Adding Folders Under "All Programs" for All Users Under Windows 7

I just recently installed Windows 7 on my wife's laptop. I wanted to add a new program group (folder) that I intended to name "Utilities" under "All Programs" so that the group would be visible to all accounts on the system. I right-clicked on the start program button as I would under Windows XP, but there was no "Open all users" or "Explore all users" option. And there was no Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs folder where I would add a new folder under Windows XP. Instead, you add a folder under C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs. To see this folder you will have to turn on the display of hidden files and folders, which you do under Windows 7 by selecting "Organize" from the Windows Explorer, then selecting "Folder and search options", and then clicking on the "View tab". Then under "Hidden files and folders", select "Show hidden files, folders, and drives". You will then be able to see the C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs folder and create a new folder within it.

Once I had created the Utilities folder by right-clicking and selecting "New" and "Folder" within the C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs, I then expected to just be able to right-click again within the Utilities folder and select "New" and "Shortcut". But the only option under "New" was "Folder". So I next opened another Windows Explorer window, thinking I could create a shortcut by just going to the folder where the program was located that I wanted to add to the Utilities folder and then clicking on the program, in this case procmon.exe, and then dragging it over to C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Utilities while holding down the Alt key (if you just drag the program from one location on the same drive to another, the progam is moved, but, if you hold down the Alt key at the same time, you will get a shortcut, aka "link"). But that didn't work either. I received the message "Windows can't create a shorcut here. Do you want the shortcut to be placed on the desktop instead?" I chose "yes". I was then able to move the shortcut from the desktop to the C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Utilities, though I was told "You'll need to provide administrator permission to move to this folder." I clicked on "Continue" and the shortcut was moved. I was logged on under an account, admin, in the administrator group throughout the process.

This seems like a far more cumbersome means of performing a fairly simple task under Windows 7 than it was under Windows XP.

Apparently, you can have at most 70 folders under "All Programs" in Windows 7. Tim Long posted the following at Windows 7 Blank ‘All Programs’ Menu:

I’ve run into a problem in Windows 7 RC where the ‘All Programs’ menu goes completely blank, making it a pain to access installed programs. The search feature still works and programs can be accessed that way.

This happens when there are more than about 70 folders in the ‘All Programs’ menu. The workaround I have come up with is:

1. Uninstall programs until there is <70 folders in the All Programs menu.
2. Use Explorer to browse the All Programs folder (typically C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs) and reorganise some of the folders into a subfolder. For example, create a Utilities folder and drag some of the other folders inside it. There must be <70 folders in the top level.

So you can use either method 1 or method 2 above to resolve the problem.

References:

1. Start Menu All Programs - Add or Delete Shortcuts
   By: Brink
   Date: November 3, 2008
   Windows 7 Forums
2. Windows 7 blank All Programs menu
   Date: August 19, 2009
   Super User
3. Windows 7 Blank ‘All Programs’ Menu
   By: Tim Long
   Date: August 19, 2009
   Blogs - TiGra Networks

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Drupal and RDF

At a recent International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC), Rennsselaer Polytechnic Institute researchers demonstrated how they had re-rendered data from the data.gov website of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) into the Resource Description Framework.

According to Wikipedia, the Semantic Web is "is an evolving development of the World Wide Web in which the meaning (semantics) of information and services on the web is defined, making it possible for the web to understand and satisfy the requests of people and machines to use the web content.It derives from World Wide Web Consortium director Sir Tim Berners-Lee's vision of the Web as a universal medium for data, information, and knowledge exchange."

The Rennsselaer Polytechnic Institute researchers' goal, according to Li Ding, was to "make the whole thing shareable and replicable for others to reuse." Ding said that rendering data into RDF, which is used to create the Linked Data necessary to the Semantic Web, can make it easier to interpose it with other sets of data to create entirely new datasets and visualizations, Ding said. He showed a Google Map graphic that interposed RDF versions of two different data sources from the Environmental Protection Agency, originally rendered in CSV files.

The White House recently deployed the Drupal Content Management System (CMS) for the whitehouse.gov webiste. According to David Lantner, editor of the "Clear Type Press" blog, Drupal could give the White House a good start in annotating its data in a machine-readable way, since it "enables authors to add semantic metadata.to their markup using attributes that are both machine-readable and human-friendly."

At the ISWC gathering, Stephanie Corlosquet, a former researcher at the National University of Ireland's Digital Enterprise Research Institute, demonstrated a set of four interrelated new modules he helped develop for Drupal to ease the use of RDF. The modules were written to "expose the site structure in an RDF format automatically, so site administrators or users don't have to care about RDF or do anything with RDF," he said.

Mr. Corlosquet stated "Drupal has a very modular design, so we can plug [the modules] into the system very easily." He said these modules will be incorporated into the next core version of the system, Drupal 7.

References:

1. How the Semantic Web would work
   By: Joab Jackson
   Date: November 9, 2009
   Government Computer News (GCN)
2. White House shift to open-source Web system draws mostly praise
   By: Joab Jackson
   Date: October 29, 2009
   Government Computer News (GCN)
3. Resource description tool can add smarts to your Web pages
   By: Joab Jackson
   Date: October 23, 2009
   Government Computer News (GCN)
4. Symanec Web
   Wikipedia

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