What's In Your Gadget Bag, Scott Wasson?

 

http://www.gizmodo.com/archives/whats-in-your-gadget-bag-scott-wasson-024138.php

I first bothered Scott Wasson when I lived in Kansas City and he had the privilege of then getting his hands on one of the first Shuttle XPCs with an AGP slot or something (I don't remember exactly. I just remembered that I wanted to touch it). It made sense to me that Scott, as the editor of one of my favorite PC hardware nerd sites Tech Report, would be happy to have some random punk travel to his house and look at a computer. And to his credit he said "Come on over," (I never did, I was just testing him because I'm an awful person) and he was just as accommodating when we asked him, "What's in your gadget bag?"

I'm a PC guy, so most of my gadgetry focuses on functionality rather than fanciness. The fact that I sit in front of a PC all day long, working from a home office, puts a damper on any impulses I might have to buy something really cool, like a sweet, sweet Treo 600. (Well, that and the fact I'm really cheap.)

Let's start with my main PC, since it's the coolest piece of gear I have, although it's far from mobile. I use this puppy for working, gaming, surfing, serving files, playing music, and everything else in between. I haven't really given in to the urge to split up roles between different systems, as many power users have. I like having one main box that does almost everything. The system's vital specs are: Athlon 64 FX-53 processor, Asus SK8N motherboard, GeForce 6800 GT graphics card, M-Audio Revolution 7.1 sound card, 2GB of DDR RAM, three 7200-RPM hard drives totaling 320GB of storage, a Sony DVD RW combo drive, Logitech Z-560 speakers, a Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro, and a Logitech MX 510 optical mouse. The PC is housed in a shiny black Antec Sonata enclosure. For displays, I have a pair of Trinitron monitors, one 19" and one 21". (Once you go dual, you never go back.)

The only discontent I have with the system is the Asus SK8N, which is a little slow for an AMD64 motherboard and lacks some key features, including a second processor socket. I'm contemplating moving to a dual Opteron board with a pair of Western Digital Raptors in RAID 0 as the boot volume, because I enjoy the creamy smoothness of a multiprocessor system. That may sound excessive, but when you spend over ten hours per day in front of the same system, work or play, it begins to make some sense.

I do have two special-purpose PCs in the house. In the kitchen, we have the fantastic Kitchen PC, based on a Shuttle Zen XPC ST62K small form factor box. I built this system in order to convince my wife to give me my laptop back; she had commandeered it for use on the kitchen countertop. This little cube-like system features 802.11g wireless networking and a wireless keyboard/mouse combo. Any remaining wires are tucked away between the counter and the refrigerator to keep counter-top clutter to a minimum. Otherwise, the specs aren't anything too fancy: a Pentium 4 2.8GHz CPU, 20GB hard drive, 512MB RAM, built-in Radeon 9100 IGP graphics, and a DVD-ROM drive. I've paired it up with a 17" LCD monitor with integrated speakers, so it can do almost anything a regular PC would. Mainly, it acts as a Remote Desktop Connection terminal. The kids play games on it occasionally, and we sometimes watch TV in the kitchen via this PC.

Speaking of which, my other special-purpose PC is a digital media server that sits quietly in one corner of Damage Labs tuning television, recording shows, and streaming video to other PCs in the house. This box is a pearly white Shuttle XPC SB75S with a 3GHz Pentium 4 and an NVIDIA Personal Cinema card. I use SnapStream's BeyondTV software to provide all of this system's TiVo-like functionality, but I haven't found a software package yet that can equal a TiVo for ease of setup and use. As a result, a real TiVO still rules our living room.

The rest of my gadgets are mobile gear, but they are still very PC-centric, for a couple of reasons. One, I use my laptop in place of a PDA, MP3 player, audio recording device, or anything else of that sort. Two, my laptop's number-one job is to act as a thin client, usually via Wi-Fi, whether I'm out on the back porch writing or reporting from a trade show. Even when I spent a couple of weeks in Taiwan and China recently, I checked mail and did most of my work via a remote desktop connection back to the main PC in my office.

The laptop is a Compaq X1000 series Centrino-based system with a Pentium M 1.4GHz processor, 768MB of RAM, Radeon 9200 graphics, and all the basics, including Wi-Fi. I got it last December in a cataclysmic rebate deal for $850, all told. It won't play the latest games, but it does everything I need, and it's fairly slim and light. The wide-aspect screen is gorgeous, too, although it's only 1280x800 resolution, and I'd kill for a high-density LCD.

The pictured array of other stuff is constituted mostly of accessories for the laptop. Starting from the top left and moving across, we have:

• A portable optical mouse that AMD was giving away as schwag. This is one of the few "mini-mice" for laptops I've ever seen with enough spacing between the left and right buttons for a truly usable mouse wheel.
• A universal power adapter for international travel.
• A 256MB USB thumb drive, used to carry benchmarks to, and benchmark results from, perilously unattended trade show display systems.
• An extra USB Wi-Fi adapter, just in case.
• A cheap pair of earbud headphones.
• A few packets of Splenda, so I don't have to endure the torture of coffee with NutraSweet or be thrust into a sugar coma.
• A cheap (sensing a theme yet?) headset for my phone.
• A Samsung A500 phone. Yes, this is also cheap, and it doesn't do much well beyond basic cell-phone duties. I do use Sprint's wireless web feature to get news updates sometimes, but not often.
• On the bottom left is a Microsoft 802.11g wireless router. I replaced it at home with a hackable Linksys WRT54G, but this one I'll take on the road for longer trips, so I can go wireless inside my hotel room. A router also helps for sharing a single hotel broadband connection among multiple TR staffers, as we did at Quakecon this year.
• A home-made crossover cable, just in case.
• Spooled up Ethernet and phone cables.
• A cheap mic for interviews.
• The last few items are accessories for my camera, a Canon PowerShot G3 that's not pictured for should-be-obvious reasons. We have a lens cleaning pen, mini-tripod, remote control, and a USB cable.

The G3 is a fantastic 4-megapixel camera that's much more portable than the digital SLRs. At least, that's what I keep telling myself when the upgrade temptation strikes. Truth is, the G3 is more camera than I am photographer; it has manual settings for everything and lots of nice touches, like a built-in neutral-density filter that allows one to combine the use of a flash with macro mode without getting hotspots. I'm still learning to use it well, and given proper encouragement, it takes great pictures. The G3 can also record short video clips that it outputs as AVI files, perfect for posting on the web.

The Tech Report [TechReport]

Related...

Information about my current MIIS/Exchange project

lab this scenario.  include Solaris Identity Server.

http://blogs.msdn.com/btrst4/archive/2004/10/22/246310.aspx  |  Comments

My current project is using MIIS to assist with an Exchange Resource Forest. The company has decided to run Exchange in the headquarters and each sub-Company would maintain their own Active Directory for login and security.  The Exchange forest has placeholder accounts (mailboxes) that the external accounts have rights to.

MIIS is responsible for two things:

1. Synchronize the GALs from each sub-company to the central Exchange Resource Forest.
2. Provision mailboxes when new accounts arrive on the sub-company Active Directories.

It is an interesting project with some intriguing problems.

Access to sub-company AD's:  In most cases, the sub-companies do not want to give access to their AD from the central MIIS server. We could certainly refine the access to read-only at certain containers, but there are still firewalls and other political factors that override.  In our case, we will likely ask the sub-company to export only the necessary data needed to an ADAM instance that can buffer some of the above issues.

Migration status:  Initially, the primary data source for the user data is on the legacy side.  Once the users are migrated, my data flow rules need to switch directions for certain attributes.  We decided to add a "migration status" field that would be used in our MIIS logic to help customize the attribute flow presedence and direction.

External account IDs/SIDs:  In order to permission the mailboxes, we obviously need a trust in place, but we also need the user account and/or the user SID from the sub-company AD.  The can prove challenging depending on how you are permissioning.  The permission process is also slightly different for a brand spanking new mailbox compared to one that already exists on the store.

Once the migration is over, the whole thing becomes a lot easier.  With something this large, it could take a long time....

Related...

Syncing. Syncing! Syncing! Syncing! SYNCING!!!

I came to the same conclusion when I upgraded from my Motorola StarTac to a Samsung i600.  It was all about the synching.

I don't really 'get' PodCasting, but no one should complain about losing data from their cell phones.  You should buy a data cable and synch software when you buy your phone.  Don't buy a phone that doesn't support synch unless you plan to re-enter all your contacts by hand (and don't bitch to me about it or call me to try and figure a way to import after your phone is trashed).

I think this is a sales opportunity for cell phone companies and manufacturers and I find it just as bizzare as Beattie that Motorola sold StarFish.  What were they thinking?

http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/1008086.html  |  Comments

Here's something I've felt for a while now, but haven't really figured out how to express until now. I finally just realized that it's actually a very simple idea: Syncing is *THE* most important piece of technology in the future of mobility. Voice is and will be the number one service, but after that it's syncing. Syncing! SYNCING!

I don't care if you *never* use your mobile for internet data, you still want your address book backed up in case you lose your phone, right? That's syncing. But then it goes from there to any piece of data you store on your phone. You want to not only back it up, but make sure it's synced with the rest of your digital world. Calendar and PIM information is what Palm does best. Also apps (again Palm does it perfectly), then music files where the iPod shines. And then it goes on to every file you have on your mobile device. You want to make sure it's the latest version, that if you change that data it's reflected anywhere else you use that data and finally, that if in case you lose that data, it's backed up somewhere you can get at it. It's simple. I don't care if this all happens over a USB Cable, A Bluetooth Connection or a Cellular Network. It just needs to happen, and seamlessly. If you have to think about syncing, it's not syncing.

What are the benefits of syncing? Well, we're seeing it now in the PodCasting meme, aren't we? The simple act of grabbing the latest audio files and syncing it magically to your music player has created a whole new medium for people to broadcast audio. That's huge. Right now it's mostly focused on iPods, but that's going to quickly change. Look at what's happening in the mobile space with Windows Mobile phones:

My Smartphone may kill my iPod!

During Microsoft's big living room push yesterday, the gave a demo of Windows Media Edition 10 mobile. This is the Windows Media Player 10 on a Smartphone. Great new interface for playing music and videos, but the extra cool part is that it will sync the data I have on my Windows Media Library on my desktop, onto my phone. This includes, MP3s, songs built at MSN Music, and (here's the kicker) video recorded from TV on my Media Center PC. So I record an episode of "Boston Legal" but am taking off on vacation for a week. No problem, sync it to my phone and watch it on the plane. Very nice! The only thing my iPod has on my phone now is the storage capacity. Now that I don't like my iPod, I do. It's with me everytime I go to the gym. However, I would still like to only carry one device.

By making syncing "just work" Microsoft has enabled their Windows Mobile phones to become a player in this new Podcasting medium. Automagically. And today.

Those of us struggling with other less capable syncing devices - i.e. all Nokia phones - can just look on in wonder at the new technology that's passing us by because most phone manufacturers fail to get the importance of this technology. Look at Motorola for example - I was completely blown away last year when they sold Starfish to what became Intellisync. That's such an important technology and Starfish had some really fundamental patents, and they just threw it away. Why?

I'm sitting here now trying to figure out how to hack this together on my phone, while the Microsoft and Palm smartphone owners are syncing their devices with ease. I'm amazed at the fact that my device - the Nokia 6620, a class of device which has outsold all other 10 to one - has the most rudimentary and flaky syncing ever. Someone from Nokia has seen me bitch before and sent me a link to the newest version of the PC Suite which happily includes the USB cable drivers, but it's still only marginally better than it was. I can now sync my contacts regularly, but trying to browse my phones files will crash my computer. Joy.

I own a Palm, an iPod and various phones from the top manufacturers. I can tell you from experience that not one mobile syncing experience is nearly as elegant as the first two devices. Why? I know that Americans are PC Centric, therefore our companies will focus on making sure any other device works well with it before any other functionality, but Motorola? They should know better. And Nokia? If they're serious about initiatives like LifeBlog, then they *need* to get Syncing working perfectly and easily. Just today I just saw PDF slides talking about Series 60's focus in the enterprise market. Well they can just forget about that until they take syncing seriously. All of the manufacturers can. It's Microsoft's for the taking until they get their head out of their collective asses.

I mean, really. The best $30 I ever spent was for the chunk of white plastic Apple called a "cradle" for my iPod mini. It now has a home. The back of the plastic has two ports - one for syncing and one for the stereo. Perfect. Expensive, but incredibly functional. So where the hell is the cradle for my 6620? Or for my other phones, for that matter? That shows you right there where the focus of the phone manufacturers is and it's not on syncing.

Okay, sorry. I'll stop ranting. Mike's post just annoyed the fuck out of me. I've been bitching about Microsoft catching up in the smartphone space for over a year. Well past the 18 month production cycle needed to fix these sorts of problems. And though my blog posts get passed around in various companies (most notably Nokia), no one seems to take the Microsoft threat seriously. AT&T Wireless just launched the Windows Powered C500 which has everything you'd want in a smartphone, and it's small as hell, for a few hundred dollars less than my Nokia. This is Very Annoying. We all knew it was coming, but still. You just have to go back to Netscape to see what happens. At Web 2.0 we were given this incredible booklet with charts and metrics. In 1998, Netscape had over 50% of the browser market. The next year they dropped to 47%. By 2004, Microsoft had over 90%. Poof. Complete dominance in less than a few years. The common wisdom is that this can't happen in the mobile market, but I see it. It's happening. Syncing is just one more example of how they're doing what they need to do to make this happen. Microsoft is adding features, competing on price and doing what it needs to do to distribute their platform. They haven't caught up yet, but it won't take them long if they keep executing like this.

Up until today, syncing hasn't played that big a role in the mobile space. If it had, then Palms would rule the world, wouldn't they? Palm sync is the best sync bar none. But that was in a world where data services were secondary by a wide margin. We're now entering that next phase in the mobile revolution - where data services become a bigger and bigger portion of revenue stream to operators and developers like myself. It's in this new world where syncing is going to play a huge part. (Hmmm... considering this, maybe it *is* too early to count Palm out... though they have other problems). Phone manufacturers need to *get it* and get it fast.

I wrote a while ago about how J2ME games were for the most part "disposable applications" because there was no way to actually back up the games on most phones as a sort of anti-piracy measure. As soon as you ran out of room on your mobile for new apps, you basically have to delete a previous game to make room for a new one. Consumers won't stand for this for very long. They won't stand to lose their SMSes. They won't stand to have to copy over their photos one-by-one to some online storage or sent via Bluetooth (pay attention Verizon). They're going to want to click once and have all of their digital identity copied to a safe storage place instantly, easily and securely. And again, that comes back down to syncing.

</rant>

-Russ

Related...

Web Active Directory PeopleUpdate

This appears to be what many clients are looking for, a web front end for Active Directory.  I want to test it further, but it appear to be cheaper to buy than build your own.

http://www.webactivedirectory.com/

PeopleUpdate provides an intuitive web-based search and update interface in Active Directory environments. It allows for search, export, and update functionality from a web-based interface. Uses drop-down lists and input masks for controlling data being updated and on the search page to aid in user searches. Supports searching only specific OU's, LDAP paths, etc. and standard LDAP filters to constrain search results.

Related...

Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Resource Kit & Virtual PC 2004 SP1 Released

Testing MOM 2005, install Resource Kit in lab.

http://blogs.msdn.com/nickmac/archive/2004/10/14/242055.aspx  |  Comments

The Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Resource Kit consists of tools that can be categorized into the following categories:

 

·        Management Pack Toolkit: Helps you create, test, deploy, customize, maintain and troubleshoot management packs.    

•	Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) Wizard: Creates a management pack to monitor business processes. By leveraging the BAM components of BizTalk Server, the wizard allows you to build a management pack using BAM Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and raise alerts when these KPIs deviate from normal operating conditions.
•	Configure Action Account: Helps you configure management packs in a low privilege scenario.
•	Convert Management Packs to XML (MP2XML): Allows you to convert a Management Pack (AKM) file to XML.
•	Event Creator: Allows management pack authors to generate an event based on events that are currently registered to the NT Event Log.
•	Managed Code Response Utility: Makes it easier for you to configure managed code responses in MOM.
•	Management Pack Differencing Tools: Provides a report on changes from the source to the destination management pack.
•	Management Pack Version Checker: Verifies and compares version of imported management packs to the latest published ones.
•	Management Pack Wizard: Builds a management pack containing a monitoring role, components for the role and allows you to add state based rules to your management pack for monitoring Windows Services and Windows Performance Counters.
•	Remove Blank Names: Gives a unique name to rules that have no name so they can be imported.
•	Resultant Set of Rules: Gives you a way to view the resultant set of rules that are currently targeted to an agent.
•	Rule and Computer Group Toggle Utility: Allows you to enable or disable computer groups, rule groups, and rules from the command line.

·        Infrastructure Management Solution Accelerators: Best practice guidance and tools to help you increase your operational efficiency with MOM 2005.

•	Alert Tuning
•	Autoticketing
•	MOM 2005 Service Continuity
•	Multiple Management Group Rollup
•	Notification Workflow

·        MOM Product Connectors: Maintain awareness of your system and service availability monitoring across heterogeneous platforms and application environments.

·        Troubleshooting Tools: Quickly repair problems or diagnose and collect all required information for PSS.

·        MOM Power Toys: Helpful tools like    

•	Agent Helper: Automatically allows management of agents when there is no heartbeat present by restarting the agents and re-installing them as needed.
•	Operators Console Notifier: Alerts the operator through a pop-up tool.
•	Password Updater: Enables remote service account renewal.
•	SharePoint Web Part: Enables you to show MOM data from within SharePoint leveraging the MOM 2005 SDK tools.
•	Task Launcher: Launches MOM tasks from the command line

   

The Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Resource Kit is available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/mom/downloads/2005/reskit/default.mspx

 

Check http://www.microsoft.com/mom/reskit for a quick synopsis for all the tools.

 

Virtual PC 2004 Service Pack 1 Released

Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 Service Pack 1 (SP1) contains the latest software updates for Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 that improve the reliability, performance and manageability of Virtual PC. Updates have been made to improve the performance of Windows XP Service Pack 2 as a guest in Virtual PC, to improve the manageability of virtual machines when used with SMS 2003 Service Pack 1, and to provide support for running Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition as the host operating system.

Some of the fixes included with SP1 have been previously released as separate updates. This service pack combines them into one update.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=b07c9ef0-265a-4237-ae3b-25bc8937d40f&displaylang=en

Related...

These are a few of my favorite tools (part 1)

From the Microsoft Blogs. If these guys find tools useful, they are probably worth a look.

I have used FRSDiag, Ultrasound and Sonar for AD and they are 'must have's'. Jury is out on UPHClean, not sure if its worth the overhead on my workstations. The last link is the 'top five' AD tools from Windows IT Pro (formerly Windows 2000, Windows NT, etc).

http://blogs.msdn.com/efleis/archive/2004/10/08/239670.aspx Comments

Often times people ask what sorts of tools and logging we use, and why we use them. I thought I’d share a few with y’all. These are some of the ones I find myself using more than most. I’m sure I’m forgetting some key ones, but I’ll revisit this topic I’m sure.

Server Performance Advisor (SPA)

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=61a41d78-e4aa-47b9-901b-cf85da075a73&displaylang=en

SPA is a tool that I use to diagnose performance issues. While Perfmon is great and putting the counters in front of you, SPA encapsulates a ton of logic and can perform some pretty solid diagnostic work in the area of AD / ADAM performance. It helps you understand what your directory is busy doing, and what work is bogging the server down.

Using LDP (the STATS control) and inefficient and expensive search logging

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnactdir/html/efficientadapps.asp

Often times we have a single query that we know is slowing us down, but we want to understand why that particular query is slow. The STATS control, when issued with a query, returns additional diagnostic information about the processing of that query which can help you make better choices around query optimization.

Inefficient and expensive search logging allows you to log events that indicate what queries are bogging down your server with custom-defined thresholds of what you consider egregious and worth flagging. This provides some overlapping data with what one might obtain by running SPA, but it is very targeted at just giving you data about this subset of queries which your directory services.

From the Windows support tools, repadmin

Repadmin is one of the more powerful AD tools out there. People typically use it for replication status reporting, but it has many other interesting uses as well. My favorite switch which does not directly report replication status information is /showattr, which lets you issue arbitrary queries against one or many DCs for reporting in a more distributed fashion.

Be sure you use repadmin from the Server 2003 CD or from ADAM. We added many new features as of those releases.

You’ll find that, going forward, I’ll probably reference repadmin a lot and use sample syntax for it. I really use this tool as one of my primary troubleshooting tools.

FRSDiag & Ultrasound

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=43CB658E-8553-4DE7-811A-562563EB5EBF&displaylang=en

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=61acb9b9-c354-4f98-a823-24cc0da73b50&DisplayLang=en

Anyone who has worked on FRS issues in their environment has probably realized that out of the box diagnostic logging in FRS is not detailed enough to give meaningful data which lets you resolve issues. In response to this, we released FRSDiag. This tool aims to collect data from many different replicas in a given FRS replica set at once and aggregate the data such that analysis can be performed quickly.

In the area of proactive monitoring, Ultrasound is the Microsoft tool for FRS health. This tool installs an agent on the servers hosting the replica’s and regularly collects health information such that you can ensure replica health at all times.

UserEnv logging

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=61acb9b9-c354-4f98-a823-24cc0da73b50&DisplayLang=en

Anyone who has had a group policy issue has probably been asked to collect a userenv log. UserEnv logging can be flipped up on the fly through the modification of a single registry value, UserEnvDebugLevel. My personal value of choice is 10002 (hex), and I’ll then collect the UserEnv.log file for inspection. Often times you can find a policy issue upon first glance at this log.

UPHClean

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=837115

Once you’ve dug in to a profile unload problem you realize that they can often be difficult to track down and even more difficult to resolve. In response to this, we released UPHClean. This tool helps diagnose the offending process / application so you can understand what it is that is keeping handles on resources required to be released during the profile unload process.

Today there was actually an article in a magazine (thanks to an MVP for pointing it out to me) that listed what they felt where the 5 most important AD tools out there. While I haven’t actually used these myself, it is always interesting to hear what others think. That article can be found here: http://www.windowsitpro.com/Windows/Article/ArticleID/43879/43879.html

That’s enough on tools for a while. I’m sure this topic will be mentioned over and over again as the months pass by. There is really an endless supply of good tools out there. Do holler with your favorites.

Related...

Highly available ADAM

This is an important issue.  Once you deploy ADAM and its in production, it really becomes a necessary part of your infrastructure and needs to be highly available.  This article is a good start.

http://blogs.msdn.com/efleis/archive/2004/10/07/239102.aspx  |  Comments

I thought I'd post on ADAM once more before moving on to something new. Once you get me started on something, it's tough for me to switch gears!

 

One of the most common questions I’m asked about ADAM is “how do we deploy highly-available LDAP/LDAPS?” In AD, people often rely upon DC discovery (connect to the naming context name, let your API set do the discovery) but ADAM isn’t fortunate enough to have such a rich discovery mechanism. There are many reasons for this that I won’t get in to here. (It is worth noting that you are welcome to implement your own, and if you do I’d like to hear from you!)

 

When it comes to solutions, people typically first ask about clustering their ADAM nodes. This is an unfortunate first question for several reasons. First, cluster hardware tends to be pricy. I like to evaluate more economical solutions to start, move on to pricy ones if required. Secondly, ADAM doesn’t cluster well. You certainly can run ADAM on cluster nodes, but it doesn’t give you the benefit you are probably looking for as the DIT can not be a shared resource among multiple nodes.

 

At this point people start to look gloom, thinking there is no answer here. This is the point where I mention that NLB can achieve what you are looking for! That is, connect to sharedname.domain.com and be routed to an available (and hopefully not too busy….that’s up to your NLB solution of course) node to service your request. This solution can utilize Microsoft NLB or a 3^rd party product, it doesn’t make any difference. That is entirely up to you.

 

There are, of course, some tricks. LDAP will play with NLB no problem, but LDAPS is a bit more picky about it. If there weren’t any tricks this wouldn’t make a very good post really. Fundamentally there are two tricks to making LDAPS & NLB & ADAM all play well together:

1)      Don’t pull a cert by the name of nodename.domain.com. Rather, pull a cert by the name of sharedname.domain.com. This way when clients pull the cert from the DSA it is ok with the name on the cert as it matches the name the client connected to.

2)      Place the cert in the ADAM service MY store, not in the machine store. This way ADAM selects the correct cert to hand out to clients. Oh, and of course be sure this is the only cert in the service MY store.

 

Once you’ve got the hang of it, there are other more complicated things you can do, such as multiple different names on the cert. But this should get the ball rolling!

Related...

The C prompt – command line information

Great links for 2003 and XP.  Its good to review new command line utilities every once and a while.  Between Resource Kits, service packs and Cygwin utilities I try to review my command line options every few months (seasonally?).

http://blogs.msdn.com/bgroth/archive/2004/10/02/237105.aspx  |  Comments

To some, the command-line (Start, Run, CMD) is a confusing place to be. To others, it’s the place to get stuff done quickly. Here are a few useful links for that second group, or if you’d like to be part of that group:

• Command-line reference for Windows Server 2003: All of them for Server 2003
• Command-line reference for Windows XP: All of them for WinXP
• Command-line Nirvana: This is a nice little introduction to WMI Command-line, or WMIC, for those of you who want to get REALLY serious about doing everything/anything from a command-line.
• How to Use Command-Line Shortcuts: A pretty lengthy article on the entire topic.

Related...

Completing RPC over HTTP

A good overview of the pre-requisites and installation process (with reference links) for RPC/HTTP on Exchange 2003.

http://blogs.msdn.com/mkleef/archive/2004/10/01/236432.aspx  |  Comments

In the last part of my fun Exchange 2003 deployment I wanted to enable RPC over HTTP for Outlook 2003's VPNless Exchange connection. Was actually quite easy, heres the process (for a single server Exchange deployment with no front ends)

1. Highly recommend you use ISA to front end it. As I mentioned in previous posts I used ISA's reverse proxy function to terminate a secure SSL channel at the ISA Server and then recreate another one separately to Exchange...why? primary reason is security. Secondary reason is that you can use OWA forms based logon with SSL and use the great compression functions that it now has.

2. You need Windows Server 2003 DCs and GCs in order for it to work. Also Exchange 2003 must be running on Windows Server 2003. Patch both the Windows Server install and get Exchange 2003 SP1 on aswell.

3. Install the RPC over HTTP service on the Exchange Server from Add/Remove programs.

4. Follow Q article 833401. If you have deployed Exchange 2003 SP1 it makes it a lot easier and you wont need to type as much in in terms of the registry settings that are required. You will need to add a registry setting to each GC though that Exchange will be accessing.

Test it by going to the https://mail.servername.com/rpc and authenticating. If it comes back and says "HTTP Error 403.2 - Forbidden: Read access is denied" then youve done everything right! :)

5. You need to configure your Outlook clients to use it as an option. You configure it in your email settings/Exchange Server settings, then the Connections tab and finally Exchange Proxy settings. You can just fill in the FQDN of your mail server thats being reverse proxied and if you want the next level of security to mutually authenticate then you need to put that in aswell. Tick the "On Slow networks connect using HTTP first then TCP/IP" and choose basic text authentication. Obviously, because you're using SSL to encrypt the channel your basic text credentials wont be compromised.

The client computer must be running Microsoft Windows XP Professional Service Pack 1 (SP1), and the update package that is described in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article must be installed:

331320 Outlook 2003 performs slowly or stops responding when connected to Exchange Server 2003 through HTTP.
Note: The update package that is described in article 331320 is included in Microsoft Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 (SP2). If you have installed Windows XP SP2, you do not have to install the update package that is described in article 331320.

Enjoy!

 

Related...

Director's Cuts: Frank Zappa's Music Legacy

Brief piece on new Frank Zappa release.  I had the pleasure of seeing Zappa live in concert when I was in college.  He was a musical innovator whose life was cut short by cancer.

http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=4058871&sourceCode=RSS

Weekend Edition Sunday music director Ned Wharton reviews two new discs featuring the music of rock innovator Frank Zappa -- Ensemble Modern's Greggery Peccary & Other Persuasions and Quadiophiliac, a DVD-audio disc featuring multi-channel audio mixes Zappa created himself in the 1970s that are only now being heard by the public.

Related...

MCSEworld Articles

Pretty good overview of several Exchange functions.

http://hellomate.typepad.com/exchange/2004/09/new_mcseworld_a.html

Daniel Petri's published some new Exchange articles over on his excellent MCSEworld site...

Configure MX Records for Incoming SMTP E-Mail Traffic

Configure Exchange 2000/2003 to Receive E-Mail for other Domains

Configure Specific E-Mail Addresses for Specific Exchange 2000/2003 Users

LDAP Search Samples for Windows Server 2003 and Exchange 2000/2003

Great stuff Daniel!

Related...

OpenLDAP 2.2 Administrator's Guide

OpenLDAP 2.2 Administrator's Guide

Latest documentation for OpenLDAP.

IBM has two pretty good Redbooks on LDAP.

LDAP Implementation Cookbook

and


Using LDAP for Directory Integration

Outlook.exe /cleanreminders versus /resetfolders

Short link for the KB article:    http://tinyurl.com/6nv7l
this is an update to command line switches for previous Outlook revs with a better explaination of why you would use /resetfolders and /cleanreminders

Outlook has a bunch of commandline switches that can be used to change certain behaviors, reset settings, or do things such as create messages. There are two switches that are sometimes confused with each other: /cleanreminders and /resetfolders. I got an explanation of the difference between the two once, and wanted to share it:

outlook.exe /cleanreminders recreates the reminder search folder and restarts the search.

outlook.exe /resetfolders recreates the properties (and possibly the folders themselves) that point to the default folders. We cache the entry IDs for the default folders on the root of the store so that we don't waste RPCs looking them up every time we need one. /resetfolders causes us to look for a folder named “Inbox“ or “Calendar“ (or localized versions). If we find the folder, we stamp the entry ID for that folder into our special property for that folder.  If we couldn't find a folder by that name, we create the folder and stamp the property.  The reminders folder is one of our default special folders, so this applies to it, too.

Related...

http://blogs.msdn.com/kclemson/archive/2004/02/06/68894.aspx  |  Comments

How the M: Drive came about

Interesting article.

In Exchange 2000, we introduced a new feature called IFS.  IFS stands for “Installable File System”.  This uses a little known and even less used feature of NT that allows the OS’s file system (like NTFS or FAT) to be replaced.  The initial reason for doing that was as an optimization: it would allow protocols, such as NNTP and SMTP, to transfer the MIME messages directly as files.  In Exchange 5.5, MIME messages are broken down into MAPI properties and stored in database tables.  When they need to be accessed as MIME, they are put back together. In E2K, MIME messages are stored as MIME files in IFS and only converted into MAPI if a MAPI client (such as Outlook) accesses them.

 

The other perceived benefit of IFS was that the Exchange storage objects could then be made visible through the file system.  So you could go to a drive letter (M: was chosen for two reasons: first, “M” for “Mail”, and second, because it was in the middle of the alphabet and least likely to collide either with actual storage drives -which start at A and move up - or mapped network drives - which start at Z and move down), and get a list of mailboxes, navigate to mail folders via cmd or windows explorer and look at actual messages.  This was considered pretty neat at the time and since it didn’t seem to be much more work to allow that access, it was thrown in (there may have been other, better reasons but I’m not aware of them). This ended up causing some challenges down the line related to the intricacies in how email objects need to be handled and mapping the file access behavior to them.

 

One of the biggest problems encountered was around security descriptors.  This is difficult to explain without a detailed understanding of NT security descriptors, so I will simplify the explanation for the purpose of this discussion.  The main part of an NTSD is called a DACL (discretionary access control list).  It contains a list of users and groups and what they can do to that object.  There are two main types of entries: allows, which say what an entity can do; and denies, which say what they can’t.  The order of this list is very important.  A standard sequence of entry types is called “canonical”.  NT canonical form calls for a particular sequence.  Because of legacy issues, MAPI canonical form requires a difference sequence of entry types.  Applications that modify security expect a particular sequence and will behave erratically if the sequence is wrong.  By creating or modifying objects through the M: drive, it will change the canonical format of the DACL’s and result in unexpected security behavior.  This is bad.

 

A related issue here has to do with item level security.  E2K also introduced this feature, which is that items in a folder can be secured independently of each other and the folder.  While this has some great uses, for many email systems this level of security is not needed.  When a message has the folder default security, it simply references that property in the folder.  When a message has its own security, there is an additional property that needs to be stored (this also has an affect on how folder aggregate properties, such as unread count, are computed).  Having lots of individual security descriptors can result in both increased storage size and poor performance.  When a message is created or modified through the M: drive, it will always get an individual security descriptor stamped on it, even if it is exactly the same as the folder default.  This can also lead to unexpected behavior.  For instance, if you change the default security on the folder, it will not change the security on any messages in it that have their own security descriptors.  They have to be resecured individually.

 

Another challenge is in relation to virus scanners.  Virus scanners typically look for valid storage drives and spin through all the files on those drives and check them against virus signatures.  The M: drive appears as a normal drive, so virus scanners were picking this up and processing it. This can have very detrimental affects on system performance and may also result in message corruption in some cases.

 

Finally, IFS runs in kernel mode.  This is a privileged execution path and it means that problems in this area can have much more severe affects (and be harder to track down) than in other areas of Exchange, which all run in user mode. Blue screens are one possibility if something goes wrong.

 

IFS has given Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003 a lot of advantages: we maintain content parity for MIME and make MIME message handling faster and more efficient as well as increasing the performance of such messages retrieved via internet protocols. But as I described above, there can be problems if IFS is misused via the M: drive. In Exchange 2003 we have disabled the M: drive by default to hopefully help reduce the likelihood that customers will encounter any of the issues described above. I encourage every system administrator to keep this disabled on E2K3 and disable it on all E2K servers as well. See KB Article #305145 on how to do this. 

 

- Jon Avner

Related...

http://blogs.msdn.com/exchange/archive/2004/02/09/70067.aspx  |  Comments

What is DomainPrep and Why DomainPrep the Root Domain?

Add to 'best practice' document for Exchange 2003.  Forward to ChrisV.

What is DomainPrep? Why does Exchange recommend running DomainPrep on the Root Domain if there are no Exchange servers or users in that domain?

I have been asked these questions so frequently I thought I’d do a post on it. I know DomainPrep is a little mysterious to many people so let me quickly explain what DomainPrep is and does.

DomainPrep does all the tasks for Exchange Setup which require Domain Admin rights to accomplish. These tasks are:

• Create two groups; The Exchange Enterprise Servers group (EES) and the Exchange Domain Servers group (EDS)
• Create the Microsoft Exchange System Objects container (also known as the Domain Proxy Container) in the Active Directory
• Add permissions (mainly for the EES and EDS) to the Domain, AdminSDHolder, and MS Exchange System Objects containers
• Add permissions to the EES, EDS, and the Pre-Windows 2000 Compatible Access Group

Note: The Recipient Update Service (RUS) will keep these permissions up to date when Exchange is installed in new domains and when new Exchange Full Administrators are delegated.

Thus running DomainPrep requires an account that has Domain Admin level permissions, but does NOT require any Exchange Admin permissions. This way you don’t have to give your email administrator Domain Admin permissions in order to install the first Exchange in a given domain.

That’s it. 2 groups, an object, and some permissions for the groups. That’s all DomainPrep is. It doesn’t create any directories, install any binaries, or add any regkeys. It’s actually very lightweight and runs in seconds.

So then why do I need to run DomainPrep is my Root (or Parent) Domain if I’m not going to have any Exchange servers or users with Exchange mailboxes in that domain? The short answer is "Because that’s usually where the GC is".

The main issue has to do with DSAccess. DSAccess is what Exchange services use to access information in the Active Directory. In order for it to find the correct information, DSAccess needs to talk to Global Catalog servers, even if those servers are not in a domain where Exchange is installed. DSAccess will only talk to GCs that it has rights to. It will check to see if it has rights to that GC by checking if it has privileges to the Security Access Control List (SACL) on the GC. These rights are only propagated by the Recipient Update Service (RUS) and you can only create a RUS for domains that have been DomainPrepped.

If you follow this chain, you’ll see that it comes down to "DSAccess needs to be able to talk to a GC", and in order to do that the GC has to be in a domain which has been DomainPrep’d and has a RUS pointed at it.

So if you have a parent-child domain configuration, with Exchange only in the child domain, and GCs in the parent domain, you will have to run DomainPrep in the parent domain AND create a new RUS on an Exchange server in the child domain and point that RUS at the parent domain.

Now I know you’re all asking the question "What if you don’t have a GC, or Exchange servers, or users getting Exchange mailboxes in the parent domain?" The answer is: "Then you don’t need to DomainPrep the parent domain."

So if all your GCs are in the child domain, and none are in the parent domain, and there are never going to be any Exchange resources in the in the parent domain, then you don’t need to DomainPrep it or create a RUS for it. But that configuration doesn’t happen very often and the consequences for not DomainPreping the parent are bad enough (like the Exchange Information Store service won’t start) that we tell everyone to always domainprep the parent domain.

- “Berg”

Related...

http://blogs.msdn.com/exchange/archive/2004/02/27/81133.aspx  |  Comments

Exchange ActiveSync Always-Up-To-Date Webcast!

Schedule time to view webcast and test w/i600

http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2004/08/03/207350.aspx  |  Comments

Two folks from the ActiveSync team have a webcast tomorrow (8/4) on how to configure and troubleshoot Exchange ActiveSync for always-up-to-date support. This is a pretty common question on the newsgroups so if you're at all interested stop by!

Here are the details:

Exchange Server 2003 now includes the ability to synchronize Windows MobileT
devices wirelessly using Exchange ActiveSync Server.  As more devices
running Windows Mobile 2003 enter the market, many users now have an option
to enable Always-Up-To-Date sync with the server.  This session will:  Give
an overview of the mechanics of the AUTD system. Describe how to configure
devices to use AUTD, Describe the available AUTD administration settings and
Give tips and tricks for troubleshooting issues should they arise.

http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032255964&Culture=en-US

[Author: Neil Enns]

Related...

BlogJet

BlogJet

Looks like a simple blog client - have Megan test this and Blogger to see which she prefers.

VERITAS Architect Network Home Page

VERITAS Architect Network Home Page

already have logon, but check out resources and subscribe to RSS feeds.

ornj.net

ornj.net

Web Album Generator looks interesting.
How does it compare with Adobe Elements or Album web publishing?

BASH 3.0 Released

I *love* BASH.  Its the 'baby duck syndrome' - BASH was the first UNIX shell I used that solved all my problems.  At one time, I knew it inside and out.  I had 10-20K .bashrc config and alias files.  It corrected my spelling.  I aliased all my common typos, so even when I fat fingered a command it worked.

Life was good.

Now, 20 years later there is a 3.0 release.

Maybe its time to run a Linux desktop.  Ahh, if I only had the time.

http://freebsdaddicts.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=170

http://tinyurl.com/3prfa

The first public release of bash-3.0 is now available with the URLs

ftp://ftp.cwru.edu/pub/bash/bash-3.0.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/bash/bash-3.0.tar.gz

and from the usual GNU mirror sites.

This tar file does not include the formatted documentation
(postscript, dvi, html, and nroffed versions of the manual pages);
that may be retrieved with the URLs

ftp://ftp.cwru.edu/pub/bash/bash-doc-3.0.tar.gz
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/bash/bash-doc-3.0.tar.gz

When unpacking the documentation, make sure to extract the tar file
in the bash-3.0 source directory.

 

Credit Firms Resist Anti-ID Theft Measure

My Way News

Look into this after we get back from Atlanta.

How to compare mortgage deals

On Personal Finance | How to compare mortgage deals

Good article, print and review our mortgage with Barb

subversion: Content

subversion: Content

FreeBSD Install Guide

Mad Penguin :: Howtos : FreeBSD Install Guide

New PowerToys for OneNote 2003 SP1

From Chris Pratley's Blog.

I set a reminder to load this weekend.

http://blogs.msdn.com/chris_pratley/archive/2004/07/28/199379.aspx  |  Comments

Better sooner than later - the first PowerToys are already here and available for download. Bear in mind that “PowerToy = hobby project”, so these are not necessarily the same robustly designed and high quality things you should expect in the main product, but that said, many of us use them all the time at work and they have been worked over plenty by our internal user group, so they're good to go.

You can check out the PowerToys page (may not be up just yet if you're reading this post July 27-28):

http://www.microsoft.com/office/onenote/powertoys

Or go directly to these download pages to get the first two PowerToys:

IE to OneNote. This PowerToy adds a button to IE that lets you send any page or a selection on a page to OneNote. You get the same results as a copy/paste would give you, but you can do it all in one click. It also nicely puts the clippings in a single section so you can browse and clip, browse and clip. Then review your research later, complete with links back to the source pages. Link:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=a9872a17-2d0c-47f0-9b4d-026e94a8ef1c&displaylang=en

Outlook to OneNote. This PowerToy adds a button to Outlook so that you can send any email message (or group of email messages if you multi-select) to OneNote to keep them together with notes and other docs. Very handy if you like to have a “project folder” section in OneNote that keeps all your stuff together in an easy to flip through and modify/reuse format.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=87c661e3-178d-46f0-979e-0fdd96327928&displaylang=en

More to come in the next weeks...I love extensibility.

Related...

Housing Bust: It Won't Be Pretty

The New York Times > Business > Your Money > GRETCHEN MORGENSON: Housing Bust: It Won't Be Pretty

Review with Barb. Our timing was good. Review impact on student loans and other issues.

Seed Magazine: a Maxim for science writing

Check Library and Borders for recent copy.

http://www.boingboing.net/2004/07/19/seed_magazine_a_maxi.html

I just finished reading my first issue of Seed Magazine, a science-culture magazine that is the best new magazine I've read since I picked up my first issue of Wired.

The writing in this magazine -- mostly by scientists -- is stellar, and there's a fantastic mix of long features and short factoids about science. The approach to the subject is like the very best science fiction, coming at it from the intersection of the social and the scientific, going for the cultural stories behind the science. There's even a fiction department, something that tech-oriented magazines have been sorely lacking since Omni folded up.

This is almost a Maxim for science, something that makes science cool and relevant and edgy. The mag's been around for quite a while, but it wasn't until my cow-orkers Seth and Annalee turned me onto it that I discovered it. Now that I have, I'm taking out a subscription.

I really can't gush enough about this: it's the best subway reading I've had in months. Link

Related...

Roof Mounted Soft Side Cargo Carrier - Waterproof 10391: Trailer hitch bike rack and trailer hitches - etrailer.com

Roof Mounted Soft Side Cargo Carrier - Waterproof 10391: Trailer hitch bike rack and trailer hitches - etrailer.com

Stream Machine

Look at ordering one.

http://www.kk.org/cooltools/archives/000478.php

Simple water cannon

Related...

Ice cream makers

Note - bring ice cream maker and get ingredients this weekend.

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1771112788833189/

The LA Times ice cream maker review has forced us all to ditch our computer terminals for a sunny porch and some old fashioned ice cream grinding. Though ice cream making never seemed very practical, several hours and a sore rotator cuff later, the results were always well worth it. They liked this 50 dollar Cuisinart ICE-20 series best, which being an automatic, requires no half-a-day cranking marathon. But if you need that workout to negate your ice-cream-eating guilt, then Cuisipro’s 50 dollar hand-cranked Donvier Ice Cream maker is a good bet.    

Related...

PSS and Memory Dumps

 

http://blogs.msdn.com/mfp2/archive/2004/06/22/162044.aspx  |  Comments

A whitepaper which describes memory dump files and their use by Product Support Services (PSS) has just been released to the web.  The paper was created in response to customers who have voiced frustration with requests to obtain multiple memory dump files to troubleshoot certain problems and wanted to understand the processes used by PSS to collect and analyze those files.  I remember working on all of the types of cases in PSS that required a memory dump to find root cause.  In many cases, it was difficult for a customer to schedule any down time because of SLA agreements, etc., so asking them to get dumps that could require up to 15+ minutes of down time was not always acceptable.  Hopefully this document will help explain the importance of capturing memory dumps and help everyone understand why PSS frequently requests them.

The paper discusses the following key areas:

• Definition of a memory dump file 
• Differences between full memory dump files and mini memory dump files
• An explanation of why it takes so long to create a memory dump file 
• An overview of tools that are used to capture memory dump files 
• A discussion of capturing hangs, performance problems and crashes with memory dump files
• An explanation of why engineers will need multiple memory dump files to diagnose certain problems 
• A chart that customers can view to set their expectations on the type of data PSS needs to begin troubleshooting certain conditions

Currently this document is found here: http://support.microsoft.com/support/exchange/content/whitepapers/MemoryDump.doc

Related...

OneNote 2003 SP1 has wrapped

download SP1 RTM and install.
Review features outlined in Chris' post.

http://blogs.msdn.com/chris_pratley/archive/2004/06/25/165609.aspx  |  Comments

Today we had our ship party for OneNote 2003 SP1 down at Sammamish State Park (at the south end of Lake Sammamish in Issaquah for those who might know the greater Seattle area). Although we have signed off on the code, the process of building a patch, verifying it, and creating international versions continues so you won't see the final SP1 bits for a few more weeks.

Some highlights of SP1 for me (allow me to sing our own praises on this one day, please):

1. It is super rock solid stable. The original version of OneNote was pretty darn stable, but for SP1 we have had the chance to collect Watson data for the last 9 months or so and have been able to fix a large % of the crashes and hangs people have seen. We measure "mean time to failure" for OneNote and we are now averaging about 900 hours of execution time between crashes for the original version. That means if you add up all the time that we are running for all users and divide by the number of crashes logged, we get a pretty big number.  The numbers for SP1 are still coming in but they are way ahead of the original release for the same pre-ship period, so we should be able to beat 900hours no problem. We are pretty happy with how stable we are - people expect version 1 of an application to be weak in this area and we have not fallen victim to that - quite the opposite.
2. We were able to address most of the top user requests - as I have written before, we couldn't do everything, but we did a lot. It is fun to hear people who have not yet used the preview ask for improvements and be able to tell many of them that *everything* they have asked for is already in Sp1.
3. Breakthrough experiences, like real-time note sharing. If you're the only person you know who has OneNote, then this is not of much use to you, but if you work with others, such as in a team, it is very powerful. We do our status meetings using this. One of us invites the others to a shared session, then everyone joins and adds their status to the status page - all at the same time. It is freaky to watch, since the whole page is filled in after about 2 min, with text and diagrams appearing all over the place. Then the whole meeting is way faster because you can read the status and not wait for each person to say all of it. Once I had to be at home and had to miss the meeting, and decided to join a shared session that was going on at work. I could see everything everyone else could see who was actually in the room, and could even add comments and ask questions silently by typing them into the shared note surface. Wow - try doing that over just the phone.
4. Focus on end users, corporate team scenarios. We took the feedback we got from people not just on bugs but on how they wanted to use the product and tried to make their scenarios work. In particular, we worked with several corporate customers to help make OneNote work as a group collaboration tool, and it shows in the SP. Shared folders, SharePoint integration, real-time sharing, etc are all inspired by working with our “rapid adopter“ corporate customers. Some of these were questioning the value of OneNote to their organizations at first, but now they are enthusiasically embracing it thanks to SP1.
5. Big focus on reducing annoyances. Some things are hard to work with such as the “offline files” system in Windows. It is just flaky, and bites OneNote especially hard because we do our constant-save thing. SP1 has improved on this experience tremendously due to the extreme dedication of a few people on the team to tracking down issues and working hard to get clear reproducible steps so the bug can get resolved or a workaroudn devised. Although we couldn’t do a radical overhaul of our ink user experience, the same sort of attention to detail went into tracking down obscure and annoying bugs that users would occasionally report (such as ink jumbling on a page for no apparent reason). We think we’ve managed to exorcise these problems due to a lot of hard work by a couple of people. Similarly, our already solid anti-file corruption code has been tweaked and tuned to the point where we're starting to feel like the Maytag repairman...
6. FEATURES FEATURES FEATURES:

• Insert Document as Picture (Word/Excel/PowerPoint/Pictures)
• Shared Sessions – real-time peer-to-peer multi-user sessions (we had over 70 people once)
• Share With Others Pane – e-mail/SharePoint/file share/real-time
• Shared Folders for collaboration with others
• Much better performance with SharePoint
• Password Protection of sections
• Send to/Save as/Publish as Word
• New stationery pane – new stationery too!
• Insert Screen Clipping
• Insert Outlook Meeting Details
• Create Outlook Contact & Appointment
• Insert Date/Time (Ctrl-Shift-F)
• Change date/time on page header
• Names for subpages (they take the first text on the subpage)
• Resizable page tabs (drag page edge)
• Video Recording & linked notes
• Copy text/ink/voice notes from Pocket PC/SmartPhone
• Updated default notebook with out-of-the-box useful structure and "Helpful Tips" section
• Updated online and offline help with top requests (thanks for the on-line feedback!)
• You can specify scope of search before running it (drop-down next to green "go" button)
• Better default notebook structure
• Skip slow sections & folders during search
• 10x perf fixes for Navigation drop-down and clicking on section & folders tabs are all faster
• More note flags (25) and additional symbols
• Tablet improvements
  • Added support for scratch-out gesture
  • New erasers (including point erase, like a pencil would do)
  • Erasing a word in a sentence and rewriting it puts the new word in the right place after converting the sentence to text
  • Customizable pens (color, thickness, name, etc)
  • You can now double-space your notes without getting a lot of separate containers
  • Better ink performance and responsiveness
  • Selection tool allows you to grab individual strokes in ink drawings
• Can mark pictures as "background" for use in stationery
• Improved sync support for offline files/Intellimirror
• Can associate different default stationery with each section, create new pages from stationery using split new page button
• Drag/drop files onto OneNote page allows link/copy-and-link/insert as picture
• And loads more little tweaks and nasty things removed...

Now, on to the next version...

Related...

Microsoft Introduces Its New Command Shell

download and test on XP.

Does it run on Windows 2003?

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=7419

Microsoft's latest episode of The .NET Show is la...

Related...

The Clutter Control Rules

The Clutter Control Rules

Wow - review with Barb and the girls.

Timex/Sinclair 1000 Emulator

Timex/Sinclair 1000 Emulator

Batch Image Processing - Home - Image Genius

Batch Image Processing - Home - Image Genius

download and test.
can't Adobe do batch processing?

The New York Times: Movies:

The New York Times: Movies:

Add this link to my portal.
Add google search to blogs
add stat link (check report) to blogs, re-register if necessary.

Geekzone, mobile forums

Geekzone, mobile forums: "main "

FixYourOwnPrinter.com

 

http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2004/06/10.html#a1020

My decade-old LaserJet 4 recently developed a bad case of the dreaded "accordian paper jam" syndrome. It's been a workhorse. Maybe, I thought, I should just put it out to pasture. But I had a hunch that the process of getting it fixed would be interestingly different from the last time I had to do something like this. And sure enough, it was. I found several repair kits online, but zeroed in on FixYourOwnPrinter.com because their kit includes a video that illustrates the process.

Here's 45 seconds from my favorite scene¹, which demonstrates the right way to remove the clip from the end of a roller. I, of course, did it the wrong way. "Be careful not to lose these e-clips, they're easy to pop off," the guy said, just as my e-clip took the leap of faith. That was the only mishap, though. The printer's fixed, and I've joined the ranks of FixYourOwnPrinter.com's satisfied customers.

The video isn't going to win any production awards. It's handheld, and not always in focus. But it was plenty good enough to walk me through a complicated procedure that couldn't have been communicated as effectively in any other way. And because it didn't need to be better than that, it was doable for some folks whose business is printer repair, not video production.

---

¹ Courtesy of Blue Pacific's Turbine Video Encoder. I've been wanting to standardize on Flash as a universal no-hassle video playback format. Turbine, an encoder for Flash video, is a $39 product. And it offers a free version (which I've used here) that's unrestricted except for a subtle watermark. Looks like a nice solution.

Related...

Label Your Power Supplies

 

If I can be so bold, here's a tip for my fellow geeks to make your life easier: label your power supplies.

When you get a new toy that comes with a power cable that has a converter in (either in the middle or built into the plug) slap a label on it explaining exactly which one of your hundreds of devices this works with.

I have a "workshop" in my office. It's sort of a server room, sort of a place where all my geek crap can accumulate. I inherited a box of about 100 different power cables, convertors, and supplies. I can only tell you what about a third of them are actually for.

Last month, some of the guys wanted to stick a bunch of laptops in the conference room. Ignoring the wireless connection (and me, since it was late at night), they rummaged around the workshop, found a hub, and rummaged some more until they found a power supply with an end that would fit. Too bad it supplied twice the voltage that the hub needed — some sparks and noxious fumes later, I can scratch one hub.

I can't tell you the number of times I've had to dig through a pile of cables for 30 minutes to try and match up amps and volts between a device and a power supply. Now, whenever something new comes in the mail, the first thing I do is slap a label on the supply or the cable. It'll make your life easier, trust me.

Click here to comment on this entry

Related...

http://www.gadgetopia.com/2004/06/11/LabelYourPowerSupplies.html

[Gadgetopia]

LinksysWrt54g - SeattleWireless

LinksysWrt54g - SeattleWireless

Hacking WRT54G

Furl - Your web page filing cabinet

Furl - Your web page filing cabinet

Add Furl to laptop

Notes from Danny O'Brien's NotCon Recap of Life Hacks

Interesting. Check out book references.

Bink.nu | Identity Management Resources - Getting Started

Bink.nu | Identity Management Resources - Getting Started

Need to research MIIS.
Is this Generally Useful for home network?
Interoperability with Solaris.