Visual Studio Team System 2010 focuses on application quality
Microsoft is making significant strides into ALM with the upcoming Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) 2010 that it says will better enable developers and QA professionals to collaborate and focus on application quality.The company has not committed to a release date for VSTS 2010. Dave Mendlen, director of developer tools at Microsoft, noted that it would be part of the next wave of the .NET Framework, .NET 4.0. Microsoft will also ship a standard edition of Visual Studio 2010 concurrently.
VSTS 2010, formerly known by the code name “Rosario,” expands the company’s ALM vision with more roles and fewer walls between them, effectively “democratizing” ALM, said Mendlen. Modeling plays a heavy role in how that is accomplished.
Microsoft details WCF and WF in next-gen .NET
By David WorthingtonOctober 1, 2008 — Microsoft has detailed some of the .NET 4.0 feature set, and how it will evolve Windows Server to host composite applications by extending the Application Server Role.
Today, the company announced its road map for Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and an update to Windows Server 2008, code-named “Dublin.” Community Technology Previews of the new technologies will be released at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference at the end of this month.
Adobe Flash to deliver NFL games in full
By Tim Conneally, BetaNewsSeptember 5, 2008, 6:51 PM
The National Football League, NBC Sports, and Adobe have announced their collaboration on Sunday Night Football Extra — full-length live streams of NFL Sunday night football games.
Delivered in Adobe Flash, the games are promised to include the ability for viewers to change their camera angles, as well as access live statistics, in-game highlights, picture-in-picture views, and live blogs from color commentators.
Adobe Flash Player 9.0.115.0 or higher and Firefox 2.0+, IE7+, or Safari 2+ are required for viewing. NBC recommends a minimum 500 Kbps connection for stutter-free playback.
Running behind the scenes is Adobe Flash Media Server, supporting the huge number of expected connections. Adobe says its developers utilized the company’s own Flex authoring environment, Flash CS3 Professional, and Photoshop CS3. Read more
The First Bill Gates & Jerry Seinfeld Microsoft Ad
Besides the slick and probably expensive editing designed to make Jerry Seinfeld look like the more awkward of the pair, there’s not a whole lot of special effects in this clip. In fact, there’s not really a whole lot of anything, including laughs, information or pimping of Vista. It’s kinda like Seinfeld’s really long, really rambling Superman ad for Amex he did a few years back. We hope the rest of the campaign is better. They did get Bill Gates to use his mug shot somewhere in the spot (not spoiling it by saying where), but other than that we’re underwhelmed. Here’s what we took away from it: Bill Gates’s jiggling ass is moist and tasty. Don’t ask us now, watch the clip and you’ll see.
IE8 beta lets users cover their tracks
By David WorthingtonAugust 29, 2008 — On Wednesday, a beta refresh of Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 that includes new privacy and search features became available for download.
End users are the target audience for beta 2. It introduces granular privacy settings that Microsoft has dubbed InPrivate browsing and InPrivate blocking. InPrivate helps users cover their tracks as they browse by informing them about cookies that may observe their browsing history and permitting them to selectively remove those cookies.
Survey: IT staff would steal secrets if laid off
Computerworld UK —
Most IT staff would steal sensitive company information, including CEO’s passwords and customer details, if they were laid off, according to a new survey from Cyber-Ark.
A staggering 88 percent of IT administrators admitted they would take corporate secrets, if they were suddenly made redundant. The target information included CEO passwords, customer database, research and development plans, financial reports, M&A plans and the company’s list of privileged passwords. Read more
IE 8 looking like a November release
Mozilla did its best to throw a spoiler into Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) 8 Beta 2 launch on Wednesday. But the new Ubiquity add-in for Firefox doesn’t sound all that different from what Microsoft is doing with the version of its browser due to ship in November.That’s my take, but you can form your own opinion. Starting today, August 27, at 3 p.m. EST, Internet Explorer (IE) 8 Beta 2 became available for download by anyone who wants to give it a whirl.
Latest Trend Report on Application Security
Cenzic just announced our latest Trend Report on Application Security for Q2 2008 (PDF format) and would like you to have a copy.
Cenzic analyzed reported information for April 2008 through June 2008 from vulnerability sources such as SecurityFocus, CVE, SANS, USCERT, SecurityTracker, and other third party databases and found these top 10 vulnerabilities listed below. Among the top 10 issues, the usual suspects like Adobe, IBM, Sun, and QuickTime show the most vulnerabilities.
2008 OWASP USA, NYC Conference
3) Weeks until the 2008 OWASP USA, NYC Conference. This event offers tracks for security and development professionals interested in learning how to secure applications and enterprises as well as organization leaders who want to learn more about the state of the appsec industry and its trends.
Speakers include Joe Jarzombek, the Director for Software Assurance in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Vadim Okun of National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Philip Venables CISO, Goldman Sachs and over 40 other APPSEC leaders. Attendees should expect to learn about new threat vectors and ways to build secure web application from well known software security experts such as Jeff Williams, Jeremiah Grossman, Robert Hansen and Arshan Dabirsiaghi and many others.
QualityLogic offers ATS-IF test files
By David WorthingtonA test tools and services company is selling the test pages for developers to validate their applications’ ability to consume and process files from top-selling programs.
Last Wednesday, QualityLogic began offering ATS-IF test suite intermediate files, which are raw data files used in printer/driver testing, for sale at the QualityLogic Online Storefront.
The files are designed to allow test teams to validate the accuracy and performance of their file manipulation processes. ATS-IFs can be sent through a print driver just as an end user would send a print job, according to the company.
ATS-IFs are available for both Windows XP and Vista, in English as well as several Asian languages. Test files are available for applications from Adobe, Corel, Microsoft, OpenOffice.org, Quark and others.