Windows Live Messenger to shut down in October 31

Last year, Microsoft had announced that Windows Live Messenger will be shut down in October 31 that users have to migrate to Skype which is kind of more popular. Now that Skype is with Microsoft, it may seem that Microsoft will have more work after that to keep Skype going. There may be recent features as well as the fact that the UI is redesigned with Modern UI in which the only ugly looking is taking place in the video chat section while the rest of the new Skype UI looks simple and fine. Perhaps, they forgot to change the background of the video chat or something to make things better.

Xperia and Box renew partnership through next year

Announced before the last year’s festive season and initially running for a year, the Xperia smartphone and Sony tablet users can now get the free 50GB Box cloud storage for life by signing up or accessing existing Box accounts from their devices before the end of next year.

Development Area Update

As Windows Live Mesh would be replaced with the new Skydrive, it seemed that I had decided to move my development data to my Box cloud storage but the Box Sync was annoyingly flawed that I decided to another migration again and this time, the Music Remix Area would be moved to my Skydrive account. Even worse was that the policy was changed that having abusive data in your Skydrive cloud storage can lead to the removal of your Microsoft account.

Over the next few weeks, there will be another news from Sony and Box as there will be a talk about the service and what they can expect from Box through next year. This is available for Xperia smartphones including the released after Xperia X10 but not for X10 Mini, X10 Mini Pro and devices with Android versions prior to 2.1

Skype for Linux with Windows Live Login

Previously, the newest version of Skype for Windows which is version 6.0 has the Windows Live Messenger support but to make things even faster and more fluid, it seems that Microsoft has decided to ditch Windows Live Messenger in favor Skype next year. Now, there’s also the Linux version of Skype that is based on Windows version of Skype 6.0.

Interestingly enough, the Linux version of Skype is multi-arch friendly. This means, 64-bit users can install the 64-bit version of Skype on the 64-Bit Linux OSes. Unfortunately, there are flaws for the 64-bit version of Skype for Linux compared to 32-bit versions.

Messenger Contacts on Skype

Messenger and Skype are coming together and things are getting easier. It was previously a pain in the ass that you can’t even view the email accounts of your Skype friends but I don’t know if importing Messenger or Facebook contacts can make things easier.

The effort was previously started with the release of Skype 6.0 which allows you to sign into Skype with the Microsoft Account. With that, you can communicate with the Messenger friends with Skype.

Next year, Windows Live Messenger will be retired in favor of the clean looking Skype like it was a shame on Microsoft for not making the latest version of Windows Live Messenger quite fluid enough.

Once you update to version 6.0 of Skype, you’ll be able to expect broader device support for all platforms, sharing screens, video call on mobile phones and with Facebook friends and group video calling. However, some of the features require that you get the premium account. Once you have Skype version 6.0, you will be merging your Messenger and Skype accounts into the Microsoft account and to start communicating straight away.

First wave of Windows 8 Metro games announced

You know, they should have announced this in September 1st instead of August 31st and here comes some announcement from Major Nelson. The first wave of Windows 8 Metro games powered by Xbox Live will be released in October 26th and what surprised me was that, I stumbled upon the upcoming Metro edition of BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger. HOW THE HELL ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO PLAY THAT PORT IF IT DOESN’T SUPPORT KEYBOARD CONTROLS? You expect to hook up the USB controller for that? WHAT IF THAT PORT IS FOR TABLETS ONLY?

You know, there was ALREADY a PC version released two years ago and that wasn’t enough to Microsoft like that? It turns out that Steam is somewhat better in services and functionality than Games for Windows Live. I tried out Games for Windows Live like one to three years ago or something and the login process could go and troll on my ass that I gave up using on that service in favor of Steam, where I can look for more indie games to try there.

In addition to that existing fighting game, there are also casual games as we know of that will be released for Windows 8 devices. OK, it sure seems that the controls will be easily compatible that way with mouse and touch and of course, you’re going to play them once the operating system is out but WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER GAME GENRES?

And that’s what has been happening to Microsoft without like enough motivation and fun activities to deal with. Where in the hell is the multi-national music artist appreciation like Google Japan did in showcasing the commercials featuring like three different young music artists?

But wait up, there’s a good news for you. There will be the upcoming sequel to Blazblue: Continuum Shift and one of the characters is somewhat comparable to Iku Nagae from Touhou series. Holy cow, that character is kind of badass but it turns out that it is the male character. That sequel will be released in Japan in Winter this year with the Playstation 3 release hitting sometime next year.

New Office and Skydrive for Windows

In Office 15, you can connect your account to various services like the social networking sites, other E-mail accounts and even the cloud services like Skydrive. From the Skydrive menu, you can choose various folders to retrieve documents from and save the documents to. But unfortunately, because Microsoft Office 15 is the desktop app, it may be unfortunate that you have to end up using the Skydrive desktop app or something when trying to retrieve documents like that for example. You may have a better bet in using the Skydrive Metro app to retrieve the documents on the document as the interactivity is easier that way.
There are now few ways to obtain the new Skydrive desktop app for windows. First, is the standalone way. Second, it you have Office 15 Home Premium Preview installed, Skydrive is already on your computer. Third, there's even the new Windows Essentials Wave 5 that has Skydrive app that replaces Windows Live Mesh entirely. Downside though, the programs still look like the Wave 4 version of Windows Live Essentials  and in fact, there's no major progress whatsoever like that. The glassy ribbon interface is still there and there are STILL NOT enough features for Windows Live Movie Maker or some sort compared to other third-party video editors. That is the most disappointing part of Windows Live Essentials of like all time.
In addition to saving your documents to the cloud on Skydrive, there are other Web Locations, other online storages on other Microsoft accounts and other computers on your network. Besides saving your documents on your network, there are other places for you to save your documents to. Due to having the Save As Sub-Menu like that in Office 15, you have to be careful on where do you want to save your documents to so it's a little bit challenging while the data synchronization with the use of Skydrive is already easy enough on the computer. However, since you're in the desktop mode, it may be unfortunate to interact like that on the dialog boxes on the tablet and it should be WHY the hell is Office 15 the desktop app. One of the reasons is that Office 15 can be fully-featured app which may be finer on the normal computers, not the tablets.
When you have the Office documents stored on your Skydrive, you can use any device to access your Skydrive documents where-ever you go, provided that you have internet access. You can also use the Office Web Apps that are also upgraded to the online version of Office 15. Other changes include the Microsoft Website and the Microsoft Account Login pages which are apparently metro-ized. When your Skydrive data is automatically synchronized between your cloud storage and your device, it is automatically up-to-date  just like using its rival cloud services.
There's also the Office Upload Center that connects with the Skydrive but even then, I don't happen to be using it to transfer the documents.

Office 15 Preview - Let's Get Started!

Well, I already had Office 15 Customer Preview installed on my computer provided that I have my Windows Live Account. From the Office 15 Customer Preview official website, you can click on Sign Up button to get directed to the Office 365 Home Premium Customer Preview. You're allowed to install Office 15 Home Premium edition on up to 5 devices. Furthermore, you can access the Office documents on the cloud via SkyDrive technology. Also, you can click on one of the products under 'Explore the Office applications' where I think that you're still directed to Home Premium edition.
Below Home Premium edition part is the 'Services for Business' part. There, you can select ProPlus, Small Business Premium or Enterprise. Professional Plus is for IT Pros, Enterprise is for large enterprise business and Small Business as it suggests, is for small business companies. ProPlus Preview lets you create up to 25 users with 5 installations per user. So this kind of volume licensing method is under 'Per User' so one user can install Office 15 Preview on up to five devices which leaves 24 users remaining. Small Business Premium Preview and Enterprise Preview editions take the benefits of Office 365 Pro Plus edition that allow professional email, shared documents, and HD video conferencing but the Enterprise Preview has extra features like Exchange Online, including archiving and legal hold to fully manage your company's email in the cloud. The Enterprise Preview edition also includes SharePoint Online to manage, share and edit business documents and Lync Online to allow you to conduct meetings and collaborate across remote teams on the network technologically and your team members.
In addition to the new Office 365 split up into new editions and existing editions, there are newer versions of individual products that are separate parts of Microsoft Office such as SharePoint, Exchange, Lync, Office Web Apps Server, Project and Visio. For IT Pros, you can get the new version of SharePoint Server, Exchange Server, Lync Server, Project Professional, Visio Pro for 365 Preview and lastly, the Web Apps Server Preview.
Surprisingly enough, the Apps for Office and SharePoint service is at Developer Preview stage which is similar to when Windows 8 was in Developer Preview stage but it is likely to be for developers.

Hardware Acceleration in Windows 8

High-end computers are likely to be the must for advanced multimedia work, advanced computer gaming and of course, computers graphics work. You can still use those three purposes on mid-end computers but the performance will not be as good as the one in high-end computers. In the past from 80s to 90s, there were Windows Accelerators powered graphics cards which allowed the windows from the desktop GUI to be moved around the screen faster. As technology involves, so do the newer graphics cards and their new features as well as the newer methods from the developers. So far for Windows 8, there is still no sign of Windows Media Player 13 or DirectX 12 and yet, the recent graphic cards are already powered by DirectX 10 or 11 with DirectX 11 powered graphics cards being the latest opportunities for Windows Vista and 7 gaming users.
With the new Hardware Acceleration features for Windows 8, it seems that the Metro stuffs are starting to get smoother but unfortunately for Office 15 Splash Screen, it isn't quite smooth as we realized. Also, another goal from the developers of the operating system is that they want to provide a hardware-accelerated platform for all Metro style apps regardless of which type of app to ensure that things are performing smoothly as well as to add new capabilities to the existing DirectX to enable stunning visual experiences but with interface like Metro interface, I am not sure about the graphical features because in Office 15, certain graphical features are apparently different or perhaps broken. Even with the goals they have set to ensure smooth graphical performance, the great performance and graphics platform's capabilities surely depend on your computer's video card.
So far, NVIDIA already has the video card drivers for Windows 8 but since this is the power of prototyping, things may not be accurate.
But to a surprise without our knowledge through corroboration, even the latest Windows Live Essentials programs make use of DirectX perhaps for animations such as Mail, Mesh, Messenger, etc.
For text performance improvement in Windows 8, it goes a long way towards creating the better experience so web pages, email programs, instant messaging and other reading apps are able to benefit from high quality and high-performance text display. The Metro style design language ever since two years ago is used in the latest Windows Live Essentials, Windows Phone 7 and 8, the new Xbox 360 Dashboard and the on-going Microsoft official website.
For geometry rendering performance in Windows 8, is the core graphics technology used for tablets, charts, graphs, diagrams and user interface elements. The improvements deliver high-performance implementations of HTML5 Canvas and SVG technologies for use in Metro style apps and webpages viewed in Metro web browser apps. In IE10 Metro edition, it is already smooth enough in watching YouTube videos in HTML5 mode but even then, things are still not accurate in terms of performance. A new graphics hardware feature called, Target Independent Rasterization is used to improve the graphics performance when rendering irregular geometry. It enables Direct2D to spend few CPU cycles on tessellation so that it can give drawing instructions to the GPU more quickly and efficiently without sacrificing visual quality. It is available in the video cards that support Windows 8 and DirectX 11.1. Furthermore, Microsoft even collaborated with the developing partners of the video cards to design TIR. Dramatic improvements were made possible thanks to this collaboration. DirectX 11.1 video cards are already available today that you may want to buy a new computer with those video cards so that you can get the newest technology experience as long as you're using Windows 8 but more work still needs to be done so that TIR-capable products will be broadly available.
For image rendering through PNG and JPEG, the SIMD usage is expanded for faster image decoding on all CPU architectures. JPEG's improvement also has faster Huffman while PNG's improvement has faster image encoding and decoding by optimizing zlib implemented by Microsoft. The results are that the rendering time is much lesser in Windows 8.
Direct2D Effects form the new set of APIs that enable high-quality hardware-accelerated effects to be applied to any image. They provide optimal-quality renderings of image effects to suit the needs of wide variety of apps. They are also hardware-accelerated and work on a wide variety of graphics hardware. They provide many built-in effects and support large image sizes and up to 32 bits per channel. Lastly, custom effects can be combined with built-in effects or other custom effects. The SVG filter effects and CSS 3D transforms are implemented using Direct2D Effects features.
Overall, the rendering is much faster in Windows 8 and the new graphics features improve the new graphics capabilities. Hopefully, there will be newer video cards that support Windows 8 but my point is that there should be DirectX 12 because DirectX 11.1 is minor to us.

Office in the Cloud

Finally, Office 15 was out this month and I had the opportunity to try it. There are more features than in Office 14 and some of the features are like using Adobe products on the Mac such as zooming in and out in PowerPoint 15. In slide show view, you can zoom in and out using the zooming feature in case people can't even see what was written on the slides which may be useful but during the presentation, it may be time consuming so you need to plan the presentation properly in order to save time. Other new features include the smooth transitions and animations everywhere in Office 15 software and I was like, wow, things are impressive like that. Since Office 15 is using Cloud Technology, there will be an opportunity to store your documents to Skydrive in addition to connecting your Microsoft account to various sites such as social networking sites like I already connected my Windows Live account to. Also, you can insert online stuffs in addition to inserting the stuff stored on your hard disk. When you install Office 15, you also get to see the video as shown on YouTube I already watched. Unfortunately, it displayed the prototype Office 15 logo at the video's end which is likely to be a flaw but Microsoft is still working all along. Other than using Skydrive, you can also use SharePoint to store your Office documents and thanks to Cloud Technology, you're also able to use your Office documents stored on your Skydrive on mobile devices as long as there's an internet connection as well as the Skydrive and Office apps installed. Best of all, you can share your documents to social networking websites but then there was already an app from Facebook called Docs in which you can store your Office documents there and start sharing. Man, what's the freaking point of that? Not all people take a shit on the newer prototype technology.
If you have your Office account which is also the Hotmail account, you can access your Office documents at the Office Preview website. It's similar to viewing your Office documents at Skydrive website but I guess this is much easier than using Skydrive to locate your documents.
Lastly, there's also the Office 365 Home Premium for home use. At least, I was excited for new technology like this and it seemed that Microsoft decided to expand the Office 365 into different editions. However, those new editions are under Customer Preview as well. Unfortunately, there's one bastard here. The preview product will expire after months after the product has reached the final stage that I have to stick on using Office 2k10.

Mail App for Windows 8

I didn’t even believe that I got reminded of the Mail App on Apple tablet devices. The one on Windows 8 surely looks like it but the lack of toolbars makes the app on crack. The top toolbar is missing for sure but at least, the bottom bar has enough features and top-right buttons are somewhat enough for this app.

So here are the following experiences they have when they developed this app.

• Multiple email accounts are common - This may be needed for redundancy as there may be security issues going on today and you must make sure that your email account is secure with strong security level and strong password. You also have both the personal and work email accounts in which these two types of email accounts serve different purposes.
• Lots of email everyday – It is true that everyone is receiving emails regularly. According to the developers of this app, there are two types of email users. The light email users receive less mails every week than the heavy email users who receive lots of messages every week.
• Email is real-time – Sure, the service itself is synchronously working in real time but in fact, the communication itself is asynchronous for email, where you don’t expect the mails to come in immediately. I think the reason is all about the regards of the bandwidth.

What’s special about the Mail app in Windows 8 is that there will be three-pane support for 16:9 screens compared to 4:3 screens where there will be two-panes instead similar to Apple tablet devices. When selecting multiple messages, the bottom app which is the App bar appears automatically and you can select what to do with them. Selecting the name of the sender or the recipient in the message pane brings you to the People App so you can add in the sender to the contacts list.

When writing email to your friends, the screen will be made up for two-panes and the left-pane is optimized for touch, and keyboard. Now for formatting, you have to enter some text first and then select some text you want to format. You can choose to make the text italic, underlined, bold or even highlighted. You can also choose to change the font and the font color.

Then, using the Metro Snap for Email app, you can refer to certain stuffs and then put them in the email you’re writing to. Also, you can check out the email while doing other stuffs, hoping that the app will be working in real time. This is much better than going back to the Hotmail website or Windows Live Mail app which may be taking you time to re-check for new emails.

Now, when it comes printing e-mails, you can use the Devices Charm and then choose the printer you want to print the mail. This may be needed in case you need to have the hard copy of the email you’re supposed to fill in before submitting.

The lock screen on Windows 8 is kind of flawed. Sure on the IOS, you can slide from left to right on the notification message box which is on the center on the screen as well as to slide from left on the unread message you want to read. So for the unread message list on the IOS Lock Screen, it lists down the following unread messages so you can choose which message you want to read but before that, you’re asked for the passcode or password if you have one. On the Start Screen, you can check out the incoming messages on the Mail tile as long as the tile has Live Tile turned on. You can also pin the respective messages to the Start Screen for future reference similar to saving E-mail messages on the desktop apps. Just like the email notification box on smartphones, you can check out the notification box on the top-right corner of the screen.

Today, email is one of the important parts in our daily lives of technology. It is believed that people want the great email apps that meet their modern expectations. However, it may seem that the Email Metro app is not as good as Windows Live Mail but there may be more features to come.

People App for Windows 8

The address books today are stored in the cloud but they are also synchronized between your computer and your account. If this app is supposed to be cloud-powered address book service, that will be great. And what’s even easier is that you can import your contacts from other services straight to your account such as social networking sites for instance. On the What’s New tab, you can check out what’s going on from your friends as if this tab is like the homepage of social networking sites which may be also similar to using Windows Live Messenger. I don’t know if this should be in Messaging app but this being in People App makes half a sense as the social networking app that came with Developer Preview version is likely to be third-party app. If there are Facebook and Twitter official apps on Windows 8, at least it can make more sense. Also, you can notice the Windows Live homepage with your account signed in to Windows Live in which you can also check out what’s going on from your friends. Lastly, like Windows Live, you can get connected to multiple social networking services in People App including your Hotmail and Exchange accounts.

This may be where modern devices come with modern contact list because the users we communicate and share with are so important to how we use them. These may consist of email, messaging, phone calls, social updates and comments, video communication and so on. The People app is a modern take on the flat contact lists of the past, it’s built for the way you communicate today and like other services, it’s connected to the cloud you already use. Modern devices require the modern address book that’s crafted around a few principles:

1. Complete and Connected – All your personal, work and social contact are there, alive with their social activities, photos, videos and other social media stuffs depending on the social networking sites that let you instantly engage and react to them.  The social data syncs from your email and social networking accounts rather than getting this info from a one-time import and you get a simple unified contact card for each user, regardless of how many versions of their contact info you have from different accounts. What about the merged contacts and contact info by then? Do we have the time to re-manage the contact lists like checking for duplicate contacts?
2. Cloud powered – Your contacts and settings are effortlessly backed up so they just work when you sign in from the web or the new device.
3. In control – You can decide on what you want to share with whom across your home, work and social networks. And of course, those networks decide what information is shared and connected, respecting their policies and customer privacy. Hopefully, this should be driving you good social networking at work, not those Anti-Facebook type policies we had already seen on the online news. If that’s the case in getting around the problem because of those bad policies, you can be better off with using Twitter or other social networking sites no one else has known of.

You can easily import the contacts from your social accounts and other accounts of yours without having to invite your friends whatsoever so that there’s no reason for the apps like this to spam your friends with invitations like hell. Yesterday, some friend of mine had the guts to chat with me with the use of Windows Live Messenger just because I was active in Windows Live Messenger. The truth is that, my account is completely active in Windows 8 but who knows if that is true or not. Also, there’s no reason to transfer contacts between devices like that but imagine using the non-modern mobile phones where you have to re-make the contact list based on the modern device you’re using. So, the People App is assumed to be using the Exchange ActiveSync technology as well as the secure standards-based APIs exposed by social networking sites to sync a copy of your contact list from the cloud. It’s always up to date with new friends you add, edit and remove so you don’t have the problems of a brittle one-time import.

What’s new to Consumer Preview is that People app now supports the Share contract, allowing you to post to share stuff on social networking sites from any Metro style app including Internet Explorer Metro version. What about the desktop apps? Another great feature is the People picker contract. With this, any Metro app can speed up simple tasks like sending a package from the website or emailing a list of friends by letting you quickly select contacts from the People app. You can also use the Share charm to share stuffs on the blogs but it won’t be the case as if the entire article is exactly copied like hell or some sort without major modification.

So for desktops and laptops, the People App may seem to be optional but with third-party tools that allow you to customize Windows Live Messenger skin including the latest version of WLM, it may be the fact that you’re better off with WLM instead of this Metro app as the People App is likely to be optimized for tablets. What’s not touch-friendly though is the Windows Live website which is still looking like it is for desktops and laptops. However, there’s also Mobile version of Windows Live website that you can get the around the problem in case the site is not touch-friendly on the tablets. So, there will be the upcoming Metro version of Hotmail that can be easily used for smartphone and tablets in the future.

Updates to Skydrive for Windows and OSX Lion

In April, they released preview versions of Skydrive for Windows and Mac OSX Lion, along with big updates for IOS and Windows Phone. There was also a new, more flexible approach to personal cloud storage that allows power users to get additional paid storage up to 100GB just like other cloud storage services have.

It has been an incredible month in May since! The goal is to build a cloud that seamlessly connects your data to the apps and devices you use everyday and that is a promising step with the power of Skydrive as a cloud computing power for Windows 8 which may be comparable to local storage on IOS and Android devices. Well, there should still be hard disk drive or perhaps the SSD drive to store local data in addition to cloud data. This can be what Windows 8 can be installed to as well as the apps. In just a few weeks, more people were using Skydrive than Mesh but I use both of them by the way. People using Skydrive for Windows or Mac are now the most engaged users, syncing files across several devices, sharing with SkyDrive.com and working together with Office Web Apps and Office Client Apps. What about Live Mesh like that?

There will be different updates to be pushed to all the above mentioned platforms. You do not need to do anything to the updates as they are background automatic updates.

Here are a few of the improvements the fixes in the updates:

• Skydrive for Windows desktop will power a cool new feature in the upcoming Windows 8 Release Preview, available in the first week of June which is already happening right this moment. From the Photos app in Windows 8, you can fetch photos stored on other PCs that have Skydrive installed.
• Your Skydrive folder now updates more quickly and reliably when changes are made on other devices, including SkyDrive.com which still leads you to skydrive.live.com.
• The limit on the number of total files in the Skydrive folder is raised from 150K to 10M. This should unblock some power users from easily adding lots of files to their Skydrive folder.

Well, that’s it for the updates but the Skydrive desktop app is still in Beta phase, lol.

Creating new Windows user experience

The freaking new Metro UI is somewhat optimized for Windows tablet devices but for the dual-screen touch screen notebooks, who the hell needs that? At least you can get the around the problem while using Windows 7 like that anyway when I stumbled upon the Acer dual-screen notebook that is the combination of the notebook and tablet. We had already seen the concept of dual-screen device Microsoft was doing but too bad they cancelled it. It’s sort of like the HD version of Nintendo DS but both screens are touch enabled and they have multiple touch points. The new UI is fast and simple but confusing at times on which ones to tap and which ones not to tap. The button size may be large enough to tap and the text is already sharp enough to see but that doesn’t mean the UI can be simplified a lot into one simple colored stuff. The worse thing is that the standard buttons are looking prototyp-ish as if they have no idea what the new interface will be in the future of technology. If Windows 8 tablets allow USB mouse support, that’s the good thing in addition to allowing USB Windows Keyboard support for any PC and tablet but if not, what’s the freaking point anyway? You call that beautiful? That’s a son of an ass to me as I’m already going for futuristic UI which can be abstract/digital/cyber looking UI which is when taking place inside the device which already looks futuristic from the inside or perhaps the Sci-Fi looking UI which is damn difficult for me to illustrate with as there are randomized patterns of lines that represent the Sci-Fi mechanism. For Abstract UI, the futuristic UI may be simple like that such as simple interface with glows and futuristic fonts as well as the grid background. Now let’s head back to the past of Windows.

Windows 1.0

The computers running Windows 1.0 were looking like some 16-bit computers and like other 16-bit computers, there wasn’t nothing special about the GUI. The bottom part of the screen had the buttons which were later used for Windows 7 superbar. Sure for Windows 8 CP, the Start button is gone but the superbar buttons are not positioned all the way to the left as there’s still spacing whatsoever. Nowadays, the mouse is one of the required components of computing in addition to keyboard.

Windows 3.0

The interface was finally senseful and this was the first Windows OS to run on 32-bit computers onwards. The windows can be moved but compared to today’s Windows OSes, the buttons on the menu bar and the title bar were different. The down arrow is to minimize the window while the up button maximizes it. The up and down button un-maximizes the window to its original size. To close the program, you might have to use the top left button and then select Close. You can also double-click on it but having to close the program with the top left button was no easy feat. In addition, the Program Manager was the main point of Windows like you could use it to restart, shutdown, or log off from the computer or arrange the windows in respective ways. You could also use the Program Manager to see the help or About Windows in addition to using its pre-Start Menu portion to open programs. The File Manager was the pre-Windows Explorer and folder structure started from the disk you were on as the top level compared to Windows Explorer today where the Desktop system folder is at the top level. The toolbar had the drive letter buttons for you to select but that was the past.

Windows 95

The taskbar is the popular thing where you can select the taskbar applications buttons to switch the programs you’re wanting to use. There’s also the Start Button which is popular but on Linux operating systems, the main taskbar button opens up the menu of different menus and commands but the Start menu is somewhat common. There’s also the notification area which is the third popular feature in computer technology. However, the internet surfing in the past was damn sensitive so was the performance of DOS based Windows OSes as well as the freaking PC components of the past. Also, setting up internet devices wasn’t the easy thing as well as the whole internet relied on slow sensitive modems that required the telephones as well. Worst of all, there might be signs of interruption or disconnection when someone picked up the phone but for DSL and ADSL connections, that is not as worse as the modem connection in the past. The modem connection also had networking feature similar to using the damn DSL and ADSL broadband connections which have the WAN, router and switch all embedded inside. Also in the past, the networking was obviously done with LAN or something as the wireless networking standard was still quite slow. For media player, there was a serious file format limitation compared to media player software today. There wasn’t a support for digital cameras or portable MP3 players since neither of them existed in the early 90s. Unlike Windows 3.0 and below, the startup process was improved.

Windows XP

A major evolution of the GUI to catch up with the rival operating systems. This is one of the OSes people are currently using today and many features were apparently evolved. You get many modern computing features but as time went on, there were various updates to allow support for newer features and devices.

Windows Vista

A true catch up with the rival operating systems with the use of Aero interface and this GUI seems to be best for me. However, it took up lots of resources that many people criticized it despite the interface looking damn good. There were also unnecessary, sensitive and failed features that were eventually taken out in Windows 7 for performance improvement.

Windows 7

This is what Windows Vista should have been and we are also using it today. The features from Windows Vista are somewhat identical, if not, even better. It is the first Windows OS to introduce multi-touch support but even then, it is touch un-friendly like that on the tablet devices. To get around the problem, you may as well get the stylus to do the touching.

Windows 8

If the performance improvement in Windows 7 isn’t perfect enough, it seems that they’ve decided to simplify everything while adding other common modern features needed for additional improvements. However, the Metro UI is the serious downside to the people and not all people are going to use this OS or the interface itself. For me, it is starting to look confusing at times.

So here are the trends they noted that influenced the design of modern computer user experience and features:

1. Nowadays, we’re connected everyday and it seems that the business companies have been doing this ever since the past perhaps to extend the industry around multiple countries as well as the easy communication in between the buildings. Of course, there may be networking environment everywhere for easy transfer. However, we can’t be personally connected 24/7 and especially for our homes.
2. We surely have things to do or the whole life can be boring like that. With the use of online computer technology, news on certain media, posters, etc, we can check out on what’s going on and what’s going to happen in the future and we should embrace them on how are we going to do as the opportunity.
3. Today, there will be cloud technology which is the next level of networking and internet combined for next level of network transfer of data. It is easier like that and I’ve been using this technology to transfer my stuffs between my computers and my cloud storages. It is more secure that way like trying to ditch off the USB storage devices for data transfer as having to plug in those devices can simply infect our computers for sure. The core of cloud technology takes place in the companies that servers, network devices and data centers are somewhat required. There should also be computers in the companies perhaps for other technological purposes such as inventing new programs, new updates and other IT managements needed.

So what the goals for Windows in the future?

1. Fast speed and touch friendly UI are the next things for Windows 8 tablet devices and they seem to be promising but it can’t be same when there’s a Desktop app sitting on the Start screen which is still not touch friendly even if the interface is simplified. At least the UI animations are nice but the interface is somewhat confusing at times on which ones to tap and like those rectangular things that don’t look like buttons on some pages. They don’t seem to look like tiles like that and that’s one of the mistakes. In fact, the interaction in Windows 8 for tablets is somewhat not easy to learn such as dragging the top of the screen all the way to close the app for instance. Another confusing thing will be tapping the bottom left part of the screen to open the Start screen and that should be taken out.
2. Today, the laptop PC batteries don’t seem to last even longer but with tablet devices, their batteries can obviously last even long regardless of the UI. Having to simplify the UI with Metro language like that is unnecessary for this or speeding up the performance.
3. Like smartphones, the Metro apps are the additional apps on the computer for us to try out as if we can keep them besides keeping the desktop apps but then, they are actually optimized for tablet devices and that is a must. Unlike desktop apps, Metro apps run in the local sandbox called AppContainer but even then, they are kind of messed with by the desktop apps that allow you to modify the Windows 8 metro features like I already have those tools. The tablets can’t be messed with thanks to using the Metro apps as long as there is no support of running desktop apps like there should be tablet edition of the OS. So even with the sandbox for Metro Apps, your computer can still be messed with with the security vulnerability.
4. The live tiles can display on what’s notifying you on what’s going to happen and you can check out the notifications like that by simply tapping on them. The improvement is that once we’re not using the Metro Apps without closing them, they are suspended to gain back the memory so that you can use one of those apps again at any time. Like smartphones, you can pin and unpin certain stuffs to the Start screen.
5. The new way to logon to the Windows 8 PC will be the use of the Microsoft account. You can use your Windows Live ID as well or perhaps any email address you currently own. Unfortunately when I’m using Windows 8, not all things are synchronized so the Start screen between my computers are not exactly common. For some reason, the apps are likely to be taking up the disk space but that doesn’t mean the metro apps can’t be commonly installed. The metro apps can be synchronized between devices, not the desktop apps as I already think of.
6. For tablet devices running Windows 8, they are likely to be on par with rival tablet devices in terms of required component behaviors such as pressing the power button instantly puts the tablet device on standby and when you press any button, the tablet device goes back to where you left off. But, how the hell are you supposed to shut down the tablet devices running Windows 8? Usually, using the Charm bar to go to Settings and then tapping the Power menu will do but where’s the shortcut for shutting down the device in two steps, damn it? This is done through four freaking steps instead of two freaking steps and that’s another flaw. For expert customization, the Desktop Control Panel, Group Policy Editor and PowerShell are in stores for you.

In the past of tablet PCs, there was a stylus and they were obviously used for business purposes. They are more expensive than laptops although they are actually the shape of the laptop with turnable monitor and touch screen support. The tablet features consisted of on-screen keyboard and on-screen handwriting. You could also draw with the stylus as well but the number of touch points was only one. For Windows 8, the touch screen feature is going to be improved for tablets, making it on par with rival tablet devices. In fact, there are also Windows powered devices with modern touch screen support.

The desktop section is still going to be there in Windows 8 but that should apply to laptop and desktop computers without touch screen support. For devices with touch screen support, only Metro section by the way but for the Acer dual-screen notebook as I already saw, there can be both Desktop and Metro sections for truly combined experience. Hopefully, Acer will get Windows 8 support for that notebook. Furthermore, there will be Hyper-V Client edition which succeeds Windows Virtual PC for Windows 7.

So let’s move forward, the computers that could be seen in the past were mostly desktops and they were like unmovable computer environments and the laptops were like rare or something. Today, we see lots of computing devices like desktops, notebooks, ultra-books, net-books, net-tops, modern tablet devices, smartphones and so on. The tablet devices and smartphones may be the best for you to move to other rooms wherever you go as if you can take notes of what you’re doing in various ways.

Skydrive update

Looks like there are more account updates coming in. Starting today, the public work of mine will be shared on Google Drive and the new Skydrive in addition to my DropBox storage. As we already know, it is already accessible through mobile apps and HTML5 as well as Office and 3rd party apps. Last time, there was already Windows Live Mesh in which I’m already using to store my gaming related development works. However, that storage is as private as un-sharable to the public and it can be synchronized between the program’s separate Skydrive storage and my computers.

Today, there are newer features for Skydrive as of this year such as new storage options just like other cloud services, apps that connect your devices to Skydrive similar to other cloud services and the desktop app for the computer similar to other cloud services’ desktop apps. There’s also the Metro app for Skydrive but there’s no way the automatic synchronization can happen between your Skydrive cloud storage and your device. If there’s one, it can be on par but then this is Metro version so things are different. Imagine trying to synchronize your music, photos and videos from your phone’s storage to the cloud automatically through some app, that should be what Metro Skydrive can be. It may be great like that for Windows 8 like there may be some data installed for hidden desktop operation but what about other platforms then? At least, you can store your data to the cloud and depending on the location and device, you can retrieve your corresponding data from there and start working on.

• Skydrive Desktop Client – Just like DropBox, you can automatically synchronize data between devices and the cloud and manage your data on the devices you’re using.
• Fetching data – I bet that easy retrieval and access to data from your Skydrive cloud can be suitable to computers having the desktop app, non-desktop app or both. Moreover, there’s also the online Office app that you can easily open the office documents online through Skydrive or email without having the obtain the Skydrive app.
• Skydrive storage updates – As I’m the existing user, I already upgraded to 25GB for free as they are increasing the limit to 7GB. This is similar to other cloud services but higher the storage size can mean the higher the cost.
• Skydrive for other devices – More platforms will soon have Skydrive for sure for better management features and sharing options.

You can get the Skydrive desktop app like I already did and it’s compatible for Windows Vista and above.

Three months ago, they announced the Metro version for Windows 8, the desktop version and the feature called ‘fetch’ that allows you to remotely access data from a connected computer. Just like Windows Live Mesh, as long as your computer with Skydrive desktop app installed is turned on and connected, the data from that computer can be remotely accessed. The data on Skydrive mounted drive which is the mounted cloud drive on your computer can be done online and offline. When you’re connected, the service will check to see if the data is modified and then synchronize the updated data. If the data is removed on your computer, so is the one from your cloud.

In Windows 7 and 8, you can add the folders from Skydrive to the corresponding libraries but if you’re offline, I can assume that your Skydrive data is inaccessible, leaving the local data accessible.

You can also change the location on where your Skydrive data will be stored on your computer but that is during the setup and you can’t change the location after that. This is one mistake that makes Skydrive on par with other cloud services like DropBox but more will be implemented, pretty soon.

In order to do some fetching however, you will have to provide a second factor of authentication beyond your account password. You’ll need to enter the code that is sent on your mobile phone or alternate email address if you’re already signed in to your Microsoft account.

Today, the limit will be changed to 7GB but if you’re already an existing Skydrive user and I am, you can increase to 25GB for free like I just did. However, there are other storage plans you can use but they costly just like other cloud services. Also, as a Windows Phone or IOS user, with the latest update, you can delete, rename and move data on the Skydrive but is there a reason not to include the Copy feature?

Overall, I’m already using Skydrive desktop app in addition to Live Mesh so I’ll try to make today’s public work available on my Skydrive cloud storage as well.

Accessing data in the cloud

The post from Building Windows 8 can be interesting. This is regarding the SkyDrive which is Microsoft’s cloud storage service for users. I have been using cloud technology ever since three years ago and the best example is DropBox. I already had the tool that encrypts the DropBox data and in fact, that is for extra protection to my DropBox data except that the protection can be done offline. The encryption takes place inside my USB Hard Disk. The encryption thing was likely to be due to discovering some IT news saying that even cloud storages can be compromised if in-secure. Today, I already have Windows Live Mesh that synchronizes the development data in between my computers and the Live Mesh Skydrive storage which is quite separate. Usually, this may be where the momentum can come from where I retrieve my good stuffs and then share with my mates but still, DropBox may be the best use and it has been mentioned by others as well such as my lecturers of my college for instance.

The college downside of cloud computing lies with that freaking faggot from one of Wireless Technology classes who presented with me the other time. That person is so inferior and the worse thing is that, there has been no knowledge of cloud computing whatsoever that the whole stupid success laid with the use of thumb drives again even all the way to the IAP presentation day where my presentation was hooked up to my liaison officer’s Macbook which uses OpenOffice Impress which already worsened the creative looking presentation, turning it into a shitty one. I don’t even know what will happen next to my Case Study and Module Assignment 5 presentations. Will they end up like that shitty one or turn out to be much better? Seems that that faggot was the one who wasn’t paying much of enough attention that that person may deserve a repeat this April until the respect or whatever is earned.

Got the Xbox 360 in June 2nd

This should be surprising but it may be viewable a lot if we talk about various Cave games. From that time, there was the Microsoft IT event which was known as Microsoft Student TechFest. This took place at the auditorium of the polytechnic and we were briefed the respective decent Microsoft technologies. So we know the new features of Windows Live Wave 4 and the latest version of Microsoft Office. You know, I had used OneNote for probably personal projects that are good instead of crap. Other experiences included Windows Live Photo Gallery and Windows Live Movie Maker and Windows Live Writer in which nobody mentioned about Windows Live Writer. For Windows Live Movie Maker, it is not what we want to see like this because it’s completely different than its predecessor or the third-party video editor programs. Hell, you can screw this in favor of a video editor that is capable of rendering the 60FPS video. After all, I have the Nico Nico Douga account for uploading videos nobody does just like in my YouTube account. There were videos of my tricks I performed in video games like Gradius Galaxies and Sonic Heroes. Other glitch I performed unexpectedly was in Gradius IV in which I went through the dead-end in the high speed stage. That dead-end surely has smaller hitboxes between these boxy tiled things and that means they are not connected, leaving the rest of the stage to be connected or merged. Think about modeling two boxes without merging them that there are gaps going on. This happened while I was playing Gradius IV on my PSP. Back to Windows Live Movie Maker, I obviously used that program to post certain remixes to YouTube and Facebook respectively. Lastly, for Windows Live Photo Gallery, I may decide not to use it as it takes up so much resources and long to load up. So Microsoft OneNote is kind of useful for you to take note in schools, work and other kinds of briefings but other Microsoft Office products are underrated. After these introductions, there was some lucky prize winning and I was one of these lucky winners in which I won the Xbox 360.

Unfortunately, there were few flaws that screwed up the event. First is some bloody spoilt brat-ish song that was executed during the 10 second posing part but too bad that the prizes were not that major for answering the questions and doing those special parts as well. Second flaw was the unnecessary 10 second posing part in which you had to feel some musical beat like a dance or something. Also, you had to strike some poses on the stage. Why that song I mentioned was a brat-ish was that it’s because it is nowadays performed by that spoilt musical pop brat from Canada.

A Day Later

Then I had to buy certain games like Dreamcast Collection and Xbox Live Arcade games from the store after looking for games I wanted. It might be because those people had already bought those games or maybe the retailers discarded them as if nobody but me might want them. What I bought for Xbox Live Arcade was the 1600 MS Points card and after getting the trial version of those XBLA games, I used that card to get the full version of G.Rev’s Strania and holy cow, that was really hard.

Conclusion

This prize winning part took damn long like a waste of time but the real time-waster was the 10-second posing part. I guess that we had no choice but to keep on staying on the IT events at all time until we were dismissed. This is probably the screwed up IT event at the end, having to include that song or that 10 second posing part should not have been parts of the events whatsoever. Then there’s Kinect Adventures in which I never touched at all as I’m pretty shy to use that Kinect technology to play with it so I played a bunch of Xbox Live Arcade shmup games to surprise my foreign friend that I have the game console. After all at this rate, I may end up becoming the arcade gamer but I suck ass in fighting game genre. DAMN, what kind of controller was that from the console? Its sucky communication with controls got my ass kicked when I tried out the trial version of KOF 98 UM.