This may not seem all that interesting at face value but there are a LOT of people in higher education who have workstations that use public IP's. There is a secure way to connect to your machine remotely. Here's how to setup your Windows Vista workstation to accept new incoming VPN connections. This was also available in Windows XP but you have to know where to look in Vista to enable it.
Start - Network
Open the Network and Sharing Center
Click on Manage network connections
No using your keyboard, press Alt and select File or do an Alt+F to open the File menu and choose New Incoming Connection.
Approve the UAC prompt.
A new wizard opens to walk you through the process. First select who should have access.
Select how they may access the machine.
Select the protocols that should be available and click Allow Access.
The conclusion screen provides details. You can print the information if you need it.
Very nice, it adds a new icon on your Network Connections page.
If you view the properties dialogue you can manage the settings you choose in the wizard.
Out of those dialogues, these are the settings I found to be most interesting.
IOW, encrypt the connection and don't let the VPN connection interfere with connections from handhelds.
That's it, you now have a VPN connection available. To connect, setup a new VPN connection on your other workstation from the Network and Sharing Center.
Select Connect to a workplace.
Create a new connection.
Choose Use my Internet connection (VPN).
Provide the name or address of the machine you are connecting to.
Provide the username and password for the account you selected on the first machine. You may also need to provide the computer name as the domain name.
I choose to let the wizard go ahead and connect when finished.
The new icon on Network Connections shows the VPN connection. In the future you can right-click on this icon or use the Connect To button on the Start Menu.
On both machines you will be prompted to set the network profile. Work should suffice.
The connection and remote user appear on your host machine's Network page. If you right-click on the username, you have the option of disconnecting them from the host.
Enjoy!
and securely embed your MAK!
I've had several requests to document this since I posted the how-to on embedding your MAK in a custom WIM for departmental usage. The next logical step is to create your own DVD using this image. So if you haven't read my first article on this topic, now would be the time to go back and do so.
<edit - just a quick editorial note - although this does not expose your MAK in clear text, you should still be cognoscente of who you are trusting with an embedded key. See your licensing documents for more details.>
This operation is actually quite simple. Let's start out by assuming you have created a customized WIM by running setup and installing Vista on a workstation or VM, optionally using an autounattend.xml file on removable media, possibly including your MAK in pass 4 if desired. Run sysprep with OOBE and Generalize selected, shutdown, and finally capture the image either using ImageX or WDS. You could also automate the whole process, quite easily, using BDD (I did).
Next we leverage a tool that is conveniently provided with WAIK, named "oscdimg". This executable has been around for a long time as part of the OPK, and has for many years been a tool I keep handy. The process for building a custom DVD is very similar to creation of spanned media, so I recommend you also take a look at the article named "Create Spanned Media" in the WAIK User's Guide.
In addition to WAIK, we also need a Vista DVD image. Copy everything from the DVD in to a new folder, in my case I already had the files in my BDD deployment point.
Now, take your custom WIM image and rename it to install.wim. Copy or cut and paste this file in to the \Sources folder in the location where you copied your DVD.
Note: You can also specify the location of a custom WIM in an answer file using the "Install From" parameter. This way, you could point to a network location and use the original, unmodified Vista DVD.
<edit> - After further testing and feedback from a University customer, I discovered that if you would like to embed the MAK, it is also necessary to delete the PID.txt file from \Sources folder you copy from the Vista DVD. Otherwise the default KMS client key will be injected and the MAK will be overwritten after the image has been applied. The result is the media will prompt for a key but if none is provided and the user selects "Next" and then "No", the embedded MAK will be used.
Now open a command prompt as Administrator and execute the following command. This will initiate the process of building your ISO using the etfsboot.com file to make the image bootable.
C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\PETools>oscdimg -n -m -b"c:\program files\windows aik\tools\petools\x86\boot\etfsboot.com" "<location where you copied the Vista DVD>" "<location and filename where you want the new DVD image>.iso"
If all went according to plan, you should see the following operation complete successfully. Typically if I have an error it was a bad keystroke or I left a backslash (\) at the end of the string for "location where you copied the Vista DVD". BTW, that's the root folder where you copied the DVD where setup.exe is located, not the \Sources folder.
You can now boot a VM from the ISO to test or burn it to disc and boot a workstation from it. Note than any pass 4 settings that you applied during setup using an answer file on the original machine where you captured the WIM will be retained in the cached c:\windows\system32\sysprep\panther\unattend.xml. If you followed the instructions from my first article, that file would at minimum include your MAK which would now be stored securely within the WIM file on the DVD.
Sweet, I just heard, tested, and confirmed that the drivers HP has posted for the TI smartcard reader work for 64-bit even though they are only listed in the category for 32-bit versions of Vista. I am only able to test this on my nc8430 and my nx6125, beyond those two models I have no idea whether this is still the case. This nearly completes my driver set. I still have one item listed as an "unknown device" but I don't know what it could be. Even my fingerprint scanner is working, though I don't use it.
From the site:
This package contains the driver for the Texas Instruments PCI (TI-PCI) 6x12/7x12 Cardbus (Media Card Reader) for the supported notebook models and operating systems.
Source: HP Compaq nc8430 Notebook PC - Texas Instruments Media Card Driver - HP Business Support Center
On a side note, I'll be the first to admit I have some kind of weird fascination with HP. Especially now that they carry the old Compaq form factors. I'm dying to get my hands on their new tablet.
WOW. Thanks Travis, for turning me on to this app. I've posted in the past about my frustration with news readers. I've never found one that I consider to be perfect. So far, I've found Newzie to be awesome. Literally every time I find something to complain about I find it has some method of doing things that solves the problem. It ranks posts by most recent and still shows how many are unread. It has multiple ways to consolidate views, it can be reduced to just a slim panel or even a ticker. It is not intrusive nor does it bog down your machine or connection. The interface is clean and mostly customizable. It even does interesting things like show how many feeds you read per day, etc.
It doesn't really have a great method of dealing with attachments on an automatic basis but I've basically decided there is no good program out there to handle attachments (including iTunes, I tried it too). I'm looking for something that separates audio, video, photos, and files, deals with setting metadata and creating playlists, and manages archival well. So for now "Save as Target" within IE RSS is still working fine.
The only two things I wish I could improve are moving "mark all as read" and "delete all" off the sub menu when you right-click a feed name, up to the first set of menu choices. I also REALLY wish it would integrate with the Vista central OPML.
Link to Newzie, your feature-rich news aggregator
Each year my manager approves enough budget for our team to attend some sort of reasonably priced training. Being product specialists, each of us has different interests and most of us want to learn something that is peripheral to our focus so we might expand our knowledge to other areas. I started searching for courses on PowerShell but really had a tough time finding one that was both affordable and had the content I was looking for.
I got lucky. A customer I have had the pleasure of working with for a long time communicated that they were bringing an instructor on site for a 4-day class specifically on PowerShell. I immediately bought a seat and one for Kevin.
I am happy to report the class was excellent! Don Jones from Sapien Technologies was the instructor. Don is a PowerShell MVP and is obviously well engaged with the product team. He did a very nice job helping us understand why PowerShell is so important and then took a sensible approach to comparing it to other languages and tools, how to use it as an administrative tool, and how to expand upon PowerShell to solve interesting problems. I really enjoyed it and would recommend Don as an instructor for others who might be looking for onsite instruction. Sapien also offers several flavors of self paced instruction and literature.
Website: http://www.scriptingtraining.com/classes.aspBlog: http://blog.sapien.com/Book: http://www.sapienpress.com/powershell.asp
I use flagged items A LOT. I live and die by the Outlook To-Do bar. In fact, I always feel on top of Email because I can effectively triage it from my phone by moving it in to folders and then flagging those items when I get back to my laptop. I have the process down to where it only takes seconds. Once I get my hands on Mobile 6 (supports flagged items) I'll really feel I have Email under control!
I've found other articles on the web about this but it didn't really sink in until today I realized that I was taking to long to move my hand over to the mouse, move up to follow-up, and click complete, and then move on to the next item. It would be nice if I could do this without leaving the keyboard.
Ah-ha! You can!
From any app, including when you have a new message open in Outlook, use Alt+H to show shortcuts over the Home ribbon. You can use Alt+<letter> to show this for any of the ribbons.
So to mark an item complete when you have it open, use Alt+H, W, M. This may seem extreme if you haven't tried it but I find it to be extremely simple now that I know it is there.
The reason this is so cool - it means you can use the keyboard to do just about anything in Office 2007. Anything undiscovered as a keyboard shortcut you can Alt+<letter> your way to doing!
I use this almost every day. If you read my blog you'll notice I love screenshots and I always have a green border around them. That comes from a setting I have applied to the Vista Snipping Tool. Initially I was capturing good stuff but was frustrated when I did a right-click, then hit New in the Snipping Tool and the menu closed! You can overcome this using the Print Screen button together with the Snipping Tool.
First of all, if you haven't used the Snipping Tool in Vista just hit the Windows Key or the Start Menu and type "Snipping". It will float to the top so you can open it. The first time it will ask you if you would like to add a shortcut to the Quick Launch menu. Of course you do!
Now to do a capture, open the Snipping Tool, which will automatically cast a white transparency over your desktop and let you select an area to capture. Click on the Cancel button to get your desktop back. Do not close the Snipping Tool, just let it hang out there with the window still open.
Now right-click somewhere to get a context menu. If you want to capture it, press the Print Screen button (on my HP laptop I press Ctrl+Fn+prtsc). This will initiate a new capture in the Snipping Tool with the context menu still present.
My over-usage of this feature comes from years of doing documentation as a consultant.
So, if you subscribe and wouldn't mind taking a second, please swap out the URL in your reader.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/OffCampus
Why? It solves two problems for me. First, it will tell me if anyone is actually subscribing. None of your private information, just # of people. I'll keep blogging either way but I'm kind of curious. Second, I've been looking for a way to add "Digg This" to my feed. I don't know whether anyone actually cares to Digg my stuff but if they do I'd like to make it easy for them. The problem is the link needs to have the URL for the post in it, which I don't know until the post gets published. It's unnecessary work to get the URL and go back to update my post if this will do it for me. It also adds a link to share it on Facebook (which I don't use but people do). If you would like to have Del.icio.us on there as well, let me know.
Other tools I've been playing with - there is a SnapShots box down on the right side of my page you can use if you would like to preview URLs, and Blogflux keeps track of some interesting things like how many people are opening the site, from where, what browser, etc. Again, I don't really care about any of that but at times I am curious.
.....
So, why blog if I don't care whether anyone is reading? Good question I suppose. If you look back at my "50 first posts" article, I tell the story of Kevin Sullivan and I starting up blogs for the sake of having technical information to reference. I blog more than just technical info now but I'm still not totally comfortable with posting negative opinions so I don't, just things I find to be interesting to me. I don't want to look back in 10 years and feel bad about posting some obnoxious opinion piece. There are plenty of blogs out there for readers who want that.
One detail I left out of the story when Kevin and I first started blogging - We had an idea what we wanted to do but wanted some insight in to best practices so Kevin, Jeff, and I had a conference call with Robert Scoble who at the time worked for Microsoft and was really getting active as a blogger. Looking back, I think that call was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back and got us to bring our sites online. Several times I've talked with Kevin and others about having a team or v-team blog but everyone, including me, likes having something of their own to enjoy working on! So far it looks like I'm averaging about 100 posts a year, which is fine by me.
This is a great video if you want to sit back and see what everyone is talking about.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4217348.html
Looks like it's in the process of being Dugg.
So, you may have noticed I haven't blogged in about 2 weeks. I hit a point where I was just posting links and although that's fine it's not as much value as I would like to provide so I decided to play it cool until travel slowed down. Travel has slowed down.
Q4 baby! The infamous fourth quarter has begun and we are only in the second month. This is the time of year when people in our sales group go absolutely rabid trying to get business wrapped up by the end of our fiscal year. On top of that we have so many new products that they are constantly referencing product specialists (that's me) with licensing questions. On top of that I've noticed a major uplift in the number of customers that are getting in to test environments and working out how they might deploy Vista. Helping customers is where I prefer to spend my time!
I have a long list of things to blog about so I'm excited to get back at it. Next week I will be Out of Office M-Thurs but otherwise I hope to hit the 30-post mark in May.
I actually caught this on Scoble's blog yesterday went I went their to copy his URL. I haven't had a chance to play with this yet but it looks like fun.
Microsoft Popfly
"Popfly is the fun, easy way to build and share mashups, gadgets, Web pages, and applications."
Check out the Popfly Screencast for a quick intro. WOW!
Also, cool default site -
Or a podcatcher, if you like trendy, made-up words.
Here's the basic features I am looking for:
I just keep getting more excited about the new line of tablets from HP. You all know my fascination with HP gear to begin with, but here are a few more reasons, the things I don't like about it so far (it's not out yet), and my asks. This machine looks as powerful as my nc8430, in a tablet!
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/321957-321957-64295-321838-306995-3355644.html
Pros
Cons
Asks
Ok, WOW. Popfly is incredible. Here's my first app, or if you want to see the end result just click the link in my column on the right for "Plot my visitors on Virtual Earth". It will plot the visitors to my blog. Now granted, the data is hit or miss, "dirty in dirty out" as they say. Blogflux is reporting City, Country rather than City, Region, Country so the data sometimes plots perfectly and sometimes does not. I submitted a request on their forums.
Data aside, designing and implementing this in Popfly took all of 5 minutes once I had a chance to play around with it and figure out how everything fits together. As time goes on and we see more and more blocks to introduce data and manipulate the information in interesting ways I can only imagine where this is going to go.
This is ground control to Major Tom...
My Saturday mornings often mean getting up early to play with the dog, kid, drinking coffee, and sitting down to search for new music. That's why I love subscription music services, it lets me download everything I can get my hands on and then delete out the things I later decide I don't care for.
Do you recall your first mp3? Mine was "Counting Blue Cars" by Dishwalla. I clearly remember ripping the track from CD using a command line tool in Win98 and being astonished at the clarity, and having it stored on my hard drive! Of course, at that time the hard drive on my Compaq Pentium 120 laptop was 1 GB. Ripping an mp3 was also the first time I realized 1 GB may not be the expanse of space I first imagined...
Counting Blue Cars - Dishwalla
A few times while visiting customers I've been asked the question:
"So, if I apply all the latest patches, I install IE7, and I install Defender, does XP give me the same security as Vista?"
NO, Absolutely not! Much like many write-ups I saw posted early after the release of Vista, too often I find people simply install, poke around a bit, open the Start Menu, open Windows Explorer, and then sink back satisfied that they understand a new OS. This would not be a fair evaluation of any OS be it Windows, OS X, or any Linux distribution. There are many, many moving parts to an operating system and not all of which involve a shiny new icon. So as a blogger how do I go about proving that, without writing out every change, feature by feature? I don't have to. TechNet Magazine has produced a three part series on kernel level changes that came in Vista. These are a must-read for anyone trying to decide if Vista offers "enough difference".
Don't limit yourself to just TNM, there are other resources out there. This is just a good sample of readings IMHO. No subscription required.
With Windows Vista, changes to the OS kernel bring about advances in many areas, ranging from memory management to reliability to security. We kick off this series with a look at how the kernel delivers improvements in the areas of processes, threads, and I/O. - Mark Russinovich
This month we continue our in-depth discussion about what’s new in the Windows Vista kernel. In this issue, we review some advancements in how Windows Vista manages memory and explore the areas of system startup, shutdown, and power management. - Mark Russinovich
In this issue, we wrap up our in-depth discussion about what’s new in the Windows Vista kernel. In this final installment, we look at changes and new features pertaining to reliability, recovery, and security. - Mark Russinovich
Good stuff but you want more? The June installment of TNM is packed full of information on Vista security.
User Account Control, or UAC, is one of the most misunderstood new features in Windows Vista. But its goal—to enable users to run with standard user rights—can solve many security issues. Get an inside look at the problems UAC is designed to address and see exactly how this new feature works. - Mark Russinovich
BitLocker serves two very important purposes: it provides both full-volume data encryption and a way to validate the integrity of early startup components before Windows Vista starts. Get an overview of how BitLocker works and see how it can help you protect your organization. - Byron Hynes
Mobility has changed computer threats and the techniques that guard against them. As laptops wander outside the perimeter and come back to the network, you need better ways to protect your systems. Find out how you can use Windows Firewall to protect your computers—on the Internet and on your own internal network. - Steve Riley
While ACLs haven't had a major overhaul, there are a number of important changes you need to know about when managing ACLs in a Windows Vista environment. Discover how 30 ACLs have changed to improve security, find out how they will impact your organization, and learn how to manage these changes in your infrastructure. - Jesper Johansson
USB thumb-disk keys and other removable devices can make your personal life easier but your professional life harder. For improved security, you need a way to control what hardware devices your users are installing on their work systems. Now you can use Group Policy to control which devices they can use and which ones they can't. - Jeremy Moskowitz
Wow. This laptop looks about the size of a portfolio notebook, and when I say notebook I mean the pad of paper kind.
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/notebook-supermodel/intel-unveils-worlds-thinnest-laptop-almost-skinny-as-a-razr-263359.php
Best of all, a wireless charging pad...
Exciting news! Microsoft and Facebook have partnered to enrich the development community and tools for Facebook. So what? You're not a developer? No problem, the Facebook box is now live on PopFly!
Link to Visual Studio Express: Showcase
This builds value on previous partnerships with Facebook.
Much of TechEd will be available online this year if you are unable to attend. Personally, I've opted to attend MMS for many years in lieu of TechEd since I feel very passionate about the Microsoft solutions for Management and Operations. I will definitely be catching up with as much TechEd as possible from my home office, through this portal.
Credit to: John Weston Stories, Information, and random thoughts. : Can't make TechEd this year?
Virtual TechEd: http://www.virtualteched.com/Pages/default.aspx
Every Monday I sit down to figure out what the hype of the week will focus on. I've decided to start blogging about it as time allows. I have no idea where this concept is going or whether I will keep it up... :-)
There's a conference going on this week in CA, hosted by the Wall Street Journal, named D5 or "D: All Things Digital". So if you were going to coordinate a conference in spring 2007, who would you invite as speakers? WSJ isn't messing around. Check out this list from their website - Speakers.
Impressive! Just to make sure they take advantage of this opportunity, tomorrow D5 has a joint presentation with Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
Bill Gates | Chairman, Microsoft Steve Jobs | CEO, Apple Steve Ballmer | CEO, Microsoft George Lucas | Film director and producer Eric Schmidt | Chairman and CEO, Google Steve Case | Chairman and CEO, Revolution John Chambers | Chairman and CEO, Cisco Systems Les Moonves | President and CEO, CBS Ann Moore | Chairman and CEO, Time Inc. Peter Chernin | President and COO, News Corp. Jeff Hawkins | Founder of Palm Computing Chad Hurley and Steve Chen | Founders of YouTube Philippe Dauman | President and CEO, Viacom Senator John McCain | United States Senator from Arizona
Bill Gates | Chairman, Microsoft
Steve Jobs | CEO, Apple
Steve Ballmer | CEO, Microsoft
George Lucas | Film director and producer
Eric Schmidt | Chairman and CEO, Google
Steve Case | Chairman and CEO, Revolution
John Chambers | Chairman and CEO, Cisco Systems
Les Moonves | President and CEO, CBS
Ann Moore | Chairman and CEO, Time Inc.
Peter Chernin | President and COO, News Corp.
Jeff Hawkins | Founder of Palm Computing
Chad Hurley and Steve Chen | Founders of YouTube
Philippe Dauman | President and CEO, Viacom
Senator John McCain | United States Senator from Arizona
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/surfacecomputing/default.mspx
Traveling today so I've got a link for you rather than something original. If you are interested in some of the investments Microsoft is making in Education, browse over this site. This is a nice consolidated list that might introduce you to something new! There are a lot of good projects listed here and I would be very interested in your comments.
Link to Unlimited Potential: Transforming Education
Comments - btw - you'll have to create an account and log in to post. I have had a lot of trouble with comment spam so I'm only allowing posts after sign in. Better yet - write up your thoughts and link back to me from your site!
Yeah, this beats the PowerEdge 2450 and PowerVault 200 I have running as my test gear in the basement... It's nearly time to get my server on EBay in anticipation of grabbing up whatever appliances for WHS ship first. Given my draw to HP gear, most likely I'll look for their next rev MediaSmart Server. I was eyeing the current model at Fry's and would have bought one except I'm waiting for WHS to release.
vs.
I think they win.
Source: Windows Home Server Blog : More Hockey Puck Photos
Have you seen the new VAIOs? WOW. I was at Fry's in Chicago yesterday. Sony is obviously known for their stylistic form factor but this is impressive and actually pretty affordable. You can get in to one of these fully loaded at around 1600 bucks. Not great, but not 1000$ over what you would pay for a similarly built device from other PC manufacturers. Similar in concept to the Mac Mini, the computer and monitor are combined to form a much clear look and feel.
This is actually what it looks like, not just an artistic rendition. I was wondering who would be first to try and recreate the Aero effect around a monitor... It comes with a webcam built in and a very jazzy keyboard and mouse.
Link to SonyStyle.com | LS series
I had a chance to play around with this quite a lot and I LOVE it. It fits the description "just works" as a desktop sharing app. It's very easy to get up and running which is important if you are working with a remote friend who doesn't know how to configure and setup challenging network and firewall rules, etc. It's also very easy for them to share with you and still see your cursor which is a neat experience when you want to show someone how to do something on a remote machine.
Link to Microsoft SharedView Beta