Posted 09/24/09 at 08:33:11 PM by Ryan Whitwam

If you happen to be a web designer, Microsoft would like to have a quick word with you. Just don’t drop any more money on Adobe products until you’ve heard them out. Microsoft’s Expression design tools haven’t enjoyed wide scale adoption in the face of Adobe, but they’re out to change that. As part of Microsoft’s “Spark” program, they will be giving away several thousand dollars worth of software to any small design firms interested.

Web design shops with up to 10 employees are eligible, and all they have to do is pay a $100 administrative fee. The so-called “WebSpark” giveaway includes multiple licenses of Expression, Visual Studio 2008, Web Server 2008 and SQL Server. The software licenses are good for three years and include full support. Not bad for $100.

Microsoft expects 15,000 to 20,000 companies to get in on the deal. Clearly, this program is meant to get small firms into the Microsoft ecosystem early. While their intentions may not be entirely pure, it’s hard to refuse the offer of free software.

Read More

Posted 08/23/09 at 08:06:44 PM by Justin Kerr

Making a high profile hacker arrest is respectable accomplishment, but bragging about it to his friends on the community forums is clearly a bad idea. I’m sure you didn’t need to be told this, but apparently it’s a lesson the Australian Police Department had to learn the hard way. In a recently televised take down broadcast on ABC’s Four Corners, Australian investigators raided, and sized computer equipment belonging to the administrator of an underground hacking forum located at r00t.y0u.org. Following the arrest, interrogators were able to obtain passwords, and began using the site as a honey pot to try and expose other potential suspects.

Unfortunately for Police word of the arrest leaked out quickly, and it didn’t take long for the community to discover something was up. Matters were further complicated when the police agency began taunting the forums visitors by saying “all member IP addresses have been logged, and arrests are being made”. Enraged by the comments, members of the hacker community broke into the system police were using during the investigation and supposedly gained access to intelligence contained within the federal police mainframe.

The hacker posted his own retort to the Australian police on pastebin.com mocking them for busting a couple of “script kiddies” and posted pictures of fake IDs and stolen credit card numbers lifted from police servers. The hacker continued by claiming “I couldn’t stop laughing on seeing that the federal police server was running Windows”. Apparently the MYSQL password was also left blank (opps!). Apparently this 30 minute long hack could have been faster if he “didn’t stop to laugh so much”.

Police claim the files were intentionally planted on the compromised system. Anyone buy that?

Read More

Posted 10/29/08 at 02:49:54 PM by Mark Edward Soper

It was called "Project Red Dog" during development, but this week Microsoft revealed its favorite color for its cloud computing development platform is actually blue - Azure, in fact.

Windows Azure Services Platform was introduced at this week's PDC, and includes the following key components, according to eWeek:

• Windows Azure (service hosting, management, low-level scalable storage, computation and networking)
• Microsoft SQL Services (databases and reporting)
• Microsoft .NET Services (.NET Framework workflow, access control, and so forth)
• Live Services (file and media synchronization between PCs, phones, apps and website)
• Microsoft SharePoint Services and CRN Services (business content, collaboration, and rapid solution development)

To learn more about the Azure platform, and what it might mean for the future of Microsoft, join us after the break.

Read More

Posted 10/03/08 at 09:42:30 AM by Mark Edward Soper

Amazon's much more than the "world's biggest bookstore" - its Amazon Web Services division has been offering flexible hosted application development for some time. And this week, Amazon Web Services launched what ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley calls a "pre-emptive strike" against Microsoft's forthcoming "Windows Cloud" operating system by adding Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Server to its product portfolio.

Amazon's move to provide access to Windows Server and SQL Server is significant because it enables developers to have their choice of Linux-based or Windows-based development resources on what Amazon calls its "cost-effective, pay-as-you-go pricing model." Essentially, Amazon's Elastic Computing Cloud service (also known as Amazon EC2) lets developers rent a virtual machine with varying amounts of disk space and transfer capabilities on an as-needed basis without the need to carve out space in a crowded server room or spend long-term dollars on a short-term requirement.

To learn more about why Amazon Web Services has added Microsoft vehicles to its "rental fleet," join us after the jump.

Read More