Microsoft Switzerland Academic Team Blog

12 tips to secure your Windows System (Win7 & 2008 R2)

Live from Berlin at Tech.ed 2009 your Swiss Microsoft Student Partners (MSPs) are here to blog about the conference and the sessions we joined.

In this session (12 tips to secure your Windows System (Win7 & 2008 R2), Mark Minasi is here to give us some tips about security and new goodies in Win7. First Mark started by telling us some general problems about security. There are 2 categories of security holes: the silicium base and the carbon based (human). It is important to differentiate both of them because software will never correct carbon based problem, but it can always help!

He then mentioned that the security policies are always getting better but not the users. And that a first step to get good security is to be able to convince the user to follow the rules. You must talk to your management, once they are on board with your security policy, it is a half win. Then you must be persuasive with your users and make them sign the policies (you can even threaten them with punishment if needed).

Mark continued with some math: you can reaches asymptotically 100% security as money invested reaches infinity, therefore IT security has a price and we need to accept a risk (the same way when we take the car).

He then explained that the purpose of an IT guy would be to increase ease of access to resource and the purpose of a security guy would be to keep people access to resources.

Password was a big topic in the presentation, he explained how crucial point it is for security and that "bad passwords always beat good security". The evolution of password has changed a lot in the last 20 years. Whereas in old times 4 characters were good enough password, now a minimum would be 8 and a good one should have 12 characters (and become a passphrase) that are always transmitted in the form of a 128 bit hash function. The problem is that complex password is hard to guess but hard to remember too! And if we continue following Moore's law in 10 years the passphrase would be minimum 20 characters long. Finally a user won't be able to remember his password (especially if he needs to change it every 45 days), so the solution would be to use a smartcard (1000 to 4000 bit actually).

One other major problem is that many applications we use require admin right to run (generally because there are poorly written) and here is where UAC (User Access Control) comes in. With UAC you always login as standard user and when you need to become an admin you can just switch to have all the rights (previously you needed to logoff as a user, login as an admin, do your stuff, logoff as admin and re-login as user).

At the end he told us about services security issues. As almost all of them have to be run from system account, they have lots of rights and can do a lot of things, which make them first choice targets for worms who could then enjoy total system rights. Windows 7 provides more regulations tools for developers: there are now 34 subset privileges in the system account, which can be activated or inactivated independently by the developer. To check if a developer has done a correct job, use the command "sc qprivs servicename". Developers can now edit the rights of services with a laser precision, avoiding putting the whole system in danger if one of the services is hacked by a worm.

The first day of the conference was very nice and we look forward for the next days.

That was Steven Meyer and Mikhail Chatillon, for Microsoft Switzerland, direct from Berlin

Adding live an intelligence to Windows Mobile 6.5

We are currently at Microsoft TechEd 2009 conference in Berlin and report you some of the best bits of the sessions we are joining.  This session, Adding live an intelligence to Windows Mobile 6.5, was about how to use different sensors on mobile devices (Pocket PC, Smartphone, Handheld PC and Industrial Devices) and the main points you have to consider when designing user interfaces for mobile applications to get good user experience.

Following sensors were introduced in this session:

·         GSensor (accelerometer, to measure orientation in the room)

·         Light sensor

·         Stylus sensor (to recognize if stylus has been taken out/put in)

These sensors can be easily accessed through the Unified Sensor API, which you can find on http://www.codeplex.com/sensorapi. Another nice sensor, which is coming up more and more, is the touch sensor. To use this feature in a very effective way no special API is needed, just use the mouse events from CF.

After this part of user input treatment we got a short overview about providing feedback to the user. The three main methods to do this on a mobile device are visual feedback, sounds and vibration. As sound feedback you can use either system sounds or create a sound object by your own with any source you like. To control the vibration mode you should include the OpenNetCF framework. But consider that you need different libraries either for Pocket PC’s (OpenNetCF.WindowsCE) or Smartphone’s (OpenNetCF.WindowsMobile).

We really enjoyed listening to this session. It gave an excellent introduction of human-machine interaction and showed how easy (only a few lines of code) really cool things can be implemented.

Some important tips collected for you:

·         Always keep in mind user’s perspective!

·         Don’t copy your PC applications directly to mobile, because this could dissatisfy your users (cause of the much smaller screen)!

·         Avoid scrolling!

·         Carefully use sound as feedback signal, this could annoy your users!

·         Don’t overload the screen!

·         Find a lot of useful tips on http://www.msdn.com

Best regards,

Adam Kortylewski and Raphael Bösch

Your Swiss MSP TechEd Blogging Team

Internet Explorer 8 Add-On WEB-Challenge

The Internet Explorer 8 Add-On WEB-Challenge calls for Swiss students to come up with innovative ideas for web slices and accelerators that break new ground in the presentation of online information. All you have to do is:

1. Design add-ons (web slices or accelerators)

2. Submit your entry and

3. Keep your fingers crossed!

All those, who submit an entry by 31 January 2010 will receive a thank-you pack containing 2 x 4GB Memory Sticks from Disk2Go and will also participate in the draw for the main prize: a travel voucher worth CHF 3,000.00, for an unforgettable surfing holiday in Hawaii, for example!

*Travel voucher for 3000 CHF

So get cracking and join in – online at: www.microsoft.ch/ie8addons (English quick link).

Good luck in the Challenge,

Sanna Kuusisto, Academic Audience Manager, Microsoft Switzerland

Already had a look on Windows 7?

Windows 7 is now released! Did you know that Windows 7 Professional has been already available through MSDN AA since several weeks? Presumed that your university or school has the MSDN AA Subscription, you can download it and get to know to the capabilities of this great new software!

Have a look on the following site to check if your university has the MSDN AA Subscription: http://www.microsoft.com/switzerland/education/en/academiczone/students/MSDN.mspx (if your school or university isn’t listed yet, contact us at swissarm@microsoft.com!)

By the way: Expression Studio 3 will be available through MSDN AA really soon. The Expression Studio is the perfect tool if you want to create ergonomic, nice looking and expressive software for the desktop and the Web. Here are the 3 Top Features available with Version 3:

• Design Tools for Silverlight & .NET - Design compelling user interfaces for the Web and desktop using Microsoft Expression.
• From Concept to Completion - Prototype your ideas rapidly, engage and interact with your customers and get your projects off to a flying start.
• Standard Technologies - Create standards-based Web sites with a tool that provides precision layout control and speeds cross-browser debugging with advanced visual diagnostics.

If you want to read more about Expression Studio 3, check out this page: http://www.microsoft.com/expression/try-it/Default.aspx
Learning resources and other materials about Expression Studio 3 can be obtained here: http://www.microsoft.com/expression/resources/

Do not hesitate to contact me if you have questions or need help, I’m glad to help you!

Best regards

Milan Kubicek
Academic Relations & Programs
Lead Student Partner Bern
+41 78 844 65 27
v-milank@microsoft.com

Multitouch Mouse from Microsoft Research

We have all already heard about multitouch mouse pad but until now we had never seen any multitouch mouse.

Well Microsoft Research hasn't presented one multitouch mouse but five! All with different technology and with different usage potential, going from working to navigation passing from gaming, you'll see how it can change you way of using your PC. Go on, give it a look, it makes you to wish you had one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce4ACKCiulA

Do forget to check regularly our blog for Microsoft Research PhD Scholarship.

Kind regards,

Steven Meyer, Lead Student Partner Lausanne

Photosynth Adds Overhead View

For dose of you who don't yet know Photosynth (I hope there aren`t many), it is a free software that stiches together all your photos from the same scene, in other words, it creates a 3D object of your pictures by automatically putting them together. You don't need to do anything except taking as many pictures as you want of the scene you like.

Even the CSI have used Photosynth to solve one of their crime scenes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0suot89qXY4 and for once it is not science fiction!

Anyhow, the good news is that Photosynth has gotten a new mode called Overhead View, where you can see the whole synth scene from above with 3D points; by dragging your mouse above the points, you can then see the picture and from where it has been taken. When you click on it, you do a 3D dive into the picture (it is awesome!).

Give a look at this video to see the new experience that Photosynth can bring http://vimeo.com/6951006.

And if you want to have fun, just go and create your own Photosynth on http://photosynth.net/.

Kind regards,

Steven Meyer, Lead Student Partner Lausanne

Imagine Cup 2010 Information Event at EPFL, 18. November 2009

Imagine Cup (www.imaginecup.com) is an annual worldwide student competition with categories ranging from digital arts to software design. More than 300 000 students from over 140 countries entered the competition in 2009. As with the Olympics, Imagine Cup finalists compete at the world finals, which are held in a different country each year.

For Imagine Cup 2010, programmers, artists and technologists aged from 16 years onwards are invited to submit innovative projects with important topic: “Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems facing us today” and to use United Nations Millennium Goals as a guiding light.

Microsoft Switzerland will award the best Swiss competitors across all categories at the local finals in May 2010. Swiss Software Design category winners will be awarded also by Hewlett-Packard (Schweiz) GmbH and with a Microsoft sponsored trip to world finals in Warsaw in summer of 2009.

We would like to invite you to Imagine Cup 2010 Information Event at EPFL to hear more about the competition: 

Location: EPFL, room INR 219

Date: 18. November 2009

Time: 16:00-17:30 (including Apèro)

Language: English

Note: no pre-registration to the event is required, doors are open to all.  

Agenda:

16:00 – 16:05 Welcome Words by Microsoft / Dr. Marc-Alain Steinemann, Microsoft Switzerland

16:05 - 16:20 Personal Experiences from Imagine Cup 2009 World Finals in Cairo / Prof. Dr. Huang Jeffrey, EPFL

16:20 - 16:55 Imagine Cup 2010 Introduction / Sanna Kuusisto, Microsoft Switzerland

16:55 - 17:00 Closing / Dr. Marc-Alain Steinemann, Microsoft Switzerland

17:00 – 17:30 Apéro

Kind regards,

Prof. Dr. Huang Jeffrey, EPFL

Sanna Kuusisto, Microsoft Switzerland

Dr. Marc-Alain Steinemann, Microsoft Switzerland

Microsoft Graduate Programm – Marketing, Sales oder Technical Sales (w/m)

Wir suchen erfolgsorientierte Hochschul- oder Universitätsabsolventen der Studienrichtungen Wirtschaftsinformatik, Wirtschaft mit hoher Affinität zur Information Technology oder Informatik mit hoher Affinität zu Business-orientierten Themen. Sie interessieren sich leidenschaftlich für Kundenbedürfnisse und Innovation und haben den Wunsch bei Microsoft im Bereich Marketing, Sales oder Technical Sales tätig zu werden?

Sie stehen uns ab Herbst 2009 zur Verfügung? Dann bieten wir Ihnen:

Karrierechancen in Marketing, Sales oder Technical Sales für Hochschul- und UniversitätsabsolventenInnen

Unsere Mitarbeitenden sind hochgradig engagiert und verfügen über ausgezeichnete zwischenmenschliche und kommunikative Fähigkeiten. Sie verstehen es, einen guten Ausgleich zwischen ihrer individuellen Kreativität und ihrer Fähigkeit zur Zusammenarbeit im Team zu schaffen. Begeisterung, Engagement und die klar umrissene Vision der Menschen bei Microsoft, haben unser Unternehmen zu dem gemacht, was es heute ist – ein international führender IT Konzern.

Ziel ist es, dass Sie hauptsächlich „on the job“ unterstützt mit „off the job“ Aktivitäten und gezieltem Coaching vorbereitet werden, um in Zukunft eine Funktion im Marketing, Sales oder Technical Sales zu übernehmen.

Ihr Profil:

·         ehr guter Hochschul- oder Universitätsabschluss in Wirtschaftsinformatik oder Betriebswirtschaft/Marketing mit hoher Affinität zur Information Technology resp. Informatik mit hoher Affinität zu Business-orientieren Themen

·         maximale Berufserfahrung von 18 Monaten

·         Muttersprache Deutsch (m/s) und sehr gute Englischkenntnisse (m/s), idealerweise Französisch

·         Innovativ, flexibel und offen für kreative Ansätze

·         Hohe Kunden- und Partnerorientierung

·         Sehr gute kommunikative Fähigkeiten

·         Starkes analytisches und konzeptionelles Denken

·         Eigeninitiative, Umsetzungsstärke und gewohnt, Prioritäten zu setzen

·         Teamplayer und begeisterungsfähig

ARE YOU READY? Dann freuen wir uns auf Ihre vollständigen Bewerbungsunterlagen an swisshr@microsoft.com.

You Make IT Smart: Code – Play – Win

The You Make IT Smart campaign invites you to “Code – Play – Win”. Find out how to program your own spaceship game, win one of the 200 free Xbox 360® Arcade consoles, download free software, complete free online learning courses or take part in competitions with great prizes.

Microsoft Switzerland is giving away up to 200 free Xbox 360 Arcade consoles to inspire full-time students and faculty member of Swiss educational institutions to get hands-on experience in games development with Microsoft® XNA® Game Studio and practice technical or artistic skills in competitions and other activities.

Students have 4 ways to win one of the 150 free Xbox 360 Arcade consoles^*:

1. Complete the game-programming exercise

We challenge you to program a game of your own. Follow our online tutorial and build your own «spaceship battle» game with Microsoft XNA. If you complete it right and fast enough, one of the Xbox 360 consoles will be yours.

2. Compete in Imagine Cup 2010

Imagine Cup is a worldwide student competition with categories ranging from digital arts to software design. For Imagine Cup 2010, students are challenged with important themes under the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. If you participate, one of the Xbox 360 consoles can be yours.

3. Get lucky at Microsoft Switzerland events for students

We will be giving out some Xbox 360 consoles at our student events such as Academic TechDays`10. Stay tuned to forthcoming events and come along.

4. Do an IT Academy course and get certification

IT Academy enables you to do free «hands-on» online courses on Microsoft technologies. If you continue from IT Academy to complete a professional Microsoft Certification, you can win an Xbox 360 consoles

Swiss educational institutions can win up to 50 free Xbox 360 Arcade consoles:

1. Swiss Universities or Universities of Applied Sciences can win up to 5 consoles per institutions (out of total of 25 consoles) by submitting their commitment to set up an “XNA Game Programming Lab” within their institution and use the lab in their lectures. The lab must to be set up and made part of lectures before June 30, 2010.

2.  Swiss vocational- and high schools, as well as teacher training institutions (pedagogical universities and others) can win up to 3 consoles per institution (out of total of 25 consoles) by submitting their commitment to set up an “XNA Game Programming Lab” within their institution and use the lab in their classes. The lab must to be set up and made part of classes before the June 30, 2010.

Download FREE^** Microsoft software

Under MSDN Academic Alliance and DreamSpark you can download for free all the Microsoft Software you need to «make your IT smart».

How to participate? Read more at: www.microsoft.ch/youmakeitsmart.

Kind regards,

Sanna Kuusisto & Microsoft Switzerland MSP Team

* As defined in campaign rules by Microsoft Switzerland.

** Special terms of use apply.

Bing’s Visual Search

Almost 25 years ago, Microsoft presented a new concept of OS by replacing the command line with some visual windows and icons.

The same is happening now with the search in Internet. During TechCrunch, Microsoft Senior Vice President Yusuf Mehdi presented the Visual Search Beta, which enables you to search with images instead of texts and links!

With Visual Search you make your query and the refining threw pictures. You can just go through the library to visually find what you are looking for or use the left bar to refine you search to a perfect match. Everything is done with style and good design, the pictures load fast and reposition as you refine your search, just click on one picture and you can get all the information you are looking for.

With this new visual search experience, you can find things from which you don't have the exact information. For example, if you see a clip on MTV with female singer that is between 18 to 21 of age and who has won the Grammy award, just do the search and you'll find her (it was Rihanna).

They is already 39 categories of search going from digital cameras to periodic table of elements, so go and give it a try on: http://www.bing.com/visualsearch (don't forget that it is still a beta and you can give your feedback on the lower right link on every page).

Edit: you need to set United States in bing language settings.

Kind regards,

Steven Meyer, Lead Student Partner Lausanne

Imagine Cup 2010 Information Event at ETH Zürich, 30.September 2009

Imagine Cup (www.imaginecup.com) is an annual worldwide student competition with categories ranging from digital arts to software design. More than 300 000 students from over 140 countries entered the competition in 2009. As with the Olympics, Imagine Cup finalists compete at the world finals, which are held in a different country each year.

For Imagine Cup 2010, programmers, artists and technologists from 16 years onwards are invited to submit innovative projects with important topic: “Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems facing us today” and to use United Nations Millenium Development Goals as a guiding light.

Microsoft Switzerland will award the best Swiss competitors across all categories at the local finals in May 2010. Swiss Software Design category winners will be awarded also by Hewlett-Packard (Schweiz) GmbH and with a Microsoft sponsored trip to world finals in Warsaw in summer of 2009.

We would like to invite you to Imagine Cup 2010 Information Event at ETH Zürich

to hear more about the competition: 

Location: ETH Zürich, room IFW A36

Date: 30. September 2009

Time: 17:00-18:30 (including Apéro)

Speakers: Prof. Dr. Jürrg Gutknecht, ETH Zürich and Sanna Kuusisto, Microsoft Switzerland

Language: English

No pre-registration required

Kind regards,

Prof. Dr. Jürg Gutknecht, ETH Zürich

Sanna Kuusisto, Microsoft Switzerland

Dr. Marc-Alain Steinemann, Microsoft Schweiz

Search with Bing

I guess by now you all have heard about Bing Search that replaced Live Search since May 2009.

Something you may not yet know, is that OnlineColleges.net (a must stop if you plan to go to study in the US) has created list of 50 tricks and shortcuts that Students should use to get the information faster. Here are some few examples:

Do math: Enter a math calculation directly into the search box to compute anything from simple math to trig functions.

Get definitions: Enter "define" or "definition" along with a word to find a definition of that word.

Find holiday dates: Enter the holiday and year to find out what date that holiday will occur.

Save search results: Save your search results to a local folder online to have access to them without having to remember how you performed the search.

Preview videos: Get a whole page of video thumbnails, then just hover over each to start it playing.

Use their mobile site: The Bing mobile site is specially designed for mobile phone usage.

Don’t forget, Bing is yet a beta in Switzerland. If you want to enjoy Bing’s full power already now, change your browser setting to Unites States (on the top right). We’ll keep you informed when Bing Switzerland takes the next step.

Kind regards,

Steven Meyer, Lead Student Partner Lausanne

Get to Know my.live.com

If you have ever had problem keeping up with you RSS feed or being able to put all your news, blogs and gadgets together, then you should give a try to my.live.com.

Once you logged in with your live account you’ll be able to add your content thru some predefined categories, by doing a search, directly entering the url or by uploading a OPML file.

You’ll then have a box for every feed. Just put you mouse above one of the article and you’ll have a glimpse of it, click on it and a new page will open with the full article.

You can then customize them, organize them into categories and share them with friends.

It is really easy and useful. Just give it a try and you’ll see.

Kind regards,

Steven Meyer, Lead Student Partner Lausanne

Microsoft tag

Have you already heard about 2D barcodes? Instead of having the data set in a vector like in normal barcode, 2D barcodes have the data in a matrix, which means they enable to store a lot more data (usually v-card, URL or free text). Well, the problem with this is that they are really ugly. Microsoft has solved this problem with Microsoft tag.

With Microsoft tag everything starts with a set of triangles of four different colors, which can concentrate more information in a smaller surface then a standard 2D barcodes:

However, the really interesting part starts here… Instead of using triangle, with Microsoft tag enables to use points. And since there are white spaces between the points, those can be filled with a background.

Pretty cool!

The application enables actually even more… imagine merging every point to the background, so that you don’t see the tag anymore but just a nice and smooth picture.

If you don’t believe me that it really works, download the free application from http:/gettag.mobi on to your mobile phone (Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, IPhone, Android, PalmOS, Symbian, Java etc...). You can even create for free your own tag and customize it at http://tag.microsoft.com.

Kind regards,

Steven Meyer, Lead Microsoft Student Partner Lausanne

pptPlex

At university we are all at one point or another in a situation where we need to make a public presentation. Most likely you’ll go with PowerPoint and choose a nice design with Transitions and animations, but as students we usually need some help to organize and present the logic of our presentation. What is the link between the slides? What part of the presentation are you in? These are some questions we often hear during a presentation.

Here is where pptPlex comes in. It gives you the possibility of zooming in and out of slides so you can see the big picture of the presentation and in the same time every slide. After installing pptPlex form here, you’ll get a new tab. Just click on the form overview and you’ll immediately see the result on your presentation: if you right click on a slide you zoom in, if you left click you zoom out and with the arrow keys you go from one site to another very smoothly.

It is realy nice and it will make you presentation outstanding. Give it a try, check out the demos and download it for free from http://www.officelabs.com/projects/pptPlex.

Kind regards,

Steven Meyer, Lead Student Partner Lausanne