Microsoft News - Atidan Wins New Microsoft Gold Competencies in the Microsoft Partner Network

Atidan officials said that they are proud to announce that their company has achieved a total of four Gold Competencies in the Microsoft (News - Alert) Partner Network for showcasing their ability to meet Microsoft customers' evolving needs in today's dynamic business environment.

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The two new Microsoft Gold Competencies in the Microsoft Partner Network was given away to Atidan for its Digital Marketing and Application Integration. These Gold Competencies are handed over to organizations which complete a rigorous set of tests to prove their level of technology expertise, have the right number of Microsoft Certified Professionals, submit customer references and demonstrate their commitment to customer satisfaction by participating in an annual survey.
Atidan is on the leading edge of Microsoft technology solutions for the enterprise," said David J. Rosenthal, President and CEO, Atidan. "Integrating distributed systems and process within and outside of companies and delivering enterprise-class digital marketing strategies are two of the most important technology initiatives for our clients today."



Atidan expertise lies in developing rich Internet solutions on Microsoft SharePoint 2010 for Internet Sites, Microsoft FAST (News - Alert) Search Server technology, and the Microsoft Silverlight browser plug-in. Atidan's Digital Marketing solutions are highly functional, scalable, flexible, and secure through a unified platform for intranet, extranet, and Internet sites, according to company officials.

Jon Roskill, Corporate Vice President, Worldwide Partner Group at Microsoft Corp said that they are proud to put forth a program that provides the right resources to help a company develop the expertise customer’s demand in today's competitive market and also provides the community and infrastructure that can connect them to one another, lowering costs for all parties.

With the new title, Atidan can now deliver products and services based on the Microsoft platform with the training, resources and support they need to provide their customers a superior experience and outcomes.

Microsoft: Android is standing 'on the shoulder of companies like Microsoft'

Microsoft: ‘Licensing is not some nefarious thing that people should be worried about.’

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Google is standing ‘on the shoulder of companies like Microsoft who made all these billions of dollars in investments‘ with its Android mobile OS, claims Horacio Gutiérrez, deputy general counsel in charge of Microsoft’s intellectual property group.

Gutiérrez makes this claim in an interview with SFGate.

Speaking in relation to the huge amount of litigation currently going on between mobile device players, Gutiérrez said that ‘there is a period of unrest and a period of readjustment, until the claims on the ownership of different pieces of technology are well known’ and that licensing and cross-licensing is required to make these problems ‘disappear into the background.’

Gutiérrez also believes that ‘licensing is not some nefarious thing that people should be worried about’ but instead ‘the solution to the patent problem that people are reacting so negatively about.’

Gutiérrez goes on to defend the software patent system, claiming that ’many things that earlier were implemented in hardware … are now implemented in software’ and that the ‘patent system has actually played a role in securing the leadership that the United States has in this field.’

Why Microsoft's vision of the future will really happen

Two videos from Microsoft show the future of technology. Here's why I think they're dead-on

Computerworld - Microsoft released a video in 2008 and another one this week that together predict the sleek, wireless, connected gadgets we'll all enjoy by the year 2019.

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Called Productivity Future Vision and Future Vision 2019, the videos fascinate in the way that science fiction does. But what's even more interesting is that this vision will almost certainly come true.
Microsoft's videos depict their vision of the future. Use the "Next" button to advance between the two videos.

When you see them, you may be surprised by my conclusion. Will technology really move that fast?

Just remember how quickly things moved in the past 10 years.

Ten years ago, there was no such thing as a multitouch consumer device -- no iPhone, Android phone or anything even remotely like it. The original iPod was brand new, and there was no iTunes store for buying music. There was no Xbox, no YouTube, no Flickr, no Reddit. Google was just a search engine. Gmail, Maps, Docs, Calendar, Voice, Talk, Reader and many other Google services didn't exist.

Facebook? Ha! Mark Zuckerberg was still in high school, and even MySpace was still years away.

In fact, virtually every aspect of today's consumer electronics scene was nonexistent or even beyond imagining 10 years ago. Almost everything Apple sells right now -- the iPad, iPhone, Siri, Apple TV, iMac, MacBook Air and other products, would have seemed like science fiction in 2001.

When most people imagine the future of technology, they envision better versions of what they've already got. But changing technology will sweep away almost all the products and services we use today.

Microsoft's videos brilliantly capture what is likely to replace them.
Where did these videos come from?

Office Labs is one of Microsoft's in-house think tanks. The initiative comes up with working concepts, some of which can be downloaded and experimented with (you need to be running Microsoft Office). Some of them are created by employees in their own time (similar to Google's 20% time projects).

Many of the Office Labs concepts would require technologies and computing power that aren't available yet. So the researchers create special-effects-laden videos and demos to communicate ideas. Microsoft also maintains an "Envisioning Lab" where close business partners can see and discuss the prototypes on display.
What to look for in the videos

In Microsoft's vision of the future, connected computers and displays are built into everyday objects.

A woman's eyeglasses whisper real-time translations of a foreign language in her ear. A coffee cup shows the drink's temperature and has a display that indicates how high the liquid is inside. An electronic newspaper is as thin and flexible as actual paper, but it functions like a wireless connected multitouch text-and-video e-reader.

"Monitors" in the video are often depicted as clear smart glass. Call 'em "Microsoft Windows." What the heck.

A businessman uses a clear-glass display that is straight-up Minority Report, controlled with both touchscreen and "wave your hands in the air like you just don't care" gestures. Both display and touch-input devices look like regular clear glass until they come to life with gestures. In some scenes, touch gestures become in-air gestures, as they extend beyond the screen.

On-screen buttons, dials and other controls appear as needed for the task at hand, then vanish when no longer required.

A clear-glass stylus is also used in one scene, suggesting a role for a pen.

Keyboards are depicted, both the onscreen and physical variety. But there's a lot less typing in this future, as Siri-like voice assistance and dictation replaces most typing.

See-through glass displays, of course, are perfect for augmented reality. A mobile version is held up to a green plant, which is visible through the clear glass. But then the device recognizes the species, and throws information about it on the screen.

The window of a taxi turns into an augmented reality screen, pointing out to the passenger the building where her meeting is to take place the next day.

Other displays aren't clear, but appealingly opaque. In many cases, surfaces that used to hold analog information tools themselves replace the tools. For example, instead of a whiteboard mounted on a wall -- a standard feature in today's conference rooms -- the wall of the future is the whiteboard -- computerized and connected, of course. Instead of a tablet on a table, the table is the tablet.

Windows 8 to increase PC production costs

ODMs and brand vendors squabble over who will cover the additional costs.

Microsoft’s new Windows 8 OA 3.0 verification system will add complication and costs for ODMs (Original Device Manufacturers) who create and build PCs for the big name OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers). These costs will, undoubtedly, be passed on to us, the consumers.

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Note: The DigiTimes piece inaccurately refers to OA 3.0 as being incorporated into the BIOS. What we are actually talking about here is UEFI firmware, which all Windows 8 certified systems must have.

According to DigiTimes, the issue revolves around Microsoft’s new activation system for Windows 8.

For the OA 3.0, Microsoft plans to pre-install the Windows 8 operating system into PC’s BIOS and will have consumers key-in the authorization key to activate the software through an Internet connection and will completely abandon its previous method of using a COA [Certificate of Authenticity] label.

OEM BIOS activation is nothing new. OA was first seen in Windows XP, and OA 2.0 with Windows Vista and Windows 7. Both of these mechanisms are now easily bypassed by pirates looking to install/sell unlicences copies of Windows.

However, now rather than shipping PCs with a COA, keys will be incorporated in the system’s UEFI firmware, and this will increase production costs for ODMs because each machine will require individual attention to squirt the key into the UFI firmware (rather than just sticking on the COA). Technicians will also require more training. Finally, the absence of a certificate on the machine could also increase costs because of installation overlap (Microsoft charges a per-install fee, so having to install a second key because of an error would increase costs.

There’s also concern about who will bear these extra costs:

The sources also revealed that the ODMs believe Microsoft is playing a two-faced game with the notebook players - on the one hand, the software giant has told notebook ODMs that brand vendors will pay all the increased cost, while they told the brand vendors that ODMs will be responsible for the cost.

One thing is for sure … you and I will be the ones ultimately footing this bill.

Kick users, devices from Wifi

Is your roommate eating all of your Wifi bandwidth downloading those crazy torrents? Is your wife streaming too many movies from Netflix? Are your younger ones spending so much time on nothing but Facebook? Its almost time start kicking them from Wifi connection.

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You can now kick users & devices from Wifi using an android app called WiFiKill. The app makes sure that a targeted users is not able to connect to Internet using your Wifi.

WiFiKill is pretty simple: it scans your network for connected devices and gives the option to individually kill their network connectivity. You can also chose to Kick all users, if you intend to. Tick the “all” box and the network will be completely empty in a matter of seconds. To re-enable connectivity for any device, simply uncheck the box next to its name.

Note: App does wacky stuff to your wifi by injecting spoofing DNS and several other UDP stuff, works only on Rooted phones.

There’s alot of things you can do with it, but doing so for Public or shared networks can create serious problems. We hope you don’t boot users and create havoc using this app. Use it wisely, don’t be a jackass. If you promise to be ethical, feel free to install the app from market.

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Cloud tools give Microsoft partners a jump-start

Microsoft is giving its partners tools that could help drive more business to its cloud-based services.

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At the company's annual Worldwide Partner Conference, being held this week in Washington, the new Microsoft channel chief unveiled programs that give Microsoft business partners free access to its cloud software as well as training.

"We're going to provide a wide array of tools to help partners both drive the deals and once they get the deals, then manage the customers from the support and deployment aspect," said Jon Roskill, who assumed the role of corporate vice president of the worldwide partner group on July 1.

While earlier in the week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer extolled the virtues of Microsoft's cloud services to partners, Roskill detailed how Microsoft would help partners get their own services started.

One package, called the Microsoft Cloud Essentials Pack, will offer partners free use of Microsoft cloud software, as well as access to an expanded online directory of business opportunities in 46 countries.

With this program, the company is offering 250 free internal-use seat licenses for two online Microsoft services, Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) and Microsoft Dynamics Online, which is the company's customer relationship management service. Free licenses would also be available for Microsoft's InTune and Azure services as well, though Roskill did not specify how many free seats would be available for these services.

Microsoft will also offer a range of courses for how to work with BPOS, as well as free pre-sales phone support for partners who register with the company's advanced cloud program, called Microsoft Cloud Accelerate.

"We believe this will allow partners to quickly and effectively position BPOS solutions and resolve any issues that come up while they are going through the trial and deployment phases," he said.

In his talk, Roskill offered the audience a list of traits that the "most successful partners" of Microsoft would possess. For one, such companies would run the "latest and greatest" Microsoft software. "I've seen partners who are still running on Windows XP and on Linux, and those are great folks, but they won't be Microsoft's best partners," he said.

Secondly, the partners would need to understand their places in the ecosystem. "You all figured out your niche in the world -- construction, [telecommunication], multimedia. The most successful partners have a clear understanding of where they are operating," he said.

In his new role, Roskill will report to Vahé Torossian, corporate vice president of the worldwide small and midmarket solutions and partners group. Allison Watson, the former channel chief, will assume Roskill's former role as the U.S. head of business and marketing.

Microsoft ad trashes OpenOffice.org

A recent Microsoft video suggests the company considers OpenOffice.org a significant threat to its own Office suite.

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Titled "A Few Perspectives on OpenOffice.org," the video features a series of horror stories from customers who tried the open-source productivity suite and suffered from excess costs as well as IT resources, performance and compatibility issues.

A series of customer quotes flashes across the screen in the slickly animated video, read aloud by a series of unseen narrators. "If an open-source freeware solution breaks, who's going to fix it?" according to a statement ascribed to a school district official in the U.S.

"When we returned to Microsoft Office after our experience with OpenOffice, you could practically hear a collective sigh of relief across the entire district," states another comment attributed to a U.S. school system official.

Comments are not enabled on the video's YouTube page.

Microsoft is facing competition from OpenOffice.org on multiple fronts, from the commercial version sold by project owner Oracle, as well as offshoots like the recently announced LibreOffice.

Oracle this week sought to dispel any doubts about its commitment to OpenOffice.org, saying it would participate in an ODF (Open Document Format) Plugfest event in Brussels and pledging continued development support on the OpenOffice.org codebase.

An Oracle spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Microsoft's ad.

Microsoft delivers Windows Intune 2.0 cloud-management service

Microsoft has made the second version of its Windows Intune cloud-management service generally available to customers on October 17, as promised.

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On October 17, Microsoft made generally available the second version of its Windows Intune cloud-management service.

Windows Intune enables businesses to manage and secure PCs. It also provides users with rights to current and future versions of Windows — similar to what they’d get if they signed up for Microsoft’s Software Assurance volume-licensing program. Microsoft also is attempting to pitch Windows Intune as a way to get customers to move from Windows XP to Windows 7 because of the current/future Windows 7 rights.

Windows Intune is a Microsoft cloud service that provides IT pros with PC management and security for $11 per seat per month. (There’s a free 30-day trial for users with up to 25 PCs available.)

Windows Intune is comprised of two components: On-premises Windows and Windows management tools, plus an online management and security service. Windows Intune evolved from a Microsoft project known as System Center Online Desktop Manager (SCODM).

The new (2.0) version of Intune supports third-party application updates and patching. It also will add the ability to perform remote IT tasks, and read-only access to the administration console and new reporting capabilities.

Update: Though many of us currently refer to the latest version as “Windows Intune 2.0″ (to differentiate it from the first release, a Microsoft spokesperson noted that, going forward, this update will be known officially either as “just Windows Intune or the Windows Intune October 2011 release.”

Current Windows Intune customers will be automatically upgraded “in the few weeks following October 17,” with no action required by customers, according to Microsoft officials. Current Intune users will see an alert displayed in the Windows Intune administration console, indicating the exact date and time when Intune will be updated. Those beta testing Intune 2.0 will see the beta close on November 17.

Microsoft released version 1.0 of Windows Intune in March 2011.

There’s still no official date from the Softies as to when the company plans to integrate Windows Intune with Office 365, though that is the plan of record. The new Windows Intune FAQ (frequently asked questions) document notes that Office 365 and Windows Intune’s portals are still separate and that the two cloud properties require separate logins.

Microsoft's Courier team scatters

The founders of Microsoft’s Pioneer Studios, which created the concept behind the double-sided Courier tablet, have scattered and the group’s office, located in a Seattle neighborhood full of startups, has closed.

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The changes come a year after J Allard, Microsoft’s former top designer who is credited with starting Pioneer Studios, left the company.

Other people who say they were instrumental in starting the group have either left the company or moved into new roles at Microsoft.

The group is no longer occupying the office space in Seattle, Microsoft confirmed Thursday. The office is across town from Microsoft's corporate headquarters in the suburbs.

Georg Petschnigg, a cofounder of Pioneer Studios, says on his LinkedIn profile that he is an "entrepreneur" working on an “undisclosed new venture.” A Microsoft spokeswoman said he is at Microsoft's startup business group.

Petschnigg's profile also says that while working at Pioneer Studios he secured $20 million in funding to develop the Courier product.

The Courier was a unique tablet design that had two screens connected by a hinge and a cutting-edge user interface. Videos showing mock-ups of how it might perform circulated widely online, eliciting excitement based on its unusual capabilities. But not long after the videos surfaced, Microsoft said it had no plans to build the product.

Jonathan Harris also describes himself as a cofounder of Pioneer Studios on his LinkedIn profile. He and Petschnigg co-developed the Courier concept and pitched it to executives at the company, he said. His profile says he is "principle experience director" at Microsoft.

Other former Pioneer Studios workers appear to have either left the company or joined other groups, including the Startup Business Group.

The Microsoft spokeswoman noted that the company has several incubation groups, including FUSE Labs, the Garage and the Hardware Incubation Lab.

Microsoft looks to business tools for health care

Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer, demonstrated some applications on Thursday that apply current technologies to problems facing the health care industry.

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He spoke at the Pacific Health Summit in Seattle.

Technology developments aimed at businesses can help the medical field more than many people in health care may think, he said. For example, health care organizations often say that they have so much data, including patients' medical, billing and insurance information, that it will be a challenge for technology companies to build applications around the data, Mundie said.

But Mundie discovered that, in fact, the data collected by some businesses far surpasses that of health care groups. His researchers found that every five hours, consumers upload enough video to YouTube to match all data that the Beth Israel hospital system in Boston has collected in total over the past 27 years. Similarly, every day, consumers upload a volume of data in Facebook photos that equals all of the hospital's data, he said.

Beth Israel was the largest single health care system in terms of data that Microsoft could find in the U.S. in order to make this comparison, he said.

"While yes, medical data is big and complicated, by today's standard it's actually not very big," Mundie said.

The volume of medical data is set to grow, though, as an increasingly tech-savvy population begins to use devices that collect health information and transmit it to back-end databases. For example, bathroom scales and hearth monitors can automatically send data to databases.

By combining such user-generated data with information produced in the clinical care environment, "we'll be enlightened," Mundie said.

His researchers are working on ways to analyze that data and apply machine learning to improve care and reduce costs in health care. Microsoft did one experiment in which it used machine learning to look at 10 years of data from a hospital to try to predict whether a patient was likely to be readmitted to the hospital. It used all the data from the hospital, including clinical data and billing information.

"We set about to answer the question of, if you look at things that are expensive in medicine, is there a way to not ask doctors what the answers are, but can you ask the data instead and would you get a different answer," he said.

Microsoft's tool looked at data for people who had congestive heart failure and found many of the same correlations that doctors look for to determine if the person was likely to require readmittance. But the tool also found new scenarios. For example, it found that patients who were given drugs for gastric disorders and those with depressive issues had higher incidences of return visits.

The idea is to use machine learning to identify patients who are likely to have additional problems, and then doctors can decide to intervene in advance, he said.

"We think we're just scratching the surface of what can be done using machine learning technology," Mundie said.

Microsoft uses machine learning for a number of its own products, such as its Bing search engine.

He also showed off ways that health workers could use Microsoft's Kinect sensor, currently used in conjunction with the Xbox 360 game console. Kinect lets users move their arms, bodies and voices rather than a game controller to interact with games.

Mundie showed an example where a health care worker could use voice commands to sift through patients to identify those who might be eligible to be entered into a new program. He was presented with photographs of the patients and could choose one in order to see visual representations of clinical data. For example, a chart showed one patient's weight, and Mundie could drag an incident where the patient sprained her ankle onto the chart to see how that incident correlated with changes in weight.

He also showed a scenario where diabetes patients could be part of a virtual support group. The group appeared as avatars sitting in a room, and members used Kinect sensors to interact in the virtual group. The application uses avatars for individuals because some people would prefer not to use their true image, as they would in a video chat. But the avatars move and reflect facial expressions just like the real person does. That could allow a health care worker to review a recorded video of the session to look for clues that individuals may not be engaged by the sessions, Mundie said.

Mundie has spoken at the Pacific Health Summit many times in the past, and often the futuristic technologies he demonstrates become commercial, he said. For example, he once discussed ways that inkjet printers could inject medicines onto pills or other surfaces, and this year a major drug company is completing a trial doing just that. He also once showed off robots that could be used in health care, and there are now 400 of them being used commercially.

Striking a domain provider, Microsoft kills off a botnet

The story, "Striking a domain provider, Microsoft kills off a botnet," posted Tuesday, incorrectly spelled the name of Microsoft's Richard Boscovich on second and third reference. The story has been corrected on the wire and the fifth and seventh paragraphs now read:

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The idea of a highly disruptive botnet that Microsoft shut down in February 2010 quietly resurfacing under a different name didn't sit too well with Microsoft's digital crimes unit. "We wanted to take it out early enough so that number one, it wouldn't grow and propagate ... but also to make the point that when a threat is down, it's going to stay down," Boscovich said. "I think we made that point pretty effectively in this particular operation."

and

"For some time now, this particular domain has had multiple issues with it in addition to Kelihos," Boscovich said. "We ultimately decided to name him as a defendant in light of some previous incidents that he's had."

Microsoft to ship last service pack for Office 2007 this month

Microsoft yesterday announced it will ship a third and final service pack update for Office 2007 before year's end.

It appears that Microsoft will deliver Office 2007 Service Pack 3 (SP3) this month.

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"The October 2011 release provides a six-month window to test and deploy the release prior to exiting mainstream support," Microsoft said in a blog post Thursday.

Office 2007, which went on general sale in January 2007 alongside Windows Vista, exits what Microsoft calls "mainstream support" in April 2012.

The suite will continue to be updated with security fixes for another five years after that, through April 11, 2017, during the "extended support" phase.

The biggest difference between the two support phases is that extended, non-security fixes are provided only to companies that have paid for special support contracts.

Microsoft, however, never issues service packs -- which are mostly composed of past security and other patches -- once a product is retired from mainstream support.

Office 2007 SP3 will be offered using Microsoft's now-standard procedure. Initially, the service pack will be available as a manual download and through Windows Update as an optional install. Three months later, the company will kick SP3 into Windows Update for automatic distribution and deployment.

Microsoft also usually gives corporate customers another heads-up about 30 days before it starts serving Office service packs through its update services.

Service Pack 3 is Office's 2007's first SP since 2009's SP2.

Not surprisingly, Microsoft touted the newer Office 2010 as an option for customers who want to retire Office 2007 or the even-older Office 2003.

Office 2003 has more than two years of life left in it: The suite won't be retired from security support until April 2014.

BlackBerry PlayBook

After experiencing both the ups and downs in the smartphone market, Research In Motion (RIM) is now trying to make its way in the tablet industry as well. The new Blackberry PlayBook tablet is the company’s first effort in this regard. Released in April 2011, this tablet is working really hard to make some productive revenue for its developers, if nothing else. We’ll now take a look at the goods and bads of this device in detail. So jump in!

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Blackberry PlayBook Specs and Features
The tablet features 1 GHz dual core processor and 1 GB of Random-Access Memory (RAM). It has a distinctive 7-inch LCD screen with WSVGA 1024 x 600 pixel resolution,and acapacitive panel with multi-touch capabilities. The compact screenmakes this tabletreally handy by reducing its total weight to 0.9 lbs, which is much lighter as compared to the iPad.

PlayBook is backed by the new Blackberry Tablet OS with QNX technology, an operating system that also supports symmetric multiprocessing. The device also flaunts twin 1080p HD cameras ideal for making high-quality videos and video conferencing. The rear camera is 5 mega-pixels and the front-facing camera is 3 mega-pixels, definitely better than the low-quality iPad cameras in every way.Not just that, this Blackberry Tablet also have 1080p HDMI output; GPS; accelerometer; stereo speakers and microphones; digital compass; micro USB port; and 6-axis motion sensor (gyroscope). In terms of connectivity, the device can be connected through Bluetooth (2.1+ EDR) or Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n).Later, it will be updated to support WiMax, LTE, and HSPA+ as well, probably by the end of this year.

The Blackberry PlayBook release took place on April 19, 2011 with Best Buy being its preferred retailer in the USA. The device is available in three models, differentiating each other on the basis of external storage and also prices. Therefore, the 16 GB PlayBook is priced at $499, 32 GB at $599, and the 64 GB version is available at $699 in North America.

BlackberryPlayBook Review

Even after having such amazing features and smart technology, the Blackberry PlayBook couldn’t manage to attract users like the iPad. Why? There are a number of reasons for that. Let’s find out!

BlackBerry PlayBook

First, the PlayBookapps are pretty limited, especially when we compare them with Apple or Android applications. This majordrawback automatically reduces its usability and makes the device less enjoyable. There’s no doubt that applications play a great role in maintaining the reputation of devices. That’s why the continuously growing app stores of Apple and Android do not let their devices fade out from the market so easily.

Secondly, the Blackberry PlayBook price is pretty much similar to the iPad 2, which makes it a lot easier for buyers to make their choice between the two. Of course, no sane person would want to spend their money on an unstable new device, when a highly rated device is available at the same price.

blackberry-playbook

And lastly, the false promise! The Blackberry tablet claims to give a battery life of up to 10 hours, but it actually gives much lesser time when compared with other tablets.According to a test done by Engadget, the PlayBook displayed an average battery life of 7:01 hours, which was fairly less than the iPads, Motorola Xoom and even Archos 101.

Overall, the Blackberry PlayBook is purty, smart and unique but it is also true that the industry is already dominated by a name-brand tablet. Therefore, the new tablet developers should consider all of the various aspects including features, competitors, prices, and of course timing before releasing their final products in the market.

Arabs, Jews Study IT Together

Orgad Lootsky heard the bombing near here that killed 20. But Lootsky, who has trained IT professionals for seven years, still believes he can forge links between Arabs (Christian and Muslim) and Jews.

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In this northern city, which has an Arab section and a Jewish one, called Nazareth Illit, high school teenagers from the Nazareth Baptist School and its Jewish counterpart come together to earn their Cisco Certified Networking Associate (CCNA) certificates in classes taught by Lootsky.
These young adults exhibit seriousness preparing for their futures, but what's compelling is how they trump the political pressures that make any mixing of Arabs and Jews potentially confrontational.
Haya Samaan, a 15-year-old 10th-grader at the Nazareth Baptist School, has been in the program for two months. "I want to make a difference," says Samaan, who considers Bill Gates a hero. "I want to fulfill my dreams," she adds, explaining her studies for the CCNA certificate. She's also excited about the connections she's making with Jewish classmates.
The program has backing from local educators such as Ousama Moalem, principal of the Nazareth Baptist School; parents; and scholarship help from Salesforce.com/foundation, individuals and Nazareth Illit-Yezreel Technological College, which hosts the sessions on its campus.
Zika Abzuk, who established the program in Nazareth and is business development manager at Cisco in Israel, said that after a suicide bombing, tensions were high, and some parents and officials were dubious about the plan. "But we felt this is time people should show there are many good things we can do together," she said.
Moalem, whose school of 1,060 makes do with 20 computers and lacks networking equipment and teaching space, agreed: "The students are excited, the atmosphere is comfortable, and I look forward to more cooperation with the Jewish school."
But as with IT projects in the business world, reality tempers enthusiastic visions. Iris Klein, general director of the Nazareth Illit-Yezreel Technological College, said on a day when people were visiting bombing victims in the hospital that she wholeheartedly supports the program and will find money to keep it alive, but that this alone will not change the enmity in the region. "This is a small program, and we would be happy to enlarge it," she said, "but we have to be realistic."
And yet the attitude of Alex Etkin, a 17-year-old 11th-grade Jewish student in the program, should encourage more optimism. "We're all here to learn," said Etkin, who has dreams of being an artist as well as an IT professional. "It doesn't matterif you are Arab or Jewish, we want to learn together."

Microsoft says no more Zunes, it's all about the phone now

Microsoft will make no more Zune music players, building its future music strategy on applications incorporated in its Windows Phone and Xbox platforms, the company has confirmed.

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Rumors circulated in March that Microsoft planned to stop making dedicated music players, but the company ducked the issue then, saying this year's new Zune devices would be mobile phones running Zune software. It went on to release a trickle of applications for the Zune platform later in the year.

The company has now updated a help page at Zune.net to announce: "We will no longer be producing Zune players." Instead, the page said: "Going forward, Windows Phone will be the focus of our mobile music and video strategy."

However, this will make no difference to current Zune users, the company said on the support page: "Your device will continue to work with Zune services just as it does today. And we will continue to honor the warranties of all devices for both current owners and those who buy our very last devices."

Microsoft launched the first Zune players and Zune Marketplace music store on Nov. 14, 2006, as a challenge to Apple's iPod player and iTunes music store.

However, Apple moved the goalposts a couple of months later with its Jan. 9, 2007, announcement of the iPhone, a widescreen iPod that could also make phone calls and surf the Web.

It took Microsoft three years to follow suit. When it announced Windows Phone in February 2010, one of the features of the new mobile OS was a Zune music player app. It's also possible to access Zune music and video via Xbox Live, Microsoft's online service for its Xbox 360 game console.

Sales of the Zune have consistently trailed far behind those of the iPod. While not a definitive ranking, the list of best-selling MP3 players at Amazon.com is telling: Nine of the 10 best sellers are iPods (Sandisk has a $40 Sansa model in eighth place) and the first Zune device now appears at number 24, preceded by 16 iPod variants.

Terry Childs juror explains why he voted to convict

Terry Childs' guilty conviction struck a nerve with IT staffers this week.

Here was a man who, by all accounts, was good at his job, though lacking in interpersonal skills. Suddenly, on July 9, 2008, he's pushed into a tense situation -- a hostile conference call with the human resources department, his boss and even a police officer, all listening in, and told to hand over the passwords to the City of San Francisco's FiberWAN network, which he helped build. He chokes and hands over bogus passwords. Later, he argues that he did this because nobody in the room was qualified to have administrative access to the network.

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IT people are used to being held accountable for bad decisions made by their superiors, and some people who've read about the case feel some sympathy for Mr. Childs. After all, the city's network never went down, and Childs eventually did hand over control of the FiberWAN to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom -- the only person Childs felt was competent to have the passwords.

"How exactly was he breaking the law?" wrote one Slashdot poster, reacting to news of Childs' conviction. "[H]e refused to disclose the passwords when the person requesting them did not follow proper protocols."

While the City of San Francisco apparently did a poor job in spelling out the protocols for handing over administrative control of its network, Childs was still guilty of a crime. A jury found him guilty of breaking California's hacking laws on Tuesday, and when he is sentenced on June 14, he will be facing a possible five-year prison term.

So how did Childs break the law? We put the question to one of the best people able to answer it: Juror # 4, also known as Jason Chilton. In addition to having listened to countless hours of courtroom testimony, he also happens to be a Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) and a senior network engineer with payroll administrator Automatic Data Processing. (ADP) He's spent the past five months of his life on the trial, which began jury selection in late November. According to him, there's much more to the Terry Childs case than most people realize. Following is an edited version of an interview he gave the IDG News Service on Wednesday, the day after the verdict was handed down.

IDG News Service: Why did you find Terry Childs guilty?

Chilton: The law was clearly spelled out for us. Within it there are very specific questions that you have to answer in order to reach a guilty verdict. And within those questions there are certain terms such as computer network, computer service, and those are given legal definitions, which you have to follow.

The questions were, first, did the defendant know he caused a disruption or a denial of computer service. It was rather easy for us to answer, "Yes there was a denial of service." And that service was the ability to administer the routers and switches of the FiberWAN.

That was the first aspect of it, the second aspect was the denial to an authorized user. And for us that's what we really had to spend the most time on, defining who an authorized user was. Because that wasn't one of the definitions given to us.

IDGNS: People who followed the case heard about this conference call with Cisco engineers, and the defense said he was reluctant to hand over passwords to people who were not authorized to have them. There was an HR person in the room, a police detective, and the chief operating officer of his division, Richard Robinson.

Chilton: It was really hard for us to get through that part. We said, "OK, what policies may there have been that defined an authorized user?" Well, the city didn't have any procedures. There was no policy that was formally adopted that people were supposed to follow. It was this amorphous thing.

Eventually we looked at it and we saw that in late June his manager had requested certain accounts to be created that would have access to certain routers and switches. And he did create those accounts, and he sent that back in an email with the user IDs and passwords, to which Richard Robinson was also copied. If his big concern was that Richard Robinson was not authorized to be a user, why -- just a week before -- did he copy him on an email that has user IDs and passwords?

IDGNS: If you're doing this stuff in the course of your job, it's not criminal. There must have been a point at which you decided that what he was doing was outside of his job description?

Chilton: Essentially, one of his job duties was to allow the network to be maintained. So when he went into that meeting on July 9th, he was told he was being reassigned, therefore he was not going to be working on the FiberWAN any more. Somebody has to get access, and he refused to provide that. So he's leaving this very critical network in the city's hands, but saying that nobody can maintain it.

IDGNS: What do you think he was thinking at that point? The defense made it sound like this was a high pressure meeting and he choked.

Chilton: I think he went into that meeting probably thinking he was being fired. Definitely he knew that there were some employment changes coming. He had received an email the week prior from his manager saying, "We're about to go through organizational changes." So that was proof to us he knew something was going to happen organizationally that would affect his employment. That very morning before he went into the meeting, he received a phone call from one of his co-workers saying, "We've just been told you've been reassigned."

I think he was used to, over the years, dealing with Herb Tong, his manager, who didn't understand how to deal with him effectively. He would let him get away with everything, and he was kind of weak-willed and would let things slide. And I think Terry Childs was used to that and not thinking that the consequences of what he was about to do would be greater than what they normally would be if he was dealing with Herb Tong. Now he's dealing with Richard Robinson [Tong's boss] and the police.

And I think he left that meeting honestly thinking, "OK, they're going to try to get into this network and they're not going to be able to." He even sent an email the next day, saying, "I know you all are trying to figure out how I can get into this network."

So he knew nobody else could get in, and I think he had the assumption that they would say, "We need you back to maintain this network." And that obviously did not happen.

IDGNS: Since the verdict you've finally been able to read what people are saying about the case. Any surprises there?

Chilton: No, not really. Most of the news stories that covered it really boiled it down to something simple such as he was in a meeting and asked to give up his passwords and refused. There were so many other things happening that don't get put in the news that really led to the whole situation happening. It wasn't simply he wouldn't give up his username and password. It was two years of building up to this point.

IDGNS: What do you think of Terry Childs?

Chilton: I think he's a decent guy. Like many IT people, protective of his work. Possibly a little paranoid. But the problem he had was that he didn't have good management to keep that in check. He was allowed free rein, which allowed engineering decisions over the years that made things worse and worse, and locked people out of possibly getting into this network.

IDG News: Going back, what was the one step he could have done to avoid prison?

Chilton: If he would have simply said, "I will create you an account and you can go in and you can remove my access if you want." If he had created access for someone else, I think that would have resolved it. If he had not decided to leave and go to Nevada a few days later and withdraw US$10,000 in cash, [Childs did this the day before his arrest, while under police surveillance] I think the police may have let it continue on as an employment issue and not a criminal matter.

IDGNS: Do you think Terry Childs deserves another chance?

Chilton: Yes I do. He has a lot of knowledge and he has the ability to learn this stuff on his own. I think with what's happened, he's probably not going to get himself hired by an AT&T or a Bank of America, but he could probably do stuff on his own. Because he definitely has the knowledge.

IDGNS: Do you think he's a trustworthy person?

Chilton: I think for the most part, yes. If he's given clearly defined rules, he could be. I think he's also very stubborn and a little egotistical.

Is an IT boot camp the way to shape up for Windows Vista?

The attractions of an accelerated tech training course are obvious. Why spend weeks or months reading boring computer books or lurching through online courseware when you can have high-energy instructors helping you to cram all that information in over a single long weekend?

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Nicknamed boot camps for their abbreviated length and grueling methods -- 12 hours in class per day, along with assigned homework at night, is not unusual -- some even have students taking certification exams by weekend’s end -- and still boast a respectable pass rate.

Unsurprisingly, a number of boot camps aimed at training both system administrators and end users in Vista and Office 2007 are starting to spring up.

The courses aren't cheap. Prices typically start at more than $1,000 for a long weekend’s course, and the costs go up rapidly from. But some experts see value in these crash courses. IT boot camps "are very helpful to get a team up to speed prior to a software deployment," said Cushing Anderson, an analyst at Framingham, Mass.-based IDC.

A constellation of camps

Training Camp, the boot camp division of TechTrain, will begin offering Vista boot camps in June with a three-day course aimed at helping Microsoft Certified Technology Specialists (MCTS) pass the certification exam for configuring Vista.

Jeff Porch, director of educational services at Philadelphia-based Training Camp, says the $2,195 course is aimed at people who provide IT support, both in person and via call centers.

All of the instructors employed by Training Camp are Microsoft Certified Trainers (MCT). Classes are limited to 10 students, allowing them to get a lot of one-on-one attention, Porch said. They are also worked hard. "The camp will run from 9:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., with an hour for lunch and an hour for dinner," Porch said.

Training Camp is also developing courses for Office 2007 and Exchange that should be available by the end of the summer, Porch said.

Other providers include Vigilar Inc.'s Intense School, which is holding a series of five-day Vista-Office 2007 boot camps starting in August. The $2,495 course will prepare students for the Vista configuration exam. Intense School Chief Technology Officer Barry Kaufman said 97% of students in Intense’s MCSE classes pass their exams.

Atlanta-based CED Solutions’ six-day, $2,995 course claims to go one better by preparing students for two MCTS exams on configuring and deploying Vista and Office 2007.

Meanwhile, Houston-based ETEC is, until the end of this month, letting students who register for a 14-day, $5,990 course for Microsoft Certified System Engineering (MCSE) certification also attend a three-day Vista boot camp for free.

Learn IT is offering three-day Vista deployment courses for $1,400 in San Francisco and Santa Clara, Calif. Compared to Training Camp's courses, Learn IT's weekday classes run at a relatively light pace -- 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. -- and the company makes no mention of preparing students for passing certification tests.

Certifications less valuable today

One reason why not all training companies offer certification exam preparation may be because of the recent decrease in the prestige of technical certifications. The dot-com crash left many IT workers, even those with certifications and years of experience, unemployed for many years.


Some scrambled to buttress their resumes by hastily taking courses to add certifications. That led to a situation in which many workers held paper certifications but lacked much or any work experience with a given technology.

Add to that recent reports about the prevalence of cheating and pirating of certification test answers, and it’s no wonder that many employers are less impressed with certifications than they once were. "Certifications used to be the be-all, end-all for getting you a job. Now they’re a way to get you an interview," Porch said.

Still, certifications are important enough for most students that Training Camp has them taking the exam at the end of its three-day course. Porch said 80% of students pass at the time of the boot camp, and 90% pass after six months.

Moreover, Training Camp takes an approach similar to the one the Princeton Review takes in preparing high school students for the SAT. In addition to teaching the content, Training Camp instructors also teach strategies for taking the mostly multiple-choice test -- such as eliminating two answers if they are too similar, or reading the answers first on a long question, Porch said.

Porch says the company has to balance opposing needs. "We don’t want anyone to walk away feeling like they were given the answers to the test," he said. At the same time, "we try to focus on the exams because it’s 90% of what students are looking for."

Teaching to the test

While IDC’s Anderson remains a fan of IT boot camps, he takes a hard line against providers focusing purely on getting certified.

"Teaching to the test is, in my view, unethical and bogus," said Anderson, emphasizing that he was speaking generally and not singling out Training Camp. "What a manager wants is someone who knows the material. They care if you have the skill."

Anderson doesn’t buy the argument that emphasizing test-taking tactics helps those students who otherwise know the material but tend to choke or underperform during exams.

"We’re talking only about a very small minority of people there," he said. "It’s not helping the profession of IT to have certificates granted to people who three weeks later may not be able to pass the same test."

Anderson also warns that some boot camps don’t license official content from Microsoft, leaving them vulnerable to teaching out-of-date information. Potential students need to ask and make sure the courseware didn’t come from "some manual bought at Borders," he said.

How about an online course instead?

Anderson said students -- especially those who are motivated and lack a pressing deadline -- should certainly consider other options, such as self-study with books or self-paced online courses. The downside, he pointed out, is that it’s easy to procrastinate with self-guided study programs, since "life tends to get in the way."

Rubbish, said Tim Hildreth, manager of content solutions at SkillSoft PLC, a Nashua, N.H.-based provider of online IT courses. "If students aren’t motivated to begin with, they won’t be motivated sitting in a classroom, either," he said.

SkillSoft, which claims 3,000 corporate customers and more than 6 million current end users, offers four Office 2007 courses today. It is also developing an additional eight Vista courses and 50 Office 2007 courses that will start to become available in July.

Hildreth claimed that online courses are more convenient to those who can’t take whole days or weeks off to attend a boot camp. SkillSoft also sells subscriptions to its e-library of more than 12,000 technical books. Those are popular with IT administrators, who can cut-and-paste scripts and programs straight from the books, Hildreth said.

While some SkillSoft courses "are very closely aligned to a certification exam," Hildreth said, "in general, our courseware tries to be broader than that."

Another provider, Anaheim, Calif.-based New Horizons, is offering 14 Vista-related courses at the moment.

The real value of IT certifications: Education

I got my first certification in the 90s on Windows 98. I did it solely because I was tired of hemming and hawing when my clients asked if I was certified. After all, I'd been working and playing with technology in various forms since the 1960s. I didn't need to prove myself to anyone and besides, all certification would prove is that I had good test-taking skills. I was surprised, however, after going through the preparation and testing process, at how much I learned on subjects not directly related to Windows 98. Since then, I've added CCNA, MCSE, Linux+, MCT, and CCNA Security as a means of broadening my knowledge base and keeping my skills sharp. I'm also pursuing certifications in non-IT areas for the same reason: education.

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Here are two rarely spoken benefits of certification:

1) Broaden my overall knowledge base.

I realized that preparing for and taking the test forced me to fill in the gaps in my knowledge. For example, I had very limited experience with NetWare, but the test had questions about IPX/SPX. In order to pass the test, I had to gain a basic familiarity with Novell NetWare, so I got a trial copy of NetWare (I think it was 3.12) and began to experiment. There were questions about Unix and even mainframe integration. Admittedly, there weren't many questions on those subjects, but without knowing exactly which questions would be asked, I was forced to study each of the subjects enough to be comfortable with the fundamentals. My overall knowledge base was increasing because I wanted to pass a Windows 98 certification exam.

2) Narrow the gap between what I think I know and what I really know.

I rarely know as much as I think I do on any given subject. The certification process provides a reminder of the vast amount of information that is absent from my brain.

We've all read the myriad articles extolling the benefits of IT certifications: Make more money, get faster promotions, earn the respect of your peers. Many organizations reimburse testing fees and even offer pay increases when you achieve certification. There's no doubt that certification has its benefits, but I've never read an article that discusses the real benefit of certification. The real benefit lies in forcing me to follow a prescribed course of study, filling in gaps in my knowledge, and widening my overall knowledge base. (This, by the way, is not about "paper" certifications where you memorize questions and answers and pass the test without having any real knowledge. Please don't do that.) Even if your employer doesn't pay for certs, most employers like having qualified people on staff who are interested in expanding their knowledge.

I had a client who said he didn't care if we were certified or not, but he did care that we went through the process of preparing for certification. He wasn't talking about attending a boot camp or memorizing questions. He was talking about sitting in a lab, experimenting with configurations, breaking things and troubleshooting, and fixing them.

I really don't like taking tests. I'd rather do almost anything than take another certification test, but I know that the process of preparing for the test will make me a better trainer, writer, and IT person. It's not about piling up a long list of initials after my name, it's about piling up the hours of study, experimentation, and real-world experience that those initials represent. That way, when I design a system, it will usually work as expected. Similarly, when some component fails, I've got a real chance at identifying the problem and fixing it.

How do you see the benefits of certification? Am I the only one who thinks of the certification process as having educational value?

I still don't know as much as I think I do, but preparing for and passing a certification exam gets my actual knowledge base a little closer to my perceived knowledge base.

Don R. Crawley is President/Chief Technologist at soundtraining.net, the Seattle IT training firm. A geek and nerdy kind of guy since sometime back in the 60s, today he pontificates at Computerworld, writes books for IT people, and speaks on command.