Software News Daily

Adobe Acrobat X – Buy Six & Save 25%

Dan — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:57:22 +0000

For a limited time only, Adobe Acrobat X Professional and Acrobat X Standard are 25% off when you buy six licenses. The Adobe Transactional Licensing Program (TLP) is running a 20% off promotion, but here at SoftwareMedia.com we’re upping the ante by 5%, so you can save even more.

Adobe Acrobat X Standard lets you create and share PDF’s with ease and reliability. With X Standard you get PDF file conversion, which allows for simple conversion from the Microsoft Office suites, as well as Firefox and Lotus Notes, and then back to PDF. You can also easily scan documents, creating PDFs that can be edited and searched.

Adobe Acrobat X Pro has all the same features as X Standard with advanced applications. Acrobat X Pro comes with a Adobe LiveCycle, which can automate multistage tasks with the Action Wizard. You will be able to organize your PDF portfolios with corporate logos and branding and be able to permanently delete sensitive info with the redaction and sanitization capabilities.

Start the creation and collaboration of professional-looking PDF’s with the only PDF software that helps defend your security and mitigate risk. This promotion will be running from February 1, 2012 through July 31, 2012, so be sure to take advantage of the great savings before it’s too late.

To learn more information on the differences between Standard and Professional check out our article Adobe Acrobat X Standard vs Professional.

Atomic Training – Award Winning E-Learning Solutions

Kyle — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 20:27:27 +0000

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.

Groundhog Day Sale!

Kyle — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:54:09 +0000

As winter slowly draws to a close, the nation -hopeful for an early spring- turns its collective eyes to the most trusted meteorologist the world has ever known: Punxsutawney Phil (sorry, Roker). For generations, Phil, like some wizened, soothsaying sciurid of yore, has predicted the end of winter and the onset of seasons that we don’t hate.

Unfortunately, Phil, the Nostradamus of the Animal Kingdom, has seen his shadow, foretelling another six grueling weeks of snow and ice.

There’s no need to fret, however, because SoftwareMedia.com is having a special promotion in honor of our prophetic, furry friend: today only, use promo code GROUNDHOG and get $10* off at SoftwareMedia.

*Valid only on 2/2/2012. Limit one (1) per customer. Valid on orders of $40 or more.

Symantec Fast Forward (Backup Exec) Promotion Extended through February

Lisa — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:27:29 +0000

Symantec just announced today that their Fast Forward Promotion has been extended through the end of this month. If you own a previous version of Backup Exec now is the time to upgrade.

The 2 Year Upgrade Essential Support skus are on sale, enabling you to save over 50% off the purchase price of an upgrade sku plus enabling you to the most current and latest features. Because this entitles you to 2 years of regular updates and upgrades, you can insure that your systems and products are current with the latest version of Backup Exec, even if a new version is released during that 2 year term.

See qualifying Backup Exec software on sale

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 – First Look

Kyle — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:43:38 +0000

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

Last Chance to Save Over 70% on Upgrading to Backup Exec 2010 (and 2012 once released)

Lisa — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 23:58:51 +0000

Important Note: This has been extended until February 29th, 2012

Tomorrow (Jan 31st, 2012) is the last day of Symantec’s Fast Forward & Save promotion. Save over 70% off Backup Exec 2010 upgrade skus when purchasing 2 year Essential Support. This offer is applicable to existing Symantec Backup Exec customers and is a great (and inexpensive) way to remain updated with the latest in security at an unbelievable price. When you purchase Symantec’s skus with Essential support, this entitles you to free upgrades to any new versions that come out during your support period. In other words, if you upgrade now you’ll receive 2010 now plus all the features of 2012 once that is released (for free).

When you bring your business’s backup and recovery software up to date with Backup Exec 2010, you immediately get access to the latest features, such as:

V-Ray for VMware and Hyper-V
Backup Exec 2010 with V-Ray technology now provides visibility across both physical and virtual servers, as well as into the virtual machine and applications for more efficient backup and recovery.
Integrated Deduplication
Integrated source or target deduplication optimizes bandwidth utilization when backing up to data centers, reducing storage capacity requirements dramatically.

See qualifying Backup Exec skus for more information. Or to request a quote, call our Symantec-certified experts at 1-800-1045 ext. 3

Hurry! This deal ends tomorrow, January 31st!

H&R Block Tax Software Just Reduced!

Lisa — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:01:52 +0000

We just got a great deal on some of our tax software. H&R Block At Home Deluxe 2011 has been reduced to only $29 ($44.95 on H&R Block’s website). This includes 5 federal programs and 1 personal state program. Additional personal states are $36.95 each and if you choose to e-file it is $19.95 extra for each state e-file used. We recommend e-filing so you can get your refund sooner and to ensure better accuracy. State programs are required for those who have investments such as owning a home or owning stocks, bonds or mutual funds.

These software programs make it super easy to do your taxes yourself, and you don’t need an accounting background to figure it out. These products guide you through every step of the way and are up to date with all the latest tax laws so you don’t need to worry about a thing.

Is your New Years Resolution to save money? Then start 2012 off right with Quicken 2012 so you can keep track of all your checking, savings, credit card, loan, investments, and retirement accounts in one place. Set reminders so you don’t miss payments and create customized goals and budgets to make sure you stay on track over the next year. And when tax time comes around next year, all you have to do is import your data into H&R Block Software and voila! See more info on Quicken Software.

Still have questions on tax software? Check out our Tax Filing Guide.

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

Microsoft Word 2010 Ribbon Tutorial

Kyle — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:30:06 +0000

In this Microsoft Word 2010 tutorial, Kyle gives us an introductory look at the “Ribbon” that has replaced the traditional toolbar in Microsoft Office.

Video Transcript

Hello and welcome back to SoftwareMedia TV. My name is Kyle, and today I’m going to be taking you through a quick, introductory look at Microsoft Word.

One of the biggest changes that you’re going to notice between Word 2003 and Word 2010 is what’s called the “Ribbon.” Now, instead of having drop-down menus like file, edit, window… you’re going to have various tabs that include all of your formatting and tools, right here for quick access.

So, first of all, is the File tab. This is where you’re going to do all of your saving, opening of documents, closing, info, recent documents that you’ve worked on, creating new documents, printing, and your help option is in here, too.

Next, you’ve got your Home tab. This is probably the most commonly used tab. It incorporates all of the text formatting. So all of your fonts, font sizes, text format, strike-throughs, changing the sizes, colors, paragraph formatting… everything like that is going to be here on the Home tab.

Next, you have got the Insert tab. This is where you are going to put in your pictures… that’s my dog Riley. This is where you can insert pictures, clip art, hyperlinks, bookmarks, cross-referencing, headers, footers… everything like that will be done in the Insert tab.

Then, you’ve got Page Layout. This is where you can put in page colors. You can adjust the margins, page orientation (whether it’s landscape or portrait), page size, columns, line breaks, watermarks. Everything is done in the Page Layout tab.

Then References. You can add text, update tables, table of contents, you can insert footnotes and endnotes, insert captions, insert your citations and bibliography, all in the References tab.

Then you have your Mailings tab. Now this tab helps you to create documents when sending out mailings like printing out envelopes, labels, processing mail merges. You can set your recipients. You can do it all through Outlook as well.

Next you’ve got your Review tab. This is where you’re going to find SpellCheck, researching, word count, translating… it’s really cool that you can translate right here in Word, and not have to copy and paste into Google Translate.

And then you’ve got your View tab, which is where you’re going to change the way you’re looking at your document. You can zoom in and out, you can set it to one or two pages, you can adjust your page width, you can open new windows, you can set macros. This is all done in View.

So, that is the Ribbon in Microsoft Word 2010. In our next tutorial we are going to look at getting started, so stay tuned here at SoftwareMedia.com

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