Microsoft has released a free theme tool for Windows7 and other versions Windows called Windows Experience Pack. Windows Experience pack is a cloud application and it produces an executable with Windows7 and Windows live messenger customization package according to user preferences. Once downloaded and executed, the customization package will offer customers the possibility of saving the avatar locally and choose Bing as the default search engine and MSN as the default home page. For users that don’t have Microsoft’s IM client, the package is designed to also download and install Windows Live Messenger.

With the Windows Experience Pack, you are able create an alter-ego of yourself in a specific destination – a beach, mountain, safari, or city. When you create your alter-ego, you create a fully customized avatar for that destination that becomes a part of a Windows Live Messenger and Windows 7 theme for your PC. You’ll also be able to download a .jpg image of your avatar to share, print, or use as your icon on social networks. Windows Experience Pack is capable of creating a Windows 7 theme complete with a desktop background, out of a plethora of wallpapers, a screensaver, and an avatar which can be personalized and bundled with pictures of end users.

For a specific destination you pick, the following Windows Live Messenger elements are created for you to use in Messenger for your alter-ego:

• 1 static Display Picture
• Up to 4 Dynamic Display Pictures
• A Wink
• 7 new Emoticons
• A new Messenger Scene

For Windows 7, you are given the choice between 3 desktop backgrounds for your destination and a screensaver featuring multiple photos from your destination.

The Windows Experience Pack was created and optimized for Windows 7, but it can be downloaded and used on PCs running Windows XP or Windows Vista too (although performance and features may vary).

PDFMyURL is a website that can be used for converting website or a single  webpage into a static pdf file. The tool does a phenomenal job at maintaining formatting, including correct font sizes and in-line images. Advanced users also have a number of tweaks they can add to the end of whichever URL they drop in that can change how the PDF is created, my favorite being the size of the paper on which you may intend to printing it.

PDFMyURL also offer some advance options to add this service on your website for converting webpage into a PDF file or use the service from your own server.

Gladinet Cloud Desktop is a application that allows us to map multiple clod storage services including Windows Live SkyDrive, Google Docs, Google Docs(Apps),Google Picasa, Amazon S3,Synaptic Storage, Box.net,EMC Atmos Online, EMS Atmos Storage,Nirvanix Storage,FTP,Azure Blob Storage and WebDav online storage services.

In this post i am using Windows Live SkyDrive cloud storage to show how to add cloud storage service to map as network drive.

• Download and install  Gladinet Cloud Desktop application. When installation finishes you will be prompted for license information, Choose respective license option. The free option allows you to transfer 1000 files simultaneously .

• Register your Email address with Gladinet, registration is optional.

• Select cloud storage provider. After selecting cloud storage service you will be prompted with a confirmation page,Once you done with all settings click on finish button. Your cloud network drive would mapped in couple of seconds. Double click on newly mapped network drive.

With Gladinet Cloud Desktop also offer backup functionality,allows you to backup all your valuable data over cloud .

Other cloud storage service providers could be added in the same way.

How to Add Windows Azure As Network Drive

Download Gladinet Cloud Desktop

Windows XP users very much familiar with classic start menu but users just migrated to Windows 7 find that the classic start menu is not available. Than Classic Start Menu could be very useful for you. It simply replaces Windows 7 start menu with classic start menu. Windows 7 quick find feature is still available with Classic start menu.

To get started with Classic Start menu first you need to download and install this program. After successful installation you will be able to see the classic start menu. Classic start menu some really good configuration options so that you can customize classic start menu. This application also comes with full Aero effects.

Users can set their preference whether to start classic start menu with system start of they want to do it manually. Windows 7 users can switch between classic and default start menu by just clicking on the checkbox, no reboot is required.

This feature is unique and is available only in this program so far.click the program you need. Just wait till the drop-down menu appears in order to
access additional files.each folder. After that you will not have to open the folder in order to start the program, it will be enough just to click the folder. the program you need much faster.

Restart,shut down, hibernate ,sleep and open other most used folder with shortcut keys instead of using mouse.

Download Classic Start menu.

Microsoft has released a new updated version of Facebook SDK. The latest release (v3.0) includes new architectural improvements and provides an asynchronous interface for using the toolkit from Silverlight and from WPF.Facebook SDK comes with samples and tools for developing Facebook applications in ASP.NET, Silverlight, WPF, and Windows Forms. It also features the source code for the API, components, controls, and samples.

Image Source : Silverlight Team Blog

The toolkit is comprised of the following core assemblies:

• Facebook.dll: This is the main assembly that will be used by all applications. This has all the logic to handle communication with the Facebook application. This assembly also has specific support of XAML applications (Silverlight and WPF) to enhance the Facebook platform to make databinding and data caching easier.
• Facebook.Silverlight.dll: This is the Silverlight version of the main assembly that will be used by all Silverlight applications. This has all the logic to handle communication with the Facebook application. This assembly also has specific support of XAML applications to enhance the Facebook platform to make databinding and data caching easier. The REST API in this assembly is Asynchronous only.
• Facebook.Web.dll: This assembly should be used by Canvas applications. The main functionality supported in this assembly is to encapsulate the handshake between the Facebook application and a canvas application (both FBML and IFrame)
• Facebook.Web.Mvc.dll: Provide a support building canvas applications using ASP.NET MVC. Separated from Facebook.Web.dll to avoid all developers from needing to install the MVC bits.
• Facebook.Winforms.dll: This assembly provides support for writing Facebook applications using Winform technology. This provides a Component that wraps the API to make it easier to use from Winforms. This also contains some user controls to help display Facebook data easily.

Download Facebook SDK

Handy Backup Server is a complete server-based network backup solution for small business enterprises. The utility lets you back up and recover data stored on both central server and remote computers, on a client-server scheme, and has multiple server-specific functions.

Workstation backup tasks can run as service under Windows 2008/2003 Server or Vista/XP/2000, absolutely unnoticeably and not interfering with employees’ work.

Handy Backup Server allows backing up not only individual files and folders, but also creating drive images – backups of operating system and all applications. All workstation backup tasks are fully automated and run with low system priority which allows performing them during work hours.

Comprehensible user interface provides easy step-by-step adjustment of network backup, with options of compression, encryption and flexible task scheduling. E-mail notifications, command line interface and log file generation ease task management by system administrator.

Besides files, folders and HDD images, the program features plug-ins for backing up MS Exchange, MS SQL, DB2 databases and Lotus Notes/Domino data stored on the central server. Also, you can back up Oracle database and ODBC-compatible databases that can be located on both local server and remote workstations.

Data transferred to the central server can be stored on the widest range of backup media: you can backup to FTP, SFTP, Network, FireWire and USB hard/flash drives, CD, DVD, Blu-Ray, HD DVD and much more. Detailed online help is available.

Centralized workstation backup and an ability of fast system recovery distinguish Handy Backup Server from other network backup software. The utility proudly carries the "Certified for Windows Vista" and "Works with Windows Server 2008" logos and is acknowledged as one of the best tools for backup and recovery of the entire office network or a local server.

You can download a full-featured 30-days trial by clicking the following link: Download Handy Backup Server Edition.

Read more about Handy Backup features here

BinScope Binary Analyzer is tool that is being used by Microsoft teams since early days of SDLC. It analyzes your binaries for a wide variety of security protections with a very straightforward and easy-to-use interface. At Microsoft, developers and testers are required to use this tool in the Verification Phase of the SDL to ensure that they have built their code using the compiler/linker protections required by the Microsoft SDL.

How you use BinScope Binary Analyzer?

The BinScope Binary Analyzer can be downloaded as a standalone tool or as a tool that can be integrated into Visual Studio 2008. By offering these two options, this tool can easily and quickly help you build your code to meet the SDL compiler/linker protections.

The analyzer performs a diverse set of security checks. These checks include:

• /GS flag is being set to detect stack-based buffer overflows
• /SafeSEH flag is being set to enable and ensure safe exception handling
• /NXCOMPAT flag is being set to enforce data execution prevention (NX)
• /DYNAMICBASE flag is being set to enable Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR)
• .NET Strong-Named Assemblies are being used to ensure unique key pairs and strong integrity checks are in place
• Known good ATL headers are being used
• Up-to-date compiler and linker versions are being used (minimum Visual Studio 2005 SP2)
• Reports on dangerous constructs that are prohibited/discouraged by the SDL (e.g. read/write shared sections, global function pointers).

Download BinScope Binary Analyzer

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 is the newest version of Microsoft Deployment Toolkit, a Solution Accelerator for operating system and application deployment. MDT 2010 supports deployment of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 in addition to deployment of Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003, and Windows XP.

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit Overview

Deploy Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 with the newly released Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010. MDT is the recommended process and toolset for automating desktop and server deployment. MDT provides you with the following benefits:

• Unified tools and processes required for desktop and server deployment in a common deployment console and collection of guidance.
• Reduced deployment time and standardized desktop and server images, along with improved security and ongoing configuration management.
• Fully automated Zero Touch Installation deployments by leveraging System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Service Pack 2 Release Candidate and Windows deployment tools. For those without a System Center Configuration Manager 2007 infrastructure, MDT leverages Windows deployment tools for Lite Touch Installation deployments.

What’s New in MDT 2010

Improvements to the newest version of MDT allow you to:

• Access deployment shares from anywhere on the network and replicate files and settings across organizational boundaries or sites.
• Organize and manage drivers, operating systems, applications, packages, and task sequences with an improved UI.
• Automate UI functionality using the Windows PowerShell command line interface.

Choosing the Right Version

Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 is offered in two versions to support Solution Accelerator component installation on x64 or x86 hosts. Select the version that corresponds with your host hardware type. Both versions of MDT 2010 support deployment of x86 and x64 Windows operating systems.

Download Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010

Microsoft Dev Labs released an Ajax application optimization tool called Doloto. Doloto is very useful for large and complex Web 2.0 applications that contain a lot of code. Doloto analyzes AJAX application workloads and automatically performs code splitting of existing large Web 2.0 applications. After being processed by Doloto, an application will initially transfer only the portion of code necessary for application initialization.

Doloto reduces the size of initial application code download by hundreds of kilobytes or as much as 50% of the original download size. The time to download and begin interacting with large applications is reduced by 20-40% or dozens of seconds as shown below, depending on the application and wide-area network conditions.

Experimental Results:

To demonstrate the effectiveness of Doloto in practice,Microsoft performed experiments on five large widely-used Web 2.0 applications. Doloto reduces the size of initial application code download by hundreds of kilobytes or as much as 50% of the original download size

Original and Doloto sizes, in bytes, when loading these sites

The time to download and begin interacting with large applications is reduced by 20-40% or dozens of seconds as shown below, depending on the application and wide-area network conditions.

Time savings, in seconds, achieved through Doloto when loading these sites.

The Doloto process proceeds in three steps, which correspond to wizard steps in the Doloto GUI.

• First, the application you want to optimize is profiled. Doloto performs profiling by running a local proxy on your machine that intercepts JavaScript files and instruments them. This is done in a browser-independent manner.
• Second, the profiling information is used to calculate code coverage and a clustering strategy. This determines which functions are stubbed out and which are not. This also groups functions into groups which are downloaded together, called clusters.
• Third, the JavaScript code is rewritten and saved to disk so that you can upload it to the server. Note that the entire process happens entirely on the client – that is, on your own machine, without needing access to the server. This way, you can profile and optimize the JavaScript of a third-party site such as cnn.com or maps.bing.com without having any sort of special access to their servers. It’s only when you are satisfied with the results of Doloto rewriting that you need to deploy the Doloto-rewritten files to the server.

This document is a step-by-step guide on how to use Doloto.

Download Doloto

Server growth is a costly issue for organizations that rely on session hosts / terminal servers. To avoid application conflicts, applications must undergo significant testing to determine which applications will collide and, therefore, must be separated and run on different session host / terminal server silos—a time-consuming and costly process. Running multiple separate terminal servers for each application routinely results in servers being underutilized because each one is locked into a specific configuration, capable of serving only a limited set of non-conflicting applications, typically using just 25 percent of capacity. Often, 20 servers are required to support 1,000 users. Microsoft App-V for Terminal Services completely changes this situation offering the following features and benefits: Consolidate servers and end server siloing, end application conflicts and regression testing, accelerate application deployment, reduce deployment risk, simplify profile management.

System Requirements

• Supported Operating Systems: Windows Server 2008; Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2008 (32-bit)

Download Microsoft Application Virtualization for Terminal Services / Remote Desktop Services