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Here are some helpful Windows 7 Shortcuts that I have run across:

[WIN] + [LEFT]: Snaps window to left side of screen

[WIN] + [RIGHT]: Snaps window to right side of screen

[WIN] + [UP]: Maximizes current window

[WIN] + [DOWN]: Restores a maximized window

[WIN] + [HOME]: Minimizes all windows except current window

[WIN] + [T]: Moves forward through items on your taskbar (Unlike [ALT] + [TAB] this will not change your active window)

[WIN] + [1-9]: Switches to the taskbar item in that numbered position

[WIN] + [SPACEBAR]: Temporarily makes all windows transparent to allow to see Desktop

[WIN] + [P]: Changes Multiple Monitor or Presentation Settings (Computer Only, Duplicate, Extend, & Projector Only)

[WIN] + [SHIFT] + [LEFT]: Move active window to the left monitor

[WIN] + [SHIFT] + [RIGHT]: Move active window to the right monitor

[WIN] + [+]: Zoom screen in

[WIN] + [-]: Zoom screen out

Old but helpful:

[WIN] + [D]: Shows or Hides Desktop

[WIN] + [E]: Launches Windows Explorer

[WIN] + [F]: Opens up Search Window

[WIN] + [L]: Locks the Computer

[WIN] + [M]: Minimizes all windows

[WIN] + [R]: Opens the Run dialog box

[WIN] + [PAUSE]: Launches the Systems Properties

Brent Microsoft TechHints, Windows7

Hey – did you hear that Microsoft has upgraded their search engine named Bing?  If you haven’t, you either don’t pay attention to the blur of TV commercials as you fast forward, or you don’t watch anything on Hulu.  So, I thought I would give a post to you people of how bing compares.  First I did a simple search:

It found Google, that’s a good start!  =)  It even lets you search google from Bing.  Maybe that’s how I should start to search now…

No seriously, Microsoft has actually done well at this new search engine.  Much better than their Live.com & MSN.com.  I came across this site called BlindSearch by Michael Kordahi.  It lets you enter a search query then it shows the results from Google, Yahoo, & Bing side by side.  However, he doesn’t show you which search engine is which, so you can have a good “Blind Search”.  The site will let you reveal the engines after you choose to.

So, I thought I would give my own test.  Searching for things like Amazon or IRS worked fine, but do give different results than Google or Yahoo on more difficult querys.  So, the conspiracy theory that Microsoft is just using Google search is probably false.  So, I thought I might try the most important search – “brentb blog”.  (-ha!)  The results did not impress me to the Bing side.

Not even in the top 5?  Come on!  Well, they covered a lot of ground, but they haven’t won my search business.  (However, I may be looking for competitive search advertising-please post a comment if you have any experience with Bing advertising.)

Brent Google, Microsoft, TechNews Bing, BlindSearch, Google

With the gaming world constantly evolving and with the ever so popular Wii system by Nintendo the other gaming companies are looking for the new next thing.  I really thought the next thing will come from Nintendo again with their success, but after seeing what Microsoft has coming - I think Microsoft might have it!

Yesterday Microsoft revealed their Project Natal for the XBox 360 at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3).  Instead of trying to just copy or enhance the new popular controllers of the Nintendo Wii like Playstation is looking to do – Microsoft is going even farther.  Getting rid of controllers all together!  Using a combination of cameras the Natal box can model you and your movement in 3D.  It also includes a microphone so that it can use it’s speech recognition to enhance the experience.  Here is a video Microsoft made to demo the new technology – it feels very Wii-like in the way they are marketing it with having “family fun”.

As you can see – Microsoft is also might be looking at getting into the movie rental market to take some share away from the iTV.  Microsoft already announced that they will be able to offerstreaming music service by Last.fm and give XBox users access to social networking sites Facebook and Twitter sometime this fall.  These sites will be integrated into the Xbox Live interface. 

After looking into presentation at E3 a little more – I found this video that shows off some even more exciting technology that uses Natal with a boy character called “Milo”.

I am not a “extreme gamer” by any stretch of the imagination.  I do enjoy the more easy laid back games like the Wii offers since I don’t have a lot of time to play games, and learn the controls for each game.  I love the idea of this Natal project, and even more of what it can do to enhance new experiences in games.  With the ability to stream my Netflix movies already to the XBox – I am starting to think I need to add this console to my living room.

Brent Games, Microsoft Microsoft, Natal, Xbox

It doesn’t take long for software to appear on the torrents ready for downloading.  As people are ready to move away from Vista to something new and better without going to the Mac side – downloads of Microsoft Windows 7 has skyrocketed.  Although beta version were available to download, when the release candidate was leaked a lot of people jumped on BitTorrent to get themselves a copy.  Altough, the person who leaked this copy to the public had more to share than just the copy of windows 7.

According to a eWeek article the pirate also included their own software with this package:

According to researchers at Damballa, attackers hid a Trojan inside of pirated copies of the operating system and began circulating them on BitTorrent sites. Damballa reported that it shut down the botnet’s command and control server May 10, but by that time infection rates had risen as high as 552 users per hour.

….

In the case of Windows 7 RC, pirated copies were leaked on BitTorrent sites with a Trojan horse that, once downloaded, attempts to install a bundle of other malware on the infected machine. Blocking infections is tricky, as many anti-virus tools do not yet support Windows 7 and the operating system is infected before the tools can even be installed, according to Damballa. 

To have preinfected software in pirated software is not new, but having it on the OS installation is something I haven’t heard of before.  Antivirus is not usually the first thing people install when trying out a new operating system, especially when Windows 7 is not very antivirus software friendly currently.

So, for those that are looking for that cheap (free) software online – remember you get what you pay for.  =)  How about just using the public beta directly from Microsoft?

Brent Microsoft, TechNews Piracy, Spyware, Windows

I’ve had a lot of people ask me, “So, conficker wasn’t as big a deal as they thought?”.  I too expected to see something happen on April 1st once these bots got their instruction.  But when we didn’t see any big actions by the instruction, that wasn’t a good sign.   I thought the Gizmodo blog did a great post on this:

What the April 1 update did was simple: It provided instructions for linking up with the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of new nodes registered by Conficker.c over the last few weeks, effectively growing the size of the p2p botnet to a point where it can not be stopped.

“It’s not about ownage, it’s about continued ownage,” says Kaminsky, citing a favorite quotation of one of his hacker buddies. “It’s not about how you get into the network, it’s about, ‘How do you be [there] a year from now?’” And the answer is: “You do a lot of the things the Conficker developers are doing.”

“This is not something where the guys wrote it, it’s out, then they’re going to go out and play Nintendo. They’re frankly trying to build something that is a sustainable network for months or years to come,” Kaminsky says.

Kevin Haley, director of Symantec Security Response, raises another good point: “The first [of April] would have been a pretty bad day to choose [to do something with Conficker], because everyone was watching to see what was going to happen. Whoever’s behind this is as lot more patient than we are.”

So, I agree – I think the creator(s) are doing this very well.  They are going to use this worm for something a little more than a prank.  So, please people – update your windows & run the cleaner utility to make sure you don’t have this on your system.

Brent Microsoft, TechNews Conficker, Microsoft, Windows