Another Tech Blog

My current favorite is FlightControl by Firemint.  It severley addicting.  The gist that you are a flight controller and you have to land planes and helicopters byt dragging a flight path from the plane to a runway.  Sounds easy, right?  It is, for the first few planes.  Then more planes come, and planes of differing speeds.  Pretty soon, CRASH, a mid air collision.  The graphics are simple but clear, and the interface is nice.  I’m sure I’ll be burning through my battery on this instead of working on the train ;)

eWeek is reporting that a Microsoft Executive, Stephen Elop, while speaking at the Web 2.0 Expo hinted that Microsoft will eventually release a version of the Office suite for mobile devices, specifically the iPhone.  I think this is important for a couple of reasons.  It further emphasizes MS’ current move away from desktop based toward web delivery of applications.  In the statement, Elop also eluded to an Ad supported web based version of the Office suite.  For a couple of years now Microsoft has said the the future of their software  is not the desktop but the web.  This move, along with the recent Office Live releases, are proof of that directive.  As an aside, I’ve been impressed with Office Live – it is a great collaboration tool, and is free – essentially you get sharepoint for nothing.  Very cool.

Back to the Office apps for iPhone – if this is a reality, it would be another rung up the ladder to getting more business away from Blackberry.  There are already apps on the Blackberry that let you edit Word and Excel docs; on the iPhone you can view documents, but not edit them.  There are apps on the way that will give users the ability to edit docs on the iPhone, specifically QuickOffice, but a release from Microsoft would likely trump any third party contenders.

As for the utility of native Office apps on a mobile device, that is another discussion entirely.  Personally, I think there is limited use for this – maybe editing a word doc for a word or three, or correcting a cell or two in a spreadsheet, but I can’t imagine trying to do any real work in Word or Excel on a mobile device.  That said, this “announcement”, if it becomes a reality, is good for Apple, and good for Microsoft.

If you don’t already know, conflicker is a worm that exploits a buffer overflow in the windows server service.  The worm is wiley – there are several hundred variants and it is difficult to know how widespread it is.  You can find more info on the Wiki or on the McAfee discussions.

The panic over this and other worms like it makes me mental.  Don’t get me wrong, these things can cause all kinds of havok not only in terms of potential identity theft, but also tons of lost hours to clean infected machines.  But if you pay just a little attention to security you’ve been innoculated against this and other threats like it for months.  Way back in October 2008 Microsoft released patch MS08-067 to close the security hole that conflicker exploits.  This was an out of band update, meaning Microsoft released the patch outside of the normal monthly patch release because it thought the release was critical.  I know that at my firm, we took this very seriously and had every node patched within two weeks, then made the patch “autofix” meaning that any node that connected to the network would get the patch automatically.

Getting rid of this worm is a pain in the ass if you have it, but protecting yourself from the exploit, which effectively makes the thing benign, is really easy.  Run Windows Update!  If you are infected, there are lots of resources to get rid of it.  Most decent anti-virus programs will get rid of it – McAfee, Norton, AVG, etc.  Google conlicker and you will get tons of help.

I hate the way the media jumps on these things and makes people panic for no good reason.  When did the news become just fear-mongering?  And what good does that do for anyone?  I suppose rasing awareness of malware is ultimately a good thing, but do they have to make it seem like the world is coming to an end?

Patch your system and you are fine.

I took a deeper look at the 3.0 release and there will be landscape mode for email and SMS messages.  Check out the preview here.  It’s about time that Apple put this out, but the proof will be in the pudding.

On a related iPhone note, I installed the Skype app for iPhone today.  I am really excited by this, and so far so good.  I don’t have good cell reception at my home, so having the ability to make calls while at home via a low cost service like Skype will be great.  Unfortunately, Apple is restricting Skype traffic to Wi-Fi only to protect AT&T’s revenue stream for calls.  Chat will work over 3G, but calls will not.  I understand this, but it is really anti-consumer.  Apple has said that they do this for all VoIP apps for iPhone, so it’s not like Skype is being singled out, but this feels very heavy handed and to me comes close to a monopoly power (AT&T is the only US carrier for iPhone at the moment) marginalizing a direct competitor.  The app will be very useful, but would be so much more useful if it worked over the 3G network.

Unfortunately, this is another example of Apple almost getting it right.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why we love and hold on to technology gadgets when they are not necessarily all that great.  I can think of several things I’ve bought or used at work that were “the next big thing” or just new and cool that turned out to be more trouble than they were worth.  Did I stop using them?  Sometimes, but more often than not, I’d keep plugging along, being frustrated and annoyed by something that didn’t quite do what I wanted it to.  Why?

I guess I, like a lot of tech guys, love technology.  When something new comes along, you want to believe the hype and be the first one in the pool.

Take the iPhone 3G for example.  I wanted to get an iPhone for a long time, but didn’t before active sync was available – I needed to be able to use the device for work in order to justify the expense.  When I got it, it was clear in the first couple of hours that the phone was no match for my Blackberry for email, and the phone was noticeably worse.  Since I was evaluating the device for use at my firm, I put together a list of probably a dozen or more issues any one of which was enough to prevent me from recommending we adopt the device as a blackberry replacement.  I told lots of people NOT to get the phone as a business device, and to this day I don’t think it is an enterprise class device and that Blackberry is much better at corporate service.  But I kept the phone.  And I love it.  Why, why why?

Because it almost does what it needs to.  Because it almost gets it right.  And because I’m hopeful that over time the issues with the device will be worked out.   That has already happened for many of the early issues (dropped calls are not the issues that they once were, battery life is better) and I’m hopeful that more software improvements are coming.   We will see with 3.0 what happens, but I’m hopeful.

Office 2007, IE7, IE 8, Vista, Windows 7.  All are things I beta tested or installed as soon as the release candidates were out.  Some were huge disappointments (Vista, IE 8 ) and others were really neat, but a big pain in the rear (Office 2007).  I still kept using Office 2007 even though I had to have a separate machine to run things that just didn’t work with ’07.  Why?  Again, the promise of improvement and the cool features that did work outweighed the problems.  As a tech guy I can overlook/tolerate stuff that others can’t because I can find a way around the problem.

It’s like the girl who dates the bad guy even though she knows it will end badly.  Or the guy who dates the really hot girl who treats him like crap.  You hope for the best and ignore the immediate problem because you think it will eventually get better.

Hope lives!

It’s is about time – Apple just announced that version 3.0 of the iPhone OS will have, among other things, cut and paste.  This has been one of my pet peeves for a long time, and frankly I can’t believe it hasn’t been done yet.  I don’t understand how it was left out in the first place, but I’m glad that is will be available soon.

Interesting addition to the OS is the ability for messages to be pushed to the device.  I’m excited about this for lots of reasons, but mostly for mobile IM.  I’ve yet to see this done right on any mobile device, so I’m hopeful that this will actually work this time.  Time will telll…

How cool is this?  This is the Eye-Fi wireless memory card for your camera.  It wirelessly transfers photos and video from your camera to your computer and/or to your favorite photo site whenever you are in range of the wireless network you specify.  No more cables, no more uploads, just turn your camera on when you get home and….poof….photos are uploaded.  It comes in 2Gig and 4Gig, and a version that will geotag your photos.  I can’t wait to pick up the 4Gig card, will post my experience with it when I get it.

So far so good – I installed the beta on a couple of laptops in the last month, and so far I like what I see.  It’s very much Vista centric, but without the sllllloooooowwwwwness.  Boot time is much improved (under a minute) and there are some added features that I like.  The improved task bar holds all of your open instances of an application in a single icon.  I was a big an of this in XP, and it’s better in windows 7.   Hover over IE, for example, and every open page you have is displayed in a menu.  Choose the instance you want, and you are good to go.  Very useful.

I’m not as happy about IE 8 being included, but what can you do.  I’ve had lots of issues with Active X and other pluggins with IE 8 on lots of sites.  I’m sure that this will work itself out as IE 8 is adopted and coded to in more applications, but for now, it’s a pain in the rear, and I’ve been using Firefox instead.  I’ve also been toying with the latest version of Safari, and frankly, it kicks ass.  I’ll post a more in depth review, but the bullet is that it is wicked fast, and displays your page history in an iTunes-esque pane view from which you can choose your destination.  There are pluggins for Firefox for this too, and I think a windows Gadget or too.

Speaking of Gadgets, one of the really neat things about Vista and Windows 7 are the sidebar gadgets.  These are little (quite literally) applications that sit on the right side of your screen that provide all kinds of useful, and some not so useful, information.  There are clocks, calendars, calculators, CPU meters, search tools, IM tools – basically anything that you might think of has probably already been done.  And that is the cool part – anyone can develop an app and have it posted to the Gadget site.  Check it out. It’s so open of Microsoft – very cool.

This is the Gadget window.

My favorite gadget so far is the Nasa TV app – I can watch nasa TV right on the sidebar!

I’ll post more on Windows 7 as I get deeper in to it.

Symptom – can’t open attachments to emails.

This is one of the things about Micrsoft that will eventually push me over the edge.

A few months back, my CFO called me in to his office saying he couldn’t open attachments from an email in Excel.  I poked around a bit, and as is his wont to do, there were several instances of Excel open, 40 or so outlook items, and various other applications open on his four monitors.  He never reboots, so I assume this is just and Excel memory issue or somesuch, and recommend he reboots at the end of the day.  He does, but it doesn’t work.

I start poking around some more, and low and behold come across the Outlook Secure Temporary File Folder.  This is a little know folder where outlook stores copies of attachments that it needs to open in other applications.  When all is well, this is fine.  Outlook removes the temporary file after the attachments supporting application is closed.  If, however, you exit Outlook WITHOUT closing the supporting application or if Outlook unexpectedly closes, the temp file is NOT deleted.  Again, not normally a problem, but outlook has a limit on the number of files of the same name that it can store.  If you have 99 “orphaned” files in the temp folder whose source attachment have the same name, when you try to open the 100th, you will get an error saying you can not open any attachments.  For example, suppose you get an email every day with a report that is automatically generated.  Call it Daily Report.xls.  If you quit outlook everyday before you close the attachment and do this 99 times, you will have 99 copies of Daily Report in the secure temp folder.  When you attempt to open the attchment on day 100, it will fail.

What to do?

You need to delete all of the files in the secure temp folder.  To do this, you need to find it first ;)

You can look at the MS Article, but the location of the folder is in the registry as below.  Find the folder, delete the files and you are good to go.

Viva la Microsoft!

Thanks to T Mills for giving me the heads up on this.

Outlook 2003

Value Name: OutlookSecureTempFolder

Data Type: REG_SZ

Outlook 2007

Value Name: OutlookSecureTempFolder

Data Type: REG_SZ

Hey there, welcome to me.  I’ve tried to blog before with limited success, but as the old adage goes, if you don’t succeed, try, try again.

This will be yet another tech blog, with some other stuff that I’m interested in throw in for good measure.  I know, another tech blog?  You can’t be serious.  I am.  I don’t expect to become the next tech advice sensation, but I do hope to impart some of my knowledge and experience and highlight some of the tech I find cool.

Feel free to comment, I don’t consider myself an expert on everything, and I want to know when I’m wrong or misinformed!