Microsoft DreamSpark

I accidently found this place called "Microsoft DreamSpark" from MSDN, where several Microsoft products giving for students at no cost. In their words,
"DreamSpark is simple, it's all about giving students Microsoft professional-level developer and design tools at no charge so you can chase your dreams and create the next big breakthrough in technology - or just get head start on your career"


But currently this is only for students in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, China, Germany, France, Finland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Belgium. But they are saying that they are working on adding more countries, so keep checking it.

Here is the Microsoft DreamSpark link for more details.

Visual Studio 2008 - released

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 provides an industry-leading developer experience for Windows Vista, the 2007 Microsoft Office system, and the Web. In addition, it continues in the Microsoft tradition of development language innovation.

You can find trial downloads for evaluation of Visual Studio 2008 here.

Brief history of Visual Studio

The first release of Visual Studio in 1997 featured separate IDEs (that required their own installation) for Visual C++, Visual Basic, J++, and a tool known as InterDev. Visual Studio 6.0 was a dramatic improvement that marked the birth of Visual Basic 6 and embodied the idea of a set of unified services across all languages.

With Visual Studio .NET 2002 and Visual Studio .NET 2003, this vision was realized with the .NET Framework. For the first time an individual developer could write an application in the language of their choosing while taking advantage of a common set of tools including designers, drag and drop controls, and IntelliSense. Along with the increase of individual developer productivity was an increase in the size and complexity of development projects and teams.

Visual Studio 2005 was born to help developers in teams of any size increase collaboration and reduce development complexity.

Visual Studio 2008 will no exception and will be delivered on the commitment to make every software project successful on the Microsoft platform.

XSSDetect - Free Visual Studio Plugin (Public Beta)

XSSDetect is a VisualStudio plugin designed to detect XSS vulnerabilities in managed code which is very common and unfortunately, still an issue that have to deal with in many web applications.

Cross-site scripting (XSS) is a type of computer security vulnerability typically found in web applications which allow code injection by malicious web users into the web pages viewed by other users. Examples of such code include HTML code and client-side scripts. An exploited cross-site scripting vulnerability can be used by attackers to bypass access controls such as the same origin policy. Vulnerabilities of this kind have been exploited to craft powerful phishing attacks and browser exploits. (Cross-site scripting was originally referred to as CSS)

XSSDetect is a stripped down version of enterprise ready Code Analysis Tool for .NET code bases (CAT.NET for short). CAT.NET adds such features as VSTF integration, centralized reporting using web services, customized rulesets and filters, integration with FXCop and MSBUILD as well as the ability to run from the command line to integrate with your build processes.

XSSDetect is currently in beta! This current version of the beta will expire after 60 days.

You can download XSSDetect from here.

gOS

gOS is a Linux distribution created by gOS LLC. The company advertises it as “An alternative OS with Google Apps and other Web 2.0 apps for the masses and simple, user friendly, beautiful desktop for normal people.”

It is based on the Ubuntu 7.10 distribution. It uses the Enlightenment 17 window manager instead of the usual GNOME or KDE desktops, allowing for lower memory and speed requirements.

Its primary feature is its usage of a Mac-like Dock featuring icons linking to various web applications such as Google Docs, Wikipedia, and Gmail, as well as local applications such as GIMP and Skype. Also come with all the software you need to browse the web, email, instant message... play movies, music, and connect to iPods... create and edit documents, spreadsheets, presentations, databases, images... out of the box.

SpaceTime™

SpaceTime™ is a 3D search application which can be used to Search Google, YouTube, RSS, eBay, Amazon, Yahoo!, Flickr and Images all in one 3D space. The days of mining through pages and pages of tiny thumb-nails in an effort to find the item you are looking for are over. Because SpaceTime™ has unlimited space, you can display hundreds of items at once to find exactly what you are looking for.

3D Image Search

Using SpaceTime™ you can search Yahoo! Images and Google Images and take advantage of your computer's high powered graphics and fast broadband connection as SpaceTime™ displays thousands of images at once. Enter your search term and SpaceTime™ displays your search results in their own visual stack. Enter another search and SpaceTime™ displays your second search results next to your first.

3D Web Search

With SpaceTime's™ 3D Web Search, you choose your search engine from the drop down menu, type in your search term and enjoy the experience as SpaceTime™ displays all your search results at once in our patent pending interface. Enjoy the perks that immediate visualization has to offer as you save time, eliminate clicks and find the web pages you are looking for at a fraction of the time.