Project Gustav: Immersive Digital Painting

Project Gustav is a realistic painting-system prototype that enables artists to become immersed in the digital painting experience. It achieves interactivity and realism by leveraging the computing power of modern GPUs, taking full advantage of multitouch and tablet input technology and our novel natural media-modeling and brush-simulation algorithms. Project Gustav is a great example of how Microsoft's research efforts are leading to exciting new technologies to support creativity.

About

Typically the experience of painting on a computer is nothing like painting in the real world. Real painting is actually a very complex phenomenon – a 3D brush consisting of thousands of individually deforming bristles, interacting with viscous fluid paint and a rough-surfaced canvas to create rich, complex strokes. Until fairly recently, the amount of computing power available on a typical home computer simply hasn't been sufficient to attempt simulating such a real-world painting experience in any detail. Project Gustav aims to leverage the increasing power of the PC and ever faster graphics processors and combine that with a natural user interface, to bring a rich painting experience to a wide audience including hobbyists and professionals alike. The result is a prototype system that contains some of the world’s most advanced algorithms for natural painting. more

Spyware and viruses: What's the difference?

Spyware and viruses are both malicious software, but they're different.Learn how, and how Microsoft Security Essentials can help protect you from both. Then find answers to these common questions about Microsoft Security Essentials: Do I still need Windows Defender? Do I need another antivirus program, too? Suspect you have a virus? Get help fast at our newVirus and Security Solution Center, and learnsteps that you can take to help remove it.

Microsoft Research Labs: Pex for fun

Pex for fun brings programming in C#, Visual Basic, and F# to your web browser. I found this today on Microsoft research Lab website and its very interesting. You should try this.

If you have never visited Pex for fun before, we suggest you follow the tutorial.

Is it just for fun? The full version of Pex integrates into Visual Studio, and can be launched from the command line as well. (Download, Documentation) Pex can explore an entire project at once and can automatically generate a comprehensive test suite of traditional unit tests.

What is a puzzle? Each puzzle is either a small program with a statement that is tricky to reach, or it is a Coding Duel, which is an interactive programming challenge. You can use Code Contracts and even write Parameterized Unit Tests.

What puzzles are there? Can I write my own? Pex for fun already has many puzzles; you can write your own puzzle starting from a puzzle template, and even turn it into a new Coding Duel (tutorial).

How does Pex work? Pex finds interesting input values by analyzing the behavior of the code, combining dynamic and static analysis, and using a constraint solver.

Can I use Pex for fun for teaching? Yes! Please follow our teaching tutorial.

Who created Pex for fun? Pex for fun was brought to you by the Pex Team, part of the Research in Software Engineering (RiSE) group at Microsoft Research.

I have more questions. You can discuss Pex for fun on our MSDN Forums for Pex, where you can also post your Permalinks to share them with other people.

I want to provide feedback. If you have found a bug, you can send a bug report directly to the Pex developers at pexbug@microsoft.com. You can also get in touch with the Pex developers for any other reason at pexdata@microsoft.com.

Get a Free Cyber-Security Book from MicrosofT

Parents and teens now have access to a free downloadable e-book from Microsoft called “Own Your Space,” which aims to instruct teens and other new internet users how to stay safe while online. Specifically, the book addresses common security threats like phishing scams as well as modern-day social issues like cyber-bullying and cyber-stalking.

LifeHacker recently reviewed the book and found it worth recommending, saying “it's difficult to write books for teenagers that don't fall into the ‘trying too hard to be cool’ trap, but Microsoft has done an admirable job.” Glowing praise indeed!

You can grab a free copy for yourself from here.

Channel 9 App for Windows Phone 7

For all Channel 9 fans out there, here is an APP for Windows Mobile 7.
An independent Windows Phone developer, Sigurd Snørteland, has created an application for accessing news from Channel 9 on your Windows Phone 7 device. The app, “myChannel9,” will display news and videos from the site and will offers features like the ability to favorite a show, browse by tags or search by keyword. You’ll also be able to use the app to watch videos right on your device, whether in portrait or landscape mode. Screenshots and demo videos of the app are available now on Snørteland’s personal blog. He has also created an app called Wall Street, which, as the name implies, will focus on delivering stock-related information.