the things I have said above,do count me in the giveaway please.Thanking You... Dhiraj
P.S I have subscribed to the email feeds and following you on twitter.My twitter handle is d4dhiraj.Additionally I have tweeted this post at: http://twitter.com/d4dhiraj/status/14745349934

 

• Sender Name: vipul
  Sender Email Address: Removed for privacy 

Hi!
A unique feature of its type should be added to MS-Word.
That is an image editor should be added to word so that any one could make image more pleasant in his document.
Thanks for the promo!

 

• Sender Name: Shaan ul Majid
  Sender Email Address: Removed for privacy 

Hi,
Let me take the liberty to thank you for selecting me as a winner for MS Office 2007 Home Student Edition.
I would like to know how it is going to be shipped to me as I have not received any confirmation related to it.

IM and SMS from the new Hotmail wave 4 integrated chat

The new Hotmail Wave 4 has fully integrated the Messenger chat into the Inbox making it more efficient. With the new Hotmail you can see your Messenger friend’s status and just click on the name to start a conversation. If you right click on the friend’s name, you can do even more like send a text message to their phone, all this without leaving your Inbox.


And if  you have 2 or more conversations going on at once,a new tab gets added to the chat window thus making it easier to keep track of.


 
You can also move the chat window anywhere on the screen and can also detach/pop-out -


Hotmail  header  options screenshots -




Check the demo video of the same -

Microsoft now offering Robotics Developer Studio 2008 R3 for FREE !!

The Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 R3 (Microsoft RDS) is a Windows-based environment for academic, hobbyist, and commercial developers to easily create robotics applications across a wide variety of hardware. All previous editions of Microsoft RDS 2008 R2 (Express, Standard and Academic) have been combined into one new version, RDS 2008 R3 and can be downloaded at no charge.

 

You can get from here.

For more details please check - http://www.microsoft.com/robotics/

Innovative spam fighting technologies in the New Hotmail wave4

Hotmail's fight against spam has certainly come a long way in the last five years.

“SmartScreen is the collective name we use for a cloud-based set of technologies and algorithms that leverage machine learning and artificial intelligence to assign a “spam probability” score to each incoming message. This enables us to filter out over 98% of the spam sent to Hotmail inboxes, blocking 5.5 billion spam messages per day.  Microsoft utilizes SmartScreen across Hotmail, Microsoft Exchange, and Microsoft Forefront, bringing consumers the benefit of business-grade spam protection on Hotmail.”

In the soon to be released Hotmail Wave 4, a number of innovative new spam fighting technologies that will further reduce the amount of spam in Hotmail inbox have been added. Check out this video showing how Hotmail's latest innovations help brings the best spam fighting on the web.

 

 

“New spam-fighting innovations include:

• More advanced IP and content filtering – Hotmail receives over 8 billion messages per day, giving us 8 billion input variables to work with and learn from. Each message we receive further informs SmartScreen’s IP filtering algorithms, making SmartScreen even “smarter.” Because Hotmail is the largest webmail service in the world, it also receives more telemetry on bad IPs than most any other service – either directly or through third parties. This gives our spam filters more opportunity to inform their artificial intelligence than pretty much any other service.
• Spammer infrastructure detection and destruction – SmartScreen not only blocks spam, it uses “x-ray vision” to see behind the URLs contained in malicious email to the source URLs, which we can then block along with their IPs. This means spammers have to abandon their current infrastructure and pay for new places to hide out. By making it more expensive to continue their business, we are taking away their economic incentive.
• Time-traveling filters – We can't always identify a new spammer the moment they start sending spam. But once we identify one, we can go back and clean out spam that they’ve already sent to your inbox before you ever see it. We call this a time-traveling filter, because in some sense we are able to go back in time and get rid of the spam even after it's been delivered!
• Personalized spam filtering – One person’s junk mail is another’s desired piece of mail.  Using artificial intelligence, Hotmail personalizes spam filtering according to the individual preferences of each of the 360+ million customers who use Hotmail, reducing false positives while improving effectiveness at the same time.
• Tagging – Hotmail tags each message you receive, whether in your inbox or in the Junk folder, to help you understand little bit more about why the message was categorized as it was. For example, if you previously marked messages from a sender as junk, we'll tell you that, or if you use a client email program with Hotmail, we'll tell you when that program has rules that result in moving a particular message to another folder. This gives you more direct control of spam management in your inbox unlike any other service.”

(Source: Inside Windows Live)

Microsoft Connect begins its Redesign with Home page and Product Directory

 

Microsoft Connect has started its redesign. This redesign effort will go through the next several months. In the May release Home Page and the Product Directory have been redesigned.

 

Main changes to Home Page -

· Cleaner and simpler UI

· Clear call to action: find products accepting feedback

· Product/Program search

· Clearer site focus: bugs and suggestions for Microsoft products currently accepting community feedback

· Showcase user’s feedback impact on Microsoft products

· Connect-wide news by the Connect team

 

Main Changes to Product Directory -

· Easier-to-navigate directory, including column sorting

· Feedback Centric: products not currently accepting bugs or suggestions moved to secondary screen

· Product/Program search

· Display User Status in Programs

· Products belong to only one category

· Product Logo added

· Grid shows the type of feedback currently being accepted and the audience availability

The Connect Blog says-

“We invite you to give us your feedback, as well as to join our Connect Improvement Program to discuss these changes in our newsgroups. “

So one can provide feedback and also can join the Improvement program for discussion

(Source: Connect Blog)

The New Hotmail and Messenger in Action Videos - wave4

The New Hotmail (wave4) in action -

 

 

 

The New Messenger in Action -

 

(Source:http://www.youtube.com/user/TheMicrosoftIndia)

RAMMap – A new Sysinternals tool for advanced physical memory usage analysis

Mark Russinovich has come up with a new Sysinternals tool, RAMMap v1.0 . RAMMap is an advanced physical memory usage analysis tool.

Have you ever wondered exactly how Windows is assigning physical memory, how much file data is cached in RAM, or how much RAM is used by the kernel and device drivers? RAMMap makes answering those questions easy. RAMMap is an advanced physical memory usage analysis utility for Windows Vista and higher. It presents usage information in different ways on its several different tabs:

• Use Counts: usage summary by type and paging list
• Processes: process working set sizes
• Priority Summary: prioritized standby list sizes
• Physical Pages: per-page use for all physical memory
• Physical Ranges: physical memory addresses
• File Summary: file data in RAM by file
• File Details: individual physical pages by file

 

Use RAMMap to gain understanding of the way Windows manages memory, to analyze application memory usage, or to answer specific questions about how RAM is being allocated. RAMMap’s refresh feature enables you to update the display and it includes support for saving and loading memory snapshots.

 

Download it from here.

You can also run it Live from -

Run RAMMap now from Live.Sysinternals.com

Source : http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ff700229.aspx

View, Share and Edit Office Documents from Hotmail – Cool new feature in Wave4

The new version of Hotmail has come up with lots of cool features and this one is the coolest feature. The new Hotmail makes it very efficient, easy, convenient to handle Office docs.
As you create a new email, there’s an option provided ‘Office Docs’, click on it to attach any Office Document and send it.




As one receives an Office document as attachment in the new Hotmail- be it Word, Excel or PowerPoint, one can open and view it online in any popular browser – on a PC or Mac – and even if office is not installed on ones’ PC or if one has an older version. A link will be provided and one has to just open it to view. Thus a seamless integration is provided between Hotmail and the Office Web Apps.

And one more thing, if you receive any Office Document, it gets automatically listed under ‘Office docs’ folder in the Quick views.


You can view Office documents sent to you in the new Hotmail with the same fidelity you’d get if you were viewing it using your Office Application on your PC. This means that if you’re travelling and want to be able to view that PowerPoint presentation or you’re on the road and want to read that Word document, you now get 100 percent full viewing quality even when you’re away from your PC

( Click on picture for enlarged view)

And even you can edit it in browser itself with the Office Web Apps.





if you need intensive editing, you can open it in Office application on your PC. When you’re finished, any edits you made to the document on the browser will maintain formatting and any on your PC will be automatically saved back into the cloud where you can then keep the document stored privately or share it with others.



Reply with edits to an attachment
Normally, if a friend emailed you a document — like a resume — and asked you to make a few edits, you’d have to spend time downloading, saving, opening, resaving and re-attaching the document. And of course, you would need to make sure your PC had Office installed.
The new Hotmail makes this much easier by letting you edit your friend’s document and reply back — all without leaving Hotmail and even if you don’t have Office installed on your PC.
This makes it one of the coolest feature of the new Hotmail.

Share big attachments
Hotmail users can send up to 200 Office documents of up to 50 MB each — a total of 10 GB — in a single message. The people you send the documents to — regardless of whether they’re on Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo!
Mail or otherwise — will receive links to where you’ve stored the documents in the cloud (on Windows Live SkyDrive) so that you’re not filling their inboxes. They can click on the links to view the documents in their browsers using the Office Web Apps or download the documents to their local machines — one by one or all together in a single convenient .zip file. And when you send those documents, just like with photos, a private folder is created and only the people that receive
the email will have access.

Work with others
If you’re using the new Hotmail, you can email Office documents to people on other email services (including Gmail and Yahoo! Mail) and they too can view and edit your Office documents in the cloud. Nothing is needed to view, and all they need is a Windows Live ID to edit.

Versioning
And with multiple edited versions of the same document, you can always go back to previous versions thanks to the online file management provided by Windows Live SkyDrive — another key part of transforming Hotmail and Office into a great personal productivity solution.

Collaborative editing in Real time
You can work together on a doc in real time. whatever changes being made by one can be seen instantly so one can work together in real time and stay coordinated using Messenger present within Hotmail


Such features truly makes the new Hotmail, the most efficient email for busy people.
You can view all the above features demoed in this video -

Hotmail Wave 4 Vs Gmail comparison Chart

Vs

As you know, Microsoft has previewed today the New Hotmail with great features. The Hotmail Wave 4 provides slew of new tools and features.
Here’s a head to head comparison of some of the features between Hotmail Wave 4 and Gmail -

	Hotmail Wave 4	Gmail
Lots of Storage	Unlimited	Expanding
Large attachment limits	50 MB	25MB
Total attachment limits per message	10 GB	25MB
Threaded Conversations	Optional	Always On
Integrated Web IM and SMS	Messenger	Chat
Mobile browse	Yes	Yes
Mobil sync/push	Yes	Yes
Forwarding	Open	Open
Flags or stars	Yes	Yes

Check the Total attachment limits per message of Hotmail Wave 4 , its 10GB compared to 25 MB of Gmail.
(Source: Hotmail Competitive Comparison Chart)

New themes in the New Hotmail

Apart from many cool features, the new Hotmail has also added some themes that matches with the Windows 7 themes.









Please note that this version of Hotmail is not the final ver. and the themes may vary in the final version.

Active Views – Watch Youtube videos and other partner platform content within the new Hotmail

Hotmail has a new partner platform which will bring the content and functionality of other websites right into Inbox. Thus, it not only makes it very convenient but also saves time. This feature is called ‘Active Views’.


For example, if you get a link in your mail to a video or photo album from your friend, you can view it right within the email message itself. Hotmail recognizes the video and automatically  pulls in the description and lets you watch it right in the Hotmail. Hotmail supports this for links to many sites like YouTube, Hulu, Flickr, SmugMug, and Justin.tv.


Just click on the ‘Play video’ and it’ll start playing without you leaving the Inbox.



Similarly for your online purchases, the tracking code mail can display the  real-time shipping status within Hotmail itself without going to the shipper’s web site.


Similarly if you receive an LinkedIn invitation. you can accept it within Hotmail.
Very convenient feature.
Check out the demo video of the Active View