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Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 Review

Kyle — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 22:05:14 +0000

Many organizations are constantly looking to address their business needs with flexible and scalable applications. In most cases, the time and resources necessary to build those applications are not always available.

Here’s the solution: Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 has the potential to meet these business needs.

Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 is a flexible development tool that helps developers to rapidly develop polished and fantastic business applications for the desktop as well as the Cloud.

With an intuitive development environment, timesaving tools and templates, Visual Studio LightSwitch helps speed the development process. It also reduces the complexity from user-interface design to Windows Azure cloud deployment. LightSwitch is essential in the development of affordable, scalable custom software solutions that connect with existing applications, legacy systems and web services. It automatically handles the routine code and lets you focus on developing the custom logic that makes your application unique. It facilitates comprehensive and user friendly views of your business data.

Key Features of LightSwitch 2011

LightSwitch 2011 supports exporting data to Microsoft Office Excel for easy reporting.
The asynchronous data loading routines help in building load-responsive applications.
The built-in authentication models provide all the users with varying degrees of authorization and accessibility.
Automatic generation of administration console.
A simple and innate way of setting user roles and permissions.
The pre-built components and templates of LightSwitch 2011 are absolutely extensible.
LightSwitch 2011 ships with a set of Application Shells that gives a feel of popular Microsoft software.
It consists of predefined data types for commonly used fields like email addresses and phone numbers.

Major Benefits

You can easily enhance the functionality of LightSwitch application by adding extensions from third party vendors.
It is very easy to collect, analyze and reuse the content from various sources such as Microsoft SQL Azure, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft SharePoint, Oracle and other databases.
As LightSwitch 2011 handles the code, you can create user friendly business applications.
It helps in building the applications with built-in paging, filtering and sorting capabilities. This makes it easier in handling huge amounts of data.
The development environment simplifies all the phases of the development by providing assistance as and when required.
You can create custom business logic and rules that are unique to a particular business and the users.
You can change the behavior and appearance of an application by just changing one setting of shell and theme extensions.
With LightSwitch 2011, you can build applications that can be deployed to desktop clients, browser clients or through the Cloud. You can choose the deployment method according to your requirements.

As you create a new LightSwitch project, the only decision you need to make is whether to use Visual C# or Visual Basic. The projects are logically 3-tier applications and follow n-tier best practices. They also utilize Entity Framework and RIA services.

Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 is in stock at SoftwareMedia.com!

Article Contributor: Satish Kumar

Insperity: Ultimate Employer Professional Review

Dan — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:07:11 +0000

One of Insperity’s best selling products just got better with the addition of OrgPlus 9 Professional. With Ultimate Employer Pro you get all of the great Human Resources features of Ultimate Employer with the added visualization and organization software OrgPlus. Ultimate Employer Professional is the quintessential HR software.

The standard version of Ultimate Employer helps you streamline all of your HR-related tasks with Policies Now, Performance Now, Descriptions Now and People Manager.

Policies Now allows you to effectively and professionally communicate your organization’s values, culture and expectations. You will be able to create a valuable employee handbook with the easy to use features of Policies Now. Some of the features included are the Q&A process that allows you to consider important issues and customize your policies, along with the wizard that provides professional results by writing policies for you. It can publish in 11 different design layouts with either formal, informal or plain English and can be distributed online or in print. You can record and track policy changes and maintain up to six different handbooks.

Descriptions Now is a very user friendly software tool that provides fast and easy ways to hire more efficiently. Defining jobs is made simple with their library of thousands of jobs that is customizable with questions about specific requirements and responsibilities. The ad writer will then help you create effective ads based on the job descriptions and links to advertising gateways online to make posting jobs easier. Descriptions Now will even generate interview questions so that you can ask the right questions once you start hiring.

Performance Now helps you to quickly write in-depth employee performance reviews. This tool allows you to track and measure employee goals and log performance year-round and provide them with useful feedback. Performance categories allow you to choose which measures are relevant for each position that you are evaluating. Perfomance Now will develop a concise performance review based on the elements and ratings that you enter with a customizable form designer.

People Manager is a personnel manager that helps organize your employee’s tasks and information. You can view daily tasks assigned to employees and schedule reminders. People manager keeps track of important employee information and maintains accurate records. As with the other features of Ultimate Employer, you can access Human Resources advice and information.

Org Plus Professional is the new addition to Ultimate Employer Pro and provides an easy to use organizational chart program. With OrgPlus org charts are made easy with various templates and built-in reports. You can add HR metrics and model scenarios to the org chart to help with visualization. You can track changes and manage your workforce with automatic data importation and dynamic reports.

For a limited time all Insperity Software will be 15% off only at SoftwareMedia.com

SAP Crystal Dashboard Design 2011 – In Depth Review

Kyle — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 18:36:31 +0000

Bored with the same old, bland figures in your spread-sheets? Want to impress your clients with some extraordinary dashboards? The new era of business intelligence begins with SAP Crystal Dashboard Design 2011. Formerly known as Xcelsius Engage, Crystal Dashboard Design is a powerful tool which can generate eye-catching dashboards in a very short time.

The main benefit of SCDD is its embedded spread sheet and flash format output files. Just drag a component from component list, map it with the embedded sheet and a gorgeous dashboard is ready for your viewing. In addition to dashboard development, normal flash development can also be done, such as flash slide shows or some normal visualization effects for web pages.

Crystal Dashboard Design contains several different categories of templates which can help to develop various kinds of dashboards. If, for example, someone wants to create sales, finance or other category-related dashboards, they need only select a template from the list, enter their data and the dashboard is ready.

Crystal Dashboard Design boasts a wide variety of features and functionality, including various types of charts, grids, analytics with alerts, maps, text boxes, radio buttons, labels, image containers, panels and much more. In addition, if a user cannot find what they need in the included components, there are a number of third-party SCDD-supported components are available for download, many of which have insertion functionality with multiple options which are very useful in drill-down development.

The key element to any dashboard is presentation, and with Adobe Flash being the primary output format, the aesthetic benefits and capabilities of SAP Crystal Dashboard Design should be self-evident. SCDD comes equipped with ten different preset themes, each with its own effects and component looks and color schemes.

SAP Crystal Dashboard Design 2011 is a unique business intelligence tool that offers a multitude of features, utilities and functionality that will allow users to present their reports and spreadsheet data in a compelling, visually engaging medium. Advanced compatibility with Microsoft Excel and Live-Office connection make this product a must-have for any business professional.

Article Contributor: Nisarg Kothari

ABBYY PDF Transformer Review

Kyle — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 22:27:10 +0000

ABBYY PDF Transformer is a useful PDF (Portable Document Format) conversion and creation application that quickly and easily converts PDF files into editable file formats, while retaining the original layout and formatting. ABBYY is the most comprehensive solution for anyone working with PDF files including image-only PDF, text and image PDF and text under image, or searchable PDF. It can convert PDF files to Word, Excel, HTML and ASCII text and can also opens PDF files directly in Word and Excel for immediate editing.

In a very short time, you can create a PDF file directly from Microsoft Office applications. You can also combine a number of files from different directories into a single PDF file, or modify PDF files as per your needs. In addition you can add stamps and change your files into searchable as well as protected PDFs.

Key Benefits

Short file-conversion time
Support for over 180 languages
Exceptional integration with Microsoft Office
Versatile output formats
Extensive file format compatibility
Document accuracy and integrity retention
Excellent security for confidential or sensitive documents
Efficient and easy to use

PDF Transformer has the ability to analyze documents and then process them while preserving their logical organization, retaining the original text and columns, headers, fonts, footers, styles, footnotes and the numbered captions of tables and pictures. It also recognizes the fonts used in the original document and finds the most similar font from those installed on the computer.

ABBYY PDF Transformer uses a compression algorithm to produce smaller files while retaining maximum quality. You can also edit out unwanted texts or pictures before publishing a PDF document.

The file conversion process is quick and easy, giving accurate results. Its language recognition, document identification and protection functionalities, along with the ability to redact sensitive information make it one of the best PDF conversion tools. The software also has a number of features that help you combine, modify and secure your PDFs. Creating PDFs from scratch is also easy and gives impressive results but this functionality appears as a separate application on a separate user interface.

For anyone having any PDF requirements, AABBY PDF Transformer is the right software. It does a great job of converting, manipulating and creating PDFs.

ABBYY PDF Transformer is therefore a great PDF tool that is easy to use and gives great results. I would recommend it to anyone handling PDF files or anyone who wants to easily create a PDF file from scratch.

Article Contributor: Michael Gituko

ABBYY FineReader 11 User Review

Kyle — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 00:17:26 +0000

ABBYY FineReader is a useful, accurate, easy to use and intelligent tool that converts printed documents into digital formats. It can be used to convert scans, PDFs and digital photographs available in formats like jpeg, bmp and pdf into searchable and editable documents. It does this with very high accuracy and impressive layout retention.

You can also convert the input files into HTML documents, Excel and Word files, PDFs, image files and many other formats. This software -which is available for both Windows and Macintosh operating systems- makes working with scans, PDFs and digital photographs very easy and in just a few clicks you get wonderful results.

ABBYY FineReader also enables you to create searchable PDF documents ready for archiving from images and scans in addition to extracting text from documents, photos and other images. What’s more interesting about this software is that it allows you to edit data locked in any type of PDF file.

FineReader supports 171 languages including German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish and Russian.

ABBYY FineReader has an easy-to-use interface that makes working with the software convenient, simple and efficient regardless of the tasks you need to perform.

When you launch ABBY FineReader, a clean and attractive interface meets your eyes. You can choose to convert your file to a text document, a spreadsheet document, a HTML document or a searchable PDF from the task options on the interface with just a click.

Features & Benefits

A number of key features make this award-winning tool the best of its kind. Its Adaptive Document Recognition Technology analyzes the entire document and reproduces an editable and formatable file in a precise manner, retaining the original layout, style and formatting attributes. An enhanced Camera OCR (Optical Character Recognition) automatically identifies digital camera images and adjusts image distortion for best OCR results. The product comes with a QuickTasks automation to make your conversion not only easy, but fast and accurate.

The software extracts text from a large number of sources with impressive results, and should a section of text in a margin or in a box be accidentally incorporated into the main body, it can be easily separated. The application also has dictionaries for 36 languages to provide the best possible OCR and PDF conversion results in addition to recognizing multilingual documents written in up to three different languages.

Even when working with a relatively low-resolution photograph, the text recognition engine is still fast and extremely accurate with only a few errors creeping in here and there, and rarely at that. The ScreenReader tool makes it possible to extract text from sources that would otherwise be impossible to copy from.

AABBY FineReader’s unmatched accuracy and conversion capabilities eliminate retyping and reformatting in a big way and its one-click automated tasks let you do more in fewer steps.

The Camera OCR function allows you to take photos of documents which can then be converted to text. This comes in handy when encountering documents on the go, or when you want to scan large bound documents.

Options of retrieving text from a variety of sources and processing it into an editable format may be limited, but not if you have AABBY FineReader. Scanners are only able to give an image output which is not editable. FineReader allows you to capturetext from banners, posters and timetables and then extract the captured information. The process of data conversion takes little time and the final document looks just like the original.

FineReader Corporate Edition streamlines workflow and enables comprehensive network capabilities and cost-effective licensing options to meet all of your needs. These options include advanced privacy and security settings to protect information. A wide range of available formats are supported to easily send to applications or save to SharePoint. Cost-effective licenses are easily managed and supported by Terminal Server. Business card reader for Windows provides a simple way to move data from paper cards directly to Outlook or vCard format. Workgroup productivity tools support distributed document processing and centralized installation from a server onto workstations.

FineReader Professional Edition increases productivity by createing editable and searchable files from e-books, PDF’s and digital photographs. A user friendly interface increases efficiency and automated tasks can take over routine or complicated tasks. The convenient e-book creation allows for reading anywhere and can send to your Amazon Kindle account.The camera OCR feature provides mobile document collection anywhere, anytime. Image correction tools allow editing for color, contrast, blur, distortion, and brightness for amazing results.

Conclusion

AABBY FineReader is an accurate, easy to use, user-friendly and powerful utility which anyone can use without having to go through a user manual. The conversion of documents into editable text is impressive and convenient since the software supports a wide range of documents and file types.

Its multilingual language support and dictionary, add to its usefulness and it is these features that make AABBY FineReader stand out from the rest in the market.

A wide range of users could save a lot of time by using this software, from college students to office workers. AABBY FineReader is the best such utility there is.

Article contributor: Michael Gituko

Corel Painter 12 Mirror Painting – 60 Second Tutorial

Kyle — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 18:00:36 +0000

Corel Painter has long been known as the premier graphics software for realistic painting and illustration. Kyle, the resident animator and video geek here at SoftwareNewsDaily, has long been an unapologetic Corel Painter fanboy, and he has taken a little bit of time to show us the Mirror Painting Tool, one of the amazing new features available in Corel Painter 12.

Top Ten Best Antivirus for 2012

Kyle — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 12:34:11 +0000

As the new year approaches we are faced with the eventuality that some malicious jerks with knowledge of computer coding -and too much time on their hands- will invariably unleash upon the world ever more vicious and malignant viruses and malware to infect our computer systems.

Fortunately for us, there exists amidst this digital Black Plague an industry of software developers who work tirelessly to create new and more effective virus protection software in an effort to stem this seemingly unending tide of binary evil.

We firmly believe in the idea of an informed consumer, and therefore, the staff at SoftwareNewsDaily have scoured the interwebs for independent reviews, and compiled a list of the top ten best antivirus software for 2012.

10. Vipre Antivirus 4

A relative newcomer to the Antivirus software game, Vipre Antivirus 4 earns some serious points with its efficient, lightweight scanning engine. Unfortunately, while it may excel in efficiency, it seems to fall short of the mark when it comes to protections against phishing, spam and identity theft protection.

9. Avira Antivirus Premium

Equipped with a fine balance between protection and performance, this software is an excellent choice if you don’t mind over-protection (false positives). The Advanced Heuristics Analysis and Detection (AHeAD) system has a tendency to flag non-malware incorrectly.

8. Trend Micro Titanium Antivirus + 2012

Trend Micro’s recently revamped line of security software delivers fast, lightweight protection and utilizes cloud technology to provide real-time updates to your software. However, a lack of defense against spam and phishing make this product fall behind a few of its competitors.

7. McAffee Antivirus Plus 2012

McAfee has long been a household name in the realm of antivirus protection, so it is no surprise that they have made the top 10 list once again. McAfee earns more than a few gold stars for its exceptional protection against Viruses, Trojans, spyware and other threats, however its lack of password protection, and not-so-great defenses against keyloggers caused this program to lose some points.

6. AVG Antivirus 2012

Exceptional malware protection, continual updates, plus LinkScanner technology and Social Media Protection make this one of the best antivirus products available on the consumer market. However, that awesome protection power comes at the cost of speed.

5. ESET Nod32 Antivirus 5

Advanced diagostic tools, heuristic detection and little or no slowdown, this security program delivers powerful protection for a very good price. The main problem that consumers havefound is in the somewhat clunky, outdated user interface.

4. Webroot SecureAnywhere Antivirus 2012

A new, cloud-based approach from webroot delivers a fast, effective defense against many different types of malware, while using as few system resources as possible. The lightning-fast scans, minimal system resource consumption, automatic updates and free technical support brings this product almost to the top of the list.

3. Norton Antivirus 2012

Norton is back with their acclaimed antivirus software, ready to tackle yet another year’s worth of malware and viruses. With outstanding security, a light footprint and exceptional technical support, Norton Antivirus 2012 is one of our top recommendations.

2. Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2012

Kaspersky Anti-Virus delivers unbelievable virus and malware protection at -reportedly- a 100% success rate. Intelligent scanning of your system blocks threats before they get anywhere near your computer, and comprehensive, always up-to-date virus definitions ensure that you are always protected. The only drawback to this program is -possibly- the price tag.

1. BitDefender Antivirus Plus 2012

At the top of the leaderboard for the best antivirus of 2012 is BitDefender Antivirus Plus. This software features an unbeatable, award-winning combination of state-of-the-art virus and malwareprotections, social media defense, and comprehensive updates to ensure that your systems receive unparalleled protection, without breaking the bank. Some of the features included in 2012 that placed BitDefender ahead of its competition include the new Virtualized Browser, Rescue Mode and Scan Dispatcher.

Amazon Kindle Fire – the Tablet with a Twist

Justin — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 16:44:24 +0000

Amazon has just announced a whole new Kindle lineup. Now you can get your Kindle in multiple flavors: with a keyboard, with a 5-way controller, or with a multi-touch screen. However, the biggest announcement comes in the form of the new Kindle Fire: a 7-inch muti-touch screen tablet featuring Amazon Silk—a wicked fast cloud-accelerated web browser. What could be better than that? How about it costing under $200?

For a mere two hundred dollars, you may be thinking Amazon skimped on the hardware. That’s not the case at all. The Kindle Fire will come with 8GB internal storage, dual-core processor, and 16 million color high resolution display. Amazon Silk has the potential to be an amazing browser as well. However, many questions still exist on how HTTPS scripts will be handled as well as overall security of personal data on an external cloud server. Lastly, what happens should the Amazon Cloud go down? Will that mean I lose all access to my content? These are some of the questions Amazon has no-doubt asked themselves and I am confident they will have solid answers for each.

The original Kindle has been fundamental in making eBooks a mainstream part of the publishing industry and showed the world an online retailer can make their own quality hardware. The new Kindle Fire will take Amazon into the realm of full-function tablets. If the Kindle Fire proves half as successful as the original Kindle, it will be a game-changer in the tablet market. The Kindle Fire will be released on November 15, 2011. You can learn more about the Kindle Fire as well as pre-order one now!

Check back with SoftwareNewsDaily.com often for additional updates on the Kindle Fire as well as other exciting software and tech news.

Windows 8 Developer Preview – WOW!

Justin — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 22:31:56 +0000

Microsoft has a new slogan to go with their upcoming operating system: “Windows reimagined.” After watching Steven Sinofsky’s keynote address at the BUILD developer conference held last week, all I can say is “WOW!”

During the address, viewers got to witness Windows 8 in action (an early developer build, anyway). If Microsoft did nothing else to improve Windows 8 and launched this developer build tomorrow, it would probably be an instant success. If you’ve ever used the Windows Phone 7, the UI will be very familiar. The live tiles are back, and better than ever. Very modern and sleek, the interface provides the user with all their important apps, photos, and more within a simple swipe or tap of the finger. Not a fan of the billboard-style flood of information? Windows 8 is fully customizable to mimic the more static Windows 7 design.

Whatever your choice of layout may be, one of the greatest feats the Windows team has accomplished is what happens behind the scene. Windows 7 is powerful but also requires a lot of power to run smoothly. Windows 8 boasts the same power and performance with a fraction of the resource gulping. “So what?” you may ask. “My iPad runs smoother than a greased up baby sliding down a butter slide on the back of a wet seal.” Ahh, but iOS isn’t a full operating system. You can’t just run the same full-blown Apple apps on your iPad. A Windows 8 tablet, however, will be able to run all the same apps a Windows desktop can.

Many other features can be seen in the full BUILD conference Keynote address. Also, it’s still very early in the development stage, and Microsoft is sure to have several surprise features up their sleeve. For those who are a little more daring and merely watching someone play around with new technology isn’t exciting enough, Windows has released the Windows 8 developer preview for the public to download and try out first-hand. I can’t wait to download it myself!

QuarkXPress 9 New Features

Justin — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 16:38:50 +0000

Quark introduced QuarkXPress in 1987; delivering exactitude typography, layout, and color organize to the desktop computer and varying the approach community design and publish around the world. Since then, more than three million professional and casual designers have used QuarkXPress to bring their creative visions to life. Their mission for more than two decades has been to enable designers both formally trained and self-taught to fulfill their creative visions in any medium using a single, intuitive program.

QuarkXPress 9 is also available to digital devices such as Smartphone and tablets. Since Quark developed QuarkXPress especially for the task of page layout and design, designers believe right at home with QuarkXPress, with trouble-free access to the tools, palettes, and keyboard shortcuts they require to make and modify their designs.

QuarkXPress 9 Overview:

Design and publishing have been altered without end by the mounting status of e-readers, the quick acceptance of Smartphone, and the seductive interactivity of the iPad. So far early on digital publishing conversations have paying attention on technical development, sidelining designers. QuarkXPress 9 continues to set the designer at the hub of the creative process, openhanded designers the power to design for and publish straight to Windows Smartphone, the iPhone, iPads, and other digital devices. Joint with designer driven automation and latest features that amplifier up efficiency, QuarkXPress 9 is the most dependable print design and publishing tool. It is currently the easiest, most dominant tool for digital design and publishing.

What’s New in QuarkXPress 9?

Conditional Styles	Without human intervention style content based on powerful styling rules.
Bullets and Numbering	Take control of lists and outlines with bullet, numbering, and outline styles.
Callouts	Boxes and groups move automatically with text.
Shape Make	Effortlessly create exclusive shapes.
Image Grid	Import and repeatedly construct picture galleries
Linkster	Unlink and relink text boxes without overflow.
Story Editor	Correct copy in a word-processor like outlook.
Cloner	The smartest and mainly well-organized way to clone design essentials.
XlsX Import	Import XLSX files.
Style sheets	Apply style sheets without affect local formatting.
Table creation	Automatically split anchored tables to flow across several pages with repeating headers and footers.
Digital Design and Publishing	QuarkXPress 9 opens a entire new world of digital design and publishing to you in one implement, with one recognizable interface at one sound price without requiring coding or programming.
App Studio for QuarkXPress	(Create the vital Mobile understanding) Make your individual iPad apps with App Studio for QuarkXPress, then publish and organize your own interactive publications.
Export to ePUB	(knock Into the exploding ebook promote) Transfer your QuarkXPress layouts into uniform e-books for the iPad, Sony Reader, NOOK, and additional.
Design for Blio eReader	(Get Rich, Interactive Design to the ebook bazaar) Create interactive content for the Blio eReader the majority easy to get to and versatile e-reader on the market. Then put up for sale it during the Blio online bookstore.

Features & Benefits of QuarkXPress 9

Design environment for mobile apps	Modify your individual iPad app, then generate or alter content issues and sell them throughout the App Store.
Blio eReader export	Build or switch content for export in rich Blio eReader layout, together with interactivity and slide shows.
Shape Maker	Easily create unique shapes.
Image Grid	Import and automatically build grids of images.
Linkster	Unlink and relink text boxes without overflow.
Cloner	The smartest and mainly well-organized method to clone design fundamentals.
Be taught once for compound channels	Use a single product with a single set of tools, commands, and keyboard shortcuts to produce output for print, Web, SWF (Flash), and digital devices.
Smart scaling	Control every portion of scaling with a keen palette.
Guide Manager	Dedicated palette makes guide managing effortless.
Great step and replicate	Generate various copies with modifiable shade, scale, and skew.
Custom kerning and tracking tables	Create your hold kerning and tracking tables, so you don’t include to kern manually.
Entirely customizable and handy Hanging characters	As an alternative of just spinning hanging characters on and off, run every feature of each character you desire to hang up.
Font fallback	QuarkXPress smartly substitutes a well-matched font for each absent font so in its place of boxes, you observe characters.
Grid styles (Lock Baseline)	Simply apply different grids to pages and boxes with a dedicated Grid Styles palette.
Hot-swappable user boundary languages	Transform the complete user interface from one language to another by choosing an item from a menu.
Create scripted behaviors	Without complexity put together scripts for interactive layouts with a drop-down-menu-based authoring system.
Highly developed Photoshop import	Maneuver Photoshop layers and blend modes right there in the layout.
Output styles	Create reusable output settings for different devices and goals.
Job Jackets	Deal with resources within workgroups, evaluate layouts against rule sets, and set up jobs to fit output requirements.
Layout spaces	Store numerous layouts in the similar file even layouts for print, Web, interactive, and digital device output and distribute resources among them.
Coordinated content	Synchronize text, pictures, and formatting connecting layouts, and even between project files.
Composition Zones	Allow many users to work on the similar layout at the same time.

Farhan contributed to this article