Chip Ganassi Racing has selected Microsoft solution to help improve their car performances during racing. The high-performance computing (HPC) solution is based on Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003. Now simulations which took 24 hours can be run in less than a hour, thanks to Microsoft solution.

Chip Ganassi Racing is an racing organization with its team competing in NASCAR, IRL and Grand-Am. Owned by Chip Ganassi and Felix Sabates, the team is based in Concord, North Carolina. Chip Ganassi Racing worked with Microsoft and Stackpole Engineering Services Inc. who were their simulation software vendors to modify the software to run on the Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003.

Previously, the racing team spent 24 hours to run a simulation. Now, with the use of five-node HPC cluster, the team can run a simulation in less than an hour. This has helped the team run simulations faster and more frequently to equip the team better and more competitive in race tacks.

Paxton of Chip Ganassi team mentions, “We’re all about making cars go faster, not building fancy computer systems. At first, I thought HPC was only for big companies that can afford multimillion-dollar supercomputers. After we realized that HPC was accessible and affordable, we saw the potential competitive advantage it would bring. My only concerns were that the solution be easy to use and easy to manage, and that we could easily modify the application. Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 enabled us to meet all three requirements.”

Chip Ganassi Racing has selected Microsoft solution to help improve their car performances during racing. The high-performance computing (HPC) solution is based on Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003. Now simulations which took 24 hours can be run in less than a hour, thanks to Microsoft solution.

Chip Ganassi Racing is an racing organization with its team competing in NASCAR, IRL and Grand-Am. Owned by Chip Ganassi and Felix Sabates, the team is based in Concord, North Carolina. Chip Ganassi Racing worked with Microsoft and Stackpole Engineering Services Inc. who were their simulation software vendors to modify the software to run on the Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003.

Previously, the racing team spent 24 hours to run a simulation. Now, with the use of five-node HPC cluster, the team can run a simulation in less than an hour. This has helped the team run simulations faster and more frequently to equip the team better and more competitive in race tacks.

Paxton of Chip Ganassi team mentions, “We’re all about making cars go faster, not building fancy computer systems. At first, I thought HPC was only for big companies that can afford multimillion-dollar supercomputers. After we realized that HPC was accessible and affordable, we saw the potential competitive advantage it would bring. My only concerns were that the solution be easy to use and easy to manage, and that we could easily modify the application. Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 enabled us to meet all three requirements.”

Microsoft today released Hyper-V for Windows Server 2008, a hypervisor-based virtualization technology. Microsoft claims that it has distributed nearly 1.5 million copies of Hyper-V beta version which demonstrates customers interest in virtualization.

Virtualization helps companies decrease hardware costs, power consumption costs and the complexity of managing the IT system. Virtualization also increases flexibility for the overall environment and helps maximize value of IT investments.

Microsoft’s Hypervisor Technology, commonly called Hyper-V enables customers consolidate some of their most demanding workloads.

Bill Hilf, General Manager for Platform Strategy and Windows Server Marketing at Microsoft stated, “Customers who buy Windows Server 2008 are not only getting the scalability benefits, the high performance and reliability, and all the great things that Windows Server is known for; as of today they can benefit from integrated virtualization with Hyper-V.”

Customers can now download the final version of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. Hilf also added, “There have already been over 1 million evaluations of Hyper-V, and with this release IT organizations everywhere can move it from the lab to production to fully experience the benefits that Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 can bring.” To download Hyper-V, please click on the following link:

http://www.microsoft.com/Hyper-V

Hyper-V would also be available as a Windows Update for customers who have already deployed Windows Server 2008.

Microsoft Corp. announced its intention to acquire Mobicomp a Portugal based mobile technology company. MobiComp built one of the first WAP-enabled ticketing systems for cinema-goers in early 2001 and is acclaimed for its innovative mobile data protection and sharing services.

Corporate Vice President, Mobile Communications Business at Microsoft, Todd Peters explained that “People expect their phones to deliver the best experiences from PCs and the Web right to their pockets. Investing in the right solutions from companies like MobiComp will extend the capabilities of Windows Mobile and Windows Live to help us provide the most innovative and seamless way to stay connected.”

Formed in 2000, MobiComp is a privately funded Braga, Portugal based company which has its offices in Spain, Lisbon, Dubai, UK and Finland. The company is !SO 9001:2000 certified and received the Award for Services to Innovation from the Portuguese Republic President in 2006.

Carlos Oliveria, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of MobiComp mentioned, “Like Microsoft, we’ve always believed in an open and innovative mobile platform and deep industry partnerships. We are thrilled that our work over the past eight years can now be extended by partnering with Microsoft’s world-class portfolio of mobile services.”

Just downloaded a new font and you are unable to find it in your application that you wish to use them? Fonts have to be installed to your operating system properly in order for them to be added to your application.

1. Download the font that you wish to install. The fonts are usually of .ttf format.
2. Click “Start” in Windows task bar, and then choose “Run”.
3. Type “%windir%\fonts” in the Run window, and then click OK. [You can also choose the folder “fonts” inside “Windows” folder.
4. On the File menu, select Install New Font.
5. In the location box, choose the location where your font exists
6. Click the font you want to add. To select more than one font at a time, press and hold down the CTRL key and simultaneously select each font.
7. Click to select the ‘Copy Fonts To Fonts Folder” check box. The “Windows\Fonts” folder is the default fonts folder for Windows.
8. Click OK.

How to Delete or Remove Fonts

Similar way listed above, go to the fonts folder.

Select the fonts you wish to remove. Click Delete. You would get a notification requesting if you wish to proceed with the removal. Click Yes and the fonts are now deleted.

Microsoft recently announced that it has planned to release the Beta 2 version of Internet Explorer in August.

Microsoft has been putting up a tough fight with Mozilla Firefox. There have been a growing number of internet users switching from Microsoft Internet Explorer to Mozilla Firefox. Firefox has been adding new features, plug-in, add-ons and updates frequently.

The first version of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 was released late March this year which provided designers, webmasters and web developers an preview of the latest features on Internet Explorer 8. Microsoft also informed the press that the new browser would be more home user or ordinary web user friendly and it would concentrate more on the ordinary user category.

Group Program Manager Tony Chor informed that,” “In addition to the features for developers we showed in IE8 Beta 1, we’ve been working on great new features for consumers and IT professionals (as well as doing even more cool stuff for developers)”

Microsoft Corp. announced an ad-funded cash rebate to customers who purchase productes through Microsoft Live Search cashback. Partnering with Barnes & Nobles, Overstock, WPP, Sears, eBay and Zappos, cash rebate would be available for customers who search for and buy products through the Microsoft Live Search.

Microsoft also revealed that the Live Search cashback product portfolio includes more than 10 million products from more than 700 merchants. This would also include 13 of the top 40 U.S online retailers.

“We believe search can offer much more value to consumers and advertisers than it does today, and we see Live Search cashback as an important opportunity to deliver additional value,” Gates said. “Our goal is to make Live Search the most rewarding commercial search destination on the Web. Live Search cashback will help advertisers drive more online sales while giving consumers a new way to stretch their dollars.”

Microsoft also announced its new Live Search Farecast and Live Search travel destination for assisting searchers find the best travel deals on internet. Microsoft plans to make Live Search the premier search engine for search queries helping customers research and purchase services and goods to help merchants drive online sales of their products.

It is reported that MSN Windows Live mail registrations have been hit by spam bots as much as 30% to 35%. This is a serious security issue for Microsoft.

The bot acquires the CAPTCHA on the MSN server, takes it back to the spammers server and is read using spam servers technologies. After successful reading, the text match is sent back to MSN registration form and the registration is done successfully.

Vice President of Security Research, Dan Hubbard stated that this is the first time that we have seen bots like this. He also mentioned that some of the account creation scan is still murky and stated that the team is yet to find out what is happening in the spammers server. He also mentioned that spammers use these addresses for a day and then dispose them. These spamming addresses are quickly shut down by MSN and get listed in spam filtering products.

This huge success rate by spammer bots has started an debate if CAPTCHA is secure. This has lead to rethink CAPTCHA potential. It should also be noted that few months back a Russian programmer stated that he was able to crack Yahoo’s CAPTCHA system 35 percent of the time.

Microsoft failed to make the acquisition deal with Yahoo on Saturday. This has resulted in Microsoft to decide if it wishes to takeover Yahoo on a hostile way through a proxy fight or to bid and seek other alternatives.

Though Microsoft had been informing Yahoo through various means that they would pursue acquiring Yahoo using all available options, Yahoo has been ignoring Microsoft’s threats. Continue Reading

Ever wanted to add a lot of features to your MSN Messenger? Messenger Plus! Helps add tons of features and extras to your Live Messenger.

Messenger Plus Live has features like Log Search, Messenger Skinning, An All-New Interface, Tabbed Chats, Custom Sounds, Quick Texts, Personalized Status, HTML Chat Logging, Contacts on Desktop, Account Polygamy, Event Viewer and Logging, Messenger Lock, Contact list Clean-up and much more.

MESSENGER PLUS DOWNLOAD – Latest Version

MSN Plus claims that Messenger Plus Live has been installed more than 340 million times from 2001 till date and helps improve Messenger experience greatly.
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