Tech Chop Episode 3 – Five Free Antiviruses

My monthly Tech Chop video was a little late this month. I had my folks in from Colorado, and they were helping me build a tree house for my kids in the back yard. When they left, my wife’s cousins came over the next day. When all the extended family left, we simply needed a break, and I didn’t have time to film an episode.

Well, I finally got it finished last night, so here it is, Episode 3 of Tech Chop! In this episode I give you my five favorite free antivirus programs! I thought I would make a video on free antivirus programs because a lot of average home users don’t know that they can protect their computers from viruses and malware for free.

 

If you want to download any of the antivirus programs, here are the links:

• AVG Free
• Avast 4 Home
• ClamWIN
• Comodo Antivirus
• Microsoft Security Essentials

Do you have any other favorite antivirus programs? Let us know your favorites in the comments!

Technorati Tags: tech chop,5 free antivirus programs,avg,avast,clamwin,comodo,microsoft,security essentials

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Theme of the Week #3: AlienAqua Blue Theme

This blue glossy theme or android phones is pretty sweet. Designed by parsh a professional designer it stands a bit above other themes with a sleek look. It can be used with CyanogenMod and MetaMorph. He also offers up all his backgrounds and icons in a zip file. My favorite part of this theme is the clock widget, it’s got a steam punk mixed with Star Trek look and feel to it.

 

Get the Theme Here

 

 

By FreedomChicken

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How To Install A DPM 2010 Agent on An Untrusted Domain Controller

The company that I work for is a Microsoft Gold Partner. Now I know that I write a lot about Linux, and other stuff, but because I work for a Microsoft gold Partner, that means that I am sometimes forced to drink the Microsoft Kool-Aid. Sometimes drinking the Kool-Aid is not that bad, and can sometimes save us money.

For instance, we were up for renewal for our backup Exec licenses. To renew for each little piddly agent in order to backup our entire infrastructure it was going to cost us over $100,000. It turns out that Microsoft’s Data Protection Manager is a part of our EA agreement, so it doesn’t cost us anything extra! BOOM!

The problem with Data Protection manager though is that it really was designed for single domain operations. When you start getting into untrusted domains, things start to get complicated. Now there is a procedure for manually installing the DPM agent on untrusted domain servers which works pretty good, but the documented process for installing, and configuring the agent on an untrusted domain controller doesn’t work so well. In fact the way you are SUPPOSED to install it is by running the following from the command line on the untrusted domain controller:

DPMAgentInstaller_x86.exe FQDN.DPMSERVER.COM

or

DPMAgentInstaller_x64.exe FQDN.DPMSERVER.COM

The above commands work fine on a member server in an untrusted domain, but do you think it works on a Domain Controller? BULL SHIT!

When trying to connect I was getting errors similar to this on the untrusted domain controllers:

A DPM agent failed to communicate with the DPM service on FQDN.DPMSERVER.COM because access is denied. Make sure that FQDN.DPMSERVER.COM has DCOM launch and access permissions for the computer running the DPM agent (Error code: 0x80070005, full name: FQDN.DPMSERVER.COM).

and

DCOM was unable to communicate with the computer FQDN.DPMSERVER.COM using any of the configured protocols.

I did figure out how to get it working. What you have to do is simply double click on the DPMAgentInstaller_x86.exe or DPMAgentInstaller_x64.exe for 32 bit DC’s or 64 bit DC’s respectively and let the install complete. Or right-click and run-as Administrator if you have UAC enabled. Once complete reboot. For some reason if you point DPM to the DPM server during install on a domain controller it screws something up.

After reboot, run the following command like you normally would:

SetDpmServer.exe -dpmServerName FQDN.DPMSERVER.COM -isNonDomainServer –userName DpmAgentUser

After that you can attach to the untrusted DC’s successfully, and you can actually back them up!

I’m still pretty new to Data Protection Manager, so if you have some tips and suggestions I am all ears! Hit me up in the comments!

Technorati Tags: dpm,2010,how to,untrusted,domain controller,install,agent,attach

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Configuring Google Apps With Pidgin

I have a Gmail account like most of you, but I don’t like to use it for Google Talk. Why? Because I have a lot of people in my buddy list that like to hit me up for Diggs, Stumbles, and so forth. I don’t want to block them because sometimes I need them to Digg, and Stumble stuff for me too. I don’t want to do it all the time though, and if I stay signed into Google Talk using Pidgin, then I am constantly bugged throughout my day.

Instead, I would rather stay signed into Pidgin using my Google Apps account. That way my true friends and family that have my email address can still chat with me. The problem with Pidgin and Google Apps is that it doesn’t automagically jive using the Google Talk settings. To get it to work you need to set it up like any other XMPP/Jabber server. To set it up use the following settings (Make sure to change them to match your account settings!):

Basic Tab:

Protocol: XMPP
Username: USER
Domain: DOMAIN.COM
RESOURCE: Home
Password: YOURPASSWORD

 

Advanced Tab:

Check Require SSL/TLS
Check Force old (port 5223) SSL
Uncheck Allow Plaintext auth over unencrypted streams
Connection Port: 5223
Connection Server: talk.google.com
File transfer proxies: talk.google.com

Save your settings and you should be good to go!

Technorati Tags: google,apps,settings,pidgin,im,gtalk,google talk

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Best Geocaching App for Android

Some of you know that I recently made the switch from my Palm Pre to my new HTC Evo 4G phone. With that change, or course comes a whole new operating system, and a whole new set of applications. I of course still wanted some of the same types of apps for my new phone, or at least similar apps that provided the same functionality. One of those being an app for Geocaching!

If you go into the Android marketplace though and search for Geocaching, of Geocache, you get the official app from Groundspeak, the company that owns Geocaching.com. That app is $9.99. I am a cheap bastard though, and since the app on my Palm Pre was free, I wanted a free app for my Android. I went down the list of other apps, but all of them pretty much sucked. None of the free ones that showed up with the above search criteria had direct access to the Geocaching.com database. You had to go to the website on your phone, and download the loc files. LAME!

Well, I pretty much said screw it, and decided to take a break from Geocaching for a bit. That was until I decided to try and fix the housing on my wife’s iPhone. You see, it had a big crack down the back, so I went on Amazon and bought her a replacement back housing piece. I then followed some instructions online on how to remove the back housing, and replace it. It didn’t work out too well. I took Humpty Dumpty apart, but I couldn’t put him back together again.

Anyway, after about an hour or so of trying to get the itty-bitty screws back in, in the right order and what-not, I finally told my wife that I would buy her a new HTC Evo 4G, and that it was a better phone anyway. She reluctantly agreed, but said that it HAD to have a working Geocaching application. So once again I began to search. This time was a little bit different.

I again went to the Android market, but this time I decided to look at the comments for the Groundspeak app. There in the comments I found my answer. Everybody was raving about a free alternative that worked better than the official app. The free application is called C:GEO, and it is bar-none the best  Geocaching app I have used on a smart phone. PERIOD!

From their page:

c:geo is simple yet powerful unofficial geocaching client for Android devices. In contrast with other similar applications, c:geo doesn't require web browser nor exports. You can just go geocaching with your phone and without any home preparation or worries. Of course, you can go without paying - it's free.

The thing I love about this app that I didn’t have on the free version on my Palm Pre was the ability to log visits directly from the app! My wife’s iPhone app could do it, but she had the official Groundspeak version for her iPhone. Now on her HTC Evo, she can have the same functionality, but it doesn’t cost us a dime!

Do you geocache? Do you have an Android? What app do you use? Let us know in the comments!

Technorati Tags: free,geocache,geocaching,app,android,c:geo

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Know your Browser: Internet Explorer 9 Beta

So I was going to write up this post last week but decided to give it a few more days of testing to get a good feel for it. I’ve used it every day in my normal work, which consists of going through probably hundreds of tabs throughout the week and almost never closing the browser. Loading plenty of flash and sites with a lot of javascripting.

So what are the results? I would give IE9 Beta a 7/10. It is by far better than IE8 or lower. It does have most of the modern web standards, supporting audio and video tags from HTML5. It is much faster than other versions and more slim and compact. For me it scored a 95 / 100 on the Acid3 test. where IE8 only had a 20/100 and Firefox had a 94 / 100, so a bonus there also. Another improvement I've noticed is that the Remember Password doesn’t come up as a popup but instead a hover over the page at the bottom similar to how other browsers do it. Some of the downfalls to it, is, well that it’s Microsoft. Other than that, visually it does not have some of the features we’re used to in other version of IE. There is no status bar, instead when you hover over a link it shows in a little popup in the bottom. To me I find that annoying. I don’t mind losing some of the web viewing space for the status bar.

There are also very limited good or free add-ons for it as there are in Firefox and Chrome. Although a lot of improvements are built in to it, you can’t fully customize it and make it your own as much as I would like. It also does not and as far as I know does not support default re-opening your last session. Although you can still do it via the New Tab page. Also if you still need to view a site in IE8 or 7 it has an engine switching mode in the developer section by pressing F12. Though the developer section doesn’t seem to have changed at all from IE8 and not nearly as functional as Firebug.

So to sum it up, performance wise it seems good, a far improvement from older versions. Functionality and feel of it is lacking and takes some getting used to. So if you’re a dedicated IE user then this will be awesome for you and the greatest thing ever, and for us web developers, we can’t wait for everyone to start using it when it comes out in full release next year. For you firefox and chrome users it’ll still be a useless blue e icon on your pc, but at least it’ll look prettier.

IE8 Acid3  Test

IE9 Acid3 Test

 

By FreedomChicken

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Theme of the Week #2: iDroid for iPhone

If you’re unfortunate enough to have an iPhone and really wanted to have a Droid phone instead but don’t have the money yet saved up to shell out for a new Droid X or EVO. iDroid should help you last long enough till you can actually get one. Or if for some reason you like the iPhone or want to seem trendy with one, but like the cool Android icons iDroid will work too. This is a theme however that will require you to have your phone jailbroken and have WinterBoard installed, but not hard to do. Another nice thing about it is that It’s Free. It’s got about 35 different icons, dock, background, lock screen background and some other custom UI mods.

 

 

How to Install

1. Your device must be jailbroken. (how?)
2. Make sure you have WinterBoard installed via Cydia.
2. Make sure you have the MacCiti source installed in Cydia.
3. Search for iDroid in Cydia, run the install.
4. Open WinterBoard and activate the iDroid Theme.

 

 

Brought to you by the letter A and FreedomChicken

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