I’m not sure how long this has been around, but I noticed that Google Maps now has the ability to show alternative routes when using directions. This is great when you know that you want to avoid a particular area but do not know the next best route.
To use this feature, get directions using google maps and then hover over the alternative routes. The new route will be displayed on screen at the same time as the original one. See the screenshot below for more details.
Many of us on Friends In Tech are keen photographers and therefore have decent cameras that are capable of shooting in Raw and JPEG mode and a lot of the cameras are capable of shooting both at the same time. This has an advantage in that you don’t really need specialized software to edit the JPEG files and the Raw photos are still available for the heavy duty editing that may be required.
However shooting both Raw and JPEG files in the camera slows the writing of files to the media card and also takes up extra space. In my Canon XT camera the jpg files take up an extra 25% of the media space.
By switching to Raw only, you will always have the benefits of the full original file and detail to work from but it makes it harder for quick edits if you need the JPEG formats.
From a hint on Photoshop Insider by Scott Kelby comes a link to the free (registration and email address required) RawWorkFlow.com’s Instant JPEG From Raw utility. The Photoshop Insider link also has some interesting history on the Raw format and a video on how to use Instant Jpeg from Raw too.
Note that the application does not register itself in the start menu or on the desktop - you just select your Raw files, right click and choose the Instant JPEG from Raw menu option.
I’m sure that many of you have seen the Experts Exchange website and sometimes had the frustrating situation where the site insists that you log into the website to see the result. Other times the results are shown to you if you scroll down to the bottom of the page. Thanks to Channel9 forums I’ve discovered that this only works if you came from google.
For example the dns query result shows this resulting page. By clicking on the first link in the google results and scrolling down you will find the answers. Clicking on the saved url will only give you the option to login.
Hopefully this little trick will help you get the answers you need. Is this tactic sneaky? Yes. Is it justifiable to get the answers without joining? In my opinion yes - as they are gaming Google to get to the top of the search engine, then it’s fair game to use this tweak to access the results. If Google had the option to personalise the results so that I could ignore Experts Exchange (or other sites without specifying the ignore option for every search) this would be great ,but as this feature doesn’t exist this tweak should help.
George posted a review on the Belkin 3-Outlet 918 Joule Mini Surge Protector with USB Charger a while back. At the time the price was $22 plus shipping. On Sunday, this will be available from Staples for $19.99, a little cheaper and shipping won’t need to be paid as most people will probably have a Staples store nearby.
Microsoft have for some time made available virtual images of XP with IE6 and IE7 available. With the new beta version of IE8 now available for testing, the download page for IE on XP and Vista has been updated. You can also try the various IE’s in Vista too. Note that all the downloads will expire at the end of June 2008 (but new ones will probably be available to download before then.) Apparently IE8 won’t access Microsoft Update pages unless you run in IE7 emulation and restart your browser.
Most people have probably used the Microsoft knowledge base but did you know that Microsoft Certified Partners (anyone who has passed a Microsoft exam) has access to an internal database that may have more information and articles? As long as you are already certified and have a LiveID then you can access the Microsoft Partner Level Knowledge Base.
Did you know that Microsoft have some free online training courses for Office 2003 and 2007? The Office Training Homepage helpfully shows you popular and new courses - worth checking out and referring your end users to. If you have Software Assurance then there are additional courses available too under the Microsoft e-learning scheme. To access these courses you will need to request access from the person who administers your Microsoft Licensing. In my experience, getting the e-learning access for my users took about 4 weeks or repeated emails and phone calls with Microsoft before someone could fix the system to allow my users in, but the content was worth it.
I’ve just posted a detailed guide on how I set up a Dell server to notify me whenever events such as hard disk failures or warnings occur on the server. The GUI web front end is painfully slow to setup with a lot of mouse clicking and pasting and is prone to error and can result in a non standard setup. By following the instructions in the Dell Open Management Server Administrator (OMSA) alert guide, hopefully you will see how quick and easy it is to ensure all of your Dell servers are setup in the same way.
Microsoft’s SteadyState 2.5 is now in Beta and supports Vista. Admittedly the application is in Beta but for those of you who need the ability to lock down a pc so that any changes made by users get removed on reboot, then SteadyState is well worth investigating. This application was last mentioned back in July, but the new version has recently been released.
Following on from my previous post on disposable email addresses, here is a post on disposable email addresses that come to your REAL email address.
Services such as bugmenot and mailinator are really temporary email address that you check for 5 minutes and do not bother with again. However sometimes you may want to check or receive email for an extended period of time which is where a service such as spammotel.com comes in handy. This service provides you with a random email address such as asda12fasa@spammotel.com that redirects to your predefined real address. It is possible to add prefixes to the email such as SPAM or FWD so you can filter on the incoming emails. A web interface is provided for creating new email addresses (you don’t create one up yourself) and this screen also allows you to put a description for each email set up.
Two added bonuses that come with this system is that if you reply to an incoming email address the email will go to spammotel.com where they scramble your from address so the recipient still does not know your original email (unless you forget to remove it from your signature) . The other benefit is that you can change the destination email address so that if your work email address changes, or you change employers then you have one website to change the email address at and all your subscribed email lists will continue to work.
A screen shot of the interface is below to give you an idea of how it works.
Hopefully you are all aware of bugmenot.com which provides a list of valid usernames and passwords for sites that insist you register before downloading or accessing content. The most common example quoted is the New York Times articles but other (technical) sites might include APCC and techrepublic. If you need to access and article or posting on this site, head on over to bugmenot, enter the site url and it provides you with a username, password and the likelihood that this combination will work. If it works, you click the Yes button, if not you click the No button and a new combination(s) will be offered for you. You can also add your own.
Anyway, if you want to access a site temporarily but do not want to share the details with other people OR get on the sites email distribution/spam list then you can always give a fake email address but typically most sites send a confirmation email to the email address you provided. Clicking the link in the email then authenticates you as a valid user.
Previously I’ve always used a service such as mailinator.com. When signing up you pick a nonsense (or rude) email address ending in @mailinator.com such as IDontThinkSoSpammers @ mailinator.com, check the web interface to read the email that you send, access the site and then forget about it.
Now bugmenot provide a similar service at email.bugmenot.com but the advantage is that you can instantly access the emails from a webpage by adding your email address to email.bugmenot.com/view. In the above example you would go to email.bugmenot.com/view/IDontThinkSoSpammers
A very useful service - it is interesting to see the conflict between using a service such as this and the “morality” of using it. Personally I will provide a valid email address from my own domain to a site most of the time if I expect I will continue to use the site as I can always blackhole the email address if they start spamming but for sites that want your life history when signing up OR I expect they might spam me then this is a good alternative.
What do you think - do you/would you use a service like this - have you used alternatives that may be useful? Do you think providing fake information is naughty or is asking for too much information immoral and companies deserve all the bogus information they get?
Earlier this year Microsoft ran a promotion called Exam Insurance which provided you with a free retake on a failed Microsoft Exam or a discount on the next exam if the first one was passed successfully. A subscription to TechNet was also included (if you passed) but you had to pay extra for the Exam Insurance but the extra was well worth it to get a discounted copy of Technet. Unfortunately this offer expired at the end of July but Microsoft have come back with their 2nd Chance promotion again. This time you get a free retake if you fail the first exam.
This offer runs until the end of January 2008 which provides 4 months of insurance so now is a great time to get cracking on your Microsoft certifications and try those tests that you’ve been meaning to get done but not got around to it just yet.
Personally I’m hoping to get my MCSA by the end of the year - I already have my MCDST (Desktop Support Technician) and Small Business exams, the former qualifies as an elective for the MCSA and the latter an elective for the MCSE which will be my next milestone. It is tough getting the time to sit down and do the studying for these exams as work is very busy but obtaining the qualifications is often part of a professional development plan and often comes up in annual review discussions (which I am about to have very shortly.)
Update This post was actually written a couple of days ago and intended to be released later today but the information has already been posted on In The Trenches and on Mike McBride’s blog so I am now posting it here too! My first exam is scheduled for Friday morning.
I’ve recently had to conduct two interviews for a Network Engineer at our company and at both interviews I asked questions about keeping up to date with technology. I was surprised at the answers considering the job role. I asked if they listened to any podcasts or subscribed to any blogs. Both answered in the negative. I was really surprised as I can’t see how a person can effectively keep up to date with all the latest updates, patches, bugs, tools, software and tips that a network or systems engineer needs without subscribing to a podcast or at the very least some technical blogs.
Sometimes the excuse given is that people don’t have the time to listen to a podcast or read several blogs but they have the time to watch a couple of hours tv each night or spend 30 minutes at the coffee machine discussing the game or their drinking exploits!
Hopefully the Friends In Tech site helps with little tidbits of information that don’t take up a lot of time but do provide useful feedback - and this tip is about Microsoft’s new Technet Webcast Express - webcasts on various subjects lasting about 10-15 minutes to gain a quick overview on a product or it’s features. Currently there are 9 webcasts, 7 on Sharepoint and 2 on the Office2007 document format but keep an eye open for new Webcasts. If Sharepoint doesn’t get you excited then spend 10 minutes catching up with some product news from other bloggers in an area that you are interested in - and if you have an interview in the future - don’t forget to mention Friends In Tech as the blog you read to keep up to date!
For those of you who followed the suggestions in the recent ITT Minute about Microsoft downloads, you should know all about Microsoft Steadystate. This is the new version of Microsoft’s Shared Computer toolkit - a very useful utility that allows you to freeze, rollback and control the configuration of pc’s in schools, home or kiosk machines. The new version has several new features and can be downloaded from the Microsoft Steadystate download page. A handbook for Steadystate is also available.
A long time ago back in July of 2005 on the In The Trenches Podcast, Uniform Server was mentioned as a free to download Windows Web server. From the Uniform Server website - “The Uniform Server is a WAMP package that allows you to run a server on any MS Windows OS based computer. It is small and mobile to download or move around and can also be used or setup as a production/live server. Developers also use The Uniform Server to test their applications made with either PHP, MySQL, Perl, or the Apache HTTPd Server”.
The new version, 3.4 was released earlier today and is well worth checking out. One advantage of this WAMP (Windows, Apache Mysql, PHP) application is that it is completely portable, no installation required so it can be used on a USB thumbdrive on multiple computers with no problem.
Update - Version number changed as it was 3.4 not 3.3 that was released.
Or if like me you were using the beta version of the software in order to find out what it does and how useable it is, Microsoft have now released a virtual image of Vista (30 day trial) so you can play around in a virtual environment without breaking anything.
Beejive have opened up their beta test to the public prior to launching v1.0 of their multi client chat program for the Blackberry. This client application supports gtalk, msn, yahoo and aol so is pretty useful. Several changes have made recently to improve the notification of new messages and the release notes are worth reading.
The installation information has now been moved to their website at www.beejive.com To install the application OTA, you can just point your BlackBerry browser to www.beejive.com/download.Do you use your blackberry to IM people - do you use it for corporate use or personal use? Personally I use it for a combination of both, although if I had all my friends on the blackberry account I’d never get any work done, so I have a work account for google (my primary chat client) that I use.
One useful feature that I use is the ability to send a text message to another gmail chat account that is normally offline and everytime I arrive or leave a client I send it an IM so I can then later go back and fill out my time sheet. This is quick and easy and always available - my computer may not be turned on, or I may not have my timesheet paperwork with me, but the Blackberry is nearly always by my side. A quick “L company1″ or “@ company2″ gives me good tracking capabilities.
With all the fuss about Daylight Saving Time a couple of weeks, there seems to have been very little said about the affects or problems that people had after the event.
I had several issues with out of date clients not being patched, the main ones being Windows XP service Pack1 clients that are not supported by Microsoft anymore and therefore not receiving non security patches via Windows Update. Instead we ran the daylightsavingsfix program from IntelliAdmin with a batch routine to run on affected desktops. Another desktop issue was caused by people somehow unchecking the observe Daylight Savings checkbox within Windows so their time was still an hour out!
The other issue that I had was with Kronos releasing patches right up to (and beyond) the DST timezone change but the instructions were not complete and it didn’t even update the timeclock machines out in the field so they were one hour out too.
Thankfully, the DST period is over…or is it? Next weekend, is when the original time change would have taken place - do you have any plans in place to check that machines do not change their time again?
