Microsoft pays $300M for a Barnes & Noble app for Windows 8 and may build its own e-reader

Microsoft is investing $300 million in a Barnes & Noble spinoff that has agreed to create a free Metro style Windows 8 application so customers can shop at the spinoff’s store, but Microsoft reserves the right to compete against Barnes & Noble with its own e-reader hardware presumably based on Windows 8.

As part of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing that details the agreement between the two companies, Microsoft can make its own e-reader — akin to Barnes & Noble’s Nook and Amazon’s Kindle — and include an interface to the store and support any content customers buy there.

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HARDWARE: 12 available devices to test drive Windows 8

The new company, called NewCo for purposes of the filing, will create a Metro style application for x86 Windows 8 machines as well as Windows RT for ARM-based devices, including tablets.

“If Microsoft creates a reader, Microsoft may include an interface to the NewCo Store in that reader and may surface in that reader all Content purchased by customers from the NewCo Store,” the filing says.

The app itself will be available free at the Windows Store, and NewCo will support it once it’s installed on customers’ machines. NewCo will also update the application as needed, the filing says.

The application will include other functionality, but what that is exactly is redacted from the SEC filing because Barnes & Noble requested confidential treatment.

Barnes & Noble commits to directly shift its agreements with publishers for content such as e-books and digital magazines to NewCo if possible.

The agreement also hints at more cooperation with Microsoft. “NewCo will make good faith commercially reasonable efforts to enhance the NewCo Windows App to exploit features and functionality available through Windows and its extended Microsoft ecosystem,” the filing says.

It further states that the company will help Microsoft software and services interoperate with the NewCo store under specified circumstances. “NewCo will use good faith efforts to enable Microsoft Products and Services to be used with the NewCo Store and distribution system in the following scenarios, the delivery and nature of which will be subject to the Microsoft product and service strategy,” the filing says. The scenarios are redacted from the filing.

The agreement has a clause to prevent Microsoft from hijacking the NewCo Store name or masking the fact that Microsoft customers are accessing it and giving the impression that it is a Microsoft store. “Microsoft will not white-label (which for the avoidance of doubt includes rebranding or presenting as Microsoft’s) the NewCo Store or obscure NewCo’s branding or the fact the NewCo Store is the NewCo Store, including in Microsoft Products and Services,” the filing says.

The agreement calls for transferring to NewCo its e-reading assets and content, and to sell the content in a marketplace called the NewCo Store, apparently a replacement for the Barnes & Noble Store. As long as Barnes & Noble holds the majority stake in the company, Barnes & Noble will use its influence to supply digital content to the NewCo Store. The pricing of content available on the Windows application will be set by NewCo, according to the filing.

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All credit to businesses upgrading to Windows 7, says MicrosoftComputerworld – Stronger-than-expected sales of Windows helped Microsoft post a 6% increase in revenue for the first quarter of 2012, the company said yesterday.

The Windows and Windows Live division brought in $4.6 billion during the three months ending March 31, an increase of 4% over the same period the year before.

That was a turnaround of sorts: Windows’ revenue for the quarter was just $112 million less than sales during the last three months of 2011, traditionally a strong quarter in the calendar because of holiday purchases of PCs. But in 2011′s fourth quarter, Windows revenue was down 6% compared to the year before.

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Business purchases of PCs — Windows’ revenue is directly tied to the sale of new machines — fueled the gain, with system sales to companies up 8% year-over-year, while consumer computer sales, long sluggish, remained flat.

“The business PC is what really drove the Windows business,” said Peter Klein, Microsoft’s chief financial officer Thursday during an earnings call with Wall Street analysts.

Most analysts had expected a poorer performance, largely on the projections by Gartner and IDC, which initially predicted a PC sales slump but then last week raised their estimates, saying that shipments actually increased about 2% in the quarter.

Microsoft estimated that PC sales grew between 2% and 4% during the quarter.

PC sales have struggled to match previous periods because of tougher competition from tablets and smartphones for consumer dollars, and the lingering effects of a hard disk drive shortage sparked by flooding last year in Thailand.

The Windows group accounted for 27% of the company’s revenue for the quarter, second behind the Business division, which handles the Office line. Windows’ piece of the pie was larger than the previous quarter — the division contributed 23% of all revenue in the last three months of 2011 — but slightly less than the same period a year before.

Windows 7 continued to gain ground among corporate users, said Klein, who claimed that 40% of all enterprise desktops were running the OS. Klein did not name a source for that number, but Net Applications, which Microsoft’s IE team regularly cites, said that 41% of all machines running Windows worldwide last month did it with Windows 7.

As executives touted the strong sales for Windows 7, they also, although only in the broadest strokes, reminded analysts of the upcoming Windows 8.

After noting that the next fiscal year — which runs July 1, 2012, to June 30, 2013 — will include an “unprecedented refresh” of the company’s core products, Klein was upbeat about Windows 8, even though customers have seen only a beta of the desktop version and nothing at all on ARM.

“With Windows 8 and its availability on both x86 and ARM, we believe the ecosystem will capitalize on the new range of capabilities and scenarios Windows 8 enable,” said Klein in prepared remarks.

Although executives divulged no new information about Windows 8′s release date during yesterday’s conference call, Bill Koefoed, the general manager of Microsoft’s investor relations, said that the development of Windows 8 and Windows RT — the official name for the version designed for ARM processors — is “on our schedule.”

Klein dodged a question from one analyst about revenue swings later this year caused by Windows 8 upgrade giveaways. “We haven’t said anything and will not today, but we’ll have more to talk about in terms of programs and promotions as we get closer to the launch date,” Klein said.

With Windows 7, Microsoft offered free or nearly free upgrades to people who purchased a new Vista PC in the months before and after its launch. The company also aggressively discounted Windows 7 upgrades during a two-week pre-sale period. Microsoft may repeat one or both of those promotions with Windows 8.

If it does, the deals will impact the bottom line: Two years ago, Microsoft deferred $1.7 billion in revenue to account for the Windows 7 upgrades due Vista PC buyers.

Klein also sidestepped a question about whether Windows XP’s looming retirement will create additional incentive to upgrade to Windows 7, or even Windows 8, and accelerate sales of those editions. “Obviously, it’s high on the priority list for CIOs to upgrade their business desktop [from XP],” said Klein. “Exactly how that will play out over the next couple of years is hard to say.”

XP will fall off Microsoft’s support list in early April 2014.

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This is a combo of MCITP: Enterprise Administrator and MCITP: Server Administrator Microsoft certification for Windows Server 2008.

MCITP: Enterprise Administrator is the equivalent of MCSE for Windows Server 2008.

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MCITP: Enterprise Administrator training boot camp validates your ability to:
• Design Windows Server infrastructures, evaluate and recommend new technology solutions
• Serve as an escalation point for infrastructure issues
• Develop client and server best practices for other teams, such as engineering, development, and operations
• Keep policy current for authentication, identity, and access management
• Provide guidance in implementing security policies that affect the infrastructure on multiple levels
• Participate in application reviews on security and
• Ensure that the applications adhere to standard security guidelines and practices

MCITP: Server Administrator is the equivalent of MCSA for Windows Server 2008.
MCITP: Server Administrator training boot camp validates your ability to:
• Handle day-to-day management of the server operating system, file structure, and directory services
• Handle software distribution and updates; monitor servers; provide tier-2 troubleshooting support
• Support engineering and change-management projects
• Build and configure servers
• Implement auditing policy
• Perform scheduled vulnerability-assessment scans
• Monitor logs for firewalls and intrusion-detection systems

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QUESTION 1
You work as It Admin at Certkingdom.com. The Certkingdom.com network consists of a domain named Certkingdom.com.
The servers at the Certkingdom.com network run Windows Server 2003. The Certkingdom.com network has a file
server named Certkingdom-SR18. Certkingdom-SR18 hosts shared folders.
During your routine monitoring, you notice that Certkingdom-SR18 has a connectivity issue. To investigate
further you run Network Monitor, but notices that during capturing, network packets were dropped.
What actions must you take to minimize the dropping of packets while monitoring Certkingdom-SR18?

A. You should configure a persistent demand-dial connection.
B. You should configure a two-way initiated demand-dial connection.
C. You should use dedicated capture mode when utilizing the Network Monitor.
D. You should select the Do not overwrite events option in the Event Viewer.

Answer: C

Explanation: The CPU of Certkingdom-SR18 runs on 80%, which indicates that there are not enough
resources to the network Monitor. Running Network Monitor in dedicated capture mode frees
resources on the computer for capturing dat
A. This results in fewer frames being dropped. The
capture statistics are not displayed or refreshed because the frames are copied to the capture
buffer.
Reference:
Deborah Littlejohn Shinder, Dr. Thomas W. Shinder, Chad Todd and Laura Hunter, Implementing,
Managing, and Maintaining a Windows Server 2003 Network Infrastructure Guide & DVD Training
System, Syngress Publishing Inc., Rockland, 2003, p. 841

QUESTION 2
You work as the network administrator at Certkingdom.com. The Certkingdom.com network consists of a single
Active Directory domain named Certkingdom.com. The servers at the Certkingdom.com network run Windows
Server 2003 and the workstations, Windows XP Professional.
The Certkingdom.com network has a DNS server named Certkingdom-SR03 that does name resolution for host on
the Internet. Certkingdom.com users complain that they do not get the correct site when trying to access
Web site known to them.
What actions must you take to stop this from happening without disrupting production?

A. You should restart the DNS Server service.
B. You should select the Secure cache against pollution setting.
C. You should run the ipconfig/flushdns on Certkingdom-SR03.
D. You should run the ipconfig/registerdns on Certkingdom-SR03.

Answer: B

Explanation: When the Secure cache against pollution setting is disabled, all records received in
response to DNS queries are cached. This is true even when the records do not match to a
queried domain name. Enabling the Secure cache against pollution setting disables the ability to
pollute the DNS cache with incorrect information, and spoof DNS queries. With Windows Server
2003 the default setting is that caches are secured against pollution. This will then prevent users
that browse the Internet from being directed to the wrong websites.
Reference:
Deborah Littlejohn Shinder, Dr. Thomas W. Shinder, Chad Todd and Laura Hunter, MCSA/MCSE:
Exam 70-291: Implementing, Managing, and Maintaining a Windows Server 2003 Network
Infrastructure Guide & DVD Training System, Syngress Publishing Inc., Rockland, 2003, pp. 496-
497
J. C. Mackin, Ian McLean, MCSA/MCSE Self-Paced Training Kit (exam 70-291): Implementing,
Managing, and Maintaining a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 network Infrastructure, Microsoft
Press, Redmond, 2003, Part 1, Chapter 3, pp. 285, 291

QUESTION 3
You work as the network administrator at Certkingdom.com. The Certkingdom.com network has a domain named
Certkingdom.com. The servers at the Certkingdom.com network run Windows Server 2003 and the workstations,
Windows XP Professional.
The Certkingdom.com network has a server named Certkingdom-SR10 that runs Windows Server Update
Services (WSUS). During synchronization you notice that you cannot connect to the Windows
Update servers, however, you can access to other Web site not residing in the intranet.
What actions must you take to connect to the Windows Update servers?

A. You must run the ipconfig/registerdns.
B. You must configure the forwarders on Certkingdom-SR10.
C. You must set the authentication to the proxy server in the WSUS settings.
D. You must run the gpupdate /force command on Certkingdom-SR10.

Answer: C

Explanation: In the Software Update Services administration console, there is an option to
configure your internet connection settings. These settings include proxy server settings. If you
have a proxy server between the SUS server and the internet, you need to configure the proxy
server settings in the SUS options.

QUESTION 4
You work as the network administrator at Certkingdom.com. The Certkingdom.com network has a domain named
Certkingdom.com. The servers at the Certkingdom.com network run Windows Server 2003. Certkingdom.com has a
subsidiary named Test Labs, Inc. that has a domain named testlabs.com.
The Certkingdom.com network has a DNS server named Certkingdom-SR05. Certkingdom-SR05 acts as a secondary
zone for testlabs.com
What actions must you take to track when the DNS server at Test Labs, Inc. sends notifications of
modifications in the zone of testlabs.com to Certkingdom-SR05?

A. You must run the gpresult command in verbose mode.
B. You must select debug logging and set the log to store Notification events on Certkingdom- SR05.
C. You must run the secedit command in analysis mode.
D. You must configure a two-way initiated demand-dial connection.

Answer: B

Explanation: Debug logging is disabled by default and has to be enabled on Certkingdom-SR05. Select
the Log packets for debugging check box to configure Debug Logging. To receive useful debug
logging information, you should select a Packet direction, a Transport protocol, and at least one
more option. You can also specify the file path and name, and the maximum size for the log file.
Enabling Debug Logging slows DNS server performance.
Reference:
Deborah Littlejohn Shinder, Dr. Thomas W. Shinder, Chad Todd and Laura Hunter, MCSA/MCSE:
Exam 70-291: Implementing, Managing, and Maintaining a Windows Server 2003 Network
Infrastructure Guide & DVD Training System, Syngress Publishing Inc., Rockland, 2003, p. 551

QUESTION 5
You work as the network administrator at Certkingdom.com. The Certkingdom.com network consists of a domain
named Certkingdom.com. The servers at the Certkingdom.com network run Windows Server 2003.
The Certkingdom.com network has a Web server named Certkingdom-SR11. During a routine monitoring you
notice an increase in network traffic. Due to this you need to find out the MAC address of the
workstation that initiated the transfers and the command that was used. However, you action must
not effect Certkingdom-SR11.
What actions must you take?

A. You must run the ipconfig/registerdns.
B. You must use the Netmon utility.
C. You must capture the IP traffic to Certkingdom-SR11.
D. You must Enable Server Message Block (SMB) signing on all the workstations.

Answer: C

Explanation: Network Monitor tool allows you to capture dat
A. The tool also allows you to identify
its source from where it came from. The Network Monitor tool also allows you to analyze the
content of the message. Use a Network Monitor capture filter to capture IP traffic from any
computer to Certkingdom-SR11, and apply the capture filter before capturing the data.
Reference:
Deborah Littlejohn Shinder, Dr. Thomas W. Shinder, Chad Todd and Laura Hunter, MCSA/MCSE:
Exam 70-291: Implementing, Managing, and Maintaining a Windows Server 2003 Network
Infrastructure Guide & DVD Training System, Syngress Publishing Inc., Rockland, 2003, pp. 198,
543
J. C. Mackin, Ian McLean, MCSA/MCSE Self-Paced Training Kit (exam 70-291): Implementing,
Managing, and Maintaining a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 network Infrastructure, Microsoft
Press, Redmond, 2003, Part 1, Chapter 3, pp. 140, 144, 145.

QUESTION 6
You work as the network administrator at Certkingdom.com. The Certkingdom.com network has a domain named
Certkingdom.com. The servers at the Certkingdom.com network run Windows Server 2003.
The Certkingdom.com network has only one DNS server named Certkingdom-SR11 that only hosts the zone for
Certkingdom.com. During the course of the day you have received complaints that the response time of
the connections to other workstations is very poor.
What actions must you take to see if it is the DNS client traffic on Certkingdom-SR11?

A. You must set up a log of the Total queries/sec and the DNS counters Dynamic updates/sec.
B. You must configure a Network Monitor capture filter.
C. You must run the gpresult command.
D. You must set up the Performance Logs and Alerts to note down the Physical-Disk object.

Answer: A

Explanation: The System Monitor utility is used to collect and measure the real-time performance
data for a local or remote computer on the network. Through System Monitor, you can view
current data or data from a log file. When you view current data, you are monitoring real-time
activity. When you view data from a log file, you are importing a log file from a previous session.
Using the System Monitor, you can generate statistics on the following types of information
regarding DNS services:
AXFR requests (all-zone transfer requests), IXFR requests (incremental zone transfer requests),
DNS server memory usage, Dynamic updates, DNS Notify events, Recursive queries, TCP and
UDP statistics, WINS statistics and Zone transfer issues. Thus to find out where DNS client traffic
is responsible for the slow speed at which computers connect within the Certkingdom.com domain, then
you should create a log of the Dynamic Updated/sec and the Total queries/sec given the fact that
Certkingdom-SR05 is the only DNS server in the domain.
Reference:
James Chellis, Paul Robichaux and Matthew Sheltz, MCSA/MCSE: Windows Server 2003
Network Infrastructure Implementation, Management, and Maintenance Study Guide, Sybex Inc.
Alameda, 2003, pp. 70-73, 304

QUESTION 7
You work as the network administrator at Certkingdom.com. The Certkingdom.com network has a domain named
Certkingdom.com. The servers at the Certkingdom.com network run Windows Server 2003 and the workstations,
Windows XP Professional.
The Certkingdom.com network has a Web server named Certkingdom-SR10 that has the Internet Information
Services (IIS) 6.0 installed. Certkingdom-SR10 hosts a Web site that can be reached from the internal
network and the Internet. The internal traffic at Certkingdom.com needs authentication without a secure
protocol to access the Web site; however Internet traffic needs to authenticate with a secure
protocol.
What actions must you take to ensure that the all accesses to Certkingdom-SR10 use a secure protocol?

A. You need to configure the log to capture Notification events.
B. You need to apply the hisecdc.inf predefined security template.
C. You need to monitor network traffic and IIS logs.
D. You need to apply a custom security template.

Answer: C

Explanation: To make sure that the users are using a secure protocol, you must use the Network
Monitor. The Network Monitor allows you to capture frames directly from the network. As soon as
the frames are captured it will display and filter captured frames. The Network Monitor also allows
you to edit captured frames and transmit them on the network.
Reference:
Diana Huggins, Windows Server 2003 Network Infrastructure Exam Cram 2 (Exam 70-291),
Chapter 4
J. C. Mackin, Ian McLean, MCSA/MCSE Self-Paced Training Kit (exam 70-291): Implementing,
Managing, and Maintaining a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 network Infrastructure, Microsoft
Press, Redmond, 2003, 1: 26, 3: 3.

QUESTION 8
You work as the network administrator at Certkingdom.com. The Certkingdom.com network has a domain named
Certkingdom.com. The servers at the Certkingdom.com network run Windows Server 2003 and the workstations,
Windows XP Professional.
The Certkingdom.com network has two servers, named Certkingdom-SR30 and Certkingdom-SR31, which contain file with
sensitive company information. You create a new OU named SenSrv and move Certkingdom-SR30 and
Certkingdom-SR31 to the new OU. You then create a new GPO that and configure it to encrypt all network
connections. You then link the GPO to the SenSrv OU.
How would you check to see if encrypted connections to Certkingdom-SR30 and Certkingdom-SR31 are taking
place?

A. By opening the Resultant Set of Policy console.
B. By running the Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer (MBSA).
C. By applying the hisecdc.inf predefined security template.
D. By opening the IP Security Monitor console.

Answer: D

Explanation: Administrators can use the IP Security Monitor tool to confirm whether IP Security
(IPSec) communications are successfully secured. The tool can display the number of packets
that have been sent over the Authentication Header (AH) or Encapsulating Security Payload
(ESP) security protocols, and how many security associations and keys have been generated
since the computer was last started. The IP Security Monitor is implemented as a Microsoft
Management Console (MMC) snap-in on the Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP Professional
operating systems. It includes enhancements that allow you to view details about an active IPSec
policy, in addition to Quick Mode and Main Mode statistics, and active IPSec SAs. IP Security
Monitor also enables you to search for specific Main Mode or Quick Mode filters.
Reference:
Diana Huggins, Windows Server 2003 Network Infrastructure Exam Cram 2 (Exam 70-291),
Chapter 5
J. C. Mackin, Ian McLean, MCSA/MCSE Self-Paced Training Kit (exam 70-291): Implementing,
Managing, and Maintaining a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 network Infrastructure, Microsoft
Press, Redmond, 2003, p. 15: 20
Deborah Littlejohn Shinder, Dr. Thomas W. Shinder, Chad Todd and Laura Hunter, Implementing,
Managing, and Maintaining a Windows Server 2003 Network Infrastructure Guide & DVD Training
System, Syngress Publishing Inc., Rockland, 2003, p.795

QUESTION 9
You work as the network administrator at Certkingdom.com. The Certkingdom.com network consists of a domain
named Certkingdom.com. The servers at the Certkingdom.com network run Windows Server 2003 and the
workstations, Windows XP Professional. The Certkingdom.com network has a DNS server named
Certkiller -SR03.
Certkingdom.com changes ISPs. Now you receive complaints that Certkingdom.com users cannot connect to Web
sites on the Internet by using the URL of the Web site.
You configure your workstation with the DNS server address of the new ISP. You can now
connect to Web sites by entering their URL in the browser.
How would you configure Certkingdom-SR03 to allow all users to connect to Internet Web sites without
causing connectivity problems on the internal network?

A. You need run the Oclist.exe command and the Security Configuration and Analysis console on
Certkingdom-SR03.
B. You need to utilize the default root hints of Certkingdom-SR03 and set up a forwarder to the new ISP.
C. You need run the Dcgpofix on Certkingdom-SR03 and set up forwarding to the new ISP.
D. You need to disable recursion and run the Security Configuration and Analysis console on
Certkingdom-SR03.

Answer: B

Explanation: Forwarders are used to inform DNS where to look for name resolution when not in
the local DNS database. With Windows Server 2003 conditional forwarding, recursive query
requests can be subject to different DNS forwarder servers based on the domain name queried.
The root hints file (cache hints file) contains host information needed to resolve names external of
the authoritative DNS domains. It holds names and addresses of root DNS servers which are
normally located on the Internet. In this situation where your network is connected to the Internet,
the root hints file should contain the addresses of the root DNS servers on the Internet. With the
default installation of Windows Server 2003, DNS uses the root hints file. It is not necessary to
configure forwarders to access the Internet. Even though it is recommended to configure
forwarders to point to your external domain, root hints will function quite fine.
Reference:
Diana Huggins, Windows Server 2003 Network Infrastructure Exam Cram 2 (Exam 70-291),
Chapter 3
J. C. Mackin, Ian McLean, MCSA/MCSE Self-Paced Training Kit (exam 70-291): Implementing,
Managing, and Maintaining a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 network Infrastructure, Microsoft
Press, Redmond, 2003, Part 1, Chapters 4 & 5, pp. 193, pp. 194; and pp. 247.

QUESTION 10
You work as the network administrator at Certkingdom.com. The Certkingdom.com network consists of a domain
named Certkingdom.com. The servers at the Certkingdom.com network run Windows Server 2003 and the
workstations, Windows XP Professional.
Certkingdom.com has a Web server named Certkingdom-SR10 which is connected to the Internet. During the
course of the day you have received instructions from the CIO to use System Monitor to determine
how much bandwidth is used on Certkingdom-SR10′s Internet connection. You decide to use the Bytes
Total/sec counter with a sample rate of 10 seconds. You also plan to archive the logs once a day.
Due to limited hard drive space, you need to prevent the logs from getting too big.
What actions must you take to?

A. You should disable recursion.
B. You should create a one-way initiated demand-dial connection.
C. You should configure an alert trigger when the Datagrams/sec counter is high.
D. You should keep Certkingdom-SR10 on the existing counter and set the sample rate to 60 seconds.

Answer: D

Explanation: The function of the Network Interface Bytes Total/Sec counter is to measures the
total number of bytes that are sent/ received from the network interface. You use less processor
cycles when you reduce the sampling frequency.
Reference:
Dan Holme and Orin Thomas, MCSA/MCSE Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-290): Managing
and Maintaining a Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Environment, Microsoft Press, Redmond, 2003,
Chapter 12, p. 479

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Exam Name: Microsoft CRM Customization v1.2
Exam Type: Microsoft
Exam Code: MB2-185

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QUESTION 1
The object model, query processor, and metadata framework are main components of which
layer of Microsoft CRM architecture?

A. Database
B. Platform
C. Presentation
D. Application

Answer: B

QUESTION 2
Which layer in the Microsoft CRM architecture includes the Browser Client and Sales for Outlook
Client components?

A. Platform
B. Application
C. Database
D. Presentation

Answer: D

QUESTION 3
Communication between the application layer and the platform layer is accomplished using which
technology?

A. Remote Procedure Calls
B. HTTP Post Method
C. SOAP
D. Stored Procedure Calls

Answer: C

QUESTION 4
Which technology does the Microsoft CRM browser client use to present the user interface to
Internet Explorer?

A. XML
B. Generated Platform API
C. ASP.NET
D. Fetch Builder

Answer: C

QUESTION 5
Which layer or Microsoft CRM performs all security checks independent of the caller?

A. Application
B. Platform
C. Database
D. Presentation

Answer: B

QUESTION 6
Once you have created a workflow rule, what must you do to it before you can test it in Microsoft
CRM?

A. Using Server Manager, run the server task titled “WF 100_Publish_Rule” in order to
instantiate the workflow rule you created
B. Activate the rule
C. Publish the rule
D. Assign the rule to a business unit

Answer: B

QUESTION 7
Your business is interested in using Microsoft CRM Workflow to automate its business processes
and policies. Which types of processes can a company automate with Microsoft CRM Workflow?

A. A process triggered by an event in an unlinked third-party application
B. A process that specifies the steps a sales rep should go through to close a sale
C. A process that schedules an activity for a non-Microsoft CRM user and places it on his
Outlook calendar
D. A process that assigns a sales rep to an account

Answer: B, D

QUESTION 8
Which of the following can instantiate a workflow rule against a particular record?

A. A unit
B. An event
C. A code change
D. A manual ‘Apply Rule’ action

Answer: B, D

QUESTION 9
The Microsoft CRM Professional Edition includes which of the following Workflow tools?

A. Workflow Manager
B. Workflow Process Mapper
C. Workflow Monitor
D. Workflow Event Scheduler

Answer: A, C

QUESTION 10
Workflow Rules can be created for which of the following objects?

A. Accounts
B. Activities
C. Case
D. Lead

Answer: A, C, D

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I am currently engaged with mentoring some young technology start-up businesses.  What strikes me about these companies is that they spend the majority of their time utilising their skills to deliver their product.  They are agile, knowledgeable and very hungry to succeed and to create.

When do they find time to “learn” new emerging technologies?  They seem to have learnt it “on the fly” as they go along – such is the pace of technology at the moment.  With cloud computing, mobile computing and social media now becoming the current “bubble”, I realised just how easy it is for anyone in IT to become out of date quite rapidly.

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There is an old saying which says “use it or lose it” and I will add “use it, grow it and keep your eyes open to what is happening around you, always”.   In this process we must keep learning.

Stopping learning, even for a few months or a whole year can make a huge difference.  It is like being having a motor car – use it regularly and it works fine (sure it may need a little maintenance), but leave it parked outside for a year unused and the battery will be flat, tires a bit softer, oil a bit tired, the gas will have lost its vitality etc.  (Of course it does depend on where you park it – it may not even be there when you return!)

Learning is the same, especially in IT (and most other professions – like medicine, law, tax etc) we need to keep up to date, and even a few months “out of the game” will render us less sharp, and left with an uphill battle if we want to regain our status.

If “IT” is our career, then we need to learn on a regular basis, via personal learning, e-learning, books, attending classes, or as I am realising, by working with very sharp entrepreneurs who are leveraging the three technology areas listed above without even breaking into a sweat.

What are your experiences of keeping yourself in the best shape you can?

‘Tis the season to begin ramping up online shopping activity, and for retailers that means doing all they can to ensure their websites are up, highly available and able to handle peak capacity. Looming in many IT managers’ minds is the cautionary tale of Target, whose website crashed twice this fall after it was inundated by an unprecedented number of online shoppers when the retailer began selling clothing and accessories from high-end Italian fashion company Missoni.

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“We are working around the clock to ensure that our site is operating efficiently and delivering an exceptional guest experience that’s reflective of Target’s brand,” said a Target spokesperson in an email, but declined to give specifics on the measures the company has taken.

One company’s hardship is often another company’s gain, and those that face well-publicized failures tend to become de facto role models, retail industry watchers say. Take what happened to Best Buy in 2005: Its website experienced what some have called a catastrophic holiday failure and customers were unable to make online purchases. That same year, competitor Circuit City saw a huge spike in traffic, says Dave Karow, senior product manager of Web performance and testing at Keynote, a firm that monitors and tests mobile and Internet performance.

“There’s nothing like falling flat on your face to give you the conviction to do right thing going forward. That was an extremely effective wakeup call for Best Buy,” he says, adding that the retailer now conducts several load tests throughout the year.

Web retailers should be shooting for 99.5% availability, otherwise “they’re not cutting it,” Karow maintains. “Ninety-nine percent is not acceptable because if you achieve that, you’re still one percent unavailable.” That has a significant impact since it means more than one percent of potential transactions didn’t occur — and likely won’t going forward, he says.

This holiday season, more than ever, Web retailers need to be prepared for the onslaught, since a growing number of consumers will be using mobile devices to shop. A report recently released by mobile ad network InMobi claims an estimated 60 million mobile users are planning to use their devices to shop during the Black Friday/Cyber Monday holiday weekend, with over 21 million intending to make purchases from those devices.
Prepare, test and review

Online shoe retailer Zappos conducts load testing early in the fall to ensure its site stays up and highly available during the holiday season, says Kris Ongbongan, senior manager, technical operations and systems engineering. Every year they follow the same procedure, he says: estimate load.

“We have our finance and planning departments give us sales predictions and we take a multiple of that to see what traffic we can absorb and test to that,” typically beginning in September, Ongbongan says. That gives them enough time to make changes and add any necessary infrastructure.
Website uptime

Retailers should go through their transaction volume testing and validation in the September/October timeframe and then code lock their systems until about January 15th, suggests Michael Ebert, a partner in IT Advisory Services at KPMG. During that period, “retailers typically freeze their systems … and don’t do updates unless absolutely necessary to avoid performance issues,” he says.

Another practice the very large Internet retailers tend to employ is having distributed networks in order to route traffic to make sure transactions are balanced around the U.S., Ebert says. That way, if one site gets too busy the customer will automatically be routed to another. “So make sure you have multiple points of your Internet presence around the U.S.” A data center “may be slow to respond, but at least I’m up and running,” he adds. “There’s always a percentage of business you never regain if someone leaves the site.”

Another metric that retailers need to be concerned with is latency, or the response time for how long it takes a page to load and for the payment transaction to be completed. “I expect we’ll see some latency concerns” or other problems during the check-out step during this holiday season, predicts Greg Girard, program director, IDC Retail Insights. That’s because there are throughput bottleneck issues at the gateway to the credit card processing network, he says.

“The micro-economic problem is that it costs money to maintain capacity that you utilize only at the peak time, which is only very infrequently during the year. It’s an economical tradeoff you have to make.”
Over-provisioning via cloud

For a lot of smaller online retailers, it’s hard to justify the return on investment for increasing the capacity they need to handle 12 hours of peak usage on one day of the year, says Girard. “That’s where cloud comes into play, and we’re seeing some retailers adopt cloud strategies. That’s really going to progress going forward.” Retailers will be able to get additional peak capacity at an incremental cost by moving to the cloud, he says.

Zappos’ Ongbongan says they handle all network functions internally and do not use cloud providers. “We have instrumentation around every transaction point on the website, from search pages to product detail pages to checkout,” he says, “so we can look at each individually to see if there’s any slowness or problems in any of those areas.”

But no matter how prepared you are, problems can still occur, especially when you outsource to third-party vendors. “Nothing is fully bulletproof, so really what [online retailers] need to try and achieve is fault tolerance,” says Mike Gualtieri, a principal at Forrester Research. He recalls a retailer he worked with that uses an external credit card service that went down one year on Cyber Monday, so the company’s orders couldn’t be processed.

“Their e-commerce system is in-house, so they had planned for volumes — searching and shopping the site — but they have a service level agreement with a credit card service processing service that said, ‘We can handle that volume.’ So they did all the right things for their own systems and planned for the [increased] volume on Cyber Monday, but were held hostage by this particular provider,” Gualtieri says.

He says he recommended that the retailer re-architect its site so if the payment processor were to go down again the company could still collect the order and payment information and process payments at a later time. That’s particularly useful for small retailers, he says, who may not be able to invest in technologies like an online shopping cart and have to rely on third parties for the functionality.

Regardless of their size, Gualtieri says, retailers need to examine every component of their systems and assign a confidence level between one and five. “Every online retailer should look at their entire ecommerce architecture and all the components they use: shopping cart, products search, account registration–whatever they have–and rate their confidence level.

“Don’t assume that everything will go right,” Gualtieri says. “Assign a confidence level and don’t fret too much, but have a mitigation strategy and backup plan.”
Optimize for traffic

Among the lessons Karmaloop learned during the 2010 holiday season were that its content delivery network configuration was not optimized for the traffic it was going to experience on Cyber Monday, says Joseph Finsterwald, CTO at the online retailer of alternative street fashion for men and women. “We worked with our CDN vendor Akamai to come up with a configuration that was a better fit for us,” he says. The firm also discovered problems with parallel processes on the network and synchronization issues when servicing up Web pages, which was corrected by rewriting code.

Revenues are growing 50% to 70% year over year, Finsterwald says, so Karmaloop is using Keynote’s LoadPro Web load-testing services to ensure its site is not strained. Because its CDN network was not optimized to handle this level of traffic in past years, the site experienced “frequent” network outrages, he said, although he declined to provide specifics.

“It gives you peace of mind that we can come up with a reasonable facsimile under peak load,” Finsterwald says. “Load testing is an inelegant science; you’re trying to simulate user traffic, but you’re integrating a lot of third-party components.” If a test is done on a quiet day, a third party may be able to scale to handle that, but all bets might be off when they’re handling multiple clients.

This year, when conducting load testing, Karmaloop scaled its systems to a high enough load to trigger a problem for the vendors to address proactively. “We saw performance degradation with some of our vendors,” says Finsterwald, “so we’re following up with them to make sure they’re doing what they need to do.”

Keynote’s Karow concurs. “Load testing done right has to be a very close representation of what real users are going to do, so it takes real thinking about what people do and the various systems involved and are you stressing those systems?”
Talk to your stakeholders

Also critical to the success of keeping systems up and highly available is making sure everyone is on the same page. “Everybody needs to be involved in the planning and predictive process,” says Zappos’ Ongbongan. At Zappos, that means everyone from brand marketing to financial planning to warehouse staff is involved in planning for peaks in site traffic.

One thing his group learned from talking with other departments was that their peak traffic typically occurs in mid-December, as opposed to right after Thanksgiving or right before Christmas.

Forrester’s Gualtieri says it’s a definitely a problem when a marketing group doesn’t let IT know what it’s doing that might cause site traffic to spike. He says he worked with a large Midwestern insurance company that spent a couple of million dollars on its first TV ad during a football game. When the ad aired, the company’s site went down “almost instantly,” because the company’s marketing department didn’t tell IT it was running the ad. “So IT had no idea they were going to expect 500 times the normal amount of traffic,” he says, and they ended up wasting their money on the ad.

Despite all the proactive measures retailers may be taking, Gaultieri predicts there will still be “some high-profile outages” this holiday season. “One, two or several will happen. I also think a lot will happen that you’ll never hear about … I don’t think this problem is going to go away.”

Although companies are becoming savvier about bulletproofing their sites, crashes will inevitably occur due to continuous changes made to enhance the online shopping experience, he says. “You can’t just put a site up and have it be static; there are lots of moving parts and it creates complexity, and there’s fallout.”

Google’s Android 4.0 operating system is more than just another upgrade.

Android 4.0, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich, marks the start of a new era for Google’s mobile platform. The release ushers in the biggest changes the software has seen since the launch of Froyo in 2010 — maybe even Eclair back in 2009. Nearly every facet of the OS has been made over, and the very core of the Android user experience has been completely reimagined.

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The more you use Ice Cream Sandwich, the more you realize just how radical a change it represents.

(Note: For the purposes of this review, I’m focusing on the smartphone side of Ice Cream Sandwich. At the time of this publication, the software had not yet been made available on any tablets.)

Getting to know Ice Cream Sandwich

The first thing you notice when you start using Ice Cream Sandwich is that Android suddenly seems a lot more friendly. While the OS has always been powerful and versatile, simple human relations weren’t exactly its strong suit.
Now, powering up an Android 4.0 device (in my case, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, which I’ve been testing for several days) is like running into an old college buddy who’s evolved into a slick professional. He has the same smarts, the same heart and soul you’ve always appreciated, but now he really has his act together — and he’s dressing better, to boot.

At a glance, Ice Cream Sandwich seems similar to the Android of years past. You have five home screen panels that hold any combination of app shortcuts, folders and live functioning widgets. Each is made up of an invisible grid that, like previous phone-based versions of Android, can support as many as 16 shortcuts (four across and four down). But beneath that basic shell, ICS is a whole new game.

You can practically see the fresh paint everywhere you look in the system. Gone are the harsh green and black colors of yore, replaced now with a soft blue-and-gray-based scheme. System icons are more brilliant, with bright colors and three-dimensional textures. New transitions and animations are sprinkled throughout the OS, adding subtle but important layers of polish.
Android Ice Cream Sandwich
Ice Cream Sandwich provides a new favorites tray that stays in place at the bottom of the screen. Click to view larger image.

As for the home screen itself, Ice Cream Sandwich provides a new favorites tray that stays in place at the bottom of the screen as you swipe from one panel to another. The tray houses a permanent link to your app drawer along with four customizable icons; you can anchor any shortcut or folder into those spots by simply dragging and dropping it into place.

ICS also introduces a new persistent search box across the top of the home screen. Tapping the main part of the box brings up Android’s universal search field, which simultaneously covers the Web and most content on your phone. Tapping the microphone at right end of the box, meanwhile, brings up Google’s Voice Actions utility, which allows you to conduct a Web search, place a phone call, send a text or email, or get driving directions by speaking into your device.

(Don’t tell Siri, but that’s actually a function Android has had for more than a year.)
The button-free philosophy

Perhaps the most striking shift with Ice Cream Sandwich is its move away from the four physical buttons that have long been Android phones’ most identifiable feature. In fact, the Galaxy Nexus — the flagship Android 4.0 phone — has no buttons on its face whatsoever.
Android Ice Cream Sandwich
Instead of physical buttons, you get three icons at the bottom of the display. Click to view larger image.

Instead, you get a trio of virtual buttons at the bottom of the display: one to go back a step, one to return to your home screen, and one to multitask, or toggle among recently used applications. These buttons will be familiar to Android tablet users; they actually first appeared in Honeycomb, as did an early implementation of the button-free philosophy. But for Android phones, they mark a major shift.

As someone who’s used Android intensely for years, I expected the lack of physical buttons to be a shock. I’m happy to say, though, that I’ve found the adjustment surprisingly painless. It’s really a natural evolution, as the on-screen buttons appear when and where you need them. If you rotate your device to a horizontal position, they move along with it. And if you don’t need them on-screen — say, if you’re viewing a photo or video — they disappear, turning into tiny dots that can emerge when beckoned but stay out of your way otherwise.

That said, the shift in button strategy does change the way you interact with the phone, especially when it comes to the search and menu functions that used to have permanent places on the front of the device. The elimination of the menu function is intended to make Android more user-friendly: Rather than having to press your phone’s menu button to find commands, as you did with previous versions of Android, apps designed for ICS show all your options in a new “action bar” that sits at the top of the screen. The action bar’s commands are context-sensitive, too, so they vary based on what task you’re performing.

When you open Google Voice, for example, the action bar gives you one icon to compose a new text, one to refresh your inbox, and one that holds an overflow list of less commonly used functions (Ice Cream Sandwich’s on-screen equivalent of the old menu button). When you’re viewing an actual message in Google Voice, the action bar changes to give you options to call the person from your conversation or compose a new message to someone else.

This approach is excellent in theory. In execution, however, it has one glaring problem: Ice Cream Sandwich lacks a certain level of consistency with the placement of some key functions. Search, for example, is sometimes an icon in the action bar, and other times an option in the on-screen overflow menu (as is the case in Google Voice).

Even that overflow menu itself moves around somewhat from application to application: On most apps that have been optimized for ICS, it lives within the action bar at the top. But on older apps that have not been updated to reflect the new design standards, it appears squished in alongside the main navigation icons at the bottom. A similar inconsistency occurred within Honeycomb. My hope is that, as the new interface reaches more and more devices, app developers will update their programs to support the new approach.

(With existing phones that have physical buttons, by the way, the physical buttons will continue to function as they always have; you’ll just use those instead of the new on-screen alternatives. The full ICS effect will be seen only on the Galaxy Nexus and subsequent button-free devices.)

The app drawer and home screen customization

Ice Cream Sandwich introduces a newly designed app drawer that puts all of your installed applications and widgets in a single centralized place. The drawer swipes horizontally, with a pleasant scroll-and-fade animation effect as you move from one screen to another. An icon at the top of the drawer gives you direct access to the Android Market as well.

Customizing your home screens is now done right from the app drawer, streamlining a process that used to be far less intuitive. With ICS, you simply touch and hold any app shortcut or widget in the app drawer, and the system automatically shows you a preview of all five home screen panels. You can then drag and drop the item anywhere you want. You can get detailed information about an app or uninstall it while you’re there, too — tasks that used to be buried within layers of settings menus.
Home screen widgets have long been one of Android’s most powerful and distinguishing features, and with Ice Cream Sandwich, they become even more valuable. Following the lead set in the tablet-focused Honeycomb OS (and seen in some third-party launcher replacement utilities), ICS allows you to interact with home screen widgets by scrolling or flipping without having to enter the actual apps.

Noteworthy examples include the Gmail widget, which lets you scroll through messages, and the Photo Gallery widget, which lets you flip through thumbnails of images on your phone. Widgets can now also be resized to take up more or less space on your home screen.

Home screen folders get a makeover with ICS, too, with a fresh new look and highly simplified setup. Creating a folder is now as easy as dragging one app on top of another; you can add or remove more apps by dragging and dropping, and you can change the folder’s name by touching it.
Notifications and multitasking

Ice Cream Sandwich gets a brand new notification bar that houses icons and information about incoming messages and alerts. It’s essentially a prettier and more powerful version of what’s existed in the past.

On the cosmetic side, the new notification area has a transparent gray background with blue and white text, matching the rest of the OS’s revamped design. Functionality-wise, the notifications now support a new system-wide swiping gesture that allows you to dismiss any individual item by flicking it left or right. This is a welcome touch that gives you greater control over what you see.

The Ice Cream Sandwich notifications area includes interactive commands for controlling music playback when the Music app is active. That means you can pause or skip tracks right from the pulldown area, without having to interrupt what you’re doing. Unfortunately, this feature appears to work only with the system Music app at the moment; third-party programs like Pandora are not currently compatible.

Along with the new notification system, Android 4.0 includes a revamped multitasking interface. It’s activated by tapping the new “recent apps” button, located next to the virtual back and home commands. This brings up a scrollable list of all the apps and services you’ve recently opened on your phone, showing each app’s name, icon and a thumbnail of its most recent state. As with the new notifications area, you can tap any item to activate it or flick to dismiss it.

The improvement here over Android’s old system — long-pressing the home key to bring up a small and limited list of icons — is immeasurable. The new multitasking interface is easy to find, fun to use, and a true highlight of the 4.0 platform.
The ICS keyboard and voice input

Google has really gone a long way in improving the system keyboard in Ice Cream Sandwich. Compared to past Android releases, the ICS keyboard is far better at predicting and correcting text, which means you can type quickly and/or sloppily and it’ll almost always figure out what you’re trying to say.
The new keyboard has a few nice bells and whistles, too, like built-in spell checking and a tremendously improved cut and paste system. I tend to be a fan of slide-based keyboards like Swype, but the stock Ice Cream Sandwich keyboard is good enough that I’m actually fine with — and even enjoying — using it.

On the voice-input front, the familiar microphone icon allows you to dictate text anywhere in the system, as it always has — but now, text is transcribed continuously, so words show up as you’re saying them instead of in one big chunk when you’re finished speaking. You can also pause and stop speaking and the system will wait for you to continue instead of stopping the session. (To signal that you’re finished, you press a “Done” button that appears on the screen.)

If the voice input mishears a word or two, error correction in Ice Cream Sandwich is quite easy: The system automatically underlines any words it thinks might be iffy, and then you just tap a word to see a list of likely alternatives and pick a replacement.
You wouldn’t think there’d be much to say about a phone’s lock screen, but with Ice Cream Sandwich, this seemingly simple system component is jam-packed with tasty new treats.

If you don’t set any security options, the default ICS lock screen uses a circular unlock gesture similar to what’s seen in Honeycomb. The lock screen offers a lot more functionality now, catching up with options that some third-party utilities have previously offered.

For example, you can now access and interact with notifications, see album cover art and music playback controls, and jump directly to your camera without ever having to go to the home screen.

Another nice touch: When your phone is locked and you receive a call, the lock screen features a new text-and-reject feature that simultaneously declines the call and sends a message to the person explaining why you can’t talk. You can pick from a list of generic responses or add your own custom message. (You can permanently edit/change the list of default responses by going into the settings section of the Phone app.)
As with past versions of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich gives you the ability to set a security pattern, password or PIN to protect your phone. It also introduces an intriguing new option: facial recognition for phone unlocking. Once configured, all you do is hold your phone in front of your your face. If all goes well, within a second or two, it recognizes your features and unlocks your device.

I found the facial recognition system to be fairly accurate and incredibly satisfying to use. In my tests, the system was able to recognize me roughly 90% of the time, even when I was wearing eyeglasses or a hat or making some silly face (for testing purposes only, of course). The times when it didn’t work were usually when I was in an extreme lighting condition or holding the phone at an unusual angle. But getting your face rejected, while perhaps mildly demoralizing, is not a big deal; you just enter in a backup password or pattern and you’re good to go.

Google does note that the facial recognition option is less secure than a pattern, password or PIN; a disclaimer on the phone goes as far as to tell you that “someone who looks similar to you” could potentially unlock your phone with the feature activated. Some users have reported being able to trick the system into unlocking by holding up a photo of the phone’s owner; I tried and was not able to replicate that. I also tested the system with my brother, whom people often mistake for me, but the phone wouldn’t unlock with his face.

The take-home message: Facial recognition is convenient, novel and impressive — and in most cases, it’s pretty secure. But if you really need to safeguard your data and can’t take any chances, it might not be the right choice for you.

Camera and Gallery

Android 4.0 includes a brand spankin’ new Camera app that’s chock full of surprises. The app’s interface boasts some significant improvements, but the added functions are what really steal the show.
One of the high points is the newly implemented support for zero shutter lag. That means you can snap one photo after another in rapid succession without ever having to stop or wait. It’s actually a little strange at first — and can make it somewhat challenging to get your image focused, if you’re moving really fast — but it’s a fantastic feature that makes photo-capturing easier than ever.

The Camera app has a cool single-motion panorama mode, too, that lets you take wide-perspective images. All you do is tap the panorama icon and press the shutter button, then move your camera slowly across the area you want to capture. When you’re finished, you tap the shutter once more, and the software puts the whole thing together into a single seamless image. It works amazingly well.

On the video side, the Camera app now includes a range of live-video effects — distorting your face, for example, or making it appear as if you’re floating in space. They’re more for fun than anything, but I found they provided some light-hearted amusement while video-chatting with friends. The Camera has a few serious new video-related tools as well, including a snapshot-capturing utility that lets you grab still images while you’re recording video.

The new Camera app and the redesigned Gallery app put photo sharing front and center, with a host of on-screen options to send images to any share-ready service. Ice Cream Sandwich also includes native photo and video editing tools. I found the video editing suite to be a bit limited in its capabilities, but the photo editing options are quite robust, with commands for cropping, sharpening, removing red eye, modifying lighting and making a variety of color adjustments. The photo editor can apply quite numerous special effects, too, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Other Ice Cream Sandwich sprinkles

I could write an entire book trying to cover and review everything that’s new in Ice Cream Sandwich. I haven’t even gotten into the revamped system settings menu — it’s far simpler and easier to use — or the new NFC-based “Android Beam” function that lets you share info with other phones by tapping the devices together (cool in theory, but fairly limited in practice at the moment).

You’ve also got random flourishes like the long overdue ability to capture screenshots and the new fine controls for managing and monitoring your network data usage. Many of the system apps are vastly improved as well, including Gmail, Calendar, People (formerly Contacts) and the browser — which now features faster page loading, automatic Chrome bookmark syncing, offline page saving and graphical tabbed browsing.

But you get the picture. Ice Cream Sandwich is more than just another upgrade; it’s a significant new beginning for the Android platform. It isn’t perfect — the software has a handful of inconsistencies and areas for improvement — but it’s astonishingly good. I suspect it’ll go a long way in delighting both hardcore enthusiasts and casual smartphone users.
Bottom line

Android has always been a powerful platform. With Ice Cream Sandwich, its power reaches new heights — and its polish makes the power more palatable than ever.

Although it may be hard to believe, life support software that allows customers and browsers to chat to each other over the web has actually been around for almost 15 years now. The main difference is the fact that now more companies are using it which has helped raise the profile of live support chat software a great deal as business people are realizing that it is still one of the top tools for communicating with consumers and offering them instant support as well as the satisfaction of knowing they are working with a real agent.

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In fact, live support software is so popular that the US Army even uses a live support chat software device in order to help answer potential recruits’ questions as well as military families that are looking for help with reassignment, deployment, and assistance questions. With this much success backing live support chat software, it should come as little surprise then that there is now a new generation of live support chat software that is slowly rolling out helping to make the software much easier to utilise from a business point of view and much more pleasing to use from a customer’s point of view.

The major problems with live support software right now is that in some instances it still lacks the human touch despite the fact that humans are actually the one’s doing the chatting. This is due to the fact that most companies want to optimise the agents that they hire to staff their live support chat software, therefore they have agents that handle five or more conversations at a time which can lead to inaccuracies in grammar and delayed responses. This can leave some more picky browsers disgruntled with live support software and the entire experience.

However, the new generation of live support chat software aims to solve this by cutting out live agents altogether thereby somewhat making the name ironic, but getting the job done in a much more efficient manner. In the place of live agents on the other side of the live support software is a virtual employer that relies on virtual intelligence to answer questions and get the job done with the programming to make sure that the customer gets perfect grammar every time along with a rapid fast response. Surprisingly enough, this software seems to be catching on as those who use live support chat software with this option seem quite pleased with the results.

From a business point of view, the use of a virtual agent that is able to be programmed to respond like a live human agent is obvious. The average chat over a live support software service will last 18 minutes, out of which five minutes are spent by the customer waiting for the next available representative. However, a virtual agent can respond right away eliminating the need for any wait and allowing the live support chat software to live up to its rep as an instant form of customer service.

Next, continuing the business point of view, bear in mind that you do not have to pay the virtual agent anything for its time, reducing the costs of actual hiring agents to staff your live support software or attempting to man it on your own. For those who receive a high volume of chat requests, this is an excellent choice given the average cost of a chat is considered to be five dollars per session all things considered. Plus, as always, if the virtual agent gets stuck the live chat can be turned over to a real human so that you do have to worry about losing a customer but can easily streamline the live support software service in most cases on your website cheaply and effectively.

Ten years ago Microsoft released its Tablet PC, with Bill Gate saying “within five years I predict it will be the most popular form of PC sold in America.” Things didn’t work out that way — the Tablet PC died, and the iPad eventually took the world by storm. What went wrong?

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Gates showed off a prototype of Microsoft’s Tablet PC at the COMDEX Fall 2001 computer show in Los Vegas. Manufacturers including Acer, Compaq, Fujitsu, and Toshiba said they would release Tablet PCs in the second half of 2002.

Here’s how a Microsoft press release described the Tablet PC:

The size of a legal notepad and half the weight of most of today’s laptop PCs, the Tablet PC is a full-powered, full-featured PC that runs Windows XP and combines the power of desktop computing with the flexibility and portability of a pen and paper notepad.

It was touted to run Autodesk’s CAD software, versions of Microsoft Office, and Groove, collaboration software which Microsoft bought from Ray Ozzie, the creator of Lotus Notes. The press release also noted that in his presentation, Gates:

emphasized that because it runs Windows XP, the Tablet PC is a fully-fledged, secure Microsoft .NET client machine that natively supports the .NET Framework.

All that tells you all you need to know about why the Tablet PC died. Rather than envision what people would really want to do with a tablet and then design the hardware for that, Microsoft instead force-fit Windows XP onto it. Windows XP was a great desktop operating system, but it was bloated overkill for a tablet.

Microsoft also decided that people would want to do the exact same things with a Tablet PC as they would with a desktop or a laptop. Here’s what Gates said at the announcement:

“The Tablet takes cutting-edge PC technology and makes it available wherever you want it, which is why I’m already using a Tablet as my everyday computer. It’s a PC that is virtually without limits — and within five years I predict it will be the most popular form of PC sold in America.”

Because Microsoft envisioned it as a full-fledged PC and equipped it accordingly, it was expensive — typically $2,000 or more. Despite that price tag, it couldn’t really replace a desktop or laptop. It only found use in niche markets.

There were other problems as well. As TabTimes notes, the heavy use of a stylus was also a mistake.

Steve Jobs recognized that the tablet should be a consumer device and not a replacement for a desktop or laptop PC. He saw that it would require a different operating system, one designed for tablets, not traditional computers.

Will Microsoft learn from its mistakes when it releases tablets based on Windows 8? It’s not quite clear yet. The Windows 8 metro interface is well-suited for tablets, although the Windows 8 Desktop isn’t. If Windows 8 tablets are essentially hybrid tablet-PCs, it’s unlikely they’ll succeed.