Microsoft has been quick to explain why the holographic image on the face of the Windows Vista DVD includes a microscopic picture of three men who just so happen to be members of the team who worked on the Windows Vista DVD hologram design. Microsoft's Anti-Piracy Team designed a counterfeit-resistant digital "watermark" for the non-encoded surface of Windows Vista DVDs. Multiple images are contained in the hologram design, all of whose inclusion serves to make it more difficult to replicate a Windows Vista DVD. The other images are of old master works of art that are in the public domain.

The images are less than 1mm in size and are not visible to the naked eye, so must be viewed using optical magnification. Their presence does not affect the contents of the DVD and these security measures were never intended to be impossible to find, but rather difficult to reproduce. While it's extremely difficult to replicate a holographic design in general, the inclusion of original images makes it that much more so.

View: How to Tell | Forum Discussion (Neowin)
Source: Neowin via Windows Vista Team Blog

DivX is offering Divx Pro for free just today. Head over to here to download and request your free serial.

View: DivX Homepage
Source: Flexbeta

TiVo, the time-shifting digital video recorder that became a household name in the US, will come to Australia in 2008.

For a small subscription fee plus the price of the hardware, Australians will be able to pause live high definition TV, fast-forward ads, record shows and series from any of the free-to-air digital TV channels, and access broadband content such as video-on-demand.

The company today announced a partnership with the Seven Network, which will build the digital platform behind the service.

Seven CEO David Leckie said the move would "vastly extend" the overall viewing experience of television viewing.

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Source: SMH

Paint.NET is free image editing and photo manipulation software designed to be used on computers that run Windows XP SP2, Vista and Server 2003. It supports layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.

Changelog:

– Fixed: Pasting an image from Office 2003 applications now works (e.g. Excel 2003 graphs).
– Fixed: Some dialogs were not indicating which command button was the default. These buttons now have a highlight to indicate which one will be activated if the user presses Enter or Space.
– Fixed: Some minor keyboard navigation issues with task dialogs
– Fixed: Performance issue with the File->Acquire submenu taking a long time to appear
– Fixed: Window activation issue when the Print wizard was finished / closed
– Fixed: Crash when there was 1 image open and the user pressed Ctrl+Q and then Ctrl+W
– Fixed: Minor performance issue if the user had 1 modified image open and then canceled the "Save changes?" dialog
– Fixed: Misbehaving filetype factory implementations (plugins) will no longer cause a crash

Download: Paint.NET 3.08
Source: Flexbeta

With MSN Messenger you can chat online instantly in real time with friends, family and colleagues. It's faster than e-mail, more discreet than a phone call. Chat using a webcam, send text messages to mobile phones, and express yourself instantly online in real time with new, cool emoticons.

MSN Messenger looks like you! Sign in with your own picture, create your own emoticons, and represent yourself with new, cool backgrounds!

Download: Windows Live Messenger 8.5.1235
Source: MSFN

It's the deal you never thought would happen: MySpace acquiring Photobucket, the "parasite" that fed off MySpace traffic and hosted a massive number of MySpace photos. There’s no word on whether the US$300M price tag, which Photobucket was being shopped around for, was met.

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Source: Mashable via Flexbeta

At the Mix'07 conference in Las Vegas-Microsoft's annual event for web designers and developers-the spotlight has largely been on Microsoft's Silverlight platform, formerly known as Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere. Silverlight is a set of tools for developing rich, Flash-like web applications. Less talk has focused around the web browser that will provide the primary user interface for all this new technology. On the Internet Explorer blog, Chris Wilson hinted at some of the things that might be coming in IE 8, while declining to give specific details.

While details may be lacking, the structure of the conferences planned for Mix'07 gives a few hints. Improvements in RSS, CSS, and AJAX support are all being given high priority. It is also widely speculated that IE 8 will include support for microformats, small tags embedded in HTML code that can be interpreted in various ways by software, such as calendar events or contact information.

Microformat support is scheduled for Firefox 3, so IE 8 will have to include them in order to keep up. The new version may also include more options for user interface customization, as that was one of the biggest criticisms of IE 7, and one which the developers often blamed on lack of time.

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Source: Ars Technica via MSFN

We all know that DirectX10, for many of us, means an expensive upgrade and the move to a new operating system. We also know that DirectX10 is going to be necessary to play DX10 games such as Crysis and Halo 2 for the PC. What if I told you that a project sought to change that? That you could run DirectX10-exclusive games such as Halo 2 for PC on a DirectX9 platform with Windows 2000?

Thanks to the Alky Project, we may not have to spend a penny to enjoy DirectX10 goodness. A quote from their official blog (I know, it's not an official web-page, but they do link to working models) tells us exactly how we can make DirectX10 work without spending at least $270 on a DirectX10 upgrade ($170 NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT, $100 Windows Vista Home Basic).

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View: Alky Project Homepage
Source: MSFN

Computer makers have been told they'll no longer be able to get Windows XP OEM by the end of this year, despite consumer resistance to Vista and its compatibility problems. By early 2008, Microsoft's contracts with computer makers will require companies to only sell Vista-loaded machines. "The OEM version of XP Professional goes next January," said Frank Luburic, senior ThinkPad product manager for Lenovo. "At that point, they'll have no choice."

Despite Microsoft's relentless promotion of Vista, manufacturers are still seeing plenty of demand from customers for systems preloaded with XP, especially in the finicky SOHO market.

In a recent post on its Direct2Dell blog, Dell reaffirmed to concerned customers that it wasn't about to force small business users — who typically purchase PCs piecemeal, rather than in large enterprise-style orders — to shift to Vista, which has experienced a less-than-stellar reaction from many buyers because of driver issues and moderately beefy hardware requirements.

View: Full Story
Source: APC Mag via MSFN

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2) is a cumulative service pack that includes the latest updates and provides enhancements to security and stability. In addition, it adds new features and updates to existing Windows Server 2003 features and utilities.
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