Windows 10 Technical Preview deep-dive: A promise of better things to come

So far, Microsoft's next-gen operating system is looking good.

It's been nearly a week since Microsoft announced that it will follow Windows 8.1 with Windows 10 -- and released its Technical Preview so that those interested could take a first look at the new operating system. Since then I've been exploring the new OS, alongside the sparse documentation Microsoft has released.

Much of the under-the-hood kernel level work has been done; the Preview is a tool for Microsoft to understand how to bring its next-generation Windows to its desktop users. That's an important problem for the Windows team to solve before the new OS is released in mid-2015. Some enterprise customers are still moving from Windows XP to Windows 7, so Microsoft needs to put in place an upgrade path from Windows 7 to this new version. It needs, as Terry Myerson, Microsoft's executive vice president of operating systems, said in San Francisco, "to feel like going from a Prius to a Tesla" -- without having to learn to drive all over again.

There are actually two versions of the Windows 10 Technical Preview. The Technical Preview that most people are referring to is aimed at individual enthusiast users or SMBs and can be downloaded from the preview.windows.com site. An Enterprise Preview for volume licensing customers is available from the TechNet evaluation center.

(If you're planning on evaluating an entire Windows 10 infrastructure, there are also technical previews for the enterprise-directed Windows Server and the System Center management suite, which can be downloaded at Technet.)

While this review focuses on the Technical Preview, as it's the release that most users will explore, I tried out both releases. There's very little difference between the two at this point, with the Enterprise Preview adding security and networking features on a par with the current Windows 8.1 Enterprise releases.

As test machines, I used a Surface Pro 2 running Windows 8.1 (which I used to examine update scenarios) and a series of Hyper-V virtual machines (which I used to test clean installs). In both cases, I found the installation process quick and easy.

I created USB installation media from Microsoft's ISO downloads. It's a surprisingly forgiving installer: One of my test machines was mistakenly set up with the Technical Preview release rather than Enterprise, and I was able to install Enterprise over the top of Technical Preview without having to reset the test PC between installs.

One thing is clear: This is a first cut at the Windows 10 desktop experience and so naturally it is more than a little rough around the edges. This should be kept in mind.
User experience

With all the disparagement of Windows 8's user interface, this was clearly the area that was going to get the most focus from testers. That's not surprising: Windows 8 was a break from several generations of Windows user experience. Windows 10 steps back into more familiar territory.

Much of the criticism of Windows 8 focused on the separation between its two UI models, with desktop apps and Windows Store apps running in separate containers. Windows 8.1 started to blend the two ways of working, but Windows 10 finishes the job, mixing the two on the familiar Windows desktop.

The most obvious change in Windows 10 is the return of the Start Menu. As shown at the Build 14 conference last April, it's a mix of the Windows 8 Live Tiles with the familiar Windows 7-style menu -- one right next to the other.

The Start Menu is back, in a hybrid of the familiar Windows 7 Start Menu (jumplists and all) and the Windows 8 Start Screen, complete with Live Tiles.

Working with the new Start Menu is easy enough: To launch it, all I had to do was click on the Windows logo in the corner of the desktop. Like the Windows 7 Start menu, it has a hierarchical list of apps and support for Jump Lists (which, oddly, fly out and replace the Live Tile section of the Start Menu). I was able to drag to adjust its height and add Live Tiles and pin apps to adjust the width.

I'm still of two minds about the new Start Menu, though. It works well on a keyboard and mouse device, but Microsoft does seem to have made some odd decisions. For one thing, it doesn't support the ability to group tiles that would make the Start Screen easier to navigate. Instead, I was presented with a long string of tiles with no way of choosing how they're displayed. Of course, this is still a preliminary UI, but right now it seems a bit strange, especially with the work done in recent Windows Phone builds that add features like collapsible groupings of tiles.

Tablet users will need to wait for the 2015 Consumer Preview to see the new Windows Phone-like touch UI that was teased in a couple of slides at the launch event. There's also a planned Continuum experience for two-in-one devices that will switch from a tablet UI to a desktop UI when in keyboard mode. I'll be looking forward to trying that out, as one of its target devices, the Surface Pro 3, has quickly become my day-to-day PC.

One thing to note: If, like me, you do an upgrade Windows 10 install on a Windows 8.1 touch PC, you'll keep the original Start Screen. It's easy enough to switch between the two user interface modes -- though if you've filled a start screen with Live Tiles you're going to get a very wide Start Menu, as all your Live Tiles will be on the new Start Menu. Mine ended up scrolling off the side of the screen on the test Surface Pro 2.

Microsoft has stepped back from the immersive model for its WinRT-powered Windows Store apps. They can still run full screen, but the default is a new windowed mode. This lets Windows Store apps run alongside desktop apps, in fully resizable windows with familiar controls.
Windows 10 Windows Store apps Simon Bisson

Windows Store apps now run on the Windows desktop, in their own fully resizable and snappable windows, alongside existing Windows desktop apps.

There's also a new set of controls on the top left of the window that duplicates the old Windows 8 touch controls and charms. One option gives access to any app commands, while others replace the old swipe-able charms bar -- with the addition of print and project buttons.

It's clear that these controls are still experimental. They're very small on a high resolution screen and don't work at all well with touch. Even so, it's interesting to see how Microsoft is thinking of delivering its new controls to a mostly desktop audience.

The Windows 8 charms bar is in this build of Windows 10; on a touch-screen device I could still swipe from the right to access the Windows 8 charms. Microsoft spokespeople were clear that this was only for the Technical Preview release, and that they were still considering how to change this behaviour. One change is already in place: Swiping from the left brings up the Win-Tab task switcher rather than the fiddly Windows 8 task view, which let me tap and swipe a carousel of my active apps and manage my virtual desktops.

Oddly, the menu bar for Windows Store apps is a couple of pixels bigger than that for a desktop app. I found it to be a disconcerting mismatch, especially when I was tiling windows using Windows 10's new quadrant snap feature (see below). Yes, this is an early look at the OS, but when Microsoft is talking about how design-led the Windows development process is, it's somewhat incongruous.

If you prefer to use Windows from a command line (after all, the good old DOS commands are still there!), Microsoft has finally updated its Windows console with a set of experimental features. There's now support for the same Ctrl-key shortcuts as the rest of Windows (at last!), along with the option of having a translucent console. I found that the same options are also available for the PowerShell console, something that should make IT administrators' lives just that little bit easier.
A new snap mode

Windows 8's snap mode let me choose how to display two (or more on higher-resolution screens) Windows Store apps. It was closely related to the similar desktop Aero snap mode introduced with Windows 7. Windows 10 brings the two approaches together with a new quadrant snap mode.

The new quadrant snap feature in Windows 10 helps arrange app windows, both desktop and Windows Store, to take advantage of monitor screen real estate.

Quadrant snap simplifies the process of snapping more than one app to a screen. Once you drag an app to a corner, it snaps to fill half the screen, and a new snap assistant displays the remaining apps so that you can snap another, if you want. Drag a third app into a screen corner and Windows 10 rearranges the windows to create a vertical division between that app and another (with the option to pick and snap a fourth app). Quadrant view with four apps really requires a large screen to work well.

Currently, Windows Store apps will only snap to half the display -- they don't support quadrant snapping. That means I was able to snap two desktop apps in the upper and lower half of the screen, while a Windows Store app occupied either the left or the right side.

Like the current Windows snap tools, Microsoft offers keyboard shortcuts, adding Win-Up Arrow and Win-Down Arrow for snapping apps to the top or bottom of the screen (joining Win-Left Arrow and Win-Right Arrow for snapping them to either side). Once done, I could adjust the width and height of the snapped windows to get the optimum layout for the task at hand.

The new snap features are useful, but a little odd at first. It takes some time to get used to them, and I found myself regularly disconcerted by the differences between Windows Store and desktop apps. The two should work identically, and it's somewhat jarring to realise they don't.

I also miss the ability to snap Windows Store apps to one side of a desktop, a Windows 8.1 feature that proved surprisingly useful with Twitter apps and with Microsoft's OneNote. While I understand that Microsoft is yet to deliver the full Windows 10 UI, it's odd to find something that feels it should be a step forward instead appears to be a step back.
Virtual desktops

Way back in the mists of time, Microsoft offered a series of Powertoys, apps that in many cases have now become Windows features. Among them was a Virtual Desktop manager that let you set up four different virtual desktops that you could use to manage your workspace -- for example, segregating personal apps from your work apps. (Vista users will remember those used for the Flip 3D task switcher.) These virtual desktops are now part of Windows 10, controlled from the Win-Tab task switcher keystroke or from the new task switch icon on the Windows taskbar.

Windows 10 Win-Tab Simon Bisson
The Windows 10 task switcher now has a carousel of large live app views, and also lets you switch between virtual desktops – and create new workspaces.

It's easy enough to create a new Virtual Desktop: Just click the + symbol at the bottom of the task switcher window. Apps can be launched as usual from the Start Menu or from pinned taskbar icons; Microsoft has added a set of visual cues to help locate running apps, with a small rectangle under an active app icon on the taskbar showing that the app is running in another virtual desktop.
Windows 10 Taskbar Simon Bisson

Apps running on another virtual desktop are highlighted by a small bar under the app icon on the taskbar.

Virtual desktops share the same wallpaper as other desktops, and don't persist between reboots. If users are going to get the most from this approach, then Microsoft is going to have to provide a tool that lets you build multi-desktop environments that are ready to go from boot. I'm expecting to use the tool to keep mail and IM away from the screen where I'm writing in order to reduce distractions.
A universal approach to development

It's clear that Microsoft still sees its WinRT development model as the way forward for Windows. That's not surprising: By offering a sandboxed operating environment with contracts that allow apps to work together, it's much more secure than the familiar Win32 APIs. (Introduced in Windows 8, contracts enable WinRT apps to communicate, even when they've been developed by different companies and have no direct links.)

At the launch event, Microsoft's Myerson and Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president, operating systems group, talked a lot about Universal Windows apps, a new generation of Windows Store apps based on the tools introduced at Build 2014.

Universal apps are Microsoft's latest solution to the old problem of how you can deliver code that runs on Windows desktops, tablets, phones -- and, according to Myerson, on Internet of Things devices and game consoles. Instead of working on a write-once, run-everywhere system, Universal apps let you build a common core of business logic that can be wrapped in an appropriate user interface for a device. It's a sensible approach, and combined with Microsoft's relationship with cross-platform development system Xamarin, also means that apps can be delivered to iOS and Android as well.


I'm expecting to hear a lot about Universal apps between now and Windows 10's release. They're the next wave of Windows Store apps -- and with the new APIs that are being delivered with Windows 10, look likely to finally offer the same capabilities as the more mature Win32. Microsoft is starting to position Universal apps as a significant differentiation between its development platforms and its competitors' tooling, and with a single store for Universal apps, it has a key way to help developers monetise their apps.

There are certainly a lot more WinRT namespaces in the new release; while Microsoft isn't intending to focus on Windows 10 developers until its next Build event in April 2015, there's plenty here for developers to explore. Many of the new namespaces are focused on productivity and information management scenarios, which points to more shared code in future Windows Phone releases. Apple's Continuity lets information flow from phone to tablet to PC, and from an exploration of the WinRT namespace, it looks as though Windows 10 will be able to offer something similar.

Programmatic access to contacts, to email and to messaging makes a lot of sense in a multi-device world, and giving WinRT the tools to do this goes a long way toward encouraging developers to work with Microsoft's new programming model.

Microsoft is clearly targeting enterprise users with this latest version of Windows. While many of the underlying enterprise features rely on a new release of both Windows Server and the System Center management suite (and the cloud Intune service), there's a lot that's being done to ensure that enterprise concerns with Windows 8 won't be issues in Windows 10.

One key concern is the use of Microsoft Accounts for the Windows Store. While Microsoft hasn't described how the Windows 10 store will operate, a now-deleted blog post detailed how it would use Azure Active Directory accounts as an alternative authentication model and would also allow IT departments to curate their own store experiences. I'd expect Microsoft to announce how this feature will operate in conjunction with the 2015 release of key Windows management tools, alongside new Azure AD features.

Then there's the separation of personal and business information on devices (especially Windows tablets in BYOD scenarios). I talked to senior Microsoft spokespeople at the Windows 10 event in San Francisco, exploring how a new container model would allow secure partitioning of work and personal data. Work apps would get access to the work container and information in one container can't be copied to another -- even via cut and paste. Some apps, like Office, will be what Microsoft calls "enlightened" -- able to work in both contexts while still keeping information under control.

The Windows 10 Technical Preview is most definitely a very early release, and it's still hard to judge exactly what shape the final product will take. As alpha releases go -- and the Technical Preview is very much an alpha -- it's stable and familiar.

I've now installed it as both an upgrade and VM installs, with no problems. I'm not yet ready to run it as a production OS -- that's likely to wait until the Consumer Preview, when we'll get a better picture of the final OS. Until then, what we've currently got is a Windows 10 that still looks very much like Windows 8.1, with elements of a new UI and a new set of APIs.

Many of the key new features, like the containerised separation of user and corporate data, aren't yet accessible, as they rely on systems management tooling that won't be available until the early part of 2015. That could be a problem for IT departments that want to try out those high profile features, though at this point in the Windows 10 development cycle it's probably best to use the Technical Preview to explore compatibility issues and to understand the effects of tuning the delivery of Windows 10 updates.

There's a lot for Microsoft to do between now and launch, especially around delivering on its user experience promises. But with a timetable that seems to indicate a release in the second half of 2015, there's still plenty of time. Many of the nuts and bolts are in place -- what we're waiting for now are the supporting services and the fit and finish in order to get a better handle on the final shape of the new Windows.

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CIOs Share Must-Have Cloud Skills

Cloud computing prompts IT organizations to rethink how they acquire talent and develop skills.

As the clouds roll in, IT organizations are recasting their tech talent requirements.
giants in the cloudmain

“You don’t need people to build servers anymore. You need somebody good at managing another organization responsible for doing that. That’s a different skill,” says Josh Jewett, CIO at Family Dollar. “You go from managing outcomes yourselves to managing outcomes through others.”

Jewett is one of 16 CIOs who spoke to us about the move to cloud computing. A key topic of discussion was how to cultivate cloud-ready talent. On the skills front, CIOs are in agreement that companies need to reexamine the traditional roles and capabilities in their IT shops to be successful in the cloud.

Everything Is Different in the Cloud
Cloud is a big change for people and organizations, says Randy Spratt, CIO and CTO at healthcare services provider McKesson. There are “different skill sets, different relationships with vendors, different ways of deploying and provisioning services.”

Change management becomes an “evangelical” function, Spratt says. “Just building and deploying isn't enough. You need to educate businesses about what they have. It's like an internal sales job.”

Essential is a grasp and understanding of virtualization; if it can't be virtualized, it can't go to the cloud, says Bob Fecteau, CIO at IT support company SAIC. While newer entrants in the workforce have been trained in virtualization, they need to understand the business they’re supporting -- there has to be a balance and that takes time, Fecteau says.

Bob Fecteau,CIO at SAIC
In general, Fecteau says he sees a path away from pure skills (coder, network manager) and toward information brokers. Tomorrow, IT will be asked, “How can you get me the info we need to make key business decisions?” he says.

It’s not as simple as repositioning a data center architect and saying, “Now you’re the cloud architect,” says Paula Tolliver, CIO and corporate vice president, business services, at Dow Chemical. “You have to have more of a systems integration mindset for [cloud] architecture roles,” she says. “You’re going to be piecing together a cloud environment from multiple service providers in infrastructure and applications.”

Brian LeClaire’s approach to skills acquisition is to identify the best-in-class solutions, then leverage vendors to help with testing, implementation and training.

“We run concurrent pilots across solutions, then we bring the vendor in for implementation and training and upskilling our base,” says LeClaire, CIO at Humana. The health insurance provider also has hired people with specific cloud skills, usually pertaining to a particular tool. “The tool is no good if you don't understand the applications the tool is meant to help,” LeClaire says.

Avnet’s approach has been to train current employees on new cloud technologies, which lets CIO Steve Phillips leverage those employees’ institutional knowledge. To help staff transition to cloud-friendly skills, Avnet holds technology days, followed by job shadowing, so IT workers can spend a day or two learning about a specific technology.

Steve Phillips, CIO at Avnet.
At Whirlpool, CIO Michael Heim is considering sending some of his IT team to “intern” at VTEX, to learn cloud processes. Whirlpool is implementing an ecommerce suite from Brazil-based VTEX for Latin America, its biggest e-commerce market. In addition to accelerating the team’s development, it’s also a good way to build a healthy relationship between the two companies, Heim says.

Heim also invited staff from Amazon to visit, to show Whirlpool staff how AWS works. “That opens my team’s eyes,” Heim says.

A desire to learn new skills is essential, says John Marcante, CIO at The Vanguard Group. “Roles are definitely changing. Cloud allows for a lot more automation and less sophistication and deep knowledge,” Marcante says. Fortunately, IT pros tend to pick up new technologies quickly, he says.

“If you don’t like to learn, you’re in the wrong field.”
Editor’s Note: Giants in the Cloud was written by Network World assistant managing editor, features, Ann Bednarz, based on interviews conducted by CIO Magazine managing editor Kim S. Nash, CIO.com senior editor Brian Eastwood, Network World senior writer Brandon Butler and Computerworld technologies editor Johanna Ambrosio. This package, based on an idea from CIO executive editor Mitch Betts, was edited by Network World executive features editor Neal Weinberg, designed by Steve Sauer and illustrated by Chris Koehler.

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Women in IT: No longer a nice-to-have

If you’re in IT -- and reading this article about women in IT – the odds are that you’re male. After all, just 24% of the U.S. IT workforce is female, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, quite a fall from its high point of 36% in 1991, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology. This is at a time when women make up more than half (57%) of the professional U.S. workforce.

But odds are that you’ll keep reading, as male IT executives increasingly seem to care about encouraging women to join the profession. In a recent study by Harvey Nash, nearly three-quarters (71%) of CIOs globally said they recognized the gender imbalance in their organizations.

The trend is also seen outside of IT, at the highest ranks of corporate professionals: A report by Institutional Shareholder Services from this fall found that the percentage of women nominated for boards at large U.S. companies has doubled since 2008, to 30% this year.

It’s noteworthy that there are fewer women, on average, on the boards of software and services companies (16.3%) and hardware and equipment companies (13.6%) than the S&P 500 average, which is 18.7%, up from 16.3% in 2011.

Nevertheless, the reason for the interest in attracting more women into technology is likely tied to the push for diversity in general. “Managers frequently mention to me that diverse IT teams foster greater innovation and collaboration, which is so important for the digital age,” says Harvey Nash, CEO of the namesake recruiting firm in a blog post.

Here are four ways in which IT organizations can attract and retain women professionals and help them flourish in their careers once there.

1. It starts with a change in attitude: recognize that hiring women in good for the bottom line.
More companies realize that attracting women to the company is no longer a nice-to-have; it’s a business imperative, says Colleen Doherty, assistant vice-president in human resources at Cognizant Technology Solutions. “A lack of diversity will get a business nowhere fast, in terms of growth and innovation,” Doherty says.

There is no end to the studies verifying exactly that point. According to Fortune Magazine’s analysis of data from Factset Research Systems, the financial results of the biggest companies in the U.S. with female CEOs beat the stock market, averaging a return of 103.4% during the woman’s tenure, compared with the average 69.5% return for the S&P 500 stock index over the same period. Revenue also flourished; the 51 companies in the Fortune 1000 with a female CEO, generated 7% of the total revenue for the entire group. Studies by Credit Suisse Research and McKinsey & Co. show similar results of companies with women on their boards performing better than those with all-male boards.

Not to mention, Doherty says, clients and partners increasingly expect to see a diverse workforce in the companies they do business with and are even putting diversity questions in their RFPs. “The global awareness about diversity is at a fever pitch,” she says.

2. Beef up recruiting efforts, both internally and externally
With that ammunition, IT organizations can make a push to establish internal groups that support their women professionals, or at the very least, identify external groups for them to join. At Cognizant, Doherty formed Women Empowered as part of the company’s larger diversity and inclusion initiative. The group – which has expanded globally in the five years of its existence – aims to attract, retain, develop, communicate with and create networking opportunities for women in the company.

In addition to recruiting efforts, the group sponsors “lunch and learns,” mentor programs, meetings, external speakers and speaking events with clients. There is a Women Empowered newsletter, and Doherty is working to create an app for women to download on their mobile devices. The trends at Cognizant are improving, Doherty says, as the company is seeing more women at the associate director, director and vice-president levels now than in 2012.

External groups for supporting women professionals abound. Recruiter Harvey Nash hosts three groups: one intended to attract college and high school women into the profession; one to support pre-executive women in their IT careers; and one for women in senior IT leadership roles. CompTIA also hosts the Advancing Women in IT community, as well as an online resource center for women entering the profession or desiring to advance their careers.

3. 'It takes women to hire women’, so give current female IT workers a larger role in recruiting and retention
Anecdotal evidence suggests that women workers will tend to feel most comfortable in companies in which women are already present. When Doherty first joined Cognizant five years ago, she says, “I was much more comfortable having a conversation with [chief finanial officer] Karen McLoughlin than a male executive at that time,” she says. “It takes women to hire women, and having a ‘Karen’ in the position she was in was critical to making this work.”

For this and other reasons, “proactive succession planning to develop the next generation of female IT leaders is essential if meaningful change is to be achieved,” concludes the Harvey Nash report. It’s important to keep in mind, however, that sometimes women need more encouragement than men to move to that next level. Scott Seese, CIO at eBay, for example, says he is passionate about developing the next generation of women leaders at the company and has begun holding events to encourage the professional growth of women in the organization.

4. Think long term: That young woman you hire today could be your CIO down the road.
According to the Harvey Nash survey, the CIO of the future will look quite different from today, if you consider that the CIO of tomorrow is coming from the ranks IT workers who are in their 20s and 30s. While just 7% of this year’s survey respondents were female, for instance, representing a drop of 2% from the year before, that trend is not likely to continue. When these IT managers, senior architects, analysts and associate directors mature into leadership roles, the recruiting firm estimates that 13% of CIOs will be women.

Whether your goal is to increase innovation, boost profitability, improve collaboration or simply have your IT organization better reflect the workplace as a whole, attracting and retaining women professionals is clearly a move toward the future.

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iOS 8 tips and tricks you need to know

Some advice on how to make iOS 8 work for you.
iOS 8, Apple's latest mobile OS, introduces a ton of new features that promise to make using your iOS device a whole lot more efficient and even more fun. Here are some tips and tricks to help you get the most out of iOS 8.

Find out which apps are draining your battery
Given how much people use their iOS devices, battery drain is a pesky problem a lot of people have to deal with. Thankfully, in iOS 8 Apple has made it easy to figure out which apps in particular are using more than their fair share of battery power.

To check this, simply go to Settings > General > Usage > Battery Usage and you can quickly determine which apps are draining your battery. Given that some apps run in the background, you might be surprised to see which apps are the worst offenders. More importantly, this enables you to be smarter about your app usage when battery life is a concern.

Use Siri hands-free with "Hey Siri" command
Apple in iOS 8 has made Siri even easier to use. With a new setting, Siri is always listening. In order to awaken it, simply say "Hey Siri" and then state your query. Note, though, that this feature only works when your iOS device is plugged into a power source.

To get this feature up and running, simply go to Settings > General > Siri and then toggle on the Allow 'Hey Siri' feature.

Quick access to recent contacts and favorites
iOS 8 makes it easy to access your most recent contacts. To do so, simply double tap the home button and the normal multitasking interface will appear. But located above it will be a listing of your most recent contacts. From there, simply tap on an individual photo to bring up options to text message, call, or FaceTime. Tap a photo again to return to the main view. And as a cool hidden feature, if you swipe your list of "Recents" to the right, you're then presented with quick contact buttons for people you've previously designated as your "Favorites."

Get notified when important emails come in
If you send out an important email and are waiting for a reply, there's no need to keep checking your email in iOS 8. Instead, you can create a flag for a specific message so that iOS will notify you when a response comes in. To do so, simply swipe to the left on any particular email message and hit the "More" button, where you can then select "Notify Me..." You'll then receive notifications when anyone replies to the email thread.

Quickly send an audio message to friends
A fun new iOS 8 feature is the ability to send quick audio messages to friends. To get started, you’ll note that there's now a microphone icon situated on the lower right-hand corner of the Messages screen. If you tap and hold the icon, it will bring up a window that will automatically start recording an audio message.

Quickly listen to audio messages by raising your iPhone
When you see that you have an audio message, all you have to do to listen to it is raise your device to your ear and the message will begin playing automatically. Note that this feature is on by default but can be turned off by going to Settings > Messages and then scrolling down and toggling off the "Raise to Listen" button.

View detailed weather information
When looking at the weather for a particular city, simply scroll to the bottom, where you'll be presented with a slew of additional weather information, including the details regarding the chance of rain, barometric pressure, humidity, and even how fast the wind is blowing.

Optimize your iPhone storage
If you use iCloud for your photos, you can save space on your iPhone by only saving optimized photos to your iOS device. To do this, go to Settings > Photos and select "Optimize iPhone Storage." This will ensure that the photos stored on your phone aren't full quality, which isn't always necessary on the smaller screen.

Set a timer with the iOS 8 camera
Among many new camera features, iOS 8 introduces the ability to set a pre-set timer for photos. To do so, fire up the Camera app and you'll see a clock icon towards the upper right part of the screen. If you tap on that, you'll then be presented with the option to set the timer for 3 or 10 seconds. Next, tap the shutter button and the timer will then start counting down, give you ample time to set up the shot and get everyone, or everything, in place before the camera goes off.

Find your iPhone's last location
With iOS 8, Apple has added another feature to make it easier to find your iOS device when it seems to have disappeared. The feature is called "Send Last Location," and as the name implies, it will automatically send you the last known location of your iOS device when the battery gets down to a low level. This is great because once the battery is drained, Find my iPhone is of no help. Knowing where your iOS device was before it ran of out juice, however, is a godsend.

To activate it, go to Settings > iCloud > Find My iPhone and then toggle on the "Send Last Location" button.

Record Time-Lapse video footage
One of the great new iOS 8 features is the ability to take time-lapse video footage. All in all, it's a great way to add an element of "time passing" to your video footage. Using it is as simple as can be: simply fire up the Camera app and swipe until you're in "Time-Lapse" mode. Note, though, that in order to really see the wonder that is time-lapse, make sure you record footage for at least 45 seconds. Some time-lapse video suggestions include sporting events and weather.

Pre-load websites in Safari for faster viewing
Safari in iOS 8 has a great new feature that promises to make web browsing even faster. If you go to Settings > Safari > Preload Top Hit and toggle the feature on, Safari will pre-load the top hit from your search results. If data usage is a concern for you, you probably want to toggle this feature off.

QuickType in Messages for faster typing
Messages in iOS 8 now includes more enhanced predictive typing, where iOS tries to predict what word you might want to say next. What makes this feature incredibly cool is that Messages will learn your writing style with respect to each person and will make more informed predictions the more you use it. That way you can receive formal word predictions when you're communicating with your boss and more slang-oriented terms if you're chatting with one of your buddies.

If you're not into the QuickType feature, you can quickly disable it by tapping and pressing on the globe/emoji icon next to the keyboard, then toggle on and off "Predictive."

Quickly send a video message
From the main Messages view, tap and hold the camera icon on the lower left corner of the screen. Next, tap the red button to quickly record a video message for one of your friends. Tap the red button again to end the video and then tap the upward facing arrow to send it.

Request the desktop version of a mobile site
With a powerful and capable browser like Safari, sometimes we don't want to view a website's awkward and sometimes less-functional mobile site. Thankfully, Safari makes it easy to request a website's desktop site. To do so, simply tap on the Safari URL bar once to bring up Safari's Favorites window. Next, simply scroll downwards to reveal an option to add that site to your Favorites list or view the desktop version of that site.

Keep your web browsing private with DuckDuckGo
Apple in iOS 8 added DuckDuckGo as a new search engine option. DuckDuckGo is privacy-oriented and, as opposed to Google, doesn't track what you're searching for or the sites you're visiting. To select DuckDuckGo as your search engine of choice, simply go to Settings > Safari > Search Engine and select away. Note that Yahoo and Bing are additional options.

Hide private photos
If you have photos that for whatever reason you want to keep private, iOS 8 makes it easy. Simply tap and hold on a photo and you'll see an option to "Hide." Select that and you're good to go. Note, though, that doing this simply removes photos from your Years > Collections > Moments view. The photo is still viewable from within the "Albums" view.

Automatically delete Messages after 30 days
Messages can, quite stealthily, use up a lot of your storage space, especially if you're prone to sending or receiving a lot of photos. To avoid this, it's possible to have messages automatically delete from your phone after 30 days or after a year.

To do so, go to Settings > Messages > Keep Messages and select the option you're most comfortable with.

Scan your credit card into iOS 8
Instead of laboriously entering in your credit card information on iOS 8 Safari, users can now take a photo of their credit card and iOS will auto populate all the requisite fields. To do so, go to Settings > Safari > Passwords & AutoFill > Saved Credit Cards > Add Credit Card. There you can enter in your credit card manually or use your camera. This will be especially useful once Apple Pay becomes active.

Record Slo-Mo video footage at 240 fps
With iOS 8 and Apple's new iPhones, the bar for video recording has been raised. You can now shoot slo-mo video footage at a whopping 240 fps. When you're in the Camera app, simply swipe to the right until "Slo-Mo" is selected and you're good to go.

Search for a word on a webpage
This is actually an old iOS trick but it is so helpful and useful it's worth mentioning. If you're on a webpage and want to search for a specific word or phrase, simply tap the URL bar and start typing the word or phrase in question into it. Next, you'll be presented with a few Google Search suggestions. Ignore those and scroll to the bottom where you'll see a section titled "On This Page." Tap that and you can then cycle through each instance of that word or phrase.

See what time a message was sent
Originally introduced in iOS 7, this is a great feature that's worth mentioning for any new iPhone users out there getting acquainted with iOS 8. With Apple's Messaging app, it’s extremely easy to see when each individual message was sent. To do so, simply swipe to the left from the messaging screen and the time will appear to the right of each message.

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How to ensure the success of your private PaaS project

This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach.

Building a private platform-as-a-service (PaaS) cloud that provides on-demand access to databases, middleware, presentation layer and other services can enable consumer agility, lower the cost to maintain that agility, and increase the utilization of on-premise resources.

That is a trifecta of self-reinforcing value for the business. Agility and cost have traditionally been thought of as tradeoffs in IT, but thanks to standardization, consolidation and automation that is tightly coupled with the technology used to provide cloud services, private PaaS clouds have the potential to eliminate that trade off.

In order to achieve those simultaneous benefits, it’s important to think about why you are implementing a private cloud, what workloads make sense for that private cloud, and how you intend to marry the two together. Let’s look at five practical considerations for a successful discrete private cloud implementation project that can form the building block of an eventual larger-scale transformation.

* Suitable workloads. Most IT services are used to either run the business or grow/transform the business. Run the business activities such as ERP, CRM, Finance, HR and similar tend to have stable workloads, usually consisting of small deviations around a moving average, perhaps also with relatively predictable spikes such as seasonal or periodic variations. These activities also have a generally lower rate of change because they are ingrained in organizational processes, and are often centrally-managed for the same reason.

On the other hand, grow/transform activities involve launch of new offerings, big data analysis, cross-channel marketing/selling, and organizational change, all of which have unpredictable workloads and high ongoing rates of change.

Your intuition might tell you that the grow/transform activities are naturals for private PaaS clouds. The agility gained by developers allows them to provide new services on a short timeframe, while also allowing those services to be rapidly decommissioned if circumstances change. It’s also fairly obvious that many “run the business” workloads do not need the agility of private clouds, and in fact it may be a high-risk maneuver to place them on a shared services environment.

There is, however, a gray area in times of business change. During these periods of evolution many “run the business” applications are forced to act more like “grow/transform the business” applications – with high rates of change, variable workloads and the need for rapid provisioning/decommissioning. In those cases, the neat segregation between workloads breaks down. As such, a private PaaS cloud needs to be able to provide services that address the needs of both types of applications. It needs to provide agility… but with the reliability/security/scalability of traditional IT services.

* What services to offer? When it comes to figuring out what services to offer, the answer lies with your users. Help them prioritize their needs and offer as few services as possible.

Customers can have hundreds of variants in their IT environment. This sprawl is often the result of lack of governance, lack of standardization, and a bottoms-up/best-of-breed mentality that resulted in “configuration pollution” (a wide variance among arguably-similar stack configurations). Managing such an environment is expensive and inefficient.

Example of categories for a Private Cloud Service Catalog.
Compare that complexity to the service catalog of most public cloud providers. For example, the Oracle Database Cloud Service has only a few offerings. Not 50, or 500 or 5,000. Your private cloud service catalog should look and sound more like a public provider’s catalog. Doing that requires making choices about standardization and consolidation. Sometimes these choices are politically challenging, but they need to be made nonetheless or your private cloud will not provide the cost optimization that it should.

* Is chargeback necessary? Chargeback/showback is the idea of passing consumption costs back to the consumer either via internal automated transfer costs (chargeback) or simply via reporting (showback). It sounds great on paper, and is a relatively simple matter to execute technically with a fully-integrated cloud management regime (since the software that does the automated provisioning knows who’s using what at all times). But the transparency it provides is truly transformational to an organization, and therefore has political and human consequences. A well-implemented private PaaS cloud will automatically have all the information IT needs to make costs transparent, but making those costs visible is an organizational decision.

* PaaS versus IaaS? To reiterate, if your goal is agility and cost reduction, PaaS gives you more flexibility, more efficiency and more value than infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). The raw shared compute and storage (think hypervisors, guest OSs, etc.) that IaaS provides are simply containers that then need to be installed, configured and managed, and that cost lives somewhere (either in the provider or the consumer’s bucket).

Furthermore, because most organizations pass the configuration effort onto the consumers, the tendency for “bottoms-up” configuration pollution continues to be a problem. I call this “cost shifting”. PaaS, on the other hand, provides instantly-consumable services (database, middleware, presentation layer, etc.) in standardized configurations that can be managed with minimum effort on an individual basis and with maximum efficiency on an enterprise scale. IaaS provides efficiency but primarily just shifts costs around. PaaS doesn’t just shift costs around, it eliminates a substantial portion of them outright.

Chart of service types
* How to succeed? The most successful model I’ve seen to introduce PaaS to an organization is to start small, with a well-defined scope. Pick a service, or two services, and a defined user base (say, a particular LOB development organization in a “grow the business” activity) and let them see what PaaS can do for them.

In conclusion, PaaS clouds offer an unprecedented opportunity to simultaneously lower costs, increase agility and maximize utilization. They also carry the potential for meaningful cultural transformation by making IT costs transparent. Unlocking that value requires careful up-front analysis and an unwavering commitment to consolidation, standardization and automation -- and most importantly, simplicity. But with the proper commitment, the rewards can be tremendous.

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