September 25, 2007
Bill Gates will now be answering to your questions. He is unreachable and will be replying to some of the selected questions from NEWSWEEK readers in this exclusive Web forum.
Here is the report: Ask Gates
He’s impressive, he’s inspirational—and for most people, he’s unreachable. But Gates has agreed to take questions from NEWSWEEK readers in this exclusive Web forum. Please submit your questions by Sept. 28; we’ll publish the answers to selected questions on Oct. 10.
Click here to send your question to Gates
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September 25, 2007
Today as I was just going through my emails, I came across 2 mails that would make anyone excited. The sender promises to share millions of dollars. Read them here:
From: alice dennis <alicedenniskamokai_3@hotmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 25, 2007 4:21:31 AM
Subject: Strictly Confidential
STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL.
FROM: MRS ALICE KAMOKAI
TELL : + 27-73-038-41-03
PRIVATE EMAIL ADRESS
ALICEDENNISKAMOKAI O_O@YAHOO.COM
ATTN: CEO/DIRECTOR
Compliments of the day. I am writing to you with much respect and honour to this letter, which must remain private and confidential. I know my roposal will come to you as a surprise since you do not precisely know me. Anyway, my mind accepted you and I believe that this proposal will bring mutual benefit for both of us.
Let me use this medium to introduce myself to you, I am MRS ALICE KAMOKAI , the wife of Alhaji Mustapha KAMOKAI, the former chairman of Diamond National Mining Co-operation and once the Director of Works and Housing before his untimely death. My Husband associated himself with coup plotters that ousted the government of Ahmed Tijan Kabbah on the 25th of May 1997 and was executed including ten (10) others. As a result of his death and uncontrollable war in my country, Sierra Leone, my children and I decided to seek asylum in South Africa where my Husband had deposited US 7.5m (Seven Million five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars) for us.
We now want to use this money for investment in your Country since we do not have anybody to assist us. Therefore, I am asking for your urgent assistance to forward this money into your country using very Confidential and reliable means in which I will offer you 30% of the total amount for your king assistance. However, This money is safely kept in a Security Company before my husband death under disguise as precious items and nobody has any slight knowledge of what is inside the box deposited with the Security Company. In other words, there is no risk involved and so not hesitate to ask questions where necessary.
All the documents covering the deposition of the money with the Security Company are intact with me. For more information, please contact my son DENNIS on the above phone number and do well to provide me with your private phone numbers for security reasons. I am looking forward to hear from you immediately you receive this latter.
Best regards,
MRS ALICE KAMOKAI.
MR DENIS MY SON
FOR THE FAMILY
and this Email:
From: Marlene Smith. <nettimeclaims26@hotmail.com>
To: nettimeclaims26@hotmail.com
Sent: Monday, September 24, 2007 8:21:57 AM
Subject: Congratulations, you won a lottery.
NET TIME LOTTERY
UNIT 7 VILLAGE BLUES
NO. 4 ZUMA CRESCENT
GAUTENG PROVINCE.
FROM: THE DESK OF THE PROMOTIONS MANAGER, INTERNATIONAL PROMOTIONS/PRIZE AWARD DEPARTMENT,
REF: NET/3651246008/07
BATCH: 21/0012/OKO
RE: AWARD NOTIFICATION
ATTENTION:
Be informed that you have emerged a winner of our Lottery International Program that was drawn three days from the day of this notice.
Attached to ticket number 6,13,23,47,64 BONUS NO: 80 with serial Number 3113-04 matched the winning numbers 6,13,23,47,64 BONUS NO: 80 and consequently won our Net Online International lottery in the 3rd category.
Approved is a lump sum of One Million Two hundred Thousand Euro(1,200,000 Euro)in cash prize accredited to file REF NO. NET/3651246008/07 that should be released to you. This is from the total prize money of (18,000,000 Euro) shared among the fifteen International winners in this category. Participants were selected through a referral program and winners were picked by a computer ballot system drawn from 25,000 names from Australia, New Zealand, America,Asia,Europe,Africa and North America as part our International Promotions Program. Participants are selected from individuals all over the world that do register on the Internet daily. This draw automatically qualifies you for our end of the year International Grand draw of (100,000,000 Euro) that will take place by the end of the year. Due to the mix up of some numbers and names, we ask that you keep this award strictly from public notice until your claim has been processed and your money released to you.
To begin your claim, please contact the Claims department:
THOMAS MAZIBUKO
(Claims Manager)
Phone: +27837535119
Email: claimsc@gmail.com
NB: Prizes must be claimed not later than 8 working days. After these stipulated days, all funds will be returned as unclaimed prizes and will channeled for charity. In order to avoid unnecessary delays and complications, please remember to quote your winning reference batch numbers in every one of your correspondences with the claims officer. Congratulations and thank you for being part of our International promotions program.
Sincerely Yours,
Marlene Smith.
(NET TIME PROMOTIONS DIRECTOR)
This reminded me of a friend of mine who recently narrated me a story that he received such an email but luckily matters have not gone far ahead. As I know, he too is a smart guy enough to not shell out a single penny for this reason and was just responding for the sake of watching the fun on how that goes on. It’s fine as far as you know it’s a scam and is really much important that you know should never entertain such mails and they deserve a space in you SPAM folder.
These mails are actually operated by the Nigerian scammers. Such scams are called advance fee fraud or 419 fraud as per the Section 419 of the Nigerian Penal code.
So how do they operate?
- This scam usually begins with a form-letter e-mail sent to many target recipients making an offer that will purportedly result in a large payoff for the intended victim. (Just like the one above.)
- Many operations are professionally organized in Nigeria, with offices, working fax numbers, and often contacts at government offices.
- However, many scammers are part of less organized gangs or are operating independently; but are still convincing to middle-class individuals and small businesses, and can bilk hundreds of thousands of dollars from such victims.
- If the victim agrees to the deal, the other side will first send several documents bearing official government stamps, seals etc.
- They then introduce a delay or monetary hurdle that prevents the deal from occurring as planned, such as: “In order to transmit the money, we need to bribe a bank official. Could you help us with a loan?” or “In order for you to be allowed to be a party to the transaction, you need to have holdings at a Nigerian bank of $100,000 or more” or similar.
- More delays and more additional costs are added.
- In any case, the promised money transfer never happens. The money or gold does not exist and the victim then realizes this.
- The spam e-mails perpetrating these scams are often sent from Internet cafes equipped with satellite Internet.
- Scammers often request that payments be made using a wire transfer service like Western Union. Reason being that wire transfers and similar methods of payment are irreversible, untraceable and, because identification beyond knowledge of the details of the transaction is often not required, completely anonymous.
You can find more on this information in detail here and here. LaTimes had a good article on this and also here are many such stories happening everyday.
Some must read email conversations on Scam-O-Rama. 1 , 2 , and more. And the Checklist.
So next time you get any such email, you know what is to be done. Just do not entertain them. Never respond to them and just mark them to spam.
Few facts need to be considered on winning a Lottery:
- They don’t notify winners by email.
- You can’t win without first buying a lottery ticket.
- They don’t randomly select email addresses to award prizes to.
- They don’t use free email accounts (Yahoo, Hotmail, etc) to communicate with you.
- They don’t tell you to call a mobile phone number.
- They don’t tell you to keep your winnings secret.
- They will never ask a winner to pay any fees to receive a prize!
In case you want to take some action against this, here are the tips.
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September 24, 2007
INDIA WINs the First Twenty20 World Cup Finals beating Pakistan by 5 runs.
What a game this has been. Went right down to the wire. Can’t ask for more from a grand final. The crowd erupts as the Indian support staff, coaching staff and remaining squad members charge onto the field.
The Indian players do a lap of honour as the Indian flags in the stands are waved. The players go towards the stands and pick up a couple of flags … almost every one has a flag now as they do a lap around the ground.
The celebrations are still on as the Indians run around on the outfield. Disappointment for Pakistan but they’ve put in a real good show here. Misbah held his cool till the end, only making one mistake, trying to be a bit too cute in the end.
The organisers bring the trophy out onto the field as the Indians and Pakistanis congratulate each other. A brief moment of calm and the Indians are again celebrating on the outfield. Dhoni gives his shirt away to a young fan and is walking around bare-chested as Malcolm Speed, the ICC chief executive, comes around to offer his congratulations.
Match Statistics:
Over comparison
Final: India v Pakistan at Johannesburg, Sep 24, 2007
| Fall of wickets1-2 (Mohammad Hafeez, 0.5 ov), 2-26 (Kamran Akmal, 2.3 ov), 3-53 (Imran Nazir, 5.4 ov), 4-65 (Younis Khan, 8.3 ov), 5-76 (Shoaib Malik, 11.3 ov), 6-77 (Shahid Afridi, 11.4 ov), 7-104 (Yasir Arafat, 15.6 ov), 8-138 (Sohail Tanvir, 17.6 ov), 9-141 (Umar Gul, 18.5 ov), 10-152 (Misbah-ul-Haq, 19.3 ov) |
Toss India, who chose to bat first
Series India won the 2007/08 ICC World Twenty20
Twenty20 Int. debut YK Pathan (India)
Player of the match IK Pathan (India)
Player of the series Shahid Afridi (Pakistan)
Umpires MR Benson (England) and SJA Taufel (Australia)
TV umpire DJ Harper (Australia)
Match referee RS Madugalle (Sri Lanka)
Reserve umpire BR Doctrove (West Indies) |
 |
Match notes |
- India innings
- Restricted Overs (0-6) : India 40/2 (G Gambhir 14*, Yuvraj Singh 0*)
- India: 50 runs in 7.4 overs (49 balls), Extras 3
- G Gambhir: 50 off 38 balls (6 x 4, 1 x 6)
- 3rd Wicket: 50 runs in 40 balls (G Gambhir 37, Yuvraj Singh 11, Ex 2)
- India: 100 runs in 13.1 overs (83 balls), Extras 5
- India: 150 runs in 19.2 overs (121 balls), Extras 6
- Innings Break: India - 157/5 in 20.0 overs (RP Sharma 30, IK Pathan 3)
- Pakistan innings
- Pakistan: 50 runs in 5.3 overs (35 balls), Extras 4
- Restricted Overs (0-6) : Pakistan 53/3 (Younis Khan 15*, Shoaib Malik 0*)
- Pakistan: 100 runs in 15.3 overs (97 balls), Extras 6
- Pakistan: 150 runs in 19.2 overs (123 balls), Extras 12
- Twenty20 International Scorers: S Raju and Binoy George
At the Presentation:
Shoaib Malik “First of all I’d like to thank people back home and the Muslims around the world. We gave our 100%,” he says. “India have a strong batting line-up. We did well to restrict them to less than 160 but our batting didn’t come through. The Indians bowled really well and we played some bad shots. That’s why we ended up on the losing side in this game.”
The Man of the Match award goes to Irfan Pathan who says: “It’s a great comeback for me. I held my nerve and bowled in the right areas. The pitch was a bit on the slower side. It gripped a bit when I bowled slower balls. I tried to mix up the pace and keep things tight. In the end it could have gone any way. The bowlers all did really well when Misbah was batting well. We played as a team and we won.”
The Player of the Tournament award goes to Shahid Afridi who says: “Winning and losing is part of it. But we played really good cricket. Congratulations to the Indian captain and the whole team. I struggled a bit with my batting but I concentrated on my bowling.”
Mahendra Singh Dhoni “It’s one of the things I will treasure for the rest of my life. I’d like to congratulate the boys and thank them for the response they have given me. No-one expected us to win and the way we played today we deserve a big celebration. Pakistan bowled really well today in the second half. But we knew we had runs on the board and we could bring some pressure on the batsmen. Bhajji was not 100% sure of getting yorkers in the death. I thought I should throw the ball to someone who really wants to well in international cricket. Jogi did a really good job.”
The fireworks go off and the Indians celebrate wildly on the podium. New has just come in that the Board of Control for Cricket in India has announced a bonus of US$ 2 million for the team and a bonus of Rs 1 crore to Yuvraj Singh for his achievement of hitting six sixes in one over.
Information Source: CricInfo
My Final words: What a close match that was… Can a World Cup Final be better than this?
This now gets added to my list of the Important Events in India
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September 17, 2007
With increase in the number of data that we store which may be your personal videos, photos, movies, music, and files; we have been looking out for a better option to find a better storage solution to upload, store, access, and share them. With computer hard drives becoming so large and reliable you would think that the need for remote storage was redundant. But they are actually a part of necessity. We all create data and need to store and share them. With increase in the data by the way how we download the video or music from Internet of transfer from our camcorders, cameras, mobile phone to the documents that we create which are most valuable and those memorable pictures that we term priceless, are stored on our computer hard disk which results to pile up and fill our disk space. But what when we face a hard disk crash and have all our data lost in a swap? Oh! few of us take an offline backup on CD or DVD. What when we face a natural disaster? This is when we search for an online data storage solution that should be private and secure. From sending a document to backing up your entire business data, there are numerous options for online storage / data transfer services available on the Internet. Some paid… Some free… Here I have compiled a list of few of the services available for FREE online.
The best part of having an online storage is that, you can access from ANY computer from any part of the world and use a secure web based interface. Moreover, you have your data safe. However, I wont suggest you not to just go for an attractive service that is provided free. Look at the company’s past services and the credibility and then take the step if you are backing up your huge data. Else, they are better for a temporary file storage / data transfer. Also they are not recommended to backup business data.
Few services may demand to register for free. That would be filling up a registration form and email verification etc.
Few of them delete your account within some specified days in case of inactivity. So do read all the terms and conditions before signing up.
1GB or more:
FileHo Unlimited
Badongo Unlimited
MediaMaster Unlimited only for Media files
Mp3Tunes Unlimited only for Media files
ShareNow Unlimited only for Media files
BooMP3 Unlimited only for Audio files
MongoFiles Unlimited
DirectTransfer FreeFTP
Megaupload 50GB
MediaMax 25GB
BOXSTr 10GB
Orbitfiles 6GB
MyDataBus 5GB
Xdrive 5GB
MyOtherDrive 5GB of Media files and 1 GB of files
Jumbodir 2GB
Mofile 1GB
File123 1GB
Omnidrive 1GB
Steekr 1GB
Yuntaa 1GB
WOOfiles 1GB
MyFabrik 1GB
Ewedrive 1GB
4shared 1GB
BoxCloud 1GB
YouSwap 1GB
Tilefile 1GB
Send6 Size not determined
DivShare Size not determined
Exaroom Size not determined
In.solit.us Size not determined
500MB to 1GB:
zUpload 500MB
FileNanny 500MB
Bigupload 500MB
BigFileHost 500MB
Driveway 500MB
250MB to 500MB:
QuickSharing 500MB
ShareBigFile 500MB
FileFactory 300MB
Sendspace 300MB
DropSend 250MB
QwikShare 250MB
FilePanda 200MB
100MB to 250MB:
JustUpIt 120MB
Mediafire 100MB
RapidShare 100MB
TagAndFile 100MB
Arunalabs 100MB
Jagbox 100MB
MailBigFile 100MB
Sharebee 100MB
YouSendIt 100MB
BigFilebox 100MB
Less than 100MB:
FileDEN 50MB
Localhostr 50MB
Pandafile 10MB
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September 16, 2007
Yahoo! has launched it’s new social networking site called Yahoo! Mash. This is currently in private beta and requires invitation to join. This is the day 3 and I have been just exploring it for the last 2 days. Glad to have got the invite on Day 1.
Yahoo! had earlier started their social networking site Yahoo! 360 and after which there have been strong competition with several other social networking sites which gets really tough since users would not be joining all the social networking unless they find some really value added and something new. Recently after Yahoo! failed to acquire Facebook - the second largest social networking (1st being MySpace) site to Microsoft, and to have it launched before Google launches it’s Social Stream project.
Y! Mash so called as the next generation social networking site looks like a combination of MySpace, Facebook, My Yahoo!, and Yahoo! 360. You have the widget concept as you do in Facebook and can also edit your friend’s profile in case they have left the option open for you to edit being semi-wiki concept.
Once you get the invite and accept it, you re first asked if you are fine with the profile that your friend has created for you. You may create your all new profile if you feel. There are 3 options: “Yes’ I’ll keep it”,”Create New”, “Delete this Page”. By deleting the page, If you select “Delete this page”, you can either select “Delete”, “Cancel” or “Delete and Opt-Out”. If you select “Delete”, you will delete the profile created for you. If you select “Delete and Opt-Out”, Mash will never be able to send email invites to that email address again.
It has a “What others are doing” section which gives you the brief details on what your friends are doing with their profile, what have they changed, tagged, removed etc… and similarly with your profile. The “Pulse” section gives you a detailed description. This is the same as you view in Facebook under the “News Feed” section and “Updates from your friends” on Orkut. To be frank, FaceBook has a neat way to display it. May be we will also have to explore it with Y! Mash if we can rearrange them.
Under the settings section you can manage your preferences on Who can see your profile?, Who can edit your profile?, Who can post on your guest book?, manage notifications, Emails, managing users / blocking, etc… There is another setting called Simple URL. When you get your profile, you get an ugly URL to your profile using the profile ID like http://mash.yahoo.com/profile.php?id=KVrJLu5j2yVViv5f3O2K. Using the Simple URL, I have now activated it as http://mash.yahoo.com/ashwinkini. Simple to remember now isn’t it?
There is a Shout box called as “blurt” where you can add announcements to your Profile page and a “guest book” where you can post a message. The guest book is just as a Scrapbook on Orkut and The Wall on FaceBook.
The My Stuff section is a good handy module that allows you to interact with your friends, paste HTML snippets, that may be a YouTube Video, Flash Games, Flickr Photos, or any other interative content you may want to share.
You can customize your Mash profile with some basic HTML editing through the Module Gallery and can also Style your profile with the excellent new feature to edit CSS. You can have your creativity displayed with the CSS editing - no HTML needed. The CSS feature was originally started by MySpace which now even Yahoo! has adopted. This will surely keep it an edge above other social networking sites.
Now here’s an interesting thing that is introduced. You have a pet born along with your profile called Mash Pet. This comes by default when you claim your profile. You can treat your pet in the following ways: feed, pet, mash, snorgle, lick, smack, poke, zap, kill, hunger. You have to treat it like your real pet so that it won’t die. Nice way to have you visit your profile alive too.. as if you don’t frequently visit your profile, your pet may die. So keep it alive, keep visiting your profile and treat your pet. 
This is also a nice way to express your mood to your friends visiting your profile.
Here’s my say to Y! mash: Good way to start all new instead of improvising on the Yahoo! 360. The question now being that after a lot of users getting addicted or used to Facebook and Orkut, would the world now go Mashing? Atleast not so soon for me. Let’s find out as we use it. If you need an invite to Y! Mash, please leave you e-mail id in the comment section and I will send it across to you.
Get updates from Yahoo! Mash blog.
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September 14, 2007
Three weeks back, Google had launched Google Sky, a detailed satellite imagery of galaxies on Google Earth that gave people a chance to explore the sky from their desktop. You also may have explored Google Mars. They have now re-launched another site called “Google Moon” which is a composition of images from six missions of Apollo Space program from 1963 to 1972 and some sophisticated geological charts.
Google LatLong Blog reports:
This update brings higher-resolution map imagery, text search, and photos and stories from every Apollo landing. We even included Street View-style panoramas of the moon’s surface, taken by the Apollo astronauts … something you won’t see anywhere else. And last but certainly not least, we tossed in scientific charts that are good enough for actual mission planning and science classrooms alike. Check out the about page for more info on all of these features.
With this, now all I can say is Google proves it’s focus from apart from thinking globally, they now have moved a step even further with showing things out of this world to the users.
Feel yourself on the Moon and find out more about Google Moon.
Also just as an information - back in 2004 as an April Fool’s Joke, Google had posted their job opening at the Google Copernicus Center. That stated as follows:
Google is interviewing candidates for engineering positions at our lunar hosting and research center, opening late in the spring of 2007. This unique opportunity is available only to highly-qualified individuals who are willing to relocate for an extended period of time, are in top physical condition and are capable of surviving with limited access to such modern conveniences as soy low-fat lattes, The Sopranos and a steady supply of oxygen.
Steven W. Squyres, an astronomy professor at Cornell University and the principal investigator for science payload for NASA’s ongoing rover mission to Mars, said the Lunar X Prize was a great idea. “I hope somebody wins it, I really do,” he said.
MercuryNews further reports.
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September 13, 2007
Microsoft has recently launched a website called Real Live Moms from Windows Live that offers a space for moms to create a personalized space and network with other moms.
In Short, here is a list of few stuffs that Real Live Moms from Windows Live can let moms do:
- Create a scrapbook slide show, blogs using Windows Live Spaces, favorites lists, and more…
- Chat on Windows Live Messenger
- Email with Windows Live Mail
- Find local parks (for the kids) and day spas (for mom) using Live Search Maps
- Learn how to and share photos, videos, design print-free business cards
- Read helpful parenting tips
- Get tips for creating a personal space within the Live network
- Find fun mom-centric gadgets to add to your space
Now, it’s up to the niche audience, the moms to give their verdict. Whether to go and cry or make the best use over the initiative. Looking at how Microsoft is coming up with all the initiatives recently with integrating all the Windows Live services that we can also find from their recently launched Windows Live Unified Installer, they are going a great way ahead in competition to the Google pack.
Get more updates in the RealLiveMoms Spaces
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September 9, 2007
Do you get a spam of telemarketers calling you up on your mobile phone and disturbing you each time for home loans, credit cards, or any services for a petty commission? Here is an initiative by which you can now have a STOP to this by blocking them to dial your number. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has started the National Do Not Call Registry of India (NDNC Registry). Any mobile or landline subscriber who does not wish to receive telemarketing calls, can request their telephone number be included in the NDNC Registry. Here is the process how that works:
-Any Mobile or landline subscriber who does not wish to receive telemarketing calls, can request their telephone number be included in the NDNC Registry. Such request are sent through their telecom service providers which will be stored in National Do Not Call Registry.
-This registry will contain a database of all telephone numbers of the subscribers who have applied not to receive any unsolicited messages or phone calls.
-Telephone subscriber (land line or mobile) who does not wish to receive UCC, can register their telephone number with their telecom service provider for inclusion in the NDNC. Requests may be sent via Letter, phone, SMS or on-line.
-Telecom Service Provider then uploads the telephone number to the NDNC within 45 days of receipt.
-The Telemarketer will then have to verify their calling telephone numbers list with the NDNC registry before making a call.
In order to discourage the telemarketers who make calls to numbers registered in Do Not Call list still incase you get calls, following is the fine as prescribed:
First Call: Amount of Rs 500/- per call/message.
Second Call: Fine of Rs 1000/-
Third Call: Telemarketer will face disconnection of telecom service.
The details of the call centre number/SMS number on which the registration can be done are being given on the websites of respective service providers. However, there is another website that is a hoax and just for generating website called http://www.ndncregistry.com/ but please note the official website is http://ndncregistry.gov.in/
Recently I read about an another such unique service called Bankaro which is on Invitation basis which I now do not feel any need for subscribing through them.
Here are some of the forms of the respective Mobile and Telecom companies. So choose your service provider and submit the form:
| Aircel Chennai | Aircel - Tamilnadu | Bharti Airtel | BPL Mobile | Hutch | Idea Cellular | MTNL Delhi | MTNL Mumbai | Reliance Mobile | Tata Indicom Mobile | Spice Telecom Punjab | Spice Telecom Karnataka |
|
|
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Posted in India 4 Comments »
September 9, 2007
Microsoft has now joined the free language translation services on the web. They have now launched the Windows Live Translator (beta) that allows you to translate between the following languages: English, German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and Russian.
You can either translate text of upto 500 words of a whole website. But we will get more options on the other major players already in market, Google Language Tools or AltaVista - Bable Fish (now Yahoo!) . However, you could find several other services already supporting the Microsoft Office applications. All of them use the Systran technology. But Google also has their own In-House built translation application which you can switch over to.
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September 7, 2007
The wait is over. I have been blogging about the Virtualization products by Microsoft and also got some ready reference. I also mentioned about the long awaited Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (code named “Carmine”). Now it is finally here. Microsoft has officially announced the release of SCVMM through their Virtualization Team Blog.
There are 4 announcements made:
1. SCVMM released
Here are some of the interesting details of the release:
- Throughout the release we have had over 32 TAP (Technology Adoption Partners) customers and 10 partners which have been testing, giving great feedback and creating solutions with the beta versions of SCVMM
- Microsoft’s own internal IT group has been managing 100% of their virtual environment (86 physical hosts running 1224 VMs) in production with SCVMM since Beta2 with no (that is zero) impact on their SLAs
- To date we have over 20,678 public beta users of SCVMM
- SCVMM is available in 9 different languages
In addition here are some quotes from our Beta and TAP customers:
· “VMM came through for us “Big Time”, I would have been doing this for many hours, 5 min opposed to many hours, what more can I say! VMM was the only reason I got sleep last night!”
· “We hadn’t used System Center software before, but we found it fairly easy to move from Linux to Virtual Server and adopt Virtual Machine Manager because VMM is so well designed and easy to administer.”
· “Virtual Machine Manager handles so many tedious, yet critical, VM infrastructure tasks. It makes VM management so easy, we’re ecstatic.”
· “System Center Virtual Machine Manager provides us with many important benefits. Its centralized management and sophisticated provisioning capabilities make it so much easier for us to manage and enhance our virtual infrastructure.”
2. Pricing / Licensing of SCVMM
The System Center Management Suite Enterprise license which gives you everything you need to manage you virtual environment at a very reasonable price of $860 per physical host.
You get:
- System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 license
- Enterprise server management licenses for System Center Configuration Manager 2007, System Center Operations Manager 2007 and System Center Data Protection Manager 2007.
One key thing to note – the license is on the physical host and includes unlimited VMs running on that host.
3. SCVMM 2007 Workgroup Edition
This edition is aimed at mid-market customers and allows them to manage up to five physical host servers and an unlimited number of virtual machines. The only restriction in the software is the number of physical hosts you can manage (5) but everything else is full functionality. The System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 Workgroup edition will be priced at $499 and will be available in January 2008.
4. Future Roadmap of SCVMM
Next release is planned to coincide with the release of Windows Server Virtualization (codename Viridian)
Will be adding support for non-Windows virtualization environments – specifically VMWare and Xen
From a single console and a single command-line you will be able manage Virtual Server, Viridian, VMWare and Xen
Some of the resources that may interest you:
A 120-days trial of SCVMM 2007 Workgroup edition will be available here shortly.
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