Microsoft has debuted the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Release 2 (R2), an update to Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 at the VoiceCon event in Amsterdam. Customers will be able to purchase the release, currently in private beta testing, beginning in February 2009.

“Office Communications Server 2007 R2, debuting just one year after the Microsoft unified communications launch, highlights the pace of innovation that is possible with software,” said Stephen Elop, president of the Microsoft Business Division at Microsoft. “This new release puts Microsoft on a rapid path to deliver voice software that does much more than a network private branch exchange (PBX) and with much less cost.”

Microsoft has also released some really exciting features of the upcoming R2 update for Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007.

• Dial-in audioconferencing. This feature will allow customers to host their own on-premise audioconferencing bridge that is managed by IT instead of having it outsourced from a 3rd party provider.
• Desktop sharing. This feature enables users to seamlessly share their desktop, initiate audio communications and collaborate with others outside the organization on PC, Macintosh or Linux platforms through a Web-based interface.
• Persistent group chat. This feature allows users to participate in topic-based discussions or chat rooms. The chat rooms are archived periodically to allow for easy searching on past discussions.
• Enhanced Voice and Mobility
• Attendant console and delegation. This allows receptionists, team secretaries and others to manage calls and conferences on behalf of other users, set up workflows to route calls, and manage higher volumes of incoming communications through a software-based interface.
• SIP trunking. This feature enables businesses to reduce costs by setting up a direct VoIP connection between an Internet telephony service provider and Office Communicator 2007 without requiring on-premise gateways.
• Response group. A workflow design application manages incoming calls based on user-configured rules (e.g., round-robin, longest idle, simultaneous), providing a simple-to-use basic engine for call treatment, routing and queuing.
• Mobility and single-number reach. This extends Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile functionality to Nokia S40, Motorola RAZR, Blackberry and Windows Mobile platforms, allowing users to communicate using presence, IM and voice as an extension of their PBX from a unified client.

The Microsoft OCS R2 will be launched on February 3rd 2009 and you can find more information about Microsoft OCS R2 at www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Good news to all geeks out there, Cray is set to release a compact personal supercomputer called Cray CX1 which will run the Microsoft HPC (High Performance Computing) Server 2008 Operating System.  The Cray CX1 with price starting at $25,000 and can go up to $80,000 or more is expected to be touted by Microsoft and Cray as “the most affordable supercomputer Cray has ever offered”.

The CX1 chassis provides enough room for eight blades of single or dual socket Intel Xeon processors. According to Cray, the current peak configuration for the chassis is 64 cores with 3.4 GHz bus working at 786 gigaflops and each chassis can be connected to up to 4 TB of storage.

Windows HPC Server 2008 is the high end version of Microsoft’s Windows Server 2008 family and an alternative to Linux operating systems. Microsoft will officially launch the Windows HPC  Server 2008 on September 22 in New York City.

So if you would like to have your own personal supercomputer, it will be as easy as shopping online,  order the CX1 system using a configurator and pay with credit card.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Popularity: 2% [?]

SimpleSignal has announced their latest service called SimplyMobile,  a hosted service which enables users to listen to their emails from any phone or mobile devices by means of text-to-speech technology. SimplyMobile also uses voice commands to call the sender of the e-mail and manage your appointments in Microsoft Outlook’s calendar items. SimpleMobile service is good for mobile workers, just charge up your bluetooth headset and they can start listening to their e-mail messages even if they are driving.

Below are SimplyMobile’s complete features:

• Read or listen to your emails on the go
• Read or listen to your visual voicemail
• Listen to your daily schedule
• Verbalize the addition of a particular task to your daily schedule
• Verbalize your appointments on the fly
• Use voice commands to call back email senders
• Use voice commands to access your calendar
• Use Outlook instantly to notify attendees of a schedule change by email

Popularity: 1% [?]

At the end of the Open Source Convention being held in Portland, Oregon, Microsoft has donated $100,000 to the Apache Software Foundation,  a non-profit group of decentralized community of developers who developed the open-source Apache Web Server. 

“We thank Microsoft for their generous sponsorship that goes towards supporting The Apache Software Foundation and the over 60 top level projects in use and development within the ASF,” ASF Chairman Jim Jagielski said.

The Apache Web Server is a direct competitor of Microsoft’s Internet Information Server (IIS).  Apache Web server runs approximately 49.12% of all web servers while Microsoft’s IIS runs 35.39%. Microsoft said that its $100,000 contribution to the Apache is a show of appreciation for the Apache Foundation’s work.  

Popularity: 1% [?]

The pagefile.sys file is the Virtual Memory file used by your Windows computer. If you have limited RAM, your windows machine to run programs and store data. It swaps out some of the RAM data to the page file and then reuses the freed up RAM.

You can improve the security of a computer running Windows if you delete pagefile.sys everytime you shut down your Windows machine.

How to do this?

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management

Add the following registry keys:

Value Name: ClearPageFileAtShutdown
Value Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 1

You need to restart your computer for the changes to take effect.

Popularity: 1% [?]