Futurecat - Michael Karek

My 3 year old daughter Lil (her blog nickname) recently started to game on our family PC. As a Microsoft mom, I’m proud she’s learning how to use a computer and has quickly become comfortable with controlling the PC at a basic level. Granted, she isn’t doing much other than going to Nick Jr.’s website (saved into our favorites in IE) to play Dora the Explorer, Backyardigans and Yo Gabba Gabba! games. Even though her online time is short, I want to ensure she stays safe, avoiding advertisements and websites not meant for her little eyes. I’m in the early stages of having to think about online parameters, house rules and talking with my kids about proper online behavior, but this is a good time to start asking questions about tools available and how to establish some proper online safety etiquette for our household.

As this is a big topic, I plan to write a few times on keeping your kids safe online over the next couple months. To kick things off, I wanted to share what I was able to do in my house very quickly to ensure my kids are protected, with just a few easy steps using Windows Live Family Safety. Note that Family Safety is the replacement for MSN Parental Controls which is no longer being updated. I’ve never had to monitor other accounts in my household and even though I knew the capabilities of Family Safety, I had never actually applied the product. What I discovered is that setting up parameters for my house was really easy, so I wanted to share how to do this and encourage other parents to use this product to help protect your children, which will help you breathe a little easier. And remember, Windows Live Family Safety, part of the Windows Live Essentials suite of products, is FREE! You can download the latest beta here.

What does Windows Live Family Safety do?

• Gives parents control over when Windows will let your child use the computer, what games your child can play, and what programs your child can run. If your children use multiple computers, the choices will roam with them to each computer; they simply need to log in with their username and password to any PC in your house already configured with Family Safety.
• Filters images, which is helpful if your child visits websites that allow other users to upload images. This feature works best on Windows 7 machines with faster processing power.
• SafeSearch is locked for Bing, Google, Yahoo! and other popular search engines to prevent your child from seeing adult content in search results.
• Has contact management, which provides parents control to monitor or restrict the contact list for their child in Windows Live Hotmail, Messenger and Spaces.
• Provides requests management, which allows requests from a child to a parent to be aggregated in a single daily email allowing you to manage them more efficiently.
• Restricts ads, which means children’s Live IDs that are added through Family Safety and logged into the Windows Live network, will not see advertisements when using Windows Live services.

Examples of how I’m personally using Family Safety in my house:

• I set up a rule in my house for using the Internet, which includes blocking downloads, which I only had to do once. The choices I made for Lil on the Family Safety website apply to any computer she uses in our house, as they are all configured to run Family Safety.
• Since I work during the day and I have at-home childcare, I’m not always aware of how much time Lil spends online gaming. I can now (from any online location) log into the Family Safety website and view activity reports to see how much time she’s spending online gaming. The report also contains websites my child visited.
• I set time limits so she can only game during certain hours of the day and can restrict how much time she spends on the computer.
• I mentioned that I allow Lil to go onto Nick Jr.’s website to game, though Family Safety also offers a list of child-friendly websites to visit which I’ve started to explore with my preschooler.

How easy is this really? You’ll be amazed! Here are the simple to follow steps to get you started:

• Download the latest Windows Live Essentials beta.
• Once installed, go to the Windows start button and type in Family Safety in the search bar.
• The Family Safety screen will pop up. Note, you will need to sign in with a Windows Live ID to set up Family Safety. If you don’t have one, click here. The main screen will show which accounts are set up as Standard Users, and which have Admin rights. Make sure you add your kids as Standard Users, if they aren’t already there. Microsoft recommends that each child has their own Windows account so you can customize different settings for each child.
• Once you have completed this, click “save.”
• The main screen will then show you a link to the Windows Live Family Safety website, providing you with all the latest information on the accounts you monitor and allowing you to customize all your settings.
• Since this is all linked to your personal Windows Live account, the great thing is that you can monitor your kids’ online activities anywhere. This includes the ability for your children to make requests to visit websites and add contacts, even when you’re not at home.
• You can also view detailed step-by-step instructions on the Family Safety website located here.

In an upcoming post, I will interview a program manager for Family Safety to go into further depth on things you should know about keeping you kids safe online, including how to get the most out of free tools available to you. If you have questions about Windows Live Family Safety, please post comments. I will be picking from the top questions to include in my upcoming interview. Follow me on Twitter @WinMommyLisa.

Gastposting von Dariusz Parys , Developer Evangelist für .NET 3.0 Technologie, C++, High Performance Computing, Windows Communication Foundation, Workflow Foundation und Visual Studio Team System bei der Microsoft Deutschland GmbH. Letzten Donnerstag…(read more)

Gastposting von Dariusz Parys , Developer Evangelist für .NET 3.0 Technologie, C++, High Performance Computing, Windows Communication Foundation, Workflow Foundation und Visual Studio Team System bei der Microsoft Deutschland GmbH. Seit gestern ist die…(read more)

I’m sitting here in on my in-laws’ deck overlooking beautiful Lake Chelan. Evan sleeping by my side, Audrey is down for a nap and the house is otherwise empty, so I thought I’d take my mother-in-law’s HP G62 out for a test drive. Yes, this is the same one I was conscripted to configure just a few weeks ago, but last time I was giving it the quickie setup (i.e., installing Microsoft Security Essentials, Windows Live Essentials Beta, and Office 2010), so didn’t have the chance to fully put it through its paces.

The HP G62 is part of HP’s line of everyday computers, meaning it’s optimized for light internet work, basic productivity tasks like writing Word docs, and playing music and movies. It’s a value priced machine – MSRP starts at $499.99, and my mother-in-law got her model for a little over $500 at a major retailer. For that price, you get a lot of machine. The G62 comes with a brand-new Intel Core i3 processor, 4 gigs of RAM, and a 320GB 7200 rpm HDD. Graphics are Intel Integrated HD which put out respectable Windows Experience Index score of 4.2 for desktop graphics and 4.8 for gaming graphics. That’s not top-shelf power, but if you’re just watching DVDs, playing casual games or streaming some web video it’s more than enough to give you a great experience.

As with all HPs, the 15”, 1366 x 768 display is gorgeous. It’s very bright but not too glossy; out here on the deck in bright sunlight the screen is still easy to read. Sound is powered by Altec Lansing speakers which produce solid, deep sound that’s better than most laptops I’ve tried in this price range – you don’t get the tinny, hollow reverberation that you find on cheaper speakers. As someone who’s permanently tethered to his Zune collection (or Pandora), that’s a big plus.

Even though this is part of HP’s value line, they didn’t skimp on design. The chassis is imprinted polycarbonate with a light polygon texture and the default out-of-the-box wallpaper matches the case design, which is kind of cool and a nice touch that brings the PC together inside and out. My favorite bit about the G62’s design is the touchpad – or should I say “lack of touchpad”. Unlike most laptops that have a dedicated, defined touchpad that looks like at touchpad, the G62 doesn’t. Its touchpad is seamless with the rest of the palm rest, so the chin of the laptop is completely unbroken (aside from the right and left mouse buttons). That’s an unusual design choice, but I like it and it’s something I wish more PC manufacturers would do. I’m a minimalist by nature, so anything that cleans up the façade of my PC makes me feel all Zen inside.

I’ve only had a chance to work with the G62 for a few hours, but I like what I see so far. Performance while working on this doc in Word 2010 was snappy and Internet Explorer running Twitter, Facebook, and multiple other tabs like CNN.com, Weather.com, The Consumerist, Gizmodo, Engadget, The Windows Experience Blog, and my favorite non-tech blog, The Sartorialist, was smooth and hang-free even when playing video on both Giz and Engadget simultaneously.

If you’re in the market for a solid 15” laptop and you’re working off of a modest budget, put the HP G62 on your list. For around $500, it’s a tough box to beat.

Have a question about this or any other PC?  Post a comment, hit me on Twitter, or Ask Ben Anything via email.  Your question might appear in my monthly Ask Ben Anything Q&A column!

Today is earnings day and Windows continues to have a strong showing. We announced a new milestone in Windows 7 sales – 175 million copies. This continues our record breaking pace of more than 7 copies sold per second. And as of today – Windows 7 is now running on more than 16% of all PCs worldwide. It’s exciting to see this kind of response from customers who have helped make Windows 7 the fastest selling operating system in history. We are also seeing some strong momentum with businesses for Windows 7. The PC “refresh cycle” for businesses has accelerated and we recorded the second straight quarter of double digital business license growth. And with Internet Explorer, IE8 is now the fastest growing and most popular web browser in the market and we have IE9 coming!

This strong momentum isn’t limited to Microsoft  – in fact we’re seeing strong growth across the tech industry. Last week we highlighted a recent IDC press release that illustrated the growth of the global PC market – more than 22.4% year-over-year for the second quarter of 2010. Intel reported its best quarter ever with second quarter revenue up 34% year-over-year. And AMD reported a whopping 40% growth year-over-year in its earnings release, due to record sales of their chips for notebook computers. It’s great to see this kind of growth across the PC ecosystem and we’re pleased to be part of this growth with Windows 7.

Today we are announcing the beta for the next version of Microsoft Security Essentials. Microsoft Security Essentials was first released in September 2009 and is our award-winning no-cost light weight anti-malware service. It’s designed to help address the ongoing security needs of PCs running genuine Windows – helping keep people protected from viruses, spyware, and other malicious software.

New features in the beta of Microsoft Security Essentials include:

Windows Firewall integration – During setup, Microsoft Security Essentials will now ask if you would like to turn the Windows Firewall on or off.

Enhanced protection for web-based threats – Microsoft Security Essentials now integrates with Internet Explorer to provide protection against web-based threats.

New protection engine – The updated anti-malware engine offers enhanced detection and cleanup capabilities with better performance.

Network inspection system* – Protection against network-based exploits is now built in to Microsoft Security Essentials.

* For Windows XP users: Please note that the network inspection system feature will not be enabled on Windows XP. This is because the network inspection system requires the Windows Filtering Platform (WFP) in order to run, and WFP is only available in Windows Vista and Windows 7. However, if you are running Windows XP, you can still use all other beta features. 

To download the beta of Microsoft Security Essentials, click here to visit the Microsoft Connect page to register for the beta. Once completed – you will find the instructions for downloading and installing the beta. We value your feedback – beta participants are encouraged to provide feedback about their experiences with Microsoft Security Essentials through Microsoft Connect. Please note that this is a limited beta available in English (U.S.), Israel, and Brazilian Portuguese (the beta will also be available in China in Simplified Chinese later this year) and is available to genuine Windows users on a first come, first serve basis until the allotted spots for the beta have been reached.

I’ve already commenced with beta testing for Microsoft Security Essentials – I am running it on all my PCs at home!

UPDATE: We are aware that some users are having issues downloading the Microsoft Security Essentials beta after signing into Microsoft Connect and we are working on resolving the issue. In the meantime, you can use the file transfer manager within Microsoft Connect to download the beta files. After logging into the Microsoft Connect site for the Microsoft Security Essentials beta, click ‘Download Microsoft Security Essentials Beta’,  select the version of Microsoft Security Essentials beta that is right for you (32 or 64 bit), and then click the Download button (Download selected file(s) using FTM).

Gastposting von Oliver Scheer , Developer Evangelist – Windows, Silverlight und UI-Technologien bei der Microsoft Deutschland GmbH. Gestern hat Microsoft die dritte Platform Preview für den Internet Explorer 9 veröffentlicht. Damit wird das Versprechen…(read more)

As Brandon mentioned in last week’s post, we’ve started a TV campaign that recreates some notorious internet scams to show how easy it is to fall victim to online attacks. In the first ad we showed real customers giving personal information like their social security number, mother’s maiden name and ATM password to a fake bank to get $500 for opening an account.

The second ad airs tonight during “So You Think You Can Dance” on FOX, 8PM EST. This time, you’ll see customers willing to have a DNA scan and give hair samples.

Enjoy!

James

We’re pleased to announce that today we’re launching a new Internet Explorer blog as part of the Windows family of blogs that will cover a broad range of industry and business topics to complement the existing Internet Explorer Engineering blog.

Since 2004, the Internet Explorer engineering team has been keeping a blog on MSDN: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie where we’ve been covering the development and release of new versions Internet Explorer. Our Internet Explorer Engineering blog will continue to be the definitive place you’ll hear about release milestones, our engineering point of view on topics like video codecs for HTML5, how we’re implementing standards, how and where to file bugs and detail on how we design and implement specific browser features. It is the quintessential voice of the team building Internet Explorer.

Here on the Exploring IE blog we’ll be covering topics we don’t usually cover on the engineering blog to give a broader context to the work we’re doing with customers and partners around Internet Explorer:

• The Business of the Browser: where we’ll cover some of the interesting trends and discussion topics that surround the browser business. We’ll also provide our point of view on relevant industry discussion topics – for example the recent privacy discussion that resulted from Facebook’s changes to their privacy controls are a good opportunity to share how we think about privacy with Internet Explorer.
• Around Internet Explorer: where we’ll cover what’s going on around the Internet Explorer business. We’ll cover things like our recent partnership with MySpace and let you know when you can find people from Internet Explorer out on the road and at events like TechEd, MIX, SXSW.
• Internet Explorer Around the World: the core Internet Explorer team is based in the US but we’ll share some of the neat things happening with Internet Explorer around the world. For example, did you see the IE Experts campaign run recently by our German subsidiary : www.IE8experts.com
• Tips and Tricks: where we’ll cover some of the ways you can customize and tweak Internet Explorer.

There are some topics which will continue to be covered elsewhere, although we’ll be sure to post links to articles that pertain to Internet Explorer:

• Legal and Policy will be covered on the Microsoft On The Issues blog, for example the roll out of the Browser Choice Screen in Europe
• Security and privacy issues will be covered on the Trustworthy Computing blog and the Microsoft Security Response Center blog

On Exploring IE you’re going to hear from several members of the Internet Explorer team, including frequent guest posts from our industry partners and the Internet Explorer community.

Please participate in the discussion by posting in the comments. We’ll be moderating comments using the same basic policy we use for the Internet Explorer engineering blog. In addition to that policy we ask that you keep your comments on topic.

The team and I are excited to start the conversation.

Ryan Gavin

Senior Director, Internet Explorer Business and Marketing

Every day we use the internet to shop, book travel and do our banking. To do this we share personal information such as our name and address, credit cards numbers and enter our passwords. We need to be able to do this with confidence, knowing that our information is being used only by the company or organization that we intended to share it with.

Many of us know that criminals are increasingly trying to steal our personal information any way they can. Some attempt to install malware on our PCs or phish for our personal information by pretending to be a legitimate organization. We hear about the importance of online security all the time, but if you’re like me, you probably think it couldn’t happen to you. We’re all savvy consumers, right?

We wanted to raise awareness of just how easy it is to fall victim to these risks and to highlight some of the ways that Internet Explorer 8 can help to protect you. That’s what our new advertising campaign, which kicked off tonight during Fox’s Lie to Me (8/7 Central) and Good Guys (9/8 Central), is all about. We thought the most powerful way to do this would be to tell the story through your eyes, our customer. There are countless real people around the world confronted with online scams every day.

To prove just how vulnerable your personal information is, Internet Explorer 8 re-recreated notorious internet scams–live, off the web– in the most street-smart city in world: New York. We used hidden cameras to film reactions of real people. In the first spot we asked people to provide very personal information in order to open a new bank account which would give them a cash reward of $500. We learned that, just as it is online, it can be hard to tell the difference between the scammer and the real thing. We filmed a lot of people and nearly all of them were convinced our “bank” was the real deal.

By the time we got to some of the more outrageous questions, folks started to be suspicious. At that point we revealed the cameras and asked everyone to personally shred the paper on which they’d written their personal information. But, ask yourself, would you have been able to spot the difference straight away?

While consumer vigilance is the most important defense against online scams like this (you can get some great hints and tips here www.microsoft.com/protect ), we can all benefit from a safety net. As a leader in web browsers, we believe it’s our responsibility to help. For example:

Internet Explorer 8 SmartScreen Filter automatically blocks web pages which look suspicious or have been reported as suspicious and warns you of the risks. Every day the SmartScreen Filter blocks 3 million suspicious pages.

Domain Highlighting also reduces risks by clearly identifying the real location of the page you are viewing and helping you check that it really is the page you were expecting and not just one that looks like the real thing.

Internet Explorer 8 also helps protect your privacy with InPrivate Browsing and InPrivate Filtering. InPrivate Filtering in Internet Explorer 8 helps protect your privacy by preventing information about the Web sites that you visit from automatically being shared with other sites.

You’ll see the ads on TV and online beginning tonight, and you can view them at www.ie8protects.com. Finally, we want to say a very big thank you to everyone who took part and was willing to be help raise awareness of this issue.