Microsoft has confirmed it plans to make an initial commitment of $1.25 million to support the relief efforts in Haiti following a massive 7.0 (on the richter scale) earthquake on January 12.

The software giant is providing support via cash and in-kind contributions and said it will match US based employees donations up to $12,000. It also plans to assist the relief efforts in the following ways:

• Disaster Response team - Microsoft's team is currently engaging with humanitarian relief organizations to assess how they can make a difference. The Disaster Response team plans how Microsoft's company, people and partners can be mobilized during issues such as Earthquakes - through outreach to lead government, inter-government and non-government agencies involved in leading local and global response efforts.
• Working with impacted customers and partners to help get critical systems up and running.
• Helping drive awareness and donations for relief efforts through MSN and Bing.
• The NetHope Emergency Working Group was activated last night to set up the basic telecommunications communications between the relief agencies operating in the affected areas.
• The NetHope Haiti Emergency Center (a secure Sharepoint application used by all of the NetHope members) is active and serves as a focal point for all reports, events, contact lists and collaboration.

The scale of destruction and death from this traggic incident is still not fully known. Reports suggest as many as 100,000 may have died as a result of the powerful Earthquake on Tuesday. The US government is sending 3,500 soldiers and 2,200 marines to help with relief efforts and many companies worldwide are also offering donations and aid. There are many ways to help, through donations of your time as a volunteer, and through financial contributions if you wish to do so. Both Neowin and Microsoft invite you to consider supporting the relief organizations who are working in Haiti:

American Red Cross: http://www.redcross.org/
Care: http://www.care.org
NetHope: http://www.nethope.org/
MercyCorps: http://www.mercycorps.org/
Save the Children: http://www.savethechildren.org/
Unicef: http://www.unicef.org
World Vision International: http://wvi.org/wvi/wviweb.nsf

Bloomberg is reporting that Apple's upcoming fourth-generation iPhone may have a "touch-sensitive casing." Much like Apple's Magic Mouse, the phone's body may support finger movements for actions such as scrolling, zooming, and other useful navigation. "'Apple's going to put a lot of innovation, not just on the hardware, but also on the software of the new iPhone,' said Taipei-based Chen, a member of Asia's top-ranked technology hardware research team. The handset will feature a new plastic casing similar to that used for Apple's touch-panel Magic Mouse released last year, he said."

Chen also re-affirmed the public that the next iPhone will go into production as early as April, and be available to the general public in June or July. He also hinted at an updated version of the iPhone OS and an overhauled App Store. However, no further details were given.

Assuming Chen is right, Apple has sure held back a lot of juicy details from the public (and we expect nothing less). If the next iPhone does, indeed, have this new body, it would not only make sense, but it would also allude to the fact that AT&T is still a big part of the picture. Just this past week, AT&T announced their upcoming, Android based, Motorola Backflip phone. This is the first phone to have a touch sensitive gesture area built into the body. This would make AT&T the only carrier with, not one, but two gesture body enabled phones. Perhaps this means that the new gesture body was AT&T's idea. This would further add creditability to Chen's iPhone claims.

Schools across Kent began a comprehensive blocking of Sparklebox.co.uk, a popular school resource, in late 2009.

Last week the owner of Sparklebox was revealed to be a former teacher who faked his own death after serving a nine month jail sentence in 2005 for making indecent images of children. Daniel Kinge also changed his name to Samuel Kinge so he could re-offend and work with children again. Kinge later went on to form Sparklebox, a teachers resource website.

Sparklebox was originally blocked in late 2009 by councils. Concerns over the sites security were cited in an email to teachers explaining the block. Originally many teachers were confused and some angered over the block, as it was a site that many relied on for essential classroom resources. Kent County Council issued a statement confirming the block, "we feel it right to block the site centrally until more information is available and review whether this site should be blocked permanently after consulting schools and other sources."

According to the BBC (02:03:35), on Friday January 8, Samuel Kinge, 28, was sentenced to 12 months in prison. 424 indecent images of children were found in Kinge's hard drive shadow files which included the depiction of the sexual abuse of babies. Yahoo Messenger had also been setup on his computer with the profile name of "samuelunder5boys" with the picture of a naked four year old attached. The court heard it was a legitimate business and there was no suggestion child porn was posted on Sparklebox. Kinge will serve at least half his sentence and when he is freed he will be ordered to sign the sex offenders register and an agreement which restricts his access to the internet for the next 15 years.

Ars Technica is reporting that the attack on Google which was announced a few days ago on the Google Blog has disturbingly been traced back to the Chinese government, according to VeriSign's iDefense security lab who traced the attack back to its origin.

iDefense researchers at Verisign were able to trace the source of the control servers that distributed the malware which gained access to private customer and corporate Google data. Verisign does not hesitate to point out that the Chinese government was the source of the attacks. The source IPs and drop server of the attack correspond to a single foreign entity consisting either of agents of the Chinese state or proxies thereof," reads the report.

The report goes on to point out that the attack was executed using infected PDF files that were designed to exploit a vunerability in Adobe's PDF reader and distribute malware across PCs.

The researchers also found that there were large similarities between the attack on Google and one that was perfomed in July against US companies - both attacks were managed through the same servers; "The servers used in both attacks employ the HomeLinux DynamicDNS provider, and both are currently pointing to IP addresses owned by Linode, a US-based company that offers Virtual Private Server hosting. The IP addresses in question are within the same subnet, and they are six IP addresses apart from each other," the report says. "Considering this proximity, it is possible that the two attacks are one and the same, and that the organizations targeted in the Silicon Valley attacks have been compromised since July."

If all the claims in the report are correct, the report suggests that the Chinese government has been attacking companies across the world for months in a campaign of industrial espionage.

Adobe has claimed that the PDFs were not used to distribute the malware. In a press statement shortly after the reports release Adobe announced they have found no evidence that a PDF flaw was used to perfom attacks in this incident.

Microsoft has confirmed it plans to make an initial commitment of $1.25 million to support the relief efforts in Haiti following a massive 7.0 (on the richter scale) earthquake on January 12.

The software giant is providing support via cash and in-kind contributions and said it will match US based employees donations up to $12,000. It also plans to assist the relief efforts in the following ways:

• Disaster Response team - Microsoft's team is currently engaging with humanitarian relief organizations to assess how they can make a difference. The Disaster Response team plans how Microsoft's company, people and partners can be mobilized during issues such as Earthquakes - through outreach to lead government, inter-government and non-government agencies involved in leading local and global response efforts.
• Working with impacted customers and partners to help get critical systems up and running.
• Helping drive awareness and donations for relief efforts through MSN and Bing.
• The NetHope Emergency Working Group was activated last night to set up the basic telecommunications communications between the relief agencies operating in the affected areas.
• The NetHope Haiti Emergency Center (a secure Sharepoint application used by all of the NetHope members) is active and serves as a focal point for all reports, events, contact lists and collaboration.

The scale of destruction and death from this traggic incident is still not fully known. Reports suggest as many as 100,000 may have died as a result of the powerful Earthquake on Tuesday. The US government is sending 3,500 soldiers and 2,200 marines to help with relief efforts and many companies worldwide are also offering donations and aid. There are many ways to help, through donations of your time as a volunteer, and through financial contributions if you wish to do so. Both Neowin and Microsoft invite you to consider supporting the relief organizations who are working in Haiti:

American Red Cross: http://www.redcross.org/
Care: http://www.care.org
NetHope: http://www.nethope.org/
MercyCorps: http://www.mercycorps.org/
Save the Children: http://www.savethechildren.org/
Unicef: http://www.unicef.org
World Vision International: http://wvi.org/wvi/wviweb.nsf