Aptec Holdings, one of the largest technology distributors in the Middle East, Turkey & Africa, has expanded its distribution agreement with Microsoft to include Gulf region for Microsoft OEM products. Aptec was an authorized distributor for Microsoft OEM previously only for the UAE.

Aptec plans to expand the current Channel and recruit new partners for Microsoft OEM in the Gulf region to further gain market share. With the presence of Aptec with other products and solutions, distributing Microsoft OEM will add a significant opportunity to the reseller community in the region. The new distribution agreement authorizes Aptec to sell Microsoft OEM in Bahrain, Qatar, Oman & Kuwait, with previous held markets. Aptec already has Microsoft Volume License distributor for the Gulf.

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Furthering its commitment to the development of knowledge based society in Qatar, Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development and Microsoft signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) at a press conference in Doha, Qatar. The MoU was signed between Executive Director of Operations, Qatar Foundation Mr. Khalid Al-Sulaiteen and Mr. Mohammad Hammoudi, Country Manager for Microsoft Qatar.

Under the agreement, Qatar Foundation will benefit from a 90% discount on the commercial prices of Microsoft software licenses as well as software assurance benefits such as free online training on the software purchased. In addition, Microsoft will provide professional-level developer and design tools to students under its DreamSpark program to support and advance their skills. Schools and universities at Education City will also be able to benefit from Microsoft’s Live@edu, a cloud based service, which will provide students, staff and faculty with primary email addresses and a collaborative communications platform.

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She’s in the band. Rock out with musician desktop backgrounds (wallpaper) in this Windows 7 theme. To download the theme, click the Download button, and then click Open. The theme will be applied to your desktop and added to Personalization in Control Panel.

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Recently, we guided you about how to add your Facebook Stream, how to hide the updates from a specific friend or group and how to appear offline for a specific friend in Windows Live Messenger.

Today, we are going to guide you about how to setup a sound alert for a specific friend in Windows Live Messenger so that you can hear a different sound alert whenever your friend signs in or interact with you in messenger. Following are the steps:

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Microsoft Kuwait celebrates the holy month of Ramadan and recently hosted an exclusive Ghabka for local media, VIP’s, government officials, educators and students at the Sheraton Hotel in Kuwait. At the event, Microsoft Kuwait took the opportunity to recognise key students and teachers from Kuwait University and American University of Kuwait (AUK). The Ghabka was attended by Wael Al Sagar, Chairman, A.H Al Sagar & Bros and Microsoft representative in Kuwait.

Ehab Mostafa, Country Manager, Microsoft Kuwait presented certificates to 23 computer science students and teachers of Kuwait University for their outstanding contribution towards the Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Arabization content project organized by Microsoft in July 2010. Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, is a technology advanced programming language used by developers to develop console and graphical user interface applications.

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Itqan Al-Bawardi Computers successfully wrapped up a complete infrastructure overhaul for Maritime Industrial Services Co. Ltd. Inc. (MIS), a leading contractor in the energy-related construction and services industry. The project entailed a complete migration of MIS’ previous infrastructure platform to a bundle of Microsoft’s technologies, which include Microsoft’s messaging system, IT management tools, data security and protection controls.

“This project illustrated the collaboration between MIS and Itqan and the level of co-operation and professionalism shown by MIS during this project was remarkable and pushed us to give our 200% to make this implementation a success. Despite some obstacles and challenges that inevitably came up during the implementation phase, MIS’ IT team was supportive, and placed its complete trust in Itqan,” commented Itqan’s General Manager, Feras Al-Jabi.

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Wipro Arabia Ltd. today announced that it has been accorded Large Account Reseller (LAR) status by Microsoft for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). This reinforces Wipro’s strong relationship with Microsoft and underlines its exceptional level of expertise in Microsoft solutions.

Wipro Arabia, a JV unit of Wipro Ltd, is a leading provider of IT and business transformation services in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. With this elevation, Wipro Arabia, in addition to offering domain-centric Microsoft solutions, will now be able to resell Microsoft licenses and software to customers in the Kingdom. Wipro will also be able to directly administer enterprise agreements with customers, without going through a distributor.

Commenting on the achievement, Durga Prasad, GM and Head, Business Operations, Wipro Arabia Limited said, “We are excited about Wipro Arabia being selected as the LAR partner for Microsoft. Through this partnership, we will now be able to increase our competitiveness in providing customer-centric solutions on Microsoft platform to our customers in the Kingdom.We will also be able to further enable companies in the region by offering the best possible value and supporting services through Enterprise Agreements.”

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Microsoft MVPs Rob Miles and Andy Wigley recently led an incredibly well received live training course about a month ago which focused on getting developers trained up on building amazing applications and games for Windows Phone 7. So, Microsoft decided to publish this training for the developers around the world. There are 12 sessions in total, each about 50 minutes in length.

According to Microsoft “Andy and Rob provide a good bit of humor along with their incredible depth of knowledge on the topic of building apps and games for Windows Phone 7. We recognize that providing as much technical content as we can for the full range of developers is what developers deserve. While we plan on having more live training sessions in the coming weeks and months, we are also committed to making that content available as quickly as possible to as many developers as possible. “

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Tell us who you are?
I work in the IT area as developer since 2000 to 2005 and as DBA/DBDeveloper since 2005. This passion started when I was 11 years old, with my wonderful C64. I worked as web solutions developer (between ASP to the most recent versions of ASP.NET), windows application and services developer with languages C# and VBNet. But since 2005 I started the study of the data layer, using SQL Server in depth.

I actually work full time as DBA/DBDeveloper with latest SQL Server versions. During last years I managed my blog on dotnethell.it. I’m a member of the staff of this community and an active poster. I like to be active, always. I love music (principally metal, hard rock, rock/funky) and I’m a singer of a Red Hot Chili Peppers cover band called Blood Sugar. I like sports, especially golf. I play indoor soccer, swimming and surfing with his snowboard also. In the spare time I read (Fantasy books) and I play on MMORPG.

Tell us about your MVP history, when were you first awarded?
Before the MVP award, there are some things to explain. I started to reply on dotnethelli.it forums and Microsoft public newsgroup in 2004. This was my first passion to follow ( and at the moment too ) and I concentrated my efforts on this kind of “support” in order to learn a lot of informations too. I think that reply is the best way to search documentation, study and definitively, learn, together.

Dotnethell.it promoted me as staff member on December 2006 after a “silent” analysis and moderation made by the most experienced members. This was the very first trigger that allows to me to reach the MVP award on January 2008, after an entire year of heavy activity on our forums. This was one of the best events in my life and I will remember it forever

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Office 15 is the next major iteration of Microsoft’s productivity suite and the successor of Office 2010, which was built using the codename Office 14. The first leaked screenshots and details of Office 15 / Microsoft Office 2014 are now available in the wild, at just four months after Office 2010 was released to manufacturing, and just a couple of months since the General Availability deadline.

According to Neowin “The first of the two features is the “Microsoft Limestone Test Application”, which appeared in beta builds of Office 2010 before it was released. Not much is known about this application or what it does exactly, but it has previously surfaced in test builds of Office before being removed.

Softpedia also reports that Microsoft is planning on integrating a KMS activator into office 15, making it easier for companies using volume licenses to activate their Office 2014 installations quickly.”

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Facebook Places, the newest of the Facebook products will be using Bing Maps to pinpoint everyone’s location-based experiences on Facebook.com. According to Facebook “Starting today, you can immediately tell people about that favorite spot with Facebook Places. You can share where you are and the friends you’re with in real time from your mobile device.”

To get started, you’ll need the most recent version of the Facebook application for iPhone. You also can access Places from touch.facebook.com if your mobile browser supports HTML 5 and geolocation.

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Bing Webmaster Team recently hit the reset button and rebuild the Bing Webmaster Tools from the ground up. Now with each passing day, they are adding new features to the Bing Webmaster tools. These new features are a direct response to feedback Bing team received since launch last month.

• Data Export Capability - You can now download and export data from Bing Webmaster Tools about your registered sites. You can export up to six months of data in the form of a downloadable, comma-delimited CSV file.
• Crawl Settings - They’ve added a “Crawl Setting” page for more control over how Bing crawls your sites. The first setting made available there is “Add Query String Parameters.” Site owners can now add query string parameters that can be ignored when indexing their sites so duplicate content in the Bing index can be avoided.

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Recently, Microsoft released the beta 2 of Windows Live Essentials suite that was initially made available to public for testing on June 24, 2010. It incorporates many feature improvements and bug fixes. It’s getting better and better. Want to learn about the new features? Do read our posts on different parts of Windows Live Essentials.

• 40+ Cool Features of Windows Live Messenger
• 40+ Cool Features of Windows Live Movie Maker
• 40+ Cool Features of Windows Live Photo Gallery
• 40+ Cool Features of Windows Live Writer
• 40+ Cool Features of Windows Live Mail

“We’re releasing an update to Windows Live Essentials 2011 beta,” said Chris Jones, Vice President, Windows Live Engineering. “One of the main reasons we release betas is to allow early adopters to enjoy our products and provide feedback on their experience. Your beta feedback and usage has helped shape the many improvements we’ve made and continue to make across Messenger, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Writer, Mail, and Family Safety,” Jones added.

According to Chris Jones, the initial beta release was a hit for Microsoft with 3 million unique users in Messenger alone, 3.5 million updates to display pictures, 6.2 million video calls, and 7.6 million updates to status messages. Here are some of the many improvements you will see in the new build.

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Switch it up! Receive two new photos from Bing every week for three months, with this Windows 7 theme that updates automatically through an RSS feed. Don’t forget to check out the other bing Themepack Bing’s Best 1, Bing’s Best 2 and Bing’s Best 3.

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In times of disaster, Microsoft helps increase resources available to humanitarian relief organizations by connecting citizens and their employees to donation opportunities. Microsoft invites you to consider supporting any of the following relief organizations providing support to flood relief efforts in Pakistan.

• American Red Cross
• MercyCorps
• World Vision
• International Rescue Committee

According to Microsoft “We have activated our disaster response protocol to monitor the situation in Pakistan and offer support as appropriate. We are taking a number of steps, including offering technical support to lead response organizations, promoting employee giving and volunteering and assessing where our resources can be most helpful for the impacted region and communities.”

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