8 great reasons why Windows 8 is great for education

Here are 8 great reasons why Windows 8 is great for education:

1. No compromises: When it comes to technology decisions, schools often have to compromise. We hear from schools that they want the form factor of a tablet, but what they really need is the power of PC to meet their educational goals. They want a device that is very secure, runs powerful software and legacy applications, allows multiple user login, long battery life, instant on and works within their budget for procurement, deployment and management of the devices.  Windows 8 moves schools beyond compromise bringing together a tablet form factor with the power and flexibility of a PC. They’re no longer limited by challenges they’ve historically faced.

2. The cloud foundation: With Windows 8, we put “the cloud” at the center of the operating system so students and teachers can easily access their information, collaboration and productivity tools.  SkyDrive and Office 365 for education are central to the Windows 8 experience. This offers a flexible, anywhere, anytime learning experience across a range of different devices, both in and out of the classroom.

3. It saves time and money and safeguards kids: Windows 8 reduces ongoing management costs and provides enterprise-grade security and reliability. Beyond protecting your devices and your data, Windows 8 provides facilities to protect your students online and offline with Do Not Track on by default and group policy.  In addition, Windows 8 offers enhanced parental controls and a ‘Family Safety Activity Report’ so parents have insight into their child’s computer activity.

4. Accessibility plus: Windows 8 is optimized for a first-class touch experience, but equally comfortable with keyboard and mouse or pen.   In addition, there are many assistive technologies build in such as handwriting recognition with digital ink, speech and gesture tracking.

5. Real productivity: Windows 8 makes it possible for students or teachers to be as productive as they need. Imagine simultaneously watching a video while taking notes in OneNote, or the possibility of searching across an OS, the web and the cloud at once, while aggregating all findings in one place – it’s now possible and easy.  With split screen technology and easy switching between apps, multitasking is taken to a whole new level.

6. It opens students to the world of education apps: Windows 8 makes a wide range of content available, with the support of Flash and a rich set of applications like Khan Academy and the KNO reader, not to mention the 4.5 million existing Windows 7 apps.  Windows 8 fully embraces open standards like HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript across IE 10, so that publishers and partners can continue to build native and rich content experiences.

7. Connected classrooms and mobile learning: With Windows To Go students can pack up entire desktops and bring it along on a small bootable USB drive wherever they go. And mobile broadband is being built-in more devices every day.  No more searching and connecting to Wi-Fi hotspots. Windows 8 does it automatically, whether from the school bus, home or a relative’s house.

8. It’s cool, fast and fluid: Students will respond to it and teachers will find it easy and intuitive. It’s powerful yet fun, beautiful and simple.
At Microsoft, we believe that technology must be in service to each student’s unique journey for learning and life. Also, it has to serve teachers and administrators as they guide their students. It’s because of this belief that our technology, our partners, our ecosystem, and our people, are in service of that reality in our classrooms today. Windows 8 is an extension of that mission, and a huge step forward – serving those heroes in learning.

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Posted By Sundeep aka SunTechie

Sundeep is a Founder of Youth Talent Auzzar, a passionate blogger, a programmer, a developer, CISE and these days he is pursuing his graduation in Engineering with Computer Science dept.

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How Microsoft, IBM are mentoring Indian startups...

It was a meeting with a clutch of about 16 startups in the Silicon Valley Bay Area that led Microsoft to make their product, Windows Azure infrastructure as a service, compatible with open source software such as Linux.

From sourcing ideas to influencing direction of new product development, startups are becoming critical for large technology giants IBM, Microsoft and Qualcomm who are plugging into this ecosystem to fine tune their future strategies.

"The office joke is that it was during the break when we went from the conference room to rest room that we decided Linux support is critical," says S Somasegar, corporate vice-president of the developer division at Microsoft.

Somasegar, who is just two levels down from CEO Steve Ballmer at the world's largest software maker took a trip to Silicon Valley along with his team to get these insights. Last week he was in Bangalore, to launch Microsoft Accelerator for Windows Azure, a cloud computing platform.

Microsoft accelerator
Out of 200 business ideas, Microsoft has chosen eleven early stage technology startups to be incubated at its new centre in Bangalore. The batch will be put through a four-month mentoring program led by senior executives from Microsoft, top entrepreneurs and investors.

"They will receive all the tools needed to create the most successful businesses from India," says Amit Chatterjee, managing director, Microsoft India (R&D). Among the 11 incubated startups is Sparsha Learning Technologies started by two IITians Debabrata Bagchi and Kapil Kaushik.

The firm, which counts Pune University and MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology among its customers, builds simulation based learning methodologies that help students learn-by-practicing.

"The association with Microsoft has given us broad visibility and credibility. Venture capitalists have started approaching us and lot of people from top institutions are applying for jobs," says Debabrata Bagchi, co-founder of Sparsha. While Sparsha is focused on education, Amplyfy.me, a social media platform, aims to engage TV viewers and enable them to discover programmes and provide direct feedback to the media houses.

The nascent startup has already developed an application that is available in Android market and has got around 500 downloads. "Besides mentors, we have got access to their investor network comprising Accel, Nexus, Sequoia and IDG," says Naresh Bhat, cofounder of Amplyfy.me. Bhat, who already runs a software services firm, joined hands with Prajwal BS and Rajesh Kumar, who had conceived the platform during a codefest event organised by technology companyYahoo, where they were both employees.

Breakout areas are provided at the accelerator for informal huddles and mentor sessions. The conference rooms are equipped with advanced communication technologies to facilitate discussions with mentors or other firms in Microsoft Accelerators in Beijing and Tel Aviv. The garage space will be used for community networking sessions and pizza dinners with industry luminaries. It is also equipped with gym, games room, pantry and facility to watch movies.

One of the mentors, Mukund Mohan, a serial entrepreneur, says it has become important for technology giants such as IBM, Microsoft and Qualcomm to aggressively chase startups. "Biggies know it very well that for every job created by a startup, about $500 goes to Microsoft, $100 goes to IBM and $50 goes to Qualcomm to buy their software and tools," says Mohan. According to him, startups have become very important to create jobs during the downturn.

Smart camps by IBM
Last week, five selected technology startups presented their new or improved company at IBM SmartCamp in Bangalore. Each startup got a few minutes on the stage to convince investors, executives and mentors sitting in the audience - expecting to get funding, potential customers and employees. IBM chose the business ideas out of 200 firms that had applied for the programme.

Among the five startups was Hyderabad-based Imaginate Software Labs founded by IIT Madras graduates, which has developed digital trial product for the retail industry. Here, shoppers can instantaneously try out a variety of apparel and jewellery by just standing in front of a digital display or an electronic mirror.

"At the SmartCamp, I met a few top executives from big retail and fashion industry, who gave me good feedback," says Pavan Kosaraju, cofounder at Imaginate. Finally, Yonyx, an IIT Delhi incubated technology startup, was named the IBM SmartCamp winner.

The firm will go on to the SmartCamp global finals in Beijing, where it will face-off with winners from other regions — America, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. "It is a win-win situation for both. Conducting such programmes enables them getting the mind share and exposure for us," says Sanjay Bajaj, co-founder of Yonyx Infomedia.

Yonyx enables organisations to publish their trouble-shooting and product support knowledge in an interactive self service for the benefit of customers.

"Working closely with the entrepreneurs helps us innovate better and help clients solve some of society's most pressing challenges," says Karthik Padmanabhan, country manager for ISV & developer relations at IBM India.

Qualcomm's chase
Startups such as Apalya Technologies, which enables telecom majors such as Vodafone andAirtel to stream mobile telivision video content to consumers has benefitted from Qualcomm, the largest maker of mobile phone semiconductors. "Qualcomm's network helped us tap business leads globally, especially in markets such as Africa and Indonesia," says B Vamshi Reddy, co-founder of Apalya.

It was able to do this when Qualcomm Ventures, the early-stage investment arm of the mobile technology major, invested funding in the Hyderabad-based firm. Apalaya has raised a total funding of $11 million from Qualcomm along with investors - IDG and IndoUS Venture Partners.

A few months back, Qualcomm Ventures also announced that it has increased the corpus for its Qprize competition to $1 million to fund top technology startups. From the pool of competing entries, it will select one first prize winner of the QPrize India competition, who will receive $100,000 funding. That winner then also be eligible to compete against other regional finalists in the grand finals competition for an additional $150,000 funding.

Funding startups
Qualcomm is not the only one who is funding startups. The SmartCamp is part of IBM Global Entrepreneur Program - a $150-million investment to fund and establish programmes that promote new business opportunities. Microsoft also is scaling up its another small and medium business platform - Bizspark programme .

Besides providing mentoring and free tools, Bizspark is helping entrepreneurs to get funded by connecting them venture capital funds and tap global markets. In April, Bizspark winner Freshdesk, a Chennai-based customer support software provider, raised about Rs 25 crore from international fund Tiger Global and existing investor Accel Partner this month. It had also received about Rs 5 crore in seed investment from Accel last year.

"Microsoft helped us to get funded quickly, as they brought visibility and credibility for our firm," says Girish Mathrubootham, CEO at Freshdesk, which is now providing its services to customers in 40 countries. "Startups here are important as they are always on the leading edge of technology adoption. Sooner, established players are going to do the same," says Microsoft's Somasegar. 


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Sundeep is a Founder of Youth Talent Auzzar, a passionate blogger, a programmer, a developer, CISE and these days he is pursuing his graduation in Engineering with Computer Science dept.

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Microsoft replaces Hotmail by Outlook.com

Microsoft's newly announced major refresh of its 16-year-old Hotmail producthas the goods—from a new name, Outlook.com, to a streamlined interface, key improvements and the integration of social media connections—but those coming changes still appear to be too little, too late to get dedicated Gmail or Yahoo Mail users to jump ship.

That's the reaction from two IT analysts who say that the way-overdue revamping of the former Hotmail service will allow Microsoft to catch up to Google much more than it will entice contented Gmail users to find a reason to switch.

"It's puzzling because it's been 16 years since Hotmail was introduced, and this is the first real change that Microsoft has done with it," said Dan Keldsen, principal analyst at Information Architected.

Microsoft announced the coming changes in a blog post July 31 that shared its vision for the new Hotmail replacement and described how the company has been busy reimagining personal email in its upcoming Outlook.com offering. Coming eight years after Google introduced its now-entrenched Gmail product, the new Outlook.com is said to be a modern take on email, designed for "the next billion mailboxes," according to Microsoft.

But one big problem with all of that hype is that while that's all good progress for Microsoft, a huge number of users today already have a modern email service filled with features—in their existing Gmail accounts, said Keldsen.

"The laundry list that I've seen of what's supposed to be included there in Outlook.com appears to all be catch-up to Gmail, to Google Drive, to Yahoo's Web services and to Apple's Mobile Me and Apple's iCloud," said Keldsen. "I think it's kind of astonishing that they're so late to the game."

What's really amazing is that Microsoft actually lauds the new Outlook.com service as having a minimalist aesthetic. "That’s what Gmail already is," said Keldsen.

One new feature of Outlook.com that could be compelling—the ability of users to be able to access Skype through their Outlook.com email accounts—won't even be ready when the new service debuts and will be added later, which, Keldsen said, is shocking.

Microsoft bought Skype in 2011. 

"Why didn't they do that Skype integration first?" Keldsen asked. "Why that isn’t one of the first things brought into this new re-launch baffles me."

What the Outlook.com unveiling does prove, according to Keldsen, is that while Gmail and Google Apps for the enterprise have been side businesses for Google for years, "this is a sign that Microsoft is getting more serious targeting Google and its apps role with Outlook.com, Office 365 and other products. And like Google, they're trying to go with the consumer side first."

Maurene Caplan Grey, principal of Grey Consulting, agreed, saying that the Outlook.com concept continues Microsoft's recent professional consumer, or prosumer, strategy.

The problem today for Microsoft, however, is that "Google is way ahead," said Grey. "Users won't abandon their Gmail accounts and start all over again" because they are already entrenched with Gmail accounts that meet their business needs very well, she said. "And it’s a pretty good online email service."

One area where a new Outlook.com could help Microsoft better compete with Google is by offering improved social media connections where users can link all their accounts, said Grey.

"Google has built and is continuing to build out social community services," such as adding chat from its acquired Meebo unit, said Grey. "Microsoft really doesn't have that kind of offering yet. That's what they're attempting to do with Outlook.com. All we know is that social media, mobility, connecting with the community, that’s where Microsoft needs to be to connect with the prosumer market, and they have never done that."

The new Outlook.com name for the revamped Hotmail service, though, has both Keldsen and Grey shaking their heads.

"Outlook is already a product," said Keldsen, describing Microsoft's existing application-based email client. "It seems to me that it only confuses things. If this is really their reinvention of Webmail, then I would have used a different name. If after this long a time, the best they can do is to switch the name from Hotmail to Outlook.com, that’s pretty bad."

Grey said the name change will be very confusing for customers, adding: "They need to do effective branding, and Outlook.com is not it."

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Sundeep is a Founder of Youth Talent Auzzar, a passionate blogger, a programmer, a developer, CISE and these days he is pursuing his graduation in Engineering with Computer Science dept.

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That Entrepreneurs who changed our life : have a look

 Steve Jobs

Vision: World’s First Personal Computer

Achievement: Apple Inc

After few days in college, Jobs soon realized that it was in no way going to fulfill his dreams. Working for many firms and designing calligraphy Jobs teamed up with a pro engineer, Steve Wozniak to produce world’s first personal computer. Jobs had this flair about him to never get into market research and achieve greatness just by following the gut feeling.

Bill Gates

Vision: A world run by computers

Achievement: Microsoft

The founder of the pioneer computer product manufacturing company Microsoft, Bill is one of the most recognizable faces in the world. He started his entrepreneurial career by founding the company with partner Paul Allen. He dropped out of Harvard before Microsoft because he just could not bring himself to go to class.

 Niklas Zennstrom

Vision: Internet Telephony Service

Achievement: Skype

The Swedish creator of Skype had envisioned seamless and easy file transferring over internet. To accomplish his goal he co-founded KaZaA Media Desktop which became one of the most popular ways of trading multimedia files over the web. After facing a lot of controversies and ruthless lawsuits, Niklas went on to design Skype which was based on similar technology as KaZaA.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin

Vision: The whole web at the fingertips

Achievement: Google

Larry’s dream to have the whole web saved on a hard drive pushed the duo of Stanford PhDs to build what is now the greatest search engine in the world. Started in a garage with nothing more than ideas and passion, the team faced lots of issues in the early days. Google is now one of the most successful tech companies and has produced many products with a goal of changing the face of the world.

 Mark Zuckerberg

Vision: Know what your friends are up to.

Achievement: Facebook

The Harvard drop out had barely any experience in business and hardly any money to start his entrepreneurial venture. In those times he relied completely on his gut and believed in the people around him. Now with a multi billion tech IPO, Zuckerberg stands to be one of the youngest successful entrepreneurs ever. Shot with many controversies all the time the leader of Facebook never gives up on the fighting spirit and keeps going forward.

William Hewlett and David Packard

Vision: To make electronics a household term

Achievement: Hewlett-Packard

In 1939, a toss of coin started the company for a mere $538 right in the middle of garbage. The duo then moved on from designing electric appliances to semiconductor based products and now their company is one of the biggest tech companies in the world. What was once envisioned by William and David, electronics and allied appliances is now a house hold term.

 Jerry Yang and David Filo

Vision: The ultimate web portal

Achievement: Yahoo!

Built for personal use by the two Stanford University alumni, Yahoo is now one of the most popular search engines around. When they came up with the idea of developing the product they were merely college pass outs and had barely any experience to build the tech empire that Yahoo is today, although slashed with a tumbling management and controversies in recent times.

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Assam government and Microsoft India signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU)

The Assam government and Microsoft India signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) here Wednesday that aims to improve the readiness of educators on using technology in classroom learning to impact on the outcomes of students.

The one-year alliance will support the Assam School Education System to use ICT towards improving the quality of learning in schools, a Microsoft statement said.

The agreement was signed by L.S. Changsan, director of the Assam government's Asom Sarba Siksha Abhijan Mission, and Ranbir Singh, country head (Government Engagements) of Microsoft India.

"The agreement will focus on professional development for 5,760 school teachers in Assam and will equip them with skills required for integrating IT in classroom teaching to drive better learning outcomes for the students under Microsoft's Partners in Learning (PiL) programme through training sessions held at six state-run DIETS (District Institute for Education and Training)," the Microsoft statement said.

PiL, introduced in 2008, is a global Microsoft programme that helps in providing teachers with tools aimed at enhancing their IT skills and the integration of ICT into teaching and learning in a meaningful way.

In India, 708,017 government school teachers have been successfully trained under the programme in 17 states, including Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Delhi, Uttarakhand, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Gujarat.

"Education is key to nurturing our youth and helping realise India's potential. We believe technology can bridge the opportunity divide to deliver that much needed world class education. Through this collaboration with the Government of Assam, we hope to provide ICT enabled education and aid the progressive transformation of education in Assam at large," Ranbir Singh said of the MoU.


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Microsoft Windows 8 hackathon, Mumbai

Over 200 hundred developers from across India have camped up for two days at a hotel in south Mumbai for a Windows 8 hackathon. This is the first time that the Indian developer community is getting into the hack mode for Microsoft Windows.

Hackathon, or codefest, is an event in which computer programmers and others in the field of software development, like graphic designers, interface designers and project managers, collaborate intensively on software-related projects.

With Microsoft Corp geared to launch its cloud-connected Windows 8 later this year, the US-based software developer is making sure that the developer community is ready with applications (apps) for the platform.

“India is an incredible bastion of software developers. On a global scale about 25-30 per cent of all the software codes written in the world are written by Indian developers (based out in India and abroad). Certainly galvanising the developer community in India to see the possibility and re-imagine Windows 8 and build next generation businesses is important,” said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer (CEO) of Microsoft, via a video conference at the Microsoft India Technology Summit.

Atul Gupta, an individual application developer who has been coding for the last 16-17 hours, is elated with his experience on Windows 8. “This is my first time that I have attended a hackathon and the experience was awesome. The application that I developed is consumer oriented,” said Gupta.

But some of the app developers, who are active on the Android and Apple platforms, are yet to test the Windows 8 platform. “We do not see any immediate reason to be part of the Windows 8 environment. What matters is the actual number of people using handset on that platform, as of now they are very small. Besides the Android base is just growing fast,” said Sagar Bedmutha, founder CEO of Optinno Mobitech.

The company has been developing apps for Research in Motion’s (RIM) BlackBerry smartphones and the Android platform.

Noida based OnGraph Technologies is yet another app developer that is staying away from the Windows 8 platform. “Our issue with Windows is that it is not an open source system. Hence, we prefer Android,” said Nikhil Verma, business development manager, OnGraph.

For Microsoft, getting the developer support from India and APAC (Asia Pacific region) will be significant as the region has several hundreds of companies creating application for the Android, Apple and RIM platforms. “For Microsoft, this is crucial as they need to create a market. There is no dispute that Windows has a huge base in the enterprise segment but that’s not the case in the handset and tablet segments. And these are two areas that are growing exponentially,” said an analyst who did not want to be identified.

Ballmer also reiterated that the launch of Windows 8 is a “rebirth” of the company. “While Windows 7 was one of the best products, with Windows 8 we are re-imagining Windows from ground up,” he said.

Agrees Alok Shende, principal analyst, Ascentius Consulting: “For Microsoft Windows 8 is one of the most important product. The company has a dominant position in the desktop environment, the challenge will be in the mobile category. With Blackberry losing sheen in the enterprise segment perhaps Microsoft can address that market too. But consumers already have too much to choose from,” added Shende.

Vishal Tripathi, principal research analyst, Gartner, believes that Windows 8 has its benefits as security, application store and delivery models and app contracts. It will also support broader devices where users can have same seamless experience on tablet, Phone and PC. “But one of the challenges for Windows 8 is the Metro UI. While they have developed plenty of desktop applications but the catalogue of Metro is limited. Though Microsoft is encouraging developers to build applications and apps acquired through the app store are free for a limited time. In India Windows 8 adoption will face some resistance enterprise who have recently migrated to Windows7 so moving to to a new platform is a huge cost in terms of license, manpower, application testing etc. The change in OS in the enterprise environment happens every three to four years in India and in case of small businesses perhaps up to five to years. It might make sense of companies who are still on XP to move to Windows 8,” said Tripathi.

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MSR TechVista 2012, Kolkata, India (Microsoft India)

Event ID: 1032502360

Science City

J.B.S Haldane Avenuekolkata 700046India

TechVista is Microsoft Research India's annual research symposium. It brings together the best minds from the scientific and academic worlds onto a common platform. TechVista provides an opportunity for the research community, government, and students to interact and exchange ideas on research and its future directions.

TechVista 2012 will be held at the Science City Auditorium, Kolkata, India on January 20, 2012.The speakers at TechVista 2012 include thought leaders and world renowned scientists. Some of the speakers are:

• Prof. Katsushi Ikeuchi, Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo.
• Prof. Narendra Ahuja, Donald Biggar Willet Professor,Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Beckman Institute, and Coordinated Science Laboratory University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
• Dr. Ravi Kannan, Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research India.
• Prof. Andries van Dam, Thomas J. Watson, Jr. University Professor of Technology and Education and Professor of Computer Science, Brown University.

• click here to know more and for registration (limited seat so hurry !) : http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/events/techvista2012/

on facebook : http://www.facebook.com/events/275318159198095/