14th February 2006 - Microxchange February News Wire

News Wire from Microxchange – Bi-Monthly

February 14th 2006


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Microsoft Office Live

Office Live Basics, a collection of free services, will include a company domain name; five e-mail accounts using that company domain name, each with 2 GB of storage; a Web site with 30 MB of file storage space; a drag-and-drop design Web-site design tool; and the Microsoft Office Live Site Reports tool for monitoring and analyzing Web site traffic. More information is available here http://www.liveside.net


Microsoft Releases alternative to Blackberry

While the lawsuit filed by patent holding company NTP over Research In Motion's Blackberry wireless e-mail product drags on, Microsoft has seized the opportunity to promote its Windows Mobile alternative. The new Windows Mobile 5.0 software, features a direct "push" e-mail capability when partnered with Microsoft Exchange 2003 on the server. Together, this provides the same instant wireless e-mail feature that the Blackberry is famous for. In addition, Microsoft has revealed the first of many partnerships with mobile phone companies to provide a complete push e-mail package for small business customers who may not own Exchange Server.
Vodafone, T-Mobile, Orange and Cingular have all confirmed that they will incorporate Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system in some of their new phones. The new e-mail phone partnership was formally announced yesterday at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, the world's largest mobile phone trade show.



Watch out if you are using Microsoft Anti spy ware and Norton Antivirus!

Microsoft's Anti-Spyware program is causing troubles for people who also use Symantec's Norton Anti-Virus software; apparently, a recent update to Microsoft's anti-spyware application flags Norton as a password-stealing program and prompts users to remove it. When Microsoft Anti-Spyware users remove the flagged Norton file as prompted, Symantec's product gets corrupted and no longer protects the user's machine. The Norton user then has to go through the Windows registry and delete multiple entries, so that the program can be completely removed and re-installed.

BitTorrent Files

BitTorrent is more than another P2P network - it divides large files into sections so they can be downloaded from different computers before being reassembled. Once you have received a section it can also be uploaded by other users so very large files can be distributed much faster than from one dedicated server.


Microsoft Shortly to Release Vista

Roughly half of today's PCs won't be able to take advantage of the "Aero Glass" composite found within Microsoft's upcoming Vista software, due at the end of this year.


3.5G Wireless

UK operator O2 will start testing its HSDPA (high-speed downlink packet access) network this year on the Isle of Man. O2 expects to offer the high speed network to all UK customers by 2006. Although groundbreaking now, because o2 will be the first European operator to test 3.5G, competitors are expected to release their upgraded 3.5G networks around the same time as O2.


RSS Feeds

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. These feed are everywhere now and a great way to keep up to date with web pages that have active content, such as news sites. It takes the hassle out of staying up-to-date, by showing you the very latest information that you are interested in. Browser-based news readers let you catch up with your RSS feed subscriptions from any computer, whereas downloadable applications let you store them on your main computer, in the same way that you either download your e-mail using Outlook, or keep it on a web-based service like Hotmail.
Firefox browser has the RSS function built into it using its ‘live book mark’. Here are a few other readers, which are available;
SharpReader

FeedReader

NewsGator

RSS Bandit

NetNewsWire for Macintosh computers



Paparazzi

As news channels have started to use live footage from mobile devices a new website has sprung up for those budding photographers that like taking pictures with their mobile phones.
www.scoopt.co.uk is offering cash for newsworthy material and will split the proceeds 50/50 if bought by a news channel


Confused by all the Different Types of Memory around?

DDR (Double Data Rate)
A type of memory chip that works at twice the speed of conventional memory

DIMM (Dual Inline Memory Module)
A double sided type of memory chip that can be installed individually

ECC (Error Checking and Correction)
A feature found in certain chips where errors can be rectified

RIMM (Rambus Inline Memory Module)
Similar to DIMM, but must always be installed in pairs

SIMM (Single Inline Memory Module)
A single sided chip that has to be installed in like for like pairs