Windows 9 (Comming Soon)

Microsoft has been rumored to be working on the launch of a new preview version of Windows 9 toward the end of September or early October.

Microsoft's Windows 9, the successor to the widely panned Windows 8, could be shown off at the end of next month, according to a new report.

Microsoft is planning to hold a special press event on September 30 to show off Windows 9, The Verge is reporting, citing people who claim to have knowledge of the company's plans. The date is currently "tentative," according to the report.

It's not yet clear whether Windows 9 will actually be known as Windows 9. The operating system is currently code-named Windows Threshold, though it's highly likely that Microsoft will keep its numbering scheme with the next platform.

Whenever Threshold makes an appearance, it's expected to come with a wide range of improvements, including a "mini" Start Menu, separate windows for Metro-style applications running on the desktop, and support for virtual desktops.

Microsoft was succinct in its response to the news, saying only that it has "nothing to share" at this point.

FREE Download Latest Genuine Microsoft Softwares for HEC Students

The Higher Education Commission (HEC) in collaboration with the Microsoft Pakistan has launched National Student Software Accessibility (NSSA) Portal to provide genuine software availability to the higher education sector.

The service will streamline software distribution to all faculty members and students of public sector universities in the country. All public sector universities recognized by HEC have been provided a customizable portal for licensed software distribution. The portal consisting of around 150 software applications will enable over one million students and about 40,000 faculty members to download genuine Microsoft software.The event to mark the launch of the portal was held today and attended by the Vice Chancellors, Rectors, Directors, and representatives from different universities of the country.

It gives us immense pleasure to inform you that every student, faculty and staff member can now download Latest Genuine Microsoft Software at no cost for their personal and home use under the strategic alliance agreement with Microsoft; as a part of this alliance between Higher Education Commission and Microsoft, free licensed Microsoft software were provided to all the Public Sector Universities for their official use. Now HEC in collaboration with Microsoft would like to announce that every student, faculty and staff member of all public sector universities have full access to thee-academy Licensing Management System (eLMS) Portal to download the complete suite of Microsoft products for their home use absolutely free.

Speaking on the occasion, Chairperson HEC Dr. Javaid R. Laghari said that this is a great opportunity for institutions of higher learning to gain access to a broad spectrum of technology and enable the country to move towards a knowledge-based economy, ultimately benefiting the country through socioeconomic development.

“I appreciate Microsoft’s commitment for development of the education sector in Pakistan. It is always fruitful for public sector and private enterprise to combine expertise, knowledge and resources to ensure successful and sustainable education transformation. Microsoft has facilitated HEC to attain its goals by transforming education, fostering local innovation and creating jobs and opportunities through the Strategic Education Alliance,” the Chairperson said.

Now students can demand their own account from the IT Services department of their respective university. You have to acquire your account as early as possible to get the maximum benefit from this facility.

What is new in Microsoft Office 2010

The first public beta of Microsoft Office 2010 (v. 14.0.4536.1000) is now available for download on both MSDN and Technet. If you are not a subscriber, don't hit the torrents yet because Microsoft may announce the general availability of Office 2010 beta sometime today itself. Update: You can download Office 2010 now.

Microsoft Office 2010 - What's New

Here's a quick visual guide to some of the new features of Microsoft Office 2010 that you're likely to find useful once you get access to the software.

#1. Save Office Documents to the Cloud

With Microsoft Office 2010, you can directly upload documents to your Windows Live SkyDrive account and access them from any other computer.
SkyDrive provides 25 GB of free online storage and, since the service is integrated with Office Web Apps, you can view and edit these documents anywhere in the web browser without requiring Microsoft Office (even on a Mac).

#2. Embed Web Videos in your Presentations

With Office 2010, you can easily embed video clips from the Internet into your PowerPoint presentations just the way you embed Flash videos in regular web pages. Just copy the embed code from YouTube (or any other video sharing site) and paste it anywhere on the slide.

#3. Quick Steps in Outlook

Gmail includes a useful feature called Send and Archive that performs multiple tasks. When you click this button, it will first send the reply and then archives the thread with one click.
With the new Quick Steps feature in Outlook, you can create a sequence of commands (Send & Archive is just one example) and apply them to any Outlook item with a click. For instance, here's a quick step for "Send and Delete" which would delete the email from your inbox after you've replied.

#4. Built-in PDF Writer

All Office 2010 programs include a built-in PDF writer to help you save documents into the PDF format with a click. Earlier, you had to download an add-on separately but now PDF support is native.

#5. Document printing made simple!

With Office 2010, Microsoft has completely revamped the print dialog and it's a tremendous improvement. For instance, you can tweak printer settings (like page margins, etc.) and preview the changes side-by-side.

#6. Broadcast Slideshows within PowerPoint

This is probably my favorite new feature of PowerPoint 2010. You can deliver live presentations over the web from within PowerPoint and anyone in the world can view your presentation using a web browser. It just works.

#7. Video Editing meets PowerPoint

Do you want to trim some parts of a video clip before using it in your presentation? Or do you want to apply professional styles to a video (like reflection coupled with 3D rotation) so that your audience stay glued longer? Well, that's easy because PowerPoint 2010 now includes some very powerful video editing features.

#8. Distribute your slides as video

PowerPoint 2010 can convert your presentation into a video file that you may upload on to YouTube or distribute on a portable media player like the iPod. The video conversion happens in the background so you can continue using PowerPoint while the video is being created.

#9. Built-in Screen Capture

All Office 2010 programs now include a screen clipping utility to help you quickly capture any area of the desktop screen. The tool will automatically take screenshots of all open applications on your desktop (that are not in minimized state) and you can insert them directly into your document or presentation.

#10. Outlook gets social

When you open an email message inside Outlook 2010, it will show you related information such as email attachments, pictures, meeting requests and all previous email messages that you may have exchanged with that person (something like Xobni).

There's a green add button that lets you "add that person to your online social networks from Outlook" but the service isn't live yet. Until then, you can use these add-ons to make your Outlook more social.
Important: Before installing Office 2010
1. If you are installing Office 2010 beta for the first time, the default settings will upgrade your existing copy of Microsoft Office. You can however customize this setting and install Office 2010 alongside an older version of Office.
2. If you already have Office 2010 Technical Preview on your computer, make sure you completely uninstall this edition before attempting to installing Office 14 beta. In case you still have trouble installing Office, use the cleanup utility to remove all traces of the previous version of Office from your system.

Microsoft & Nokia announcing Windows Phone 7 Partnership?

It seems like Nokia doesn’t have much choice to increase it’s down slope sells then partner with a major 3rd party operating system once again. This time it’s Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7, and we certainly hope it raises Nokia a good fortune.

It is expected that Nokia will announce a new partnership at Capital Markets Day next Friday. This is when the company has launched new products and ideas in the past and Chris Ziegler claims this time around we’ll learn about a new partnership with the boys from Redmond. As a result Nokia’s existing platforms will be dropped as a direct result. It’s hard to pick which one that’d be: Symbian, though terribly out-of-date, is still wildly popular in Europe and emerging markets, while MeeGo is technically promising but has yet to make any impact in the market whatsoever. On the flipside, noted Microsoft pundit Mary Jo Foley doesn’t put a lot of stock in this latest round of rumors.