10 predictions for Windows 8

Although there have been numerous rumors regarding what we can expect from Windows 8, Microsoft has revealed very few concrete details. So I wanted to take the opportunity to present my predictions.

1: ARM support

The one firm detail that Microsoft has released is that Windows 8 will support the ARM architecture. ARM processors are common in various consumer electronics devices, and it seems clear that Microsoft is positioning itself to allow Windows 8 to run on PCs, tablets, and cell phones.

2: Separation from the server

Before the days of Windows XP, Windows Server and the Windows desktop clients were two completely different operating systems. In recent years, Microsoft has tried to cut development costs by designing its desktop and server operating systems to use the same kernel. Even so, I think we may see Microsoft make a departure from the strategy.

3: OS on a diet

For as long as I can remember, people have complained that Windows is an overly bloated operating system. Since Microsoft is going to design Windows 8 to run equally well on PCs and devices with ARM processors, I think that it will have no choice but to trim down the operating system.

4: Goodbye to 32-bit support

Even though there are rumors to the contrary, I expect Microsoft to do away with 32-bit support in Windows 8. Every PC that has been manufactured in the last several years includes a 64-bit processor. There is absolutely no reason why a brand-new operating system needs to continue to support legacy 32-bit hardware.

5: Virtual plug-ins

Believe it or not, I think that Windows 7 was actually a model for Windows 8 in some ways. As you will recall, Microsoft offers something called Windows XP mode in some editions of Windows 7. With Windows XP mode, Windows XP runs as a virtual machine, but in a rather unique way. Users can either use the Windows XP desktop or they can run applications transparently through the Windows 7 desktop, even though those applications are actually running on Windows XP.

6: Heavy reliance on the cloud

This past summer at TechEd in New Orleans, Microsoft placed extremely heavy emphasis on cloud computing. I don’t expect Microsoft to completely abandon its cloud focus just because it has a new desktop operating system on the horizon. Instead, I look for Windows 8 to include heavy cloud integration. For example, I think that Windows 8 will probably provide the ability to make cloud applications appear to users as if they are installed and running locally.

7: Native support for virtualized apps

I think we can expect Windows 8 to offer native support for virtualized applications. Among these applications, I think Windows 8 will be designed to run Internet Explorer in a sandbox. This would help put an end to all the security issues that Microsoft has previously had with the browser, because virtualizing and sandboxing Internet Explorer would prevent malicious Web sites from infecting the core operating system. It may even be possible to reset Internet Explorer to a pristine state after each use.

8: A bigger distinction between consumer and enterprise versions

Ever since Windows XP, Microsoft has offered different editions of its desktop operating systems with at least one version geared toward consumers and another toward businesses. I think that in Windows 8, we will see a greater distinction between the consumer and enterprise editions than ever before.

9: Using hardware to drive sales

One thing that was abundantly clear from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this year is that the PC is in real trouble. Consumers have begun to shy away from purchasing desktops and laptops in favor of purchasing tablet devices. As a result, I look for Microsoft to use native operating system support for specialized hardware to try to woo customers back to the PC. For example, I think we will see an adaptation of Microsoft Kinect for the PC, which will allow interacting with the PC via hand gestures. Just how practical it will be to work with a PC in this manner remains to be seen, but I think it will make a great marketing gimmick.

10: Name change

Even though everyone has been using the name Windows 8, I don’t think that will be the official name of the new operating system. At the moment, Microsoft has a serious image problem. It’s perceived by many as being out of touch and late to the party. While other companies are focusing on tablets and mobile devices, Microsoft is still writing software for the PC. I think that in an effort to lose its dated image, Microsoft may rebrand Windows as something completely different. It might even lose the name Windows.

Microsoft's battle plan vs. iPad

Wonder how Microsoft is planning to counter the Apple iPad phenomenon? Take a look at this leaked slide presentation. Then, give us your thoughts on Microsoft’s approach.

Microsoft is planning its 2011 attack against the Apple iPad, which is running roughshod over the tablet market with 95% market share and starting to eat away at the sales of low-end Windows netbooks and laptops. According to a leaked presentation obtained by ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft is focusing its tablet strategy on five key areas that it considers iPad weaknesses:

1. Enterprise security and compliance
2. IT manageability
3. Integration with Microsoft apps and platforms
4. User choice
5. Content creation

Larry Page as Google CEO: His top 5 challenges

Google has a new CEO as co-founder Larry Page steps up to the plate. Eric Schmidt hangs around as Chairman to deal with strategy and government relations and the big picture. Page’s other half Sergey Brin will focus on products. And that’s where things are going to be interesting.



Thinking quarterly. A CEO’s success is measured three months at a time. Google hasn’t had to worry about that too much since the search giant makes gobs of cash—at least enough to invest heavily in data centers, big buildings in New York City and bonuses to keep people. Page was largely insulated from that song and dance. As CEO, it’s distraction city. Page will have to talk to media, government types and Wall Street analysts. That’s a bit different than “the spend 10 percent of your time motif Google has going on.”



Putting doubts to rest. Schmidt inadvertently put a lot of pressure on Page. On an earnings conference call, Schmidt said: 
I want to say very clearly that I believe Larry is ready. He has been working on this area for a long time. His ideas are very interesting and clever, and it is time for him to have a shot at running this and doing it, and I’m sure he will do a fantastic job. It is interesting that a decade goes by very fast when you work in a partnership as wonderful as this has been, and I’m quite sure that this partnership will continue. We are friends. We are coworkers. We are computer scientists. We have a common vision. I don’t anticipate any material change in any of our strategies or anything. We tend to agree on pretty much everything. But I do believe that as a result of this, we will operate and execute the business even better.



Schmidt’s shadow. Adding to this pressure on Page is the fact that Schmidt is still there. In Google’s history, Schmidt was the grown-up manager to the two co-founders/visionaries. However, Page is like a CEO who still lives at home. Schmidt’s shadow remains. It would almost be easier if Schmidt weren’t hovering.


Page’s presence. Page may have been involved in the day-to-day operations, but he hasn’t really had the big stage to himself. How will Page carry a keynote? Schmidt had a veteran’s view and a lot of presence based on experience. Page’s persona is a work in progress.


Finding Google’s next act. Schmidt alluded to Page’s “clever” ideas. Page will have to deliver a few of those. Why? Google’s biggest threat may be Facebook. Facebook could be an ad threat and be as meaningful to the Web ecosystem as Google.

CES 2011: The biggest winners and losers

The Consumer Electronics Show is the biggest and most anticipated events in terms of electronics and tech industry that take place every year. It is also the stage which hosts industry tech giants to showcase their masterpieces. As it happens annually, it brings out some clear winners and losers alike. Here is this year’s scoreboard.


WINNERS

Motorola Mobility

Motorola Mobility the new Motorola spinoff that went live as a separate entity on the New York Stock Exchange on Monday of CES week. This new company focuses entirely on consumer devices and their first CES couldn’t have been scripted any better. In partnership with Google and Verizon they officially announced the new flagship Android tablet, the Motorola Xoom. They announced one of the first high-powered smartphones running on Verizon’s LTE 4G network, the Droid Bionic. And, to top it all off, they unveiled the breakthrough product of CES 2011, the Motorola Atrix, a smartphone that doubles as a legitimate PC replacement with both desktop and laptop docks.

Verizon Wireless

In the past, Verizon Wireless has saved most of its big product announcements for some of the telcom-specific trade shows or its own private announcements. This year, the company came to CES with both guns blazing. On the heels of the successful US launch last month of its 4G LTE network — which is, arguably, now the world’s most advanced 4G Internet experience — Verizon had LTE live in Las Vegas and ready to show off the world’s largest annual crowd of technology enthusiasts. The network performed like a champ. And, on the official opening day of CES, Verizon held press conference announcing 10 LTE devices — smartphones, tablets, and hotspots — that will launch during the first half of the year. It was an impressive roster of devices from leading vendors such as Samsung, Motorola, HTC, and LG. The Motorola Xoom tablet and the HTC Thunderbolt were especially impressive. I spent 25 minutes using the Thunderbolt and was blown away by the speeds generated by the combination of its high-end hardware paired with Verizon LTE.

NVIDIA

The company that was seemingly everywhere at CES 2011 was NVIDIA. Specifically, the dual core NVIDIA Tegra2 was the processor du jour, showing up in many of the new smartphones, tablets, and even car-tech announcements. At CES, NVIDIA announced that it is partnering with ARM to launch its own high-performance CPU cores the size of a dime. This is the long-rumored “Project Denver” that NVIDIA has been working on and it will likely position the company as a leading powerhouse in the next generation computing, since ARM processors power nearly all of the smartphones and tablets coming to market and are now scaling up to run PCs and servers as well. NVIDIA looks like it could become the Intel of the next great wave of computing.
HONORABLE MENTION: Samsung

LOSERS

Microsoft

This is beginning to sound like a broken record, but I’m still waiting to hear any hint of Microsoft’s vision of where it sees the computing world headed in the decade ahead and how Microsoft plans to take us there. We didn’t get it at CES 2011 even though Microsoft once again had the biggest stage — the opening keynote the night before the official opening of CES. Microsoft squandered its opportunity to set the agenda of the tech industry. Instead, it simply trotted out its standard stump speech on “Windows everywhere” and replayed many of the same demos from its 2010 product launches. Then, once the show opened, many of Microsoft’s traditional PC partners spent CES spotlighting their tablets instead of new netbooks or laptops running Windows 7. Microsoft’s newly-launched Windows Phone 7 devices got completely overshadowed as partners HTC, Samsung, and LG put their new Android smartphones front-and-center. And, at a show dominated by the launch of new tablets, we heard nothing from Microsoft about its tablet plans. Even Microsoft’s long-time partner Intel criticized Microsoft’s missing tablet strategy.

Sony

Sony’s CES story is not unlike Microsoft’s. Where’s the leadership? Where’s the vision? Sony has traditionally been the biggest name in the consumer electronics industry. It should dominate CES. But, when’s the last time you heard about a breakthrough product from Sony? When’s the last time you heard about a market-leading product from Sony? Its competitors have been running circles around it, and it was no different at CES 2011. Sony put on some glitzy presentations, but lacked the product leadership. Much of that was due to the fact that Sony focused most of its energy on the wrong thing — 3D TV. While Sony had perhaps the most impressive 3D television at CES, that’s a dubious distinction akin to having the nicest house in a neighborhood scheduled for demolition. Contrast that to what Samsung did at CES. It delivered thin, high-quality, reasonably priced (non-3D) TVs — the ones people actually want to buy. But, TVs weren’t Samsung’s only story. They unveiled exciting new smartphones, tablets, and PCs, including one of the most innovative new products at CES, the Sliding PC 7, a hybrid laptop/tablet.

Intel

One of the major trends at CES 2011 was the acceleration of the world to mobile computing. With the unveiling of dual core smartphones, over 80 new tablets, smartphones that also serve as PCs (the Motorola Atrix), and an emerging new category of hybrid tablet/laptops, it’s clear that technology companies are rising to meet the demands of users, who are spending more and more of their computing time using mobile devices instead of traditional PCs. If you look closely at this army of new devices — which were the headliners of CES — almost none of them are running Intel processors. Practically the whole fleet of these devices are running ARM processors in general and the dual core NVIDIA Tegra2 specifically. Intel has known that this trend was coming. I remember Intel presenting a slide at the 2008 Intel Developer Conference showing how sales of mobile devices were going to rapidly overtake traditional PCs in the years ahead. Intel attempted to meet this trend with its Menlow and Moorestown processors for “Mobile Internet Devices” (MIDs), a category that it tried to create with its hardware and software partners. However, Intel’s chips couldn’t match the low-power efficiency of ARM chips and rise of smartphones crowded MIDs out of the market. Instead of going back to the drawing board and making a more power-efficient class of mobile chips, Intel continues to fall behind. While NVIDIA chips were powering nearly all of the tablets and high-end smartphones at CES, Intel played up its “Sandy Bridge” chips for multimedia PCs. This focus on high-end chips feels like a tacit admission that Intel has no answer in mobile.

Five tips for managing employee Internet access

There’s a fine line between being Big Brother and keeping employees from wasting too much time on the Internet. And as we all know, there are plenty of ways to waste time on the ‘net: Facebook, Twitter, chatting, shopping, scores… you name it. But how do you manage control of your employees — and what type of control do you extend over them?

1: Try Packetfence

Packetfence is one of the most powerful network access control tools available. It’s an open source tool that can easily be installed and administered on either Red Hat Enterprise Linux or CentOS. You can also install on Ubuntu or Debian, but it’s not nearly as easy. With this tool, you can manage who has access to what, what time they have access, and how much they have access to. Packetfence helps keep unwanted users/devices from accessing your network, too. If you are serious about controlling your network, this tool should be at the top of the list of those you want to test.

2: Try OpenDNS

OpenDNS is an industry-leading Web content/security/DNS tool that is completely Web based. With OpenDNS, you can filter content, prevent phishing, block page bypass (Enterprise only), protect against malware (Enterprise only), delegate administration (Enterprise only), and much more. You will have detailed daily reports as well as archived logs and statistics. With content filtering, you can select from more than 50 categories and prevent the use of proxies for bypassing filters. There are different plans, ranging from Free to Enterprise. Pricing can be found on the OpenDNS Web site.

3: Monitor network usage

If you are less inclined to do a catch-all prevention of certain Web traffic, you might want to look into tools that will monitor network usage. With tools of this nature, you can keep tabs on what your users are viewing online and then act accordingly. This is a much less Big Brother approach to managing what your employees are viewing. By handling this task this way, you are more inclined to have a lower attrition rate from employees not wanting to work in a controlling environment. A tool like Net Spy Pro allows you to monitor employee Web usage from a single desktop. This particular tool even allows the administrator to view employee bookmarks and favorites. Although some think this a better approach than implementing policies and preventing access to certain (or all) Web sites, many people view this quite the opposite. As I said earlier, it’s a very fine line.

4: Make sure you have a clear access policy

Instead of employing controlling software, it might better suit your environment and employees to have clear policies in place that prevent the usage of certain Web sites during work hours. This method does call upon the honor system (unless you are using a monitoring tool), which gives your work environment a more relaxed feel. The problem with this method arises when you discover an employee abusing the policies and you do not react. If you lay out a clear policy and do not punish those ignoring it, you may as well throw that policy out the door and forget about having any control whatsoever.

5: Give a little now and then

Along with having clear policies, you have to be willing to offer some flexibility. During the holiday season, employees are going to shop online. During March Madness, employees are going to check basketball scores. You must be willing to give or you will find yourself with some upset employees. If you are never willing to bend on your policies, the attrition rate may rise during certain times of the year or with certain cross sections of employees. (Older employees may be less apt to take issue with such policies than younger employees.)

Finding the balance

The saying “Everything is relative” applies here — as does “Everything in moderation.” The real problem with employees surfing the Web happens when it interferes with actual work. This could be too much browsing or browsing to unsafe or inappropriate sites. You, as an employer (or manager) must tread that fine line between too much and too little control over what employees can do with their Web browsing.

Photography Tips

Perk Up Pets Pictures:

BigC- my Pomeranian

Everybody loves to photograph their pets -- but few know how to get the most out of their furry friends. Following any or all of these tips can improve your pet photography

1) Get down and dirty. You usually see Rover and Fluffy from above, but that's not the best angle for a portrait. Instead, flop down on the floor and meet them at eye-level; this presents them as equals in the photo and reveals their personalities.

2) Light it right. Direct on-camera flash will give your pet a killer case of green-, yellow-, or blue-eye. Try to avoid direct flash: If you can, bounce the flash off the ceiling or a wall, or move the flash off-camera. Or just ditch the flash and try available light, both indoors and out.

3) Fill the frame. You've heard this one before. Fill the frame with your subject to make it prominent and to crop out any distractions.

4) The eyes have it. You might find yourself shooting with a shallow depth of field, so whatever else you do, make sure the eyes are in focus. The windows to the soul must be kept clear! 

MyFord Mobile smartphone app

Ford's new MyFord Mobile app will let owners of the Focus electric car get a variety of telematics functions, from the basic, such as remote door unlock, to trip planning software that takes the car's remaining range into account.

MyFord Mobile includes smart charging settings. Ford worked with Microsoft to develop a system that takes advantage of low electricity rates. The system asks owners when they expect to need the car, then picks a period of time when electricity is cheap to charge up the batteries.

MyFord Mobile uses MapQuest to find charging stations. It shows the car's current location and nearby charging stations. It also indicates which charging stations are in range.

The trip planning feature lets drivers enter multiple destinations, indicating if the car has enough range to reach all of them. Drivers can decide on different routes based on how much range the car has left.

The app gives tips to help drivers maximize their range. For example, it checks the outside temperature and suggests pre-heating or running the air conditioning while the car is plugged in, so the climate control system does not impact range as much.