Microsoft NZ Student and Academic Blog : Student News

Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 $80 for students.

nzacad — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:01:00 GMT

Microsoft New Zealand is making Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 software available to eligible New Zealand tertiary students for only NZ$80! This is a saving of 94% off the usual RRP. Office Ultimate is a premium software suite, containing 9 different products including Word 2007, PowerPoint 2007, and Excel 2007, so get it today from the program website, www.theultimatesteal.co.nz.

Session 2 Wellington: US Microsoft Speaker Presenting at Victoria University This Friday – Giorgio Sardo

nzacad — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:56:00 GMT

Giorgio Sardo, a recent Imagine Cup Competitor now working for Microsoft Redmond is in New Zealand presenting at Microsoft’s Largest Professional IT Conference, Tech Ed. Come and hear from Giorgio at a free event running at the Victoria University this Friday. Learn how to build a website that gets the most out of IE8. Discover how to use the new integrated Developer Tools, Microsoft Expression SuperPreview and Fiddler to build and debug cross-browser-compatible layout designs. Learn how to build new Accelerators, Web Slices and Visual Search Providers that extend the reach of your content.

Venue: Victoria University of Wellington

Room: Cotton Lecture Theatre 122 (Cotton Building)

Date: Friday 18^th September
Time : 3-4pm

Register on Facebook (optional): http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=131552607422&add

Giorgio Sardo is a Technical Evangelist in Microsoft Corporation. Moving from Italy to the United States, he studied at Polytechnic of Turin and successfully obtained a Master of Computer Engineering with distinction. Before joining Microsoft, Giorgio leaded a national university community forum in Italy and won the Imagine Cup worldwide championship. He started his experience in Microsoft UK as User Experience Consultant, delivering stunning solutions based on Silverlight, WPF and Mobile and presenting several sessions at Microsoft conferences. In 2008 he has been nominated Best Consultant of the Year from the British Computer Society. Early 2009 Giorgio moved to Redmond, where he currently focuses on Web Client technologies, such as Internet Explorer and ASP.Net AJAX.

Visit Giorgio’s blog

Most Secure Browser: Internet Explorer 8

nzacad — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 08:18:33 GMT

NSS Labs, a trusted advisor to the information security community, released today two new Web Browser Security Reports:

They’ve been testing intensively the latest browsers (Apple Safari 4, Google Chrome 2, Microsoft Internet Explorer 8, Mozilla Firefox 3* and Opera 10 Beta)** to compare their security models and APIs.

Note that Internet Explorer 8 relies on the new SmartScreen® Filter technology, while Firefox, Safari and Chrome on the same SafeBrowsing API (developed by Google).

Let’s have a look at the result of their tests.

1) MALWARE Protection

What is a Malware?

A Malware is software which is deceptive about functionality and is a security risk or a privacy risk. The term malicious software or malware refers to programs that demonstrate illegal, viral, fraudulent, or malicious behavior. For example, viruses, worms, and Trojan horses are malicious software.

Comparative Test Results

The use of reputation systems to assist browsers in the fight against socially engineered malware is a strong use of cloud technologies. But, not all vendor implementations and daily operations yield the same results.

Internet Explorer 8 “was by far the best”, thanks to the SmartScreen® Filter technology
Firefox 3 “comes in a distant second”
Safari 4 presented a declined compared to the previous tests, with two short periods of sever security dips
Chrome 2 performed very consistently, albeit very poorly

Although Firefox, Safari and Chrome are using the same security API, the results are different. From the report:

“The SafeBrowsing products’ protection rates were showing signs of converging just under 25%. This supports the notion that there are operational differences between the implementations of the API, but that the block lists are the same (or very similar)”

2) PHISHING Protection

What is Phishing?

Online phishing is a method of identity theft that tricks you into revealing personal or financial information online. Phishers use phony websites or deceptive email messages that mimic trusted businesses and brands in order to steal personally identifiable information such as usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, and Social Security numbers.

Since phishing sites have an average lifespan of only 52 hours it is essential that the site is discovered, validated, classified, and added to the reputation system as quickly as possible. A good reputation system must be both accurate and fast in order to realize high catch rates.

Comparative Test Results

Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3 are clearly responding quickly to block new phishing sites
Opera had a period during the tests where the protection dropped off significantly
Chrome was below average

From the report:

“We expected better results given the fanfare about Google’s SafeBrowsing initiative. Additionally, a third-party (Firefox) was able to utilize Google’s API to achieve significantly better protection that Google’s own browser.”

What is the SmartScreen® Filter in IE8?

Internet Explorer 8 introduce a new technology called SmartScreen® Filter, an evolution of the previous Phishing Filter in IE8, to help protect IE8 users against the major security threats on the web today.

Eric Lawrence, Security Lead in the IE Team, has written many blog post where he introduce the feature and describe how it works. A FAQ about the Filter is available here.

If you want to know more about security in IE8, check out this video on Channel9.

Demo

For the sake of this post, based so far only on numbers, I’d like to show in action how IE8 identify and display an unsafe site to the end-user. We will use a test web site marked from the SmartScreen Filter as unsafe***.

If you browse to the site with IE8, the browser will start download the content of the page but shortly it will understand that the site is not safe and switch to a different view: a red warning alert will be offered to the end user.

The experience on other browsers, including Firefox and Chrome, would be completely different – since they don’t detect the site as unsafe…creating a big security threat for the end-user.

Is this really relevant?

NSS Labs is not The Word; it is one of the (many) trusted voices on the web, with a deep expertise in this field. You might not trust their results (btw, have a look at the Appendix of their reports to understand the architecture/methodology they have in place…).

It’s interesting however what they call “an easy apple-to-apple comparison”: they run those tests back in February and they are now comparing the trend over time for each browser. I’m surprised (and pleased :)) to see that IE is the only browser with a positive trend == it’s getting better over time. All of the other browsers decreased protection, between 3 and 8% - within the margin in the error.

Does all this mean that IE8 is 100% secure? Absolutely not, but I feel secure now… :-D

NOTE:

* I wished they tested with Firefox 3.5. From the report, “Firefox 3.5 was not stable enough to be tested during the course of this test. A patch has subsequently become available to address the stability issue. We were able to manually verify that the protection was identical between versions 3.0.11 and 3.5”.

** They used the “vanilla versions” (as downloaded from site and updated). No antivirus, no add-on installed, no security group policy, no special settings…. Just the browser, as it is.

*** This site has been designed for demonstration purposes only. The test performed from the NSS Labs used a list of 12000 real suspicious sites.

Microsoft Office Ultimate for $80…just for tertiary students

nzacad — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 03:30:58 GMT

Office Home and Student 2007 promotion

nzacad — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 01:56:00 GMT

Office Home and Student 2007- on sale for $149*

For a limited time you can get this essential software suite for any student at the low price of only $149*. Office Home and Student 2007 gives you four essential tools for your tertiary studies, helping you get the extra credit, without the extra effort. Take advantage of this great price today!

Microsoft® Office Word 2007

Create and share great-looking documents and papers that get noticed.

Microsoft® Office Excel® 2007

Versatile tools help you analyze information and make better decisions for your reports and projects.

Microsoft® Office PowerPoint® 2007

Present your ideas more clearly and effectively with new formatting and graphics features.

Microsoft® Office OneNote® 2007

Save precious time—and headaches—by managing all your notes and information in one, easy-to-use product.

Office Live Workspace promotion:

Complimentary online storage with Microsoft Office Live Workspace Microsoft Office Live Workspace is your online extension of Microsoft Office 2007- enabling you to access your documents from almost anywhere online and to share your work with others. It’s easy, and complimentary. Just sign up and go.

Save 1,000+ Microsoft Office documents in one place*
Access your documents from almost any computer with a web browser
Work with Microsoft Office Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook.
Based on average file size and use of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents by students, workers and home users.

Discounted Microsoft Exams

nzacad — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 06:52:00 GMT

A FANTASTIC CERTIFICATION OFFER FOR STUDENTS & FACULTY!!

From now until June 2009 Students and Faculty who register for the ‘Academic 2^nd Shot Campaign’ are able to buy exam vouchers** at academic pricing (see table below)!! This is almost a 50% discount on the current commercial exam price PLUS…. If they fail, Academic 2^nd Shot gives them another shot for FREE!!!

Step by Step instructions for Students and Faculty

1. Visit http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/offers/2ndshot/default.mspx to register for second shot

2. Accept the disclaimer confirming you are a student or faculty employed by an academic institute

3. Get your Academic 2^nd Shot voucher number by going here Get your voucher number for an eligible Microsoft IT professional or developer certification exam (Prometric.com)

4. Using the voucher number, schedule and pay for your 1^st exam by contacting your nearest Prometric Testing Centre

Take your exam.
If you fail, register for your free retake exam via Prometric's web site, call center or test center locations using the same voucher number.

Please wait one day after the failed exam to register to allow for test results to be entered into the system.
Academic exams may not be scheduled via Prometric's web site – you need to contact a testing centre directly.

**Please note that only ‘academic’ exams are available at academic pricing and eligible under this offer – see list of eligible exams here

40% OF MICROSOFT CERTIFICATION EXAMS

nzacad — Fri, 16 May 2008 11:19:00 GMT

SAVE 40% ON MICROSOFT CERTIFICATION EXAMS

Get a head start on learning to become certified on Windows Server 2008, Microsoft SQL Server 2008, and Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. Together, these products provide a solid foundation for next-generation Web applications, and broad support for virtualization technology in a more secure networking environment. Find out more here

Game Creator On Popfly

nzacad — Sun, 04 May 2008 09:11:00 GMT

Go Crazy With Popfly: Creating Games Is Just Too Easy With Popfly's Game Creator

Launched on 2nd May, game creation is now officially accessible to everyone. You don’t have to be a physics major or hard-core coder to create your own personalized game using the Popfly Game Creator. In fact, you can create your first game in three easy steps through Popfly’s intuitive interface.

1.	Select your actors: Choose from nearly 400 pre-built actors in categories like people, vehicles, power-ups, and more. Can’t find what you’re looking for? Import and create your own.
2.	Set the scene: Pick a background, select some sounds, and position your actors through a visual designer.
3.	Bring your game to life: This is where the magic happens. Using Popfly, you can specify behaviors on your actors and scenes that define how they should interact. Use Popfly’s intuitive user interface to define events, set properties, and specify actions without writing a single line of code! If you want more control, define a custom behavior in JavaScript.

Creating Games has never been easier.

To learn more and build your first game head over to http://www.popfly.com

Keep upto Date !!

nzacad — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 07:33:00 GMT

NZ Developer & IT Professionals Newsletters – Sign up now!!.

NZ Developer & IT Professionals Newsletters – Sign up now!!

From March 2008, Microsoft New Zealand will be including a Student’s section into both of our bi-weekly technical newsletters; TechNet Flash newsletter for IT Pros, and MSDN Flash newsletters for Developers. This section, dedicated to our Student community, will provide you will relevant information about new software and technologies, free downloads, and information about other students from around the world to give our New Zealand student’s a truly global perspective on the IT industry. So register for these newsletters today!

LaunchWave 2008

nzacad — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 07:19:00 GMT

LaunchWave 2008

Be a part of Microsoft’s biggest ever outreach to IT Pros and Developers! Join us at one of our Launch Wave 2008 Technical Briefings and get an in-depth look at the cutting edge technologies within Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008. All attendees will receive a promotional pack containing limited ‘not for resale’ versions of the Launch Wave products together with other software goodies.*

1 x Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition with 1 virtualisation license RTM
1 x Visual Studio 2008 Team Suite 90 day trial
1 x SQL CTP 6 (Community Technology Preview) plus a SQL RTM (final version) voucher for SQL Standard 1 user
A 40% discount voucher on a TechNET Plus Single User subscription
1 x Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista DVD

Christchurch
Tuesday 11th March 2008
9.00am – 4.40pm
Christchurch Convention Centre

Wellington
Either Tuesday 18th March 2008 or Wednesday 19th March 2008 (same agenda on both days)
9.00am - 4.40pm
Te Papa Museum

Auckland
Wednesday 26th March 2008
9.00am - 4.40pm
SkyCity Convention Centre

Event cost: $149 + GST per attendee.
Arrival tea and coffee, morning and afternoon teas, and a full lunch will be provided.

Check out more info here

The Month of February

nzacad — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 00:05:00 GMT

The Month of February - Before the Storm!!

Summer Road Trip 2008 posted 28.01.2008

The NZ community rocks! As you probably know, we've got three big products coming out in the new year (Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008) and the community are in the midst of a major road trip around New Zealand. Chris Auld and Jeremy Boyd - our two Regional Directors are touring the country showing off all the cool stuff in Windows Server (Virtualisation, IIS, etc), SQL Server (File Stream, Spatial data types & queries, etc) and Visual Studio (LINQ, CSS designers, etc). For more info go here.

Imagine Cup 2008 posted 25.01.2008

Imagine Cup 2008, there is still time to join the 2008 competition, create your team of up to four individuals and join us in trying to change the world. This year's theme "technology that enables a sustainable environment". Its now the time to join up with 9 weeks to go before the end of the competition, compete and each team member will get a copy of office 2007. Check out more info here

Stay tuned in March when all teams around the country will present a short video on their idea where YOU will be able to VOTE for your favourite team. Support your team and be into win a range of software and hardware prizes. Videos will be posted soon, stay tuned.....

"Dev Jam" Orientation 2008 posted 22.01.2008

Microsoft's yearly orientation event is coming soon. This year is focussed on showcasing some of our new technologies including gaming, user experience and robotics. If that doesn't grab you, there will also be a chill out session involving XBOX consoles and the new SCENE IT Game. Stay tuned for upcoming details...

Student Partner Orientation 2008 posted 20.01.2008

Its that time of the year again, Microsoft will be travelling across the country for the next two weeks to visit this year's Microsoft Student Partners. This is a great opportunity for students to get connected with the industry and learn about our new technology as well as helping us inform other students about our new tools. For more info and to apply for the 2009 role have a look here