Running Commentary

If like me you wanted to see Microsoft's five new default font candidates, one of which is supposed to replace Calibri , but don't have access to Microsoft 365 (which is the only place these fonts are currently available), you have come to the right place. Browse through the following screenshots and you will have a decent idea of what each font will look and feel like in real-life conditions. How do these fonts look in Powerpoint slides? Now that you have seen everything, what do you think? It's ok if you are unable to decide at once. Take your time and once you are done and have selected a winner, head over to this Twitter post and tell Microsoft which one you like. And tell me also in the comments.

List of resources to prepare for AZ 900 certification: 1. Tim Warner's video playlist   2. Andrew Brown's 3-hour video (broken into individual videos for every topic) 3. My collection of Microsoft documentation links And below are my own study notes,  created from all of the above. Happy preparing. Availability Options An  Azure geography is a discrete market,  typically containing at least one or more regions, that preserves data residency and compliance boundaries.    An  Azure region is a set of datacenters , deployed close by and connected through a dedicated regional low-latency network.  Each Azure region is paired with another region within the same geography (such as US, Europe, or Asia) at least 300 miles away, which together make a  region pair    Examples of geographies and corresponding regions:   Geography Regions (Location of datacenters) India Central India (Pune), South India (Chennai), West India (Mumbai) Eur...

Before you start mocking me for using Yahoo! Mail, let me explain that this is NOT my primary mail account and I use Gmail and Outlook.com for my daily use. Yes, this Yahoo! account was once my daily haunt but that was during college days and those days are long gone. I don't use Yahoo! Mail much but still there are some group subscriptions and I just log in once in a while to see what's happening in those forgotten groups. And due to this reason, I have always kept track of changes in Yahoo! Mail and the fact is that you can blame them for everything but not really lack of trying. Though most of those tries just ended up cluttering the UI and adding somewhat needless features. However, now we hear that new CEO Marissa Mayer is focusing once again on the mail and first major product to come out is Yahoo! Mail app for Windows 8. So how is it? The Login screen is pretty neat and purple background with an envelope watermark is very pleasing, very Yahoo!. However why ...

Now how do these guys manage to these kinds of things. I am genuinely surprised. I am one of the (few?) fans of Microsoft's Live.com. I find much better than Google Reader and though I would like others to add my blogs' feeds to Reader, I manage my subscriptions through Live.com. But today what I saw was just unbelievably hilarious! Just look at this one. Have you ever seen a site's name getting disappeared from its banner? Well here is the magic for you! Not only the name, even the menu options get disappeared. This is Microsoft, and anything is possible!

Gopi thinks I am a Microsoft basher. Vaibhav thinks I am a fan of theirs. The reason I am giving both extremes reasons to be happy is that I am none! Yes I use Windows Vista on my laptop and my resolve of installing Solaris Desktop dwindled since I speeded up booting by turning User Account Control off (from about 5 minutes to about 5 seconds!) and I wrote reviews of several Microsoft offerrings but am I a fan of Microsoft? I have written about how irritating and stupid Microsoft products can be at times and how Third Party software works better on their OS as compared to their own and often I have complained about their software not being supported on other OSs but does that prove me a Microsoft basher? I think I am somewhere in the middle ground. I use Microsoft's products and appreciate them for all their goodness. They are popular and by hook or by crook MS has garnered maximum users. These software may not be best available but they do work pretty well for most of the users. B...

I admit that my most popular blog is not that popular, but that doesn't mean that I will tolerate any body messing up with it! Have a look at this: http://removing.blogspot.com If you are reading this blog in Firefox, you won't notice a thing (except my posts ofcourse!) but if you are on IE, you will see something like this: These 'comments' have been inserted by blogger when I draft the post, and since these are comments they should not be displayed. Right? Wrong, if I am using IE! What is it? Why is it? When will it be over?

When Steve Ballmer said pompously (yeah, that was downright pompous!) 'We won the desktop. We won the server. We will win the Web. We will move fast, we will get there. We will win the Web.', everyone thought this is version 2.0 of Bill Gates's infamous outburst against Google and its founders. But fed on the Windows and Office dollars, Microsoft actually seems to be pushing towards being a VERY significant player in web domain, if not the winner. Talking in terms of web-search pie, Microsoft's Live Search is still distant 3rd behind Google and Yahoo, but consider this: While Google Search grew by 44% YoY iin terams of search volume and Yahoo managed only 20%, Live Search leapt by 77%. MS is also in fierce competition with Google in race of acquiring nice search providers (like MedStory ,a medical provider) And to Microsoft's credit, Live Search has also begun impressing cynics and critics. Though they had to tone down their radically new search interface, they stil...

Microsoft has been sprucing its Live.com services lately, though things are yet a little patchy and at times they simply won't work! I saw a nice feature in Live Mail today. If you get a .mp3/.wma file as an attachment, you can directly play the file from your inbox. Live Mail shows a play-pause-volume toolbar in the message. I don't know if it works for other media formats as well. I just wish they could make the actions a bit faster. Switching views (like moving from Inbox to Sent to Folders) is much slower than GMail or Yahoo! Mail.And why was it showing a mail from IRCTC.co.in as phishing attempt? That message didn't even ask me to login anywhere! If you are using Live.com, then you can select many more gadgets which are available in Live Gallery. Microsoft seems to be positioning Live as a one stop shop for all the users of MSN Space, Live.com and Vista users who have got Sidebar on their desktops. However the number of gadgets is still much lesser as compared to Googl...

Microsoft is spending billions to spruce up its web based service operations and all the web services are being now brought under the banner of 'Live'. And to counter the Google's onslaught that started with mail (GMail) and is now directly challenging MS Office applications with Google Calendar, Google Spreadsheets and Writely (online word processor), Microsoft is going to push Live brand with great aggression. So our good ol' Hotmail is now being converted to Windows Live Mail with a whopping 2GB mail box and 10 MB attachment size. And thankfully size is not the only thing that make it a much improved version of Hotmail. The mail box looks more like Outlook now, as the mail can be read with a single click in a third pane which can be put below the mail list or right to it or just turned of. This feature would be familiar to users of new Rediffmail in which mail can be previewed below the mail list contents. But flexibility in positioning the pane makes it better. The ...

I was waiting something of this sort from Microsoft Mandarins from quite some time now! The battle-field of personal and customizable web-sites, which give the users facility to put up all their favorite online-content at one place, should now get a bit hotter with entry of Windows Live (still in beta, available at http://live.com ). Windows Live is pitching against Yahoo! 360 and Google Personalized Homepages . And apart from the tough competition on hand, the initial reactions from users should be a cause of worry for MS. Live gives us first glimpse of the new web-search that will be integrated with Windows Vista, and will replace MSN search gradually in coming months. Apart from a new search algorithm (perhaps, because the search results differ for MSN search and Live search), Live team has tried to float a new and innovative interface as well. However it remains to be seen that how much it is appreciated (or rejected) by our Google-fed generation. The search results are presented ...