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Windows 10 Top Features

1. Start Menu is back – Welcome back

Windows 10 Start Menu
Windows 10 Start Menu

In Windows 8 and 8.1, Microsoft decided to get rid of the start menu and replace it with metro UI.. unfortunately, Users were not happy with that change and they wanted to have the start menu back.. that was one of the  main reasons that Windows 8 & 8.1 had market failure. The good news for those who are missing the start menu is you will have the start menu back in Windows 10.

It is not the same style that we used to have in Windows XP and 7.. the new start menu will have the live tiles on it but at the same time it has the old structure of the start menu that we used to have in Windows 7.

  1. Cortana for desktop users.
Cortana
Cortana

Microsoft is marketing the Cortana as the most personalized digital assistant. I personally have been using it in my Windows 8.1 phone devise for quite good time and I found it is very great digital assistant. Cortana wasn’t available in Windows 8.1 desktop version..

Microsoft is bringing Cortana into windows 10 desktop version. I believe that would make it easy to interact with your desktop devise by voice command. It will enable you to launch applications, adding meeting requests, searching your files on hard drive and onedrive….etc.

  1. Xbox app

This will enable you to play Xbox game on your laptop or tablet. With improved speed and graphics performance.

  1. Spartan Browser
Project Spartan
Project Spartan

Bye bye for Internet Explorer.. Microsoft officially announcing that IE is dead. Project Spartan including many built in features, like PDF reading and reading mode.. Project Spartan will have Cortana support from within the browser, so Cortana can read information from the sites you’re on to do some tasks like navigate to a restaurant you’re looking up or know n upcoming flight time without having to go into your email or ticket paper.

  1. Multi-tasking improvement

Very similar to Apple’s space feature on OSX; it enable you to have multiple desktops; each desktop has its own set of open windows and apps. I believe this will make it easier for you to organize your work in better way and isolate things.

  1. Switching between to modes
Switching Modes
Switching Modes

Microsoft introduced a new way to switch between desktop mode that more convenient to you. If you have mouse/keyboard attached to your devise; then you will have the desktop mode with start menu similar to the one you have in windows 7. If you de-attached the keyboard and mouse; you will be switched to the metro UI (after confirming that in confirmation message).

  1. Action Center

With windows 10, you will have all notifications in one place, it is similar to what we have in phone devises where you can see all notifications grouped by Application that generated the notification.

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How to roll back to Windows Phone 8.1 after Installing Windows 10 Preview (Pre-Released)

Windows Ohone 10
Windows Phone 10

Yesterday I wanted to try to use the pre-released Windows 10 on my Lumia 920 device. Per Microsoft, Windows 10 should work fine on my phone. But unfortunately that wasn’t the case. After installing windows 10, the tiles wasn’t showing up and the mobile devise wasn’t charging at all. So I decided to rollback to Windows 8.1. the good thing is Microsoft provided a backward path to roll back from Windows 10 to Windows 8.1. it was easy steps to follow; basically you need to do the followings:

  1. Backup your data on the phone
  2. On your PC Install Windows Phone Recovery Tool  from Microsoft
  3. Start the recovery tool on your PC
  4. Connect your phone to your laptop by using the USB cable
  5. Tool will detect your phone and model. Click on the phone model detected.
  6. Follow the wizard and read the warning messages carefully.
  7. Windows 8.1 compatible with your device will be downloaded it is around 1.4 GB. then it will be installed on your phone. This will wipe all of your data and settings form the phone and install a fresh copy of Windows 8.1

For more info, check this article here

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Restore SQL Database from Backup on Network

Couple of weeks ago, I overcome situation where I need to restore SQL server database from network drive to my SQL server. An easy option was to copy the database to local drive on the SQL Server and do the normal restore operation; but that was costly in term of time and space as it was a huge database size.. by default MS SQL server doesn’t allow you to restore the database from network drive unless you enabled a couple of features in SQL Server; to do that you need to run the below SQL statement:

EXEC sp_configure 'XP_CMDSHELL' , 1
GO
EXEC xp_Cmdshell 'net use p: \\ServerName\SharedFolderName'
GO
EXEC xp_fixeddrives 1
GO

to make sure the above statements configured the network drive correctly, you should see the drive name and estimated size for it as a result of executing the last SP (xp_fixeddrives). if you didn’t see the list of drives available on the server, then there something went wrong and those steps didn’t completed successfully

Completing these steps will let a drive called P: showing on your normal restore window and you can explore and locate your backup file (.Bak). also I’ve overcome a situation where the drive isn’t showing on my restore window and I can’t explore neither to locate the .bak file; even after running the above statement, so I had to delete the P drive and re-define it again.. I deleted it using the below statement then rerun the above statement and things worked fine with me

EXEC XP_CMDSHELL 'net use P: /delete'
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How to Redirect non-www to www domains using Web.config

You can utilize the URL rewrite rules on web.config to redirect user’s requests that has no www to www for your domain name. below is an example of the rewrite rule that you need to inject into your web.config file (after enabling the URL Rewriting feature).

Note: Make sure to replace the domainname word in below XML with your actual site domain name

<rule name="Redirect to WWW" stopProcessing="true">
<match url=".*" />
<conditions>
<add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^http://domainname.com/$" />
</conditions>
<action type="Redirect" url="http://www.domainname.com/{R:0}"  redirectType="Permanent" />
</rule>
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Turn Off Outlook People Pane feature

I’m a user of outlook 2010; and I got annoyed of having the People Pane at the very bottom of each email I open. I don’t use this feature; actually I hate it as it is slowing down my outlook. So I decided to disable it, I found 2 ways to do it and I thought of sharing this with you:

First Method:

  1. On the outlook main window, click on View Tab at the ribbon
  2. Click on People Pane button
  3. From the mini menu that appear; you can select Off option to turn this feature OFF.

Second Method:

  1. On outlook main window, click File tab then select Options; you will get the options dialog box opened
  2. Select Add-Ins from the left hand side menu.
  3. Click GO button.. it is at the very bottom of the screen.. you will get a new dialog box opened
  4. Uncheck the checkbox near to “Microsoft Outlook Social Connector”, then click OK.

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Why to Setup Goals for your Employees

Setup goals for employees is critical for your business success and it will help you to get to the point where you vision your business at. You as a business owner should have vision of where you want to have your company at after specific period of time.. This vision should be translated to goals for different departments on the organization structure which in turn should be translated to be goals for each individual employees in the company.

As a company you have various set of goals that you need to achieve and you will not be able to achieve these goals without aligning your staff with you on these goals. One of the most effective way is to define set of goals for your staff. These goals needs to be aligned with the company overall goals and strategy. Which means more chances to achieve the company long and short term goals. From employee perspective, setting goals will motivate them, enhance employee’s knowledge as well as it will be easy for the company to measure individual achievements.

Effective employee’s goals should be very clear and understandable. The goal has to be measurable and attainable. If you setup the goals in the right way, then it will be win-win situation where employee and the company will be the winners at the end.

On the GigaGoals.com road map, we setup the needed features to support Manager-Employee relationship on Goals setup and assessments. We believe this will help Employers and Employee to setup Employee’s Goals in effective way.. stay tuned, we will release this feature very soon.

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What the Most Successful People do Everyday

Successful People Habits
Successful People Habits

The way you are starting your day has the major affect on your day. Habits and how you manage your day also has a major affect. I was researching how the most successful people start and manage their days and what they usually do to be very successfully.. it is obvious those people has 24 hours a day just like everybody else. it is all about how they manage their days and how they are getting into their targets. one of the articles that I read and I really like, was stating the big 9 habits that most successful people do everyday. it is as below:

1. Always keep their Goals in sights.

     Having the personal and work goals in front of you everyday will help you to stay focusing on what you are targeting to accomplish and thus helping you to get to the target goal. If you didn’t review your goals everyday, you will ended up forgetting about those goals as life is moving. thus it is strongly recommended by almost all of the successful people to keep your goal list in front of you and always think how you can accomplish these goals.

This is one of the reasons why we built GigaGoals.com. The main problem that GigaGoals trying to resolve is to make Goal Management easier and provide a platform that make this easier on everybody.

2. Writing down the To-Do list for the current day.

      Defining the To-Do list will help you stay focus and organize on your day.. I personally try it and I found myself getting things done in much organized way than before.

3. Rarely watch TV..

     Most of the most successful people watching TV for less than 1 hour a day. I believe watch TV is good but if you watch TV more than 1 hour is considered as a time wasting and you should be do better things during this time. your should be do more productive things in that time.

4. They love reading

     Rich people love reading, but that is not for fun… they usually reading about self-improvement and how to get their business to the next level.

5.  listening to audio Books.

      It is a nice thing to listen to an audio book while you are driving to work or back to home. this will help you to make this time as much productive  as you can. I love this idea.

6. They are doing more than what is their job required

       Most successful people always going extra miles over what is the job is required. They are not stopping at their job requirement limits and they are always looking for improvement and being in better position.

7. They are not hopping  to win the lottery games

       Successful people always taking risks and do whatever they can to mitigate that risk. They are not afraid from failure, actually they consider failures as a steps towards the success.

8. Watching what they are eating.

       Successful people take their health very serious and like to stay healthy and value their health. Well, if a person is healthy he will be very productive and can accomplish more things.. I would agree on this and recommend this to everybody who is targeting the success. You need to watch calories and make sure you are not over-weight. being over-weight

9. Care about their appearance

      They are take care of their appearance and smile.. recent study shows that the good appearance and good smile will make people give you their attention and thus you get where you are looking for.

Similar article: http://goo.gl/bimhpw

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How to be Positive and Release Negativity

Release Negativity and Be Positive
Positive attitude

Being under stressful life is something that everybody is facing from everyday.. that will lead to have you being negative person and look to every aspect of your life in very negative way.. but did you ever thought of how you can get rid of this negativity to be more positive… I read this nice article from entrepreneur.com site and I would recommend that article to you.. it is just listing 5 easy way that will help you release negativity and being more positive..

Basically you need to be gratitude, giver, controlling your breath, imagine the success that you will have and mediate then mediate the mediate.. mediation is a great thing to refresh your mind and change direction of how you are looking into things

I like this article and I’m hopping you will find it useful as well.. http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/230613 this article is written by Michael Jacobs

 

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How to Accomplish your Goals

Everyone has his own dreams that he/she always like to achieve and accomplish. Regardless of how big your dream is and how it is important to you to get it accomplished, we all procrastinating accomplishing our dreams. Without planning how to accomplish your dreams and break it down into small tasks it will never become real.

My personal advise to you is to write down your dreams down.. Convert those dreams into Goals (a goal should have some set of characteristics) and break down these goals into tasks and start taking actions immediately. Don’t ever never procrastinating accomplishing your dreams. Below are some advices of how to set your goals and go in the way to achieve them.

The set of goals that you will define needs to have the following characteristics:

1. S – Specific .
2. M – Measurable.
3. A – Action-Oriented.
4. R – Rewarding.
5. T – Track-able.

This is called SMART goals characteristics …. Whenever you are writing your goals, you have to think about the SMART goals.

Goals might be like “I would like to lose 10 KG of my weight in 3 months”. It is specific, you can measure it, and you can track it (3 months); also you can break it into action and your will be rewarded at the end.

When you define your set of goals, start asking yourself, what I can do to get this goal accomplished. This will define a set of actions to get his goal done. The most important rule is to make sure your goal has a deadline.. Don’t have it open not ended time line.

It is a good practice to brainstorm different ways to accomplish your goal. Don’t stick with a single way to do it, and try to think about different ways to do it. This will give you different options in case you get into a blocked road.

Always imagine yourself accomplishing the goal, and visualize how things will be after accomplishing this goal. If your goal to get a home, just start visualizing how is that home will looks like and where you want to have it.

My last advise is to is to always read inspiration stories and quotes; this will help to keep up your spirits which will help you to make progressing in your goals.

I found this article very useful, I would advise you to read it http://www.wikihow.com/Accomplish-a-Goal

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Send Emails From SQL Server in Tabular Format

You may face a case where you need to send an email with some summary information based on certain DB queries that you have in place. The best presentation of this is to present the data in tabular way in your email. In the past, to satisfy such a requirement you had to build your own .NET or Java code and write long algorithm to accomplish this. Which is a time consuming for such a small requirement… don’t agree?

Now you can send emails from SQL server in tabular format it in very easy way using SQL server mail feature. Within couple of lines of SQL statements you can send a very good looking email to your recipient list… below is a summary of steps of how you can do it:

  1. Build a temporary table on your DB to hold your result sent.
  2. Populate the temporary table with your summary data records.
  3. Do some sort of conversion to convert your table data into an XML.
  4. Build your HTML header and concatenate the result of step 3 into your body html tag
  5. Send the email using SQL server mail.

Below is a sample code to send emails from SQL server in tabular format, it is basically send a Sales count summery based on areas

CREATE TABLE #Temp
(
[Area] varchar(100)
[SaleCount] int
)
INSERT INTO #Temp
SELECT ‘San Diego’,500
UNION ALL
SELECT ‘Los Angeles’,100
UNION ALL
SELECT ‘Temecula’,10

DECLARE @xml NVARCHAR(MAX)
DECLARE @body NVARCHAR(MAX)

SET @xml = CAST(( SELECT [Area] AS 'td','',[ SaleCount] AS 'td',
FROM #Temp ORDER BY [Area]
FOR XML PATH('tr'), ELEMENTS ) AS NVARCHAR(MAX))

SET @body ='<html><body><H3>Sales Summary Report</H3>
<table border = 1>
<tr>
<th> Area </th> <th>Sales Count </th> </tr>'

SET @body = @body + @xml +'</table></body></html>'

EXEC msdb.dbo.sp_send_dbmail
@profile_name = ‘SQLProfileName’, -- replace with your SQL Database Mail Profile
@body = @body,
@body_format ='HTML',
@recipients = ‘admin@smartdigitizers.com’, -- replace with your email address
@subject = 'Sales Summary Report – Tabular Format ' ;
DROP TABLE #Temp