Microsoft Corp is getting ready to unveil a long-anticipated free anti-virus service for PCs that will compete with products sold by Symantec Corp and McAfee Inc.

A Microsoft spokesman said on Wednesday that the world’s biggest software maker is now testing an early version of the product with its own employees and that it will “soon” make a trial version available via its website.

Shares of Symantec and McAfee, the top two makers of security software, tumbled in November after Microsoft disclosed plans to launch the service as investors worried that they will lose sales to the free product.

Microsoft has said that it will only include basic features for fighting viruses, which would likely make it comparable to the least-expensive products sold by Symantec and McAfee.

Their top selling products are security suites that come with features include encryption, firewalls, password protection, parental controls and data backup.

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Windows Vista has the built-in ability to automatically reduce the potential of security breeches in the system.It does that by automatically enabling a feature called User Account Control (UAC) .It is biggest irritation in Windows Vista , especially for the people that do a lot of tweaking (like me) .

Note: Disabling UAC will lead to a less secure system, so be warned.

Following is the steps to Disable User Account control(UAC) in Windows Vista

1) Launch MSCONFIG by from the Run menu.Go to the Run Command and type MSCONFIG

2) Click on the Tools tab. Scroll down till you find “Disable UAC”. Select “Disable UAC”

3) Press the Launch button.

4) A Command window will open. When the command is done, you can close the Command window.

5) Close MSCONFIG and your’e done. You need to reboot the computer for changes to apply.

In case if you want re-enable User Account Control you can follow the above steps by selecting the “Enable UAC” and Clicking the Launch Button.

Google, already the king of Internet search, rolled out an experimental new search product on Wednesday called “Google Squared.”

The product is still pretty raw right now, but think of it sort of like Google’s short-term answer to the  Wolfram Alpha‘s structured search—with results displayed in a spreadsheet format of sorts.

Google Squared does not provide a list of links to Web pages, like with a traditional Google search, but presents information derived from a query in a spreadsheet-like grid called a “square.”

Users of squared can then build, modify and refine their “square” through further Web searches.

“Unlike a normal search engine, Google Squared doesn’t find webpages about your topic — instead, it automatically fetches and organizes facts from across the Internet,” Google said in a preview of the product last month.

In a blog post on Wednesday, Google said Google Squared could be useful when a user needs to make multiple searches to find the information they want.

“It essentially searches the Web to find the types of facts you might be interested in, extracts them and presents them in a meaningful way,” Google said.

“If your square isn’t perfect at the beginning, it’s easy to work with Google Squared to get a better answer,” Google added.

The Mountain View, California-based Internet search giant cautioned that Google Squared remains experimental and the technology behind it “is by no means perfect.”

1) Connect the iPod to your windows machine. Close the autostarted itunes by hitting the X in upper right hand corner of itunes.

2) Go to Computer or Windows explorer , click on Organize and select Folder and Search Options as shown below.

In Folder options Window select View tab and Select the Option Show Hidden files and folders in Hidden files and folders option.

3) Navigate to your ipod in Computer or Windows Explorer.

4) Navigate to Music folder in your ipod .

Full path is YOURIPODNAME (F:)\iPod_Control\Music

5) Select all the music folders and drag and drop them into a folder on your hard drive, or directly into iTunes.

And you’re done! The music folder structure in ipod is strange, but once you move your files into iTunes you can set it to automatically organize your folder by artist and album to clean that up. To do this, in iTunes Edit menu, choose Preferences and in the Advanced tab, check “Keep iTunes Music Folder organized.”

Microsoft has introduced a bundle of software applications that leverage Windows 7′s built-in support for touch-screen interfaces.

The Windows 7 Touch Pack includes Microsoft Surface Globe, a 3-D map of the Earth that users can navigate through with their fingertips; Surface Collage, a digital photo organizer and editing program; and Microsoft Surface Lagoon, an aquatic-themed screensaver in which fish and other creatures react to touch.

Other apps in the pack include the mechanical design game Blackboard and the pinball-like game Microsoft Rebound. Another app, Garden Pond, lets users create and control organic creations in a garden setting.

Microsoft introduced the package Wednesday at the D: All Things Digital conference in Dallas.

“The Windows and Surface development teams have been have been collaborating closely on bringing multi-touch to Windows,” wrote Brandon LeBlanc, Microsoft’s in-house Windows blogger, in a post Wednesday. “We thought it would be fun to give you some applications that show what’s possible with this new way to interact with your PC.”

“The Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows 7 is a great example of immersive experiences software developers can create for Windows 7 and multi-touch,” LeBlanc added.

Microsoft is set to release the first beta of its long-awaited Visual Studio 2010 tools suite next week.
The firm will first release the beta to its developer customers on Monday, followed by general release to the public on Wednesday, according to a blog posting by Microsoft developer tools solution specialist Jihad Dannawi.

On 18 May Visual Studio 2010 Beta 1 (Professional, Suite and Team Foundation Server) will be available to MSDN subscribers through MSDN Subscriber Downloads and to the general public on 20 May through Microsoft Downloads.

When it was announced to much fanfare last September, Microsoft explained that the new version of its flagship developer platform would try to democratise the application lifecycle by allowing all contributors on a software project to participate throughout the lifecycle.

The arrival of Windows 7 should put the final nail in the coffin for Windows Vista, one of the most disappointing products in software maker Microsoft’s recent history.

That’s the opinion of researchers at IT consulting group Gartner, who are advising corporate customers who haven’t already made the leap from Windows XP to Vista to forgo the latter entirely.

“Microsoft expects to ship Windows 7 in time for the 2009 holiday shopping season. Organizations with a Windows Vista project well underway should stay the course, but most others should target Windows 7,” wrote Gartner researchers Michael Silver and Stephanie Kleynhans, in a report released this week.

The researchers said Windows 7 holds a number of useful features for business users. BranchCache allows workers in remote offices to tap information from headquarters more quickly and easily by caching that content on local networks. Another feature, AppLocker, gives IT managers control of which applications users can run. Read the rest of this entry »

Microsoft will make Windows 7 available to businesses and consumers in time for the busy
holiday shopping season in the fourth quarter of the year, according to company officials.

Windows Server 2008 R2, the server companion to the windows 7 operating system, also will be available at the same time. Microsoft unveiled the information to journalists just ahead of its keynote at its annual conference.

Microsoft also said it plans to release a technical preview of the next version of its other key software product, Office 2010, in July to all attendees of the conference.

Nice time ahead for new releases.

Eighteen months ago, Mozilla introduced an experimental project called Prism with the goal to “to bridge the divide in the user experience between web applications and desktop apps and to explore new usability models as the line between traditional desktop and new web applications continues to blur.”

Excited features for many real-world applications currently using Prism:

* New API functionality for allowing Prism-enabled web sites more desktop like power.
* Ability to set fonts, proxy settings and other application-specific settings.
* The ability to clear private data on demand.
* Applications are automatically updated when new Prism versions are available.
* Tray icon support, as well as submenus for dock and system tray menus.
* Full OS X 10.4 support, and further OS X specific enhancement.
* Support for SSL exceptions.

You can find out more about Prism 1.0 beta and download the standalone version and Firefox extension from our new Prism website at prism.mozilla.com.