MS Office Online

This week tech bite is MS Office Web Apps Live, Store documents online and modify them in your browser.

What it will do:
It is alternative option for Google Documents. You can edit MS office products like Excel, PowerPoint, Word etc., in browser. You won't have MS Office applications like Access and Outlook though.

How it Works:
You need NOT have MS office installed in your Desktop or Laptop and no need to worry about version of MS Office. You can store documents in Windows Sky Drive (Storage space of 25 GB is free) and you can edit them over browser.

When it is coming:
It is coming in First half of 2010. Beta version is available for Windows Sky Drive users.

What are the Features :

The Office Web Apps are being certified to work in Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari

Sharing and collaboration made possible though this, editing documents over online for free.

MS office web version provides close look and feel of MS office desktop based version.

Windows Home Server

This week tech bite is Windows Home Server , connects more than one PC up to 10 within home on small businesses.

What it will do:
It will connect all the PC's in your home at one place and can be accessed from anywhere including internet.

How it Works:
All the PC's in your home or in your small business will be connected to Home Server. You can access the content from any PC connected to this network and most importantly you can connect from internet to your Home Server. All the PC's connected to the Home server can utilize 3 services like backup restoration, files sharing , remote access.

When it is Coming:
Its available i market for around $400 .




What are the Features :

Backup your data
Access anywhere
Expandable storage space and share.
Connect all your electronic media at one place.

Windows Phone

This week tech bite is Windows Phone , mobile phone OS from Microsoft to fight with the current smart phones in the market like iPhone, BlackBerry.

What it will do:
Windows Mobile 6.5 is an Operating system for mobile phone. This version has more upgraded OS features.

How it Works:
Phones running Windows Mobile 6.5 will include phones running on AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon Wireless .

When it is Coming:
Windows mobile 6.5 is coming on Oct 6, 2009.



What are the Features :
It includes features such as improved Web browsing and conversation threaded e-mail, as well as a new Windows Marketplace app store . Netflix (preview and manage), Face book, and a variety of games are also available.
Find My Phone feature helps in tracing the lost phone.

Mobile OS and Apps

This week tech bite is Mobile OS . Market Share of Operating system for mobile phones .

What it will do:
Mobile Operating system controls Handheld devices like mobile phones or smart phones. This is just like windows or Linux for your PC.

How it Works:
Applications are developed on these mobile OS for running things like GPS, Wireless internet access and other user friendly applications.

Who are the Major Players:
In the market we have six major players like iPhone, Palm, RIM, Android, Symbian, and Windows. Out of this six players, 49% of Mobile OS applications developed are targeted on iPhone.

RIM - Research In Motion is OS for black berry. Android is from Google, Windows OS is from Microsoft. Symbian OS is used in Nokia, LG, Motorola, Samsung and Sony.

The below pie chart shows the market share of applications developed on Mobile OS Platform. YES, Apple's iPhone is dominant in the market.




Apart from Search Engine , PC OS business, smart devices , Mobile OS is the latest business arena for corporate war between Microsoft, Google and Apple.

Caffeine - Google New Search Engine

This week tech bite is Caffeine , new search engine from Google.

What it will do:

This is new version of Google search engine providing better search results faster. That means search results will be more accurate. Fake sites will be de-indexed by new version.

How it Works:

The new infrastructure sits "under the hood" of Google's search engine, which means that most users won't notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences in speed and accuracy. There are so many technical changes underlying this new version, results will be indexed in real-time as the search engines of Twitter and Face book.

When it is Coming: Developer’s preview available at http://www2.sandbox.google.com/ (When I tried it was unavailable). Full blown version will come soon.

Where is this useful: Envelope on size indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.

Hyper V

This week tech bite is Hyper V. Previously codenamed Viridian , is a Virtual machine technology for Windows Server 2008.

What it will do:
Enables one or more operating systems to run simultaneously on the same physical system .

How it Works:
A core component of Hyper-V, Windows hypervisor is a thin layer of software between the hardware and the OS that allows multiple operating systems to run, unmodified, on a host computer at the same time. It provides simple partitioning functionality and is responsible for maintaining strong isolation between partitions.

When it is Coming: Available in market since Oct 2008 .

Where is this useful:
Several servers can run side by side on a single machine. Helps in server consolidation.
Development and testing environments can be consolidated to one.
Virtualization can be done from Desktop to Datacenter level.
Legacy application re-hosting. Legacy operating systems and applications can run on new hardware along with more recent operating systems and applications.

This week tech bite is Windows Azure Platform. Azure is a Cloud service platform hosted in Microsoft Data Centers.

What it will do:

You need not purchase Software, Hardware. No need to worry about maintenance. You can host applications on Azure platform just the way you are using your Enterprise LAN center now. It can also be used as development environment for Application development. Connectivity, storage, uptime and data availability are promised at 99.95% in Enterprise Service Level Agreement.

How it Works:

Pricing will be based on usage , storage, transaction etc., Give a look at the pricing model comparison between three major Cloud providers, namely Microsoft Azure, Amazon, Google App. Engine.



When it is Coming: Second half of 2009, hopefully Nov 2009.

Where is this useful:
Reduces Tedious and expensive Infrastructure planning.
Additional computing & services capacity is available easily.
The services platform manages critical OS updates and management tasks.
Existing applications in other infrastructure can also be moved and maintained easily.
Happy Learning !!!

(Courtesy Infosys Blogs & Microsoft Azure websites)