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Learning to use a software application can sometimes seem like an overwhelming task. Some people spend years learning the ins and outs of the various software suites required for their profession. Well, we have some good news: learning how to use your software doesn’t have to be a time-intensive, mind-bending endeavor.

Atomic Training has been providing high-quality, award-winning e-learning solutions for more than a decade to over 16 million users in 45 countries.  With Atomic Training’s online Help Desk Solution, your company can reduce training costs and enhance employee productivity. Atomic Training’s fully integrated online training platform provides an easy-to-use search interface allowing employees to quickly find answers to their software questions.

No matter what industry your company is in, Atomic Training  has software tutorials to meet your training needs. Some companies, such as graphic design firms or those with graphics-intensive creative departments, will benefit from products such as Adobe Creative Suite Training, wherein users will learn to utilize the full range of features and tools for such programs as Flash Professional, InDesign, Dreameweaver and Photoshop. Companies with a predominantly (or entirely) Macintosh workflow will greatly benefit from Mac OS X Training, while a corporate office environment may find Microsoft Office Training to be the most useful. Whatever your training needs, Atomic Training has the know-how and tutorial resources to meet them.

Many companies employ multiple departments, each with their own software and training needs. For those who require access to training for multiple software applications, the Atomic Training All-Access Subscription is probably the best option.

With the Atomic Training All-Access Pass, your employees gain access to Atomic Training’s entire tutorial library, with unlimited 24/7 availability. With more than 50 thousand software tutorial lessons for such industry standards as Microsoft Office, Skype, Google Services, Adobe Creative Suites, Dragon NaturallySpeaking, AutoCAD,  your employees can find the exact training they need, on demand. Don’t let software slow your company down. Provide the right kind of training today.

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Microsoft announced that SQL Server 2012 will be released in the first half of 2012 in three versions: Standard (for basic database and reporting capabilities), Business Intelligence (a new version providing premium corporate and self-service BI) and Enterprise (for large scale data warehousing and mission critical applications). Microsoft is holding a “virtual launch event” for SQL Server 2012 on March 7, 2012.

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 is a significant product release that provides mission critical confidence with greater uptime, blazing-fast performance and enhanced security features.

SQL Server 2012 is a cloud-ready information platform that helps organizations unlock breakthrough insights with pervasive data discovery across their organization.

SQL Server 2012 Enhancements & New Features

 Availability

 For protecting application databases, SQL Server 2012 introduces the AlwaysOn SQL Server Failover Cluster Instances and AlwaysOn Availability Groups feature.

 AlwaysOn SQL Server Failover Clusters:

• A multi-subnet failover cluster provides a disaster recovery solution in addition to high availability.
• The improved failure detection and addition of failure condition level property lets you configure a more flexible failover policy.
• The indirect checkpoints feature provides a database specific alternative to automatic checkpoints that are configured by a server property.  

AlwaysOn Availability Groups:

• An availability group is a container that defines a set user databases (availability databases) to fail over as a single unit. It defines a set of availability replicas to host copies of each user database.
• It also provides a rich set of options that improve resource usage.

Manageability

Manageability of SQL Server 2012 is improved by enhancements to tools and monitoring features.

• The Database Engine Query Editor introduces enhanced functionality for Transact-SQL debugging and IntelliSense.
• Point-in-time restore has improved by the addition of a visual timeline.
• Restore plan algorithm has improved and a lot of edge cases are dealt more efficiently than in previous versions.
• Data tier applications now support many more objects than in SQL Server 2008 R2.
• The new Windows PowerShell 2.0 feature loads SQL Server components into a PowerShell environment.

Programmability 

Programmability enhancements include FileTables, statistical semantic search, ad-hoc query paging, support for sequence objects and numerous improvements to Transact-SQL.

• You can now store files and documents in special tables in SQL Server.  You can access them from Windows applications as if they were stored in the file system, without making changes to the Windows applications.
• Semantic search enables new scenarios that extend beyond syntactical keyword searches. Semantic search lets you query the meaning of a document.
• You can specify a range of rows returned by a SELECT statement based on row offset and row count values that you provide.
• A sequence object generates a sequence of numeric values according to the specification with which the sequence was created. Here the sequence numbers are not restricted.
• The THROW statement can be used to raise an exception and transfer the control to a CATCH block of a TRY-CATCH construct.
• The OVER clause has been extended to support window functions.

Scalability & Performance 

Scalability and performance enhancements in the Database Engine include columnstore indexes.

• The columnstore index improves data warehouse query performance by hundreds to thousands of times and can routinely give a tenfold speedup for a wide range of decision support queries.
• This allows end users to get more business value from their data.
• As columnstore indexes can eliminate the need of pre-built aggregates, IT workers can reduce the development costs and ETL times.

Security

Security enhancements include new SEARCH PROPERTY LIST permissions and new user-defined server roles.

• New GRANT, REVOKE, and DENY permissions are available to a SEARCH PROPERTY LIST.
• To manage user-defined server roles and to add and remove members from all server roles, CREATE SERVER ROLE, ALTER SERVER ROLE, and DROP SERVER ROLE are available.

Key Benefits

• The new MDS Add-in for Excel helps end users to manage and maintain central data.
• Create and scale business solutions from server to cloud.
• Provide complete view across business data through integration, cleansing and management.
• Reduce complexity and accelerate time to solution through SQL Server appliances and cloud offerings.
• Ensure peace of mind with premier services and support, and free access to software service packs.

The upcoming release of Microsoft SQL Server 2012 promises to further protect the infrastructure of an organization, especially for mission critical workloads. As you bet on Microsoft, you get more than a trusted platform. You also get a trusted business partner as well as a trusted ecosystem of experienced vendors.

Article Contributor: Satish Kumar

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Continue reading »]]> SoftwareMedia.com is now carrying Intego Mac Antivirus and Security software! 

The Internet is rife with dangers: from viruses and malware that can infect and delete files, to hackers and vandals who can infiltrate computers. Mac users have special security needs, and Intego has been working to protect them from the dangers of the Internet for more than ten years. Founded in 1997, Intego is the only company focusing solely on Mac security. With a full range of products to protect Macs, Intego makes the Internet a safer place for Mac users.

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Continue reading »]]> Back in November 2011 Adobe announced that you would need the most recent versions of Creative Suite, 5 or 5.5, in order to upgrade to CS6. This policy meant that if you had an older version, such as CS3 or CS4, you would need to upgrade to CS5 or CS5.5, which could run you anywhere from $400 – $1000, and then have to pay a fee to upgrade again to CS6 once it comes out. When Adobe announced this in November they offered a 20% off promotion till the end of the year for upgrades to CS5.5.

Here at SoftwareMedia.com we felt the pain of being forced to upgrade and dropped our CS5.5 upgrade prices even lower than Adobe’s advertised discount and now include a free gift with purchase. Late December, in an attempt to give customers a break, Adobe announced their 20% off promotion would continue until March 15th. But this plan still wasn’t satisfactory with customers and, most likely due to the overwhelmingly negative response, there was a change of heart over at Adobe.

Fortunately, Adobe has revised their upgrade policy once again. For a limited time customers will be able to upgrade to CS6 from versions going back to CS3, reverting to the previous “3 versions back” upgrade policy. So, if you have CS3 or CS4 you will no longer have to upgrade to CS5 or CS5.5 before upgrading to CS6 when it is released. But, this offer is scheduled to be a special introductory price only.

This special upgrade policy will be in effect from the release of CS6 until December 31st, 2012.

This change in upgrade pricing will hopefully allow industry professionals to stay on top of their game with all the new features in CS6, without breaking the bank. But, as we mentioned before, the previous policy wasn’t unanimously disagreed with. Some argued that encouraging people to stay up to date will make collaboration easier among teams by avoiding the headache of sharing files with older versions. In any case, creative professionals will now have more flexibility with upgrading older versions or upgrading to CS6 once it comes out. We’ll have to wait and see what Adobe does with later versions but we’ll keep you updated if Adobe releases any information.

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Continue reading »]]> What happens when an unstoppable force collides with an immovable object? Physicists worldwide agree it’s the same thing that happens when SoftwareMedia teams up with Simply Mac: Pure Awesomeness!

Simply Mac’s roots trace back to 2006, when they decided that buying Apple products isn’t merely a exchange of currency for goods or services, but rather an experience; a way of life. The folks at Simply Mac are true fanatics when it comes to Apple products and SoftwareMedia has teamed up with them to provide our customers with a wide selection of Apple products and accessories to please any Apple Fan. Buy iPad cases, iPod chargers and more!

Visit our Simply Mac category at SoftwareMedia.com to find the best prices on Apple accessories and be sure to check back often to see what’s new in stock. If there is a product you’re looking for that you don’t see on our site, let us know and we’ll send our team of reconnaissance ninjas out to locate the item and get it.

Also, for a limited time, order any Simply Mac product on SoftwareMedia.com and get a free 2GB flash drive. Use promo code: SIMPLYAWESOME at checkout. Limit one per customer. While supplies last.

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SAP Crystal Reports software is a trusted name in reporting. Since 1993, developers and authors have been using Crystal Reports to create flexible and dynamic reports from virtually any data source. Crystal Reports provides comprehensive tools to generate specialized reports and deliver actionable information to all the stakeholders. Crystal Reports 2011 builds on powerful features of Crystal Reports 2008 and provides certain new features to the report designers and application developers.

 New Features:

 The new Read-Only format

 This feature helps in protecting your investments and securing your intellectual property within your reports.

• By leveraging the new read-only report format, you can protect the investments made in the design of your reports. This is useful for standalone report designers and application developers who want to distribute their reports without worrying about them being modified after distribution.

• You can export the reports to the read-only report format (RPTR) from SAP Crystal Reports 2011.

• This feature ensures that your reports cannot be opened inside the SAP Crystal Reports designer. The reports can only be accessed from the viewer.

Exporting reports to the Excel 2007 workbook

 This feature is useful in exporting your reports to the Microsoft Excel 2007 workbook format from either the designer or the viewer.

•  Export your reports to the new Microsoft Open XML Excel format that allows for smaller overall Excel files via the Office 2007 compression technology.

• Leverage the new XSLX format to export up to 1 million rows from a Crystal Report

• You can export to a Microsoft Excel 2007 (XLSX) workbook from a Crystal Report through the designer or the viewer.

Build applications with Crystal Reports for Visual Studio

With this feature you can continue to build custom applications that embed Crystal Reports content using Crystal Reports for Visual Studio.

• Integration of the Crystal Reports with Visual Studio has been developed as a separate product from the core Crystal Reports product. It is available as a separate download which is installed on top of Visual Studio. This allows SAP to better serve the needs of the Visual Studio developer market and ensures that we have the flexibility to deliver the features that developers find valuable.

Windows 7 Compatible

• Windows 7 compatible – SAP Crystal Reports software 2011 is certified compatible with Microsoft Windows 7.

Essential Features:

 Flash Integration

A variety of flexible data presentation options are available through Flash. Flash (SWF) files can be integrated into your report and report data can be shared with SWF via FlashVars for interactive and information rich reports. SWF files can quickly be embedded in the report or linked via a Web site, saving IT and development time. You can create dazzling visualizations by adding dynamic charts and video files to your reports.

 Broad Data Connectivity

Connect to information sources spread across the organization directly. Data sources include: Native, ODBC, OLE DB, and JDBC connectivity to relational, OLAP, web services, XML and enterprise data sources.

 Built-in Barcode Support

Generate barcodes with a few clicks of the mouse by using the new ‘turn to barcode’ function in the context menu. Easily convert fields to Code39 barcodes without any coding or extra steps. This saves design time and reduces your cost. Additional barcode fonts are also available from third-party vendors.

 Hyperlinking wizard

By using this wizard, report designers can save time by automatically creating the SAP Crystal Reports formula required to invoke SAP BusinessObjects Enterprise ‘opendocument’ hyperlink.

 Extensile Pagination

This feature facilitates better online report viewing to the end users. Designers can customize page size and easily control page breaking after n records/groups. A single report can combine portrait and landscape oriented pages. White spaces at the end of groups can be eliminated by compressing the page footers.

 Multilingual Reporting

You can choose your preferred working language by just selecting the language packs you would like to use during your Crystal Reports installation. The report content locale can be set explicitly for each report file. This setting controls sorting and formatting that matches the conventions of the local language.

Satish contributed to this article.

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Can I deduct Blackjack as a business loss?

Update: SoftwareMedia.com has put together a comprehensive Tax Filing Guide, in order to help you determine the best way for you to prepare and file your 201 tax return.

Tax season is just around the corner, and unless you have your own personal accountant, or Rain Man’s knack for numbers, you’re probably going to need some help.

We are happy to announce that you are not alone. With the forboding shadow of the IRS collectors looming on the horizon, SoftwareMedia.com is here with the latest editions of your most trusted tax software.

Get TurboTax or H&R Block at Home for your personal, business or corporate tax needs, and get the biggest refund possible, along with other awesome features like audit protection, guaranteed accurate calculations, and free federal e-files.

Just check out the Tax Software available at SoftwareMedia.com.

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