Something useful to all students…  $10,000.

Microsoft is running a treasure hunt, where you download IE8, look out for clues on Twitter to find $10,000 on the Net.

We have posted often about Microsoft’s It’s Not Piracy offer for students, allowing us to get a completely full, legit copy of Office 2007 Ultimate for $75.00.

Making it an even better deal, when you purchase Office for $75 you go into the draw to win $5,000!

The competition ends June 30th, 2009 so get your copy of Office now to go into the draw!

Luke
Aussie MSP Lead
The University of Western Australia

As a quick recap, these are the betas\CTP’s that are making news:

• Windows 7 RC
• Server 2008 R2 RC (<- Site is up, and linked to form the Server 2008 home page, but no download likely until tomorrow)
• Exchange 2010 Beta
• Visual Studio 2010\.NET 4 CTP
• Windows Azure
• Live Mesh Beta
• Office 2010 (No beta\CTP available yet…)

So, the question you probably asking is "Why should I care? Why should I spend my time looking at this stuff when it isn’t even finished yet?". The answer to that is simple…

Consider: most of the people reading this blog are students interested in technology and, most likely, Microsoft technology. Most of the betas above are likely to be ready, deployed and industry standard by mid to late 2010. By which time you should have either graduated or be close to it. This means that you’re going to be looking for a job that involves the final versions of there products (on that note, open Microsoft Students to Business in a new tab and register after reading the rest of this blog). At the point where you are in the interview where your potential employer asks "How much do you know about Program X Version Y" how much better will it appear when you can honestly say that you have not only been using "Program X" but you have been running "Program X Version Y Beta" for the last few years and helped submit a number of bugs which were then fixed. Not only does it show that you have a few years experience with the program, but also the fact that you participated in a beta program indicates that you enjoy learning and experimenting and that you aren’t afraid to do some testing and go the extra mile.

Other than that, there is nothing more enjoyable then playing with (and breaking) pre-release software…

- Daniel
Curtin MSP

Got a large inbox? Lots of emails clogging up the system? Grab the February Cumulative Update which includes massive speed improvements for people with large PSTs. You can either grab it today via the link below or wait for Office 2007 SP2  (which should be coming next week, April 28th):

The Update
FAQ About the Update from the Outlook Team

Channel10 is reporting:

An internally used tool at Microsoft called the Microsoft Outlook Thread Compressor has by finally made available to the general public by its creator, Ewan Dalton. The Thread Compressor (or “TC” for short) is an add-in for Outlook 2000/XP/2003/2007 which removes unnecessary emails from your inbox. The tool basically looks at the body of your email and removes those that have redundant data. This is most useful when you’re dealing with a long chain of emails and replies – such as those found in discussion lists. You see, in those cases, the person replying often leaves the body of the email to which they’re replying intact. Since each new email on the thread includes the entire conversation history, there’s no need to have every individual email saved. And by deleting the ones you don’t need, you can save a ton of space in your inbox and archives.

Since the tool was originally built back in 1999, it may look a little…uhhh…retro by modern standards, but don’t let the appearance fool you – this may easily be the most useful Outlook plugin you’ve installed in a long time.

Of course, anyone choosing to use the tool must do so at their own risk because – be warned! – it does delete email. That’s its purpose. For that reason alone, the legal department at Microsoft was hesitant about it being released to the public.

Note that Microsoft does not support the tool nor can they be held responsible for what it does.

That said, you can get the Microsoft Outlook Thread Compressor for free from here: http://threadcompressor.co.uk/default.aspx. You’ll find installation instructions and more information on that site, too.

Luke
Aussie MSP Lead
The University of Western Australia

The Microsoft DreamSpark program provides students access to an awesome list of free Microsoft software and has just got better. Students now have access to free Microsoft Technology Specialist Exam vouchers to be used at Prometric test centers.

This is a limited offer and the voucher must be redeemed before June 30th 2009, so get in quick.

Additionally Microsoft has added several free e-books for download, along with access to the IT Academy program.

Learn more at www.dreamspark.com

Luke
Aussie MSP Lead
The University of Western Australia

More information on his blog.

Luke
Aussie MSP Lead
The University of Western Australia

Check it out.

Luke
Aussie MSP Lead
The University of Western Australia

1. DreamSpark – any university student has access to this, technology wise or otherwise
2. MSDN-AA – each university specifically signs up for this. Generally this is available only for Computing & Engineering students. The university can sign up for MSDN-AA on its own or to IT Academy with includes MSDN-AA.

The good news is both Curtin and UWA both have signed up for MSDN-AA.

MSDN-AA primarily works by allowing students to borrow DVDs of the software and installing it on their machine. For Curtin students you can get the media from ComSSA, and UWA students should ask at the CSSE reception desk.

ELMS for MSDN-AA is an addon for MSDN-AA which allows the students to download the software online, not just install off pre-burned media. UWA has signed up for this and if you are a Computer Science student you should have received an invite for you to register. Once you have registered you can download the software at http://msdn70.e-academy.com/au_37792

For more information, please contact ComSAA at comssa@lists.curtin.edu.au for Curtin students or go to http://web.csse.uwa.edu.au/school_and_systems_information/school_systems_information/downloads for UWA students.

A couple of students noted why bother if they can just pirate the software? I would say just for the easy of use. No worrying about keygens or serials, updates all work and any genuine advantage addons just work.

Luke
Aussie MSP Lead
The University of Western Australia

If you haven’t checked it out already, OneNote is an awesome Microsoft Office program that allows you to take notes quickly and efficiently without having to worry about the constraints of a word processor.

It’s include in the It’s Not Piracy version of Office Ultimate.

Check out Canvas for OneNote and get even more value from OneNote.

Luke
Aussie MSP Lead
The University of Western Australia

Check it out!

Windows Vista Resource Kit, Second Edition

By Mitch Tulloch, Tony Northrup, and Jerry Honeycutt with the Windows Vista Team
ISBN: 9780735625969

An in-depth resource kit with all the information you need to administer Windows Vista (now with info on SP1). Sign up to download the entire e-book from here (PDF, 44.8 MB).

Microsoft® Visual C#® 2008 Express Edition: Build a Program Now!

By Patrice Pelland
ISBN: 9780735625426

Not sure where to start on Visual Studio, .NET and C#? Then grab a copy of this book and Visual Studio Express and start learning! Sign up to download the entire e-book from here (PDF, 7.8 MB)

DreamSpark is a program that gives university students access to 100% free software, including Window Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 along with others.

DreamSpark together with the It’s Not Cheating program empowers students to reach their potential with awesome free tools.

Even better, very soon all TAFE students will also have access to DreamSpark. Watch this space!

Luke
Australian MSP Lead
UWA

Here’s how it works:

If you are a university or TAFE student, or staff member, you can use your institution E-mail address to get Microsoft Office 2007 completely legal for $75.00 outright or as a $25/year subscription.

You purchase online, and can download the software instantly or have it sent to you by mail.

Either way, you are up and running quickly, easily and cost effectively, ready to go for the new year.

Click on the banner to get your copy now!

Luke
UWA MSP

• Windows Server 2008
• Visual Studio 2008 Professional (2005 also available)
• SQL Server 2008 Developer
• Expression Studio 2
• XNA Creators Club – 12 month subscription (via Game Studio 2.0 but don’t forget to check out 3.0!)

Dreamspark 2.0 - new look website

Shibboleth to the rescue! (UWA login)

Tip for UWA students: Login with your student number and library password (i.e. card barcode), hopefully the interface will become somewhat more user friendly as we progress. For those who really care, UWA are using Shibboleth.

The biggest feature of course if the ability to create games and distribute them through Xbox Live Community Games.

Remember, as a student you can get access to XNA Game Studio free of charge through DreamSpark!

Luke
UWA MSP

Silverlight 2 supports Windows and Mac (and you can always check out Moonlight for linux) and comes with an improved toolkit for everything from standard & custom controls to networking and media streaming support.

Developers will be particularly interested in the Getting Started website which includes walkthroughs from the obligatory “Hello World!” right through the usage of controls and database bindings.

Check it out!

NB Don’t forget to uninstall any betas before installing the release version

Touchless allows you to create Multi-Touch applications, simply by using your webcam to detect movement.

The Touchless SDK team have also got a demo to download to show this off.

I’d love to see a whole bunch of Touchless apps coming from Australia students.

Luke
UWA MSP

http://twitter.com/ekulmi

So, as to not bore you by reiterating the new features and benchmarks, I shall jump straight into some of my insights and things that interest me with the latest Beta.

Accelerators

For those of you who gave up on IE8 after Beta 1, Accelerators are the evolution (or plain renaming) of Activities. For anyone who didn’t read the above links, the concept behind Accelerators is to avoid the “Select-Copy-New Tab-Open Page-Paste-Submit” paradigm of other browsers, but to switch to “Select->Accelerate”. In non marketing speak, this simply means that you can select text and have it submitted to a webpage.

One thing that I was very disappointed in was the shear lack of available accelerators at the time of launch. I would have imagined that every blogging, mapping, searching, translating, encyclopedic and dictionary site on the internet would have submitted an activity for their site (if only for get a couple more hits per day). Instead I was greeted by less that 10 accelerators, mostly from Google and Microsoft.

Determined to help, I read the suggested MSDN page and promptly created the “Define in Wikipedia” and “Search in Google Australia” accelerators, and am currently working on one for Where Is (although it is likely to be difficult, seeing as Where Is requires the search term to be divided into Street\Suburb\State (as opposed to Google\Live Maps’ “give me everything, and I’ll figure out what you meant” approach)).

Also, if you want an accelerator made, and doing a bit of XML appears daunting, feel free to leave a comment, and I’ll see what I can do for you.

DEP

Data Execution Prevention – Microsoft’s (quite successful, but unpopular) attempt at protecting the memory for applications has risen its head again in the new beta of IE8 – though not to the extent of the first beta.

I did notice one HUGE improvement though – after having “Internet Explorer Stopped Working” and letting Vista submit its crash report, and then finding DEP telling me it killed IE and asking for a pat on its head* I noticed that the IE window was still open. In fact, only one tab had changed – the one with the Flash Player. It appears that Flash triggered DEP but, rather than killing the entire browser, IE8 now has the ability to kill one tab and leave the rest untouched. Additionally, the tab displayed an error page that offered suggestions on how to fix the problem and a link that explains what DEP is and why it is important.

Overall, it appears that IE 8 Beta 2 is much improved, but may still need some work. One feature that I am looking for is to extend the Add-In manager such that extensions like Flash, IE Pro, etc do not need their own installers (that is, IE installs them).

– Daniel
Curtin MSP

*I imagine DEP to be much like a misguided guard dog. While it may protect your house (computer) from bad guys, it occasionally will drop a chewed up pair of slippers at your feet, and then look to you for a pat of approval. Guess it gives extra meaning to “The dog ate my homework…”

Often an issue when showing off aspects or presenting a demo with Windows Mobile is that the screen is too small, and you have to move your hand over the screen in order to interact with the device (making a PDA->Camera->Projector combination difficult), while devices with TV out are extremely rare (although the HTC Touch Diamond and Touch Pro will both have HTC’s extUSB, which has USB, Audio and TV Out).

So the solution? My Mobiler. This allows you to not only display the contents of your PDA’s screen on your computer, put also control it from there as well. It also features screen scaling and by IP or ActiveSync connection (making wired or wireless both options). Best of all it has a small resource footprint and is free!

I also use My Mobiler when adding in a number of new contacts or calendar items as it is a lot easier to do via my PC than my PDA (even though my PDA does have a full 50-something key keyboard).

So, My Mobiler  – De-Mobilising Windows Mobile and Re-Mobilising your Mobile demos and Mobile’s data!

- Daniel
Curtin MSP