An excellent overview on how-to implement a EDC/CTMS system using Microsoft Technologies

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Clinical Trials and the Microsoft platform

My friend and colleague Les Jordan has recently added a new posting to his MSDN Blog called CTMS & EDC: A system to do both - and more.  Lately, I have been thinking a lot about Clinical Trials as well, so I wanted to add my own perspective to his excellent posting.

I think Clinical Trials are another area within the Life Sciences industry that are incredibly balkanized.  Most of large pharmaceutical companies I have worked with have between 20 and 25 clinical systems that need to work together.  The effort and expense to make all this function is simply mind-numbing!  A partner just sent me some presentations from a recent CTMS conference, and I just could not believe the incredible pain and expense companies have to go through to make these systems work together.  They have no idea how much easier their lives could be by considering some alternative approaches.  And it is scary to think they actually believe they are doing cutting edge stuff.  Well, in a way they are doing cutting edge – by pouring money and resources into legacy systems which they believe to be ‘best-of-breed’.  They are literally spending millions (or even tens of millions) annually to keep these systems running and working together.  However, the reality is that nobody can afford these approaches any more, and things will have to change drastically in the Clinical Trials space, just like in all the other facets of the life sciences industry.

If I had to start from scratch, I would build a system on the following elements of the Microsoft stack: MOSS, SQL Server, Project Server, and Dynamics CRM.  These are just four ‘moving parts’, but they are designed to work together, and work with a single integrated development environment in Visual Studio.

When I think about it, it is mostly about collaboration and business process management around data and documents.  Let's consider a simple overview of Clinical Trials, without going into too much detail, and consider what systems need to be in place.  It is a complex, convoluted process, and I would like to show that most can be done with just four ‘moving parts’.

• First, the Clinical Trial needs to be designed.  There are a number of specialized tools that are used for this, but no doubt collaboration plays a key role.  How can this collaboration take place: MOSS, of course! 
• Then, a Clinical Protocol needs to be written.  This is usually a complex, and highly structured document which lends itself well to automation.  We are currently working on using the Intelligent Content Framework and DITA-Maps (don’t be scared of the specialized term: think of a DITA-Map as a Table of contents and a set of rules to build a document) and to make this process as automated as possible.  The same approach also applies to Clinical Investigator Brochure.
• The Clinical Protocol needs to be reviewed and approved by an Institutional Review Board or an Ethics Committee.  Again, this is a collaborative process.  The best tools for this are MOSS, in combination with Unified Communications.
• Once the trial has been approved, the sponsor (i.e. the pharmaceutical company, or the CRO who they have contracted – as an aside, MOSS is a great platform for managing contracts between the sponsor and the CRO) has to select the Clinical Sites (these are mainly hospitals or research centers) where the trial will be conducted.  There is a lot of business process management and collaboration that has to take place during the so-called Site Initiation Process, and other documentation needs to be managed, such as Patient Consent Forms, Investigator Brochure etc.  Most of this is very document and forms-centric.  Our partner NextDocs has built a great module to do this – on MOSS!  There is also the need to manage all Training Records for Clinical Investigators and Research Associates, and to manage the published Clinical Investigator Brochures.  NextDocs has this Clinical module built out, too.  In fact, I am even aware of a free SharePoint Services 3.0 Application Template for Clinical Trial Initiation and Management.
• In order to conduct the Clinical Trial, the sponsor or the CRO usually puts up a Clinical Investigator Portal, where investigators log in to get all the information about the particular trial, and protocol, and can upload all their pertinent information, such as CV, completed Statement of Investigator (also known as 1572 form), etc.  MOSS is ideal for this application.  Of course, Dynamics CRM can also work in conjunction with this to serve as an Investigator Database (which needs some CRM capabilities)
• Sponsors have to recruit patients who are interested and willing, and qualified to participate in the trial: they often put up a Patient Recruitment Portal for this application.  Again, MOSS is ideal for this application.  Our partner Quilogy has built some very impressive applications in this space (both for Patient and for Investigator Recruitment).  And of course, Dynamics CRM can also supplement the Patient Recruitment Portal application as well.
• Sponsors also have to track payments and disbursements to investigators, have to track clinical supplies, etc.  This is also often referred to as a CTMS application.  There is an excellent solution for this by our partner TranSenda.  We have been collaborating closely with them on their Office-Smart Clinical Trial Manager.  We are also doing some very innovative and forward-thinking work with them around managing Clinical Trial process data, which is not an area that is covered by the Clinical Data Interchange Standard Consortium (CDISC).  See here for a great article that covers the problem space that we are addressing with ClinBUS™ (the name of the new solution).  The part about the Clinical Trials Interchange Platform (CTIP) is especially relevant!  The Veterans Health Administration have also built their own CTMS system on MOSS technologies.  They have the same requirements as the biopharma industry, but a fraction of the budget, so they have to be innovative and forward-thinking.  However, shouldn’t that be the business paradigm for everyone these days?  I have uploaded some materials of their solution here.  To quote Dave Rose, Chief Architect of VA’s CTMS/EDC solution set: “The system leverages current investments, scales and is absorptive of future technologies.  Imagine managing your clinical trials on the same platform you use to manage the enterprise….”  And of course Dynamics CRM is an excellent development platform for this, too.  I posted some White Papers on the latter here.
• Now we come to the conduct of the trial.  There are many Project-related activities related to this, and of course Project Server can be the tool of choice.  The beauty of this application is that it is built on the same foundation as MOSS, so that Project data can easily be surfaced in the Portal, and even managed from there.
• Once trials are up and running, there is a ton of data being generated related, which is made up of patient data and process data.  Increasingly, companies are moving to Electronic Data Capture to achieve this.  This data is then fed to Clinical Databases (SQL Server is used by several partners of ours for this purpose).  Once again, InfoPath and Forms Services, part of the MOSS stack, are ideal for this.  Here is a great application from Qdabra that can seamlessly connect forms to databases.  It has great potential for EDC applications.  The problem I see all too often that there is a lot of legacy technology that has been built, and vendors are very reluctant to cannibalize their old legacy EDC tools.  It is such a shame, because InfoPath and Forms Services are built on XML, and are ideal for this ‘smart form’ application.  However, there are already several applications out there that leverage this capability.  There are our friends at the VA, there is Tenalea, and there is also InferMed. 
• I do not see paper going away completely for a while as a means to collect data via Case Report Forms.  Imaging and Capture applications are also needed to get Data into the the system.  Among the solutions I have seen out there, I am a particular fan of KnowledgeLake, as a capture system for CRF data.
• During the conduct of Clinical Trials, sponsors also need to track and manage Adverse Events data, which is fed into an Adverse Events Report System, which is essentially a specialized database.  The biggest problems many companies face are how to capture and process this data, prior feeding it into the Adverse Events Report System.  Once again, InfoPath and Forms Services, in combination with a capture and imaging system, driven by business process management in the back end an ideal solution.
• All the EDC and scanned Case Report Forms have to be published into a Casebook, which then are collected as part of a Trial Master file.  MOSS is an ideal platform as an Electronic Trial Master File.  I just read an interesting article about this recently.  However, the NextDocs Clinical module does this, too.  There is also the issue of making sure all documentation is properly tagged and uploaded into the system to form the Trial Master file.   We have a great Case Study on the subject, where I closely collaborated with the customer and the partner who built the solution – on MOSS!
• There is a lot of interest in Secure Document Exchange for Clinical Trials these days.  It is mindboggling to consider how much paper is still being processed, huge bills being paid to shipping and logistics companies to manage all this paper, and the interpretation of ‘electronic’ in many cases is still data burnt on a CD or DVD, and then shipped via a courier service.   In fact, the excellent article from 2002 titled ‘Tortured by Paper’ is still very much current.   Not too much progress in 7 years…..  However, as it happens, MOSS is a solution for this problem, too – and the NextDocs Clinical module is built with this purpose in mind.  I have no doubt that they will be very successful with this application.  Certainly, paper will not disappear entirely for a long time – but there are some excellent Capture solutions build for MOSS that can help reduce or eliminate the ‘torture by paper’ part: KnowledgeLake, BlueThread and Clearview are the ones I usually recommend.

By no means is the above a complete listing of all the intricacies and details of Clinical Trials, and I have stayed away from specialty areas such as randomization, IVR, biostatistics, pharmacokinetics, etc.  However, I wanted to provide a high-level overview of some of the main clinical systems and processes, and also emphasize again that it is mostly about collaboration and business process management around data and documents.  The latest Microsoft software stack is ideal for this, and it is time people realized that they can simply no longer afford the balkanized approaches of taking all these so-called ‘best-of-breed’ solutions and try to make it all work together smoothly (even if some of them still believe that Web Services will be a panacea to fix all of this).  Best-of-breed can a misnomer, too – because the Microsoft software platform is mature and powerful enough to be able to build any of the systems mentioned above, and to deliver a superior solution at far lower cost.  Why not build a best-of-breed suite on a platform that was designed to work together from the ground up?

Apple Iphone owners get to view free digital magazines of 70 or so popular magazines without costs, courtesy of Zinio and Texterity, including Popular Mechanics, PC Magazine, and U.S. News & World Report.

However, non-iPhone/iPod touch browsers can also score free access using the User Agent Switcher extension for Firefox or a simple Safari tweak.

All that needs to be done is change the User Agent in your browser to the one of the iPhone which will trick the website into thinking that you are accessing it with an iPhone. This in turn will give you access to those magazines, among them PC Magazine, Technology Review, Macworld, Lonely Planet and, um, Playboy and Penthouse.

The content is provided in full screen in your browser and you can flip through the pages with a click. It’s probably not the most comfortable way but it’s free and easy enough. Pages are actually shown as images which means they can be saved to the local hard drive.

In Safari, set your browser to the iPhone user agent in the Develop menu, which you can enable at Preferences->Advanced->"Show Develop menu in menu bar."

Opera users have built-in user agent switching for iPhones

Firefox users can install the User Agent Switcher add-on and configure it with the following User Agent:

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419 (United States)

Then switch to that User Agent and visit the Zinio or Texterity.

recently the Gmail team has been working on a structural code change that we'll be rolling out to Firefox 2 and IE 7 users over the coming weeks (with other browsers to follow). You won't notice too many differences to start with, but we're using a new model that enables us to iterate faster and share components (we now use the same rich text editor as Groups and Page Creator, and the Contact Manager can be seen in several Google apps). A few other things you will notice are some new keyboard shortcuts and the ability to bookmark specific messages and email searches. One side effect of this change is that if you're using third-party Gmail extensions, they're likely to stop working. And that is the case for Gmail manager, because this extension no longer shows new messages.

But there is quick fix before the new version:

find your profile folder
browse to the extensions directory
open the folder named {582195F5-92E7-40a0-A127-DB71295901D7}
open the components folder
Open "gmServiceGmail.js" in your favorite text editor (notepad)
Use the find feature to the following text: "?search=inbox&view=tl&start=0&init=1" (without the quotes)
Append "&ui=1" to that text (again, without the quotes)
Save the file, and then restart Firefox! It should now show your unread messages!

Hope that helps someone!

Windows installed another round of updates and now it's asking you to restart. Again. One simple command line entry can disable this obnoxious reminder. Reader Jack writes in with the trick:

To stop this service, open [Command Prompt] (Start>Run>cmd>Enter) and type the following command sc stop wuauserv. This will not prevent Automatic Updates from starting at the next boot. So don't worry, you'll keep getting Windows updates. Just don't forget to restart eventually.

It works on XP and Vista as well.

Stop memory hogging

The default way the Windows version of Firefox consumes memory can be alarming if you don't know what's really going on. People routinely report a memory "footprint" of 75MB to 100MB or more with only a few windows or tabs open, and they assume a memory leak is to blame. While earlier versions of Firefox did have memory leak bugs, they're not the reason for this kind of memory consumption in Firefox 2.x.

Here's what's happening: Firefox caches recently used objects -- Web pages, images -- in memory so that they can be re-rendered on-screen quickly, which drives up memory usage. The following tweaks can make Firefox stake out memory less aggressively. (Note, however, that lightening the memory load might make your pages load a bit more slowly than you're used to.)

Reduce graphics caching
When the Boolean preference browser.cache.memory.enable is enabled (the default), Firefox keeps copies of all graphical elements from the current browsing session in memory for faster rendering. You can set this to false to free up more memory, but pages in your history will reload less quickly when you revisit them.

Another option: Set the value to true and create a new integer preference called browser.cache.memory.capacity. Then specify, in kilobytes, how much memory to set aside for graphics caching. That way you get some of the speed benefits that graphics caching provides without taking a huge memory hit. If you use -1 as the memory value, Firefox will size the memory cache based on how much physical RAM is present.

Reduce Web page caching
Firefox caches several recently visited Web pages in memory so they don't have to be regenerated when you press Back or Forward. The integer setting browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers determines how many individual Web pages to store in the back/forward cache; each page takes about 4MB (or 4,000KB) of RAM.

By default, however, this value is set to -1, which determines how many pages to cache from the amount of available physical memory; the maximum number of pages stored when you use -1 is 8. Set this value to 0 to disable page caching entirely. That will save some memory, but will also cause Back and Forward navigation to slow down a bit.

Note that this caching is not the same as browser.cache.memory.enable: That setting is for rendering elements on pages like graphics and buttons, and the contents of https-encoded pages, while this setting is for caching the text content of Web pages that have already been rendered or "tokenized."

Swap out to disk memory when minimized (Windows only)
A little-known feature in Firefox allows the Windows memory manager to swap out some of Firefox's physical memory space to disk when Firefox is minimized but not closed. This allows other programs to use the physical memory that Firefox was previously monopolizing.

By default, this feature is turned off, for two reasons: 1) PC memory is generally more plentiful than it used to be, so it makes sense to use it if it's available, and 2) swapping Firefox's memory out to disk will slow the program down when it's restored.

That said, if you run Firefox side by side with other memory-hungry applications, it might help keep them from competing with each other. To enable this feature, create a new Boolean preference called config.trim_on_minimize and set its value to true.

Hack network connections

The very first batch of Firefox hacks I learned about was how to override its network defaults. Some of Firefox's out-of-the-box settings for how it deals with network connections are fairly conservative, probably because Firefox has no way of knowing what kind of network it's using (dial-up vs. broadband, etc.). If you have a network that readily supports multiple simultaneous connections, you can make a number of changes to Firefox to take advantage of that.

But proceed with caution. If Firefox's network settings are set too aggressively, they can lead you to being blacklisted for a short time by a given remote server. And you should certainly get permission from the IT department before attempting this kind of hack in a corporate environment. Regardless, moderation is the key. For the most part, I find that setting the network settings to absurdly high numbers does not accomplish much of anything; it helps to ramp them up a bit, but generally not much more than that.

Maximize connections to multiple servers
The integer preference network.http.max-connections controls how many simultaneous network connections Firefox will make at any one time to any number of Web servers. One typical way this pays off is if you have Firefox set to load multiple home pages in different tabs at once, or if you access pages that aggregate contents from several different servers (for instance, multiple advertising systems).

By default, this is set to 24, which should work well for most network connections, but you can raise it to 32 and see if that has any effect. (I've seen people raise this as high as 64, but anything above 32 doesn't seem to provide much discernible payoff.)

Maximize connections to the same server
The integer preference network.http.max-connections-per-server controls how many separate connections Firefox makes to the same server, which allows multiple elements in a page to be downloaded in parallel. Normally, this is set to 8, but some people choose to set it as high as 16.

Note, however, that some Web servers will block you if you try to establish more than 8 inbound connections, typically as a bandwidth-protection or antileeching measure -- this is the kind of behavior also exhibited by download managers that try to use as many "slots" as possible to speed things up, and many server admins hate that sort of thing. Also, if you're on a connection that's not fast to begin with (e.g., slow ISDN or dial-up), changing this setting will have no discernible effect, and may in fact slow things down.

Bump up persistent connections per server
Firefox keeps persistent connections to a server "alive" to improve performance: Instead of simply sending the results of one request and then closing, they're held open so that multiple requests can pass back and forth. This means a little less network traffic overall, since a connection to a given server has to be set up only once, instead of once for each separate piece of content; it also means successive connections to the same server go through faster.

The integer preference network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server controls the number of persistent connections allowed per server. By default, this is set to 2, although some servers will honor a higher number of persistent connections (for instance, if there's a lot of content from their site that loads in parallel, like images or the contents of frames). You probably only want to go as high as 8 with this; more than that may cause a server to temporarily blacklist your IP address depending on how it's configured. (If you're going through a proxy defined by Firefox, use network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy instead of this setting.)

Reduce the interval between persistent connections
If you've already used up all the persistent server connections described in the above setting and Firefox needs to make more connections, the integer setting network.http.request.max-start-delay governs how long to wait before attempting to open new connections. This helps if Firefox's persistent-connection limit has been used up by a number of long downloads, and the browser needs to queue a shorter download on top of that.

Most people set this to 0 (in seconds), with the default being 10. Note that this does not override connection limits imposed by remote hosts, so its usefulness is limited by the whim of the server you're connecting to.

Turn on pipelining
The Boolean preference network.http.pipelining enables an experimental acceleration technique called "pipelining," which speeds up the loading of most Web pages. A browser normally waits for some acknowledgment of a given request from a server before attempting to send another one to that server; pipelining sends multiple requests at once without waiting for responses one at a time.

If you turn this on (that is, set its value to true), also be sure to create or edit the integer preference network.http.pipelining.maxrequests, which controls the maximum number of requests that can be pipelined at once. 16 should do it; some people go as high as 128 but there's not much evidence it'll help. (If you use a proxy, set network.http.proxy.pipelining to true as well.)

Note that not every Web server honors pipelining requests correctly, which is why this feature is turned off by default and still considered experimental. Some sites may behave strangely if you submit pipelined requests.

Before you begin

Here are a few caveats to keep in mind as you explore and tweak:

Not everyone will get the same benefits by enabling these tweaks. This is especially true for changing the network settings. If you habitually visit sites that don't allow a large number of connections per client, for instance, you won't see much benefit from raising the number of connections per server.

Some hacks may have a limited shelf life. With each successive release of Firefox, the need for tweaking any of the performance-related config settings (like the network settings) may dwindle as Firefox becomes more self-tuning based on feedback from real-world usage scenarios. In short, what works now may not always work in the future -- and that might not be a bad thing.

Keep a log of everything you change, or make backups. If you tweak something now and notice bizarre activity in a week, you'll want to be able to track back to what was altered and undo it. Firefox does show which about:config changes have been set manually, but this isn't always the most accurate way to find out what you changed.

To make a backup of your preferences in Firefox, just make a copy of the file prefs.js, which is kept in your Firefox profile folder. If you mess something up

, you can always copy this file back in. (Be sure to shut down Firefox before making a copy of prefs.js or moving a copy back into the profile folder!)

Speed up page display

Some of the more recent Firefox customizations I've examined are ways to speed up the rendering of Web pages. The settings to do this are a little arcane and not terribly self-explanatory, but with a little tinkering, you can often get pages to pop up faster and waste less time redrawing themselves.

Start rendering pages faster
Creating an nglayout.initialpaint.delay integer preference lets you control how long Firefox waits before starting to render a page. If this value isn't set, Firefox defaults to 250 milliseconds, or .25 of a second. Some people report that setting it to 0 -- i.e., forcing Firefox to begin rendering immediately -- causes almost all pages to show up faster. Values as high as 50 are also pretty snappy.

Reduce the number of reflows
When Firefox is actively loading a page, it periodically reformats or "reflows" the page as it loads, based on what data has been received. Create a content.notify.interval integer preference to control the minimum number of microseconds (millionths of a second) that elapse between reflows. If it's not explicitly set, it defaults to 120000 (.12 of a second).

Too many reflows may make the browser feel sluggish, so you can increase the interval between reflows by raising this to 500000 (500,000, or 1/2 second) or even to 1000000 (1 million, or 1 second). If you set this value, be sure to also create a Boolean value called content.notify.ontimer and set it to true.

Control Firefox's 'unresponsive' time
When rendering a page, Firefox periodically runs a little faster internally to speed up the rendering process (a method Mozilla calls "tokenizing"), but at the expense of being unresponsive to user input for that length of time. If you want to set the maximum length of time any one of these unresponsive periods can be, create an integer preference called content.max.tokenizing.time.

Set this to a multiple of content.notify.interval's value, or even the same value (but higher is probably better). If you set this to something lower than content.notify.interval, the browser may respond more often to user input while pages are being rendered, but the page itself will render that much more slowly.

If you set a value for content.max.tokenizing.time, you also need to create two more Boolean values -- content.notify.ontimer and content.interrupt.parsing -- and set them both to true.

Control Firefox's 'highly responsive' time
If Firefox is rendering a page and the user performs some kind of command, like scrolling through a still-loading page, Firefox will remain more responsive to user input for a period of time. To control how long this interval is, create an integer preference called content.switch.threshold.

This is normally triple the value of content.notify.interval, but I typically set it to be the same as that value. Set it to something very low -- say, 10000 (10,000 microseconds) -- and the browser may not respond as snappily, but it may cause the rendering to complete more quickly.

If you haven't already created the Boolean values content.notify.ontimer and content.interrupt.parsing and set them both to true in conjunction with content.max.tokenizing.time, you'll need to do so to make content.switch.threshold work properly.

If you are more inclined to wait for a page to finish loading before attempting to do anything with it (like scroll through it), you can set content.max.tokenizing.time to a higher value and content.switch.threshold to a lower value to allow Firefox to finish rendering a page faster at the expense of processing user commands. On the other hand, if you're the kind of person who likes to scroll through a page and start reading it before it's done loading, you can set content.max.tokenizing.time to a lower value and content.switch.threshold to a higher one, to give you back that much more responsiveness at the cost of page-rendering speed.

If you have set up your sudoers file and have a working sudo command (recommended), then simple issuing a `sudo programname from a terminal will allow you to run the program with root privileges. Since you're looking for a file manager, you would use `sudo nautilus`, enter the root password and nautilus will opon up in /root with full access to all files/folders.

Ubuntu desktop users: If you're constantly creating "sudo" sessions in Nautilus (or other applications), it's very easy to confuse your sudo windows with your regular windows. This often results in accidentally opening read-only versions of your system files -- very frustrating! A quick way to visually separate your simultaneous sessions, is to assign a different theme to your sudo applications. To do this, open a terminal and type the following:

sudo gnome-theme-manger

Pick a new theme, and any time you launch an application using sudo, you will be able to clearly see the difference between your sudo windows and your regular windows. Check out the difference in the Nautilus sessions shown above (the sudo window is shown in brown on the right, and the regular user window is shown in blue on the left).

Wow.. I can't believe they are selling these things at Costco. Seems like a good price and beats using pesticide.

Praying Mantis Natural Insect Control Egg Case

Approximately 40 to 400 
Praying Mantis Eggs

$18.99

Item # 129014

Shipping & Handling included

An excellent general predator! Praying mantis consumes aphids, beetles, flies, mosquitos, moths, caterpillars and any insect they can catch. Praying mantis, an insect with an innate killer attitude, is a great garden predator. One egg case hatches many tiny babies that quickly disperse throughout your garden. Your egg case contains approximately 40 to 400 eggs.

Mating occurs in early fall and another egg case will be laid that will hatch the following summer. The egg case is laid as a foam that hardens into a spongy almost indestructible mass, usually laid attached to a shrub, weed, grass, etc., a few feet off the ground. The egg mass survives freezing, thawing, rain and all the elements to hatch in the early summer to start the cycle again.

Features:

• Hatching will occur by June

• Egg case contains 40 to 400 young mantis

• Most often green but sometimes brown

• Very territorial, will create a home where hatched

• Feeds on anything they can catch

• Late summer mating season

How to apply

• Place egg case outside in the spring attaching the egg case using the included mesh bag in a plant, shrub or tree 1 to 1.5 m (3 to 5 ft.) above ground, or to observe, place in sealable white paper bag and place inside in south facing window checking daily. Tiny mantis will hatch in 1 to 8 weeks and all eggs will hatch within 1 to 2 hours, leaving the egg case visibly unchanged. Release tiny mantis immediately outside onto plants after the hatching occurs. They will quickly disperse throughout your yard to mature and lay eggs, continuing your population next season.

How much do I need?

• One egg case covers approximately 90 sq. m (1000 sq. ft.)

Specifications:

• Egg case dimensions (dia.):
  2.54 cm (1 in.)

Windows ReadyBoost is one of new features that improves system memory and boosts performance.

Adding system memory (typically referred to as RAM) is often the best way to improve a PC's performance, since more memory means more applications are ready to run without accessing the hard drive. However, upgrading memory can be difficult and costly, and some machines have limited memory expansion capabilities, making it impossible to add RAM.

Windows Vista introduces Windows ReadyBoost, a new concept in adding memory to a system. You can use non-volatile flash memory, such as that on a universal serial bus (USB) flash drive, to improve performance without having to add additional memory "under the hood."

The flash memory device serves as an additional memory cache—that is, memory that the computer can access much more quickly than it can access data on the hard drive. Windows ReadyBoost relies on the intelligent memory management of Windows SuperFetch and can significantly improve system responsiveness.

It's easy to use Windows ReadyBoost. When a removable memory device such as a USB flash drive or a secure digital (SD) memory card is first inserted into a port, Windows Vista checks to see if its performance is fast enough to work with Windows ReadyBoost. If so, you are asked if you want to use this device to speed up system performance. You can choose to allocate part of a USB drive's memory to speed up performance and use the remainder to store files.

ReadyBoost Q&A From Matt Ayers:

"I'm the Program Manager in the Microsoft Windows Client Performance group and own the ReadyBoost feature. I wanted to give some offical answers based on the excellent questions and discussions that I've seen in this blog, to date. Also, I'll be using this as a starting point for the official ReadyBoost FAQ.

Overall, as many posters have pointed out, the feature is designed to improve small random I/O for people who lack the expansion slots, money, and or technical expertise to add additional RAM. As y’all know, adding RAM is still the best way to relieve memory pressure.

Thanks, again, for your interest, questions and ideas."

Q: What perf do you need on your device?
A: 2.5MB/sec throughput for 4K random reads and 1.75MB/sec throughput for 512K random writes
Q: My device says 12MB/sec (or 133x or something else) on the package but windows says that it isn't fast enough to use as a ReadyBoost device... why?
A: Two possible reasons:

1. The numbers measure sequential performance and we measure random. We've seen devices that have great sequential perf, but horrible random
2. The performance isn't consistently fast across the entire device. Some devices have 128M of lightning fast flash and the rest of the device is really slow. This is fine for some applications but not ReadyBoost.

Q: What's the largest amount of flash that I can use for ReadyBoost?
A: You can use up to 4GB of flash for ReadyBoost (which turns out to be 8GB of cache w/ the compression)
Q: Why can't I use more than 4GB of flash?
A: The FAT32 filesystem limits our ReadyBoost.sfcache file to 4GB
Q: What's the smallest ReadyBoost cache that I can use
A: The smallest cache is 256MB (well, 250 after formatting). Post beta2, we may drop it another 10 MB or so.
Q: Ok... 256M-4GB is a pretty big range... any recommendations?
A: Yes. We recommend a 1:1 ratio of flash to system memory at the low end and as high as 2.5:1 flash to system memory. Higher than that and you won't see much benefit.
Q: Isn't this just putting the paging file onto a flash disk?
A: Not really - the file is still backed on disk. This is a cache - if the data is not found in the ReadyBoost cache, we fall back to the HDD.
Q: Aren't Hard Disks faster than flash? My HDD has 80MB/sec throughput.
A: Hard drives are great for large sequential I/O. For those situations, ReadyBoost gets out of the way. We concentrate on improving the performance of small, random I/Os, like paging to and from disk.
Q: What happens when you remove the drive?
A: When a surprise remove event occurs and we can't find the drive, we fall back to disk. Again, all pages on the device are backed by a page on disk. No exceptions. This isn't a separate page file store, but rather a cache to speed up access to frequently used data.
Q: Isn't user data on a removable device a security risk?
A: This was one of our first concerns and to mitigate this risk, we use AES-128 to encrypt everything that we write to the device.
Q: Won't this wear out the drive?
A: Nope. We're aware of the lifecycle issues with flash drives and are smart about how and when we do our writes to the device. Our research shows that we will get at least 10+ years out of flash devices that we support.
Q: Can use use multiple devices for EMDs?
A: Nope. We've limited Vista to one ReadyBoost per machine
Q: Why just one device?
A: Time and quality. Since this is the first revision of the feature, we decided to focus on making the single device exceptional, without the difficulties of managing multiple caches. We like the idea, though, and it's under consideration for future versions.
Q: Do you support SD/CF/memory stick/MMC/etc.?
A: Mostly. In beta2, we added support for a small number of SD/CF cards on internal USB2 & PCIe busses. RC1 has a much broader support range.
Q: Why don't you support SD on my USB2.0 external card reader?
A: We unfortunately don't support external card readers - there were some technical hurdles that we didn't have time to address. In general, if a card reader shows a drive without media in it (like a floppy drive or CD ROM does), we can't use it for ReadyBoost.
Q: Will it support all USB drives, regardless of how they are ID'd to the OS ("hard disk drive" or "Device with Removable Storage")?
A: We have no way to tell what is on the other end of a USB cable so we do some basic size checks (since no one has a 200GB flash device ;-) ) and then perform our speed tests. HDD will not, however, pass our speed tests, and there is no benefit to using a USB HDD for ReadyBoost.
Q: Can you use an mp3 player to speed up your system?
A: Not currently. MP3 players use the 'plays for sure' interfaces to expose themselves to Windows. We require that the device appear as a disk volume. These aren't currently compatible.
Q: How much of a speed increase are we talking about?
A: Well, that depends. On average, a RANDOM 4K read from flash is about 10x faster than from HDD. Now, how does that translate to end-user perf? Under memory pressure and heavy disk activity, the system is much more responsive; on a 4GB machine with few applications running, the ReadyBoost effect is much less noticable.
Q: I can't get my device to work with ReadyBoost... can I lower the perf requirements?
A: Unfortunately, no. We've set the perf requirements to the lowest possible throughput that still makes your system faster. If we lowered the perf requirements, then there wouldn't be a noticeable benefit to using ReadyBoost. Remember, we're not adding memory, we're improving disk access.
Q: Which manufacturers support ReadyBoost?
A: Well, I hope that all of them do, eventually. Right now, we're working with manufacturers to create a program that will allow them to identify ReadyBoost capable devices on their packaging.

After installed Vista on my computer, I sadly found out that SAS 9.1.3 couldn't be installed on Vista and it is not supported by SAS. SAS will be adding support for this operating system for the first time with release of SAS 9.2. But I can't wait for 9.2, and I don't want go back XP either.

However, here is what I found to make SAS 9.1.3 works on Vista.

Open the Program Compatibility Wizard by clicking the Start button , clicking Control Panel, clicking Programs, and then clicking Use an older program with this version of Windows

Click Next. For the next dialog, you will be asked how you would like to locate the SAS program to install. Select "I want to select the program manually."

Click Next. Browse to the "setup.exe" file you located in step 1.

Click Next. Depending on your current OS and installed Service Packs, choose one that matches your system.

Click Next and select display setting, if it applies to your system. You may skip this part.

Click Next. Check "Run this program as an administrator."

Click Next. This is the last page before SAS begins with the install process.

After you click Next, follow SAS installation instructions.

That's all there is to it. Have fun!

i'm is a new initiative from Windows Live™ Messenger. Every time you start a conversation using i’m, Microsoft shares a portion of the program's advertising revenue with some of the world's most effective organizations dedicated to social causes. We've set no cap on the amount we'll donate to each organization. The sky's the limit.

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Google launched their Google Apps premier today after a long period of rumored preparation. Here is a heads-on comparison.

The following is the sneak preview of comparison.

Microsoft Office Live Essentials:

• domain name for use with email and website
• website creation wizard
• 2 GB email storage (per user)
• 1 GB workspace storage
• 50 email accounts (name@company.com)
• business contact manager and workspaces for document collaboration (10 users)
• website add-ins sold as modules (for advertising and other purposes)
• $19.95 per month ($239.40 per year, assuming 5 active workspace users)

Microsoft’s offering may be for you if:

• You don’t already have a website for your business and want to get something for the world to see that’s quick and easy.
• You and your co-workers are all using computers running some version of Windows.
• You and your co-workers already own some version of Microsoft Office and are prepared to continue using Outlook, Word and Excel as the hub of your business communications and processes.
• Your business is based on customers…attracting them, interacting with them, and keeping them.
• You won’t always have access to the Internet.

Google Apps Premier:

• domain name for use with email and website
• website creation wizard (Page Creator)
• 10 GB email storage (per user)
• no limit on document storage
• unlimited accounts (since pricing is per user, you get what you pay for)
• document collaboration through Google Docs & Spreadsheets
• leverage Google API for integration with other applications
• $50 per user, per year ($250 per year, assuming 5 active users)

Google’s offering may be for you if:

• You are more interested in having reliable tools for email and collaboration, than you are in having a new point-and-click website.
• You and your co-workers are using a mix of different platforms, including Mac OS X.
• You and your co-workers are comfortable using web-based tools for email, word processing or spreadsheets.
• Your business is not entirely based on attracting and cultivating customers. Maybe you have a handful of accounts, but don’t need to track a lot of customer interactions. Maybe you’re a nonprofit organization, school or faith-based organization. Maybe you own a blog network. The possibilities are endless, and you don’t want to be confined to a standard business model.

Heading in the right direction ... Google Maps shows a new way to get from one side of Sussex Street to the other. The marker with the triangle shows 200 Sussex Street. The one with the square shows 201 Sussex Street.
Photo: Google Maps

For most people, the journey from the Shelbourne Hotel at 200 Sussex Street to Google's Sydney headquarters across the road at 201 Sussex Street would be a 30-step, 30-second trip.

But according to Google's new mapping service, the recommended route would see you take a 10.4-kilometre scenic detour that involves crossing the Harbour Bridge twice.

Google calculates that this route would entail an off-peak travel time of 18 minutes. It doesn't tell you that you'd also be up for a $3 bridge toll.

More...

For a Jolly Good Time, Chat With Santa on Windows Live Messenger

This year families can avoid the lines to see Santa at the mall and spend time at home together chatting with Santa Claus through Windows Live Messenger.

REDMOND, Wash. — Dec. 13, 2006 — Ho, ho, ho! This year there is another way for kids to share Christmas wish lists with Santa Claus. Using Windows Live™ Messenger, parents can spend time with their kids chatting in real time with Santa online. Customers can simply add Santa’s address, Northpole@live.com, to their Windows Live Messenger contact list and instantly open a conversation window to communicate with Saint Nick. Kids will enjoy immediate responses from the jolly big man himself through an interactive online chat, and they can even visit Santa’s page on Windows Live Spaces at http://santaonspaces.spaces.live.com. Filling Santa in on Christmas wishes and asking all about how the reindeer are doing or what’s new at the North Pole are a few of the things kids can talk to Santa about. Santa can even tell kids where they stand on his list: naughty or nice.

Starting Christmas Eve morning, kids can check in with Santa through Windows Live Messenger to follow his journey around the world. As Santa circles the globe delivering gifts, kids who ask him where he is or when he will arrive at their house will be directed to the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) Santa-tracking site through a link in the conversation window. More information on chatting with Santa through Windows Live Messenger can be found at http://santaonmessenger.com

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Would you like to be on Santa's nice list?

Hello kids!

I hope you are all as excited as Mrs. Claus and I am for Christmas! Our elves are working hard in the toy shop creating special surprises for children all around the world. The reindeer have been getting extra exercise everyday in preparation for our long trip on Christmas eve. We are hoping for lots of snow before Christmas but clear skies on Christmas eve so that we can drop off even more gifts this year.

If you have been good this year you should ask your parents to add your first name to the comments section.  I am sure I already have you on my good list, but I will have one of the elves double check just to make sure.

Ho Ho Ho!
Merry Christmas!

-- Santa Claus

Browser add-ons can help personalize the way you use the Internet. The add-ons available here have been carefully screened from the Microsoft new IE Addons website and rated by users to help you select the ones that suit your needs and preferences. Start exploring them today.
With so many powerful extensions to choose from for Internet Explorer 7, it can be difficult to decide which ones to install. To help you find what you need to enhance your Internet experience, I have compiled a list of some of my favorites.

Inline Search by Core Systems: Search for text within page while you type
Inline Search is an extremely useful free add-on for Internet Explorer that adds while-you-type searching within the current page, with the option to highlight all occurrences of your search term. It integrates flawlessly into IE7, giving it that little extra that makes you a lot more efficient when you are looking for a specific piece of information on a web page. 

IESpell by RedEgg Software
IESpell is a free Internet Explorer browser extension that spell-checks text-input boxes on a Web page. It will come in particularly handy for users who do a lot of Web-based text entry (Web mail, forums, blogs, diaries). Even if your Web application already includes spell-checking functionality, this utility is faster than a server-side solution. Plus, you get to store and use your personal word list across all your applications instead of having to maintain separate ones on each application.

Trailfire
Trailfire provides a unique new method of web navigation. By leaving "Trailmarks", which are essentially electronic notes, on individual web pages, users can lead their Trailfire contacts on an interpretive trail for the web. You can use the trailmarks to express your opinions on sites you visit, to plan a vacation, or for any number of clever uses not yet invented. This add-on for IE7 makes it possible to experience the web in a far more personal way than ever before.

StumbleUpon Toolbar for Internet Explorer:One of popular Extensions for Firefox now supports IE7.
The StumbleUpon Toolbar for Internet Explorer allows you to 'channel surf' the Internet and discover great websites and web content according to your interests. Whether it's a website, video, picture, game, blog, or wiki, StumbleUpon helps you find interesting stuff recommended by like-minded people with just a single click of the Stumble! button. The more you use it, the better it gets. Join over 1.3 million users who have rated over 7 million websites.

Del.icio.us Toolbar by Del.icio.us
del.icio.us is a collection of favorites - yours and everyone else's. You can use del.icio.us to: Keep links to your favorite articles, blogs, music, reviews, recipes, and more, and access them from any computer on the web, share favorites with friends, family, coworkers, and the del.icio.us community, and to discover new things. Everything on del.icio.us is someone's favorite -- they've already done the work of finding it.

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