For some reasons not connected to work I thought about security much this week. Leaving the sad story of real-world security aside, let’s focus on cyber security for a moment. This isn’t pinky either. Especially here in MEA (remember picture of most infected countries from last sec report?)

Anyway, the point of the post was to ask you to keep safe and take care. To make the long story short  - read and apply MS10-018 Out-of-Band IE Security Bulletin now. There are some attacks using it, so you shouldn’t keep yourself vulnerable when the cure is already available. Remember Conficker worm? It was a month (!!) after update was ready and available before active exploit appeared on the web - so only systems not updated for a month were at risk.. You don’t want stay at risk intentionally, right?

Btw, the principle about installing updates is fair across the industry. 2 days ago Apple patched 92 vulnerabilities, a third of them critical, in a record update to its Leopard and Snow Leopard operating systems. Security Update 2010-002 plugged 92 holes in the client and server editions of Mac OS X 10.5 and Mac OS X 10.6, breaking a record that has stood since March 2008 . (took from here)

So stay safe!

Planning to earn some more money with your application for mobile devices? Looks like it is the time to check out what Windows 7 Phone Series can offer to you.

Firstly, an interesting fact – did you know that 90% of the code could be reused in versions of your app for PC, Windows Phone and Xbox? (prooflink) So save your time – learn this :)

This Training Kit will serve as a jumpstart into the new Windows Phone world taking you in a step-by-step approach explaining the tools to use and some key concepts when programming to Windows Phone.

Ok, super quick 2 “yes-no” questions, my friends..

1. Is your boss willing to pay for your learning at professional IT-courses?
2. Does your boss expect that you stay top-notch professional and be better than other professionals available on the market?

The more I travel and see the impact of financial crisis on the IT-industry, the more that there in almost no exceptions from “1. No, never again. 2. Yes, of course”

I’m really glad that my colleagues in Redmond understand the market conditions and (which is more important) understand needs of the IT-community. That’s why we see more and more FREE courses on latest technologies. I wrote earlier about many free learning resources (and other free stuff from MS) and I glad to add another one to it…

Channel 9 is offering a free Silverlight 4 Training Kit. The training kit includes a whitepaper explaining all of the new Silverlight 4 features, several hands-on-labs that explain the features, and a 8 unit course for building business applications with Silverlight 4.

So my suggestion is simple - get the bits (for free) –> get trained (for free) –> get paid (well, here you need to invest some of your time :))

What a coincidence - I arrived this morning from NY by Emirates flight and the first e-mail that I found in my inbox was about Emirates Airline video is published on TechNet Edge!

So have to say 2 things here:

1) From my passenger’s subjective perspective and experience – great job, Emirates! it was a nice flight (as usually)

2) From IT perspective – looking forward for you sharing more news about Win7 deployment with the community! Great work on the pilot and a lot of learning for all colleagues across the region.

P.S. You might have seen this video at TechEd Middle East, btw, but at TechNet Edge is a bit longer version

Hi there!

Twice a year we are conducting survey among our users and customers – so called Global Relationship Survey. And this is not a type of survey that everybody just fills and the results go nowhere. *All* Microsoft planns further activities based on feedback we are getting from you.

It’s not hard to find examples of what was done because local IT community asked for that:

• TechEd Middle East 
• localization of TechNet and MSDN portals into Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish
• Supporting more local community initiatives (events, usergroups etc.)

All this was done because we heard through last surveys that you need more relevant and locally delivered information from Microsoft.

So my kindest request to you -  please share your feedback!

Tell us:

1. what we can do better for you as a technical professional (I know there is always a room for improvement :))
2. what we did good over the last year – we need to know if we are moving in the right direction supporting local IT Communities

The survey will be sent from e-mail @satisfaction.ipsos.com – please make sure you have this address in the white list. I really don’t want some spam filter to block your ability to share your feedback with Microsoft.

Said this, of course you’re more than welcome to share your feedback “of cycle” and not through a survey, but directly with me or IT Community collaboration the team! To be honest it’s our pleasure and the job in the same time – making sure that Microsoft as corporation hears the voice of IT Pro community and the best members of the community (yes, I mean you, 100% sincerely :))