The new Windows Live Messenger (part of Wave 4 coming very soon) helps saves you time with tabbed conversations, Bing integration and brings your conversations to life with HD video chat (in 16/9 full screen), photo sharing, video messages, YouTube videos and more…
Windows Live Messenger Wave 4 Beta will be offered to early adopters for testing on June 21st, 2010.
Get a brief demo in this video from Microsoft:
.
Kind Regards
Marc Liron – Microsoft MVP
…in a word YES, if you know how.
Go into any Starbucks, or similar, coffee shop on a busy day and you will notice many folks sitting down with their laptops and Netbooks using the free (usualy) WiFi.
It is truly scary to think how many of those laptops I could easily invade whilst sitting there myself, armed only with a Windows laptop and some free software available for download via the Internet.
Or, another scenario is driving through a town/city looking for businesses with wireless networks that are either unsecured or poorly secured.
Perhaps even sitting in a hotel room all day connected to the free WiFi and slipping in and out of other folks laptops.
Wireless networks are everywhere today, even many homes now have them…. and yet I see SO MANY that can easily be hacked into and sensitive data such as passwords to online banking stolen.
I am not trying to be alarmist here, just trying to provide a wake up to the home user/small business user who are basically targets waiting to be found by cyber criminals!
Did you know anyone can learn enough skills to become a half-decent cyber criminal just by spending a day on YouTube.com ?
Don’t believe me? …just look at some of these Video titles:
# Hacking WiFi Passwords with Cowpatty…
# Vista Security Hacks…
# How to Steal WPA-PSK keys…
# Bypass Local Windows Logins with a Kernel Modifying Boot CD…
# Bypass Your Corporate or University Firewalls…
# WiFi Packet Sniffing…
# Intercepting Passwords on a Network…
# Cracking Wireless Passwords…
# How to Hack a Friends Computer…
# How to Steal Data from WiFi Connected Laptops in a Coffee Shop…
# Making Money by Infecting Internet PCs with Malware…
…and yet many security threats can be limited just by knowing a few simple steps.
There are many websites that can help you just Google some security terms and then read through the many pages. Or, you could grab my latest guide aimed at helping Windows PC users to NOT becoming a victim of CyberCrime: PC Security Bootcamp.
Kind Regards
Marc Liron – Microsoft MVP
Microsoft has been hard at work on the next version of Windows Home Server – codenamed “Vail”.
This new version of Windows Home Server is notable chiefly for being based on Windows Server 2008 R2 — a major upgrade from the current version, which uses Windows Server 2003 SP2 as the underlying OS.
Essentially it’s an Operating System with a built in Media Server, Backup, Data Recovery, Document Management, Remote Access and a gaggle of “add-ons” bundled in; and allows you to build a reliable network at home!
The Windows Home Server team blog cites four key areas of improvement with the new version: extending the ability to stream media outside of the home network and over the internet; multi-PC backup and restore; simplified setup and user experience.
This time round the OS is 64-bit only, with no 32-bit version available. Minimum hardware requirements are modest: a 1.4GHz x64 CPU, 1GB or RAM and a 160GB hard disk.
Individual hard disks larger than 2TB are now supported, as are iSCSI storage devices, and drive removal operations have been improved.
Here is a screenshot of the new User Interface:
In the following video you will see a walk through of the new product UI and take a first look preview of Windows Home Server v2
