Windows7  Aero Peek is the cool feature which makes every other window transparent while highlighting the thumbnail preview of an application window . This enables a clear view of the window which we want to take a look at. Clicking on a silver button at the bottom right corner of the window gives us a peek at the windows desktop making all other windows transparent and the gadgets which are free floating.

Pinning is the new feature which replaces the Quicklaunch . Now they are sided along with the open applications . All such applications pinned get a spot on the taskbar thus allowing easy access. All the running appplications has a glossy sheen over it and the rest remain dull . Adding of more than folder puts them under the Windoes explore icon and adding a file makes it associated with the application . So we actually have to use the jump list to select it.

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Microsoft’s Azure Services Platform is a cloud platform aimed at delivering cloud computing services and a whole range of computing solutions based on cloud computing.This a significant step by Microsoft in the field of cloud computing following Microsoft’s online services.Azure Services Platform is an application platform which is part of the cloud that allows applications to be hosted and run at Microsoft datacenters cross various locations. It provides a cloud operating system called Windows Azure that serves as a runtime for the applications and provides a set of services that allows development, management and hosting of managed applications off-premises and on-premises. All Azure Services and applications built using them run on top of Windows Azure.

Fabric controller is the hosting environment for Windows Azure.Fabric controller manages many functions like resource management,load control and a host of other features which the connected systems need not worry about.Data storage functionality is also provided such as the Windows Azure Storage Service where the information is stored as unstructured binary blobs. Azure Services Platform provides an API built on REST, HTTP and XML which allows the developer to interact with the services offered by Azure. Besides that a client side library is also provided and is also integrated along with the Microsoft Visual Studio which functions as the premier IDE for developing applications for the environment and also publishing it. The Azureservice platform runs on the Windows Azure Specialized Operating System which in turn is on the topmost layer of  Windows Server systems running on  Windows Server 2008 .

There is also a customized version of Hyper-V which is  known as the Windows Azure Hypervisor and this provides virtualization of services.The Microsoft Azure service Platform also makes of Live Services, SQL Services, .NET Services, SharePoint Services and Dynamics CRM Services. These service can be used by the developers in developing applications for this environment. Microsoft studio is provided with client library,code management tool for the development of specialized applications for the Azure platform. Scalability and reliability is controlled by Fabric Controller which makes sure that the services do not crash. It also runs on the .NET framework SDKs have been provided for JAVA as well as Ruby so that the developers of these languages can integrate with the .NET platform.

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Today I am going to explain about Microsoft initiative to experience 360 degree view of your favorite destinations and monuments, The PhotoSynth. This research project enable us to share or relive a vacation destination or explore a distant museum or landmark. With PhotoSynth you can transform your regular digital cam photos to 360 degree view. This is a joint initiative between Microsoft and University of Washington based on the groundbreaking research of Noah Snavely (UW), Steve Seitz (UW),and Richard Szeliski (Microsoft Research).

Photosynth analyzes each photo for similarities to the others, and uses that data to build a model of where the photos were taken. It then re-creates the environment and uses that as a canvas on which to display the photos.

Check out this TED video>> This is amazing.

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Ever you felt that your mouse over and menu item opening is slow in your Windows Vista? Yeah this is true there is a delay of half a second or more. But there is a workaround to avoid this unnecessary delay. I will explain you step by step process to avoid this.

1. Open your registry editor.  Type “regedit” on your search in start menu and press enter.

2. Expand the branches to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop.

3. Double-click the MenuShowDelay value. If it’s not there, go to Edit > New > String Value, and type MenuShowDelay for the name of the new value.

4. The numeric value you enter here is the number of milliseconds (thousandths of a second) Windows will wait before opening a menu. Enter 0 (zero) here to eliminate the delay completely.

5. Click OK and close the Registry Editor when you’re finished. Log off and then log back in or restart Windows or restart explorer.exe for this change to take effect.

This will remove menu show delay. Just do this and watch whether a significant behavior for your menu.

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If you are using Windows Vista you might be experiencing performance issues. Microsoft recently released Windows Vista Service Pack 1 which contain a performance improvement pack called Hotfix.

Alternate way to install Hotfix, download it from the link provided below.

Vista 32-bit users

Vista 64-bit users

After installing Hotfix it will improve performance for layered functions like accessing menus and low response times etc. The performance improvement are about 2 to 4 times. I feel better performance improvement for my laptop now.

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You bought a new laptop that is embedded with Genuine Windows Vista and you are weird due the sluggish performance of Vista? By default the Vista sidebar is activated on the start up, that make the system slower. The user can add different gadgets like RSS reader, clock, CPU meter, Notes etc in the Sidebar. Ousting the sidebar saves some amount of memory so that we can increase the performance. Go through the steps described below.

Step 1)

Right click on the windows sidebar on the system tray. Check out the image below. If it is not there just go through this way Start->Programs->Accessories->Windows Sidebar

Step 2)

The Sidebar Properties window will be shown un-check the Start Sidebar when Windows starts. Click OK and Apply. Check out the figure below.

This amendment will saves considerable amount of memory thereby increase your system performance.

Check your Microsoft Vista updates regularly, also save considerable amount of memory.

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I am genuine Windows vista user, however, I am also using ubuntu, both seems very friendly for me. As far I know a lot of memory issues and bugs are available with vista that widely affects its performance. Even while the vista booting, a sluggish process, it will take more than 10 minutes, my laptop is with 1GB RAM. Anyway whatever issues available the compulsion factor to use Microsoft products are far far better as compared to others. Windows vista’s bugs created a lot of ominous with Microsoft. They have recognized the issues during their beta release itself, from that time onwards they started fixing issues with Vista. Microsoft recently released a low foot print version that reduced the memory requirements.

As a matter of fact, I would suggest all of the Vista users to check your updates regularly. If your automatic updates turned on, don’t bother about this topic. Anyway I have turned off my automatic updates, cos that save some memory of mines :-( . Let me explain how to check out updates manually.

Step 1)

On the start menu click on the All programs, and select “Windows update“.

Step 2)

On the left top of the Updates window, you can see link ‘Check for updates’, click on the link.

Step 3)

It will start searching for updates. After sometime the window will show the updates available.

Step 4)

Click on the Install updates button, it will start downloading, and will automatically install the components into your system.

Microsoft Vista service pack is now available for download.

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