Windows 10. Tomorrow's launch isn't the end of the road

The process of delivering and servicing Windows 10 will operate at a massive scale, with the potential to run as a continually reviews updated set of services on a billion devices in two or three years.

The only ecosystem that comes close to this scale is Apple's combined reviews OS X and iOS installed base. The Android ecosystem is probably bigger, but Google only runs the Google Play store and its own set of services. It doesn't deliver continuous operating system updates to those billion-plus devices.

With software at this scale, I expect there will be hiccups with Windows 10. Some will be annoying and frustrating, and the law of large numbers says even a small percentage of unhappy early upgraders will be able to make a lot of noise.

The nine-month-long Windows Insider program has done a decent job at its primary mission of providing feedback to influence feature designs and telemetry to measure and improve reliability. It's also established that those bugs can be fixed fairly quickly.

But there's nothing like shipping to millions of devices for the first time to discover the handful issues you missed completely.

The next two or three months should be interesting. We will read a lot of stories about bugs and problems in Windows 10's early days, you can be sure. I'll be monitoring forums and hearing from long-time correspondents (and even some new ones) via e-mail.

I've been documenting Windows 10's development through the Windows Insider program for the past nine months. Starting now, I get to monitor the public release of Windows 10 as well as what's coming up next.

Effective with the official launch, anyone who's been on the Insider program can bow and out and go back to the official release channels. You can also stay, and expect the next preview wave to start in a few weeks.

This Windows 10 milestone is important. For consumers and owners of existing PCs, it starts the clock on Microsoft's free-upgrade offer (only 364 days left!), and it also represents the first Long Term Servicing Branch release, not that very many Enterprise edition customers are going to opt in except for pilot projects.

Today's release is primarily about consumer markets and consumer devices. There's an enterprise case to be made for Windows 10, eventually. Those features will take time (a year, at least) and a lot of testing before enterprise customers are ready to consider deploying Windows 10 in any significant numbers.

But it's not the end of the road by any stretch of the imagination. With that thought in mind, here's my review of the first release of Windows 10.

It looks great, it works well, and it's good enough to satisfy the Windows 8 haters.

Windows 10 is not a complete repudiation of Windows 8, but it certainly downplays several of the signature features of Windows 8. The Charms bar is completely gone. A Start menu is built in, combining the general layout of the Windows 7 Start menu with Windows 8-style live tiles, which are smaller and confined to a restricted space on the Start menu.

Knowlarity's Super Receptionist Lets SMBs Go 'Mobile-First'

Launched earlier this month, Knowlarity has extended its cloud telephony service with a free app on Google Play, which lets businesses add a virtual receptionist to handle phone queries, track leads and view call records. Dubbed as a 'plug-and-play virtual call center', Super Receptionist provides a free lifetime subscription with every signup. This gives you a business phone number with a limited number of credits to test the service. With basic plans starting at just Rs. 900, this app makes a compelling business use case. Knowlarity is targeting India's 47 million strong small and medium businesses sector, and hopes to scale up to 1 million users in India by the end of the year. Is the app likely to top the charts? We took the app and service for a test drive to find out.

For the uninitiated, Knowlarity reviews is a cloud telephony service provider incorporated in 2009. Their product range includes SuperFax, SuperConference, and SuperCaller. Knowlarity provides IVR (Interactive Voice Response) solutions to enterprises, boasting over 10,000 SME clients and over 500 larger customers in 66 countries. The company is head-quartered in Singapore and has offices in Gurgaon, Mumbai and Bangalore, and raised $16 million in its Series B last year.

It takes literally less than two minutes to sign up for your free forwarding number for your business. The sign-on process asks for your email, and once you're logged in, you get access to a virtual number which can handle about 10 minutes of incoming calls, based on the free credits provided in the demo. Calls from this virtual number can be routed to any phone number; enabling agents can handle customers on mobile phones from the field. Customers are only exposed to the virtual number, keeping personal and professional lives separate. 

Samsung has announced a new pair of monitors today that both feature Qi wireless charging in their stands, allowing you to easily charge your Qi-compatible smartphone on your desk without the clutter of a separate charging plate.

The two displays Samsung has announced have pretty boring names: there's the 23.6-inch S24E370DL and the 27-inch S27E370DS, both of which feature 1920 x 1080 PLS panels. Samsung claims both have a response time of 4ms with 178-degree viewing angles and a typical contrast ratio of 1000:1. As for brightness, you'll get 250 and 300 cd/m2 from the 23.6- and 27-inch models respectively.

These two new monitors also support AMD's FreeSync technology, which allows the display's refresh rate to adapt to the render rate of your graphics card. This is especially useful while PC gaming, as you can experience smoother gameplay across a wider range of frame rates.

Samsung hasn't disclosed the refresh rate range of these new monitors, though it doesn't look like it'll be as wide as some gaming-specific monitors. However you will get a flicker free experience and an "ultra-narrow" bezel, plus three inputs: HDMI 1.4, DisplayPort 1.2, and D-Sub VGA.

There is no word on how many these monitors will cost, although judging by the specifications we should expect a relatively entry-level price point. Samsung says both displays will hit the market by the end of the year, with more information to come at IFA in September.

Tips to Follow While Dating Online

Online dating sites serve as one of the quickest and easiest ways for one to get closer to a dream date. It is obvious that these sites work as online forums where men and women meet to visualize their dreams of finding the right match. Unfortunately at times, the end results are unsuccessful; however, it is important to note that in most of the cases people do manage to find their dream partner through these sites.

Through online dating can bring you many rewards, it can come with some risk factors, so you should stay a little careful and conscious. Here are some easy steps that you can take to enhance your security and safety while dating online.

Whether you are dating online or chatting with a person in a chat room, the first rule for online dating that you should always keep in mind is "Take it Slow".

Use Dating Sites That Are Safe:

There are many dating sites on the web, most of which ask you to begin by completing your profile. Before filling up the profile, make sure that you read the privacy policy of that website properly. Some people are not very honest; they don't give exact information about them in their profiles. Although, the experts ask you to stay honest because some people might stretch this fake truth a little.

Some websites have taken serious steps against these filthy acts. They are now making sure that people who are registering themselves is being honest. Before making a match, they are first checking the candidate's background. Always remember that online websites can find you a perfect match, but you need to judge him correctly. Make use of your common senses and take things a little slow.

Secure Your Identity:

Do not include your personal information on your profile, unless you know that the website secures all your information with itself. Never put out your phone number, your address or your real name on the profile, until the website you are using to date a reliable one. In place of your real identity, you can use a nickname because revealing personal information is not always a good idea.

Demand for a Photograph:

Appearance of a person matters a lot, especially when you are dating online. Picture of a person helps you a lot to decide whether the person you are talking to is the same one you see in the picture.

If he or she isn't sending you any pictures, stop corresponding with him or her. Do not think that the person you are talking to is always telling you the truth.

These are some important tips that you should keep in mind while dating online. Your love of life is in their on the web, you just need to search a little.

ObjectRocket by Rackspace adds managed Elasticsearch

Try before you buy

To give DBAs and developers hands-on experience pairing the capabilities of Elasticsearch with their databases and data platforms, ObjectRocket is offering a free service for 30 days for a two data node, 256MB RAM and 2GB Disk instance.

"Most businesses utilse multiple types of databases to meet the specific needs of modern applications, but this diversity can bring complexity," said Nik Rouda, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group.

"Standardising on a bullet-proof, cloud-based infrastructure can simplify delivery without compromising quality. Rackspace has built a versatile yet tailored 'polyglot' platform to satisfy the most demanding requirements."

Rackspace is telling us that with the addition of Elasticsearch, the firm continues to expand the breadth and capability of its portfolio of managed databases, including Elasticsearch, Hadoop, Spark, MongoDB, Redis, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, Percona, and MariaDB.

Customers have the flexibility to deploy across private, public, bare metal and hybrid clouds with options to automate and reduce the time and money needed to scale, manage and help ensure the availability of production database applications.

ThinkPad users got excited about Lenovo's idea to produce a new "ThinkPad Classic" that would provide all the best features of this long-running premium brand. But with the results of the second survey, and the launch of the third survey, it looks like going wrong. Perhaps we need not one "Retro ThinkPad" but two: a lightweight X version for road warriors, and a T version for power users.

When I wrote about the project last month, I suggested that the highly-mobile X220 would be the best place to start, and in the survey, I voted for a 12.5 inch screen. However, it turns out that I'm in a minority of only 14.3 percent (graph above). More than half of the 6,555 respondents want a 14.1 inch or 15.6 inch screen, which might well eliminate me as a potential buyer.

In today's "Retro ThinkPad" blog post, Lenovo's David Hill says: "Related to that, we've been really good at being able to fit a 14.1 inch display in the footprint of a 13.3 inch ThinkPad."

That could tempt me, but I'd rather have a 13.3 inch screen in an 11.6 inch form factor - which is pretty much what you get with the Dell XPS 13 (2015).

The third survey may show a similar split between people who want a fast quad-core processor (even if it has a high TDP) and a low voltage battery-saving dual-core processor. Again, we're talking different use-cases. The power users want a workstation processor, while the road warriors want a thinner ThinkPad with a longer battery life.

It's hard to predict how this one is going to come out. Will Dave Hill be able to find a compromise that suits both camps, or will a compromise spec disappoint both camps, potentially leading to financial disaster?

Personally, I'd like to see the project result in two different Retro ThinkPads, each version optimized for its specific market. If not, then I'd recommend Lenovo go for the workstation market and ignore people like me. There are, after all, dozens of lightweight laptops and Ultrabooks already on the market.

Ask the audience: How crowdsourcing can help you tailor your messages

I'm giving a presentation on WordPress to our local Web Developers group in a few weeks. In the past I've given 60 min. talks geared towards users, but this is aimed at a more technical audience. I'd like to cover installation, theme development, plug-ins and other functionality, but I also realize that 90 min. isn't really enough time to cover the breadth and depth of the WordPress Codex. So I want to focus on whatever points would be most useful to a Web developer (someone comfortable with HTML, CSS and a bit of PHP) who is about to do his/her first WordPress site.

If you're thinking about using WP and haven't yet, what would be helpful to you? Or if you're already comfortable with WordPress, what do you wish someone had told you before you did your first WordPress installation? Thanks for your input!

In return I received 13 answers suggesting topics including:

•           Security
•          Search Engine Optimization
•         Parent/Child Themes
•         Theme Frameworks
•         Spam prevention
•         Hosting Requirements
•         Theme Customization
•         Client Training
•         Categories
•         Plug-ins

Trying your hand at a little Web development work? The task probably seems pretty daunting, as experienced developers are typically entrenched in a sea of scripting languages that make the layperson wrinkle their eyebrows in utter confusion. But hey, anyone can do it if they set their mind to it—and if you set your mind to learning one language at a time, it’s more than do-able for the average tech enthusiast who has an ample amount of fortitude.

Fortunately, the same technology that has made Web development such an essential part of the world today has also made it possible for skilled development gurus to share their tactics with the world at large through blogs. And there are plenty of developers who have chosen to share their hacks and tricks for the benefit of newbie developers. We’ve rounded up 25 of the most useful resources for beginning developers which include tricks, step-by-step instructions and a plethora of other essential information. Most of these blogs talk in easy-to-understand language, so even if you’re not up to par with developer lingo and you’re trying to figure out how to code a specific project, you can probably follow along. Listed in no particular order of importance, here are 25 blogs we suggest for beginner developers. Oh, and a little bonus section with five useful tutorial sites.

Lotus – An Open Source Framework for Ruby

Some people think that working for free or for very cheap is always the same as working on spec. This is most certainly not the case, and here’s why: when you work on spec, you’re providing the same level of service that you ordinarily would charge for.

This is bad. Really, really bad.

Designers who do this are not only devaluing their work, they’re also stunting the growth of their entire careers. When a client realizes that they can get thousands of dollars worth of work from you for mere hundreds, there’s a mentality that develops in their head about you, and about designers in general. Basically, they start to believe that your work just isn’t worth thousands of dollars, and you will be forever branded as a cheap, low-end designer.

Type design is visually complex as well as highly technical – however it is easier to begin making type now than ever, partly because of the availability of free tools like FontForge . FontForge is a free (libre) font editor for Windows, Mac OS X and GNU+Linux. Use it to create, edit and convert fonts in OpenType, TrueType, UFO, CID-keyed, Multiple Master, and many other formats. While being a handy tool with which to begin, FontForge is not just for beginners. It has an advanced toolset and is rapidly improving at the time this book is being written.

FontForge aims to offer technical help and general insight into planning a type design project, and also offers advice about how to make your workflow more efficient. If you wish to help them, you can contribute to making FontForge better by giving feedback or even by contributing content and fixes on GitHub. 

The key, like being on a diet or pushing yourself to finish a long, tedious project, is to think of free or low-paying work as a temporary arrangement, rather than an indefinite circumstance. If you give it all away for free or for very cheap, or you continue working for low rates for longer than is necessary to build your client network, your clients will never consider you for higher level work .

Why would they? If you’re lodged in the client’s mind as a $200 designer, why on earth would they automatically think of you when they have a $5,000 or $10,000 project? It’s just not going to happen.

On the other hand, if you’ve been providing your client with an appropriate amount of work for that $200, and they know you’ve been holding back on certain deliverables, they’ll be much more likely to consider you for higher paying work.