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  • Linux.com through IE7?

    Oct 27th 2006

    By: ben

    2 comments

    Is it just me that has this problem? I am unable to view www.linux.com through Internet Explorer 7!

    "Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site http://www.linux.com/.
    Operation aborted"

    Also, if I visit a link directly within linux.com, my browser crashes! Is this some kind of evil censorship from Redmond? :)

    Technorati Tags: Linux.com, IE7, Microsoft

    Random stuff

  • Books!

    Oct 15th 2006

    By: ben

    No comments

    These are most of the books I've read over the last few months (I couldn't find pictures for all of them). As you can see I have a lot of opportunity for reading these days due to my daily train journeys!

    Now it's time to stop reading fiction and start reading 70-291 revision materials. I've decided I want to get this exam out of the way before the end of the year, or at least before Server 2007 and all the new examinations come out!

    Technorati Tags: Books, Reading, Fiction

    Random stuff

  • BT Broadband speed testing

    Oct 14th 2006

    By: ben

    1 comment

    Gah ... my broadband connection is absolutely crap at the moment. It's meant to be a 5Mb connection, but because of a fault on the line the maximum download speed I can get is little more than you would get on 56k dial up. There are tons of sites out there for speed testing, usually I like to use SpeedTest.net - just because it looks cool.


    SpeedTest results

    The official site that BT use for line testing and fault finding is test.speedtester.bt.com.

    How to use:

    • Disable all anti-virus software
    • Disable all firewall software
    • Visit http://test.speedtester.bt.com:50301/
    • Enter your BT phone number and hit Go!

    As you can see, I am getting a pathetic 100kbps instead of the 5Mb I am paying for.


    BT Broadband SpeedTester

    Apparently it will be fixed in the next few days....

    Technorati Tags: Broadband, BT, Speed test, Bandwidth test

    Technology

  • Update on permanant deletions in Outlook

    Oct 6th 2006

    By: ben

    No comments

    I discovered this week that an upgrade to BES 4.1 will solve the problem of 'hard deleted' items in Outlook. BES 4.1 does now support hard deletions, this also includes items moved into Personal or Public folders. With 4.1 these are all properly removed from the device once they are gone from the mailbox.

    Here are the other points of interest from the 4.1 feature list:

    Instant Messaging
    Windows Messenger Blackberry client

    PIM/Organiser
    Address Lookup Enhancements

    Attachments
    Attachment viewing pan and zoom enhancements
    Enhanced PowerPoint viewing

    Administration
    Backup and restore of saved messages
    SMS, Phone calls, and Messaging can be audited
    Enterprise device authorisation - administrators can choose what sort of devices can connect to the server

    The bad news is the upgrade from 4.0.x is not free. You have to source it from your mobile carrier, and the cheapest I have found is £650 from BT. It's going to be a case of the users deciding if these enhancements are worth the one-time cost.

    Technorati Tags: Blackberry, BES

    Blackberry

  • Is Blackberry safe?

    Sep 28th 2006

    By: ben

    No comments

    I don't mean safe for your health, we already know that devices cause 'Blackberry thumb'. I'm talking here about security concerns an administrator might have when attaching these devices to your network. So far Blackberries don't have AntiVirus installed, but there isn't any virus that can infect a BB device (yet), even so viruses should be scanned at gateway level before they reach the device anyway, to minimise the risk of a virus being forwarded on to a machine that can be infected.

    Aside from viruses, up until recently it was assumed that Blackberry devices were the safest possible thing you could attach to your network and use to read e-mail, but now some clever hackers have developed "Blackjacking". Have a look at the link below which shows how to compromise a company network using a Blackberry.

    http://www.praetoriang.net/presentations/blackjack.html

    Of course to do this, you need to covertly acquire a Blackberry device, and this method will only work until the Blackberry administrator kills the handheld from the server ... which I would hope would be fairly instant if they are on the ball.

    It's an interesting read, and the moral of the story is clear - be alert and wipe your devices as soon as they are lost. If you are a Blackberry user, you should notify your admins immediately if you notice your device is missing. If it's wiped and then found by you again, it's a simple 5 minute task to restore it back to the same condition again.

    Technorati Tags: Blackberry, Security, BES, Blackjacking

    Blackberry

  • Permanent deletions in Outlook

    Sep 22nd 2006

    By: ben

    No comments

    One of my new Blackberry users complained that deleted items were not syncing properly on her device. After much troubleshooting and even doing a wipe and reload, I realised what the problem was. She was a shift+deleter in Outlook.

    In order for deletions to synchronise to a Blackberry device, you have to use the delete key on it's own, or just move the items into the Deleted Items folder. This is because the BesAdmin account needs to keep track of your messages as you move them around your mailbox, and if you shift+delete it, BesAdmin doesn't know what happened to the item and it does not delete on the device. This is yet another reason why shift and delete is bad, and should be discouraged among Outlook users.

    Technorati Tags: Blackberry, Deletions, Sync, Outlook

    Blackberry

  • Choosing a certificate for OMA ActiveSync

    Sep 21st 2006

    By: ben

    No comments

    ActiveSync certificate problems are well known to the Windows Mobile community. If you have certificate problems on Windows mobile 2003, you could disable certificate checking using disablecertchk.exe, but this does not work on WM5 and you have to export the certificate and install it on the device to get around the 0x80072F0D problem:

    If you are the Exchange administrator for your domain and you have several hundred devices to configure, instead of visiting each device to install the certificate, you could prevent this problem by installing a certificate on the OMA-ActiveSync website that is already in the root store.

    This can be found in Start > Settings > Certificates:

    Installing a certificate from any of the vendors in this list will avoid the problem described above. They may cost you 20 bucks $150 more than your normal provider, but it could be worth the money if it saves you hours of hassle and extra work.

    Technorati Tags: Windows Mobile, Certificates, 0x80072F0D, WM5, disablecertchk

    Messaging

  • How to migrate messages between 2 mailboxes

    Sep 5th 2006

    By: ben

    No comments

    ExMerge is probably one of the exchange administrators most used tools, but is a pain to use if you are working with large mailboxes, as it uses Outlook 2000 PST files which corrupt when they reach 2Gb. ExMerge also does not work with Outlook 2003 PST's ... I'm sure (and really hope ) this will be addressed in Exchange 2007.

    So, if you find yourself in a situation where you want to move the contents of a 10Gb mailbox to a another mailbox, and you don't have any tools such as Mail Attender for Exchange that can do it for you, you have to run ExMerge several times using date ranges to ensure the PST's don't exceed the 2Gb limit.

    In my particular situation, I have a folder in a mailbox containing 300,000 items that I want to move to a journal mailbox to be picked up by a mail archiving system. I can't move them across manually using Outlook, because it fails when you drag and drop more than 2000 items, and trying to navigate around such a massive mailbox anyway is too slow to mention.

    One of the vb experts here helped me write a macro to complete this task. It can be run from the Visual Basic Editor in Outlook. To run it use Tools - Macros - Visual Basic Editor, and click Yes to enable macros. Modify the code below so that Mailbox 1 and Mailbox 2 match the names of the mailboxes you are working on. Mailbox 1 is the source mailbox, and Mailbox 2 is the destination. You must then open both of these mailboxes in your Oulook profile before you start the macro.

    Sub move_messages()
    
    Dim objExch2003 As Outlook.MAPIFolder, objErrors As Outlook.MAPIFolder, objInbox As Outlook.MAPIFolder, objJournal As Outlook.MAPIFolder, objJournalInbox As Outlook.MAPIFolder
    Dim objNS As Outlook.NameSpace, intcount As Integer, i As Integer, objMailItem As Object
    Set objNS = Application.GetNamespace("MAPI")
    Set objExch2003 = objNS.Folders("Mailbox - Mailbox 1")
    Set objJournal = objNS.Folders("Mailbox - Mailbox 2")
    Set objInbox = objExch2003.Folders("Inbox")
    Set objJournalInbox = objJournal.Folders("Inbox")
    Set objErrors = objInbox.Folders("Errors")
    
    Do While objErrors.Items.Count > 0
    
    For i = 100 To 1 Step -1
    Set objMailItem = objErrors.Items(i)
    objMailItem.Move objJournalInbox
    Next
    
    Loop
    
    End Sub

    After you start it your Outlook will appear to crash - this is normal and it is really working in the background. You can use ESM to watch the number of items decrease in Mailbox 1 and increase in Mailbox 2.

    Technorati Tags: Outlook 2003, PST, Macros, ExMerge, Exchange 2003, Exchange Administration

    Exchange, Messaging

  • Quote of the day.

    Aug 24th 2006

    By: ben

    No comments

    'Integrity' is doing the right thing even when no one else is looking.

    Quoted from the writings of the 'Goompahs', in "Omega" by Jack McDevit.

    Random stuff

  • IE7 Beta3 and ClearType

    Aug 23rd 2006

    By: ben

    No comments

    IE7 has some strange and quite annoying behaviour. After installing it and rebooting your computer, you may notice all of your fonts look fuzzy. This is because [this beta of] IE7 includes new anti-aliasing software called ClearType, which is applied not just on Internet Explorer's fonts, but on any software that uses IE to render HTML, like Outlook and Outlook Express, Windows Explorer, MSN Messenger ... etc.

    Here's the annoying thing - on my monitor (and countless others - read these comments) ClearType fonts look absolutely awful. It makes me squint and actually hurts my eyes after 10 minutes of exposure to it. And, the IE installer does not ask you if you want ClearType enabled, it just installs it and you have to lump it. It's basically a system-wide change to your fonts and display options, without any notificication to the user, and with no means to configure it or switch it off in Control Panel.

    But before you uninstall IE7 in a flash, you might like to know there is actually a control panel applet for tuning Cleartype, but it's a seperate download from Microsoft called the ClearType Tuner Powertoy. It allows you to optimise ClearType for your monitor, or if it really doesn't look good at all, you can just select a box to turn ClearType off.

    Microsoft, if you're reading this, please make this powertoy part of the IE7 installer and run it as a wizard the first time IE7 is launched? It will save users a lot of headaches - literally.

    Technorati Tags: IE7, Internet Explorer, ClearType

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