Blogs

Ahh, once again the joys of lessening the security on a device to enable modification or easier use shows its dark side. Once upon a time geeks could open and hack the software they bought and make their own world a better place. Now, more people do this without the knowledge of the risks they are taking or how to manage them. The result is that "other" things start to happen showing that the need for knowledge is even more important, especially with regard to security. First Trojan reported for the iPhone by Jim Dalrymple While not a huge risk, the first Trojan for the iPhone has been discovered. The first reports came from iPhone enthusiast site Modmyifone.com and were later confirmed by security research company F-Secure. <sniped> F-Secure reported that it was an 11-year-old kid playing with XML files who created the Trojan. “Next time it might be someone else with more skills and with specific target,” they said. Macworld | First Trojan reported for the iPhone ttfn David Technorati Tags: Security...

Fro information on how to change the screen savers, go look at the link below. I found this info on the Windows Vista Magazine blog - http://www.windowsvistamagazine.co.uk/page/windows... The sad sad fact is Windows Vista will be shipping with screensavers without the options to be configured, however they were originally designed to be customizable. Stephen Coy tells me this feature might be available after Vista ships, perhaps in a powertoy or service pack? But if you can’t wait, then you can follow the steps below to customize the screensavers through the registry. Source: Registry hacks for the Windows Vista screensavers at istartedsomething

Wow, what a questioning title. I am not a "business online" expert, but I did find this article rather interesting and worth a read. It has some nice reminders about the importance of doing the basics right, such as customer service, shipping and core "business" such as invoicing, accounts etc. just a quick one :-) ttfn David P.S. I could suggest that Office Live might be the answer, but for true transactional stuff you need a transactional hosting partner that provides a "basket" function for you - of course, there is Commerce Server 2007....

I was browsing the Trends Blog I came across these. While not core or even necessarily affordable, it is worth seeing what is coming. Large touch screen Touch Me: Dahan Unveils the T-View, 120 Inches of Touchability - Gizmodo “Korean company Dahan has come up with a monster 10-foot touchscreen with an amazing 10 millisecond response time. The T-View runs in Windows 2000 or XP, uses rear projection and a surface mirror system, and corresponds to multi-finger touch….” Hi-res screens Dell Redesigns The LCD: Dell’s Display Port Prototype Will Allow for Resolutions 4x Better Than HD “It measures about half an inch thick and packs a resolution that’s 4x sharper than the current HDTV resolutions. It’s part of Dell’s new Display Port technology. The new interconnect will let you daisychain multiple monitors and connect other peripherals via one bi-directional cable. As you can see from the pic, it’ll also allow for embedded peripherals around the display (this one has speakers built in on the side).” Monitors with two...

Now this sounds familiar - compromise the dev tools and they compromise all products produced with them. Enterprises using open source software to engineer custom applications could be vulnerable to a newly discovered class of hack attack, a security firm claimed today. Fortify Software 's Security Research Group reported that so-called 'cross-build injection attacks' could allow a hacker to insert code into the target program while it is being constructed. The use of open source coding tools have opened the doors to "possible system-wide exploits", according to Fortify. If an attacker compromises either the server that hosts a component, or the DNS server that the build machine uses to locate that server, he could use these vulnerabilities to take full control of the build machine and possibly other machines on the remote network. Fortify discovered that, during the application build process, systems that automatically download external dependencies, including the popular Ant, Maven and...

I'm not feeling my best, so no comments, but below was an article I found very interesing: Independent study advises IT planners to go OOXML Posted by Mary Jo Foley @ 6:41 am Market researchers with the Burton Group have issued a 37-page study– not commissioned by Microsoft or any other tech vendor — that finds Microsoft’s OOXML document format to be more useful than the rival ODF format backed by Microsoft’s competitors. The new study, freely downloadable (in exchange for registration) from Burton’s Web site is entitled “What’s Up, .DOC? ODF, OOXML, and the Revolutionary Implications of XML in Productivity Applications.” Office Open XML (OOXML) is Microsoft’s XML file format that it made the default in its Office 2007 suite. Open Document Format(ODF) is the file format championed by Sun Microsystems, IBM, Google and other Microsoft competitors. Microsoft is seeking ISO standards approval for OOXML, largely to appease customers who prefer/require standards-compliant products, as well as to head off ODF momentum...

I'm no great Halo Wiz - why, I don't have the reactions of a 21 year old to beat them in network play, but I do enjoy playing against the cpu inside the box (whenever I join a network match I nearly always end up dead in a few second.. ho hum). Anyway, the graphics of the xbox 360 always impress me as does the UI of some of the games. Halo 3 is coming and there is now a site with great trailer videos, background info and more. For those of you who don't believe that Halo is reality, have a look at some of the film (yes film, not graphics) that was shot and for example, see the Warthog that was used ( http://www.bungie.net/images/News/WeeklyUpdate/WarthogB110707.jpg ) Anyway, enjoy the site and enjoy building your own trailers too :-) ttfn David Technorati Tags: xbox 360 , Halo 3 , trailers

I saw on the OneCare blog that a new beta is out this can be signed up for at Windows Live OneCare 2.0 Beta . I like OneCare - while it has it cranky moments (like I have to manually remove the old product to install the beta) it works better than some others I could mention without killing my machine or network. It is the product that I have bought for my home to protect it. According to the sign up site, this is what OneCare does. Windows Live OneCare 2.0 Beta - All-in-one security and performance for all your PCs Windows Live OneCare is an automatically self-updating PC care service that's on whenever your PC is on, helping provide persistent protection against viruses, hackers, and other threats. It also performs regular tune-ups to help keep your PC running at top speed, and helps you back up important documents. Runs quietly in the background, providing anti-virus, anti-spyware, online identity and scam protection (anti-phishing) and firewall protection Updates itself to help you keep ahead of the latest...

They said it could happen, but no-one believed them. Could and would people out-grow SBS? Well the answer is yes, people do - we see sales of the transition pack going through the system so we know it happens :-) Did Vlad use the transition pack - it sounds unlikely as he has lost his wizards, which you do get to keep (but no guarantees about the scalability of them). For more information on the Transition Pack (which saves you money moving to non-SBS editions) have a look here . For Vlads post on leaving the SBS fraternity, go here . Whilst we are on the subject, congratulations to Vlad for getting his 2nd MVP award too. Well done - perhaps this was an indication that you were always going to outgrown SBS :-) For other information on the Transition Pack, have a look at http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=sbs+transition+pack ttfn David

I was at a Citrix event last week. It was a good event with my role explaining to people that "no", Microsoft and Citrix don't hate each other and in fact our technologies are very, very complementary. I'll post on the Microsoft, Citrix, Virtualisation (Terminal Services, Application, Desktop and Server) later, but part way through I got talking to Jon Silk from Lewis and we discovered that we both blogged to communicate with the world and have a conversation. I happened to mention the fact that I had 1.5M page hits last month and about 65,000 unique people (excluding search engines) visit the blog every month and look what he wrote... The British Scoble(iser) I met David Overton, ISV Partner Account Manager at Microsoft, at a conference today. We nervously circled each other over the bad coffee making polite comments. Then he let slip that his blog gets 65,000 unique visitors a month and I realised I was talking to the UK's answer to you-know-who . Check out his approach to blog design....

Well, it is now over 30 years since Star Wars made me realise that there is more to life and that doing the right thing was something to fight for. However, just as a bit of nostalgia, here is a little posting from the Community Pages sharing how Happy Christmas (non-PC version) was done 30 years ago "Happy Holidays!" Love, 1977 December 21, 2007 Thirty years ago next week, 20th Century Fox began running a newspaper ad for the 1977 holiday season which offered seasons greetings from several Star Wars characters. Even our favorite Grand Moff and Sith Lord offered their best -- we'll chalk that up to New Year's resolutions. Star Wars: Community | "Happy Holidays!" Love, 1977 ttfn David Technorati Tags: Star Wars , Happy Christmas

From the Empower Blog I saw: Office Business Applications (OBA) Technical Briefing This two day technical briefing explores an emerging category of applications, known as Office Business Applications (OBA). It explores the technologies that underpin them, in particular Microsoft Office 2007, Windows SharePoint Services, Microsoft Office SharePoint Services and Open XML. This two-day course is run as a seminar and the labs are provided as a take-away for attendees to go through in their own time. For more information and to enrol, follow the link to the Partner Learning Centre and sign in using your Partner Program login and password. OBA Briefing ttfn David Technorati Tags: Office Business Applications , OBA , Training

I’m really sorry that everything has been so very quiet on the blog front – work has just been maxing out and I even took some personal time out – I’ve now been married for just over ten years and to celebrate Mrs Overton and I visited Niagara Falls for the weekend. It was a wonderful time and worth the break, however I now need to get my skates on. Niagara Falls from our hotel room American and Honeymoon Falls from hotel room Before that I was planning and helping an ”EBC” or Enterprise Briefing Center with a number of UK ISVs. The trip gave insight to these Partners and an opportunity to discuss next steps on working together. It certainly helped me in my conversations with COA Solutions: This week I will be working on SBS 2008 materials for publishing when the technology preview becomes available. I also have a back log of other information to share about Microsoft, SaaS, ISVs, partners and more. ttfn David Technorati Tags: Personal , ISVs