Since Microsoft is looking to get into the tablet market with Windows 8, it’s imperative that they make the OS compatible with mobile networks since a lot of tablets these day ship with 3G capability as well as WiFi. In the latest post over on the building Windows 8 blog, Microsoft have explained how they’ve built in native support for mobile networks in Windows 8.

First off they’ve developed a new control panel which will allow you to turn radios on and off, as well as configure connection settings and get contact information for support. While Windows 7 did support mobile networks, the user was left to install all the appropriate software to manage these things, where as it will all be integrated straight into Windows 8. This will make the process of using mobile broadband much easier for consumers.

The new network settings control panel lets you configure settings for all the various radios in your device, including WiFi, mobile networks and Bluetooth. There’s also an “airplane mode” to disable it all. This has been pretty much standard on all mobile phones but it’s new to PCs.

They’ve also made great advancements with how Windows 8 will manage your mobile data. They’ve managed to reduce connection times and limit the amount of data that’s being transferred when you’re on a mobile network where you could have a monthly allowance. Windows 8 will automatically switch to a WiFi network when available like most phones do.

Microsoft have really made things much easier when it comes to using mobile broadband too. Windows 8 will monitor your traffic usage and keep track of it so you know just how much data that you’ve used. Hopefully this will help stop users going over their data caps and from raking up huge bills without realising it.

What’s more, even if you don’t currently have a data plan with a particular network, Windows 8 will recognise this and allow you to purchase a data plan from the network by directing you to their website. There’s also metro apps being developed for the mobile networks which give you an overview of your account and more.

It’s really quite impressive how much work Microsoft have put into making Windows 8 very mobile friendly. This new mobile network management system is much better than that on any smartphone and I’m sure plenty of tablet users will find it incredibly useful.

There’s a whole load more stuff that Microsoft talk about such as options to reduce data usage, CPU usage and other performance factors that they’ve taken into account. I’m not going into detail on them here because Microsoft have gone into great detail on them over at the blog

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Metro themed websites are suddenly becoming very popular.  I updated my own website (below) to Metro last month, partly because it’s Microsoft products I write about mostly, but also because it makes for a touch-friendly website and I firmly believe that all websites should at least be considering the move to touch by now.

With Metro now appearing across all Microsoft’s platforms including the Xbox 360, it is soon going to be an interface with which people are very familiar.  This doesn’t mean that other people, such as myself, should always ape the design.  There will be scenarios however when it will be appropriate if used tastefully.

Now though Microsoft UK have updated their Windows Phone website to a Metro style and it’s dividing opinion, in no small part because of the size of the “live tiles” they’re using on the front page.  It’s a new interactive design that’s based around images.  That means it’s not always clear what image relates to what article until the intro-text slides into view.  You can hover your mouse over a tile to get the text detail to slide in, but that’s not exactly touch-friendly.

This raises all manner of questions about the uses for both Metro and touch on websites and I wanted to throw this open to you for conversation.  There will be all manner of Metro-style themes appearing on the web in the next few years, some will be great and some will be awful.

What do you think would make a good Metro website?  Would it require that it must be touch-friendly or is the way the new Windows Phone website does things enough for you?  Is it even important to you that websites support touch at all, or is this one of the most important moves you think the web needs to make?

Do you perhaps feel that the move to Metro is stifling good design (I remember some of the best website designs I’ve ever seen came around the turn of the 21st century) or that the move to a more ‘unified’ interface across the web-based on a touch interface would be the way to go, as opposed to the ‘unified’ interface the web currently supports of a toolbar with drop down menus approach that has been common for years now.

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Microsoft has been aggressively pushing Internet Explorer 9 as the best browser for Windows 7 since it’s been released. Currently Internet Explorer 8 is the most dominant version of IE but Microsoft is working hard to change that. Their latest campaign for Internet Explorer 9 see’s them giving away freebies and prizes to users who install IE9 and then pin certain sites to their taskbar. Once you do this you can win prizes like 3 months free at Slacker radio or $5 off your next live nation ticket from Ticketmaster.

Now not all of these offers are available immediately, but they will come on stream between now and December. I think the main thing Microsoft are trying to do here is to get users to try out the new pinning feature which was introduced in IE 9. It’s actually quite handy and allows you to pin websites to your taskbar just like you can already pin programs. It also adds jump lists to them.

If you want to check out the site for yourself , just click this link

But what happens if you’re not running IE? Well the site will show you the following messages.

If you’re running alternative browsers like Chrome or Firefox you’ll see

 ”Where’s the love? … Upgrade to Internet Explorer to pin these sites and get the free stuff.”

And if you’re running Mac OS X, I’m sure you can imagine that Microsoft aren’t too impressed with you.

“Oh Nooooooo… You’re using Mac OS which doesn’t support Internet Explorer 9 and Site Pinning.”

It’s a clever marketing move by Microsoft alright, the only problem is that these offers are only valid in the US so that rules out me and a lot of our readers as well I’m afraid. Microsoft do have a UK version of their site “Beauty of the web” but they don’t appear to have a similar offer running.

Here’s the site again if you want to check it out. Beauty of the web

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One of the best ways to improve security when you’re online is to use Windows’ onscreen keyboard to enter details into banking and other financial websites.  It might be slower than using a traditional keyboard but it’s far more effective at protecting what you type as keyloggers and other malware that might be present on your PC can’t detect your keypresses as easily.

Unless you have a tablet computer though you’re restricted to pinning the onscreen keyboard to your Windows 7 taskbar.  This is fine, but it lacks the cool features that come with tablets such as spell-checking, word prediction and having a pop out keyboard available on your screen all of the time.

It is possible to get these features though even if you don’t have a tablet computer or a touchscreen, and here I’ll talk you through how to add these features to your Windows 7 desktop.

The first step is to type the word services into the search box in the Windows 7 Start Menu and run the Services program that appears.  You need the specific tablet PC functionality running to access these features, and they’re disabled by default if Windows doesn’t detect a touch screen on your computer.

With the Services panel open you need to find the Tablet PC Input Service.  Right click on this service and select it’s Properties from the context menu that appears.

Now a new panel will appear with the properties for the Service.  The next job is to change its startup type to either Automatic where it will start every time Windows 7 boots up, or Manual where it will start whenever you call it.

Finally we need to go back into the Start Menu and type the word tablet pc into the search box.  When the Tablet PC Input Panel appears in the search results, click on it to run it.

There’s just one more step now and that is to activate the two ways to easily access the on-screen keyboard.  In these options you can either turn on the option to Show the icon on the taskbar (this will be essential if you have set the service to start manually), activate the option to Use the Input Panel tab or, as I have done here, tick both options.  If you want to use the input panel tab you will also want to Show [the] Input Panel sliding open from the tab which you can set for either the left or the right of your screen.

Note here that if clicking this brings up the actual keyboard rather than the options for you, clicking the Tools button on the keyboard will display the options link.

With this done you will now have quick and easy access to the in-screen keyboard in Windows.  You’ll see in the image below that we now have an icon on the Windows 7 taskbar for activating the on-screen keyboard and that the keyboard itself is also docked at the side of the screen for when you need it.

This docked keyboard can be dragged around and put wherever you want it to be.

The on-screen keyboard in Windows really is a way to make your online banking and finance much more secure.  This is a very small change to Windows but one that, I’m sure you’ll agree, will be well worth doing for a great many people.

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One of, certainly my, biggest criticisms of Windows Phone is the inability to synchronise Internet Favourites from your PC or Mac.  When you set up the phone, or indeed have to reset it for whatever reason, you have to use the handset’s fiddly on-screen keyboard to type everything in from scratch.

Now this might not be a problem for some simple domains, but many of us regularly visit websites with complex PHP or ASP code in the URL, or simply have a lot of websites we vitis on a regular basis.

The Mango update to Windows Phone still doesn’t address this problem (though Microsoft have told me they’re aware of, and working on this and other problems).  You’ll be pleased to hear though that, finally Mango does offer a way to get website links from your computer (even a Linux or Android device) onto your Windows Phone.

Some software for Windows Phone does provide favourites sync, but they’re all third-party and work to varying degrees.  I’ve had a look through the marketplace too and couldn’t find any that were free.  There is a free workaround though!  This workaround is the inclusion of SkyDrive support, Microsoft’s cloud storage system.  There’s still no two-way sync, every update has to be done manually, but it is at least one way around the problem.

To get your Internet favourites onto your Windows Phone you need to copy and paste them into a Word or Notepad document and upload it to SkyDrive at www.skydrive.com.  If you don’t use Hotmail you’ll have been asked to create a Windows Live ID when you first went to the Marketplace in your phone.

You will then be able to access your SkyDrive account in the Office hub on the phone and open this document on the handset.  These links will then be clickable (make sure you have http:// at the beginning of each one) and will open in Internet Explorer on the phone when you can then favourite them.

This is you’ll agree, an annoying faff, but it is at least a free option for those people who don’t need to regularly sync Internet favourites with their phone and / or don’t want to have to pay for an app to do it for them.  The only downside is that unless you already have access to a SharePoint server onto which you can upload the file, you’ll have to wait for the Mango update this autumn to get this to work.

Articles like this really serve only one purpose, and this is to demonstrate how stupid it is that simple things get overlooked in software.  We can only hope that Microsoft rectify this, and other problems with Windows Phone, pretty quickly.

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I always pause for a moment before writing about other software on a site called “Windows 7 News,” but some third-party software is so ubiquitous that it may as well come pre-installed with the OS – Adobe’s Flash Player is one such program, and the company today released a beta of version 10.2 to the public.

Flash 10.1 was a significant improvement over earlier versions, adding support for hardware acceleration on modern GPUs with current drivers – this allowed relatively weak CPUs like Intel’s Atom processor to play high-definition Flash content, when paired with a compatible graphics processor.

Flash 10.2 takes this a step further, improving hardware acceleration to the point that “[Adobe has] seen laptops play smooth 1080p HD video with just over 0% CPU usage.” Other features include increased performance under IE9 (due mostly to support for that browser’s own GPU rendering features), text rendering enhancements, and the ability to play full-screen Flash content on one monitor while continuing to work with other programs on a second monitor.

Flash development has gotten much more interesting over the last year as Adobe fights to keep the technology dominant in the face of competition from HTML5 and Microsoft’s Silverlight plugin. Flash has also had to contend with high-profile criticism from Apple’s Steve Jobs, who says that the Flash plugin will never be supported on its popular mobile devices. Jobs claims that the plugin is crash-prone and that it decreases battery life – the latter accusation has been independently confirmed by reviewers, who noted that installing Flash significantly impacted the battery life of the new MacBook Air.

I wouldn’t say that I love Flash, but I think that version 10.1 went a long way toward correcting its problems and I hope that 10.2 continues this trend. Flash is installed on nearly all of the world’s computers, so anything Adobe can do to improve the performance and efficiency of the plugin will benefit the entire Internet.

Sources: Adobe, Wired

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1. Microsoft researcher Scott Charney, who is also the Corporate Vice President of the company’s Trustworthy Computing Team has said that virus-infected computers that pose a risk to other PCs should be blocked from the Internet.

In a blog post he said…

Just as when an individual who is not vaccinated puts others’ health at risk, computers that are not protected or have been compromised with a bot put others at risk and pose a greater threat to society.  In the physical world, international, national, and local health organizations identify, track and control the spread of disease which can include, where necessary, quarantining people to avoid the infection of others.  Simply put, we need to improve and maintain the health of consumer devices connected to the Internet in order to avoid greater societal risk.  To realize this vision, there are steps that can be taken by governments, the IT industry, Internet access providers, users and others to evaluate the health of consumer devices before granting them unfettered access to the Internet or other critical resources.

He goes on to suggest that infected computers should be placed in quarantine until they are clean and malware-free.

He’s got a point, it’s all fair and reasonable, but he’s missing the biggest part of the picture.  This is that Microsoft are largely, nay, mostly responsible for the volume of infected computers on the planet to begin with.  Okay, so companies like Adobe have also been targets for malware writers because of buggy and sloppily-written code in their Acrobat and Flash products, but it’s Microsoft that’s far and away the leader with insecure software.

It’s not necessarily true of their products now.  Windows 7 is as secure as just about any other operating system out there, which is one of the reasons why malware writers turned their attention to Adobe, but there are still a great many other insecure Microsoft products that are not only in general usage, but that are still supported by the company.

To name but two of these I will highlight Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6.  Both of these products are still supported and both are extremely insecure.  IE6 for instance is commonly described as the scourge of the Internet because major businesses and corporations insist on its continued use in order to maintain compatibility with intranet systems.  The same can be said of Windows XP, which business and corporations use firstly because of software compatibility, but also because it’s the only version of Windows to support IE6.

Both of these products are home to the vast bulk of malware and botnet infections and both are still supported by Microsoft.

So who is to blame for this fiasco?  Some people would blame the corporations for failing to use new features, such as XP Mode in Windows 7, to provide legacy support.  XP Mode itself though needs to be monitored and maintained and so presents its own security risk.

Other people would blame Microsoft, not only for providing ongoing support for products they know are woefully lacking in basic security, but also for making sure that their latest generation of software, including Internet Explorer 9 will only run on their newer, post-XP operating systems.

Suffice to say there’s blame to be laid squarely at everyone’s door, including the people who are still using Internet Explorer 6 at home.  These people may or may not have had access to education and information about securing their computers (users in Europe have had a welcome helping hand in the form of the Browser Ballot screen).

Microsoft must take on board a huge chunk of the blame though and Mr Charney is quite correct in what he says, though somehow I don’t think his bosses will be giving him the employee of the month prize for a while.

There is a whole different issue about how you would block these infected computers from the Internet.  Windows Server could come into play here in corporate environments, but what server admin would allow his company to invest in software that would over-rule him and his staff when it came time to decide which PCs get Internet access and which ones don’t?

Needless to say this is a minefield, and one that in my opinion must be cleared quickly by Microsoft announcing that they’re dropping support for Windows XP and especially Internet Explorer 6 (which some major websites including Facebook have already dropped support for).  We at Windows 7 News would love to hear your views on this topic though (but please try not to swear), as it’s one that’s clearly set to run and run.

Microsoft Vice-President wants to Ban Infected PCs from the Internet was posted on Everything Microsoft - Latest Microsoft News, Guides, Reviews & Themes. If you are not reading this content in an email newsletter, it is being used without permission.

Fences is a program that you use to help you organize the icons on your desktop. Not just by moving them around but by hiding them when they are not in use. Note this is not a repeat of the hide unused icons feature of Windows XP.

A Fence is an icon manager for your desktop. It is an add-on to your desktop, not a replacement. By using Fences, you can clean your desktop by creating shaded areas. The Fence becomes a movable and sizable containers for your icons. If you double click the blank spaces on your desktop all of your Fences will fade out, and back.

What can you do with Fences?

Rope off your desktop -Fences allows you to create shaded areas on your desktop that you can place icons in. You can label them however you wish, and move/resize them anywhere on the desktop. Pre-included layouts help speed the process for new users.

Make you Icons appear and disappear. You can quickly hide and show all of your icons with an easy double-click. Double click any blank space available on your desktop, then all your icons will fade out. When you double click again, and they’ll return.

You can create snapshots, and have automatic scaling. In the free version you can take and restore snapshots of your Fence layouts for backup, or for when you are performing different tasks. You can also change your screen resolultion for playing games. Fences will still keep them in the same relative spots. There are additional features available in the Pro version of Fences. The “snapshot” feature has been enhanced to automatically take and keep recent snapshots on hand,; this ensures that your desktop layout never gets lost.

Other Features

• You can customize opacity and color tinting of Fences Auto-scaling for screen size changes
• You can create an unlimited number of Fence areas on desktop
• You can store unique Fence locations for different monitor configurations
• You can quickly hide/show desktop icons with double-click
• It can provide a Low profile, low system impact: one that integrates tightly and cleanly with the Operating System

Fences Image

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Fences - Hidden option

Fences - Icons Resetablished

Source: Stardock

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According to a recent study by ComScore.com, Microsoft websites have captured close to a 15 percent share of the worldwide online presence. Facebook and YouTube together account for almost 10 percent of the time users spent online globally.

The following table shows the top companies and their presence globally on the Internet for the month of September, 2009.  The results are interesting because the biggest Internet users are in Latin America and the Middle East/Africa, according to the study. The study does not show Asia, so it is limited.

Facts about the Internet presence:

In September 2009, an online global population of 1.2 billion Internet users aged 15 and older accounted for almost 27 billion hours spent on the Internet.
In terms of destination for end users on the Internet, the rankings came in with:
the leader – Microsoft, followed by Google, then Yahoo, and Facebook.

• Microsoft sites accounted for 14.5 percent of total minutes spent online in September
• Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger was very popular accounting for nearly 70 percent of time spent during September.
• Google sites captured 9.3 percent of total minutes or about 2.5 billion hours.
• YouTube users accounted for nearly half of total time spent or about 1.2 billion hours.
• Yahoo sites ranked as the third most engaging Web site at 1.7 billion hours.
• Facebook.com had close to 1.4 billion hours. But Facebook’s share of attention closed in on 5.1 percent in September.

This next table shows how those sites fared along global locations.

Source:

http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2009/11/Microsoft_Sites_Captures_Largest_Share_of_Time_Spent_Online_Worldwide

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