Turning The Ship: Microsoft Might Have Begun A Subtle Shift From Windows To Services

Since Steve Ballmer passed the torch to Satya Nadella earlier this year, it marked a sea change in the organization: the first time in its history one of the founding team wasn’t running the show. Changes were expected and have happened. A surprising one is a subtle shift toward a service model and what appears to be an understanding that as long as people are running Microsoft tools, the hardware and underlying operating system don’t matter.

For a company that has been driven by the underlying OS for most of its existence, this is not a minor matter

It’s highly likely that such a shift started long before Nadella took the reins at Microsoft, but when it comes turning a ship the size of Microsoft, sometimes perhaps it takes a new leader to push the company in the new direction.

That’s partly because being such a large organization, Microsoft doesn’t just have to deal with the nuts and bolts of a shifting strategy, they also have to deal with internal politics and a strong culture that might fight any change. There is a hard and fast attitude inside many large organizations that any change is a threat on some level because it has impact on your power within the organization, whether you consciously acknowledge that or not.

Part of being a CEO is finding a way to manage the politics and culture and start the shift to a new way of working. Maybe Ballmer, because of his longevity and his own biases, simply wasn’t capable of bringing the company to the next level. That would take a new leader with a different vision, alliances and biases.

David Linthicum writing about the difficulty organizations have moving to the cloud pointed out, rightly in my view, that what was holding back many organizations from going all in on the cloud was not the technology itself, but that it required a cultural change inside IT to make it happen. I believe a similar dynamic plays out in any large organization when it comes to any major change.

So it was telling when one of Nadella’s chief lieutenants, executive VP in charge of operating systems Terry Myerson, told ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley that he was OK with a services model. Specifically, when she asked about the Nokia X line of phones–those new low-priced Android phones running Microsoft services announced at Mobile World Congress. He was cool with a phone running Android, precisely because he was happy to see Microsoft services running on as many devices as possible, regardless of the operating system

This is a huge acknowledgement from a senior executive that as a company, they see the value of selling services over the old Windows-Office model in which you bought Windows and ran Windows software. It remains how they make a good deal of their money.

Simply acknowledging this idea of services on many devices and operating systems is a change for Microsoft, and although it may be a quick answer to a question by a Microsoft executive, it shows a shift in vision that I don’t recall seeing before.

Of course, this one remark doesn’t mean the whole company has a new attitude about this, but even talking in these terms is a huge step for Microsoft, and if Nadella can continue to turn the ship, you never know.

It’s worth noting that I remain a skeptic that Microsoft can truly make this change, until proven otherwise, but I’m impressed to see at least some inklings that this old dog maybe could learn some new tricks. You never know.

3 cool discoveries about the Galaxy S5 that might make you buy it

Loie Favre 2014-03-31T17:00:00Z22 hours ago

Loie Favre

Loie Favre is a Canadian-German, food-loving, live-music-craving globe-trotter. Coming from a humble background in the Canadian Prairies centred around nature and the Arts, she studied Translation and Languages in Edmonton. She left his home on the Pacific Coast of Canada, to seek her fortune in Berlin. She is now an Editor and Manager for AndroidPIT.com and is enjoying discovering about everything and anything under the sun about Android.

The Galaxy S5 launch in the USA is just around the corner and people are prepping to get their new Samsung flagship as of April 11th. Here are three new, cool things you should know about the Samsung Galaxy S5 in anticipation of receiving your very own device (or this could push you to get the newest S model).

© AndroidPIT

It has the best screen ever

Though we were amazed by the Galaxy S5’s display, DisplayMate Technologies are saying that is the best smartphone display that they have ever tested. This company makes display test kits for every single manufacturer and were able to conclude, after a lengthy analysis, that the Galaxy S5 scored the highest marks for ''Highest Brightness, Lowest Reflectance, Highest Color Accuracy, Infinite Contrast Ratio, Highest Contrast Rating in Ambient Light, and smallest Brightness Variation with Viewing Angle''. They say that even though OLED displays of the past were lagging behind their LCD rivals, the AMOLED display on the S5 is finally able to beat the competition.

This is the overall test results of the Galaxy S5 display. You can find the complete test at Display Mate. © Display Mate

It watches over your baby

The Galaxy S5 comes with a lot of extra features, some of which were called gimmicky during its unveiling at this year’s Mobile World Congress. Next to the heart-rate monitor, fingerprint sensor and other fancy features, there is one they ‘forget’ to mention: hidden away in the Accessibility section of the S5’s settings, testers discovered the ‘Baby crying detector’, that will alert you with vibrations when your baby is crying. Samsung doesn’t want you to mistake this feature for a medical device, but see it rather as a parenting aid, and reminds you that you shouldn't leave your baby alone, even when using the feature. I supposed they want to avoid any unnecessary legal headaches down the road.

I'm suprised it took so long for someone to spot the 'hidden' feature on the S5. © Soyacincau

It has one of the best batteries on the market

Finally, Samsung  got high scores and did superbly on a battery test where it was pitched next to the iPhone 5s, LG G2, Samsung Galaxy Note 3, Sony Xperia Z1 and Nexus 5. It completely schooled most of its rivals, aside from the LG G2 and Note 3 where it was almost a tie. The tests involved talk time, internet browsing and playing a 3D game. This was just one of the tests performed, a second one also showed the S5 near the top after comparing battery consumption when the screen brightness was set to max. Battery life is becoming so important these days, considering many smartphones are really lagging in this category due to powerful processors and resource-hungry displays and functions. With a capacity of 2,800mAh, the battery isn’t as big as the ones in other phones, but it looks like Samsung worked at getting the software and hardware to work better together.

Top marks here, other than internet browsing where the iPhone 5s did slightly better. © smartphone.bg

With the knowledge of these three elements now on hand, what do you think of the Samsung Galaxy S5? Has it aroused any new interest in the device or do your opinions on it remain unchanged?

Via: 9to5google Source: Android Authority, Android Community, Display Mate

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Five Powerful, Built-In Windows Tools You Might Not Know About

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Even if you live in Windows, you may be surprised to find that it includes some rather powerful built-in tools for helping you monitor your system and troubleshoot when things go wrong. We've taken a look at Windows' dark corners before and at some awesome features you may have forgotten about. Here are a few more of our favorite overlooked Windows tools.

In this article, the details and instructions are based on Windows 8, but these tools are also available in previous versions of Windows, unless otherwise indicated.

System Information

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System Information shows detailed information about many aspects of your system, including hardware resources, driver and application details, Internet settings, and more. You can find at Control Panel > Administrative Tools > System Information or just search for "system" on the Start menu.

Select what you want to see details about in the left pane and the details are shown in the right pane. While there's a lot there to poke around in, you'll probably find these are the most useful displays:

• System Summary. This view shows you basic information about the computer, such as the OS version, manufacturer and model of the computer, BIOS version, and amount of memory installed.
• Display. This view shows you what type of graphics card (or built-in graphics processor) the computer has, including the manufacturer, model, and amount of memory.
• Network Adapter. This view shows you all of the network adapters (wired and wireless) present on the system.
• Storage Drives. This view shows you all of the hard drives and optical drives on the system, their capacity, and how much free space they have.

You can't change any settings using the System Information tool, but it's a handy tool for getting quick information about a system without installing any extra tools. You can use it to print or save a report of the current system, which can be really useful if you like to keep files on computers you support for other people. You can also connect System Information to another computer on your network to view information about it.

That said, if you're willing (or able) to install other utilities, there are some out there that provide a lot more information about your system and even some extra features. We've even covered a few, like Speccy, Hardware Freak, and CPU-Z.

Windows Memory Diagnostic

Memory problems are often hard to isolate. Faulty memory can cause everything from freezing applications to unsuccessful installations to full system crashing. And the most frustrating thing about them is that the problems often come and go. Windows Memory Diagnostic can help by running a full scan of the memory installed on your computer.

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You can find Windows Memory Diagnostic at Control Panel > Administrative Tools or just by searching "windows memory" at the Start menu. Unfortunately, Windows has to reboot in order to run this tool since it needs to run before Windows is actually loaded on the system. You have the option of rebooting and scanning immediately or scheduling a scan during the next reboot. If you want to go ahead and run the scan, just make sure you've saved and closed out of all your programs before running it.

As your computer restarts, Windows Memory Diagnostics will take over and run the scan and you can just let it go. When it's done, Windows will start and you'll get a message about how the scan went. If you want a little more control, press F1 when the tool starts. You can adjust things like what level test you want to run (those levels are described in the tool) and how many passes the tool should make.

Event Viewer

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Windows records events in several different logs, and it logs a lot of events. Depending on how your system is configured, it logs everything from informational events (like when a service starts up okay) to cautions and errors (like when a program crashes or a service can't start) to security events like unsuccessful log on attempts.

You'll find Event Viewer at Control Panel > Administrative Tools or just search for "event" on the Start menu. There's a lot to Event Viewer, but as a regular user, the things that might be of use to you are all under the Windows Logs folder. In particular, these three logs can be helpful:

• Application. The Application log is a record of events generated by applications. All Windows services write their status information to this log. This is the most valuable log for monitoring the general health of a computer.
• System. The System log is a record of events that concern components of the system itself, including such events as device driver and network failures. This is the most valuable log for finding information on specific errors.
• Security. The Security log is a record of events based on any auditing settings you or your company have configured. Unless you suspect somebody is trying to gain access to your computer, this one is going to be less useful than the others.

Now, before we go any further, you should note that you are likely to see a number of cautions and errors pop up in these logs and many of them aren't important at all. Often, a service will fail to start, log an error, and then Windows will start the service successfully when it tries again. If you see an error you're concerned about, check the events following the error to see whether it resolved on its own.

But really, Event Viewer is less about monitoring the health of the computer and more about tracking down problems. If you feel like something strange is going on, like apps crashing or things not starting up as they should, check out Event Viewer for events that may be related.

If you find some errors that you'd like to know more about, note the Event ID and search for information about it. You can almost always find something useful at the Microsoft Knowledge Base when you search using the keywords "event ID" plus the actual ID number.

Performance Monitor

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Windows has several tools for monitoring performance. For a quick look at resource use, you can just fire up Windows Task Manager and for a more detailed look, Windows Resource Manager. But Performance Monitor is the king when it comes to isolating performance issues in Windows.

Performance Monitor measures the statistical data generated by various components of your computer. It breaks that data down into three distinct pieces.

• Objects. An object represents a major system resource that is either physical or logical in nature. Examples of physical objects are physical disks, processors, and memory. An example of a logical object is TCP, which represents one of the major networking protocols of the TCP/IP suite.
• Instances. A separate instance of an object exists for every component of the type the object represents on your computer. For example, if you have three hard disks attached to your computer, there would be three instances of the physical disk object.
• Counters. Each instance of an object is further broken down into counters, which are the actual aspects of the object that you can measured. For example, the physical disk object includes a number of counters such as %Disk Time, %Idle Time, and Average Disk Bytes per Read.

You can open Performance Monitor at Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Performance Monitor or by searching for "performance" at the Start menu. When you first open Performance Monitor, it starts measuring a single counter for you by default: %Processor Time.

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You can add counters by clicking the Add Counter button (it looks like a plus) and browsing through the available counters. There are a lot of them, so don't be intimidated. For a quick look at basic performance, try measuring these three counters:

• Pages/sec. Part of the Memory object, this counter represents the rate at which pages are read from or written to disk during virtual memory operations. Consistently high values can indicate that not enough memory is present on a system.
• Avg. Disk Queue Length. Part of the Physical Disk object, this represents the average number of read and write requests queued for the selected disk. Consistent values above zero means requests are backing up, which may indicate not enough memory or a slow disk system.
• %Processor Time. Part of the Processor object, this represents the percentage of elapsed time that the processor spends executing non-idle tasks. Consistently high values (over around 80%) may indicate that your processor is bottlenecking your system.

The real power of Performance Monitor (aside from the sheer number of things you can measure) is that you can monitor and log performance over time by leaving the System Monitor running in the background. It doesn't consume a lot of resources on its own, so you can leave it running for the day while you go about your business and then come back later to check things out. If you want to know more about what you can do with Performance Monitor, read up on it over at Microsoft TechNet.

Shared Folders

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The Shared Folders tool provides a central place for viewing all of the shared folders in Windows and for managing those folders. You can use it to share or stop sharing a folder, disconnect a user that's connected to a share, set permissions for a share, and more.

Under Shared Folders, you'll see three items you can work with:

• Shares. This view shows all of the folders shared on your computer. If you see a dollar sign ($) after the name of the share, that means it's a folder automatically shared by Windows and accessible only by administrative accounts. If you don't see that dollar sign, it's a folder you shared. Right-click a folder to see actions you can take, like stopping the share or configuring advanced properties like connection limits and specific permissions.
• Sessions. This view shows all user sessions currently connected to your computer. If someone on the network is accessing a folder you've shared, you'll see it here. Right-click a session to find commands for disconnecting that session or disconnecting all currently-connected sessions. Just be mindful when disconnecting people. They may actually be in the process of working with a file on your system.
• Open Files. This view shows all files that are open on the system by a remote user. Right-click an open file and you'll see a command for closing it.

A final couple of notes about these built-in tools. Some are pretty powerful; some are more basic. You can often find third-party tools that suit your needs better. We mentioned a few in this article. But it helps knowing what tools you already have access to, especially if you're working on someone else's computer and may not want to (or be able to) install additional software. Also, many of these tools (like Performance Monitor, Shared Folders, System Information, and Event Viewer) allow you to connect to other Windows computers on your local network, providing an easy way to gather information and troubleshoot remotely.

Photo by Lorelyn Medina (Shutterstock).

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You Might Be Breathing Ineffectively. Here's How to Fix That

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You'd think there's only one way to breathe, like the way you do naturally, but you'd be wrong. Certain methods take more work than others, and you can improve your health by doing it better.

Lifehacking blog Selfication explains a number of ways to breathe correctly, but the most important one is to breathe from your diaphragm. It's what singers learn to do and babies do naturally. Those deep breaths give both singers and little children the ability to project their voices powerfully, for better or worse. In your case, you can use it to get more oxygen and more energy. Selfication explains:

The air you breath in through your nose should go all the way down to your belly. Your breathing muscles consist of the diaphragm and muscles in the abdomen, chest, neck and shoulders.

70-80% of the inhaling should be done by the diaphragm so that your breathing is nice and deep. This has a couple of advantages:

• It helps your lungs with the gas exchange which is much more effective way down in the lungs.
• The diaphragm massages your liver, stomach and intestines and gives these organs a rhythmical balance.
• The lymphatic system, which is important for our immune system, gets the help it needs to get rid of the waste products from the bowels.
• The pressure in the chest and belly is decreased so that the heart won't have to work as hard.
• More effective muscle work as the wrong breathing muscles won't have to do unnecessary work.
• As the chest gets more relaxed so does the neck and shoulders and a s a result the likelihood of pain in these areas go down.

Selfication offers several more breathing tips that'll help you open up your air passages and gain more energy from the work you do breathing. Furthermore, good breathing can help keep you more calm and relaxed—it's a key point of meditation, after all. Be sure to read their full post for lots more useful information.

How to Breathe Properly – A (Surprisingly Important) Complete Guide | Selfication

Photo by Plume Photography (Shutterstock).

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