I had to keep this post for a Friday. Was in a taxi going back to Barcelona airport after IT Forum last month, and had to laugh at the driver’s low cost solution to what to do with his mobile phone…
Actually, talking about mobility and Barcelona… Jason Langridge’s session on how to deliver mobile access ot large numbers of users with WIndows Mobile & Exchange 2003, was videoed and is now online…
I got an email the other day from someone who’d been at my session at IT Forum (UCM313 – Antispam Enhancements in Exchange 2003 SP2), where I’d done a few demos of sending SPAM, in order to show how Exchange could deal with it. I’d used a command line SMTP utility to send SPAM messages directly to port 25 on the server…
The questioner asked how I’d done that – the answer, using a free tool from Craig Peacock called BMail, where I had a few CMD files set up to send mail from a text file dragged onto the CMD file.
C:\>bmail /?
Command Line SMTP Emailer V1.07 Copyright(C) 2002-2004 Craig.Peacock@beyondlogic.org
Usage: bmail [options]
-s SMTP Server Name
-p SMTP Port Number (optional, defaults to 25)
-t To: Address
-f From: Address
-b Text Body of Message (optional)
-h Generate Headers
-a Subject (optional)
-m Filename (optional) Use file as Body of Message
-c Prefix above file with CR/LF to separate body from header -d Debug (Show all mail server communications)
Ueful little tool for my demo, but also potentially good for automating the sending of log files, sending status messages etc.
//Ewan
I remember seeing Mark Russinovich present at TechEd a while back, and was impressed when he used a zooming utility to show one quarter of the screen zoomed in enough that it was easy to read the screen, even from the back of the room.
Presenting to even a small room of people and when doing a demo, using one of the various zoom utilities helps draw attention to stuff that matters – whether that’s a line of code or a particular dialog box. I started using zooming software, and it’s amazing how many people ask “how did you do that?” – I think that everyone who presents and demos software should consider using some kind of zooming software as an essential tool.
Oh… and DROP YOUR SCREEN RESOLUTION! I hate seeing 1400×1200-odd resolution being projected to a 8×6′ screen at the front of a 200′ room – nobody beyond the front row can read anything!
Now a while ago, I got a Wireless Notebook Optical Mouse 4000… bit of a mouthful of a name, but it’s a little bag-friendly mouse with great battery life, and one of the main reasons I bought the thing – the Magnify button. This allows you to zoom in on a resizeable and moving magnified window, which floats over the thing you’re trying to show.
It’s possible to use the zooming software either by having a supported mouse (like the WNOM 4000) which has a dedicated magnify button, or by installing the free IntelliPoint software, and by assigning another button (eg the “Click the mouse wheel” action), you can zoom even from a traditional mouse. The newly published Intellipoint 6.1 also supports Vista, and even works in the Aero Glass video mode (though you may see some weirdness in the video driver when activating the magnify). I’ve been using the IntelliPoint beta for a while, and the Magnify works better in non-Aero mode (ie switch the colour scheme to “Windows Basic”.
Another option is to try Robert Burke’s excellent NLarge utility, which zooms a quarter of the screen at a time in a nice “whoosh” fashion… It’s great for showing static content, but (unlike IntelliPoint) it doesn’t allow you to operate the machine whilst zoomed, though it does allow you to draw on the zoomed-in image, so if you’re just trying to highlight something that isn’t changing, that could be a better fit.
Give each of them a go and figure out which works best for you!
//Ewan
In the default modus operandi, Outlook 2007 likes to be in cached mode when running against Exchange, which is generally a *good thing*. Cached mode means there are (by and large) fewer occasions to go back & forth to the server, as it operates by synchronizing a local copy of the mailbox down to the OST file on the client. This means that operations such as content indexing (which Outlook now does by default), sorting, filtering etc, all happen on the client rather than hammering the server.
Outlook 2003 did this too, but 2007 offers a new capability in caching the calendars of other users on your behalf. Now that’s generally a good thing too – it means that when you open someone’s calendar in Outlook, it adds that user’s calendar to your cache so that you can see it when offline, and if it’s someone you regularly snoop on (let’s face it, a lot of calendar lookups are just checking what people are up to, aren’t they?), then it will be quicker in opening the calendar in future, since Outlook doesn’t have to go back to the server for everything.
A possible downside to this is if you’re in a large organization and you routinely (but occasionally) open lots of people’s calendars – what then happens is that Outlook spends time and increases the size of your OST by dragging everything down to your PC.
There are a couple of options to mitigate this potentially unwanted behaviour:
If you’re experiencing problems with excessive calendar synch traffic, one of these options might sort you out…
//Ewan
I’ve been a user of Windows CE/Windows Mobile devices ever since the early days of “Windows CE Services”, which later morphed into ActiveSync (currently at version 4.2, but v4.5 should be with us soon). The software has certainly evolved over the years and now provides a fairly decent user experience (leaving aside the somewhat chequered history of duplicating contacts and the likes).
Windows Vista has swept ActiveSync aside and replaced it with the new Windows Mobile Device Center, which looks a whole lot nicer and easier to use (on the most part). I’ve been using the Beta 3 build (which can be installed on Vista RTM code – either by getting it through Windows Update or by download from the site linked above), and once it’s up and running it provides a much smoother integration of the device with the rest of the OS.
There are a couple of niggles with WMDC though…
Installing mobile apps through WMDC
On the first point, there is an API which software vendors will be able to use in order to do a clean installation through Vista/WMDC as well as through ActiveSync, but until they start supporting that API you might be in a quandry.
One possible solution is to take the self-extracting .EXE that much device software comes packaged as, and crack it open using a suitable app (such as WinZip), to fish out the appropriate .CAB file for your device. Some apps might come packaged with both Smartphone and PPC versions, or maybe versions targeted at Windows Mobile 5.0 vs Windows Mobile 2003. The name of the .CAB file will ususally give you a clue as to what platform it’s for, and which version.
Take the appropriate CAB file and use WMDC to drop it onto your device, then use File Explorer or something to activate the CAB file for installation. Worst case might be to copy the CAB file into the folder within the Start menu, so even if you don’t have a File Explorer app (as some devices are delivered), you should still be able to activate. Normally, activating the CAB file will take up the installation part that usually happens on the device when installating through ActiveSync (ie you get the message on ActiveSync asking you to check your device screen…)
Personal Firewall blocking
After struggling with getting WMDC running on my home PC after installing Vista RTM, I wondered if OneCare was blocking it from running (since the OneCare firewall is bidirectional and also a little less integrated into the whole system than the built in Windows Firewall). I found some instructions buried deep in the WMDC help file, which list some ports to allow through the firewall.
Set your firewall up to allow ports/protocols:
Inbound: 990/TCP, 999/TCP, 5678/TCP, 5721/TCP, 26675/TCP
Outbound: 5679/UDP
After enabling these rules, and reconnecting the device, WMDC should spring to life!
//Ewan
I’ve been shamed into resurrecting my blog, partly by talking with some people in Barcelona at the Tech Ed:IT Forum event last month, and partly from chatting with some other Microsoft bloggers who have popular and interesting blogs… (people like Darren, Brett and Eileen).
I suppose the issue is that I don’t read blogs all that often – or at least I haven’t been doing so. Since switching to IE7 and Outlook 2007, I’ve been taking a bit more of an interest in the numerous RSS feeds that I must have configured at some point in the past. Also, I’ve been using pRSSReader on my Pocket PC for a wee while, and am starting to get the bug a bit more…
Anyway, I’ll try to stay in touch a bit more now 🙂
//Ewan
If you have Exchange 2003 and have SP2 installed, and you’re already publishing Outlook Web Access to the internet then you’ve probably got everything you need to enable push email to a suitable mobile device.
If your mobile device happens to be an i-mate SP5, SP5m, JAMin, K-JAM or JASJAR (otherwise know to the techie world under their HTC codenames of Tornado (both the SP5’s), Prophet, Wizard or Universal), then you’re in luck since www.clubimate.com has made upgrades to AKU2.0 available.
AKU (Adaption Kit Update) 2.0 is a new ROM image for these devices and includes various software updates, including the ability to do Direct Push mail to Exchange.
Downloads from ftp://ftp.clubimate.com/ – more details on what’s what available to registered users on the Clubimate web site.
//E
I’m surprised that 73% of the respondents to the Nerdtests.com survey are considered more nerdy than me.
Maybe it’s because I hated maths at school … although I do own a T-shirt that says “There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don’t“.
So, I got PGR3 and Perfect Dark Zero for my XB360.
Oh dear. What time is it again? 1am? Oh I really should go to bed now.
PGR3 is predictably good – I loved both PGR1&2 and this is basically more of the same, though there are some notable absences from the cars list – where PGR2 had lots of Porsches, this one has nothing (a licensing issue I wonder) other than Ruf souped-up Porkers.
I’m getting to the point where I can more-or-less drive round without hitting stuff, but playing on XBox live is quite frustrating – the number of times you approach the first 90-degree bend after the start line, wondering how to position the car – if you take the racing line, you’ll get smacked into the barrier by the guy on your inside (there’s no such thing as “Racing Accident” here … it’s all just adreneline) or the guy immediately behind won’t have found the brake yet so you’ll start to brake and turn in, only to be nerfed into the barrier by laughing boy at the back.
Oh well … another few races and I’ll figure it out …
PS – does XBox Live appeal particularly to the Dutch? I seem to come across lots of games with ‘NL’ in their tag name…
It’s that time of year when the postman delivers a bundle of cards every day, and every day I feel more & more guilty that I haven’t even started writing mine yet.
This year I’ve already noticed that lost of “ordinary folk” are sending cards with printed address labels, which means I guess they’ve got some software to do the whole shebang. I’ve pretty much stayed away from printing labels because I’ve found it takes longer to set up than just writing the damn things to start with, and the amount of labels wasted due to misprinting (margins etc) is pretty high.
Maybe it’s time to reconsider that particular piece of technology, or should I just stick to exporting Outlook contacts to a spreadsheet, then sitting down with a printout of that sheet, a couple of glasses of mulled mine, some mince pies and actually handwriting everything 🙂
— Ewan
