In pro baseball, the catcher signals the pitcher how to throw the ball. Similarly, IT needs to inspire lines.

As the saying goes, "Every company is an IT company, every person is a technology person." This adage is becoming more relevant than ever in today's digitalized world, with organizations of all sizes looking for new ways to compete and grow by changing or pivoting their business models.
Research firm Gartner says that by 2017, more than 50 percent of technology spending will happen outside of the IT organization. Lines of business have always benefited from a discretionary IT budget that was directly proportional to the power of their leader, but until the advent of SaaS this budget remained low compared to the overall IT spend. Salesforce.com's "No Software" approach and the subsequent surge in Software-as-a-Service business applications has seen the advent of a new era in non-IT-driven IT investments. Many an IT leader has had to cope with the challenging task of regaining control of applications that were selected and deployed without his involvement, and sometimes without his knowledge.

Today, SaaS is no longer limited to business applications. Even technologies that until recently remained the prerogative of IT, are shifting toward business users. Integration is a perfect example: Gartner inventories today over 30 Integration Platform-as-a-Service (iPaaS) vendors, and even the highly specialized API world is getting a step closer to business users with self-service API Platform-as-a-Service. (Disclosure: I am a former employee and a shareholder of Talend, an integration vendor which has announced it will launch an iPaaS product in 2015, and I am an advisor to Restlet, provider of an API PaaS).

In this world where IT is loosing control of IT, it is easy for IT leaders to remain passive and wait until they get thrown projects at. After all, there is never enough budget to build everything they are asked to do, so why seek additional projects? But in the long run, once the excitement fades, as business leaders get replaced, IT will inevitably be asked to assume the choices that were made without them. The challenge for IT is thus to never lose this control, to remain involved in the key technology decisions, or at the minimum to help stir them in the right direction.

I have written before about sports and how they are driven by digitalization. But sports concepts also drive this digital transformation. Take baseball: who decides how the ball is going to be thrown, the pitcher -- or the catcher? For the casual observer, the pitcher is in control, and if he throws a curveball, the catcher will have to figure out how to catch it. And indeed this is what happens when the catcher remains passive, just squatting and waiting for the pitch. This is also what happens when IT is not involved -- until the line of business decides to throw ownership of SaaS applications or iPaaS integration jobs toward IT.

But if you observe more carefully a baseball game, pro catchers actually signal to their pitcher, through an elaborate finger-position code, the type of pitch to throw. In IT, this translates by IT gently nudging the business towards the right choices -- right for the business, and right for IT.

Of course, some pitchers don't always obey the hand signals from the catcher, because "they know better." Similarly, not all business leaders will follow the advice from IT on their technology choices, because "they own the budget." And IT will be left to deal with an unexpected curve ball at some point.

You'd never come home with a dirty, pest-infested and untrained puppy you randomly pick in the street. 

This data you are trying to bring in looks pretty nice, but where did you pick it up? Are you certain it's safe to import into our systems? Until you tell me about the origin of the data, and can certify to its state of cleanliness, you are leaving it outside the door! I don't want the data we have gone to great lengths to thoroughly assess, cleanse and enrich, to get corrupted by this new data puppy of yours! It certainly looks cute, but has it received the proper immunizations? Is it data warehouse-broken? And when was the last time it saw a data vet?
You really don't want to bring into your systems any data, coming from anywhere. In a not-too-distant past, the equation was fairly straightforward. Most data was produced internally by your transactions, on your systems. Some data would be provided by trading partners, or purchased from data providers, but the process to acquire this data would be properly designed, a contract with service level agreements would be devised, guaranteeing a proper level of quality and holding you harmless from infringement, from privacy violations and other difficulties caused by improper data collection.

We now live in a digitized world. More and more, all kinds of data is available for anyone to grab. Whether data is collected through calls to public APIs or via screen scraping, it is extremely easy to harvest all kind of data. But you have no control over the origin of this data, over its reliability, over its accuracy.
All this readily available and easily harvest able data creates new challenges linked to governance:

• Origin: it's not because the origin of data is unknown that the data is unusable. Actually there are certainly cases where it is of better quality than your own data. However you have to assume that it may be bad, until it has been proven otherwise. Just leave that data in the front yard, or in the mudroom, until you have confirmed that it meets your standards.
• Reliability and accuracy: if you are going to base mission-critical business processes on this data, you need to confirm that it is fit-for-purpose. This can be done by checking samples, or by executing test-runs of these processes and comparing the outcome with other predictions or with actual.
• Liability: the press is filled with examples of data theft and privacy violations linked to improper use of data. If you are bringing harvested data into your systems, ensure that this data was collected appropriately, with the proper levels of consent.
• Control: simply put, if it's not your data, you have no power in controlling and enhancing governance. You have to rely on a third party, or set of third parties, to properly govern the data. Or, you have to assume that the data is not governed, and use it as such.

So before you bring this cool data puppy home and let him become part of your household, make sure it's not going to cause too much trouble!

Read More:- Techies | Update

Storm lets you create real-time analytics for every conceivable need.

Two weeks ago, we examined the two most popular real-time processing frameworks, Apache Storm and Apache Spark. Now we're going to take a much deeper look at Storm and walk through a basic Storm deployment for consuming Twitter messages and performing analytics on the Twitter stream.

To this end, we'll extract important keywords from individual tweets and calculate rolling metrics related to how actively a given keyword is being discussed. Plus, we'll do some lightweight sentiment analysis to determine the tenor of the discussion on a given topic. We'll also look at how Storm and XMPP combine nicely for extracting important "moment in time" events from a stream and for sending those events out as alerts.

All about Storm

Storm is an open source, distributed, stream-processing platform, designed to make it easy to build massively scalable systems for performing real-time computations on continuous streams of data.
People sometimes refer to Storm as the Hadoop of real-time processing, but it's important to note that Storm has no particular dependency on the MapReduce programming model. You may, if your needs so dictate, code a Storm solution to use a MapReduce model, but nothing about Storm requires it. In fact, Storm bears a slight resemblance to pre-Hadoop distributed computing systems like MPI in terms of the flexibility you have in designing your application.

It might not be the end of the world, but the design of system and the attitudes of its developers.

Many companies still struggle with reimbursement and access policies for employees.

It's one of the most frequent questions I get at conferences: How to manage all those users who want to or simply do -- use mobile devices and want that work usage reimbursed. This question usually comes up in the context of BYOD, but of course can also be raised in terms of company-provided devices -- meaning Who gets those in the first place?

Although every company has its own requirements, employee-ennoblement bias, and context, there are core, equitable principles that every company can start from and modify for their own needs and culture. What follows is my proposed draft policy based on these principles. As you begin a new year, now is a good time to (re)think your own policies around mobile and remote-access reimbursements and of course, permissions.

Principles

The company's business units have different patterns and mixes of employee communications and information access. Thus, a flexible approach is needed that lets each business unit optimize its use of mobile devices for communications, information access, and systems access. But so is consistency in the framework governing how money is spent on such tools, so employees whose roles are similar are treated similarly.

In applying this policy, there are two key decisions for the department head to make that determine which policy section applies to each employee:

Read More:- Techies | Update

The role of the developer has risen in importance in many organizations.

When picking a PC, we face a three-way choice: High maintenance, out-of-the-box utility, and software freedom.

Want to switch between programming languages? 

Esoteric puzzles, landmine questions, ‘cultural fit’ -- these 13 tips help you navigate the IT interview.

If you’re an IT pro, chances the job interview is at -- or very near -- the top of your list of personal hells. Why not? Tech job interviews can be grueling experiences, rife with esoteric puzzles, uncomfortable pauses, landmine questions, and the aching underlying feeling that maybe you don’t belong.
Throughout the process, you will be talking with strangers via phone and video, taking tests, answering challenging and often uncomfortable questions, traveling on sleepless red-eye flights, and enduring multiple anxious periods of not knowing what is going on, how you’ve been received, or what will happen next.
To really ace the interview and minimize your anxiety going in, you must be prepared to an almost otherworldly extent, on many fronts at once. This means deep research on the position and company to decode what to expect during the interview process and to understand the company dynamics at as near the level of a current employee as you can.
Still sure you want to pursue that new job?

IT interview tip No. 1: Don’t be afraid to reach out early

Interview preparation begins the moment you find yourself intrigued by a posting. The questions you anticipate fielding, how you’ll present your skills and experience persuasively, what you’ll ask to get a better grasp of the position -- the interview should always be a point of reflection as you dig deeper in researching the job.

One note to keep in mind early: Sometimes the company can be more important than the advertised position. Just because the job ad says “junior programmer” does not mean the company doesn’t also need a senior developer. The key to acing an IT interview is finding the perfect fit. Don’t be afraid to call or email; many jobs are not advertised. In some cases, early contact on a not-quite-right job can lead to an informal conversation with the recruiter, who can tell you whether other, better-suited jobs are on offer or if the organization is open to expanding the role to fit your extraordinary qualifications.

IT interview tip No. 2: Don't believe everything you read on Glassdoor

Resources such as Glassdoor provide a wealth of information about the hiring and interviewing process at most major companies. In fact, for many IT pros, Glassdoor’s community reviews of a company’s culture, salary information, and so on is the first stop in researching a position. The information can be extensive, detailed, and very valuable, providing instant insights from fellow professionals of their experiences with your target company.

But as with every other aspect of the Internet, be aware that people who don’t like the company are much more likely to review it than people who like the company. Take all the negativity -- you’re likely to encounter a lot -- with a block of salt and make up your own mind. Don’t be dissuaded from pursuing what could be your dream job, or get derailed by interview advice from someone who might not have been the right fit or was not as well prepared for the interview as you will be.

IT interview tip No. 3: Find employee blogs and read them in depth

Once you know what the company thinks is important about the position you are targeting and how its interview process works, it’s time to gather all the information you can about the company. For most major companies, there are blogs, books, and websites devoted to their inner workings, technical focus, and business culture. Immersing yourself in these is not a waste of time; it helps you feel prepared, making you more relaxed when it comes time to interview.

Here, employee blogs can be a goldmine. When preparing for an interview with a major international consulting and development firm, I came across the blog of its chief scientist and read it -- all of it. This took about three days, several hours per day.

I also watched several of his presentations on YouTube, as well as presentations by the company’s CTO and other technical employees. I read everything on the company website, researched the founder’s background and vision, and skimmed hundreds of tweets and blog posts by current employees.

At no point in the interview process was I asked anything about this information, but it gave me a very good idea of what the company was focused on technically and socially, thus informing the conversations I had -- not just the technical ones. Doing so brings you a lot closer to the company, making it much easier to convince those who interview you that you belong and are ready to make a difference right away.

IT interview tip No. 4: Research social culture -- it's as critical as technical focus

Employee blogs, social media, and social networks are a great source of insider information about the company’s social culture. Does everyone complain that there’s no work/life balance? Do employees frequently get together after-hours to drink shots and sing karaoke? Do project teams volunteer for social-good projects together? Do employees often appear as speakers at conferences?
None of these are particularly important, but together they paint an overall picture of the social culture at the company. Do you find this picture attractive? Could you find yourself fitting into the company’s social dynamic?
For some, a company with an all-work-and-no-play focus is fine; for others, working somewhere with people you actually want to be around after-hours can be a great benefit. Many people take jobs they think they will like only to discover they don’t enjoy the dynamics of the workplace once they are hired, or simply enter the interview process blind to the social tenor interviews will take. Getting a sense of the day-to-day social interactions of a potential employer goes a long way toward giving you a sense of what to expect about the interview process.

IT interview tip No. 5: Understanding the underlying principles of interview puzzles is the key to crushing them

One of the more controversial -- and anxiety-inducing -- hiring practices these days is the use of puzzles during interviews. Perhaps because of this, the puzzles themselves often find their way onto the Net.
The last thing you should do is memorize the answers to the questions you find when researching a particular company. Read them to understand what kind of questions you might be asked, what kind of answers they might be looking for, and what the underlying purpose of the questions might be. Memorizing the answers can easily backfire; it takes only a small change to the question to render published answers incorrect -- not to mention the fact that rattling off answers to complex questions without taking time to think is highly suspicious. People who memorize answers without understanding underlying principles are easily exposed, and interviewers know it.

Instead, use your research as a guide to uncovering the underlying purpose of the puzzles. Silly questions about cannibals and canoes may be intended to see how you think through a logic puzzle, or it may be to see if you push back against stupid questions, or it may be to see if you think out of the box. Each company has its own agenda for asking these kinds of questions; study published puzzles with a mind to unlock them.

IT interview tip No. 6: Connect with current employees

As you prepare for your interview, be sure to make use of social networking outlets like LinkedIn. Send an invitation to connect with a few people in the company accompanied by a short note explaining that you have an interview soon and would appreciate some tips can confirm, deny, or expand on the research you’ve already done. You can ask about what to wear, what to expect, and so on, but the key to not coming off like a creep is to limit your correspondence to one question per contact; make it easy for them to connect and respond. Humor certainly helps in reaching out, but above all, be yourself.

IT interview tip No. 7: Don't tilt at windmills

If you find that the kinds of things a company asks in its interviews are ridiculous, irrelevant, or offensive, reconsider whether you really want to work there. It takes a lot of work to prepare for an interview, and if you find that a company’s process or culture makes your skin crawl, it may be in your best interests to walk away.

True, practice makes perfect. And if you’ve been out of the job market for a while, going through a couple not-quite-right or even uncomfortable interviews can help you get back in the saddle. But the strain of chasing a bad fit can ultimately be very unrewarding and potentially demoralizing, not to mention a distraction from finding exactly the right position for you.

IT interview tip No. 8: Dress as if you already work there

It’s simple, almost hackneyed, but it’s true: What you wear, how you present yourself, your body language, and so on, all of these influence the interviewers and thus the outcome. If the company is “business casual,” don’t show up in a suit. Dress as if you already work there. If you’re not sure from the description, ask your recruiter or inside contact, look for office pictures, or if possible drop by the office and peek through the window.

Before you walk into the room, remind yourself of your good qualities. Stand up straight, make eye contact, and enter the space as if you belong there -- not as if you own it or rule it, but as if it is a comfortable, familiar place where several of your friends reside. You want to project an open, friendly level of confidence, to set both you and the interviewers at ease.

IT interview tip No. 9: Let your personality out

Interviewers -- the good ones -- aren’t merely looking for boxes to check. They’re looking for someone who fits into the company culture, adds value to the business, and is able to grow with the job. It's important to let your personality out, though not all at once. This may be difficult for those with a more introverted personality to ease into, and for the more extroverted among us it may be hard to hold back on the thousand things you find fascinating.

Pick two or three areas of personal interest that you feel are relevant to the job, the company, or the interviewer. You may not be able to identify these in advance, so stay alert for clues during the course of the conversation. When opportunity presents, add a little bit of your personality into the dialog, and see if that increases interest or engagement. If it does, continue the thread for a little bit; if it doesn’t, don’t press it.
In the end, you want the company to be excited about you, not about filling a round hole with an uninteresting peg.

IT interview tip No. 10: Beware the "interviewing the interviewer" trap

Some publications recommend you take control of the interview by “interviewing the interviewer.” This can be misinterpreted as adversarial in some circumstances. It’s fine to turn the interview process into a conversation instead of an interrogation and ask questions. For example, if asked about your experience with a particular programming language, it’s not a bad idea to answer with pertinent facts briefly, then follow up with a leading question such as, “How much of my work would be with this language, and in what domains?”
This is easier than it sounds, and it is definitely a good idea to prepare questions for the interviewer in advance, especially if you have concerns about the position or company. But by no means do you want to come off as challenging the interviewer by turning the process on its head. You want to be remembered as someone who is well-prepared, well-informed, and easy to talk to -- not someone who is going to undermine colleagues by questioning them for the sake of showing what you know.

IT interview tip No. 11: Help the interviewer imagine you in the position

Open-ended questions are an excellent opportunity to help the interviewer imagine you in the position. For example, “What would my day-to-day duties be?” pretty much forces the interviewer to imagine that you already have the position and are going about your daily routine before answering, or at least drawing a parallel between you and their ideal candidate or between you and the last person to fill the position.

IT interview tip No. 12: Always speak favorably about former employers

It doesn’t matter if your prior employer was a complete control freak who made your life a living hell; always speak favorably about them. Don’t say, “I got tired of text messages at midnight asking me for help with the manager’s moonlighting project, so I’m looking for a new gig.” Instead, make it positive: “I enjoyed the variety of challenges presented but am looking for new ones.” Going on and on about how badly your prior employer treated you is a serious red flag, no matter how justified you feel you are in doing so.

You are very likely to be asked point-blank why you have left former positions, so be positive -- “to expand my opportunities to use my abilities to help more people,” “to take my career in a more modern direction,” “to relocate to [city name].” Whatever you say, you must mean it, and be ready to back it up with concrete examples. Moving toward a positive goal is attractive; running away from a negative space is not.

IT interview tip No. 13: Ask for the job

Most interviewers ask if you have any questions for them at the end of the interview. If you are excited about the opportunity, it’s OK to ask, “When do I start?” If the interviewer has hiring authority, he/she may make you an offer on the spot. This question shows enthusiasm and initiative, and at the very least elicits a laugh and ends the discussion on a positive note. If the interviewer reacts negatively to this question -- seems taken aback or flustered -- that may be a sign the interview did not go well from their perspective, and it’s time to hunt anew, or seek out ways to assuage them of their reservations about you.

Read More:- http://www.infoworld.com/article/2851128/it-careers/13-tips-ace-your-it-job-interview.html 

A diverse set of real-world Java benchmarks shows Google is fastest, Azure is slowest, and Amazon is priciest.

A third of the world's population has at least basic access to the mobile Internet.

The company is looking to extend its Google Cloud Dataflow platform to other languages and environments.

The newest version of Spark in-memory framework for Hadoop improves performance.

Apache Spark, the in-memory and real-time data processing framework for Hadoop, turned heads and opened eyes after version 1.0 debuted. The feature changes in 1.2 show Spark working not only to improve, but to become the go-to framework for large-scale data processing in Hadoop.
Among the changes in Spark 1.2, the biggest items broaden Spark's usefulness in multiple ways. A new elastic scaling system allows Spark to better use cluster nodes during long-running jobs, which has apparently been requested often for multitenant environments. Spark's streaming functionality, a major reason why it's on the map in the first place, now has a Python API and a write-ahead log to support high-availability scenarios.

The new version also includes Spark SQL, which allows Spark jobs to perform Apache Hive-like queries against data, and it can now work with external data sources via a new API. Machine learning, all the rage outside of Hadoop as well, gets a boost in Spark thanks to a new package of APIs and algorithms, with better support for Python as a bonus. Finally, Spark's graph-computing API GraphX is out of alpha and stable.

Spark's efforts to ramp up and expand speak to two ongoing efforts within the Hadoop world at large. The first is to shed the straitjacket created by legacy dependencies on the MapReduce framework and move processing to YARN, Tez, and Spark. Gary Nakamura, CEO of data-application infrastructure outfit Concurrent, believes the "proven and reliable" MapReduce will continue to dominate production over Spark (and Tez) in the coming year. However, MapReduce's limitations are hard to ignore, and they put real limitations on the work that can be done with it.

Another development worth noting is Python's expanding support for Spark -- and Hadoop. Python's popularity with number-crunchers remains strong and is ideal for use in Hadoop and Spark, but most of Python's support there has remained confined to MapReduce jobs. Bolstering Spark's support for Python broadens its appeal beyond the typical enterprise Java crowd and with Hadoop in general.

Much of Spark's continued development has come through contributions from Hadoop shop Hortonworks. The company has deeply integrated Spark with YARN, is adding security and governance by way of the Apache Argus project, and is improving debugging.

This last issue has been the focus of criticism in the past, as programmer Alex Rubinsteyn has cited Spark for being difficult to debug: "Spark's lazy evaluation," he wrote, "makes it hard to know which parts of your program are the bottleneck and, even if you can identify a particularly slow expression, it's not always obvious why it's slow or how to make it faster."

Fake reviews are poisoning the Internet. Here's how machine learning is attempting to nail the counterfeiters.

 

It used to be that computing hardware was kept general-purpose to support any workload.

Salesforce1 Platform gives Salesforce developers at all skill levels good options for building mobile apps.

Salesforce.com started as a cloud service for sales force automation. The company added a cloud-based development platform, Force.com, with a Java-like language (APEX), and went on to acquire the Heroku PaaS and a number of other services.

Today, Salesforce.com is the acknowledged 800-pound gorilla of SaaS for a number of business application areas: not only sales force automation, but also marketing, customer service, community building, business intelligence, B2B prospecting, and collaboration. Over the last few years, Salesforce has been building out its mobile strategy.

As we’ll see, the Salesforce1 toolkit includes a Web-based drag-and-drop designer that even a Neanderthal – make that a business analyst – can use. (I’m now in trouble with both Neanderthals and business analysts.) At the next level of complexity, a Web developer who knows some HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript can build pages for Salesforce1 in Visual Force with Mobile Packs or using Lightning components. At the highest level of complexity, a mobile developer can build native or hybrid applications against Salesforce data for iOS and Android with the Salesforce Mobile SDKs. Meanwhile, any of these can utilize the MBaaSes provided by the Salesforce1 Platform.

Vox populi: Windows Feedback means you can prod Microsoft to change Windows 10.

Top 20 Windows 10 Feedback suggestions

The Windows 10 Feedback mechanism offers a unique way for you to change the course of Windows development. While Microsoft's made only a few, very minor changes to the Win10 Technical Preview in response to feedback, the time to get your vote in is right now, while the dev team goes into an intense six-to-eight-week full-court press.

The following list aggregates feedback items that many Windows "Insiders" feel are most important, with a bit of cheering from the mouse-and-keyboard peanut gallery, and vetting from yours truly. If you want to see these changes in the shipping version of Windows 10, speak now or forever hold the pieces.
Let’s not let the tragedy of Windows 8 be repeated on our watch!

If you aren't already running Windows 10, it's easy to use Microsoft's ISO file to install the latest version, Windows 10 Technical Preview build 9879. Get with the system and get your opinion heard!

Windows 10 Feedback: How to be heard

When you are officially signed up for the Insider Program and have the latest version of Windows 10 Technical Preview installed, go into the Windows Feedback application by clicking Start, then choosing the Windows Feedback tile on the right side of the Start menu.
Take a few minutes to orient yourself in the Windows Feedback app. In particular, note how you can add a Me Too to any of the existing feedback items. That's the key. If you find a suggestion that rings your chimes, give it a Me Too. If you have a suggestion that's slightly different from one you see, write up the details as a New Feedback -- but don't forget to add your Me Too vote to the original item. Microsoft counts Me Toos.

 

Section: Apps/OneDrive

1. Tester's Feedback: Not at all pleased with the changes to how OneDrive interacts with this latest build (9879). In the OneDrive folder ONLY the synced stuff shows up. Things that are online only have to be gotten to by going to the website. Not good imo.
You can see the problem in this screenshot. On the left, in File Explorer, my OneDrivePictures folder has a folder called Camera Roll and a handful of individual files. On the right, if I log in to OneDrive, there are two folders -- including an extra one called Photos. The file called Photos isn't synced, so it doesn't show up in File Explorer. In fact, if you looked at your OneDrive folder with File Explorer in build 9879, you'd have no way of knowing the Photos folder existed -- applications can't get to it, Windows searches won't find anything in it, you can't save to it.
It's a controversial move that, in my opinion, makes Windows 10 and OneDrive considerably less useful than they should be. Computerworld's Gregg Keizer has an excellent synopsis of the controversy. Peter Bright at Ars Technica posted a more conciliatory analysis, and Microsoft has responded. I, for one, think that CITEworld contributor Mary Branscombe hit the nail on the head with her original post, which garnered 7,100 votes, then was pulled by Microsoft.
You can't vote for Mary Branscombe's original. But you can, if so inclined, vote for its proxy, listed above.

 

Section: Apps/All Other Apps

2. Tester's Feedback: We need a new Windows Media player. Most people install other players like mpc and vlc because of the lack of codec support and features. WMP should have a playlist that can be detached as a separate window. The playlist should support auto save in case you've added new files to it but the player was closed unexpectedly…
3. Tester's Feedback: Don't preload so many junk apps: Travel, Games, News etc. If people want an app for it, they'll go to the Windows Store to get it. Not including them will also make the OS be smaller and configure faster.
I get that Microsoft wants to sell Xboxes, games, music, videos, and the like. I don't get how that translates into poorly behaved Windows apps that I'm forced to install but will never use.
Looks like Windows 10 will be able to play FLAC and MKV files -- only 10 years late and 10 cents short.
I give a Me Too to both suggestions -- with a twist. Some inside scuttlebutt says Windows Media Player may be dropped in Win10, or at the very least, it won't be improved. Good riddance, sez I. Hey, Microsoft, why not include a copy of VLC with Win10, kill WMP, and make Xbox Music and Xbox Video optional?

 

Section: Apps/App behavior on multi-monitor

4. Tester's Feedback: Add the ability to set other desktops to another monitor. This will provide users with Multi-display setups to have more multitasking functionality when combining the power of Multiple desktops and Other displays.
I'm surprised this wasn't in the design spec from day one.
Although the user interface for assigning desktops to monitors might be challenging (context menu on each of the thumbnails?), the ability to set up a desktop, then send it to a different monitor would be a godsend for many multi-mon-munchkins.

 

Section: File Explorer/File Association

5. Tester's Feedback: Give us an option to unassociate file types! If someone, for example, associates by mistake a system file type to a 3rd party program, then all files of the same type will appear to open with that program.
6. Tester's Feedback: Don't check "Use this app for all .xyz files" by default. This drives me nuts. I use Open With to open a file with a different program in a one-off scenario. I constantly have to uncheck it.
The two problems go hand in hand. Advanced Windows users frequently open a file with a one-off program and forget to uncheck the box. That leads to the situation where you want to get rid of the association.
I've seen people royally mess up their machines by assigning an unusual program (say, Notepad) to a critical filename extension (for example, .dll). Try diagnosing that one.

 

Section: File Explorer/File Picker

7. Tester's Feedback: Tabbed browsing! We use it daily with our Web browser. Our file browser needs it built in, so I don't have to keep using third-party programs.
(There's a similar item in the section File Explorer/Ribbon and context menus)
Meet Clover, the best-known third-party program to add tabs to the Windows 8 (File) Explorer. Clover has a very simple user interface: Exactly as you would drag and drop websites to create browser tabs, you can drag and drop locations inside Windows Explorer up to the top, to turn them into tabs.
Click on the tab, and Windows Explorer navigates to the location: easy, intuitive, effective.
This screenshot shows Clover working perfectly well with the Windows 10 Tech Preview build 9879 File Explorer. The tabs across the top are the ones I chose to speed up navigating. Why can't Windows 10's built-in File Explorer do the same thing?

 

Section: File Explorer/Libraries

8. Tester's Feedback: I would like the option to open file explorer to "This PC" instead of "Home" or the ability to add drives to the Frequent folders under "Home."
9. Tester's Feedback: Windows + E should take you to This PC, not Home. Or give the option to include This PC to my Favorites.
10. Tester's Feedback: The home folder should be customizable.
Windows 7 opened Windows Explorer to your Libraries. Windows 8 doesn't play well with Libraries, so Microsoft changed Windows Explorer to open in a made-up place called "This PC," which includes the primary folders (Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Music, Pictures, Videos), Devices and Drives, and Network Locations. In Windows 10 build 9879, File Explorer (different name, same app) opens to a new made-up place called "Home," which, as of this build, lists Frequent folders and Recent files.
There doesn't appear to be any way to modify the contents of the "Home" location, so you're stuck with Frequent folders and Recent files. Clearly, Microsoft hasn't thought this through very well.

 

Section: Windows Installation and Setup/First sign-in Start screen layout or app registration

11. Tester's Feedback: Please add the ability to register a local user account without logging into the Microsoft online account.
12. Tester's Feedback: You can sign in with a standard account, but the need to select "create a new account" under "sign in with Microsoft account" is misleading, having the "Make a local account" under it would be better.
13. Tester's Feedback: I don't like being forced to use Microsoft accounts as my Windows account, so I had to go through hustle of providing fake Outlook account to force install process option where I can create local account.
Similar Feedback under Windows Installation and Setup/Out-of-box-experience and under Windows Installation and Setup/Windows installation, Personalization and Ease of Access/User accounts, and several others.
Microsoft is still stacking the deck, trying hard to get you to use your Microsoft account as a Windows logon. If you don't want to use a Microsoft account (or convert a current email account into a Microsoft account) to log onto Windows, when you create the local Windows account (see screenshot) you have to click "Sign in without a Microsoft account (not recommended)," then at the bottom of the next screen click "Local Account."
Microsoft's playing Google's game. When you use a Microsoft Account to log on to Windows, Microsoft can keep track of where and when you're logging in, correlate your user ID with your IP address (and thus your Bing searches and visited URLs in IE), and track all of your local searches.
If you think Local Accounts are for power users only, ask yourself this: If a typical Windows customer understood that using a Microsoft account let Microsoft track them and their searches, what would their reaction be? I don't know about you, but my Aunt Mergatroid would be aghast.

 

Section: Network/Network and sharing center

14. Tester's Feedback: There should be a more intuitive way to change the type (private vs public) of a network.
As it stands in build 9879, the only way I've found to change a network from public to private, or vice versa, requires you to "Forget" the network. The only way to do that, as best I can tell, is to bring up the Network pane on the right -- click Start, PC Settings, Networks, Manage, and at the bottom click Open Network Flyout (see screenshot). Then right-click on the connection you want to change, and choose “Forget this network.”
Then you have to reconnect to the network, this time specifying either private or public.
Yeah, I think that needs to be more intuitive.

 

Section: Search/Windows Search

15. Tester's Feedback: The Windows Search button on the taskbar is weird. Is it supposed to be its own app? If so, why whenever you click a link does it go to IE? This is very strange to me. If this is the case, why even have it? I could just fire up IE and do the same thing. Seems redundant.
16. Tester's Feedback: Windows Search result brings search results from the Web which personally is a terrible idea. If I want to search the Web, I will start IE or any other browser and search against Google or Bing or Yahoo search engine.
Microsoft uses Windows Search's extended Web searching -- "Smart Search" -- to sell ads and to add to its Bing hit count. I talked about it a year ago, when Microsoft first introduced the "feature" into what would become Windows 8.1 Update 1.
In a nutshell, unless you turn it off, Microsoft can track every search you make on your machine -- and feed you ads based on your search terms. I'm not talking about Web searches. I'm talking about simple searches for documents, or photos, or music. If you use a Microsoft account and leave Windows Search enabled, Microsoft can amass an enormous amount of information, solely from the way you use your machine on your data.
In Windows 8.1 you can turn it off (or set it off during installation), although it's enabled by default. In Windows 10, I don't see any way to turn it off.
Scroogled? Bah! Microsoft snoops around, too -- and it brags to its advertisers about how effective Windows snooping can be.

 

Section: Windows Update and Recovery/Backup and restore

17. Tester's Feedback: You should return Windows 7 style backup.
18. Tester's Feedback: Bring back scheduled increment Windows image backups. File history is great, but it's not enough.
19. Tester's Feedback: Make System Restore easier to find! Ever since Windows 8 you've hidden the classic system restore (where you have automatic restore points) inside "Recovery" so you can push Refresh and Reset PC to the front... Make it accessible again for non-computer-savvy users!
Many more Feedback items, in multiple Feedback sections, are in the same vein.
Microsoft buried the Windows Backup tools in Windows 8, tore some of them out of Windows 8.1, and they sure as shootin' aren't coming back in Windows 10. The goal, I'm told, is to present a Chromebook-style backup capability: You don't need to back up anything on your computer because it's in the cloud. To that I say, balderdash. If I want Chromebook backup, I'll use a Chromebook. (In fact, I do, but that's another story.)
Windows 10 doesn't create daily restore points (see screenshot). If there's a way to bring back Windows 7's full-system backup, I can't find it (the Win 8.1 trick of searching for "Windows 7 File Recovery" doesn't work). With OneDrive hitting the skids (see previous slide), backing up to OneDrive is harder than ever.
I doubt that Microsoft will bring back Windows 7 backup/recovery, but I can always hope.

 

Section: Windows Update and Recovery/Restore, refresh and reset

20. Tester's Feedback: Allow holding down Shift or F8 or possibly even the Windows key at boot to get the Advanced Boot Options screen. This will make getting into safe mode and other recovery options easier to access before Windows boots.
Booting into Safe Mode in Windows 10 (like Win8 before it) is a convoluted process with a chicken-and-egg element. If you want to get into Safe Mode (or System Restore, Image Recovery, Startup Repair), you have to go into PC Settings, Update and Recovery, Recovery, then click Restart Now at the bottom (see screenshot).
For the 1.5 billion people who've been exposed to F8 on boot, perhaps by proxy or vicariously, that's a big change. It also means Windows has to be working before you can boot into Safe Mode.

 

Windows 10 Feedback: Speak up now

That's my take on the best of the Windows 10 Feedback items.
I didn't include items that have been suggested a million times and ignored by Microsoft (for example, creating a clipboard manager that stores multiple items, or showing filename extensions by default). I also didn't include feedback that's surely already on the dev list (such as dragging an open app from one desktop to another, different themes on different desktops, putting an icon marker on shared folders, bringing back the network icon in the notification area), nor did I include obvious bugs. I skipped over UI suggestions, many of which are fine, but all of which fall into the de gustibus bucket (except for bringing back Aero Glass which, to my uneducated eye, is more like a Holy Grail).
Did I miss one of your favorites? Sound off in the comments! Let's get these design screwups fixed by the time Win10 ships.
Fer heaven's sake, quitcherbitchin, sign up, and tell Microsoft how to make Windows 10 better!