Mar 31, 2010

A Day In The Internet (Infographic)

I found this infographic kind of Interesting, so I thought I would share it with you. If you spend all day at your computer like I do, these stats aren’t really surprising, but still they are pretty interesting.

For instance, the fact that bloggers post 900,000 articles every day which is enough to fill the New York Times for the next 19 years is pretty interesting. I would think with the number of blogs out there that this number would be higher, but oh well.

Another number I thought was cool is that 700,000 new members are added to Facebook every day. The only thing I can say about that is Suck It MySpace!

Anyhoo, here it is, enjoy!

A Day in the Internet

[Via Online Education]

Mar 30, 2010

Pong – A Gamers' Legacy

I found this video on the internet the other day, and thought you gamers out there might think this is interesting. When I saw this I thought of Sundance, as he is a big time gaming geek.

It is sort of funny now because video games, and home gaming consoles have been so engrained in our culture for the last 30+ years, but in the early to mid sixties, playing a video game on your TV was unthinkable!

Below is a video of the very first documented PONG game played on a television from 1969. The inventor of the gaming console seen in the video was Ralph H. Baer. According to Pongmuseum.com, although the video was taped in 1969, the very first time the game was played was in December of 1967 in preparation for a visit from Teleprompter executives the following January whom they were trying to sell licenses to.

 

 

I remember the first video games I had at home. They were Defender and Asteroids on my our Atari 2600 Jr. What was the first gaming system you owned? What were some of the games you used to play on it? Let us know in the comments!

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Mar 29, 2010

Evan and Gareth: Tech Support (Audio NSFW)

I carpooled with a coworker last Thursday and he and I had to stay a little late to fix the integration with our OCS 2007 server and our new Exchange 2010 server. While waiting for some mailboxes to move I of course decided to do a little Stumbling and happened upon a really funny video that was posted at Comedy Central.

Being a guy who works in IT, and having spent many hours handling support phone calls, I can completely identify with this video! If you have ever spent some time manning the phones for help desk or tech support, you will certainly like this video too. Careful though, and put on your headsets because the audio isn’t very work friendly.

 

 

Ever deal with any customers like that? I want to hear your best horror stories in the comments!

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Mar 26, 2010

Default Gateway Missing After Reboot

The other day I was setting up a new SQL 2005 box for a client. The base operating system was Windows Server 2008 Enterprise, and was running in VMWare. Nothing unusual about the setup at all.

Well, after installing SQL 2005, then installing SQL 2005 Service Pack 3 I rebooted it. Whenever I reboot anything I immediately start running a continuous ping so I know when that machine boots back up. Well, the pings never came back! I logged into vSphere to see if perhaps I accidentally powered it off instead of rebooting, but that wasn’t the case. It had rebooted fine. So why was it not replying to ping requests?

I checked the firewall, and it was off. I tried pinging my workstation, and that was a no go. I decided to take a look at the network settings. Sure as s#!t when I looked at the IPV4 properties for the NIC the default gateway was empty. WTF?

default gateway missing I manually typed in the default gateway and restored internet connectivity. Then I had to install a Backup Exec agent and reboot it again. Once again, when it came up the default gateway was blank! Seriously now! WTF?!?!?

It turns out that my coworker recently re-built our server templates in VMWare, and there was a problem with SYSPREP on the Server 2008 template. To fix my NIC I had to reset the Internet Protocol for the adapter. To do that:

  1. Open a command prompt as administrator
  2. Run netsh int ip reset
  3. Reboot

When you come back up, go back into your adapter settings, and manually put back in your static IP address. Reboot again to make sure it sticks.

Now we have to go back and re-do our template so this doesn’t happen again. Did this happen to you? Did you have to do something else to fix it? Let me know in the comments.

Mar 25, 2010

Temporary Profile Loaded On Windows 2008 Server

I ran into a little issue lately. For some reason, whenever our two Help Desk guys would log into either of our two Exchange 2007 servers their regular profile would not load. Instead a temporary profile would be loaded instead. WTF?

I have seen similar things like this happen in Windows Server 2003, usually due to low disk space. I have also seen this happen in Windows XP due to corrupt profiles, but never for no clear and apparent reason. First I thought all I needed to do was reboot the servers, and delete the temp profiles in C:\users\ but that did not fix it at all. Nope, when they logged in they continued to received the following pop-up message in their system tray:

Your user profile was not loaded correctly! You have been logged on with a temporary profile.
Changes you make to this profile will be lost when you log off. Please see the event log for details or contact your administrator.

pop-up

Credit goes to Eric, my coworker who found the fix in Microsoft’s knowledgebase article KB947242. This is something that normally happens in Vista-Based systems. When this happens, you will see the following appear in your event logs:

Log Name: Application
Source: Microsoft-Windows-User Profiles Service
Date: Date
Event ID: 1511
Task Category: None
Level: Warning
Keywords: Classic
User: User
Computer: Computer
Description:
Windows cannot find the local profile and is logging you on with a temporary profile. Changes you make to this profile will be lost when you log off.

The fix is actually pretty easy, and requires only that an Administrator is logged in with a profile that is not experiencing this issue. All you have to do are these five easy steps:

  1. Backup all of the data in the affected user’s profile, and delete it. The user’s profile can be found in %systemdrive%\users\username. This may require a reboot before you can delete this.
  2. Click Start > Run > type in regedit and click OK to open the registry editor
  3. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\ProfileList
  4. Locate any subkeys named SID.bak (See screenshot) and delete them

    registry
  5. Close out of the registry editor and log out

Now have the affected user login, and everything should be good to go!

Mar 23, 2010

Likewise LWIS To Be Included With VMWare vSphere

Back in May of 2008 I first wrote about a really awesome program that allows you to join non-Windows machines to Microsoft Active Directory. That program was called Likewise Open. It is the free version of Likewise’s software. Later, in September of 2009 I wrote about how I used Likewise Open with osTicket so my company could have a Linux ticketing system, but still login with our Windows domain credentials. I even used it once to join one of the Mac desktops the marketing department used at my last company to the domain for better file management and authentication. The software simply works!

Well, I am not the only one who has noticed the potential, and usefulness of Likewise’s software. VMWare, the world leader in computer virtualization, has too. In fact, they just struck a licensing agreement with Likewise to directly integrate and include their software in vSphere.

According to the press release:

likewisevmware The integration will enable VMware vSphere users to manage privileged user access with Microsoft Active Directory, providing large enterprises with a scalable means to improve authentication and access control in virtualized environments to help meet IT security audit requirements. Likewise is a member of the VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program.

The product VMWare will be integrating is called Likewise Identity Services (LWIS). According to Likewise’s CEO Barry Crist:

By integrating Likewise Identity Services into vSphere, VMware is responding to their customers’ requests to integrate ESX/ESXi/vSphere privileged users into Active Directory.  For example, those customers can now set up an administrative group in Active Directory such as “esxi admins” whose users have appropriate privileges and policies as ESXi administrators.  There are also tremendous security and accountability benefits of having users authenticate with their own credentials instead of using root or shared credentials.  And, when an employee leaves the company, turn off their AD account, and they no longer have administrative rights to ESXi.

What does this mean for VMWare users in a nutshell? It means greater security, central authentication and ease of management. I for one am looking forward to seeing this in action seeing as how I work in a VMWare shop.

What about you? Are you a VMWare admin? Does this sound like something that can make your life easier? Let me know your take in the comments.

 

Mar 22, 2010

You Did NOT Put My Sticker on an Acer!

You may or may not know this, but about a month or so ago I kicked off a minor Twitter contest. I was inching ever so close to 500 followers, but never quite reaching it so I decided to announce via Twitter that I would give away free 2GB USB stick with Bauer-Puntu Linux pre-installed. Sure, not a huge prize, and the USB stick was a used one donated by my coworker but still, free is free right?

Well, I got myself a winner. The prize goes by RWING5 on Twitter, and it almost seems like he signed up for Twitter just to win the USB stick. He is only following 5 people, one I don’t know about, me, and three guys that are on really cool Revision 3 shows like Tekzilla and Hak5. I actually felt pretty special to be in the same crowd as Darren Kitchen and Patrick Norton! Anyway, along with the 2GB USB stick with Bauer-Puntu, I also packed in there an official Bauer-Power sticker!

Well, RWING5 received his USB goodness last Thursday, and how did he repay me? By sticking the Bauer-Power sticker on his Acer Aspire One D250! WTF!?!?

acer bauer-power

Don’t get me wrong, I am enthused that he wanted to put the sticker on his laptop and essentially show off his Bauer-Power love wherever he goes, but on an Acer? I guess RWING5 didn’t know how much I hated Acer. I even wrote an article about how I would never buy another Acer again because of their shoddy customer service!

To take it a bit further, Sundance and I even did a video where we went Office Space on an Acer:

 

 

I am glad to have RWING5 as a reader and twitter follower. I am overjoyed that he actually put my sticker on his laptop. I just wish it wasn’t an Acer! Am I wrong about this? Hit me up in the comments.

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Mar 19, 2010

Unable to Expand Distribution Groups Using Outlook Anywhere in Exchange 2007

The title of this blog entry is a little bit of a misnomer. I say that because the underlying issue also caused another issue that I will mention in this post so that others who are experiencing these can get this resolved. Let me tell you, this has been an epic headache for a few months now, so to be able to finally have them resolved is a huge relief!

Like I said, the underlying issue caused another problem. The first problem we noticed is that when we tried to use Autodiscover to create user profiles in Outlook 2007 outside of the network it would fail. For our users to use RPC over HTTPS aka Outlook Anywhere, we had to create their Outlook profile while connected to the network. After that they could use Outlook Anywhere.

The second problem we noticed is that users outside of the network couldn’t expand distribution groups. They could access the Global Address List, but when they tried to expand distribution groups over Outlook Anywhere they would get the following error:

Cannot perform the requested operation. The command selected is not valid for this recipient. The connection to Microsoft Exchange is unavailable. Outlook must be online or connected to complete this action.

Cannot perform the requested operation

I finally found the answer on Aaron Mark’s blog talking about an Outlook Anywhere bug with Exchange 2007 and Windows Server 2008. The problem lies in IPV6. On our network adapter we have IPV6 unchecked as we weren’t using it, but it turns out that is not good enough.

If you are experiencing something similar, you may also notice that when you hold control, click on the Outlook icon in the system tray and select Connection Status you will see a good connection to MAIL but your connection to DIRECTORY will either say CONNECTING or DISCONNECTED.

directorydisconnect[Via Aaron Mark]

In order to fully disable IPV6 you have to do the following on your Exchange server along with unchecking IPV6 on your adapter settings. NOTE- MAKE SURE YOU MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR REGISTRY BEFORE PROCEDING:

  • Click Start > Run type in Regedit and click OK
  • Navigate to HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip6\Parameters
  • Create a new DWORD named DisabledComponents and give it the value of 0xff
  • Close Regedit
  • Open your hosts file with notepad (Located in %SYSTEMROOT%\System32\drivers\etc\)
  • Comment out ::1 localhost by changing it to # ::1 localhost
  • In your hosts file, also add two entries for your server’s name and internal IP address. Your hosts file should look something like this:

10.0.0.10 servername.yourdomain.com
10.0.0.10 servername

127.0.0.1 localhost
# ::1 localhost

That’s it! Aaron Mark’s post mentioned having to reboot for the changes to take effect, but I noticed the changes took effect right away without rebooting.

Are you experiencing this issue? What other problems have you noticed it has caused? Did this fix work for you? I want to hear from you in the comments!

Mar 18, 2010

Best Geocaching Apps For The Palm Pre

Recently my wife and I decided to get into a pretty awesome game/hobby called Geocaching. Never heard of it? Here is a basic description from Wikipedia, "Geocaching is an outdoor activity in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called "geocaches" or "caches") anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container (usually a tupperware or ammo box) containing a logbook. Larger containers can also contain items for trading, usually toys or trinkets of little value. Geocaching is most often described as a "game of high-tech hide and seek", sharing many aspects with orienteering, treasure-hunting, and waymarking."

It is really fun, and it is a great thing to do with the whole family on the weekends. Also, with the exception of the GPS equipment, it is basically a free activity your family can do!

Some GPS receivers cost $300 or more! Don't have that kind of cash? Well, do you have a Palm Pre or an iPhone? Then you are in luck! That is exactly what my wife and I use to find our caches! Since I don't use the iPhone, I won't talk about the apps for that, but I will tell you about the apps I use on my Palm Pre.

  1. Geocaching for WebOS - This app is available in the Palm catalog for free. It lists caches close to your location, but will also allow you to loog for caches close to coordinates, by cache number, by address and more. It is directly linked to Geocaching.com so you can see other Geocacher's comments and clues. There is also a navigation compass to help point you in the right direction.



  2. GoTo Tool - This app is also available in the Palm catalog, and costs only $4.99. I only downloaded it because the Geocaching for WebOS app wouldn't let me put in my own coordinates manually. That isn't necessary for most caches, but I recently decided to try and find one called "A Treasure Hard To Attain" which I had to crack a cipher to find the actual coordinates and manually plug them into my GPS. GoTo Tool lets you manually plug in your own coordinates and save them for later. Also, with a clear view of the sky the accuracy is about 10ft. I tested it against my friend's Garmin handheld and it was just as if not more accurate than his! Booyah!

    gototool


With these two apps on your Pre, you should be able to find just about anything hidden out there. Well, as long as you have a sharp eye, and a keen wit that is. Do you have the Palm Pre? Do you Geocache? What apps do you use? Do you use a different device for Geocaching? What GPSR is your fav? Hit me up in the comments!

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Mar 17, 2010

Cracking WEP and WPA using GRIM WEPA

I stumbled across a really cool new open source wireless hacking program that is installed on the new Backtrack 4 CD by default. It is a little gem that makes cracking not only WEP, but also WPA much easier. Not to mention it is a GUI program, so even your 12 year old nephew can run it. Isn’t that nice?

The program is called Grim WEPA. From their page, “GRIM WEPA's cracking methods are archaic and have been around for years. It simply uses the existing cracking methods in aireplay-ng (for WEP) and aircrack-ng (for WPA). Grim Wepa is similar in style and functionality to shamanvirtuel's Spoon series (SpoonWEP, SpoonWPA, and SpoonDRV). The Spoon suite is still available, though it is not kept updated.”

Here are the attacks they use from their page:

Attacks for WEP-encrypted Access Points
  • ARP-Replay attack
  • Chop-chop attack
  • Fragmentation attack
  • p0841 attack
  • Cafe-Latte attack
  • Cracking options:
    • aircrack-ng is able to crack just about any WEP password after about 20,000 IV (Initialization Vector) data packets have been captured. The capture usually takes about 2 minutes, and the crack another 2-3 minutes.
Attacks for WPA-encrypted Access Points
  • Basic deauthorization attack to get handshake.
  • Cracking:
    • GRIM WEPA includes a 2MB default password list containing approximately 250,000 commonly-used passwords.
    • Wordlist / Dictionary / Brute-force attack: Currently, there is only one consistent method of cracking WPA, and that is by brute force. aircrack-ng can crack hundreds of passwords per second, so this method is not nearly as arbitrary as has been proposed.

Here is a video (With no sound) of Grim WEPA being used in a WPA2 dictionary attack:

I think I am going to try to include this little toy in Bauer-Puntu 10.04 when it comes out. What do you think? Pretty cool right? Know of any other good WEP/WPA cracking tools? What about for Windows or Mac? Let us know your favorites in the comments!

NOTE: Grim Wepa is included in Bauer-Puntu 10.04!

NEW NOTE: Watch me use Grim Wepa to hack WEP in Episode 22!

Mar 16, 2010

Catching Up On Ubuntu Stickers

As many of you know, I have been offering free Powered By Ubuntu stickers for quite some time. If you didn't know, let me quickly recap for you. A while back I got an idea from the computer company, System 76, who makes Ubuntu based systems exclusively. What they were doing, and still do as far as I cal tell, is they offer free Ubuntu stickers for your personal Ubuntu workstation. What a great idea right? Not only do you spread the awesomeness of Ubuntu, but you also potentially create some word of mouth buzz about your company or product.

Well, I decided to offer Ubuntu Stickers and also Kubuntu stickers for the same reason. I wanted to promote Ubuntu, and possibly stir up some buzz for Bauer-Power. Well, it worked. Perhaps a little too well. I get bombarded with letters and requests and sometimes the occasional dollar or two for my troubles.

Well, I am only one man and sometimes I fall a little behind. Tonight I just caught up on requests I have received all the way back from November! If you have been expecting stickers, don't fret. They are in the mail today! In fact, you can thank Bauer-Power reader Alex G. for lighting the fire under my butt. He sent me an email saying he mailed his request back in December and wanted to know the status. Well, feeling like a complete jack ass, I thought it was a good time to catch up. Here is a picture of some of the letters going out tomorrow:



If you are unfamiliar with my sticker offer, check out this video commercial I made a while back:





I know, I know... Lame! Still though, the stickers are cool. Anyway, I am still going to offer stickers to anyone who wants them, but please have some patience if you don't get them right away. I do them when I can.

Have you already requested your stickers? Did you receive them? Got any action shots of your sticker on your computer? Lets see some links in the comments!

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Mar 15, 2010

How To Change The Login Background in Windows 7

This one I learned from episode 704 of  Hak5. Snubs and Darren did a GoToAssist spot, and in that spot she gives a really cool tip on how to change the login screen of Windows 7 using a simple registry edit!

How friggin’ awesome is that? It is almost just like the good ol’ days with Windows XP! I wrote about how to change the login for Windows XP a while back. The process for Windows 7 is a little different, but is basically just as easy.

All you need is administrator rights so you can modify the registry, and create subfolders under your Windows directory, and a jpeg image that is under 256kb. Easy right? Lets do this!

Here is a screenshot from my Windows 7 Enterprise VM:

Windows 7 Original

Boring right? Lets change this sucka! If you do not see any of these folders or keys, just create them! Here is how we change it:

  1. Click Start > Run type in Regedit and click OK
  2. Browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\
    CurrentVersion\Authentication\LogonUI\Background
  3. Double click the OEMBackground DWORD and change the value from 0 to 1.
  4. If it doesn’t exist create a new DWORD value called OEMBackground and set the value to 1.
  5. Browse to %systemroot%\system32\oobe\info (Once again, if info isn’t there create it)
  6. Create a folder called backgrounds
  7. Inside the backgrounds folder place your jpeg image (Must be under 256kb)
  8. Rename your jpeg to backgrounddefault.jpg
  9. Reboot

When Windows boots back up instead of boring Microsoft wallpaper, you will now have epic awesomeness! Check it:

pimp

Pretty cool right? I thought so too! Know of any other cool customization tips for Windows 7? Hit us up in the comments!

Mar 12, 2010

The Linux Distro Timeline

Asking how many Linux distributions are out there is like asking how many stars are in the sky. There are so many that if you spent the next few years trying to count, you probably wouldn’t even get half way. Okay, maybe that is an exaggeration, but you get the point. Not sure how accurate this is, but according to WikiAnswers, there are over 600 distributions, not all of which are active.

Despite the many that are there today like all things Linux began with one Distro. The first one was released back in 1992 and was called MCC Interim. From that first seed came some distros that are still around today like Slackware and Suse.

I found a chart showing the timeline of Linux over the years, and it provides an interesting look at how it all began, and how many of the Linux distros got their start. Check it out!

timeline

Click Image To View Full Size

What is your favorite distro? What makes it your favorite? Have you tried any other’s? Let us know in the comments.

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Mar 11, 2010

Verizon’s Big Red Ad

Have you seen this yet? Before you scroll down and watch it, let me just take you back in time to a little commercial by a little chewing gum product called “Big Red”. It used to be my chewing gum of choice back in high school. It was really good for making out as the original ad shows.

Well, I saw the latest ad for Verizon Wireless’s 3G coverage that is a parody of the original commercial’s for Big Red chewing gum! I first saw it at the beginning of the Iron Man 2 trailer here: (Iron Man 2 Trailer)

Here it is, Verizon’s version of Big Red:

 

For nostalgia sake, here is the original from the 80’s:

 

 

What’s your take on this? Did Verizon create a winner or what? Do you think any iPhone users will convert?

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Mar 10, 2010

Fixing jQuery intellisense in Aptana 2.0

So I have been looking around for a good Intellisense app for jQuery that is a lot lighter than Eclipse or Visual Studio. Sure either of those work but I have so many apps running on my work pc that I wanted something light. I’ve been using Notepad++ and that works good but was getting tired of having to reference jQuery for odd parts of projects and I’ve been trying my best to get the same effects out of jQuery that people wanted in flash. Only reason is that I think flash is like spawn of hellfire on the internet. Then after some searching I found Aptana. Looked pretty sweet, so I installed it and added the jQuery support plugin. I went to go check out the jQuery intellisense and didn’t see any support for it.

I looked all over the internet and heard in their forums that people were having intermittent problems with it but they could not reproduce the issue. So I finally decided to just poke around the app and figure it out myself. In doing so I realized that there is a Global References section. In that section the jQuery support was not checked by default after the install of the plugin and creating a new project.

Here are a few images and how-to, to fix this issue and get the full extent of the Aptana software.

After creating your web project and checking the box for the jQuery support open the jquery_sample.js file and delete the “.ready(function(){” on the third line after $(document)

Then put a . at the end of what you just deleted and if it looks like this, then you need to continue:

NojQuery

Now click on References at the top left next to File on your side bar:

ClickReferences

Now click on Global References:

ClickGlobal

If jQuery is unchecked(or any others you want to have the intellisense for) simply check it:

ClickjQuery

Now go back to your file on the right side and remove and re-add the . after $(document) and you should see the list of jQuery supported intellisense:

Finish



Mar 9, 2010

Minimize and Maximize are Missing After Installing Ubuntu Netbook Remix

Last Thursday I decided to "Ronnie Reload" my netbook as we say at my current IT job. I was running Windows 7 Starter edition on it for a little bit, but decided to go back to Bauer-Puntu Linux. It simply runs better. That, and if I go without using Linux for a while I start going into nerd withdrawal. You know what I am talking about.

Anyway, I installed Bauer-Puntu, but since this was on my netbook I wanted to run in netbook-remix mode. I prefer the regular Gnome layout on a full screen laptop, but on my netbook I like the smaller layout of netbook-remix. If you didn't know you can easily install netbook-remix by running the following in the terminal, then logging out and logging back in:

>sudo apt-get install ubuntu-netbook-remix

There was one small problem after installing it however. When it was done installing, and I had logged out and logged back in my minimize and maximize buttons were gone. I thought it was a simple matter of resetting metacity, but that didn't fix it. Here is a screenshot of Flock without the buttons:



Apparently this phenominon is caused by the maximus package. To fix the issue, all you have to do is remove maximus by running the following in the terminal:

>sudo apt-get remove maximus

After removing maximus, and restarting my netbook I had my minimize and maximize buttons back:



I am not exactly what it is that maximus does. When I removed it, besides fixing my minimize and maximize buttons, I didn't see a difference, so I am thinking that particular package didn't affect much. If you know exactly what maximus is, and what removing it affects (If anything) let us know in the comments.

Mar 8, 2010

Episode 19 – How To Hack Windows 7 Passwords

This is a pretty good episode if I do say so myself. In this episode I showcase one of the many cool tools in Bauer-Puntu linux 9.10R2 which can reset the administrator password, and the password for any other local user.

I know you have seen other live cd’s that can blank, or reset Windows passwords, but this one is good because it fits on a USB stick for ultimate portability and comes with a few other useful tools as well such as offline virus scan, disk partitioning, file recovery and more.

Let’s get back to resetting passwords though. So in this episode I show you how to use a terminal program called CHNTPW, and it can do stuff like blank a password, reset a password, and re-enable an account. there is also an option to promote a regular user to administrator, but it isn’t quite ready for prime-time yet. I should also mention that this isn’t only limited to Windows 7, but this will work on Vista, XP and 2000 as well.

Without further ado, here is Episode 19:

 

If you want to test this out yourself, you can download Bauer-Puntu 9.10R2 here: (Bauer-Puntu 9.10R2)

 

Mar 5, 2010

Get latitude and longitude from Google Maps

So say you need to get the latitude and longitude from a Google map to post in some app or what not. Sure there apps or you can read though the url query string and look for the ll= section but i found that putting this little javascript code in the url makes it just a lot easier to find it.

Now if you have Firefox installed and have a tab plugin that puts urls entered in the address bar to open in a new window this will not work, so just use another browser and it should work fine.

This can be useful for Geocaching, which according to Wikipedia is, “an outdoor activity in which the participants use a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers (called "geocaches" or "caches") anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container (usually a tupperware or ammo box) containing a logbook. Larger containers can also contain items for trading, usually toys or trinkets of little value. Geocaching is most often described as a "game of high-tech hide and seek", sharing many aspects with orienteering, treasure-hunting, and waymarking.”

You could hide a cache, then using Google Maps and the javascript below, pinpoint the latitude and longitude of the cache. Kind of a neat trick right?

 

Paste into URL:

Know of any other cool Google Maps tricks? Let us know in the comments.

By FreedomChicken

Mar 4, 2010

Tons of free Icons: IconsPedia

I can personally say that one of the hardest most annoying thing for a simple developer is getting cool icons for your apps. Well IconsPedia solves that. They have tons of icons with all types of terms of use. Mostly all free for commercial and personal use, but it says very simply how you can use each pack when you click on them.

They have Animals, Computers, Food/Drink, Holidays, Internet, Nature, ect… so that means all sorts of icons for your website, blog, application, desktop, whatever you want to use them for. They have a really nice set of Social Media icons on there too by Umar123.

Some of the types of icons they carry are:

  • Animal Icons
  • Art Icons
  • Brands Icons
  • Cartoon Icons
  • Computer Icons
  • Food & Drink Icons
  • Games Icons
  • Holiday Icons
  • Internet Icons
  • Media Icons
  • Movies & TV Icons
  • Nature Icons
  • Objects Icons
  • Phone Icons
  • Sport Icons
  • Vehicle Icons

Here is a picture of some of their random icons:

iconsWhere do you go for your free icons? Let us know in the comments!

By FreedomChicken

Mar 3, 2010

Palm Pre Gets Video Capture and Flash! Epic Win!

Yesterday I was minding my own business when my phone says, “Hey! You have a new update available!” This is fairly common, but this time I actually took a look at what was being updated. Among many other things, this update (WebOS 1.4.0) gives me video capture capabilities! Yes, video capture! Now if I need to take a quick video of something, I don’t have to lug around my Kodak ZI6, I can just take a quick and dirty video from my Palm Pre! When I am done I can upload it directly to Youtube or Facebook! One word… BOOM!

So I says back to my Palm Pre, “Hell yes I will update you brutha!” and promptly began the install. While updating I decided to take a quick tour around Google and see what people were saying. Well it turns out this update will also add support for the Adobe Flash 10.1 beta plug-in! The plugin will be available in the app catalog. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it iPhone users!

According to CNET, here is a list of the major changes:

  • Record, edit, and share video webos
  • Added a notification light that indicates new messages, appointments, and other notifications
  • E-mail, messaging, and calendar notification customizations by selecting new sounds
  • Capability to view, dial alternate contact numbers from the call log
  • Place calls directly from the messaging app
  • Call numbers from Web sites, e-mails, and messages by pressing and holding on number
  • Forward a text message to an e-mail address
  • Exchange contacts now shown through universal search
  • Calendar view now indicates a.m. or p.m.
  • Faster app loading and gesture response
  • Improved battery life

For a full list of features and changes, you can read check out the change log here: (WebOS 1.4.0 Changes)

Check out this video showcasing the new video feature:

 

Here is a quick video I captured with it as well:

 

If you want to see what Flash is going to bring to the Palm Pre check out this video from Adobe:

 

The update is available for both Sprint and Verizon customers, so hurry up and download it!

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Mar 2, 2010

Free Alternative to Symantec Ghostcast

I can’t believe I never wrote about this before. I mean, I set this thing up for my last company last year some time, and it was just so super loaded with epic awesomeness that I wanted to tell everyone about it. Not sure why, but it looks like I never got around to writing about it.. Oh well, it is time to remedy that now.

So at my current company we are looking for a good OS deployment solution, and have settled on Microsoft SCCM. This got me thinking however to last year around this time when at my last IT gig we were looking for a similar solution. Lets go back in time to last year.

We were using Ghostcast Server. We had numerous laptop and workstation images, and for each one we had to keep a set of boot disks or CD’s. This was set up by someone who had left the company earlier, and we they never made an improvement to the process. It was the lameness of having to hunt around for old floppy disks or CD’s that got me thinking that there had to be a better way that didn’t involve boot disks, or a lot of money for that matter.

Doing a little research lead me to one of the best open source projects I have ever seen. It is called Fog which is a free computer cloning solution! Here is a description from their site:

Fog is a Linux-based, free and open source computer imaging solution for Windows XP and Vista that ties together a few open-source tools with a php-based web interface. Fog doesn't use any boot disks, or CDs; everything is done via TFTP and PXE. Also with fog many drivers are built into the kernel, so you don't really need to worry about drivers (unless there isn't a linux kernel module for it). Fog also supports putting an image that came from a computer with a 80GB partition onto a machine with a 40GB hard drive as long as the data is less than 40GB.

Fog also includes a graphical Windows service that is used to change the hostname of the PC, restart the computer if a task is created for it, and auto import hosts into the FOG database. The service also installs printers, and does simple snap-ins.

Here is a basic overview of how it all works from their page as well:

fogoverview

We really liked this option because it was free, and it was really easy to set up on Ubuntu server. The Help Desk guys liked it because it eliminated the need for random boot floppies or CD’s. The Help Desk could use the network boot option and boot right into Fog, select their image and deploy away!

The way I set it up in our environment, because we were a Windows domain, was I added the PXE options on our Windows DHCP server to point to Fog for TFTP. I think I had that thing up and running in about 20 minutes. For installation you can use the easy to follow user guide here: (Fog User Guide)

Know of other free “Ghosting” solutions? Which ones do you like? Hit us up in the comments!

Mar 1, 2010

Hey! Get Your Own Wireless!

Someone tweeted this over the weekend so I thought I would share it with you. There is a radio show called "The Tech Guy" with Leo Laporte. Some lady called in because she needed help connecting to "her" wireless internet. She said that for over a year she was able to connect to it, but it magically dissapeared. She said she went out and purchased a wireless extender to try to fix it. Well, that didn't help her find her missing wifi, so she called Leo.

It turns out that there is a little more to her story than meets the eye. Don't just take my word for it though. Pay particular attention when Leo asks her if she actually owns a wireless access point of her own.





Please tell me that you all use at least WPA2 at home! I am sure your neighbors aren't though. Do me a favor, and take a look at the wireless networks around your place, and post in the comments how many of them are wide open. This should be interesting...



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