Good news for students wanting to develop on MS Windows platform:

How would you like a free copy of Microsoft Visual Studio 2008? How about the entire Microsoft Expression Studio? Not enough...... how about Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and more?   For once, something that sounds too good to be true really is this good and really is true. Starting today (or soon in some areas), students worldwide will be able to download our professional development and design tools for free! It's called DreamSpark and it is upon us.

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 a head start on your career.

Who can get this right now?
We are kicking this off in 11 countries/regions, giving DreamSpark to millions of students in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, China, Germany, France, Finland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Belgium. If you are not residing in one of the countries listed keep checking back, we will be adding more countries throughout the year.

What do I have to do to get this software? Not much really, just select a product and follow the steps below.

Sign In with your Windows Live ID. If you don't have one, go get one here. Pretty basic stuff.

Get verified as a student. The system is linked to schools and organizations around the world that can confirm student status. Simply choose your country and school, enter your info and hit submit.

Download your products. Now remember these are professional tools. This means they are pretty big files so make sure you have the bandwidth and space to bring them to your machine. We support the latest versions of both Internet Explorer and Firefox for your download.

https://downloads.channel8.msdn.com/

We've had a very long running and popular discount for donationcoder members on BB FlashBack,  a screencasting program that got good reviews in our 2005 review of such programs.

Since that review, Camtasia (a competing product) has come out with some very nice new features (but remains very expensive).  Well now it's time for BB FlashBack to get a major update it seems.

The people at Blueberry, the company that makes BB FlashBack, has asked me if there might be DonationCoder members who would like to help betatest their new version 2 release.. I said I would be happy to find out.

Here's the info:

"BB FlashBack is a Windows based screen recording application designed for creating, editing and publishing screencasts. Previously reviewed by donation coder, the brand new BB FlashBack 2 is due for early early this year. In prepairation for this, Blueberry Software is looking for beta testers who would like to give this new version a try and report any bugs found. New features include webcam recording, zoom and pan, action button and a precision sound editing interface. To register interest in being a beta tester please contact [email protected] giving your name, location and contact details.

We now have a feature-freeze on FlashBack until after the offical release of version 2, so what we're mainly looking for is bug reports found in general-usage testing. Seconardary to this: user feedback on the GUI and ease of use is welcomed, as if there was something we got a lot of matching feedback on GUI wise , we'd consider changing it."

So there you have it, send an email to [email protected] and sign up to test it, and give them some constructive feedback!  Let us know what you think too, when the final version comes out.

Ever wonder what's different about the brand new GPL version 3 versus it's older kin, GPLv2?

Richard Stallman, the guy who came up with the GPL in the first place, explains in non-legalese so we can all understand once and for all what it's all about:

http://video.google....-1230218647830638736

I wanted to get this in yesterday, for Valentine's Day, but missed it. Better late than never!

Researchers at Northwestern University are studying speed dating in an effort to uncover the secret to finding the right partner:

Source: Nature News

I meant to post about this a while ago.  There are a number of such tools to make screensavers out of Adobe Flash movies, here's a nice new free one, created by two 18yr old authors.

InstantStorm is a Windows freeware tool for creating Flash based screensavers with many advanced features. All you have to do is to choose a SWF file, set screensaver parameters and compile an executable installer.

http://www.instantstorm.com/

The brainchild and creator of the GNU/Linux distro "Damn Small Linux", a GNU/Linux distro for systems with limited hardware resources, has written up a little guide on how to make money as a FOSS developer from his experiences with DSL.

It makes quite an interesting read, since it covers the donation concept and some notes on the 'psychological barrier' and some of the harder choices many developers have to face when trying to survive developing only freely available software.

http://damnsmalllinux.org/income-guide