Clueless? Here's Help

How to see who views your Facebook profile

2011-08-02T06:30:00.001-07:00

By now, you've most likely seen the many apps and Web services claiming to let you see who's viewing your Facebook profile. Is your college ex checking up on you? Is someone from work scrolling through pictures of your beach vacation? Are your parents secretly peeking in on your private life? These apps promise the answers. Unfortunately, they don't deliver.
You can be 100 percent certain that each and every app that says "See who views your profile!" or "stalker tracker" or anything else like that is virus-laden junk. That said, there are a couple ways to get clues and insights into who's been floating around your profile. While you won't end up with the definitive list you're likely looking for, keep reading for tips and tricks that toe -- but don't cross! -- that fine line between natural curiosity and a massive breach of privacy.
Full article at HowStuffWorks.com.

Use Resource Monitor to monitor storage performance

2011-07-19T03:15:00.001-07:00

By Scott Lowe

When Microsoft added the comprehensive Resource Monitor tool to Windows, it added an outstanding at-a-glance tool that allows administrators to glean deep intelligence regarding the operating condition of mission critical Windows servers.
In my four-part series about the Resource Monitor, I will focus on each resource monitoring aspect of the tool: CPU, Memory, Disk, and Network. In this installment, I discuss the various disk-related metrics that you can view with Resource Monitor, explain the graphs you see, and provide some context around each metric.
For the purposes of this article, we'll use the screenshot in Figure A. This figure shows a Resource Monitor view from a production server running Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange Server 2010 with all Exchange roles installed; as such, this server has significant need for storage resources that operate within acceptable boundaries. (Note: Like all of our other servers, this server is running as a virtual machine under VMware vSphere 4.1.)
Figure A

One look at Resource Monitor in Windows Server 2008 R2 (Click the image to enlarge.)
Let's start with an overall look at the console. Occupying most of the window is the statistics area, which I'll be explaining in depth. On the right side of the window are a number of graphs, each depicting a key storage-based performance metric.

In the sections below, I will provide details for each metric. I won't repeat metrics; if one type of metric appears in multiple areas, I only list it once.
Processes With Disk Activity
This section of the Resource Monitor window shows you a list of all of the running processes that are using disk resources. You are shown the name of the executable and a number of performance statistics.

Image. Process executable file name. This is the name of the process that is actively using the disk.
PID. The ID number associated with the process. This is useful if you want to use other utilities to manage processes, or if you want to easily match up processes with Task Manager.
Read (B/sec). The average number of bytes read per second by the process in the past minute.
Write (B/sec). The average number of bytes written per second by the process in the past minute.
Total (B/sec). The average number of bytes accessed per second in the past minute.

The information you're provided in this section isn't particularly useful when troubleshooting except to show you which processes are consuming the most disk performance resources. In Figure A, you can see that the process named DPMRA.exe is doing a ton of reads from the disk.
Disk activity
This section of the Resource Monitor window provides you with more useful troubleshooting information. In particular, the response time metric is probably the most useful metric of the bunch, as it's directly observable without having to really understand the underlying storage configuration.
To the right side of this section label, you'll see two quick-glance information boxes. The green box shows you the current disk I/O (i.e., the amount of data that is being transferred right now), and the blue box lists the highest amount of active time for the disks in the system.

File. The name of the file that is being used by the active process. You'll notice that you're pointed to the full path so it's easy to find the file.
I/O Priority. The priority of I/O transfers.
Response Time (ms). Disk response time in milliseconds. For this metric, a lower number is definitely better; in general, anything less than 10 ms is considered good performance. If you occasionally go beyond 10 ms, you should be okay, but if the system is consistently waiting more than 20 ms for response from the storage, then you may have a problem that needs attention, and it's likely that users will notice performance degradation. At 50 ms and greater, the problem is serious. Figure A shows that my Exchange server is seeing 5 and 6 ms response times, so the storage is doing fine as per this metric.

Storage

Logical Disk. The drive letter associated with a disk.
Physical disk. Which physical disk is being monitored on this line?
Active Time (%). This shows the percentage of time that the disk is not idle and is actively serving requests. If a disk is constantly running at very, very high levels (say, more than 80%), it may point to a storage-related bottleneck. If your users are seeing performance issues, and you're seeing 100% active times, you might need faster or more disks.
Available Space (MB). How much disk space is available on the volume?
Total Space (MB). What is the total size of the volume?
Disk Queue Length. Average disk queue length. The queue length metric displays the number of outstanding requests (read and write) at any given time. A high number can indicate that there are not enough disk spindles to service the needs of the application or that the existing storage is too slow to keep up with requests. However, how you define a "high number" in this context requires that you have a deep understanding for how the underlying volume is created on the SAN. Each disk that makes up the underlying volume provides additional resources that go into disk queue length (simplistically, the more disks, the higher the disk queue length can be).
For additional complicating factors, the RAID level and stripe size you choose can affect this value as well. If you're running on a single disk system and your queue length remains consistently greater than 2, you should add more resources. If it goes beyond 5, you have serious problems that need to be addressed. If you know how many disks make up your underlying volume, multiply the number of disks by 2 to get a very rough, ballpark queue depth maximum value. So, if you're running on a 10 disk system and the queue depth is 18, you should be fine.

The graphs
The graphs are very useful tools. The top graph shows you the transfer rates between the storage and the system for the past minute. The green portion is the current overall I/O, while the blue line displays the disk active time for that period. The remaining graphs show you the queue length for each disk in your system.
I have four disks (SAN volumes) in this Exchange server. Because of the way that the underlying SAN volumes are created in my array, I have no queue length-based performance issues at all.
Scott Lowe has spent 15 years in the IT world and is currently the VP and CIO of Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri.

15 Keyboard Shortcuts To Enhance Your PC Productivity

2011-07-19T00:12:00.001-07:00

If you fancy yourself a PC power user, you know how valuable it is to keep your hands on the keyboard. Constantly switching between typing and mousing can really slow you down when you're powering through that TPS report.
Lucky for you, the wizards at Microsoft have built some time-saving (if little-known) keyboard shortcuts into their operating systems over the years, with some really handy ones gracing Windows 7 and most modern Web browsers.
If you're aiming to speed up your workflow and impress your colleagues at the same time, check out these little gems.
1. Move the cursor one word at a time
Cut through large swaths of text with this handy trick.

2. Select one word at a time
Similarly, you can highlight entire words in your text without pecking at those arrow keys.

3. Delete entire words
Bulldoze those terrible sentences more efficiently with this shortcut.

4. Select all text on the current line, relative to the cursor
Don't reach for that mouse. Instead of click-dragging the cursor, snap right or left with this fancy method.

5. Minimize all windows
Keep this macro in mind if you tend to browse Facebook at the office.

6. Cycle between windows
If you really want to show off the glitz of Windows 7, give this combo a try.

7. Lock the computer
Stepping away from the screen for a light lunch? Lock that puppy down with one swift stroke, especially if it's April Fool's Day.

8. Launch the Task Manager
Applications acting up on you? Need to check your system's resources? Skip the clicking and get into the Task Manager with this shortcut.

9. Take a screenshot of the active window only
Trimming down screengrabs can be a pain, especially if you have a lot of desktop real estate. This shortcut lets you capture only the window you're working in.

10. Rename a file
Forgo that right-clicking nonsense and give this file renaming trick a shot. It also works great if you've selected multiple files or folders.

11. Zoom in and out
This one works in a variety of applications, including browsers, word processors, and Photoshop, among others.

12. Return to default zoom
When you're ready to return to the normal view, strike this keyboard combo.

13. In browser: open a new tab
This one may be common, but it's worth mentioning if it will save users the effort of clicking up there in a mess of browser tabs.

14. In browser: reopen closed tab
This one can be a life-saver, especially if you've accidentally closed a webpage you've been searching diligently for.

15. In browser: focus cursor on URL/search field
If you need to navigate the Web quickly, this combo will get you moving in two keystrokes.

Which time-saving macros do you use at your desk? Share them with the class in the comments below.
Image credit: chromatix d-sign.

A beginner's guide to telecom jargon

2011-07-17T05:00:00.001-07:00

Verizon Wireless executives are just a few of the telecom insiders who love their jargon.
(Credit: Verizon Wireless)
The mobile world moves at a breakneck pace, and it's difficult to keep up--even without the technical jargon most industry insiders throw around. And they do love to toss those terms about.
Whether it's the difference between CDMA and GSM, the importance of backhaul to the speed of your connection, or what metering means, it's easy to have information blow over your head when reading about this field.
So for some light Saturday reading, we thought it would be nice to explain what exactly telecom experts are talking about when they use these terms they assume everyone understands.
4G:Blame the incessant commercials touting "blazing fast 4G service," as well as the liberal use of the term 4G--everyone thinks they've got a next-generation wireless device. According to consumer retail site Retrevo, more than a third of iPhone owners mistakenly believe they have 4G service.
There are three flavors of 4G: LTE, WiMax, and HSPA+. LTE, or Long-Term Evolution, is the Los Angeles Lakers of the 4G world, acknowledged as the fastest existing standard. It may be faster, but be wary of the lightning bolt commercials; it's not that fast. LTE is also the standard that's attracting most wireless providers, including Verizon Wireless, AT&T, and eventually Sprint Nextel--so the term isn't going away. I was the first to report that Verizon Wireless would cover 100 markets with LTE by next week.
Sprint is using an older version of 4G called WiMax. For years, WiMax was the only game in town, allowing Sprint to boast about its speed advantage. That edge has all but disappeared with the rise of LTE. WiMax is like the Philadelphia 76ers: a team with a strong history but that's faded into an also-ran.
That leaves HSPA+, which is what AT&T and T-Mobile use, as the Los Angeles Clippers of the wireless world; yeah, it's technically a 4G technology, but only begrudgingly so. Last year, T-Mobile kicked things off by renaming its HSPA+ network a 4G one, prompting AT&T to do the same. AT&T is ready to move on though; it plans to launch 4G LTE in five cities this summer.
The International Telecommunications Union, a standards body affiliated with the U.N., initially ruled that none of these technologies met its criteria for 4G. But the ITU has since backtracked and has opened up the definition to include all three. Even for the experts, it's confusing.
Churn: The word refers to the rate at which customers are running for the hills and away from a subscription service. It's also one of the critical financial metrics investors use to grade a company's performance.
Churn was a popular term to throw around this week when Netflix decided to hike up the price of its DVD plans, causing an avalanche of criticism and threats of cancellation. CNET found that 41 percent of Netflix customers polled wanted to cancel. Which is fitting, since churn is defined as "agitating with violent motion."
Cramming: It's the practice of adding third-party charges onto a phone bill. Consumers hate it because they're getting charged for services they never signed up for, and in many cases don't even know about. Regulators and carriers hate it because they have to deal with customer complaints. Earlier this week I reported that the FCC voted to crack down on the practice. Yet it continues to exist. Go figure.
NFC: Another in a long line of technology acronyms, this one stands for near-field communications. The technology allows for a quick burst of data sent from one NFC chip to another, and is the key to mobile transactions in the field. This week, PayPal showed off an NFC test at the MobileBeat conference that allowed one Nexus S smartphone to transfer funds to another by way of a simple tapping together of the devices.
Credit card companies, retailers, and technology companies like NFC because they see simplifying the payment process as another way to get money out of our wallets faster.
Throttling: No, throttling doesn't consist of physically choking users, though I imagine some carriers have at least considered this in regard to some of their more taxing customers. Throttling occurs when a customer consumes some maximum amount of data. Once that limit is reached, the carrier will slow down the customer's connection speed, dropping it to a snail's pace. This phrase popped up again when Virgin Mobile said on Wednesday that it planned to start throttling users of excessive bandwidth.
More importantly, throttling allows carriers to keep boasting that they offer "unlimited data" plans. While technically accurate, customers who face 2G speeds toward the end of the month would probably disagree.

A common sense guide to copyright for bloggers

2011-07-12T08:01:00.001-07:00

Copyright laws as it pertains to online content is a hot topic. Jason Keath, Founder of Social Fresh put together a common sense guide to copyright.
First, determine if the work you're copying meets these fair use rules:

Purpose and character of the use.
Nature of the copyrighted work.
Amount of work used.
Effect on the potential market.

In addition to these four determiners, Keath provides eight common sense approaches to copyright:

Always link.
Ask first.
Use Creative Commons.

Read the complete common sense guide on Social Fresh.

Know if your Gmail is being snooped

2011-06-29T02:50:00.000-07:00

You can check if there is any unknown IP and even set Gmail to alert you if there is an unusual activity

NEW DELHI: Gmail is one of the most widely used email services and therefore is one of the leading target for hackers. However, you can easily find out if your Gmail account is being accessed without your knowledge -- from within the Gmail window itself.

Go to inbox and scroll to the bottom of the page. Look for the line that says "Last Account Activity" and click on details.

A new window will open with IP addresses used to access your account in the past 12 hours. You can check if there is any unknown IP and even set Gmail to alert you if there is an unusual activity.

From here, you can also sign-out all other open sessions of your account in any other computer/device.

Fine-tuning Windows 7 for speed

2011-06-28T07:05:00.001-07:00

AP Windows 7 comes loaded with a bunch of features you probably never use; so turn off the ones you don’t need.
Windows 7 is at least as speedy as Windows Vista. But that’s not exactly anything to boast about. You can throw the fastest hardware at Microsoft’s latest operating system, and it will be speedy enough. But there’s always room for improvement. The good news: with a few tweaks and some know-how, you can wring the most performance out of Windows 7, regardless of the computer you’re running it on. Here’s how.
Disable visual effects
Windows 7’s interface is laden with little visual effects and animations that, while impressive when you first see them, do little more than slow down the rate at which you can get things done.
Luckily, you can turn off most or all of the visual effects while retaining the snazzy look of Windows 7. In fact, you can turn off just the visual effects you want to and leave the rest.
To do so, open the Start menu, and type “adjust.” One of the entries that results is “Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows.” Click that, and Windows 7 opens the Performance Options dialog box. Make sure the Visual Effects tab is selected, and remove the check mark next to the options that say “animate,” “fade,” or “slide.” Click OK. Now windows, dialog boxes, and menus will snap into view immediately rather than gradually.
Kill UAC
User Account Control (UAC) is the feature that almost single-handedly made Windows Vista the most reviled Windows release in recent memory. UAC was originally designed as a security feature.
It keeps an eye out for potentially harmful changes to your system and prompts you to confirm something that might be a threat.
Unfortunately, under the rubric of “potential threat” fall such harmless activities as installation a new application or downloading a file from the internet that you know is safe. Microsoft wisely made UAC a bit less obtrusive in Windows 7. But best of all, it makes UAC easy to disable.
That’s why one of the first things that savvy Windows users do with Windows 7 is visit the UAC slider dialog box. Do it by opening the Start menu, typing UAC, and selecting “Change User Account Control settings.” In the resulting User Account Control Settings dialog box, move the “notify” slider all the way to the bottom, for “Never notify.” And that will be the end of the annoying UAC slowdowns.
Speed up your keyboard
Part of what can make Windows 7 — or any previous version of Windows — seem slow is the rate at which the cursor moves when you hold down a key. That’s why one of the first things you should do after a new installation of Windows 7 is to adjust the keyboard speed. Do that by opening the Start menu and typing “keyboard.” Click the Keyboard entry under the Control Panel section, and Windows 7 open the Keyboard Properties dialog box. From there, make sure the Speed tab is selected, and move the Repeat Delay slider to “Short.” Click OK, and from that point forward, Windows will react much faster when you hold down a letter within any text application.
Remove unused features
Windows 7 comes loaded with a bunch of features you probably never use. Whether you use them or not, however, they’ll slow your system down. So turn off the ones you don’t need.
Open the Start menu, and type Windows Features. Then click the “Turn Windows features on or off” entry that appears. The Windows Features dialog box opens, and from there, you can de-select any feature that you never use. Prime candidates are the “Windows Gadget Platform,” “Games,” and “Indexing Service.”
Set your PC for maximum performance
Windows 7 actually throttles down performance of certain components at certain times in order to save energy. Those components include the hard drive and processor (CPU). So if you’re more concerned with ensuring that your PC always operates at its fastest while you’re using it, you can turn off power saving features. Just open the Start menu, and type “power options.” Click the Power Options entry that appears. In the resulting dialog box, select the “Change advanced power settings” link, and use the control in the dialog box that follows to adjust your PC for maximum performance at all times.

Firefox 5: 8 things to know

2011-06-22T10:39:00.000-07:00

Sticking to its promise of a quick-release cycle, Mozilla has released Firefox 5, just three months after Firefox 4 made its debut in March.
Firefox 5 is now available for desktop devices running Windows, Mac, Linux, as well as for Android handsets. Firefox 4 made its debut on March 22, about a year after the release of Firefox 3.5.
Here are eight things to know about the all-new Firefox 5.

Includes 1,000 performance enhancements

According to Mozilla foundation, the Firefox 5 includes more than 1,000 improvements and performance enhancements that make it easier to discover and use all of the innovative features in Firefox.
The release adds support for several modern Web technologies that make it easier for developers to build Firefox add-ons, Web applications and websites.

Is faster

The new Firefox beta is slightly faster than previous releases, accordi

New privacy settings

Firefox 5 allows mobile users to tweak their privacy settings directly from their mobile devices. The settings page is laid out in a way that a user can exactly see which options are on and which are off.

'Do not track' goes multi-platform

Firefox for Android includes the 'Do not track' privacy feature in this release, making Firefox the first browser to support 'Do not track' on multiple platforms. The feature gives users more control over the way their browsing behaviour is tracked and used on the Web.

HTML 5 support enhanced

Most enhancements and improvements claimed by Mozilla seem to be minor bug fixes according to reviewers. Some significant changes include enhanced support for HTML5 and new support for CSS (cascading style sheet) animations.

Interface identical

Firefox 5's user interface is quite similar to Firefox 4. Mozilla is also said to have dropped a feature that it touted during the testing phase, which allowed users to change development channels from, say, the final to either Beta or Aurora, rougher builds that precede the stable editions.

Networking performance

Some other changes in Firefox 5 are said to include better spell checking in some languages; improved JavaScript, memory and networking performance. Firefox 5 also offers better Linux desktop integration and improved background tab performance.

Upgrade

All users running Firefox 4 will be offered the upgrade to Firefox 5 through the browser's update mechanism. The new release can also be downloaded manually from Mozilla's site.
The next version of Firefox is said to be on schedule for an early August release.

Install the Hyper-V Manager feature in Windows Server 2008 R2

2011-05-31T00:09:00.000-07:00

By Rick Vanover
Summary
Hyper-V as a standalone install doesn't provide much of an interface to manage virtual machines. Rick Vanover shows how to remotely manage a Hyper-V server.
The Hyper-V Manager feature can be installed on any Windows Server 2008 system. If the Hyper-V Server is Hyper-V 2008 R2, I recommend only attempting to manage that class of hypervisor on Windows Server 2008 R2 systems.
When it comes to deploying Hyper-V servers, there are two main options: install the standalone Hyper-V hypervisor or add the Hyper-V feature to a supported Windows Server 2008 R2 server. I'm going to take the separation approach as I venture into Hyper-V and use the standalone Hyper-V hypervisor instead of the full installation of Windows Server 2008 R2 and adding the Hyper-V role.
The Hyper-V standalone install is a single-purpose, standalone distribution. It loosely resembles Windows Server Core, and can be plugged into all of the management frameworks, including Group Policy, PowerShell, Hyper-V Manager, System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM), and Remote Management.
The Hyper-V Manager tool is the simplest way to manage a Hyper-V host, and it can be added to any server system. To add Hyper-V Manager, open Server Manager and navigate to the Features section (Figure A).
Figure A

Click the image to enlarge.
Once the feature is installed, Hyper-V Manager will be available in the Administrative Tools area of the Start Menu. From there, the first step is to connect to a remote server. Figure B shows Hyper-V Manager connected to two Hyper-V servers.
Figure B

Before you can create virtual machines on the Hyper-V hosts enumerated in Hyper-V Manager, the host networking will need to be configured. Hyper-V supports three types of networks: External, Internal and Private. These networks loosely equate to bridged, NAT, and host-only network modes from other hypervisors, respectively.
The network for the host is created as shown in Figure C. This environment does not have a VLAN tag in use, but the Configuration tab is available.
Figure C

Be sure to use a dedicated network interface for the Hyper-V networking configuration. You will find that the connection of the Hyper-V Server is removed in favor of this configuration entered for the guest virtual machine networks. Because of this the Allow Management Operating System To Share This Adapter should be unchecked. Now Hyper-V Manager is ready to deploy virtual machines.
Rick Vanover is an IT infrastructure manager for a financial services organization in Columbus, Ohio. He has years of IT experience and focuses on virtualization, Windows-based server administration and system hardware.

What are the best social media monitoring tools?

2011-04-25T01:43:00.001-07:00

Created by KissMetrics in partnership with oneforty.

5 tips for backing up your data to the cloud

2011-04-07T00:05:00.000-07:00

By Brien Posey

Summary

Cloud backups may seem like an ideal offsite storage solution. But as Brien Posey discovered, you need to do your homework before selecting a cloud backup service.

In many ways, the cloud has solved the problem of storing data backups offsite. In spite of all the marketing hype the cloud has been receiving lately, though, it is not necessarily the ideal solution when it comes to backing up your network.

Here are a few factors you may want to consider before you adopt a cloud backup solution.

1: Determine how fast your Internet connection really is
In this day and age of high-speed Internet connections, it's tempting to sign up for a cloud backup service without giving much thought to the speed of your organization's connectivity. However, it's a good idea to check with your ISP to find out how fast your connection really is.

I say this because it's common practice for ISPs to provide much higher speed for downloads than for uploads. With my own service, for example, I receive 7Mbps downloads, but I can upload data at only a maximum of 512Kbps.

Even if your Internet connectivity speed is adequate, it's a good idea to perform some speed checks to find out how well the connection is really performing. Remember that the speed quoted by your ISP is the maximum throughput you can achieve under ideal circumstances. The actual speed of your connection may vary considerably, especially if the connection is shared with others in the area.

2: Find out whether the provider throttles uploads
Before you commit to a cloud data backup solution, find out whether the cloud service provider throttles your uploads. Back around Thanksgiving, I signed up for a cloud data backup plan. I knew it was going to take forever to upload my data, given the speed of my Internet connection, but I was willing to take a chance in the interest of having a copy of my data stored offsite.

When my uploads ended up being a lot slower than I expected them to be, I read the fine print. Apparently, this particular cloud service provider allows you to upload the first 20 GB unthrottled but severely limits your upload speed after that.

3: Make sure the provider doesn't block the types of files you need to back up
Another thing I ran into with that particular cloud service provider was that even though it claims to allow you to back up an unlimited amount of data, it prevents you from uploading certain types of files. Among these file types are system files, ZIP files and video files. This proved to be a real problem for me because I create Web content for a living, and much of that content is video.

After digging through the provider's help files, I discovered that you can configure the service to back up video files. But you have to manually specify which video files need to be backed up, one folder at a time. Although I tried to do this, it ended up being so tedious that I switched service providers. My advice is to find out whether the provider you are considering restricts backing up certain types of files before you sign up for the service.

4: Take advantage of free trials
Take advantage of the free trials offered by the various backup service providers. Almost all cloud-based backup service providers will allow you to try out their service free for a couple of weeks. I highly recommend taking advantage of this offer before you pay for the service.

Using the free trial can help you find out whether the service provider throttles your connection, restricts the types of files you can back up, or does other things that may prevent you from backing up your data. For example, many cloud-based backup service providers won't allow you to back up network drives.

5: Don't use a cloud backup provider as a replacement for traditional backups
Finally, one of the best bits of advice I can give you is that you should not expect to replace your existing backup infrastructure with a cloud-based backup solution.

Right now, most of the cloud backup providers simply can't provide anything other than file-level backups. Therefore, using such a service to create a system image for bare metal restoration is out of the question. Likewise, most cloud backup providers don't support application backups for things such as Exchange Server or SQL Server.

Even if a file-level backup is all you need, a cloud-based backup still might not be a sufficient replacement for the backups you're creating right now. After all, if you ever have to perform a mass restoration, all the data will have to be downloaded from the Internet. Depending upon how much data you have and how fast your Internet connection is, such a restoration could take days or even weeks to complete.

My advice is to treat cloud-based backups as supplementary backups that are stored offsite, but continue to depend on your existing backup infrastructure as your primary means of backing up your data.

Brien Posey is a seven-time Microsoft MVP. He has written thousands of articles and written or contributed to dozens of books on a variety of IT subjects.

Moving from Office 2003 to 2007/2010

2011-03-15T21:18:00.000-07:00

To remain current with the world’s most widely used office suite you'll have to make the switch from MS Office 2003 to 2010
Still putting off making the switch from Office 2003 to 2007 or 2010? If so, you’re not alone. Many offices around the world, facing additional training costs, have simply stayed put with Office 2003. And many veteran 2003 users, not liking the new ribbon bar in 2007 and 2010, have said no as well.
But sooner or later, if you want to remain current with the world’s most widely used office suite, you’ll have to make the switch. When you do, you’ll face struggles with the new interface and the new file formats. Here’s how to handle both with a minimum of hassle.
Q: I have tried to get used to the ribbon bar in Word 2007, but I still get lost. Is there some kind of reference that maps Word 2003 features to Word 2007?
A: Microsoft has no doubt heard plenty of complaints like yours, especially since the company provided no way for users to return to the menu interface even of Office 2003 if they want to. So the company spent some time putting together a handy “interactive guide” (http://bit.ly/96mjd3) to Word 2007 (and 2010) commands.
The guide is actually an virtual representation of the familiar Word 2003 interface, running inside of your browser. Just use the fake interface to select a command from the menus, and the guide will show you exactly how to find the same command in Word 2007 — and, for the most part, Word 2010.
Another way you can pull up a quick reference to 2003 commands is by opening the Help menu (F1) in an Office 2007/2010 application and typing “2003 commands” in the search box.
Q: The new docx format is driving us crazy. It’s not that we can’t save documents in the new format, but sometimes we accidentally save older doc files as docx, and then the original creator of the doc files cannot read our updates. Is there a way just to revert to doc?
A: You can tell Office 2007 and 2010 to save files in the old 2003 formats by default. To do so, open an Office application like Word, and click the Office/File button in the top left-hand corner. From the resulting menu, click the Word Options button.
In the Options panel, click Save in the left-hand pane, and then from the list of options in the right—hand pane, find the drop-down list box labelled “Save files in this format.” From the options available, choose “Word 97-2003 Document (*.doc), and then click OK.
From that point on, your office application (in this case, Word) will save files in the older format.
Instead of doing this, however, it may be wiser for you to direct those still using the older doc format to download and install the Office Compatibility Pack (http://bit.ly/9W6DDb) for Office 2003.
With that installed, the older applications will not balk at the newer formats.
Q: We have a lot of files in Office 2003 formats and want to convert them all to the newer format at one time. Is there some kind of bulk conversion utility available?
A: Yes. Microsoft created a migration kit that includes a utility that will convert many older Office 2003 documents at once. The tool was created for technology administrators, but anyone can download and use it.
To get started, download and install the Office compatibility pack (http://bit.ly/9hsyAQ) from Microsoft. Once that is installed, download and install Microsoft’s Migration Planning Manager (http://bit.ly/hQPnfo). You will need to create a folder for the installation of the latter program.
Once the Migration Planning Manager has been installed, go to the Tools subfolder under the folder in which you installed Migration Planning Manager. Locate the “ofc.ini” file, and open it with a text editor such as Notepad. Once the file is up on your screen, locate the [FoldersToConvert] section, and remove the semicolon before the line that reads “fldr=C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents.” Removing the semicolon makes that line active. Before you save the file, however, delete everything after “fldr=” and insert the drive and folder where you keep the documents you want to convert. For example, if you copy the documents you wish to convert to c:\convert, then you should type c:\convert after the “fldr=” prefix. The entire line should look like this: fldr=c:\convert.
Once you’ve done that, save the file. Then, from the same folder in which ofc.ini is stored, double—click the file ofc.exe. If you completed the ofc.ini file correctly, you should see “converted” status messages from the ofc.exe program as it converts your files.
Once the conversion is finished, you will find your converted files in a “Converted” subfolder under the folder in which the original (Office 2003) files were stored.

5 tips for learning how to use Server Core

2011-03-09T23:01:00.000-08:00

By Brien Posey

As organizations work to increase the density of the virtual servers running on their host servers, many are turning to Server Core deployments.

Server Core lacks a lot of the GUI features found in more traditional Windows Server deployments. It's a lightweight server operating system, which makes it ideal for use in virtual data centers. Even so, there's no denying that Server Core can be a bit intimidating and that a learning curve is associated with managing Server Core operating systems.

In this article, I will provide five tips for learning how to use Server Core.

1: Set up a lab machine
Without a doubt, the best advice I can give you is to set up a few lab machines and install Server Core. That way, you can experiment with configuring and managing the operating system without having to worry about harming your production systems.

As you do, don't be afraid to get your hands dirty. The deeper you dig into Server Core on your lab machines, the better equipped you will be to manage Server Core deployments in the real world.

2: Understand the difference between the command line and PowerShell
I have read several blog posts that have incorrectly reported that administrators must use PowerShell cmdlets to manage Server Core operating systems. Although Server Core is managed from the command line, there is a difference between the command line and PowerShell.

The command line traces its roots back to DOS and has existed in one form or another in every version of Windows ever released for the X86 / X64 platform. Although some command -ine commands will work in PowerShell, PowerShell commands will not work in a command-line environment.

The command line is the primary interface for managing Server Core. In fact, PowerShell isn't even natively supported on Windows Server 2008 Server Core servers (although there is an unofficial workaround that can be used to add PowerShell support). PowerShell is natively available on Server Core servers that are running Windows Server 2008 R2, but it's not installed by default. Microsoft Support provides instructions for enabling PowerShell.

3: Check out the available graphical utilities
Even though the whole point of Server Core is that it's supposed to be a lightweight server OS without a GUI, it actually does have a GUI. Several graphical utilities can help you with the initial server configuration process.

The best of these utilities (in my opinion) is Core Configurator 2.0, an open source utility that's available as a free download. It's designed to help you to do things such as naming your server, configuring its network settings, and licensing the server.

In addition, Microsoft includes a configuration utility called Sconfig with Windows Server 2008 R2. Simply enter SCONFIG.CMD at the command prompt, and Windows will launch the Server Configuration utility. This utility is similar to the Core Configurator, but its options aren't quite as extensive. The Server Configuration utility will help you to do things like joining a domain or installing updates.

4: Don't forget about graphical management tools
When you manage a normal Windows 2008 server, you use built-in management utilities, such as the Active Directory Users And Computers Console and the Service Control Manager. Although such utilities connect to the local server by default, they're designed to let you manage other servers on your network, including servers that are running Server Core.

Even though Server Core operating systems don't come with a comprehensive suite of management utilities, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from connecting to a core server from another server's management consoles and managing that core server in exactly the same way that you would if it were running a graphical Windows Server operating system.

5: Learn Server Core's limitations
Because Server Core is a lightweight server operating system, it's not suitable for all purposes. Plenty of third-party applications simply will not run on a Server Core deployment.

In addition, many of the roles and role services that are often run on traditional Windows Server 2008 R2 servers are not supported on Server Core deployments. The actual roles that are supported by Server Core vary depending on the edition of Windows you are installing.

For instance, Windows Server 2008 R2 Web Edition supports only three roles, while the Datacenter and Enterprise Editions support 11 roles:

Active Directory Certificate Services
Active Directory Domain Services
Active Directory Lightweight Directory Service
BranchCache Hosted Cache
DHCP Server
DNS Server
File Services
Hyper-V
Media Services (this role must be downloaded separately)
Print Services
Web Services (IIS)

Microsoft provides a full list of the roles that are supported by the various editions of Windows Server 2008 R2.

Brien Posey is a seven-time Microsoft MVP. He has written thousands of articles and written or contributed to dozens of books on a variety of IT subjects.

10 tricks for Microsoft Word

2011-02-21T21:26:00.001-08:00

Sure, you’ve been using Word for forever, and sometimes it’s tough for an old – well, “mature” - dog to learn new tricks, but here are few tricks from the guys over at Maximum PC that will wow the groupies gathered around your cubicle.

Be selective with how you select
You already know that double-clicking selects a single word, and you probably figured out that triple-clicking selects an entire paragraph. But if you just want to select a single sentence, hold down Ctrl and click on any word. To select an entire table, hold down Alt and double-click.
Add a comment
When a friend or family member sends you a document to proofread, don't waste your time writing a lengthy email detailing all the horrendous mistakes you found; mark up their Word file instead. Highlight a portion of text, click the Review tab in the Ribbon bar, and select New Comment.
Use the built-in thesaurus
You don't need to hop online to use a thesaurus, the folks in Redmond had the good sense to bundle one in Word. To use it, highlight an entry and press Shift+F7. Pretty simple, right? Or maybe we should say it's trouble-free, straightforward, effortless, uncomplicated, or painless.

More tips at Maximum PC via Gizmodo.

5 things you should know about IPv6

2011-02-21T00:01:00.001-08:00

Many web surfers don't know it, but the introduction of new internet address standards might change the way they get online.

Since the supply of usable addresses governed by the IPv4 standard (internet protocol, version 4) has been exhausted, IPv6 has now been introduced. This will allow a previously impossible variety of addresses, says Christoph Meinel, a professor at Germany's Hasso Plattner Institute.

But what does this change mean for everyday surfers? Here's an overview.

Why are IP addresses necessary?

In order for internet-capable devices to share information, they need a unique machine-readable address. These addresses are assigned based on a standard of internet protocols.
But, since humans have a hard time remembering these strings of numbers, websites are also labelled with domain names, like www.google.com. When these addresses are typed into browsers, special servers translate them into IP addresses for the benefit of the computers.

What is the difference between IPv4 and IPv6?

Until now, IP addresses have been assigned in blocks of four numbers with up to three numerals each: 217.79.215.248, for example. The new IPv6 standard won't convert the numbers into the decimal system, rather a hexadecimal system, recognized by its combination of numbers and letters. The new standard can be recognized by its eight blocks, separated by colons -- 2001:db8:0:0:0:0:1428:57ab, for example.

Will my PC be able to process new standard?

In most cases, yes. But an IPv6-capable operating system is a prerequisite. Those can be found in any Windows system post Vista. There are ways to install

Will my DSL access support the new standard?

In most cases, no. Contemporary routers, like the ones provided by telecommunications companies when DSL packages are ordered, are still set for the old IPv4 standard. In some cases, IPv6 can be added with a firmware update. When purchasing a new router, make sure it supports IPv6.

Will there be problems during transition?

Generally, no. Internet use shouldn't be affected after the switch -- at least that's what providers are promising. Those providers have modified their network so that data packets reach all users whether they are using IPv4 or IPv6 standards, a method called dual-stack application. Alternatively, software solutions, like those based on tunnel technology, can be used.

How to Wipe Yourself Off the Grid

2011-01-25T06:08:00.001-08:00

By: Eric Griffith

Here are some tips on how to make the life changes necessary to completely unplug from the grid and disappear from the digital world.

There are lots of reasons to unplug from the grid. And I'm not talking about the electrical grid. I mean the "grid" as in the whole digital world. Maybe you've had it up to here (picture my hand at my forehead) with all the digital flotsam that inundates you every day from work e-mail to social network nattering. Perhaps you need to go on the lam (and we're not going to judge your reasons why). Maybe you really need to get away from someone who makes you crazy or, quite seriously, from someone else's abuse.

The reasons are yours. However, we're here to tell you, it isn't going to be easy. Just by virtue of reading this story on PCMag.com, we can guess you're probably at a computer that has an IP address that can be tracked. And that's where the problems begin. Cell phones, credit card purchases, travel check-ins, and even just a drive through a toll booth are all ways that you can be traced. And it's not just by Big Brother, but individuals as well. Skiptracers and private eyes don't need much more than what they can access online to get to you if you continue to live digitally even after you left your old life behind.

So what do you do to truly disappear? I warn you in advance, it's not pretty. Picture every movie or TV show you've seen about witness protection programs and add-in the extra dash of paranoia that comes from not having U.S. marshalls on your side. Then get ready to live like you've never lived before. Whether you need to go on the run or you just want to settle down into a less digital life, here's how to get lost.

Digital Dos and Don'ts

Can you really get off the grid and still live digitally? Probably not. If you retain your digital life, you're going to leave breadcrumbs. The only way to stay completely anonymous is to turn it ALL off. That means no cell phones, no credit cards, no Web surfing. You can't even turn on a computer.

However, if you can't handle that, here are some options that can keep you online and, perhaps, off the radar.

1. Lose the Cell Phone
It might be your digital lifeline, but when you're trying to hide, your cell phone is a digital bull's eye. Those with the access can easily triangulate your position based on your cell signal. You don't even need to make a call, as phones are always talking to towers to get the best signal available. A built-in GPS only makes it easier.

If you can take out the battery, that'll be all she wrote. And you can always pop it back in for a true emergency. You can also leave the phone somewhere to misdirect tracers. The latter is best if you've got a phone with a battery you can't access (iPhones are not for fugitives).

You don't have to go without phone access completely. Buy some pre-paid phones on the cheap at a department store or gas station. Give one to your most trusted friend or loved one and keep the other. That way, only the two of you can talk or text. This could get more difficult, as Congress proposed a bill last year to ban selling anonymous pre-paid phones to fight terrorism. Right now, though, you can still get one without showing ID in most states.

In addition, get some portable, solar powered chargers for your gadgets, so you don't have to rely on the outlets. Powermonkey eXplorer has plugs for just about every kind of phone and they don't need much light to charge a device.

2. Make Purchases Using Gift Cards
It's a little cruel to include links in this article to products you can only buy online; but it's not impossible to make Web purchases while off the grid. Use your cash to purchase credit card gift cards, such as Visa or American Express. They're available just about anywhere. You can use them for purchases online and off and then chuck them after they're used up. (Try to rotate where you get deliveries.)

3. Forget Being Social
It's time to give up on Facebook and Twitter. Seriously. Just walk away. If you can't go cold turkey, create anonymous accounts from remote locations. Friend a few bots to keep your number of friends/followers high for your psychological fitness, since you, by definition, don't have any friends at this point. And for the love of all that's holy, don't friend or follow people you actually know.

via http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2376023,00.asp

How people tweet [infographic]

2011-01-16T05:09:00.001-08:00

How are mobile phones changing social media?

2011-01-16T05:08:00.001-08:00

Anatomy of a WordPress theme [infographic]

2011-01-16T05:04:00.001-08:00

How To remove Restriction From Sites Like Megavideo, Megaupload or Veoh

2010-12-15T22:14:00.001-08:00

If you are tired of the draconian limitations of the popular video sharing sites like Megavideo, Megaupload or Veoh we have got just the hack for you. A program that serves as Browser Extension like Illimitux is going to be the ray of light for the annoyed souls.

The software will play more than the 72 limit of Megavideo by automatically filling in the captcha code. For Veoh it will enable users to watch them for more than 5 minutes without any installations of Veoh TV required. All you need to do is to install the program on your Firefox or chrome head up to such limited sites and Voila you will receive a pop up asking you to confirm if you would like to remove the limitations. As soon as you will hit the button the CacaoWeb plugin. After which you will be re directed to another page where you will get unrestricted access to the video. It is to be noted that the video will be played in a separate layer.

The good news is that the software is free to download and works with Chrome and Firefox. It can be found here .

How to to Set the Collation for the Table (or column) to be either Binary or Case-Sensitive?

2010-12-15T22:12:00.001-08:00

more images

First thing first, you need to check out with the available collations in the system. SHOW COLLATION can do that for you. This statement lists collations supported by the server. By default, the output from SHOW COLLATION includes all available collations. The LIKE clause, if present, indicates which collation names to match. The WHERE clause can be given to select rows using more general conditions.

Eg.
SHOW COLLATION
[LIKE 'pattern' | WHERE expr]

————————————————————————————————————————————————————
————————————————————————————————————————————————————

mysql> SHOW COLLATION LIKE ‘latin1%’;
+——————-+———+—-+———+———-+———+
| Collation | Charset | Id | Default | Compiled | Sortlen |
+——————-+———+—-+———+———-+———+
| latin1_german1_ci | latin1 | 5 | | | 0 |
| latin1_swedish_ci | latin1 | 8 | Yes | Yes | 0 |
| latin1_danish_ci | latin1 | 15 | | | 0 |
| latin1_german2_ci | latin1 | 31 | | Yes | 2 |
| latin1_bin | latin1 | 47 | | Yes | 0 |
| latin1_general_ci | latin1 | 48 | | | 0 |
| latin1_general_cs | latin1 | 49 | | | 0 |
| latin1_spanish_ci | latin1 | 94 | | | 0 |
+——————-+———+—-+———+———-+———+

Further, look at the details here, The naming convention for collation in mysql is as follows:

*_bin: represents binary case sensitive collation
*_cs: case sensitive collation
*_ci: case insensitive collation

———————————————————————————————————————————————————-
———————————————————————————————————————————————————-

###########
# Start binary collation example
###########
mysql> create table case_bin_test (word VARCHAR(10)) CHARACTER SET latin1 COLLATE latin1_bin;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.02 sec)
mysql> INSERT INTO case_bin_test VALUES (’Avik’),(’Google’),(’angsuman’),(’Amit’),(’arim’);
Query OK, 5 rows affected (0.00 sec)
Records: 5 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0
mysql> SELECT * FROM case_bin_test WHERE word LIKE ‘a%’;
+———+
| word |
+———+
| angsuman |
| arim |
+———+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> SELECT * FROM case_bin_test WHERE word LIKE ‘A%’;
+———+
| word |
+———+
| Avik |
| Amit |
+———+
4 rows in set (0.00 sec)
###########
# End
###########

———————————————————————————————————————————————————–
———————————————————————————————————————————————————–
Here’s another way-out,

###########
# Start case sensitive collation example
###########
mysql> create table case_cs_test (word VARCHAR(10)) CHARACTER SET latin1 COLLATE latin1_general_cs;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.08 sec)
mysql> INSERT INTO case_cs_test VALUES (’Avik’),(’Google’),(’angsuman’),(’Amit’),(’arim’);
Query OK, 5 rows affected (0.00 sec)
Records: 5 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0
mysql> SELECT * FROM case_cs_test WHERE word LIKE ‘A%’;
+———+
| word |
+———+
| Avik |
| Amit |
+———+
4 rows in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> SELECT * FROM case_cs_test WHERE word LIKE ‘a%’;
+———+
| word |
+———+
| angsuman |
| arim |
+———+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)
###########
# end
###########

————————————————————————————————————————————————-
————————————————————————————————————————————————-
This is the third and final example to specify the collation during query in case the collation cannot be specified for the entire table. Following are a few different ways of specifying this.

mysql> create table case_test (word VARCHAR(10)) CHARACTER SET latin1;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.01 sec)
mysql> INSERT INTO case_test VALUES (’Avik’),(’Google’),(’angsuman’),(’Amit’),(’arim’);
Query OK, 7 rows affected (0.01 sec)
Records: 7 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0
mysql> SELECT * FROM case_test WHERE word LIKE ‘a%’;
+———+
| word |
+———+
| angsuman |
| Amit|
| arim |
| Avik |
+———+
6 rows in set (0.01 sec)
mysql> SELECT * FROM case_test WHERE word LIKE ‘A%’;
+———+
| word |
+———+
| angsuman |
| Amit|
| arim |
| Avik |
+———+
6 rows in set (0.01 sec)
mysql> SELECT * FROM case_test WHERE word COLLATE latin1_bin LIKE ‘F%’;
+———+
| word |
+———+
| Avik |
| Amit |
+———+
4 rows in set (0.05 sec)
mysql> SELECT * FROM case_test WHERE word COLLATE latin1_bin LIKE ‘a%’;
+———+
| word |
+———+
| angsuman |
| arim |
+———+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> SELECT * FROM case_test WHERE word LIKE ‘a%’ COLLATE latin1_bin;
+———+
| word |
+———+
| angsuman |
| arim |
+———+
2 rows in set (0.00 sec)
mysql> SELECT * FROM case_test WHERE word LIKE ‘A%’ COLLATE latin1_bin;
+———+
| word |
+———+
| Avik |
| Amit |
+———+
4 rows in set (0.01 sec)
mysql> SELECT * FROM case_test WHERE word LIKE ‘A%’ COLLATE latin1_general_cs;
+———+
| word |
+———+
| Avik |
| Amit |
+———+
4 rows in set (0.04 sec)

So, hope I could present you with some useful information.

13 reasons why you should use the "traditional retweet"

2010-11-29T07:12:00.001-08:00

A traditional retweet, as defined by Ray Beckerman, is where a tweeter manually types “RT @username” and does not use Twitter’s retweet function. Beckerman, who is a lawyer in New York City, outlines 13 reasons why users should opt for the manual retweet opposed to Twitter’s. Here are just a few:

(Twitter’s retweet) prevents you from seeing multiple versions with different comments from different people.
If someone retweets you, it is difficult for you to learn that they did, if you are using the “new twitter”; you have to go to the list of retweets > those retweeting your tweets > retweeted post, then hover your cursor in upper right hand corner to get arrow to appear, then click arrow to find out who retweeted; i.e., you would have to conduct an elaborate investigation, one that you will rarely if ever undertake.
If you retweet someone, they will never learn that you did, if they are using the “new twitter”, unless they go through the same investigative process on their internet interface home page that you have to go through to find out if you’ve been retweeted; i.e, they will never learn that you did.

Full story at Ray’s 2.0.

How to use StumbleUpon: A comprehensive guide

2010-11-17T04:45:00.001-08:00

Social Media Examiner provides a useful guide on how to unlock the full power of StumbleUpon, a site that helps people discover links. The article takes us through several key topics:

Why use StumbleUpon?
Saving Your Favorites
Creating Your StumbleUpon Profile
Finding Friends on StumbleUpon
Receiving Shares
Sharing Etiquette
StumbleUpon Advertising

For instance, to save our favorites, the site advises:

There’s more to saving your favorite pages than just hitting the “I like it” button. You can use the Comment bubble on the Chrome toolbar or the Info button on the Firefox toolbar to go to the StumbleUpon page for the URL and enter a detailed review, which is appreciated much more than just a thumbs-up.
Whenever you’re favoriting an item, be sure to use the tag icon to add tags to your favorites. StumbleUpon’s search is less than exact when it comes to relocating something that you’ve favorited and hope to return to, so tag that item appropriately so you can find it when you need it.

Full story at Social Media Examiner.

50 great time-saving tools for web designers

2010-10-20T06:56:00.001-07:00

Hey web designers, you don’t want to miss this extremely useful collection of fifty powerful time-saving resources to help you increase your productivity and improve your workflow. From the general to the more technical to the obscure yet super interesting—this list really has it all.
A sampling:

House of Buttons
A/B Split Testing Calculator
What deux yeux have teux deux teuxday?
Historious

Get the goods at Smashing Magazine.

6 online tools for managing time differences

2010-09-28T06:51:00.001-07:00

When travelling, the barriers are endless. New food, new language, new time zone - you name it. But at least one of those problems can be resolved in this helpful collection of resources from Mashable. Check out these six web tools for managing time differences. See three below:

Time Zone Converter
Every Time Zone
Gmail Time Zone Tricks

Learn more about all six at Mashable.

How to Troubleshoot Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 (MSIE9)

2010-09-20T03:15:00.001-07:00

Microsoft's Knowledge Base (KB) Articles help support & troubleshoot many Internet Explorer 9 problems.

INSTALLATION / SETUP PROBLEMS & SOLUTIONS:

KB2409098 - How to solve Internet Explorer 9 installation problems:

Method 1: Make sure minimum Operating System requirements are met

Windows Vista (x86 and x64) with Service Pack 2 (SP 2) or later versions

Windows 7 (x86 and x64) or later versions

Windows Server 2008 (x86 and x64) with Service Pack 2 (SP 2) or later versions

Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 or later versions
Method 2: Try alternative Internet Explorer 9 installer

MSIE 9 Download Site

Alt Download Site #1

Alt Download Sites #2
Method 3: KB2399238 - Make sure Internet Explorer 9 prerequisites are installed (Run & Complete All Microsoft Updates)

Method 4: Make sure installation of other updates or restart is not pending (Run & Complete All Microsoft Updates)

Method 5: Temporarily disable antispyware and antivirus software.

KB922774 - The Setup program does not respond when you deploy a ClickOnce application over the Internet or over an intranet and a user clicks Install or Run on a published page in Internet Explorer 9.

SOLUTION #1: Upgrade to Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 (SP1)

SOLUTION #2: Upgrade to Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0

GENERAL MSIE 9 PROBLEMS & SOLUTIONS:

KB948140 - An Internet Explorer 9 browser window does not open on an alternative desktop on a Windows Vista-based computer.

SOLUTION?: This issue occurs because protected mode has one separate IEUser.exe broker process. To work around this issue, start Internet Explorer 9 on the default desktop.

KB971740 - Automatic configuration does not support certain file types in Internet Explorer 9

SOLUTION?: NONE! While .WPAD and .PAC Automatic Configuration file types are still supported, the Internet Explorer Administration Kit (IEAK) no longer supports customizing .INS, .JS, or .JVS file types.

KB262161 - A webpage that uses CSS styles does not render correctly in Internet Explorer 9

SOLUTION?: NONE!

KB936211 - How to troubleshoot network connectivity problems in Internet Explorer 9

SOLUTION?: Many useful things to try!

KB949197 - Certain characters in a file name may be converted to underscores when a user downloads a file by using Windows Internet Explorer 9

SOLUTION?: Do not use "Content-Disposition: Attachment; filename=" HTTP header.

KB934817 - A script that uses the execCommand function together with the SaveAs command does not save a Web page in Internet Explorer 9 on a Windows Vista-based computer.

SOLUTION? Include the URL of the Web page that you want to save by using a script in the Trusted Zones list in Internet Explorer 9.

KB969218 - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) about the structure of.NET Framework-specific configuration options in Internet Explorer 9

3RD PARTY PROBLEMS & SOLUTIONS:

KB969057 - How to fix the Cooliris add-on and Internet Explorer 9 incompatibility which causes Internet Explorer 9 to stop responding or crash.

SOLUTION?: Disable the add-on, or update Cooliris.

KB968136 - Incompatibility issues with Google Toolbar and Internet Explorer 9 will cause Internet Explorer 9 to stop responding or crash.

SOLUTION?: Disable the add-on, or update the Google Toolbar.

KB969227 - Compatibility issues with HP Smart Web Printing and Internet Explorer 9

SOLUTION?: Disable the add-on, or update HP's Smart Web Printing.

KB968916 - PDFCreator Toolbar add-on may not be compatible with Internet Explorer 9

SOLUTION?: Disable the add-on, or update the PDFCreator Toolbar.

KB969228 - Roxio's Drive Letter Access (DLA) add-on is not compatible with Internet Explorer 9

SOLUTION?: Disable the add-on, or update to Roxio's Burn (formally DLA)

KB2398082 - You experiences slow performance in Internet Explorer 9 (however, this issue does not occur if you view the webpage by using an earlier version of Internet Explorer, or when browsing some webpages with more complex graphics.)

SOLUTION?: Update to a video card that supports GPU hardware acceleration.

Jailbreaking your iPhone? Change your passwords

2010-08-24T09:13:00.001-07:00

By Amy Gahran

Jailbreaking your iPhone may be legal, but it puts the device's security in jeopardy. Changing default passwords can help.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

If you jailbreak your iPhone, it is more susceptible to hackers
Changing the default password on your iPhone is complicated, but worth the security
The default root and default mobile user account passwords are the same on every phone

Editor's Note: Amy Gahran writes about mobile tech for CNN.com. She is a San Francisco Bay Area writer and media consultant whose blog, Contentious.com, explores how people communicate in the online age.

(CNN) -- Since the U.S. Copyright Office declared last month that it's legal to jailbreak your iPhone, lots of iPhone users have been doing just that -- nearly 9 percent of them as of late July.
But jailbreaking your iPhone -- tweaking it to run applications not approved by Apple -- is serious business. That's not just because jailbreaking can void your Apple warranty, but because it can put you at risk of data theft, malware or other significant problems.
In November, TUAW reported that a Dutch hacker proved this point by using port scanning -- using software to probe a network host for open ports -- to find jailbroken phones. From there, he sent unsuspecting users a message that read, 'Your iPhone's been hacked because it's really insecure! Right now, I can access all your files.' "
He then directed his victims to PayPal and requested €5 (about $10) in exchange for instructions to remove his hack.
At least he let his victims know they'd been hacked. Your iPhone won't notify you about that on its own.
If you jailbreak your iPhone, one crucial way to protect yourself is to change the phone's default passwords. But be forewarned: It's not a simple process.
In the latest episode of the Boulder Open Podcast, hosts Dave Taylor and Michael Sitarzewski discussed this concern. Recently both of them jailbroke their iPhone 4s.
"I've gotta say, this was not a compelling experience. It was complicated as heck to figure out how to jailbreak the phone and then change the default passwords," said Taylor, a longtime tech expert.
"Once you jailbreak your phone, it's accessible via laptops. Someone can log into your phone and monkey with it. The process for changing the passwords is really quite a production. Like a lot of the open-source technology I've used in past 30 years, this is not something you want to get involved with unless you're willing to spend the time to learn how to do this safely."
A "root password" is a fundamental part of the geeky Unix back-end of the iPhone's slick operating system. It's something that non-jailbroken users never have to worry about because Apple's walled-garden iPhone experience prevents this particular kind of incursion.
Sitarzewski explained, "Every Unix system on the planet has a root account, and the default password for that account is the same on every iPhone on the planet ('alpine').
"When you jailbreak your phone, sometimes one of the requirements for an app is secure shell (SSH). That's the only way you're opening yourself up to this particular vulnerability. So you don't absolutely have to change your root password if you don't install SSH protocols -- but it's a good idea anyway."
Taylor added: "Not only is the default root password the same on every iPhone, but the default mobile user account password also is the same on every iPhone ('dottie'). So you should change them both."
If you venture beyond Apple's iPhone garden walls, you can follow these instructions to change your default passwords from the Just Another iPhone Blog.
Alternatively, TiPb offers instructions on using the JailbreakMe mobile site to simplify the jailbreaking process.

They note that as of early August, some jailbroken iPhone users running iOS4 reported problems with the terminal (a command-line interface that lets you access system-level functions), and pointed to a TiPb discussion forum for instructions on fixing that problem.

How to 'undo' an ill-advised Gmail message

2010-08-24T09:10:00.001-07:00

By Doug Gross

A little-known Gmail feature now lets you take back an ill-advised message up to 30 seconds after you hit "send."

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Gmail has option of 30 second window to take back an e-mail they've sent
The little-known feature has existed since last year, but was expanded this week
Google Labs, where users can tweak their Gmail settings, is where Google tests new ideas

(CNN) -- Ever have that sick-to-your-stomach, "Oh crap!" moment after sending an e-mail?
Did you get immediate second thoughts about that e-mail rant to your ex? Was that blistering message supposed to be about your boss -- not to your boss?
Well, at least with Gmail, there's something you can do about it.
The ability to "undo" an e-mail has been a little known feature of Google's e-mail service since last year. But in the past few days, it appears to have been improved.
Google Operating System, an unofficial blog that shares Google news and tips, noted this weekend that a user now has up to 30 seconds to take back an unfortunate message.
In reality, the feature doesn't actually pull back an e-mail that's already gone, it simply holds your message for 30 seconds before sending it out -- just in case you change your mind.
A Google spokeswoman confirmed Monday that the 30-second option was added early this month.
When the feature first rolled out in March 2009, you had to be super-quick to use it. It only allowed five seconds to take a message back.
Enabling the feature is a bit complicated if you're not familiar with Google Labs, the place where the company lets users test out experiments with Gmail and other Google projects.
And it's worth noting that, because it is a testing space, anything in Labs is subject to change.
But, at least for now, here's how to avoid instant e-mail remorse.
To enable 'Undo Send':
1. Log in to Gmail and go to Google Labs. If you've never gone to Labs before, click the word "more" in the very top left corner, then scroll down and click "even more."
2. In the column on the right, click "Labs." It's next to the icon of a beaker filled with green stuff.
3. Click "Gmail Labs" in the column on the right.
4. Scroll down almost all the way to the bottom until you see "Undo Send." Click "enable" and the feature is now on. Then scroll the rest of the way down and look in the bottom left corner for the "Save Changes" box. Click it.
5. Now, go back to the main Gmail page and click "Settings" in the top right. You should also see your green Labs beaker icon there now -- this will let you go straight to Labs from now on.
6. Scroll down to "Undo Send" -- it should be right above "My Picture." Your default should be set to 10 seconds. But you can use the drop-down bar to stretch that to 30 seconds.
7. Scroll down and hit "Save Changes."

8. To undo an email, just look for the box at the top of the screen that will have the words "Your message has been sent." After that, you should see the "Undo" option. Click that and you'll be sent back to the e-mail's draft form, where you'll have 30 seconds to edit or delete it before it goes out.

Pros and cons of mini blades vs. full blades

2010-08-12T03:17:00.001-07:00

There are a number of advantages to selecting blades for the server platform in the data center. Yet, there are many obstacles to fully realizing the benefits of this form factor.

The blade server is great at face value in that there are additional management tools, a reduced space requirement and cost advantages.

Many data centers can't take advantage of blades due to the initial investment or the thought that the requirements would never populate the blades to the break-even cost point. Frequently, the break-even threshold is about 5 or 6 blades within a chassis.

There is an alternative with the mini blade. Among mainstream offerings for the mini blade is MDS Micro's Quad V and Dual V server series.

The Quad V can deliver four servers in a 2U space and the Dual V can deliver two servers in a 1U enclosure.

Read more »

How to manage multiple Twitter accounts with one email

2010-08-01T03:51:00.001-07:00

Most people have more than one Twitter account, especially if they’re managing both personal and professional accounts. Why do we do this to ourselves? Because every blog, website, and brand has a specific audience. The most annoying thing about managing multiple Twitter accounts is that each new addition requires a new email address. But lo and behold—thanks to a little trick discovered by Nikki Katz, you can manipulate just one Gmail account to handle all your Twitter accounts. Here’s how:

My main email is nvkatz@gmail[dot]com. But any of the following variations will be directed to my account … nv.katz@gmail[dot]com or n.v.katz@gmail[dot]com or nvk.atz@gmail[dot]com (you see where I’m going with this). See, Gmail allows only one registration for any given username. Once you sign up for a username, nobody else can sign up for the same username, regardless of whether it contains extra periods or capital letters; those usernames belong to you.

Now go forth, tweeps, and reconcile all your accounts so we can collectively breathe a sigh of relief.
Full story at Blog World Expo.

Network admins must beware of Stuxnet

2010-07-27T00:47:00.001-07:00

Sometimes with mind-numbing frequency, patches and security advisories from Microsoft, Adobe, and Apple compete for an ever-increasing amount of attention from administrators. Little wonder then, that most will have greeted with a mild yawn the latest announcement of another zero day attack--this one named the "Stuxnet Attack". Just as I was about to file this latest message under "Priority--To Be Reviewed", the sender's name jarred me to attention: Managing Automation.
Managing Automation is a periodical with a healthy Web presence that tends to cover topics from the supply chain, manufacturing, process control, and product lifecycle management. Over the past five years or more, the editorial focus has branched out to cover additional topics more familiar to network administrators: e.g. security event management for industrial systems, defenses against industrial espionage, etc. Despite this new coverage area, Managing Automation topics are rarely vehicles for malware notification. It was noteworthy then, to see author Chris Chiappinelli's story begin with:

Manufacturers worldwide have been put on notice that an insidious virus targeting supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems is on the loose.
The targets of the malware are Siemens' SIMATIC WinCC and PCS7 software, integral components of the distributed control and SCADA systems that facilitate production operations in many process manufacturing companies…

Those not in the manufacturing and process engineering fields may be unaware of Siemens SIMATIC and PCS7 software. How important was this emerging threat, in a field rife with worries that are sometimes alarmist and self-serving? Important. This time there is legitimate cause for concern.
Wired's Kim Zetter wrote in a post the same day as the Managing Automation announcement that "the emergence of malware targeting a SCADA system is a new and potentially ominous development for critical infrastructure protection". Network World's Ms. Smith quotes F-Secure's warning that the vulnerability poses "a risk of virus epidemic at the current moment". Finally, it may be standard lingo for such announcements, but Microsoft's July 16th announcement of Security Advisory 2286198 advised customers to visit Microsoft's general support portal and to "contact the national law enforcement agency in their country".
All of this was more than enough to get my attention.
While SCADA systems are often not regularly connected to the Internet, they are networked and are subject to the usual array of vulnerabilities. (Promotional Web copy for the Siemens product that is the target of this attack explicitly mentions Ethernet switches and wireless LANs.) Public officials such as Richard Clarke have warned about risks to SCADA systems, but there have been few examples to rally the troops. While the particular vulnerability--a hard-coded password allowing access to the Siemens software's back end data base--is not especially remarkable (though it does both date the software and call into question software quality review processes at Siemens), the malware packs a punch.
Thought to mainly spread by USB stick, or possibly by network shares, it cannot be defeated by simply turning off Windows autorun; simply viewing an infected file system will install the malware. A security specialist at Tofino believes that this zero-day attack, which affects all versions of Windows, may have been in the wild for a month or more. Preliminary assessments indicate that the malware does not appear designed to cripple infrastructure, but rather to steal information from SIMATIC WinCC / PCS7 implementations--i.e., some form of industrial espionage. Of course that espionage could later be used to wreak havoc on these same or similarly configured systems.
Recent press and analyst coverage has addressed both the threats to SCADA networks, and also the broader Windows vulnerability which the worm uses to spread (it exploits a code that interprets Windows shortcuts, i.e., .lnk files). As Microsoft noted in their analysis of the exploit, which has been named the "Stuxnet" threat, this is a new method of propagation which leverages a flaw in the way the Windows Shell "parses shortcuts". Stuxnet has been cataloged as CVE-2010-2568 at Mitre's CVE. For its part, Microsoft has proposed a workaround of sorts, and updated its own detection engines.
There's more
As if that wasn't enough, the attack also involved theft of a signed Verisign digital certificate owned by Realtek Semiconductor. This certificate was used to authenticate drivers needed by Stuxnet when it self-installs, though Microsoft has since persuaded Verisign and Realtek to revoke the certificate. This was the icing on the trojan's cake.
The Dependency Syndrome
What does all this mean? One lesson--not new, but that is borne out by this incident--is that the Internet-centric orientation of most malware models could miss certain types of threats. SCADA vulnerabilities are just that sort of threat. And while infections might not spread directly from them to general purpose networks, those general purpose networks depend upon SCADA systems for connectivity, power--and even human habitability. The "Dependency Syndrome" asserts that connections between traditional networks such as those managed every day by network administrators, and nontraditional networks such as those hosting SIMATIC WinCC / PCS7, will sooner or later be impossible to detect--and defend against.
Mark Underwood ("knowlengr") works for a small, agile R&D firm. He thinly spreads interests (network manageability, AI, BI, psychoacoustics, poetry, cognition, software quality, literary fiction, transparency) and activations (www.knowlengr.com) from a large island near NYC.

Organize Your Media with Google Juke Box

2010-07-26T08:39:00.001-07:00

Google Juke Box is an add-on designed for Google Desktop 5 by Ajay Pratap. This tool provides an elegant solution to manage all your media files, like song videos etc. With theGoogle Desktop 5.5 or above, you may avail its features from the iGoogle page itself.

With the help of this gadget you may avail the following features:

This nifty add-on will enable you to quickly search and play all the media files in your computer.
Built-in support for play lists.
Watch videos full screen.
Watch or listen to streaming on-line content

Even though this Google Juke Box performs a lot of tasks, its size is a minuscule 42 Kb. You may download it here. The programmer claims to add more online radio and TV channels with updates. The current version stands at 1.0.0.0 . Try it out and let me know if you liked it.

Backups: Network planner's gotcha

2010-07-15T01:45:00.000-07:00

It's the era of HD video, streaming audio, and all that megapixel hype. You can't fight it. In fact, chances are good that you're part of the problem, though perhaps unintentionally. Whom does the network planner have to thank for this circumstance? Thank PowerPoint deck designers, Photoshop-savvy photographers, data warehouse warriors, the virtual machine vanguard, Autotuning artists, Web 2.0 marketing mavens, and fervent film fans. The appetite of these specialists, not to mention the steady move toward digital TV, ensures ongoing upgrades of network switches for years. But switch upgrades aren't the only network planning chore to be considered. Unglamorous, uninteresting, often-overlooked backup tasks could place significant demands on network resources, or even place an enterprise at risk.
A short history of underwhelming progress in backup computing
For those who perform capacity planning, nominal network usage means gauging network speeds, types, and volume of transfer under typical usage profiles. Such profiles interpret normal usage to mean service levels expected by applications availability when the users need them--such as during prime shifts, with at least some attention also paid to peak demand capacity.
The backup problem and its complement, data and service restoration, have been with computing from the beginning. When machines were less reliable, it was an ever-present concern; work was performed in small chunks with frequent restarts. Today greater reliability is taken for granted, but the stakes are higher; systems are increasingly interdependent, larger, process more voluminous information, and touch networks in complex ways that challenge the simple backup schemes trusted by many smaller organizations. Not only that, but we haven't made it any easier for users. In fact, we've removed features that were once in place to allow users to manage at least some of their backup and restore needs.
Versioning file systems
Those old enough to remember DEC's VMS, now called OpenVMS, experienced file level versioning. It was very convenient for users, who had control over when to purge versions and when to bring them back into service. It had a user-specifiable granularity that backup schemes usually neglect to implement. Neither Linux nor Windows support it in 2010, so a spate of add-on hardware and software solutions have been added to the thirty-five year-old backup solutions most SMB's employ today.
Several "fixes" have been proposed as backup techniques evolved. For well-financed enterprises prepared to absorb the overhead required for disaster recovery (DR) and backup, perhaps newer technology has proven satisfactory, though perhaps not convenient. For home and desktop users, the current silver bullet seems to be the ubiquitous USB drive. For modestly more complex topologies, network-enabled disk-to-disk schemes seem to have carried the day.
Neither are elegant or friendly to users and system administrators.

Windows backup helper technologies

Volume Shadow Service (VSS)
The Windows VSS service operates at the block level. Because of this, VSS allows for a read-only copy of a snapshot to be created, and thus avoids file locking. That is essential to creating a backup that is at least consistent with itself and that permits users to keep working while backups are running. (Restores are another matter). Better backup software makes use of VSS (watch the Windows event log for possible side effects).
Bright Idea Department: Windows Home Server
While no reader of the column may be willing to admit it, the Windows Home Server offers a flexible backup solution at a very low price point. Though it won't work for most enterprise networks, it illustrates what a clever design can make possible. In fact, Home Server provides several hints for how a backup scheme should operate. It can grow flexibly, can back up onto commodity drives of different sizes and can deal with bare metal restores. (I have some reason to believe that it may not work as well in mixed Virtual Machine--non-VM environments).
System state
Windows provides a means for recording the current state of the operating system. Periodic system state saves should be part of regular backups, though coordinating these with other bare metal restore tools can prove nontrivial. Also, snapshots of system state can sometimes slow down or even temporarily freeze up some tasks while the snapshots are being taken.
Apple Time Machine
The Time Machine offers smaller environments a convenient and user-friendly way to access previous or deleted versions of files. The Time Machine was a vast improvement over previous Apple offerings, though its use in larger enterprise settings is difficult to assess.
(Separate) SAN + Box
If the budget is available to support one, consider using a SAN, such as Compellant or Dell EqualLogic. Then create a separate network subsystem to offload the backup resources. This way, the main network resources used to support nominal traffic remains unaffected by backup and restore operations. Such processing can become somewhat involved. For example, consider IBM Tivoli Storage Manager recommendations for one such method. Large enterprises can also consider solutions such as Online Data Vault, InMage, and others.
Backup detritus
Backup and restore workflow can be easily tripped up by minor obstacles, such as VM images, dumps, logs, database files, Windows update work area. Take just one of these--dumps. A dump of system memory on a machine with 8GB of RAM is likely to be bigger than a dump on a Windows 2000 workstation with 512MB.
Want to get serious about capacity planning?
Cisco is betting the farm on continued explosion of Internet speeds and volume. The company's latest guess is for 767 exabytes by 2014, driven by, Cisco believes, video demand. Add VOIP and collaboration technologies to the mix and a network planner may be left rummaging through his toolbox for a better way.
One method worth mentioning, though it requires more cost and effort than some may find worthwhile, is simulation. Firms such as Opnet or Scalable offer ways to describe a network topology, the systems and services that need to be supported, and then to simulate network performance under various scenarios. See this Opnet-based student exercise to get a flavor of such an undertaking. Figure A is a screenshot from that exercise (click to enlarge).

Seven favorite use cases
1. Files deleted "a while ago"
Apple's Time Machine saves hourly backups for 24 hours, daily backups for a month, and weekly backups for everything older than a month.
2. RAID restore
The bigger the physical drive, the longer it will take to rebuild the RAID from backup.
3. Restore events spanning work shifts
Backups can usually operate unmonitored, but restores may not have the luxury. Those knowledgeable about applications being restored may be needed to help put restored data back into service, and in global or 24/7 operations, they may not be on a convenient work shift.
4. Oblivious applications
There's a lot of talk about smarter apps, but many are still oblivious to backup and restore processing. Some require taking down entire user communities, and others try to pass the buck to the database admin.
5. How "big" is a "big file"
Outlook's quaint classification of file sizes is a legacy due in part to the PST file system it sometimes uses, but when it refers to files "> 5MB" as "Enormous" it hints at how applications lag behind user needs to process larger files. The problem of "big files" can cascade rapidly through an organization. User disks become full. Network traffic increases as files are copied across network shares to local machines, sent via email, or combined with other files for aggregation.
6. Cloud backups ("Where's the phone # for my ISP?")
As users of some consumer online backup services such as Carbonite have learned, one needs serious upload speeds to make offsite backup and restore feasible. Prepare to pay more to push backup packets to the cloud.
7. Virtual machine backups
Virtual machine backup, restore, and propagation have created a new class of requirements.
Extra credit: Major news event
You're British Petroleum. Everyone in the world wants to tap your undersea camera's video stream. Bet you didn't plan for that.
Mark Underwood ("knowlengr") works for a small, agile R&D firm. He thinly spreads interests (network manageability, AI, BI, psychoacoustics, poetry, cognition, software quality, literary fiction, transparency) and activations (www.knowlengr.com) from a large island near NYC.

via http://www.zdnetasia.com/backups-network-planner-s-gotcha-62201324.htm?scid=nl_z_tgsr

What you need to know to survive targeted malware attacks

2010-07-13T06:11:00.003-07:00

Viruses, worms, and rootkits are old news. We all protect ourselves and our organizations from common blanketed attacks that haphazardly flow through the Web looking for targets of opportunity. General phishing attacks are easily detected today, and even our users smell a rat occasionally.
However, our efforts are affecting the bottom line of cybercrime business enterprises. So they are making it easier for themselves and harder for us by targeting user populations of higher value.
Targeted attacks
Attacks against specific organizations or individuals within those organizations are known as targeted attacks. Rather than throw malware at the Internet and wait for reports from random vulnerable, compromised systems, targeted attacks use some of the elements associated with social networking.
In other words, they present themselves in a form that convinces a targeted user that an e-mail or other electronic object is legitimate. E-mail filtering solutions allow these messages to pass since they fail to violate filtering rules.
Targeted attacks don't have to be complicated. An example of a simple approach is shown in a YouTube video posted by F-Secure. In this example, a PDF file masquerades as a research report. Opening the file caused malware to install, which collected information from the user's machine. The takeaway from this example is the approach; similar to Trojans, targeted attacks look real and relevant.
Relevance is very important when targeting senior management or other key employees. Attackers might investigate a company for months to identify:

individuals in the target organization who have access to desired information;
major projects in process;
common business partners, vendors, etc.; and
names and e-mail addresses of individuals who regularly send mail to target users.

Using this information, an attacker can create e-mail messages relevant to a business deal or project, for example. He or she will probably spoof the source addresses, making the messages look like they came from a business or individual with whom the target users already regularly communicate.
The goal of an attacker using these methods is stealth. To be able to collect as much information as possible from the target user, the malware must be hidden (as in a rootkit) and the transfer of information must look like normal network traffic. Because of these requirements, and because each attack might be unique in appearance, it is difficult for security teams to identify them using anti-malware or IPS/IDS solutions. But it isn't impossible.
Defense
The first line of defense is not a piece of software or a network appliance. Rather, it is understanding that the laptops and desktops of key employees are valued targets for cybercriminals. Compromising these devices provides the opportunity to collect information used or created by the target user. Consequently, users in the organization with the broadest access, or access to the most sensitive information, are at the top of an attacker's list.
So who are these users? The best choice for an attack in most organizations is senior management. Senior management includes C-level executives and department heads. And unfortunately, the computers used by these individuals are often the least protected.
In many organizations, there is a double-standard applied when implementing security controls. Many executives believe they are smart enough, and responsible enough, to avoid malware infestation. Even if they don't believe this, they still prefer not to have to deal with the restrictions imposed on the rest of the workforce. When this double-standard exists, it presents a large attack surface to an attacker using a targeted approach.
It isn't just senior managers, however, who are targets. Many users who process the most sensitive information in an organization still have the level of access on their local workstations needed to deploy data-collecting malware.
To help meet the challenges of targeted attack defense, I recommend the following:

Eliminate any double-standard used when applying security controls. Senior managers should understand that they are increasingly at higher risk as attackers shift from broad- to narrow-scope attempts to compromise internal systems.
Under no circumstances should a business user who processes sensitive information have local administrator access to his or her computer. Even if a user opens an infected attachment, there is a good chance it can't install. This is the best way to throw up a wall between the target and the attacker.
Aggressively enforce the principle of least privilege. This limits the amount of information breached if a compromise occurs. Least privilege must also apply to IT staff. Compromising a network or server administrator's system is an attacker jackpot. IT staff should only use administrator accounts when necessary to perform specific tasks. Further, just because an administrator can create business user accounts doesn't mean he or she should have access to router and switch configuration privileges.
Ensure all systems are patched, including applications.
In addition to intrusion prevention, configure your IPS devices to prevent or detect unwanted or unusual outgoing connections between internal systems and external destinations. Extrusion detection/prevention is an important element of a targeted attack defense.
User awareness of the threat is necessary. This begins with training users about how targeted attacks work and how to react to a possible threat. Training is followed by including targeted threat awareness information in the existing security awareness material.
And finally, common controls must remain in place. These include anti-malware software, intrusion detection/prevention solutions for both host and network, e-mail filtering, etc.

The final word
Nothing in this post falls outside the realm of common sense. However, we tend to apply less restrictive controls to individuals as we move higher in the organizational chart. This is a mistake when defending against targeted attacks.
It is also a mistake to apply only basic security controls to all systems without considering that there may be one or two user systems that need a little more care. No, this isn’t always easy. But it is increasingly necessary.

Remotely enable or disable remote desktop on a Windows Server

2010-07-13T06:11:00.001-07:00

Last year, I shared a few of my favorite tips to address remote desktop issues. I've discovered a new trick that can reconfigure remote desktop remotely; this is especially important if you don't have monitor (console) access, a network-attached KVM, someone local to the server console, or a hardware device such as an HP iLO or Dell DRAC.
Remote desktop for Windows Servers can be set through the registry. Remote access of the Windows registry is enabled by default (when the firewall is disabled), and remote desktop can be disabled or enabled. The HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\fDenyTSConnections value is set to 1 by default to disable remote desktop; editing the value remotely to 0 will enable remote desktop on the next reboot.
You can make a reboot happen immediately with either the shutdown command or the Restart-Computer PowerShell command. Please refer to one of my previous tips to learn how to launch these two commands.
Opening the fDenyTSConnections value through a remote registry (Figure A) is done with administrative permissions via Regedit and selecting the Connect Network Registry option from the File menu. (Note: Editing the registry is risky, so be sure you have a verified backup before saving any changes.)
Figure A

Remotely opening the fDenyTSConnections registry value. (Click the image to enlarge.)
In order to make the change take effect, a reboot is required.
This configuration is a documented procedure and is outlined in this TechNet article. Remote desktop can be enabled or disabled on the fly when configured in Server Manager (Windows Server 2008) or on the Remote tab of My Computer (Windows Server 2003).

Creating photorealistic portraits with a finger and an iPad

2010-07-07T03:55:00.001-07:00

Artists are taking to the iPad like ducks to water. The device seems to be a natural tool for many artists to use, and the public is now starting to see the fruits of the relationship in the form of some startling and beautiful digital art.

Kyle Lambert is a perfect example of an artist who has quickly adapted to the iPad as an art creation tool. The Cheshire, England based portrait artist recently spent six hours painting an astoundingly good portrait of performer Beyonce using an iPad, his finger, and the Brushes iPad app (US$7.99).

Lambert makes time-lapse movies of his creation process, and it's fascinating to see the details of Beyonce's face emerge from the digital canvas in the movie above. We'd also like to see what other professional artists are accomplishing with the iPad, so if you have a work that was created on the iPad or iPhone, let us know by clicking or tapping that Send a Tip link at the top of the page.

Manage DNS suffix configuration through Group Policy

2010-07-06T01:33:00.000-07:00

The DNS suffix is one of the most important settings on a server's network configuration, yet it is so easy to omit because the value is buried deep within the DNS tap of networking configuration. There are a number of ways to ensure consistent configuration of the DNS suffix, including using Group Policy.
For Windows 2000 and newer systems, Group Policy can assign the primary DNS suffix for each computer's connection. The DNS suffix is important for various reasons; primarily, correctly configured DNS is the quickest way to ditch WINS for name resolution. The DNS suffix is also critical for Active Directory networks that have multiple network segments for name resolution that can't use the peer-to-peer broadcast.
The DNS suffix is set in Group Policy in Computer Configuration | Policies | Administrative Templates | Network | DNS Client. From there, you can set the Primary DNS Suffix value for computer accounts.
Figure A is an example of making this configuration.
Figure A

Click the image to enlarge.
The next logical step is to configure the DNS suffix search order; this is critical for proper resolution across a forest, and it can also be used to resolve to DNS zones that are not Active Directory-Integrated. In the same Group Policy section, the DNS Suffix Search List value allows administrators to configure this aspect of a computer account (Figure B).
Figure B

Click the image to enlarge.
Practically speaking, I recommend placing these configurations centrally in Group Policy instead of using security profiles or manual configuration. These two configurations can fill the gap that DHCP leaves in fully managing DNS for the client. DHCP can only assign the domain, not the suffix search order. In addition, I recommend using this for servers and clients if the DNS configuration is clean and well understood.

Determine the site ID with IIS

2010-06-29T00:48:00.000-07:00

Windows Server administrators, whenever you have to renew a certificate, doesn't it seem that you always learn something along the way? Whenever a Windows Server 2003 system has a certificate renewed, especially a self-signed certificate, we have to go through major hoops to determine the site identifier (site ID) of the specific Web site for IIS.
The site ID is the identifier of the Web site on the IIS engine. Simply put, the built-in site (Default Site) has a site ID of 1, yet a subsequent site ID may not be 2; this makes it quite a bit more difficult to intervene when the site ID number matters, especially if the server has more than one Web site running.
For Windows Server 2003 systems, the easiest way to determine the site ID is to look at the logging configuration. Most log files would look like either of these examples:
W3SVC1: Indicates the default site identifier of 1
W3SVC385401: Indicates a site identifier of 385401
For Windows Server 2008, you don't have to dig through the logging configuration to determine the site ID. For sites other than the Default Site, if you right-click and select the Advanced Settings option, you will see the site ID displayed. Figure A shows this for a server with an additional Web site configured in IIS.
Figure A

Click the image to enlarge.
This situation comes up very rarely and is irritating because server admins don't usually spend much time in this area.
An important note regarding certificates for IIS 7 on Windows Server 2008: The tools are installed by default to easily manage and create certificates. In the case of self-signed certificates, you have to download the IIS 6 Resource Kit to run the SelfSSL.exe tool. Figure B shows the area of IIS where the server (not each site) has certificate configuration, including self-signed certificates.
Figure B

Click the image to enlarge.
Site IDs come up most frequently when self-signed certificates are renewed, so it makes sense to determine when to stand up your own internal certificate authority; this can include Active Directory Certificate Services or OpenSSL.

via http://www.zdnetasia.com/determine-the-site-id-with-iis-62201024.htm?scid=nl_z_tgws

How to Hide Data and Programs within zip/jar file

2010-06-24T05:37:00.001-07:00

Zip files are often used to assort files to send them to other people, usually via email. The utilities such as WinZip are used to create and open zip files that can be password protected. The Windows XP files are released with built-in zip capabilities. According to Microsoft these are called "compressed folders". Users can also password protect the zip files and you can also see the list of files inside it. Even if a zip file is password protected, you might still see the list of files inside it. With steganography you can hide data and program within a zip/jar file. We will show you two simple methods.

Steghide is a steganography program that has been designed to hide data in various kinds of image and audio files. The color respectively sample frequencies are not changed making the embedding resistant against first-order statistical tests.

In order to hide text behind an Image you can first download Steghide from here. The software is available for Windows and Linux. It's a Windows package, after downloading unzip the contents of the zip file into a directory of your choice. Use the steghide from the command prompt.

Step 1: After you have unzipped and extracted the contents of Steghide, you can navigate to the command prompt.
Step 2: Typing steghide at the command prompt offers you available options
Step 3: To hide a txt file behind an image type the following command

C:\>steghide embed -cf picture.jpg -ef secret.txt
Enter passphrase:
Re-Enter passphrase:
embedding “secret.txt” in “picture.jpg”

Step 4: After having embedded the secret data as shown above you might be able to send the file picture.jpg to the person who should receive the secret message. The receiver has to use steghide in the following way

C:\>steghide extract -sf picture.jpg
Enter passphrase:
wrote extracted data to “secret.txt”

In case the supplied passphrase is correct. The contents of original file secret.txt will be extracted from the stego file picture.jpg and saved in the current directory.

Alternately, here another method how you can hide all the secret files in a zip file (or compressed file).

Step 1: In order to create a zip folder, right click into the other folder or in an empty place on the desktop and choose "New" "Compressed Folder"

Step 2: Let's say you name the new zip files as "Top Secret" and "Data".

Step 3: Now add some top secret files to the "Data" folder. Now you add a JPG picture to it.

Step 4: Open the Data.zip by double clicking it and then drag the JPG file into it.

Step 5: Let's add the stuff zip file to the "Top Secret" zip file.

Step 6: Add a password to the "Top Secret" compressed folder

Step 8: Type the password in twice to confirm it

Step 9: Next time anyone opens the zip folder. They would see the file named "Data.zip". In case you open it or extract it, they will be prompted to enter the password.

Step 10: All of the files inside the Data.zip are hidden. This is why you require two zip files

Step 11: Last thing you need to do is delete the older copies of Data and the JPG. These have been ensconced safely and securely inside the "Top Secret" zip folder.

RAID 6 or RAID 1+0: Which should you choose?

2010-06-24T01:56:00.001-07:00

Last week, my friend and fellow TechRepublic contributor Rick Vanover provided some compelling reasons why you should opt for RAID 6 instead of RAID 5 for data protection, particularly as individual disk size increases and more and more disks are added to an array.
As Rick indicated, RAID 6 provides much greater protection against data loss than RAID 5. In fact, a lot has been written about the growing need to avoid RAID 5 due to its inherent and growing set of limitations.
When it comes to a choice between RAID 5 and RAID 6, I agree with Rick that, from a data protection standpoint, RAID 6 is the better choice. There are, however, some significant tradeoffs, which Rick alluded to in his article. Most importantly, RAID 6 imposes a serious (as in, not insignificant) write performance penalty, even when compared to RAID 5.
For every write operation initiated against a RAID 6-based array, six I/O operations are required. For RAID 5, a write operation results in just four I/O operations. In my opinion, these are significant roadblocks even in a relatively equally balanced read/write environment.
Although cost is always an important consideration when buying new storage, growing disk sizes have gone a long way toward making it possible to focus much more on the performance side of the storage equation as opposed to the capacity side. That's why, in most situations, if given the option, I'd choose RAID 10 (data striping over mirrored data sets) over either RAID 5 or RAID 6. In fact, I recently put my money where my mouth is on the answer to this question when I purchased an expansion disk shelf for our SAN.
Storage capacity didn't enter into the equation (we have plenty of space); however, we were hitting an IOPS wall. As such, the primary focus was performance--balanced read and write performance. The new disk shelf is configured as a RAID 1+0 array. Whereas RAID 6 imposes that aforementioned 6x write penalty and RAID 5 imposes a 4x penalty, RAID 1+0 imposes just a 2x penalty and has other significant benefits:

Better write performance. RAID 1+0 imposes only a 2x write performance hit.
Faster rebuild speed. Rebuilding a failed disk that takes part in a mirror is a much faster process than rebuilding a failed disk from a RAID 6 array. If you implement a hot spare, the rebuild process can go quite quickly, making it less likely that you'll suffer the simultaneous loss of a second disk.
Can withstand the loss of multiple disks (in some cases). This is a bit of a shaky proposition, but is important to note. In every case, RAID 6 can withstand the loss of two disks in an array; this is one of the main value propositions for those who use RAID 6. As long as disks aren't lost on both sides of the mirror sets, RAID 1+0 can also withstand the loss of multiple disks. If the stars were aligned correctly, you could theoretically lose every disk on one side of the mirror and still be operational on the other copy of the data. Again, don't count on losing disks on one side of the mirror, but it’s still important to understand.
Performance degradation during rebuild process is minimal. When a RAID 6 disk fails, the rebuild process can have a seriously negative impact on overall storage performance due to the need to recalculate parity. With RAID 10, re-establishing a broken mirror is a relatively behind-the-scenes process.

Going back to the space cost inherent in making the choice between RAID 6 and RAID 1+0, understand that with RAID 6, you "lose" 2/number-of-disks-in-array worth of capacity to parity. With RAID 1+0, that "lost" space equals a straight 50 percent of total array capacity, regardless of the number of disks. So, yes, RAID 10 does have a higher space cost, but I believe that the benefits brought to the table (particularly with regard to write performance) are powerful reasons to avoid RAID 6 in favor of RAID 10.
Summary
If your storage device is using RAID 6 and you're not having performance problems--particularly related to writes--there's no need to blow it away and replace it with a RAID 1+0 configuration. My advice here is intended to be food for thought when it comes to deploying new storage.
Don't simply write off RAID 10-based storage due to its 50 percent overhead cost; it might be worth the cost trade off, depending on your situation. As always, your selection will be based on your own testing, application needs and risk tolerance.

via http://www.zdnetasia.com/raid-6-or-raid-1-0-which-should-you-choose-62200969.htm?scid=nl_z_tgsr

Where the Dollar Sign Comes From

2010-06-16T04:21:00.000-07:00

Today I found out where the dollar sign ($) comes from.
This symbol first showed up in the 1770s, appearing in documents of English-Americans who had business dealings with Spanish-Americans. However, it wasn’t until the very early 1800s that it became popularized, around the same time as the first official U.S. dollars were being minted. Previous to this, the symbol had already been in use as an abbreviation for names of Spanish currency, namely as an abbreviation for the Spanish peso “p”.
So how do you get from a “p” to the dollar sign, “$”? When writing financial documents referring to pesos, it was common to abbreviate the peso, for instance, “1 peso” to “1 p”. However, when pluralized, as in “1000 pesos”, it becomes “p^s“. Now when writing up financial documents and having to write “p^s” numerous times, it started to become common among the English-American colonists to merge the “p” and the super scripted “s” as one. The top half of this symbol then produces something looking very much like a double vertical lined dollar sign. In an even further bout of laziness, it became common among the English-American colonists to write the “p” with just one downward stroke vertically slashing the “s”, thus the ‘$’. In some of the earliest documents containing this short hand, it was common to see both the double slashed version as well as the single slashed version in the same document, referring to the same thing, the Spanish peso.

How then did this symbol that originally denoted pesos spread to also denote the U.S. dollar? Around the same time the U.S. was minting its first dollar coins, in 1792, Spanish currency was extensively circulated in the U.S. and around the world. In large part due to this, the U.S. chose to design the U.S. dollar coins to duplicate the Spanish coins, in terms of matching the material and weight, hence value (at the time, the coins were made of silver and valued after the price of silver). Doing this allowed the U.S. coin to be exchanged for a peso in a 1 to 1 exchange. Thus, it was natural to use the same symbol to denote the U.S. dollar as was used for the Spanish peso.
Bonus Factoids:

One interesting thing to note here is that it was the English-American colonists who first started merging the “p^s“, which eventually formed the dollar sign. So while the dollar sign was first referring to the peso, it was the English-Americans who “invented” the symbol. This is only noteworthy because it explains why we write dollar based monetary sums as “$10″ instead of “10$”, as the Spanish-Americans would have written it. Having the symbol proceed the numeric value was the common custom with the English pound and thus with the English-American colonists.
You will also occasionally hear that the dollar sign actually comes from superimposing the “U” and “S” from United States on top of each other, but this is proven false in Cajori’s book, written in 1929, “History of Mathematical Notations Volume 2“; here he references some of the earliest documents containing the “$” symbol, which not only were referring to the peso in terms of the usage in those documents, but preceded the United States, so named, and also preceded the U.S. dollar.
Yet another popular incorrect theory held by many is that the dollar sign was derived from the “pieces of 8″ in the Spanish currency, with the 8 forming the “S” and the slash through it to denote currency. But once again, the earliest documents using this symbol clearly show that it is derived and used interchangeably with the “p^s“, which denoted pesos, not the smaller coinage “pieces of 8″.
The name ‘dollar’ derived from the word ‘thaler’ which is an abbreviation for the word “Joachimsthaler”, a coin type from the city of Joachimsthal (Jáchymov) in Bohemia, where some of the first such coins were minted in 1516.

Sources:

Spicing Up Your Website With jQuery Goodness

2010-06-15T07:40:00.001-07:00

There comes a point in every website design when you simply want to give the website a little spice to impress the visitor and make it memorable. You want that sexy interaction to capture the user’s attention. In our previous articles, we showed you how to spice up your website with sexy buttons, practical elements and attractive visual effects.

In this article, we’ll discuss how to seduce your visitors with a little JavaScript action. In our examples, we’ll be using jQuery, a fast and concise JavaScript library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animation and Ajax interactions for rapid Web development. Ready? Let’s get things rolling!
[By the way, did you know we have a brand new free Smashing Email Newsletter? Subscribe now and get fresh short tips and tricks on Tuesdays!]

Ajax Image Uploader

Image uploads will be much better after your read this. Guaranteed. By using a bit of jQuery, we can upload images with previews.
How do you upload images now? You select a file and click upload. Simple, right? Except that once you select your image, you can no longer see what was selected. The name of the file is at the end of the input field, and if the input field is short or the file path is deep, you won’t see anything useful. You’ll forget what you selected and have no idea what you’re about to upload.
Now try this variation on uploading an image. We ditch the “Upload” button in favor of a “Save” button and fire the Ajax upload event as soon as a file is selected. The image is processed server-side, and a thumbnail is loaded onto the existing page. Doesn’t that feel so much better? We now have a visual representation (imagine that!) of the image we selected.

This is particularly useful in larger forms where many fields will be submitted in a single action. It allows the user to review the form before pressing “Save” and see what image (or images) they selected.
How does it work? Here’s the code. You’l need jQuery and the Ajax Upload jQuery plug-in. Link them up, and make sure jQuery is loaded first.

Here is the JavaScript we will use in its entirety.

$(document).ready(function(){

 var thumb = $('img#thumb'); 

 new AjaxUpload('imageUpload', {
  action: $('form#newHotnessForm').attr('action'),
  name: 'image',
  onSubmit: function(file, extension) {
   $('div.preview').addClass('loading');
  },
  onComplete: function(file, response) {
   thumb.load(function(){
    $('div.preview').removeClass('loading');
    thumb.unbind();
   });
   thumb.attr('src', response);
  }
 });
});

Let’s break the code down now and look at what’s really going on. First, we attach the AjaxUpload behavior to our file form element.

new AjaxUpload('imageUpload', {

Next, we specify where to post the Ajax upload. We want to keep all of our URLs in our HTML document, so we pass this URL using the action attribute of our form element.

action: $('form#newHotnessForm').attr('action'),

Set the name of the file form element that will be posted to your server.

name: 'image',

Add a class to your preview div to indicate that the image is uploading. In our case, we are applying a background image to the preview div. We also need to set the image tag to display: none; in the preview div, so that the loading background image is visible, as well as for a more subtle reason explained below.

onSubmit: function(file, extension) {
     $('div.preview').addClass('loading');
},

When the image has been uploaded, we have to do two things:

First, we have to set the src attribute of our preview img tag to the new thumb.
Secondly, we have to remove the loading class. If we simply execute these things in that order, then we would see an annoying flicker of the old image when the loading class has been removed but the new image has not yet loaded.

We avoid the annoying flicker of the old image by waiting to remove the loading class until after the preview image’s load event fires. We also unbind our listener after it has fired because we want to capture this event only once.

onComplete: function(file, response) {
 thumb.load(function(){
  $('div.preview').removeClass('loading');
  thumb.unbind();
 });

Lastly, we set the source of the preview image to the thumbnail that our server has just created. In this example, the response from the Ajax call is just the thumbnail’s URL as text. You could return it in whatever fancy format you like.

thumb.attr('src', response);
}

If JavaScript-support is disabled in user’s browsers, they will get the good old submit form without the interactive preview. Clean and functional solution, with rich interactions for users with more capable browsers.

Better Image Uploads

Want to try out and implement the image uploader yourself? Check out a live demo, the example code and more for this improved way to support image uploads on your website.
Check out the live demo »

Validation With jQuery Text-Change Event

Here’s a pretty common problem: you have a text form to validate client-side. Doing this is easy enough when the form is submitted, but in some cases doing it as the user is typing is best. For example, imagine how annoying Twitter would be if you had to submit your tweet before you were told how many characters it was.
Keep in mind, though, that this kind of immediate validation can be overused or abused. Don’t insult the user by congratulating them for every piece of text they enter in a field.

Implementing this requires that you bind events to the keyup event — and a couple other events if you want to detect text changes on cut-and-paste events. Even if you’re a JavaScript god, having to keep writing this logic over and over again is tedious. We created a text-change event plug-in to help you handle all text-change events.

Detecting the Text (Better Than Twitter)

We begin by detecting text in the standard textarea. Look at the shot below: looks like a standard textarea with a disabled “Save” button.

If you add text to the field, then the “Save” button enables and then disables when no text is in the field. Moderately impressive, right?

Now, what if you try copying, pasting or cutting text with the shortcut keys? That works as well. What about right-clicking or using the “Edit” menu? Works, too. (By the way, Twitter doesn’t support the click or menu interactions.)
The code behind this is pretty simple. You’ll need to download and link up the textchange plug-in.

The plug-in adds the hastext and notext events, to which you can bind input and textarea elements.

$('#exhibita').bind('hastext', function () {
  $('#exhibitaButton').removeClass('disabled').attr('disabled', false);
});

$('#exhibita').bind('notext', function () {
  $('#exhibitaButton').addClass('disabled').attr('disabled', true);
});

The hastext event fires when the element goes from having no text to having text, and the notext event fires when the element goes from having text to being blank. Looking for more advanced validation? Keep reading.

Detecting Text Change

What about detecting text change in the field?

This is very easy, too. A third textchange event fires whenever the text changes, and it provides you with the previous value.

$('#exhibitb').bind('textchange', function (event, previousText) {
  $('#output').append('

Text changed from ' +
    previousText + ' to ' + $(this).val() +
    ' ');
});

Twitter-Style Validation

We can implement some simple Twitter-like validation with just a single line and our textchange event.

$('#twitter').bind('textchange', function (event, previousText) {
  $('#charactersLeft').html( 140 - parseInt($(this).val().length) );
});

Ajax Save

With a little more code and setTimeout, we can hook up an Ajax call to save a few seconds once the user stops editing. The Ajax call is just stubbed out here, but you get the idea.

var timeout;
$('#ajaxSave').bind('textchange', function () {
  clearTimeout(timeout);
  $('#ajaxFired').html('Typing...');
    var self = this;
    timeout = setTimeout(function () {
    $('#ajaxFired').html('Saved: ' + $(self).val());
  }, 1000);
});

Validate Text

This may sound contrived, but say you would like to ensure that the two words “companion cube” are in the emergency intelligence incinerator (i.e. the text field) before allowing the user to continue. No problem:

$('#emergencyIntelligenceIncinerator').bind('textchange', function () {
  if ($(this).val().indexOf('companion cube') !== -1) {
    $('#continue').removeClass('disabled').attr('disabled', false);
  }
});

jQuery Text-Change event can be very useful for web applications that are aiming for a high level of interactivity and visual feedback. You may even want to analyze some of the input and provide helpful clues. For instance, if the user is opening a new ticket in your support area, you may want to present links to possibly related answers in the support forum. Be sure not to analyze every keystroke, though, as it could result in a significant overhead for the back-end. And it is also important to keep in mind that the immediacy of the application should be subtle and should not interrupt user’s interaction.

Text Change Events

Don’t fret about complicated validation, text events and edge cases. Check out the live demo and download the plug-in, which makes it a snap to perform a number of functions on text boxes to look for values, changes and more.
Check out the live demo »

JavaScript Annotation Plug-In

An application that we recently developed (Notable) allows users to collect user feedback through interactive tools. Most of these tools require the user to annotate an image. We figured that many folks are trying to solve the same problem, so why not create a plug-in that they can use? This is the result. Our plug-in uses jQuery and makes it very simple to add and save image annotations.
To start off, download the JS Annotation Plug-In. To use the plug-in, just link up jQuery (1.2.3 or higher) and our plug-in.

Meet Nutmeg the Dog. After clicking on a random spot on Nutmeg, you’ll see the black circle appear.

function blackNote() {
  return $(document.createElement('span')).addClass('black circle note')
}

$('#nutmeg').annotatableImage(blackNote);

Here’s how it works: The first parameter to annotatableImage is a function that is implemented by you and that defines the element to be added when you click. In the example above, that function is called blackNote. Simple, right?

How to Save the Annotations?

Glad you asked. Use the jQuery selector to grab all the elements that you want to serialize, and call the serializeAnnotations function.

$('#nutmeg span.note').serializeAnnotations();

These values are returned in an array of objects, so you can easily save them with an Ajax call. The response_time variable is the time in milliseconds that the user took to add the annotation after you made the call to annotatableImage.

More at http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/06/15/spice-up-your-website-with-jquery-goodness/

Prohibit users from authenticating exclusively on RODCs

2010-06-15T01:53:00.001-07:00

In my Windows Server 2008 tip on permitting read-only domain controller authentication, I showed some of the additional configuration steps that may be required to use the feature as expected.
For security reasons, you may also want to explicitly prohibit accessing read-only domain controllers (RODCs).
The default Windows Server 2008 Active Directory domain configuration delivers the Allowed RODC Password Replication Group (which I explained in my previous Windows Server 2008 tip) and the Denied RODC Password Replication Group; the latter group puts all of the higher-permission groups in this container to keep those credentials off of the RODC.
Figure A shows the default groups that are prohibited from authenticating exclusively against the RODC.
Figure A

Users can still authenticate to that site or against the RODC--just not exclusively. Take the example where the RODC is unable to contact a writeable domain controller. This situation requires all authentication activities to be handled directly by the RODC. The group membership (or any computers if present) enumerated in this group will be prohibited from logging on to the domain.
You can add or subtract from this group as you see fit, but it may be worth determining if it is really necessary for the higher-privileged groups to log on in the event that the writable domain controller is not available. An acceptable practice may be to create a security group of administrative aliases that are local administrators on all computer accounts on sites that are serviced by RODCs.
The higher-permission accounts can still log on to the RODC if a writeable domain controller is directly accessible. You can view the history of this by looking at the domain controller in Active Directory Users And Computers; to do so, follow these steps:

Right-click and select Properties for each RODC.
Click the Password Replication tab.
Double-click the Allowed RODC Password Replication Group entry.

This will show you what is stored locally and what accounts (computer and user) have authenticated through the RODC (Figure B).

Figure B

In the example, Administrator has authenticated on the RODC; however, the user is not listed on the other option (Accounts Whose Passwords Are Stored On This Domain Controller).

Password replication for RODCs in Windows Server 2008

2010-06-07T23:28:00.000-07:00

By Rick Vanover

Read-only domain controllers are easy to set up, but you need to perform a few more steps to properly use them. Here are the steps required for computer accounts.

If your organization wants to fully take advantage of the read-only domain controller, there are plenty of considerations that go with setting up this new feature of Windows Server 2008.
When a domain controller is initially configured, the options are straightforward to add it as a read-only domain controller. Figure A shows the option to select the new domain controller to be read-only.
Figure A

Once the domain controller build is complete, additional steps are required to make it correctly process logon events for computer accounts.
After a default installation, it appears that everything works fine--that is, until the writable domain controllers are not available. Though the read-only domain controller is read-only, it still needs to be able to process logon requests in the event that writeable domain controllers are not available.
If the writable domain controllers are not available, the message in Figure B will appear during logon events.
Figure B

There are corresponding Windows event logs about the computer account not being cached and questioning whether the computer account is valid. The quick fix for the computer account is to create a security group that has the computer accounts to log into a read-only domain controller be a member of a default group called Allowed RODC Password Replication Group.
Figure C shows the RWVDEV.INTRA domain having a computer account added to a designated group that is a member of the Allowed RODC Password Replication Group.
Figure C

The Allowed RODC Password Replication Group is given the permission to replicate the passwords (in this case for computer accounts) to the read-only domain controller. This is also a good way to specify which computer accounts will be permitted to log on to the read-only domain controller.
In the case of the computer account, it has a password associated with it in Active Directory. Unlike a user account, it is system administered (like the managed service account feature).
Like the computer account, the user account needs to be in the Allowed RODC Password Replication Group to be permitted to authenticate against a read-only domain controller. Also like the computer account, this group can specify if a user can authenticate against the read-only domain controller; which may be associated with a remote site.
Note: The default Administrator account is not a member of the Allowed RODC Password Replication Group. A best practice recommendation is to add the explicit inventory of users to the Allowed RODC Password Replication Group who are expected to log in at (presumably) a remote site with a read-only domain controller.
Check out TechNet's thorough listing of password replication resources.
Rick Vanover is an IT infrastructure manager for Alliance Data in Columbus, Ohio. He has years of IT experience and focuses on virtualization, Windows-based server administration and system hardware.

via http://www.zdnetasia.com/password-replication-for-rodcs-in-windows-server-2008-62200501.htm?scid=nl_z_tgws

A storage virtualization primer

2010-06-03T03:28:00.000-07:00

By Scott Lowe, TechRepublic on June 3, 2010 (4 hours 34 minutes ago)

Summary

Storage is perhaps the least optimized component of the virtualized organization, but that can change with storage virtualization. The concept may be difficult to grasp, but the benefits are clear.

These days, it's very likely that you're doing something with virtualization. The most common virtualization use case is what is commonly known as server virtualization. In a server virtualization project, IT administrators take steps to separate the running workloads from physical hardware in an effort to make better use of overall IT resources and provide an organization with additional infrastructure resiliency.
There are, however, others forms of virtualization that can have major benefits to an organization. One such type of virtualization is known as storage virtualization and, like its server-based cousin, aims to provide IT administrators with even more infrastructure flexibility and resiliency.
What is storage virtualization?
Storage virtualization is a somewhat nebulous concept. This situation is exacerbated by the fact that storage and hypervisor vendors are taking similar (and sometimes different) steps to reach the same goal.
To understand what storage virtualization is, let's start by a looking at how server virtualization works. Server virtualization pools server-side resources into what appears to be one massive host; these resources are then doled out to individual virtual machines.
These virtual machines don't care where the resources (RAM and processor) reside; in fact, it's likely that the resource location will change over time as machines are migrated between hosts. That is the beauty of the solution, though; since the virtual machine doesn't care where its resources come from, it can move seamlessly between hosts.
Now, think about what happens when you use vCenter to create a new virtual machine on a VMware ESX-based host cluster: You're asked to specify how much RAM and how many processors are required by the virtual machine, and then you're asked to choose which data store will house the virtual machine's files.
Without storage virtualization, this data store selection simply points to an existing VMFS store, whether it resides on direct-attached or shared storage.
For small and midsize organizations that have, say, a single SAN or storage array, this isn't a huge problem. But what happens when you start adding storage arrays? Perhaps you are adding a new SAN to expand capacity or are implementing a less expensive storage method in order to tier your storage. As was the case in the old days with servers, every time you add storage, you start to add complexity and inefficiency to the environment.
Enter storage virtualization
In its simplest form, storage virtualization pools all of your storage resources into a single logical entity; this should sound familiar since it's the same process you went through when you started virtualizing your servers.
Storage virtualization adds an abstraction layer between the physical storage devices and the hosts using those devices. This layer becomes the traffic cop for storage, redirecting read and write requests to appropriate locations without the administrator having to worry about the specifics. (This sounds a lot like server virtualization.)
With a fully implemented storage virtualization platform, administrators create virtual disks that the storage abstraction layer then maps to physical devices. Better yet, storage virtualization is a vendor-agnostic tool, allowing you to combine storage from different vendors into that single, logical pool.
Single-array storage virtualization
As I mentioned, storage virtualization really comes into play as you add more storage devices that are then aggregated into a pool and abstracted out to various hosts for slicing and dicing. But what happens if you have just one storage device? Is it possible to virtualize that device?
Think back to your server virtualization experience; is it possible to run all of your virtual machines on a single host? Sure it is, but you lose a ton of the benefit that comes from virtualization, including high availability and the ability to balance workloads. Likewise, with single-array storage virtualization, you might gain some administrative benefits, but you won't enjoy some of the higher end availability capabilities, and you are working with a single point of failure.
Hypervisor features
Hypervisor vendors are not sitting on the sidelines when it comes to enhancing the use of storage virtualization in order to achieve higher levels of availability. For instance, VMware has taken some significant steps with regard to storage virtualization though Storage VMotion, which relocates a virtual machine's physical storage location in a non-disruptive way.
By using VMotion and Storage VMotion along with an appropriately architected infrastructure, you can remove all bottlenecks and points of failure from your environment and increase overall availability of the services that ride on that infrastructure.
Conclusion
Storage virtualization truly shines in a heterogeneous storage environment; in these places, storage virtualization can remove complexity from the infrastructure and provide the benefits described.
Scott Lowe has spent 15 years in the IT world and is currently CIO of Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. He is also a regular contributor to TechRepublic and has authored one book, Home Networking: The Missing Manual (O'Reilly), and coauthored the Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Administrator's Companion (MS Press).

Troubleshooting Windows Media Player

2010-05-24T22:41:00.000-07:00

For most Windows users, there's no getting around Windows Media Player. Whether you want to enjoy digital music, video, images, DVDs, or recorded television, Media Player is the tool. And for the most part, it works like a charm - except when it doesn't.

While Microsoft has made great strides in improving Media Player's looks and usability over the years, the application still suffers from more than its share of glitches. The good news: some of the most common problems have easily implemented solutions. Here are a few.

Newer versions of Windows Media Player hide the standard menu -- with the File, View, Play, and Tools options -- by default. Unfortunately, many of the program's features are most easily accessible through the standard menus. Never fear. The menus are easy to get back, even if you only want them temporarily.

Just hold down the Ctrl key and tap the letter M. The menus will pop back into view. Use the same keyboard shortcut to get rid of them again. You'll also be able to turn the menus on and off by right-clicking the area just below the title bar and selecting 'Show menu bar' from the context-sensitive menu.

Album art is missing

When you rip a CD using Media Player, the program automatically downloads a thumbnail of the CD from an online database, and it will display this 'album art' when you play the CD. It's a nice touch -- but only when it works. If you've ripped a CD outside of Media Player or if the application cannot recognise your CD, you may not see album art. It's easy to fix this on a case-by-case basis, though.

Use Media Player's library to navigate to the album that's missing the art. Then open a web browser to your favourite search engine and type in the name of the artist and album. Chances are good that a picture of the album will appear first in the list of results. Right-click that picture, and select Copy. Now go back to Media Player, right-click the album with missing art, and from the pop-up menu, select 'Paste album art.' Media Player takes the album art from the clipboard and creates a thumbnail for you.

Duplicate songs in playlist

Windows Media Player scans your hard drive to catalogue and display the songs you have stored there. To tell Media Player where to look, by the way, click the Organise button, and navigate to Manage Libraries, Music. The Music Library Locations dialog box opens, and there you can add or remove locations where you have music files stored.

It's important to ensure that you don't have song files stored twice on your computer. Or, if you do, make sure that Media Player is set up only to catalogue files in one of the locations. Otherwise, Media Player will list each instance of a song that it finds. So if, for example, you have The Beatles' Rubber Soul CD stored in two locations, Media Player will find both instances of the CD. It will list the album only once, but each song will appear twice in the CD's playlist.

Media Player not starting

Windows Media Player is not always the most well-behaved of applications. Sometimes, in fact, when you try to start it, nothing happens. This usually occurs after the program has crashed or when you've been experiencing problems with it.

If Media Player won't start, chances are good that there's already an instance of the application running somewhere in the background. What you need to do is to find that instance, kill it, and then start the program again.

To do so, press Ctrl-Shift-Esc (hold down the Ctrl and Shift keys simultaneously, and tap Esc) to open the Windows Task Manager. Make sure the Processes tab is selected. Then, from the alphabetised list of running processes, scroll down until you find 'wmplayer.exe.' Right-click it, and select End Process from the pop up menu.

Deleting database

Sometimes the Media Player gets hopelessly bogged down or exhibits behaviour that you don't know how to correct. The solution in such cases is simple: delete the Windows Media Player database and start over.

Don't worry: deleting the database is easy, and there's no danger that in deleting the database you will destroy any media files. Media Player's database contains primarily pointers to files that exist on your PC or the drives to which your PC is connected; it does not contain the files themselves.

Open Windows Explorer (Windows Key-E), and navigate to the following folder: c:users name>AppDataLocalMicrosoftMedia Player. Note that name> is the name you log on with, and you won't be able to see the AppData folder unless you have turned on the 'show hidden files' option. Do that first by typing 'folder options' into the Start menu and clicking the Folder Options entry that appears. In the Folder Options dialog box, click the View tab, and from the list of Advanced Settings, select 'Show hidden files, folders, or drives.'

Once you are in the Media Player folder, delete all the files with a 'wmdb' extension. 'WMDB' stands for Windows Media Database. You will have to make sure you have closed Media Player before deleting these. Otherwise, you'll receive an error message.

-- DPA

What are smart mobs?

2010-05-21T07:36:00.001-07:00

Hundreds of people are protesting down the street. The police arrive and find -- no one? The protesters are gone, but how did they know what to do?
By being linked together via technology, members of smart mobs can receive word the police are on their way to a protest site, and leave quickly -- only to regroup in another area. As long as the police aren't privy to the communications the mob receives, the group should be able to remain one step ahead.
Full article at HowStuffWorks.com.

Facebook Statistics You Probably Didn't Already Know

2010-05-14T09:43:00.001-07:00

Facebook's latest Privacy revamps have garnered a lot of media attention, much of it negative. A new infographic from Mashable and Online Schools.org helps provide some context with a broad range of facts about Facebook.
For instance, did you know that Australia serves legally binding court notices via Facebook? Or that Michael Jackson has the #1 most popular page on Facebook (followed by Homer Simpson at #2 and Facebook itself at #3)? Would you have guessed that women over 55 make up the site's fastest growing American demographic?
The graphic also provides some background on the Site. In 2006, the infographic shows, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg turned down a bid from Yahoo for $1 billion. Today, the social networking giant could be worth between $4 billion and $11 billion. It is estimated that Facebook currently makes about $1 billion per year selling virtual products and ads; by contrast, in 2007, estimates for the site's revenue were pegged at approximately $150 million.
The site's soaring popularity is due in part to its 400,000 active users, who log on to their personal pages at least once a month. Half of those users log on every day. And it's no longer a United States phenomenon: 70% of users come from outside the US.
Check out the infographic (below) for more facts about Facebook:

[Source: Online PhD Programs for MashableMashable.com]

What To Do If You Become an Internet Meme

2010-05-14T08:16:00.001-07:00

A girl who posted pics of her "epic boobs" and inadvertently became an Internet meme lost a lawsuit against the outlet that made her a star. It raises the question: If you become an internet meme, what should you do?
Epic Boobs Girl's lawsuit against the British titty mag Loaded over the use of a photo that originated on her Bebo profile (and was immortalized on comment boards for EPIC BOOBS) has been tossed out, quashing Epic Boobs Girl's latest attempt to end her meme. In an anarchic world of mass, fleeting fame, is there any recourse for the unwitting subjects of internet memes? Here are a few tips on memes' options, featuring advice from a real, live person who went through it and survived.

1. HIDE

Epic Boobs Girl may have posed for sassy, boobalicious pics with her friends, but she definitely didn't foresee having her face plastered in masturbatory magazines. Almost instantly, internet users raided her Bebo profile and saved every picture of her glorious rack. If you haven't already taken privacy-protecting precautions, it's probably too late. Besides, hiding is by far the most boring thing you can do once you've become a meme. You'd be far wiser to...

2. PROFIT

These are your 15 minutes of fame! Ride it like a Dorothy Gale on a gust of wind in a Kansas tornado. Here's what you could get out of it:
• Fame: All the world's a reality TV show, all the people merely fameballs. Smacked in the face with the opportunity to stretch their fifteen minutes as long as possible, few can resist.
Tennessee twink Chris Crocker parlayed his plea to "Leave Britney Alone!" into a full-fledged multimedia career. He now lives in L.A. and earns his keep with appearances, comic books, and his ever-popular YouTube channel.

David After Dentist's dad franchised his kid's visage into tee-shirts and stickers on DavidAfterDentist.com—presumably with rapidly depleting returns on investment.

Even Rick Astley—whose musical career spans far further back than his incessant appearance in rickrolls—managed to ride the zeitgeist with new tour dates and albums.
The risk, of course, is that you turn into an overexposed sell-out. But that's also how we measure success in this world, so do as you must.
• Fortune: Though fame and fortune go hand in hand, if you want is money without stardom, it's doable. Take, for instance, the Numa Numa guy, whose voice most people have never heard, though they've seen him lip syncing in ads for Geico, Vizio, and others. Most people don't know this guy's real name and wouldn't recognize his lips weren't moving. Ultimately all we know is that he makes a ridiculous amount of money for licensing a YouTube video that has 35 million views.
• Something Else: Did you know some people use fame for the force of good? The dad from the "You're Not a Single Lady" kept blog chronicling son Losiah's adoption from South Korea. When Losiah became a meme, Carlos Whittaker took the opportunity to "bring adoption to the forefront of the conversation." And if it helped Carlos' career as an artist, pastor, thinker, [and] experience architect, well, that's fine, too.

3. SUE YOUR MEME INTO SUBMISSION

A major meme has yet to be sued into submission (see: Streisand Effect, the) but meme subjects have certainly tried. Epic Boobs Girl's plight is among the more sympathetic ones. The fact that her suit failed suggests there is little hope for anti-meme legal action.
Likewise, Glenn Beck's plight against "Did Glenn Beck rape and murder a girl in 1990?" illuminates the bottomless pit of failure that awaits those who try to sue their memes into submission. To satirize Glenn Beck's notorious reliance on mistruths, internet users reappropriated a Gilbert Gottfried joke that demonstrates how warning against a rumor can actually start a rumor. They started asking whether Glenn Beck had raped and murdered a young girl, why he had no commented on it, and thus without ever accusing Glenn Beck of raping and murdering anyone, they successfully wedged the accusation into his Google results and the collective subconscious. Beck tried to sue the owner of DidGlennBeckRapeandMurderaYoungGirlin1990.com into submission. He failed. What Glenn (and almost all other memes) should have done is…

4. SHRUG, LAUGH, AND MOVE ON

The most dignified and rational option for internet memes, shrugging and moving on with your life is probably best. Approval Guy became famous when a photo of him sitting alone, looking nerdy-but-happy at a lingerie party, became a meme.

He pondered what to make of his fame, ultimately deciding to do nothing. We reached Approval Guy by email, and this is what he said:

Being posted all over the internet doesn't bother me at all, in fact, I find it hilarious. I really enjoy seeing the creativity of others and think they should continue to do as they please with my image.

I have not made a profit from "Approval Guy" and nor do I plan to. On the other hand, if the opportunity arose, I wouldn't mind taking advantage of it.

Well played, Approval Guy. If you love your fleeting fame, set it free—it'll be better as a second-date story and wryly cherished memory, anyway. Approval Guy cautions, however, that not all memes are created equal.

Becoming a meme was a positive experience and I do not mind it at all. On the other hand, if I were the Star Wars kid or that guy who sings numa numa, I wouldn't show up in public... EVER.

via gawker.com

Use VKernel's Capacity View in your VM right-sizing efforts

2010-05-13T00:38:00.001-07:00

By Scott Lowe, Special to ZDNet Asia

For a high-level overview of the health of your virtual environment, check out VKernel's free Capacity View tool.

Back in the days of the physical server, an administrator purchasing a server would size a server with plenty of RAM, disk and processor for a server's long life. In many cases, computing resources were over-provisioned in an attempt to make sure that potentially growing resource needs would not max out the resources of the new server. While over-provisioning resources cost a little extra money on the front end, upgrading a server mid-cycle tended to be pretty expensive.

How times have changed.

The era of virtualization is in full swing, and over-provisioning servers--now in the form of virtual machines (VMs)--is not only unnecessary since resources can be added on-the-fly, but it also has a significant cost.

For example, every unnecessary gigabyte of RAM added to a VM is a gigabyte of RAM taken from the central resource pool that can't be added to some other needy VM. The same goes for disk space and processor.

Read more »

“How do I delete my Facebook” query growing

2010-05-12T21:29:00.001-07:00

As one Twitter-er put it, “‘I deleted my Facebook’ is the new ‘I don’t own a TV’” (HT to @bpapa). While some us would take that to mean only pretentious twerps swear off the social networking site, others see it as a sign of things to come if Facebook fails to rework its controversial privacy policies.
“How do I delete my Facebook account?” has popped up on the drop-down Google Suggest box for queries starting with “How do I…”, indicating a growing popularity for the search. A handful of vocal techies and bloggers have already ditched the world of poking and pathetic privacy, but, considering the site’s other 400 million users, the likelihood of Facebook’s imminent demise remains doubtful.
Full story at ReadWriteWeb.

Top 10 Cheap Web hosting Providers for WordPress Hosting 2010

2010-05-12T10:32:00.000-07:00

Currently WordPress is the most popular blogging software on internet. Even if WordPress.com offers free WP hosting service, it offers only limited features. To add more features and establish your blog's presence at professional level you need to find a specialized WordPress web hosting provider. Hosting your own Wordpress site will allow the webmasters the ability to integrate search-friendly functions, custom designs and community features with ease. To develop your blog with WordPress, choose a web hosting that is reliable and specialized, yet doesn't overflow your budget. The key is to choose a cheapWordPress web hosting with good services and faster uptime process. There are several web hosting providers that claim to offer cheap WordPress web hosting with upscale features. What is essential to consider while choosing a web hosting service is that WordPress is not an ordinary blog. WordPress sites requires a comprehensive content management system. The web hosting provider for your WordPress site must ensure that you could manage and develop the content into great website presence in an easy way. To make choices easier for you we selected a list of top 10 cheap web hosting providers for WordPress hosting 2010.

1. WPWebHost

This web hosting provider specializes in hosting WordPress blogs. They offer server optimized for Wordpress web hosting. They ensure nightly backups and reliable WordPress related issue support. It comes with a 100 days money back guarantee offer.
Total Domains: Hosts 50 domain names
FTP Accounts: Unlimited
WordPress Install: One click installation via cPanel
Storage: 50GBs of web space; 500GBs of monthly bandwidth
Uptime: 99.5% server; 99.9% network
Price: $3.50/month
Link

2. HostMonster

They are widely appreciated for providing the best support in the industry. It offers a free domain name or transfer, instant setup, free site promotion and no long term contracts. They might also secure and reliable backups.
Total Domains: Unlimited
FTP Accounts: Unlimited
WordPress Install: One click installation via SimpleScripts
Storage: Unlimited hosting space; unlimited bandwidth
Uptime: 99.9% network guaranteed
Price: $5.95/month (regularly $6.95/month)
Link

3. Bluehost

It includes free set up and free domain with no other hidden fees. WordPress recommends BlueHost for webhosting, why you could know more from our article here.
Total Domains: Unlimited
FTP Accounts: 1,000 users
WordPress Install: One click installation via SimpleScripts
Storage: Unlimited hosting space; unlimited file transfer
Uptime: Server varies; 99.9% network
Price: $6.95/month
Link

4. JustHost

It is a free domain for life with the JustPlan Premium. You might get the free instant setup plus. There are no hidden fees. It is anytime money back guarantee. You can register a new website or transfer your current websites. They provide their customers with most reliable web hosting service possible.
Total Domains: Unlimited for both plans
FTP Accounts: Unlimited for both plans
WordPress Install: One click installation via Fantastico
Storage: Unlimited disk space for both plans; unlimited bandwidth for both plans
Uptime: 99.9% guaranteed
Price: $6.95/month
Link

5. FatCow

It comes with free instant setup, a free domain for life and no hidden fees. For those just getting started on the Web. They also offer a MiniMoo account to get you going until you are ready for the full FatCow account.
Total Domains: Unlimited
FTP Accounts: Unlimited
WordPress Install: Installation in a few clicks via Install Central
Storage: Unlimited disk space; unlimited bandwidth
Uptime: 99.977%
Price: Currently $3.67/month (regularly $7.33/month) or $66/year (regularly $88/year)

Link

6. Webfusion

It is one of the many WordPress hosting companies that offers one-click installation. The Fusion Starter package comes with everything needed to develop the web presence. Most of the hosting plans feature 24/7 support, mySQL databases, secure e-mail and a custom control panel.
Total Domains: free .co.uk domain name
FTP Accounts: Unlimited
WordPress Install: One click installation
Storage: 1.5 GBs of disk space; 20GB monthly traffic
Uptime: 99.5% server; 99.9% network
Price: £3.95pm
Link

7. GoDaddy

They are one of the best domain registrar. They offers dozens of add-on applications that can be installed in just one click along with the 24/7 FTP access, website statistics, Google webmaster tools and much more. They offer three different hosting plans to meet your needs.
Total Domains: Economy Plan: Just one; Deluxe and Unlimited Plans – unlimited
FTP Accounts: 50 users - same for all plans
WordPress Install: One click installation via GoDaddy Hosting Connection
Storage: Economy Plan – 10GB; Deluxe Plan – 150GB; Unlimited Plan – Unlimited
Uptime: 99.9% network
Price: Economy Plan ranges from $4.24/month to $4.99/month; Deluxe Plan ranges from $5.94/month – $6.99/month; Unlimited Plan ranges from $12.74/month to $14.99/month
Link

8. LunarPages

With setup is free and a free domain name is included with your registration for the first year with the purchase of new 12, 24 or 60 month plan.
Total Domains: Unlimited domains; unlimited subdomains
FTP Accounts: Unlimited
WordPress Install: One click via Fantastico
Storage: Unlimited space; unlimited bandwidth
Uptime: 99.9% server and network
Price: $4.95/month (with the purchase of a 60-month plan)
Link

9. DreamHost

It is optimized for WordPress blogs and provides full time technical support. As long as you purchase a hosting, your domain registration will be free. You will also get 2 week free trial. In case you cancel within those 2 weeks they won't charge anything.
Total Domains: Unlimited domains; unlimited subdomains
FTP Accounts: Unlimited
WordPress Install: One click installation via the DreamHost Panel
Storage: Unlimited plus 50GB for backups; unlimited bandwidth
Uptime: 99.9% network uptime
Price: Monthly: $10.95/month; Annually – $9.95/month; Bi-Annually – $8.95/month; $49.95 set up fee if you pay monthly
Link

10. GreenGeeks

They don't offer WordPress web hosting explicitly, but they are known to offer one-click WordPress installation explicitly listed on their site. GreenGeeks are known to be the most green web hosting solution. GreenGeeks provides a cPanel and a free auto WordPress script installer.
Total Domains: Unlimited host domains on 1 account
FTP Accounts: Unlimited
WordPress Install: one-click install
Storage: Unlimited
Uptime: 99.9% Server Uptime Guarantee
Price: $6.95 per month for 24 month
Link

7 tips for replacing a firewall

2010-05-11T04:09:00.000-07:00

By Mark Underwood

Blogger Mark Underwood offers tips for upgrading firewalls, having just dealt with his own upgrade experience.

Hardware firewalls are no different from other implements of technology. They have limited lifetimes, and sooner or later they have to be replaced. Making the transition from one firewall to another is at the least a nuisance and at worst a security risk.
For the small to midsize business, firewall management is just one of the many hats worn by the "network" or "systems" administrator. As a result, a technician is less likely to be intimately familiar with a firewall's internals.
Typically a firewall receives intermittent use--for example, when a new application comes online or a new server is added to the farm. This occasional use is fine for day-to-day operations, but it doesn't provide the comfort zone for intensive work, such as switching from one vendor’s firewall to another or upgrading from a vendor’s low-end model to something more sophisticated.
The issues involved in upgrading a firewall range from the straightforward to the complex, but they are potentially numerous.

For instance, the manual for the Cisco ASA 5505, shown in Figure A, is 114 pages. It's not just Cisco. An Amazon reviewer of Welch-Abernathy's 656-page tome "Essential Checkpoint Firewall" (2004) explained that it was "great for a novice admin". Nonetheless, firewall upgrade duty is likely to fall to us ordinary mortals.
After a recent upgrade conducted by a small technology firm, I interviewed the firm's system administrator, Rich Gallo. He provided a lengthy list of concerns, shown grouped into seven categories in Figure B.
Figure B

Gallo was able to overcome them, but challenges included quirky handling of previously unused external IP addresses by ISP Verizon and coordination with a remote office subnet. Having two technicians working through the issues undoubtedly reduced the chance for errors in manually moving firewall rules for CheckPoint to Cisco.
Each set of applications had associated ports, IP addresses, and user lists. Where necessary, program managers were contacted to verify current requirements. Where possible, schedules were coordinated with periods of low utilization.
The firewall upgrade can be an opportunity to rearrange cables routes, move switches, readjust bandwidth handling, or reorganize server cabinets.
A good test plan is a nontrivial affair, involving testing of not only connectivity but applications. For instance, public-facing applications must be tested from both inside the network and from outside the network using external tools where necessary. It's also prudent to review failover plans and recovery plans--just in case.
VPNs are a special case that may affect firewall rules. In Gallo's firm, there were site-to-site VPN requirements that needed special attention. There were also client-specific issues, since support was needed for both x32 and x64 clients, Mac, Windows and Linux platforms, and a mix of user familiarity in setting up a VPN. For instance, it was discovered that there was a known issue with Snow Leopard that didn't permit AnyConnect split tunnels to work properly. Administrators will do well to collect details for inside and outside DNS records and shared keys well in advance of the moment of reckoning.
Firewall rules are the heart of the appliance's capabilities, but they may be represented very differently in the old firewall when compared to the new. This is a good time to document those rules, remove unused rules, and run the new set of rules by application managers. For instance, one new rule may lock down the firewall itself--which is by definition a new rule. And rules should be provided in both a machine-readable, firewall-specific format and a transparently understandable format. One or the other may be needed for recovery after a major incident.
A new firewall will affect logging and alert processes. Plan to update alerts and log readers to respond to new alerts in ways that can be used by the security analyst (who may be the same person who's performing the upgrade) and others familiar with nominal behavior of supported applications.

There’s more--lots more--to the process of upgrading a firewall. There may be firewall licensing issues in supporting DMZs, special considerations for handling e-mail servers, or additional logistics in supporting remote offices. This list may stimulate your thinking about the issues you may face.

via http://www.zdnetasia.com/7-tips-for-replacing-a-firewall-62061404.htm?scid=nl_z_tgis

35 examples of using typography in web design

2010-05-11T04:00:00.001-07:00

Web designers often turn to compelling typography to upgrade the overall feel of their web sites. The right font can make or break a user’s impression of your design. And in some cases, the font can actually be the design. Case in point:

See them all at You The Designer.

Why automated storage tiering matters

2010-05-06T02:12:00.000-07:00

public on May 6, 2010 (4 hours 30 minutes ago)

Summary

One of the hottest topics in storage is automatic storage tiering. Rick Vanover explains what it is and why it will be a big splash in many SANs.

Events

Effective Data Centre Management
25 May 2010

Grand Hyatt, Singapore

Green Building Congress Malaysia 2010
9 Jun 2010

Sime Darby Convention Centre, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Cloudforce 2 World Tour
25 May 2010

Raffles City Convention Center, Singapore

Customer Contact Malaysia 2010
12 May 2010

Sheraton Imperial Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Storage tiering is a practice that has existed in many ways for storage administrators for a very long time. In a static disk assignment, you can provision a number of storage tiers by manipulating these key design elements:

Storage protocol: Ethernet-based (iSCSI/NFS), fibre channel, or direct-attached storage. Each connectivity media has its own throughput that will affect the overall experience of the storage.
Drive speed: The revolutions per minute (RPMs) of the drives in an array is a factor in the overall performance of the storage design.
Drive interface: The most popular disk interfaces in use today are Ultra320 SCSI, SATA, SAS, fiber channel and solid state drives. The throughput and I/O operations per second (IOPS) for each of these drive types is a factor in determining the behavior of the storage array.
RAID level in use: RAID 1, 4, 5, 6, 0+1, 5+0, and other proprietary levels can make significant differences in throughput. Check this AC&NC RAID.EDU resource for information on standard RAID levels and the NetApp page on RAID-DP.
Quantity of drives: Generally speaking, if your array hits on more drives, you can access less surface area from more drives to enhance the performance of the array.
Disk size: Drives that are very large (potentially with many arrays striped across them) can bog down the overall throughput of the array. While the 2 or 4 Terabyte drives are attractive for SATA storage, the throughput and interface rate for the drives are the same as 1 TB or smaller drives.

For most storage systems, aligning these design elements to craft the best performing storage system with the resources available or what can be purchased is about as much storage tiering as can be done. If you've never built up a few designs and put a performance benchmark on the storage design, you really should--there can be an incredible variance in the performance results.
As you can see, this can be very tedious in the flat storage arena without advanced management. A new set of features are showing up on some of the more full-featured storage processors that provide automated storage tiering. Automated storage tiering will allow the storage processor to put the segments of data on the level of disk that it needs, when it needs it.
Examples of this technology are 3PAR's Adaptive Optimization, Compellent's Data Progression feature, IBM's Easy Tier, and EMC's fully automated storage tiering (FAST). This video shows a preview of EMC's FAST:

The automated storage tiering technologies allow the storage administrator to permit a volume that may reside on a lesser-performing disk set to be dynamically moved to a higher-performing tier automatically. One of the best use cases is to put the bulk of a SAN's storage requirements on less expensive SATA storage and use automated storage tiering to move those volumes or sub volumes to higher performing SAS or solid state disk drives.
The ability to automate storage tiers is quite attractive, primarily because the right resources will get the right disk when it is needed; however, some administrators may express concern about the data blocks or volumes being moved dynamically around a SAN. While each product will implement automated tiered storage differently, it is not far from standard volume migration technologies that exist on most storage processors, operating systems or hypervisors. I can see a great reduction in the amount of tier-1 (SAS) or tier-0 (solid state disk) storage zones that many administrators may need to provision in order to keep the hot spots on the premium disk.
Rick Vanover is an IT infrastructure manager for Alliance Data in Columbus, Ohio. He has years of IT experience and focuses on virtualization, Windows-based server administration and system hardware.

via http://www.zdnetasia.

10 Best Microsoft Outlook 2010 Hacks and Tips

2010-04-22T03:17:00.000-07:00

Microsoft Outlook2010 comes with premium business and personal e-mail management tools to more than 500 million users worldwide. The new Outlook version has been designed to offer richer set of tools and features to meet the communication needs at office, home and school. With a revamped look, advanced e-mail organization, search and communication features. Outlook 2010 allows extended tools to increase productivity> and to enhance your personal and business networks

1. How to add more search criteria

Microsoft Office 2010 allows you to add criteria . Outlook 2010 presents a simple way to search the specific items, emails, files, calender events, tasks, etc immediately. When all the Outlook folders are indexed, you can search items for specific folders and archives. Let's have a look at different search options and search tools.
The search fields are also specific to the Outlook e-mail profile that you are currently.
Step 1: Click or type in the Instant Search box

Step 2: Search Tools tab
Step 3:Go to the Refine group and chose options for refined search. For instance on clicking the Flagged in Refine group you would show all the items and emails that have been flagged recently. You might also click important presents beneath Flagged button, from This Week button specify the timeline.

2. Using the Outlook 2010 Search Tools

You can see a new tab on the ribbon by the name of Search under Search Tools. It offers several options to filter-down the search results. Search Tools can be configured for different types of options such as Indexing Status, Location to Search(POP, and all IMAP account folders), Advanced Find and Search Options.

How to search the attachments in specific folder.
In order, to search attachments click the Has Attachment button. It would show all the items that contain attachments.

Search also changed the keyword with hasattachment. Just enter the file extension and it will show all the attachments with that extension. It will also show the emails and items that contains the extension name.

3. Using the Quick Steps

It provides the ability to perform single-step functions-things like Delete, Mark as read, Reply and so on. However, in case you need to perform multi-step function. Move it to an archived email folder. The new Quick Steps feature in Outlook 2010 can easily utilize a collection of built-in multi-step tasks. You might create your own.
Outlook 2010 offers users to create new Quick steps. Here's how to create a new quick step
Step 1: Click on the down arrow in the quick steps box and click on the create new items
Step 2: When a new window opens you can create a new quick step and add a name for it.
Step 3: Create a new quick step

Step 4: In the next section you will need to select the action for the quick step. Outlook 2010 offers several pre-defined actions that you might add to your own.
In the meantime choose from one of the actions that already exists. Once you have chosen the action you can customize it.

4. How to insert reusable content using Quick Parts

Outlook 2010 offers a Quick Parts feature that allows users to save pieces of content to easily re-use. You can use Quick Parts for all those answers that you have to repeat again and again.

Step 1: Select the content you wanna reuse. For instance, you can select a table that you need to send repeatedly.

Step 2: After selecting the content click on the Insert tab in the Ribbon, choose Quick parts and click Save Selection to Quick Part Gallery.

Step 3: To insert your Quick Part click on the Insert tab in the Ribbon, choose Quick Parts and you will see a gallery with all your saved Quick Parts. You might see a gallery with all your saved Quick Parts.

Step 4: Click on the Quick Part that will insert it at the current cursor position.

Step 5: To insert Quick Parts click on the Insert tab in the Ribbon, choose Quick Parts and you can access all the saved Quick Parts. Clicking on the Quick Part will insert it at the current cursor position.
You might also use the advanced options by right-clicking the desired Quick Part.

5. Outlook message templates

You might have Message styles for Christmas, birthdays and pretty much anything family-related that you have to send too often. Sending these type of messages will involve a number of steps. You can avoid that with the Outlook Message Templates. We'll tell you how to use it.
Step 1: Open the new email to compose and add content and styles that you want to apply everytime you open the template.

Step 2: After creating your template content, click on the Office Button and choose Save As.

Step 3: Change the Save as type to Outlook template (*.oft).

Step 4: Open the template you have created and saved a template everytime you need to send that weekly status report. You can simply open the template that you want to save. Follow the Step 1 and re-save the template.

To Open the templates, open the file in Windows File Explorer or save it to the default location open it through the Tools>Forms>Choose Forms.

6. How to schedule a meeting using Team Calender

Conveniently and efficiently schedule appointments, share your calender availability and manage your work schedule. With the email calender feature you might be able to
Step 1: In the Calender Navigation Pane you can select the people you wanna invite to the meeting. Now you can also select the conference room that includes the conference room resources.

Step 2: Schedule a conference room resources, select a conference room
Step 3: In the top row of the Schedule View displays a summary of the availability(free/busy) for all the people that you have selected. You can use this summary to find the best time for meeting.
Step 4: After selecting a time slot on the Home tab, in the New group, click New Meeting. The attendees and time enters automatically. Type the subject and click on Send.

7. Delete Trash Emails Automatically when Outlook 2010 is Closed

On deleting an email in Outlook 2010, the email is included in the deleted items folder and not removed to the Recycle Bin on the Windows desktop directly. The disk space is used by the trashed email. The system runs slower. To avoid this we have an easy work around that will automatically delete trash emails when Outlook 2010 is closed.
Step 1: Launch your Outlook in your computer

Step 2: Choose File > Options in the menu

Step 3: The Outlook Options window will appear. Choose Advanced in the left pane and find Outlook start and exit in the right list

Step 4: Select the Empty Deleted Items folders when exiting Outlook option. Then click OK to save changes.

Step 5: Next time, when you open Outlook 2010, you will find the trash folders are empty.

8. Exporting emails or Contacts from Microsoft Outlook 2010

Many a times you need to export files to Outlook. Here's how you can do it in the best way
Step 1: Download the software Outlook Data Export

Step 2: Install it. And then open your Outlook. Click "Add-ins" and you can see Outlook data export added.

Step 3: Click the arrow and you will see some options in the list.

Step 4: Choose one option. Here we choose "Export emails". And then a dialog box pops up. Click Select export directory.

Step 5: Select the export directory like this

Step 6: You can also set up other options, output format, file name options and so on. Then click Start exports

Step 7: Wait for a few minutes
Step 8: You can also click Show results to see the result.
Wait till the Export results appears

Finally you are done

9. How to use Outlook 2010 as Twitter Client

Microsoft Outlook is widely used to send and receive emails. You might be one of them, who checks Microsoft Outlook too often. What about using Twitter directly from your Microsoft Outlook. If you wanna use Twitter and Outlook simultaneously here's the process
Step 1: Download the TwinBox software

Step 2: Intsall it and open your Outlook
Step 3: This sets a Twitter toolbar in the Add-Ins
Step 4: Click TwInbox you will see some functions in the list

Now let's how you can use Twitter in Outlook 2010
Choose Options option, The dialog box will appear. It contains account, receiving, sending, UI options and you can change the settings. Now you can do the following

Click on Display Status to see all the stats in Twitter
Click on Post a New Update to send new status. A dialog box will pop up and you can click update to finish
Choosing the Retweet you can change the status you have just updated
You can choose Search/Track/Group in the tab
In the dialog box, you can define groups of tweets, search them and do other things

10. Customize the To-Do-Bar

In order to customize your To-Do Bar you have a new To-Do bar Options available in the ribbon. Just follow the steps below
Step 1: Go to the View tab, in the Layout group

Step 2: Click To-Do Bar, select the items you wanna appear. Click the options for additional customization.

Bonus

How to minimize Microsoft Outlook 2010 to System Tray

Microsoft Outlook is kept open during the work hours in most companies with new emails constantly being received at defined intervals. Since Outlook by default is set by default in system tray and also at taskbar, it might be taking up unnecessary space at the taskbar. To get a neater taskbar without an unnecessary software hogging the space, you need to apply a simple hack.

In order to minimize Outllook icon to system tray, simply right-click on the Outlook system tray icon and check the Hide When Minimized option.

Top Ways You can Detect Malware in Your System

2010-04-20T00:48:00.001-07:00

Cybercriminals are making every effort to inject Malware in your system so that it is going to be difficult to detect. Many computers are loaded with this stuff but the users have no idea its there or how to get rid of it. It is very crucial to know what is running in your computer. This article highlights some of the useful anti malware utilities that can detect, remove and block malware from your system.

Microsoft Process Explorer: Process Explorer shows you information about what processes are running on your system. It also describes each process. When your PC is running okay, you can run Process Explorer to save a baseline. If anything goes wrong in your PC, you can see the differences between the list of processes beforehand and afterward. That may give you some clue about possible Malware attack.
Kaspersky's GetSystemInfo: GetSystemInfo is a free system program that gives you useful information about your system in order to troubleshoot technical issues. It can be used to detect incompatible software, detect possible malware on your computer. It creates a report, or log file, with the results of the scan. Users can also upload and analyze the report log file on the GSI Parser website as mentioned in the above link.
Microsoft Baseline Security Analyzer: You can improve your security management process by using MBSA to detect common security misconfiguration and missing security updates on your computer systems. It helps small and medium size companies figure out their security state according to Microsoft security recommendations and get some security guidance at the same time.
GMER: This is an application that detects and removes rootkits. Gmer is a hidden services, hidden registry, hidden file scanner and also it contains other features. It is very useful software and has a very nice user interface that makes it very easy for non technical people to use.
Microsoft Software Removal Tool: This is an on-demand anti-virus tool that scans the computer for specific malwares and removes the infection. And it doesn't scan your hard drive to find any malware like antiVirus software. On the contrary, it scans your system's memory for any evidence of currently running malware found on a list that Microsoft maintains and updates regularly. Microsoft releases a new version of MSRT on the second Tuesday of each month.
Malwarebytes Anti-malware: This is a computer application that finds and removes Malware. MBAM is available in both a free and a paid edition. The free edition must be run manually, while the paid version can automatically run scheduled scans. Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware monitors every process and stops malicious processes before they even start.
SUPERAntispyware: This is a software program that can remove spyware,malware, adware, trojan and rootkits. It actually can help remove some of the nastiest malware that has been released including the variety of Zlob trojan infections, Vundo infections, and others. You can scan your hard drive, check for updates to the program, find out what's in quarantine, and check the dates of your last scan and update. With the paid version you can also schedule your scanning and have realtime protection against spyware infections.

How lucid dreaming works

2010-04-16T12:45:00.001-07:00

If you could control your dreams, what would you do? Grow wings and fly, talk to God, travel to ancient Rome, dine with Marilyn Monroe, open opera season at the Met? Instead, we dream of showing up naked at work or falling or getting lost. But there's one type that offers the promise of control: lucid dreams
In a lucid dream, you're aware that you're dreaming. There's a moment of clarity where you realize that you don't, in fact, have wings, and that you can't possibly be having dinner with Marilyn Monroe, because she's dead. So how does it work? In this article, we're going to investigate lucid dreams. We'll explore both the science and the fantastic, and we'll find out how to put you in control.
Full article at HowStuffWorks.com.

How to make a DIY wax seal

2010-04-09T11:14:00.001-07:00

For an added (and personalized) touch of class on enveloppes, invitations, menus, whatever—why not try your hand at this simple, inexpensive DIY wax seal?

Learn how to do it at Ragehaus.

Use Task Manager with kernel times displayed

2010-03-30T10:52:00.000-07:00

I use Task Manager all the time when logged onto servers to view what is going on. I look at network percentage utilization, processor utilization and memory resource utilization, and I see what processes (executables) are active.
One thing that I've always done is to show the kernel times in the Task Manager view. You can do this by going to the Performance tab, selecting the View menu, and then showing kernel times. Once kernel times are displayed, a red line appears representing the kernel mode applications.
Figure A shows a Windows Server running Task Manager with kernel times.
Figure A

In Figure A, the spikes in activity were caused by user activity on the console. There are backend processes that interact with the console applications, but the key is that there is separation between the kernel time (red) and user time (green).
When kernel or privileged mode processes are consuming processor resources on the server, the separation between the two is reduced. Figure B shows a kernel mode process consuming resources.
Figure B

With kernel time displayed, you can determine if there is too much activity on the server attributed to your (or another administrator's) session. If I am running administrative tools locally, I may determine that I'm taking too much of the user processor resources.
The most egregious example is when the CPU is pegged at 100 percent. If the kernel time is at the high mark, the server is busy doing server functions; if there is kernel and user separation, it is clear that the administrative session is taking too much server processor resources.
The kernel time display is a valid configuration on all versions of Windows. Go to TechNet for more information about Task Manager.
If you use kernel times, let us know how it has helped your troubleshooting practices.
Rick Vanover is an IT infrastructure manager for Alliance Data in Columbus, Ohio. He has years of IT experience and focuses on virtualization, Windows-based server administration and system hardware

How To Download Books From Google Books

2010-03-30T02:20:00.000-07:00

Google Book Search, as you know, is a large online repository of books. You can enter a query and Google Book Search will search within the book and return you the results. You can then see a preview of the book and read it.
Some books are available in their entirety, some have limited previews and the others have no previews at all. It so happens that often one needs only a topic or two from a specific book. While the Internet is a good source and has plenty of free ebook sites, I have quite often seen people trying (unsuccessfully of course) to copy-paste, save images or take screen shots of Google Book search results. In this post I am going to show you how to download books from Google Books search.
So, if you have been in a similar situation where you badly wanted a page or two of the book, try the Google Books Downloader.

Just download, extract and run the application (make sure you have .NET 3.5 on your system).
Go to the Google Books page for the book you want to download.

Copy and paste the book code of the book you want to download.
Click the “check” button to check if GBD finds the required book and returns the available pages.
Click the “download entire book” button. GBD will now download the book. The number of pages downloaded will depend on the number of pages that are available. If the entire book is available like those in the public domain then GBD will download the entire book.
Once the download has completed, you can save the book as a PDF file by clicking on the “Save Book” button.

Now read the book! Of course you can use the application to download books that were not supposed to be downloaded. So you are advised to download the books with caution and at your own discretion. The download takes quite some time to complete so you may have to wait a little before you can reap the benefits of a downloaded book!

How to Download Embedded Flash Files using your Browser

2010-03-30T02:18:00.000-07:00

Today, Flash is everywhere. Animations, music, games, advertisements or even streaming presentations. Speaking of games, here’s a list of site with the best flash games.
The use of Flash plug-ins in browsers is now almost obligatory. Yes, it’s easy to view and enjoy the rich media content delivered by interactive Flash embedded pages. But what if I want to download some of these files as keepsakes? The greatest benefit – I can watch them offline in my own jolly time. Convert them to a format of my choice. Or embed them again in a PowerPoint presentation. Or even transfer them to my mobile phone.
Flash animation files are embedded as SWF (Small Web Format) files in webpages. Rather than depending on any software or a third-party website, downloading Flash content is dead simple. The only tool required is a browser and a bit of patience to do the rummaging around.
Just one note: As we will be heading into the internet cache folders of the respective browsers, it pays to clear it of all old files before navigating to the desired page. It makes the Flash file search a lot easier.
So, here’s how to do it in three of our popular browsers.

Download SWF files using Firefox

Fire up Firefox and browse to the page which contains the embedded SWF Flash file that you are eyeing to download. Let the SWF file stream through once completely.
On any empty part of the page, right-click and select the Page Info context menu option. Or alternatively, go to Tools – Page Info.
Select the Media tab. The Media tab lists all image formats, icons, style sheets and flash files that were rendered by the webpage.
Look amongst the items to find the particular file with the SWF extension. The type column will show up with an Embed filetype. Highlight the file and click Save as to save the file on your hard drive.

Download SWF files using Internet Explorer
In IE8, we have to head to the Temporary Internet Files folder which stores all rendered files during a browsing session. (It can be directly accessed from here in Windows XP – C:\Documents and Settings\Username\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files.)

Go to the IE Menu bar. Click on Tools – Internet Options.
On the General tab, click on Settings under Browsing History.
The Temporary Internet Files and Browsing History box opens up.
Click on View Files. You will get all the rendered webpage elements in this folder.
To rummage about effectively amidst the mass of files, choose View – Arrange by Type from the menu. Also go to Tools – Folder Options, and uncheck the Hide extensions for known file types option.
Seek out your SWF files, copy and then paste it to your preferred location.

Download SWF files using Opera
In Opera, downloaded SWF files can be accessed in two simple ways –

Type opera:cache in the address bar.
Go to Tools – Advanced – Cache from the toolbar.

Either way, a huge list of downloaded page elements opens up with their URLs. Search for a file with the .swf extension. Alternatively, you could search (Ctrl+F ) and hunt it down, with swf as the search query.
Right-click on the particular file and choose either Saved Linked Content As or Save to Download Folder to save the SWF file on the hard disk.

After downloading the SWF file, one can use the Adobe Flash Player to view the Flash file or a supported media player like Media Player Classic. Or, an easier way would be to just open it in a browser by right-clicking it and selecting the browser of choice.
These are the ways we can use to single out the Flash files from a webpage. In my experience, I personally have been more comfortable with Firefox than the other two. I am still searching a way perform this in Chrome but it is proving impossible without third-party support. Numerous third-party tools can do the same job better by converting it to a format of your choice. But it always pays to know that you can fall back on a browser alone.

8 Tips To Effectively Boost Your Wireless Router Signal

2010-03-30T02:17:00.000-07:00

Look at it – staring you down so innocently, yet I know that your Linksys wireless router refuses to give you signal. Since you decided to place it in a corner to gather dust, using it only for its relay capabilities, it has decided to constantly bring up the feared “Limited Network Connection” bubble. Don’t you just hate those?
These routers have the power to transmit intangible signals; these signals, powerful as they may be, are prone to constant interference whether it be by physical objects, other signals floating around in the air, or even because you didn’t plug the wire in all the way.
Regardless of what the issue, there are some proven ways to try to remedy the situation of a weak Wifi signal. Some may simply be a little bit of common sense, other methods require purchasing additional parts.
Here are 8 tips on how to boost your wireless router signal.

Position it better

Unless you are living in a cave and you somehow miraculously have internet connectivity at the same time, you probably figured out that if your wireless router was in the corner of your kitchen under a pile of old newspapers and your computer was located on the second floor on the opposite side of the house — it is a great idea to place your router in an open position (preferably in the center of your house) where it isn’t obstructed by dense or metallic objects such as file cabinets or brick walls.
Other items that may interfere with your signal include (but are not limited to) microwave ovens, cordless phones, garage door openers, and even baby monitors. The bottom line is that the less objects in the signal’s way, the easier it is for it to relay information to your computer.

Change the WiFi Channel

Generally, Wifi routers transmit their signals on a radio frequency of 2.4 GHz. Many other household objects may operate on or around the same frequency, like cordless phones, for example. So, the channel becomes bogged down over time with lots of excess traffic that slows down your wireless connection. In the U.S., routers have a predefined set of 11 channels, and the default on a lot of them is channel 6. Changing the channel would reduce some interference. So how do you change the channel?
A great utility many people use is called NetStumbler, a wireless networking tool that just so happens to offer the option for you to change your wifi channel. Once opened, the program gives the choice of fooling around with all of your wireless utilities. Here is where you change your channel:

Which leads to:

Since the default for most people (at least in the United States) is 6, you may want to change your channel to something like say, channel 11. Take note that the changing of your wireless channel will NOT in any way increase your speed or bandwith. It will simply remedy your network connection if it keeps breaking off or getting lost.

Update firmware or drivers

Updates, whether related to the router firmware or your computer’s network adapter are done to fix bugs, smoothen out performance and reliability, and maybe even add new features. It is always a good idea to stay up to date with the latest releases by either of these parties.
Tim suggested using RadarSync to easily automatically update your computer’s drivers at once.

Buy your equipment from the same company

Compatibility can be a big problem, especially for two way transmissions. It may help to purchase your adapter and your router – everything, from the same company. Aside from that, some companies have embedded enhancements that improve speed or signal strength when everything is under the same brand.

Replace your antenna

Most routers come equipped with something called an omnidirectional antenna. This means that the antenna attached to the router broadcasts the signal equally within a certain circular radius. This is great if the router is positioned in the center of a hub where it needs to be able to reach ever corner of a room, but it can prove to be extremely wasteful if your router is in the corner (then again, why would it be there in the first place?). Since the signal is transmitted in a radius, if you place it in a corner, a lot of the transmitted signal is sent into the wall or outside into the open.
That is why you can manually detach your antenna and replace it with a high gain antenna. This focuses its energy to direct the signal in one general direction. Simple enough? You may have to check and see if your router has an external antenna jack/removable antenna.

Replace your wireless adapter

Since this is a two-way transmission, it may not have occured to you that it may not be the router that is the problem, but actually the wireless adapter attached to your computer. If your computer cannot send signals back to the router, the same problem ensues.
What is an adapter? It used to be the card that you inserted into your computer or laptop. These days, most of the adapters are in the form of USB devices. Consider switching to a USB adapter that houses an external antenna, like this one depicted below.

This is usually only applicable to desktop computers. If you purchased a laptop that has a built-in adapter, it probably isn’t your adapter because they are usually very high quality installations.

Add an additional Wireless Access Point (WAP) or Repeater

If all else fails, you may need to purchase a repeater or a secondary Wireless Access Point. The consensus among these two options is rather mixed. Constructing a secondary WAP requires the ability to feed an ethernet cable from your primary router to the new access point. There are also cost considerations to be aware of, as WAPs cost more than regular wireless routers. Even so, WAPs have certain flexibilities that normal routers do not have. They can be configured as gateways, bridges, clients or repeaters. But that’s another story. The bottom line is that the WAP is an extension of the original hub in order to extend the distance of the signal. The repeater works the same way.
Here is a tutorial on how to set up the WAP courtesy of Techskillsvideos:

Try weird things

Apparently aluminum foil amplifies reception and transmission. It may or may not work, YMMV.

A little bit of background: You may have seen 802.11b or 802.11g written somewhere on your router – these are merely wireless LAN standards that the particular router adheres to. The main difference between these is that 802.11b has a maximum data transfer rate of 11 Mbps, whereas 802.11g has a much higher 54 Mbps rate.
With that being said, there is no way to improve data transmission or bandwith outside of hardware applications and upgrades. The tips mentioned above are meant to help you solve the problem of an interfered or weak signal. These may or may not work for you, but there is a strong correlation between troubleshooting and success rate.

via makeuseof.com

Amazing paper fold pinhole camera

2010-03-28T06:32:00.001-07:00

The words pinhole and camera aren’t typically used in a sentence with the words sleek and design—until now. Check out this amazing do-it-yourself pinhole fold from DIY Photography. The instructions are simple, the price is right, and we guarantee it’s the most sophisticated project you can build with an old cereal box.
Learn how to make it at DIY Photography.

How to surf the Web anonymously

2010-03-28T04:42:00.001-07:00

It's easy to assume that no one knows who you really are online, but that's never been the case. However, surfing the Web anonymously has become so simple that anyone can conceal his or her identity with little trouble.
Do you want to surf the web anonymously and not be tracked? Take a look at the easy ways you can conceal your identity and surf the web anonymously.

IP Addresses and Cookies
Piecing Together Your Online Identity
Anonymous Proxy Servers
Privacy Settings in Your Browser
Anonymous Registration

Full article at HowStuffWorks.com.

How to Calculate a Dog's Age in Dog Years

2010-03-23T03:41:00.000-07:00

A popular misconception is that dogs age 7 years for each calendar year. In fact, canine aging is much more rapid during the first 2 years of a dog's life. After the first 2 years the ratio settles down to 5 to 1 for small and medium breeds. For large breeds the rate is 6 to 1, and for giant breeds the rate is 7 to 1. Thus, at 10 years of age a Great Dane would be 80 years old while a pug would only be 64.
How to Tell a Dog's Age
If you've taken in a dog whose age is unknown, there are some ways to determine his age. Here are some things vets check to get a general sense of how old a dog is:
The Teeth: Dogs usually have a set of permanent teeth by their seventh month, so if you've come across a dog with clean pearly whites, he is likely a year old or thereabouts. Yellowing on a dog's back teeth may put the dog between one and two years of age, while tartar build-up at a minimal level could mean you have a dog between 3 and 5. Missing teeth or severe wear usually means the dog is a senior and could use some special dental care.
Muscle Tone: Younger dogs are more likely to have some muscle definition from their higher activity level. Older dogs are usually either a tad bonier or a little fatter from decreased activity.
The Coat: A younger dog usually has a soft, fine coat, whereas an older dog tends to have thicker, coarser (and sometimes oilier) fur. A senior dog may display grays or patches of white, particularly around the snout.
The Eyes: Bright, clear eyes without tearing or discharge are common in younger dogs. Cloudy or opaque eyes may mean an older dog.
Old Age in Dogs
The age at which a dog can be considered elderly varies widely among models. In general, the larger the dog, the more quickly it declines. For instance, a Great Dane could be considered "senior" at age 5, while a smaller toy poodle would still be spry at twice that age. Remember, however, that just because a dog is chronologically old doesn't mean that an endless series of malfunctions is in store. In many cases an elderly dog can enjoy many healthy, active, pain-free years.
One of the best ways to prolong the life and improve the functions of an elderly dog is to carefully regulate its fuel intake. Older dogs exercise less and thus need fewer calories. And since age reduces their ability to digest and absorb nutrients, high-quality food specifically formulated for their needs is a necessity. Excessive amounts of protein, phosphorus, and sodium can aggravate kidney and heart problems, so most such foods contain smaller amounts of higher-quality protein, along with reduced quantities of other elements. Levels of vitamins, zinc, fatty acids, and fiber, however, are increased.

via dogster

How To Increase Google AdSense Earnings by Category & Ad-Network Filtering

2010-03-22T09:06:00.001-07:00

How many experiments have you committed to optimize your Google AdSense earnings? I'm sure you must have tried every new weapon in your armory to boost your Google ad revenue, but for avail or minimal profits. Messing up with color schemes won't be a great idea unless you realize what is the key toGoogle AdSense earnings . Google AdSense now offers two lucrative features 'Competitive Ad Filter’ and 'category filter' that can double up your earnings. The idea is simple and hassle-free that just needs you to separate new low paying networks from interfering with the top paying networks. Here's how you gotta do it?

How does the add Competitive Ad filter work?

Google introduced the Competitive Ad filter for publishers to block any advertiser who violates their web space at any moment. There could be several reasons for blocking an advertiser. It might be that advertisers ad looks spammy, or it is irrelevant to all the overall website.
Most prominently, it optimizes your advertisers list for Google Adsense to ensure that no low paying advertiser is shown and only the top paying advertisers are shown. This is a lucrative approach to increase your overall Adsense revenue.

How to use the Competitive Ad Filter

Try to use the competitive ad filter feature to filter out low paying advertiser sites from ever appearing on your block to maximize your earning. Try to keep up to date with lowest paying advertisers. One of the quick ways to keep track of the lowest paying advertiser list is to find AdsBlackList.com. You can add it yo your advertiser blacklist to prevent their ads from ever showing up. This may not make a considerable difference, but it contributes to some level optimization to filter out the low paying advertisers from the high paying advertisers. This feature prevents up to 500 low earning ads ( EPS) from appearing on your site. Blocking an ad will essentially block the target URL where the click on the ad takes you.

How to use Category filter in Google AdSense

In order to use category filter access the AdSense Setup > Ad Review Center. In the category filter you can select up 8 ad categories that you wanna filter out. These category ads will not appear on your AdSense blocks. This provides you an opportunity to filter out ad categories that offer low earnings.

To help you out with your research for selecting, which ad categories is most paying you can use this friendly tool called SpyFu. Using the tool will offer you some idea about the overall pay from each of the categories.
Just tick the ad categories that have no relevance to your website

Apart from filtering the low-earnings categories, you also use Google AdSense category filter to block out rated (for instance, pornographic) ad groups. Google could easily do the job of filtering content specific ads.

How to use Allow and Block Google Certified Ad Networks feature

This is an intricate part of Adsense revenue that needs an extensive research on your part. We would provide you an easy tip that'll help you to select the high paying networks and eliminate the small low-paying networks. To check whether the network is low paying look for Alexa Ranking of the company. It's wise to block those above 100k.

A word of caution

The above Google AdSense features has a catch. The features will encompass your entire AdSense account and not a single site or blog. Suppose you use the Category filter those category filters will be applied to all your sites. now in case you have blogs on multiple niches, the idea may not work for you.
Given the limitations, Google AdSense features of competitive ad filter and category ad-network filtering is always an expediency worth a risk.

How To Transform You Hoodie Into a Computer Sleeve

2010-03-22T02:19:00.001-07:00

10 cool Nexus One tips and tricks

2010-03-17T10:30:00.000-07:00

A buddy at Google passed on these ten Nexus One tips. Pretty cool stuff. Be the first to use them and maybe you can be the "mayor" of Nexus One! :-)

Press and hold the search button (the magnifying glass in the lower right corner) to activate voice search. If you want to call someone, say “call” and the person’s name.
Touch and hold the dots on the bottom left and right of your homescreen to see all five homescreens at a glance. Tap on a screen to jump there.
Your photo gallery can automatically synch with your Picasa web album. Go to settings, select accounts, then select your gmail account and click on sync Picasa web albums. Now when you go to the photo gallery you’ll see your Picasa album. Also, if you take a picture you like with the phone, it’s easy to share it via email or upload it to Picasa or Facebook. Just click on the menu button and select share.
Get minute-by-minute weather forecasts with the Weather widget. Launch the weather app and click the “information (i)” button in the top right hand corner. Drag your finger left-and-right across the temperature and humidity graph to see the weather forecast updated minute-by-minute.
Touch a contact’s image or status bubble and you’ll get what’s called the Quick Contacts menu. From there you can choose how you’d like to interact with that person, no matter what application you’re currently using.
Quickly access recently used applications by touching and holding the Home button.
Dictate into any text field by tapping on the compose box and then on the microphone icon next to the space bar. This brings up the “voice keyboard” which is available anywhere you want to enter text such as searching or composing an email or text.
Navigate is a feature within Maps that uses your phone’s GPS capability to direct you to your destination. Open maps, search for your destination, tap on it, and select navigate. The app will tell you step-by-step directions to get there.
Navigate also works with voice search right from the home screen. Hold down the search button until it invites you to speak now. Then say “navigate to …” and your destination. This also works with category search: try “navigate to pizza.”
While on Maps, zoom in or zoom out with our new pinch-to-zoom functionality. You can also pinch-to-zoom in the browser and when viewing photos in the Gallery.

Use Live USB Creator to install Fedora 12 from a USB stick

2010-03-16T02:33:00.000-07:00

Vincent Danen walks you through the use of the Live USB Creator tool to install or boot Fedora 12 from a USB drive.

Linux runs great on netbooks, but unfortunately most of them come without an optical drive of any kind which can make it a challenge to install an operating system on them. Unless you have an external DVD-ROM or CD-ROM drive to connect to them, the ideal solution would be to boot from a USB stick.
Since most modern computers, if not all of them, permit booting from a USB device, this makes for a simple solution. Not only that, USB devices can be used multiple times, unlike the DVD you burn an ISO to and use a handful of times.
Fedora makes it very easy to create a bootable USB stick with the Live USB Creator tool. You can use an existing Fedora installation, and probably any other Linux distribution, to run the tool. There is even a Windows application to allow for creating a Fedora-based bootable USB stick as well.
To begin, install the liveusb-creator package on Fedora:

# yum install liveusb-creator

or download the Windows installer from the project page. When it is installed, execute the liveusb-creator tool (it must be started as root, in Linux):

# liveusb-creator

Here you can use an existing downloaded LiveCD, or the tool can download a Fedora image for you to burn. You can choose which version of Fedora to install (10, 11, or 12) and also for which desktop: KDE or GNOME. You can also download the Sugar on a Stick operating system, which is an educational Sugar environment meant for children to be able to boot any computer into their own personalized Sugar environment.
You can also tell the tool how much persistent storage to reserve on the USB stick. This space can be used to save files and make modifications to the LiveCD image, allowing you to boot and run Fedora with any changes you make.
Insert the USB stick to use (should be at least 4GB in size), and when you have chosen which version of Fedora or Sugar on a Stick to install, or have supplied your own LiveCD image, click the Create Live USB button. Make sure that the target device shows up properly; if it isn't already selected, make sure you select the correct device (i.e., /dev/sdg1 on Linux or 'E:' in Windows). Note that the install is completely non-destructive, so the device can contain other data as well.
Depending on what you have chosen to do, the installation can take some time, especially if you need to download the LiveCD image first. A progress bar on the screen will indicate how far along it is, and the text pane indicates exactly what it is doing at any given point in time.
When the Live USB Creator is completed, you can eject the USB stick, insert it into your other computer (or reboot the existing computer) and indicate in the BIOS or via boot selection at startup which device to boot from. Select the USB stick and watch Fedora boot, at which point you can either select to use Fedora as installed on the USB stick, or use it to install Fedora onto the computer.

How to install Blender in CentOS 5

2010-03-12T08:47:00.000-08:00

Blender is popular open source, cross platform suite of tools for 3D content creation. Here is how you can install Blender on CentOS 5 (enterprise version of Linux) and equivalent to RedHat Enterprise Linux 5.

This mini-guide assumes you have a working knowledge on yum / yumex.

To install Blender you need to have epel and rpmforge repositories installed and enabled in your system. You also need to have yum-priorities plugin installed.

In priorities configuration have rpmforge ahead of epel repository.
Sounds complicated? Let me provide a minimal configuration to allow you to use both the repositories.

/etc/yum.repos.d/epel.repo

[epel]

name=Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 5 - $basearch

#baseurl=http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/5/$basearch

mirrorlist=http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=epel-5&arch=$basearch

failovermethod=priority

enabled=1

gpgcheck=1

gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL

priority=10

File: /etc/yum.repos.d/rpmforge.repo

[rpmforge]

name = Red Hat Enterprise $releasever - RPMforge.net - dag

#baseurl = http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el5/en/$basearch/dag

mirrorlist = http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el5/en/mirrors-rpmforge

#mirrorlist = file:///etc/yum.repos.d/mirrors-rpmforge

enabled = 1

protect = 0

gpgkey = file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-rpmforge-dag

gpgcheck = 1

priority=9

Remember to add lower priorities to your CentOS base and update repositories.
With that in place, installing Blender is just a simple:

yum install blender

Note: I installed Blender in 64 bit version of CentOS 5.

That is simple, isn't it? Let us know your experience in using Blender under CentOS 5 in comments below.

How to convert DVD to XviD/DivX without hassles

2010-03-12T08:39:00.000-08:00

This is for all you movie buffs who've got loads of DVDs and would love to have a library of movies on their hard drives. Yot! there's crunch of space on your hard disk and you have loads of movies to store, what do you do? Typically you might consider ripping the DVD to the hard drive and compressing the files in a zip folder or may be store them in a more advanced compression H.264, or wmv. Well, hope you don't wanna compromise with the quality of your movies. What's more you have to sacrifice the menus and extras. Well, there are better ways of doing the same. Just convert the .VOB files to XviD or DivX. XviD is considered as the best codec as there isn't much loss of quality. So we'll stick to XviD. Let's see how to convert DVD to Xvid. Ensure that you have XviD or DivX codec installed on your PC beforehand to avoid hassles. We'll stick to XviD for better. So let's see how to convert DVD to Xvid.

Before you go for the steps you would require the SimpleDviX, which you can download free

Go for the steps below to convert DVD to XviD/DivX

Step 1

Select the directory with burnt .VOB files or the entire DVD. In case you burnt it with the information file .IFO select solo file only. If you haven't click the select all file tab key. The bottom just details all the information regarding the DVDmovie itself. Select the main movie, note the framerate number.
Click the next tab Video.

Step 2

Go to the video settings. Select the proper framerate based on the one you say 25.000. Click to enable the Video Stream ID and use 0xE0. Now click Auto Retrieve cropping and select width 640. Leave the Frame Options blank. First preview the video.
Next click the Audio tab.

Step 3

Audio section. Here click Create Audio. Then select Check Audio and Deselect Extract all Audio. Now go to language drop-down menu it will show the language that are available. Select the preferred language in which you wanna the final product. In the Audio format you can choose AC3 that offers the best possible sound. However, it will increase the size of the final file. It might not fit into a CD_R.
Alternately, you can choose MP3 and change bitrate to 128kbps. Click on the Midnight Mode to normalize the audio to 100% and increase the sound.
Next Click on the Codec tab.

Step 4

In the Codec Options, choose the codec you want to use. XviD would be the best option. Ensure that you create a 2 pass video file. This will allow you better quality. In the Advanced Settings you can select the Quater Pixel. This will enhance the accuracy of micro-blocks within the film. At the bottom you will see the Pass Option. Click on the both passes.
Next click at the Compression tab

Step 5

In the Compression tab enable the Enter Final Movie Size. Check the Get Time for Movie. If you wanna fit the file into CD put the file size 700 mb. In case the movie is of a larger size then spread it into Two discs and choose 1400 MB.
If the movie's Bitrate is 700kbps or less, then either click at the bottom End-Credicts and click Do Not Include end credits in movie. Alternately, if you have seen the movie and you know there is not much action in it, then click in the Advanced Bitrate Properties. However, if your movie is over 740kbps in the Bitrate section then move to the next Misc. tab.

Step 6

Click the Create Subtitles using VobSub. It will list all the available languages. Check AVI as the movie's container. Once done click the Project tab.

Step 7

Call the movie whatever you want. Create a temporary folder on your preferred location where SimpleDivX can store unfinished, unsorted data. Make a folder to save the finishedmovie file. Avoid clicking the Overwrite Files and Delete Temp Files when finished. It's better to delete the files manually. If you want to save the file for two separate discs, say 699 mb. In case, you are doing with more than onemovie you can use the Batch Settings. Just click on the batch mode.

Whatever changes you make don't forget to Click the Modify option.

Next move to the Output option

Step 8

This is the final step, but completely optional. In case you wanna Shut Down the Computer after the encoding finishes select it.

It might take 3 to 8 hours to encode depending on your PC. Once done you'll have a great library of movies to cherish.

How to use PDF Suite : PDF Suite Video Tutorial

2010-03-12T08:37:00.001-08:00

If you have to deal with loads of files with your clients, suppliers or consultants on a daily basis, then you must be facing the problem of receiving file in different format. It is really a troublesome job to change the format each time to view the file exactly in the format, it was created. PDF (Portable Document Format) is to help you in this regard. It is a standard publishing format for many companies and allow you reading file hassle free.

PDF file can be easily handled by PDF Suite. With PDF Suite you can read, create, convert, edit, review & secure PDFs. PDF Suite also helps to create PDFs from an existing document or start from a blank page. Managing electronic documents with the intuitive interface of PDF Suite is at an ease. You can modify the text or images of any PDF file using PDF Suite.

Watch the video tutorial of PDF Suite and learn how to use it.

How To Deploy Wordpress on Windows Azure

2010-03-10T09:38:00.000-08:00

Here are steps needed to get Wordpress (PHP + MySQL + ) running on Windows Azure. You can deploy any PHP based application, Wordpress here as a sample PHP application but once you know this, you will be able to deploy Wordpress or any PHP application on Windows Azure.

Some of the Pre-requisites:

1. PHP Binaries for IIS (http://windows.php.net/)

2. MySQL Binaries (Without Installer) (http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/mysql/5.1.html )

2. MySQL PHP Solution Accelerator (http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/winazuremysqlphp )

3. VS2008 SP1/VS2010 Beta 2 w/ Windows Azure SDK (via web installer microsoft.com/web )

4. Wordpress (Or any PHP Application) (wordpress.org)

5. “The Lazy Man Hello Cloud PHP” ( http://innovativesingapore.com/post/The-Lazy-Mane28099s-e2809cPHP-Hello-Cloude2809d.aspx ) [Optional but Reccomended]

Phase 1 – Setup

1. Install the MySQL PHP Solution Accelerator

2. Extract the PHP binaries for IIS to the “php” folder in the PhpMyAdminWebRole directory. E.g. “C:\Samples\AzureMySQLPHP_x86\PhpMyAdminWebRole\php”

3. Extract the Wordpress files to the “wordpress” folder in the PhpMyAdminWebRole directory. E.g. “C:\Samples\AzureMySQLPHP_x86\PhpMyAdminWebRole\wordpress”

4. Extract the MySQL Binaries to the “mysql” folder in the MySQL_WorkerRole directory. E.g. “C:\Samples\AzureMySQLPHP_x86\MySQL_WorkerRole”

Phase 2 – Windows Azure Cloud Service

5. Create a new “Windows Azure Cloud Service” solution in Visual Studio.

6. Add an existing project, “PhpMyAdminWebRole” (From the Solution Accelerator), to the solution you created.

7. Add another existing project, “MySQL_WorkerRole” (Also from the Solution Accelerator,), to the solution.

8. Right click on “Roles” (Found in your “Windows Azure Cloud Service” project) and select “Add-> Web Role Project in solution” and select the project you added in your solution previously.

9. Repeat step 8, but this time, choose “Add -> Worker Role Project in solution” and select the “MySQL_WorkerRole” you added previously.

Phase 3 – Configuring MySQL_WorkerRole

*For learning purposes we shall not touch on the advance features of the MySQL_WorkerRole in the Solution Accelerator. If you do want to do more with it, please watch this video: http://microsoftpdc.com/Sessions/SVC51 .
For now, we are going to configure the worker role to have only 1 instance.

10. Open up the settings for “MySQL_WorkerRole” (Found in the Roles folder at your “Windows Azure Cloud Service” project) and change the following configurations:

Configuration SectionInstance Count: 1

Settings Section [Name, Type, Value]TableStorageEndpoint, String, http://table.core.windows.net

BlobStorageEndpoint, String, http://blob.core.windows.net

DataConnectionString, ConnectionString, UseDevelopmentStorage=true

DiagnosticsConnectionString, ConnectionString, UseDevelopmentStorage=true

ContainerName, String, mysqlphp11

FullBackupHour, String, 06:00

IncrementalBackupDuration, String, 10

RecycleThreadSleepTime, String, 300

EnableWindowsAzureDrive, String, False

EnableBackup, String, False

*Note, we will be using the Dev Fabric Storage in this walkthrough, feel free to use your cloud storage if any.

Endpoints (Name, Type, Protocol)

PeerEndpointIn, Internal, tcp

MasterElectionService, Internal, tcp

MySQL, Internal, tcp

InstanceManagerEndpontIn, Internal, tcp

Local Storage

MySQLStorage, 200MB

MySQLDatastore, 1024MB

BlobBackup, 500MB

Next up, we want to edit the behavior of the worker role such that when the worker role starts, it will update the PHP ini (configuration) file so that our PHP web role will know where is the MySQL database located in the cloud.

11. Open up MySQLAccess.cs in “MySQL_WorkerRole” project and make the following changes:

In the internal class “MySQLClient” add a string constant – relative path to your php ini file.

Code:
private const string REL_PATH_TO_PHP_INI = "./../../PhpMyAdminWebRole/approot/php/php.ini";

Next find the line “string masterHost = instance.IPEndpoint.Address.ToString();

“ and add the following after the line:

Code:

//Set php ini so PHP knows where is the host and port of the MySQL endpoint

FileStream fs = File.OpenRead(REL_PATH_TO_PHP_INI);

StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(fs);

//Read all text in INI File

string php_ini = reader.ReadToEnd();

//Closing resources

reader.Close();

fs.Close();

//Add in details (Host IP Address and Port)

php_ini = php_ini.Replace("mysql.default_port =", "mysql.default_port = " + port);

php_ini = php_ini.Replace("mysql.default_host =", "mysql.default_host = " + masterHost);

File.WriteAllText(REL_PATH_TO_PHP_INI, php_ini);

string iniFile = Path.Combine(baseDir, "my.ini");

File.Copy("my.ini", iniFile, true);

[NEW UPDATE!]

I have changed the logic of the codes to use Environment Variables instead of updating the PHP INI file on runtime. Please make sure your function "public bool Start(int id)" looks something like the one below. (: The code is now easier to understand and shorter.

public bool Start(int id)

{

try

{

string baseDir = RoleEnvironment.GetLocalResource("MySQLStorage").RootPath.Replace('\\', '/');

string dataDir = RoleEnvironment.GetLocalResource("MySQLDatastore").RootPath.Replace('\\', '/');

string blobDir = RoleEnvironment.GetLocalResource("BlobBackup").RootPath.Replace('\\', '/');

LogError("MySql Base directory: {0}", baseDir);

LogError("MySql Data directory: {0}", dataDir);

string command = Path.Combine(baseDir, @"bin\mysqld.exe");

SetupBlobBackup(blobDir);

if (!File.Exists(command))

{

SetupAzureMySql(baseDir);

SetupAzureMySqlDataDir(dataDir);

}

MySqlConnection rootConn = GetConnection(_endpointName);

if (IsRunning(_endpointName))

{

int currentId = GetMySqlServerId();

if (currentId == id)

{

return true;

}

command = Path.Combine(baseDir, @"bin\mysqladmin.exe");

Process.Start(command, "-u root shutdown");

}

RoleInstanceEndpoint instance;

//Get the "MySQL" instance

instance = RoleEnvironment.CurrentRoleInstance.InstanceEndpoints["MySQL"];

//Get the port of the instance

string port = instance.IPEndpoint.Port.ToString();

Environment.SetEnvironmentVariable("MasterPort", port, EnvironmentVariableTarget.Process);

//Get the IP address of the instance

string masterHost = instance.IPEndpoint.Address.ToString();

Environment.SetEnvironmentVariable("MasterHost", masterHost, EnvironmentVariableTarget.Process);

string iniFile = Path.Combine(baseDir, "my.ini");

//update the my.ini file with mysql server details

UpdateMyIni(iniFile, baseDir, dataDir, port, id.ToString());

ProcessStartInfo startInfo = new ProcessStartInfo(command);

startInfo.RedirectStandardOutput = true;

startInfo.WorkingDirectory = baseDir;

startInfo.UseShellExecute = false;

startInfo.CreateNoWindow = false;

startInfo.Arguments = "--console";

Process driver = new Process();

driver.StartInfo = startInfo;

driver.Start();

StreamReader sr = driver.StandardOutput;

string output = sr.ReadToEnd();

while (!IsRunning(_endpointName))

{

Thread.Sleep(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10));

}

catch (Exception ex)

{

LogError("Error in MySqlAccess start(): {0}", ex.Message + ex.StackTrace);

return false;

}

return true;

}

Phase 4 – Configuring Wordpress

12. Copy “wp-config-sample.php” in the “wordpress” folder to “wp-config.php” then open up “wp-config.php”

13. You may want to look at http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php to know more about what each setting does.

Under the MySQL hostname section, set it to be “define('DB_HOST', ini_get("mysql.default_host").':'.ini_get("mysql.default_port"));” , without the quotes of course ;)

[NEW UPDATE!]

Under the MySQL hostname section, set it to be “define('DB_HOST', getenv("MasterHost").':'.getenv("MasterPort"));” , without the quotes of course ;)

For the rest of the settings, configure it as per normal (refer to: http://codex.wordpress.org/Editing_wp-config.php)

Phase 5 – Deploying

14. We will use the Dev Fabric for now. Hit F5 and wait for all your instances to run.

Important : For those who want to deploy on the cloud,

Phase 6 – Database Setup + Testing

15. Navigate to your PhpMyAdmin site. (If you didn’t change any settings, it should be at http://localhost:81/PhpMyAdmin/index.php )

16. Login as root with no password.

17. Create a new database (the name for the database you defined when setting up wp-config.php, lets say “wordpressdb”) called “wordpressdb”.

18. Create new user with the credentials you set in “wp-config.php” previously and give the necessary rights. Remove the root users’ privileges after you created the new user (security concerns here.)

19. You can now proceed to your WordPress app to test! (Default: http://localhost:81/wordpress/index.php) WordPress will detect whether the app have been set up or not and prompt you accordingly. Enjoy your new PHP Application using MySQL on Windows Azure Cloud!

Code concepts: LINQ's expression trees

2010-03-09T00:17:00.002-08:00

In this overview about LINQ's expression trees, Justin James shows how you might use expression objects in your projects.

One of the core components that underlies .NET Language-Integrated Query (LINQ) are expression trees.
LINQ statements operate on types of IEnumerable or IQueryable; in the latter case, the statement is translated into a format that an external system can understand, run against the external system, and translated into LINQ results. This is where the expression trees come into play.
The LINQ statement is examined and turned into a type of expression object that presents the code as data that can be inspected; from there, the LINQ provider is able to look at the expression, determine how to execute the request, and then provide results.
In this column, I look at what an expression tree is, and how you might use it in your projects.
To say that an expression tree "presents the code as data that can be inspected" means that you create can expression object and each of its properties represents code or information about code.
For example, a BinaryExpression object represents an expression that has a property for the "left side" parameter and the "right side" parameter, which can be examined for things such as the type of the parameter and the name. As a result, you can "drill down" through an expression's properties (with a normal recursive tree walking algorithm) and look at every part of the expression at the lowest level.
Expression objects can be created from existing code or manually composed; the latter case is where a lot of the objects' utility comes into play. By writing code that creates expressions based on runtime conditions, you can do all sorts of tricks, including making a domain-specific language with its own syntax (an example that I am building towards in a series of articles).
An expression object is not just a lifeless collection of data, though; it can be compiled at runtime to present an actual function that can be run. While expressions are immutable, there is no reason why you cannot take an existing expression and copy its parts into a new one and make needed changes along the way.
Here's a simple application that creates an expression at runtime and consumes it:
using System;
using System.Linq.Expressions;
namespace TestProject
{
class Program
{
public static Func CreateAdderFunction(int amountToAdd)
{
var numberToAdd = Expression.Parameter(typeof(int), “number”);
var addAmount = Expression.Constant(amountToAdd, typeof(int));
var binaryExpression = Expression.Add(numberToAdd, addAmount);
var lambda = Expression.Lambda>(binaryExpression, new ParameterExpression[] { numberToAdd });
return lambda.Compile();
}
static void Main(string[] args)
{
var addAmount = int.Parse(args[0].ToString());
var argument = int.Parse(args[1].ToString());
Console.WriteLine(CreateAdderFunction(addAmount).Invoke(argument));
Console.ReadLine();
}
}
}
In this application, we have a method (CreateAdderFunction) that returns a Func object, a function delegate that accepts an int as an input parameter and returns an int as its output. It takes a parameter of type int, amountToAdd. Inside this function, it creates a ParameterExpression object called numberToAdd; this object represents a parameter of type int named "number".
Next, we define a ConstantExpression object (addAmount) of type int and assign it the value amountToAdd (the parameter passed to the method). Then a BinaryExpression object with a node type of Add is created; the left side of this object is the numberToAdd ParameterExpression, and the right side is the addAmount ConstantExpression.
After this, a LambdaExpression is made, with the signature of Func, and it is passed the BinaryExpression and an array of ParameterExpression objects, which is initialized to contain our numberToAdd variable.
Finally, we compile the LambdaExpression and return it, which gives us the Func that we promised to provide to the caller.
This is a very roundabout way of constructing the equivalent of the following:
public static int Adder(int number)
{
const int numberToAdd = 5;
return numberToAdd + number;
}
But, in the case of our expression version, the value of "numberToAdd" is determined at runtime and within code. This is a very simple example, but it illustrates the point well.
With an expression, we could create new functionality at runtime. Granted, this has been in .NET for some time with things like System.Reflection.Emit, but expressions are easier to work with than previous runtime function creations.
Also, you can see from how we composed the function how it could be useful to read the data of an expression built from an existing function. Code can be made to analyze an expression and take action based on what it finds.
Expressions trees are a pretty advanced topic, and you won't find a use for them in every project. I hope this overview whets your interest in expression trees and introduces you to a technique that you may want to learn more about. I may use expression trees in my RPN calculator project, so stay tuned for more on this topic.