Apple's Piping Hot Innovation

Cool stuff...

http://www.forbes.com/2007/12/26/apple-patents-iphone-tech-wire-bc_1227appatent_print.html

New book claims Bell stole key telephone idea

Interesting...

By Brian Bergstein

updated 4:49 p.m. ET, Wed., Dec. 26, 2007
BOSTON - A new book claims to have definitive evidence of a long-suspected technological crime — that Alexander Graham Bell stole ideas for the telephone from a rival, Elisha Gray.

Read more here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22400009/

Google Reader Becomes Holiday Snitch

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/12/26/google-reader-becomes-holiday-snitch

Free and Easy Application Streaming

By Chris Wolf
I often get asked about effective ways to try out new applications, and naturally running an application in an isolated virtual machine is one of the first alternatives. Staging a VM will take at least a little time, and installing an application inside the VM will take up some time as well.

Of course, several applications are preconfigured in downloadable VMs and are available at VMware's Virtual Appliance Marketplace http://www.vmware.com/appliances/ . However, there are probably several applications that you would like to try out without having to download or stage a full VM.

That's where application streaming comes into play. Application streaming can allow you to run an application inside an isolated container on one of your systems. The isolated container houses all of the system dependencies needed by the application in order to run.
So ultimately, you can get the portability advantages of server virtualization for one or more applications.

If you're looking for an easy way to get your feet wet with application streaming, take a look at http://www.stream24-7.com .
At stream24-7, you can download an application player (think of it as an app-streaming equivalent to Adobe PDF Reader) and then run any streamable application hosted on the site.

To get started, you first need to register for an account at stream24-7.com. Once you have an account, you can then browse the site for streamable applications. (The Endeavors Technologies folks that host the site have yet to add a site search engine. I asked for a stream24-7 search engine on my Christmas List, and I'm hoping that Santa will deliver.)

A good application to take for a test-drive is OpenOffice. To try it out without having to install OpenOffice, follow these steps:

1. Browse stream24-7's business applications and
click on the OpenOffice link.

2. If you are registered and logged in, you will
see the "Stream it now" button. Click it.

3. Stream24-7 will now install the AppExpress Client
application player. The player installs as an
Active X plug-in and thus requires Internet
Explorer (or use of the IE Tab plug-in within
Firefox).

4. The Active X plug-in automatically downloads the
application player files and launches the
AppExpress Client Installation wizard. When
prompted, click Install.

5. When the IE popup wizard that launched the
AppExpress Client installation shows
"Installation Complete," you can close the
window.

6. You should now see the AppExpress Client object
on your system tray. Double-click on the
AppExpress Client object to launch the client.
Alternatively, the client can be opened by clicking
Start All Programs AppExpress Client Start
AppExpress Client.

7. In the Available Applications tab, you should see
OpenOffice 2.3 listed (see Fig. 1 at
http://admin.mcpmag.com/images/071226mcp_wolf.jpg).
With OpenOffice 2.3 highlighted, click Active.

8. When asked if you are sure you want to active the
application, click Yes. The application will now
stream down to your system. Don't worry, only the
essential code needed to start OpenOffice is
streamed down, so you'll only need to wait a
few minutes.

9. Once the activation completes, you're ready to run
OpenOffice. For example, you can start the
OpenOffice word processor by clicking Start All
Programs OpenOffice.org 2.1 OpenOffice.org Writer.

As you continue to use other features of OpenOffice, they will be downloaded as needed. Again, the benefit of application streaming is that you can use and try out applications without having to install them. Installing applications is often a big deal with the numerous freeware and shareware applications out there, as oftentimes you're unsure of if they are installing spyware on your system.

The AppExpressLite runtime creates a thin layer between the user interface and the underlying system resources. So it appears that OpenOffice is fully installed. Simply uninstalling AppExpress Lite removes any programs that it presents.

Application streaming has been becoming increasingly popular lately. If you're new to the technology, I'd recommend that you start with stream24-7, to see what the fuss is all about, and try out a new application or two while you're at it. You'll probably find that once you're familiar with app streaming, you'll find multiple use cases for it in your organization.

If you'd like to try out streaming some of your own custom applications, then I'd recommending taking AppExpress Lite for a spin. AppExpress Lite is free application streaming software that allows you to set up your own application streaming server and stream your organization's applications to clients.

Happy streaming!

Comment: http://mcpmag.com/columns/article.asp?editorialsid=2440#post

Chris Wolf, MCSE, MCT, CCNA, is a Microsoft MVP for Windows- Virtual Machine.

Leaving Computers On Helps Them Last Longer

"You are finished using your PC for the day. Should you turn it off or leave it on?"

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=fact-or-fiction-computers-sleep&print=true

Ajax View: Remotely Monitoring Web 2.0 Applications

The goal of the Ajax View project is to improve developer's visibility into and control over their web applications' behaviors on end-user's desktops.

Read more here: http://research.microsoft.com/projects/ajaxview/

Migrating Outlook contact dropdowns...

Weekly quickTIP: Losing All Contact

By Greg Shields

Not too long ago I moved my entire universe from my old computer to a new one. Though the process was a lot easier than previous moves, I found one item in particular to be missing. Specifically, I wanted to retain the e-mail addresses in Outlook's drop-down menu when I typed them into the To: field. Having used Outlook's autocomplete feature exclusively for years as my primary mechanism for finding an address, starting with a blank slate had me scrambling for contacts.

You see, an Outlook PST migration doesn't include those autocomplete addresses. They're not stored within your Outlook PST. Instead they're stored in a file with an .NK2 extension elsewhere in your profile. Making this migration even more challenging is that the location of the NK2 in Vista is different than where it was back on my old Windows XP machine.

For pre-Vista machines, the NK2 is stored in C:\Documents and Settings\{UserName}\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook. What's interesting is that this is not the place where Outlook PSTs are stored by default. For pre-Vista machines, that location is C:\Documents and Settings\{UserName}\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook, which is a slightly different path that meanders its way through the Local Settings folder.

On Vista machines, as you probably know, the path for profile information is quite a bit different. Thus, the ultimate resting place for the NK2 is different as well. For Vista, you'll want to deposit your NK2 into the C:\Users\{UserName} \AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Outlook folder. Once there, Outlook will begin using that file again to populate the drop-down list.

While looking for this file, you may also want to look through it as well. If you've been annoyed by the number and uselessness of certain addresses in your drop-down list, you can eliminate them from this file to remove them from your drop-down list. Doing this, however, is no trivial task. You can't just open this file in Notepad.

To edit your NK2, download a freeware tool called NK2.Info http://www.nk2.info/ . This tool shows you the addresses stored in the file and allows you to add and remove addresses as necessary.
Another more fully featured, for-cost tool that works for larger migrations is made by Ingressor Software http://www.ingressor.com/ .

Comment: http://mcpmag.com/columns/article.asp?EditorialsID=2419#post
Greg Shields, MCSE: Security, CCEA, is an independent author, instructor, and consultant based in Denver, Colo.

Apple Censorship: This Time It's Displays

hmmm... gotta love the customer support! ;)

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/12/19/apple_display_update/

Personal Prompts

This is useful if you need to use different users to run commands, easy to see who you are using at the moment.

WINDOWS TIP SHEET: Personal Prompts

By Jeffery Hicks

I've written about customizing your CMD prompts in the past and here's another idea. What about adding the user name and or computer name to the prompt? With not much work you can your CMD session so that it has a prompt like one of these:

[SAPIEN\JEFF] C:\Windows>
[VISTADESK02] C:\Windows>

To try these out, open a command prompt and type:

Prompt [%userdomain%\%username%] $P$G

This should give you a prompt that looks like my first example. Don't worry -- right now this is only temporary. If you close and reopen your command prompt you'll get the "old" prompt back. To get the second prompt example, use this:

Prompt [%computername%] $P$G

Or, what about adding something like this:

Prompt %computername% $V $P$G

You should get something that looks like this:

VISTADESK01 Microsoft Windows [Version 6.0.6000] C:\Users\Jeff>

These are but a few examples. Take a look at help for the prompt command to see other options.

How do you make this permanent every time you open a command prompt?
First, copy the prompt command to a text file and save it as a batch file. Next, edit HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Command
Processor. If you don't have a registry key called AutoRun, add it as type REG_SZ and enter the full path and filename to your prompt batch file as its value.

The next time you open a command window, the batch file will run and you'll have a custom and personalized prompt.

Comment: http://mcpmag.com/columns/article.asp?EditorialsID=2418#post

Jeffery Hicks MCSE, MCSA, MCT is a senior network engineer with Visory Group.

Googlepedia?

Interesting approach, definitely capitalistic! :)

December 14, 2007 • by The Associated Press
Google Inc. is working on a new Internet encyclopedia that will consist of material submitted by people who want to be identified as experts and possibly profit from their knowledge.

Read more here: http://redmondmag.com/news/article.asp?editorialsid=9346

Mac versus Windows vulnerability stats for 2007

Very interesting stats...

So this shows that Apple had more than 5 times the number of flaws per month than Windows XP and Vista in 2007, and most of these flaws are serious. Clearly this goes against conventional wisdom because the numbers show just the opposite and it isn’t even close.

Read more here:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=758

Google Gets Ready to Rumble With Microsoft

Google Gets Ready to Rumble With Microsoft

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/technology/16goog.html?ei=5088&en=51443a66d6584dc2&ex=1355461200&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

Office 2007 and Group Policy Control

By Greg Shields

We administrators often deal with Microsoft Office in a relatively unmanaged state. Office's installation routine allows for the component-wise installation of just those pieces you want your users to use. But once the installation is complete, controlling its configuration wasn't something we often concerned ourselves with.

But that doesn't need to be the case. For the latest versions of Office, Microsoft has released a set of pre-generated Group Policy Administrative Templates that allow you to lock down, centrally control, and otherwise manage the configuration of your Office installations. If you haven't incorporated these templates into your regular Group Policy management, you're losing out on the ability to control virtually every facet of Office.

For Office 2007, these Administrative Templates are located at the Web site: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=78161. Downloading them provides you with 15 ADM files that contain plenty of configurable and controllable settings within the Office suite.
Getting down into very detailed settings, these Administrative Templates enable control of things like default save location and file types all the way down to nitpicky items like "Disable the Free/Busy item in the person name Smart Tag menu." Whew!

Templates are available not only for the traditional Office components like Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint and Outlook, but also for newer services like the Outlook Calendar Printing Assistant, Groove client, Office Communicator, OneNote and SharePoint. Publisher, Visio, InfoPath, and Project get similar attention.

In a bizarre twist within a Microsoft world of ADMX files, the Office 2007 Administrative Templates all arrive as old-school ADM files, which means you won't be adding these templates to your Central Store.

The easiest way to use them is to copy them to the C:\Windows\Inf folder on the computer where you plan to use the Group Policy Management Console. Once there, the GPMC will automatically add the templates into each GPO you edit.

Windows 7 to get more touchy-feely

Multi-touch coming to a PC near your...

http://www.news.com/8301-13860_3-9833074-56.html

Microsoft Releases Office 2007 SP1 Early

It's nice to get something early for a change. ;)

http://redmondmag.com/news/article.asp?editorialsid=9331

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/default.aspx

CompUSA to close all stores after holiday's

Apparently they will close all of their stores after the holiday season concludes... interesting...

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2231399,00.asp

http://image.compusa.com/retail/collateral/news_release/compusa_acquired.pdf (pdf)

Call me a Utopian, but I want my teams flat and my team members broad

Here's a good article on having a team of generalists...

http://codebetter.com/blogs/jeremy.miller/archive/2007/08/03/call-me-a-utopian-but-i-want-my-teams-flat-and-my-team-members-broad.aspx

Mozilla, Opera look to make video on the Web easier

Hmmm... interesting...

Those two browsers will support a new HTML tag specifically for embedding video in Web pages
http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis&A=/article/07/12/07/Mozilla-Opera-look-to-make-video-on-the-Web_1.html

The Poor Man's Event Log Monitor

Weekly quickTIP: The Poor Man's Event Log Monitor Full-suite log monitoring tools offer gobs of info, but for those times when you just need a nibble, Vista's event log monitor delivers the goods.

By Greg Shields

I love tools that centralize and monitor Event Log data from multiple systems. Microsoft has its System Center Operations Manager http://tinyurl.com/23cm8q . TNT Software has ELM Enterprise Manager http://tinyurl.com/2gahnh . Dorian Software has its Total Event Log Management Solution http://www.doriansoft.com/ . Any of these systems can aggregate event log data from systems all across the network, analyze it, chew it up and spit it all back out with full reporting and rich alerting capabilities.

But sometimes you don't need a fully functional tool to solve the problem. Sometimes all you want is a quick-and-dirty way to set up an alert when a particular event log entry appears. For those times, Windows Vista's new event log provides a "poor man's" solution.

Open the event log in Windows Vista and right-click any event log entry in the middle pane. There you'll see a new context menu item called "Attach Task to this Event..." Click on this new entry to bring up the Create Basic Task wizard. This wizard pre-populates the Name, Log, Source and Event ID associated with the scheduled task. All you need to do is configure the action you want to occur when the event is logged. That action can be either the starting of a program, sending of an e-mail or the displaying of a message on the screen.

If you've got an available SMTP server on your network, configuring the sending of an e-mail allows you to specify the message characteristics right from within the Task Scheduler. Once the wizard is completed, the task appears in Task Scheduler under Event Viewer Tasks where even more configurations can be enabled.

I wouldn't discount the big players in the event log consolidation world like those I've talked about above. Their tools do so much more to make this process a lot easier -- especially across multiple machines with multiple logs. But sometimes when you've got a point problem, all you need is a point solution.

Comment: http://mcpmag.com/columns/article.asp?editorialsid=2405#post

Greg Shields, MCSE: Security, CCEA, is an independent author, instructor, and consultant based in Denver, Colo.

See the nLite - Free desktop configuration tool

WINDOWS TIP SHEET: See the nLite
Harried by the mundane tasks of configuring and loading desktops?
Here's a miracle tool.

By Jeffery Hicks

If you spend part of your day configuring or loading desktops, you
can simplify your life with a terrific and free tool. Go to
http://www.nliteos.com/ and download a copy of nLite, which is
currently at version 1.4. This miraculous tool allows you to build
customizable installations for just about any Windows OS you need to
deal with today, except for Vista -- more on that in a moment.

Tired of building an XP box, loading Service Pack 2, loading all the
new updates and then configuring it? With nLite you can streamline
and simplify this process.

Here are just a few of nLite's features:

* Service Pack Integration
* Component Removal
* Unattended Setup
* Driver Integration
* Hotfixes Integration
* Tweaks
* Services Configuration
* Patches
* Bootable ISO creation

I've used nLite in the past to create unattended installation CDs
that have made life very easy.

Because Vista has a whole new way of installing and configuring, the
author of nLite decided to develop a new solution, instead of trying
to force Vista support into nLite. I think it's a wise move. If you
require Vista support then visit http://www.vlite.net/index.html and
download vlite.exe. It has many of the same features of the
original nLite.

There is enough online documentation to get you going for both
applications, although most if it is pretty self-explanatory. So
don't fumble around in the darkness of configuration and installation.
Head towards the (n)lite.

Comment: http://mcpmag.com/columns/article.aspx?editorialsid=2404#post

Standalone Microsoft Hypervisor

Editorial - Breaking Things Apart - Steve Jones

This is good news and I'm glad that Microsoft realizes (a little) that they don't have to bundle everything together and try to force everyone to run Windows. Their hypervisor will be a standalone product, meaning you don't have to buy Windows Server to run it.

I think this is a great start towards selling effective solutions and letting the customer put together what they need rather than forcing them to buy into your entire solution. The whole battle to prevent Vista from be virtualized, prevent Linux from running on Virtual Server/PC, even the battle that is going on to prevent OS X from running on a PC is silly.

Consumers want flexibility and while they'll work within whatever scheme you set up, they'll also purchase less if you make it difficult. Look at iTunes? It's not any better than other services except that it's painless, easy, dirt simple to buy music and have it automatically appear on your device.

This new hypervisor, which allow multiple operating systems to share hardware, will sell for $28.

Twenty-eight dollars. How cool is that? I think they could easily bundle this into a lot of orders for MS software at $99 or $249 or some magic number and make money. Of course I know that there are some other free versions out there from Oracle, Sun, and others that may give them some pricing pressure, but lots of us would like to get an integrated solution and would just as soon use the Microsoft solution that might work better with Windows.

I like the bundle of SQL Server and all its sub-systems. They give me a complete data platform on which I can develop any number of applications. But I really think that this is a strategy that they should consider for Integration Services.
Keep the product bundled in with SQL Server, but it's such a completely separate environment that I think it could be sold as a standalone product as well. Imagine what would happen if you could buy SSIS to move data between your Oracle servers? What if you could buy this system for $249 or even $499? Most of the other ETL products cost much more than this (I know because they won't list prices. If they were hundreds of dollars, the price would be listed).

Just imagine how many people that got tied into SSIS might consider SQL Server for their next project.

Steve Jones

Adobe Debuts New Flash Products

Adobe Flash 9 Update 3 available.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0%2C1895%2C2227687%2C00.asp

Download Here:
http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash&promoid=BIOW

Windows XP SP3 To Include Vista Elements, Researchers Say

Sweet!

Vista's Network Access Protection modules also will show up in XP SP3. The system verifies a computer's "health" before allowing it access to a network, and has been "one of the more well-received features in Windows Vista," according to NeoSmart.

http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArticle.jhtml?articleID=204700446

With SP1, Microsoft plans to ditch the Vista “kill switch”

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=334