By computer management, I mean it’s sort of in the same category of Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager, but way easier to setup. Plus since it’s open source, there are no licensing costs. It’s called FOG.

FOG can clone hard drives, and deploy the disk images in a multicast. Not only that, but you can deploy software with it, map printers and join computers to Active Directory.

Check out the video:

If you have any questions about FOG that I didn’t cover in the video. Capabilities, installation questions, etc. Let me know in the comments!

By -=El Di Pablo=-

Any way, the company is only a few years old, and up until now we are running on a Microsoft BizSpark licensing plan. Now that we’re getting a little older though, and we are using more servers to produce our goods, we need a more robust licensing plan from Microsoft. I decided to go to one of my local VARs to work on some quotes, and what they came back with almost gave my boss a heart attack.

In this post I am strictly going to talk about Microsoft SQL Licensing. Just so you know though, the quote we got for SQL was on top of an already ridiculously high $107K three year quote for server licenses. Before I give you the quote I got for SQL, keep in mind this is only for two physical servers running SQL Enterprise.

So we got our quote from Microsoft, and it was roughly $183K for three years. Yes, for two servers it was almost $200,000! That is because at the time of this writing, they were quoting us based on the number of processors. One of the physicals servers has four processors, and the other has two. Bam! Bend us over for $200K!

On top of that, my VAR is telling me that next year Microsoft is switching to a per-core model of licensing. On my server with four procs, each proc has six cores! On the two proc box, each proc has four cores! Now my boss is starting to hyperventilate.

I’m sorry Microsoft, I know you’re just a mom and pop shop, and you’re just trying to make your way in this crazy world, but $200K is too much to pay for a database. The good news for us is that Microsoft SQL isn’t the only game in town. Good news for my company, I’m not afraid to think outside of the Microsoft box.

After getting that quote, the manager of our dev team and I started talking about moving to an Open Source database solution. First he said MySQL, but since they’re owned by Oracle now they have more strict licensing. I’m suggesting PostgreSQL.

Never heard of it? Here’s a description from their About page:

An enterprise class database, PostgreSQL boasts sophisticated features such as Multi-Version Concurrency Control (MVCC), point in time recovery, tablespaces, asynchronous replication, nested transactions (savepoints), online/hot backups, a sophisticated query planner/optimizer, and write ahead logging for fault tolerance. It supports international character sets, multibyte character encodings, Unicode, and it is locale-aware for sorting, case-sensitivity, and formatting. It is highly scalable both in the sheer quantity of data it can manage and in the number of concurrent users it can accommodate. There are active PostgreSQL systems in production environments that manage in excess of 4 terabytes of data.

Best of all, PostgreSQL provides all of their Enterprise features absolutely free under a Liberal Open Source License! With something like this we can lower our overhead, and use those cost savings to improve our bottom line.

We will have to no doubt do some serious coding changes to make sure our data is compatible with PostgreSQL, but I think in the long run, the cost savings of switching to open source will outweigh the work to get there.

What do you think? Move to an open source database? Stick with Microsoft and suck up the cost? What’s your argument for or against? Let us know in the comments.

-=El Di Pablo=-

After setting up Zenoss, I learned about a really cool application for Windows servers that lets you get more our of monitoring using SNMP. With this applications, it means less to configure, and you can simply add servers to your monitoring solution with SNMP, and pretty much get everything you need to keep your network in top top shape!

It’s called SNMP Informant. Here are some of it’s features from their website:

• Full 64 bit support – Our "all-in-one" installer automatically detects the operating system version and installs the correct components
• Access Windows Performance data – Our Performance providers allow you to connect to any "out of the box" Windows Performance counter object using industry standard SNMP Object IDs (OIDs)!
• Access Custom Performance data – Our new "Custom" provider (part of SNMP Informant-Premium) allows you to collect data from any valid Windows performance counter.  If you’ve got a performance counter instrumented application, and you can see the performance counters in PerfMon, then you can monitor it using SNMP Informant Premium!
• Run Remote scripts and collect data – If you’re using custom scripts to monitor something on a remote Windows server, you can now execute that script remotely using SNMP Informant, and collect the results of that script into an OID that YOU specify!
• Use your OWN Private Enterprise ID – You can customize SNMP Informant to respond to queries made against your OWN IANA Private Enterprise number!
• Read Remote Registry information – The new "Custom" provider also lets you specify what registry value to read!
• Collect WMI information – Our WMI providers allow you to connect to the Windows Management Instrumentation sub-system using SNMP!  Stop/Start/Restart services!  Reboot servers!  Execute programs remotely!
• Monitor Exchange, SQL, Cluster, BizTalk, ISA and more, including Forefront, WSUS, Virtual Server, Citrix, the OS, and system hardware.  Supported Operating Systems include Windows XP/Vista/Windows 7, Server 2000, Server 2003 (incl. R2), AND Server 2008 (incl. R2).
• Extend your monitoring system’s ROI – If you use products like HP Network Node Manager, IpSwitch Whatsup, OpenNMS, Nagios/Cacti/MRTG/RRDttool, Zenosss, or other SNMP compliant management platforms, find out how SNMP Informant can add significant value to them in minimal time and with minimal effort!
• Stop/Start/Restart Services and Windows Server – Using SNMP, you can control your Windows server like never before!
• Can be used with SNMPv1, SNMPv2 and SNMPv3 – Many companies are starting to to take advantage of enhanced SNMPv3 security.  SNMP Informant supports all 3 versions.  Find out more here!
• SNMP Informant is priced attractively – We recognize that while functionality is important, value cannot be overlooked. That’s why we have priced SNMP Informant to help maximize your IT budget spending.

Their standard version is absolutely free, so you can start adding it to all of your Windows servers today, and start seeing better results with your monitoring solution.

What are you guys using for monitoring these days? Solarwinds? What’s Up? Microsoft Systems Center? OpManager? What’s your favorite and why? Let us know in the comments.

-=El Di Pablo=-

Image via CrunchBase

A while back I mentioned some applications and or plugins I found that will help boost the views you have on a particular Youtube video on Bauer-Power. These methods might be considered by some as shady. I say, if by shady you mean helpful, then yes… Very shady!

All of these tools are fully automated. You can simply set them, and forget them to earn credits which in turn you can trade in for more views. With some of them, not only can you get more views, but you can also get comments, likes, favorites and subscribers! Basically everything you need to be the next Justin Bieber.

Here’s my list:

• Vagex – Terrible name I know. Sounds like something your girlfriend might use when she’s feeling not so fresh. Trust me though, it’s the best one out there. Not only can you get more views, but you can specify key words that you want to rank for in Youtube’s search. Plus you can get likes, favs, comments and subs as well.
• U2BViews – This is number two on my list. This is available as a desktop application as well as a Firefox extension. They are getting ready to add likes, favs and subs, but they do not have it yet. I’ve also chatted with the developer and talked them into adding Google Plus One’s as well.
• Viewet – This one is pretty much just like U2BViews, except it’s really only good for more views in my opinion. The thing I like about it is you can manage your credits easier. You can withdraw from one video to deposit on another video.
• Enhanceviews – This one runs as a browser plugin only. This one is great for comments and likes. You can even submit your Youtube account to them to use as they see fit, and earn credits that way. The only thing I don’t like about it though is their credit to view ratio. The ones above are all one to one, but Enhanceviews is something like 38 to one. Still, you can rack up credits pretty fast.

So why would you want to use this I hear you mumbling to yourself, all creepy like. This can best be answered from the Viewet page:

YouTube video views benefit your videos in many different ways. Viewet [and the other tools] increase your video’s ranking for your keywords and tags, increases the chances of your video being featured on a Google search for the keywords on your video, and also can get you video honors and even featured on the YouTube homepage.

If you can make it to the front page of Youtube, you are two clicks away from Bieberdom! Woot!

The best thing about these tools is they are 100% free to use. They all have paid features, but the free versions are robust enough that you don’t need to use them. I find it’s best to set these up on a computer in the corner over the weekend with the sound off, and walk away. The next time you have a video of you cats doing something super cute, use your new secret weapons to push them to the front page.

Got questions about these? Know of any other similar tools? Let’s chat in the comments!

-=El Di Pablo=-

What is wardriving you ask? According to Wikipedia:

Wardriving is the act of searching for Wi-Fi wireless networks by a person in a moving vehicle, using a portable computer, smartphone or PDA…

…Wardriving originated from wardialing, a technique popularized by a character played by Matthew Broderick in the film WarGames, and named after that film. Wardialing in this context refers to the practice of using a computer to dial many phone numbers in the hopes of finding an active modem.

Basically you drive around, and look for open wireless networks. Simple right?

Now I’m not saying you need to be like the guy at the hacker convention, but sometimes it’s nice to know where in town you can go to catch some free Internet in case you have to send an emergency Tweet, or update Facebook at the drop of the hat.

Well I found a cool tool that runs on Windows that will automatically try find and connect to open wireless networks when you’re in range, and will alert you to stop when it has found an open access point and is trying to connect.

The tool is called outSSIDer, and you can get it as a free download. From their page:

outSSIDer automatically attempts to connect to any open access point that comes within range as you walk down the streets hunting for WiFi.

When an attempt is made it alerts you with sound to stand still and wait. That way you don’t need to watch the screen while walking – you can even close the laptop lid to save battery!

The connection is then verified against payment hotspots and restricted networks by trying to fetch the Google website icon.

If it fails connecting or verifying, it alerts you with the sound again and resumes scanning.

This tool is light and easy to use, and certainly a good tool to have in your wardriving goody bag. Do you go wardriving ever? What tools do you like to use? Let us know in the comments!

-=El Di Pablo=-

It’s an Admin’s worst nightmare (well one of them).

A server’s system disk is quickly running out of space for no apparent reason. You know that when the system drive fills the server is going to shut down and you’re going to have a lot of unhappy users. You need to find out what is taking up so much space.

There are several tools for looking around your drive and getting a visual image of what is on it. Tools like WinDirStat, Folder Size and TreeSize all do a nice job of showing you where all that space is going.

But sometimes you need a quick and dirty tool and (if you’re like me) you don’t want to install something on your servers unless you really need to.

That’s one great thing about SequoiaView, it gives you a nice visual map of any drive or folder without installing anything. Download the zipped version, unzip it and run the executable. There’s nothing to install or risk messing up your servers with. Delete the whole folder when you are done and there’s no trace of it.

Of course, I am using JFFNMS to monitor my network so I was able to learn about this impending disaster early enough to do something about it. In my case – I had forgotten to reconfigure the IIS logging on my Exchange server, so the OWA logs were slowly filling up the system drive since they default to Windows\System32\LogFiles.

What do you use to monitor disk space on your servers? Do you have any horror stories to share with AtA? Well that is what the comments are for!

_TheMonitoringAdmiN_

The only users who can upload to your Google Docs account are the ones with the link, so you have a little control over who can upload. The user posting files can upload them one at a time or in batches, but they only see their uploads and the upload progress. When the files are finished, you’ll get an email and link to view them.

GoDropBox is free for organizations with fewer than 100 users, and gives each user 50MB to use. For larger uploads, $5/month will boost the cap to 2GB.

Not everyone always wants to be connected but sometimes you need to be. Here are the steps you need to do to add Office Communicator to your Blackberry.

Download Blackberry desktop manager for your specific BB model. Your best bet here is to go to your phone’s carrier’s website and download it. Google “Verizon Blackberry Desktop Manager” and you will get a find a place to enter your phone number. Do so. You can replace Verizon with your carrier is applicable.Install the BBM on your computer.

1. Connect your BB via USB or Bluetooth (this did not work easily/) Make sure you use a USB port on the back of your computer not connected to a USB hub.
2. Download the appropriate Office Communicator for Blackberry from here: 2007 or 2005. Download the desktop version.
3. Extract the folders.
4. Launch your Desktop manager and go to applications. 
5. Point the browser to the directory you extracted the files/folders to in step 4.
6. Log in to the app with your email address and correct password.
7. Enjoy your communicator – now you can always stay connected!!!

Oh and while you are at it upgrade your BB’s operating system to 6 and enjoy a brand new device!

_TheMobileAdmiN_

If you have two or more computers at one desk, you don’t want two or more sets of keyboards and mice cluttering up your workspace, too. You can buy a hardware gadget that lets you share a single keyboard and mouse with several computers (which involves a mess of tangled wires), or you could use a free software solution called Synergy. The Synergy application runs on all the computers you’re using—the one that has the keyboard and mouse connected and the one(s) that do not—and lets you control all of them from that keyboard and mouse. That means you can move your mouse off one computer’s screen and it will appear on the other, where you can type and work as well. Synergy also lets you share Clipboard contents between computers. If you copy information to the Clipboard on one computer and move your mouse to the other, you can paste it there, even though they’re two different systems.

Read the whole post at Lifehacker here or grab the app here.

It is called RRT and can be downloaded from here. Once you run it you will see a screen that looks like this:

Simply check Task Manager and hit Remove. That’s it! Happy Hunting Guys!

_TheTaskManagingAdmiN_

OfficeTab gives your office applications tabs like Firefox introduced to the web way back when. (If you haven’t checked out Firefox 4 yet check out this post on where to find it as a portable application.)

Well if you are not into finding the latest and greatest software you probably never heard of it. But I am hear to show you what it is, how it works and how to grab it. Interested?

Good, I thought that would spark some interest!

Feel free to download OfficeTab from this link here http://hi.baidu.com/officecm/ 

BUT WAIT – the catch is that the site is NOT in English.

So you do not have to go through what I went through trying to figure out how to download this bad boy the direct download link lives here:http://files.cnblogs.com/wangminbai/OfficeTabv1.20.zip.

Which incidentally if you scroll down to the bottom of the product page it is the only link there. So no need for Google Translations today. The actual application IS multilingual so there are no issues there. Let’s take a look at how it works.

After downloading the application you have to install it. You will see a screen that looks like this after the initial next…

Simply check the Microsoft Office Applications you want OfficeTab to work with. I left the only three that showed up checked. I guess you wouldn’t have a real need for it in Access or Outlook… (or would you??)

Finish your install and then check out the settings:

These are the Excel settings which start with the check box to enable the Tabs inside Excel. I left the rest of the settings alone until I really get into using the application.

The other tabs include WordTab and PowerPoint Tab they are essentially identical. But peruse them and see if there is something that tickles your fancy like enabling custom colors, changing the hot key to switch labels and more. If you find a particularly helpful option let us know in the comments.

Hit apply if you change anything and let’s see how it looks in Word:

Wow just like Firefox! Very cool and a lot handier than having to hit the task bar to switch between windows. All you need to do is open multiple files and they will each have there very own tab. Sweet!

let’s see how it works in excel:

It works the exact same way in Excel as it does in Word. And guess what? It works the same exact way in PowerPoint as well. It could not be easier and this really helps my work flow.

Now here is a little hint that you Firefoxer’s will love you can open a new tab the same way you would in Firefox by simply double clicking the area where the new tab would appear. Go ahead and try it – we will wait.

See I told you we would wait. Wasn’t that worth it? For me this is going on all my systems where I use Microsoft Office. What do you think? Will this help you work faster? Do you know of other FREE MS Office Plugins? We would love to give them a try. Go ahead and leave them in comments – I dare you :)

Being able to use Photoshop filters and the ability to use masks and layers were a necessity and sure enough those are both features of this application called Photobie.

Upon discovering Photobie 7.2.1 I think I have a major contender in the graphic design freeware war. First of all the download was a mere 4.4 MB. That’s right a full fledged layered graphic editor weighing in at under 5 MB!

After installing the application I was greeted by a Photoshop like interface and this message:

Photobie is completely free and has a community behind it that is constantly publishing tutorials and how-to’s. For this simple fact Photobie makes a great image editor for beginners. Reading through what the application can do I was amazed. It says that it can do Gif Animation, Screen Captures, Photoshop filter imports (.8BF files), it can make beautiful digital scrapbooks and more!

Ok it sounds too good to be true so I downloaded it and gave it a test drive. Let’s see what I was able to do and how easy it was. This is what your application looks like:

It has a main window on the right hand side where you can work, it has a free floating layer manager that allows you hide, show or modify layers, and other tool palettes on the right hand side. Just like Photoshop the palettes are moveable and can be rearranged to your hearts content.

You can see the author’s demo/walkthrough of the application via YouTube here:

Out of habit I hit Control – N to create a new document and sure enough it popped up! You can also create a new document by hitting File –> New.

You will then be shown the new image wizard. You will need to specify a width, height, resolution, default file type and you can set your background to a color, image or texture. Not too shabby!

If you are wondering you can save the file as .pob, .jpg, .png, .bmp, .gif, .tif, and .ico.

You can create a transparent background by checking the box for a transparent background. When you are happy with your settings you can hit ok. You will then have a empty canvas per your specifications to work with like so:

When you start you will have one layer that is called the background, which happens to be the same in Photoshop as well. As we either paste images in or draw on our canvas another layer will be created. To demonstrate this I will choose the pencil tool  like so:

Then I drew a line using the colored pen. I used the selected color of black but I could have just as easily switched it by clicking on another color in the color palette below the paint selection.

You can then remove the layer or add a new one from the layer manager, as well as control opacity, hide the layer, create a mask and so much more. This application will leave amateurs looking through hundreds of tools and experts happy that they can do almost anything that they can do in more expensive applications.

You can use the gif animation feature by clicking on GIF_Animation on the top menu and then Animation control panel. That will take you here where you can drag and drop frames to be used in your gif file. You can load a animated gif to be able to dissect it and use pieces of it in your own creations.

You can set up the screen capture tool by hitting the screen capture button at the top of the menu and then setting the hot keys.

By default the hot key is Control – Alt – 1. This will grab the active screen and open it as a new document like so:

There are loads of tutorials up on the Photobie website that will teach you how to use basic or advanced features as well as a full feature list which will demonstrate each feature. These tutorials are available here.

Check out the post below:

So I get an email from Disqus the other day like I always do when someone comments on a blog post. Often times if someone posts a link in the comment I get an approval email from Disqus. Most of the time if there is a link it is spam and I mark it as spam via email and I’m on my way, but occasionally someone will post a comment to something very useful, and that is how this article begins!

I received a comment from a reader by the name of Tony Jobson on my article on how to setup SSTP VPN in Windows server 2008. In that article I mentioned how you can get an SSL certificate from GoDaddy for $12.99. I thought that was the best deal in town, but I was wrong!

You can get a FREE, fully functional SSL certificate from StartSSL! Yes, I said free, and it works with most browsers and services! I signed up for a free account, and tested it on my home SSTP VPN, and it worked without issue! I even setup a StartSSL cert on my personal start page for the hell of it! It’s free, why not?

From their page:

What?

Security and encryption is getting ever more important in today’s computer networks, being it SSL secured web sites, encryption of data or mail, secure logon to mention just a few. But security is expensive, right? Not anymore….

StartCom, the vendor and distributor of StartCom Linux Operating Systems, also operates MediaHost™, a hosting company, which offered its clients, SSL secured web sites with certificates signed by StartCom for many years. That’s where the idea originated: Free SSL certificates!

How?

Most web servers, such as Apache and IIS are capable of running the 128/256-bit secured and encrypted SSL protocol. Most mail clients can encrypt and sign your electronic mail messages. All you need, in most cases, is a SSL or S/MIME certificate to make it work. StartCom provides certificates through an easy web based interface wizard and sign up process – free of charge. With our installation instructions, you’ll have your secured web site running or your email exchange secured within minutes.

Why?

Because we believe in the right to protect and secure information between two entities without discrimination of race, origin and financial capabilities. By applying a completely different and new business model compared to traditional certification authorities, we are able to prove here, that digital certificates can cost much less or may be even free of charge! Instantly! Furthermore, every certificate from StartCom is insured up to US$ 10,000 if your customers were to suffer financial loss as a direct result of relying on a certificate that was issued through our negligence! This and other measures permits the visitors and customers of your site to fully rely and trust in StartCom.

Where, when?

The StartCom Certification Authority is today supported by most important platforms like Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh OS X and many Linux operating systems and browsers like Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Safari and Google’s Chrome provide built-in support. Should you be using an older or unsupported browser you may import our CA certificate.

The next time you or your company are looking to secure a website, create an SSL VPN, setup a simple secure mail server, etc. You don’t have to waste gobs of money when you can get it for free!

Do you or your company use StartSSL? How do you like it so far? Any reason why you wouldn’t want to use them? Let me know in the comments!

If you are planning a party, event or are in charge of a project then you should definitely check this application out. It can help you and your team (or just you) get organized and stay on track.

Clutterpad does offer paid accounts to track multiple events at the same time and add more resources such as being able to upload files. But for most of you the free account will work wonders.

You can check out the service here and get to the free sign up page here as well.

When you arrive at the home page you will see a screen that looks like this:

Click on the signup button and choose the free account. They will continually try and get you to sign up for a paid account like so:

If 1 project, 5 users, 50 contacts, unlimited to-do lists, messages and chat rooms are enough for click the No Thanks button and continue on. If you need more resources or space to save files then try the 30 day trial of one of the free plans with no obligation. But I used the free one.

Now we are ready to begin setting up our first project. For mine I am using my first vacation as a family to The Dominican Republic.

Add a title and description and click on the create this project button. That will take you to this screen:

If any of my family members were online I would have added them here as users. But alas I am all alone on this one. So I clicked on cancel. That takes you to your main Clutterpad screen like so:

From here you can get a overview of your project, create to-do’s, calendar items, messages, chat rooms and add or modify contacts. You also have a pad to take notes on but from the free account you can not upload files.

By clicking on the To-dos tab you will be taken to a screen where you can create a  new To-do list. Click the new to-do list button and give it a name like so:

I choose to make this a to-do list for my trip. You can choose if you want the list to be private from your other users or available to everyone. Then I named my first to do list DR To-do’s and clicked on the button that said create this list.

To add a new item start typing in the add one item to do in this list box. Then add its due date and select a user who’s responsibility this task will be. You can also have an email sent out to notify the user, In this instance it is me.

Users that can see the list can modify it or add notes. You can hover over the item with your mouse to get a glimpse of what has been added to the list like so:

Next up let us take a look at the calendar portion of ClutterPad:

We can add separate calendars for specific functions or use one calendar for the whole project. You can click on the day you want to add an event and fill in the pertinent information like so:

Next we can add a message simply by clicking on the messages tab and then selecting new message. That will bring up this dialogue box:

Similarly we can create a chat room or multiple chat rooms to confer and collaborate on issues and tasks by going to the chat room tab and creating a new chat room:

and after creating your chat room it will be available to all your users by going to the chat room tab. This is what the actual chat room looks like:

Text pad is similar to a message board with regards to the project and your contact tab will allow you to add people to assign tasks (or view the project to).

I really like this free application and will continue using it for small projects and parties. What do you use to collaborate or track a project? Is it free? Then we would love to hear about it in the comments.

It goes on the principle that your computer’s display was created to simulate the sun or a bright day. When it is 10.00pm or even 3.00am we do not want to be looking at the sun. We should tone down our colors so that our eyes can look at images normally.

The example the author gave was what sealed the deal for me. Have you ever tried to jot down an idea on your computer at 3.00am only to be blinded by the bright monitor and walk away without using the computer? I can relate to this as it has happened to me countless times.

Now what if your computer knew that it was 3.00am and it toned down your display so that your eyes would be able to adjust to the light? Wouldn’t that be simply awesome? It sure would. So I proceeded to download the 546KB file and once it was finished installing I saw that I had a new system tray icon.

The settings for the application popped up on my screen. It appeared to be already configured for me as those co-ordinates are for North America. You can click on the arrow next to the co-ordinates to get more specific. You can also see the red arrow pointing to F.lux’s system tray icon below:

After clicking on the arrow or right clicking on the tray icon and selecting change location you will see this screen:

You can type in your zip code and hit the locate button for a fast way to retrieve your latitude and longitude.

Click OK and we are all set up. I was expecting to include screenshots of the 12.00pm desktop and the 12.00am desktop but in the screenshots they were identical. This is truly an application you need to experience for yourself to see how it works. But in essence it reduces the brightness of your monitor by changing your color schemes.

Let’s take a look at what options F.lux offers us:

We’ve already covered the change location option, preview will take you through what your screen will look like at each hour, disable for an hour will put your screen back to full brightness for one hour – this is great if you do need to work with proper colors.  The change lighting button is really not necessary unless you want your screen dark during the day and bright at night!

I also tried to do a screen cast and then as a last alternative went to see if there was a YouTube video of F.lux in action and sadly it appears that it is just not possible to capture the application’s effect using any type of screen capture software. If someone does have a link to a video of F.lux in action let me know in the comments!

Microsoft describes the tools as follows:

PsLoggedOn is part of a growing kit of Sysinternals command-line tools that aid in the administration of local and remote systems named PsTools.

Runs on:

• Client: Windows XP and higher.
• Server: Windows Server 2003 and higher.

We have covered the PSTools Toolkit before here as well. To use it simply run it from the command line with the syntax psloggedon.exe username or computername

So in this instance I ran psloggedon joes to query all my network machines to see which one joes is logged into like so:

This is what I returned:

I saw all the machine the user in question is logged on to and the machines I was unable to query. Now I can run scripts using the machine name and not have to set login scripts for the user. Good luck! And we would love to hear what you are doing on your AD network!

What kind of network magic do you have going on?

_ThePSToolingAdmiN_

So apparently after some partnering up with Verizon, Skype has decided to temporarily pull its Windows Mobile client. Support says if  you have it and run it – it will work.

But you will not be able to download it. We have uploaded the file to our server here as well for when it is gone all together! And we have the Cab file now as well here: http://rapidshare.com/files/422681600/SkypeWM_v3.0.0.256.zip

_TheSkypedOutAdmiN_

The interface is pretty simple and it provides you with two options, Backup and Restore a back up. You can select the user profile from the list of available profiles.

F you are selecting the define user profile option, then you need to manually profile the path to the opera folder, preferences and also the email and RSS folders. Opera Backup is a pretty useful utility to back up and restore Opera profiles which includes bookmarks, configuration etc.

Download Opera Backup

[Via LifeRocks 2.0]

LogMeIn has been around for quite awhile now as a very useful free remote access tool for casual users, as well as a commercial remote access tool for corporations. They’ve now taken the obvious step of putting their technology to use in the form of a screen sharing application called LogMeIn Express.

The idea here is that you can quickly share your Windows computer’s screen with up to 100 viewers by sending them a short 12-digit code and directing them to the LogMeIn Express website. Entering the code will then open a Flash-based page containing the contents of your computer’s screen. As the presenter, you need to install a small piece of native Windows software, but the installation process is quick and painless, and offers 256-bit SSL encryption.

LogMeIn Express competes with more full-featured commercial screen sharing tools like GoToMeeting and WebEx, and though it’s a much more simple implementation, it stacks up well. GoToMeeting is significantly faster than most competitors due to it being based on Citrix’s Terminal Services technology, but LogMeIn Express competes well with WebEx. It doesn’t currently include conference calling features which both of the commercial options do, but it does include an in-session chat module, and the ability to pass control of the host computer to one of the viewers.

LogMeIn Express is still in beta, but is free for both commercial and non-commercial use.

[Via DownloadSquad]

The Chromium OS source code is available for download (Chromium OS is the open-source version of Google Chrome OS), and you can compile and build it. It took some time, but I did manage to do this on my 64-bit Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) machine. I also managed to put together a VirtualBox virtual appliance that is all ready to go. I built a torrent for it, so feel free to download it here:

Download the Chromium OS VirtualBox Appliance Torrent

Please continue to seed, as I’m sure there will be many people out there wanting to try it out.

To use it, just start up VirtualBox, click File and then Import. Navigate to the chromiumos.ovf file and select it. The virtual appliance will be imported into VirtualBox and you should be good to go.

I also included a txt file that more or less has the commands I used to build it. You may be able to run it as a script, although I haven’t confirmed that it will work. I guess you could say I more or less took “script-like notes” as I was building Chromium OS.

If you hit Ctrl+Alt+T when you first log in, you’ll get a shell prompt. You can run “sudo su” (no quotes) to log in as root, and I’ve set the password to “password” (no quotes). If you use this machine for anything serious (although I doubt you would), be sure to change the password.

It is absolutely astounding how fast it boots. It really is nearly instant-on and takes a mere few seconds to bring up the login screen.

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Once you log in with your Gmail account, it launches and you’ll see the Chromium interface open up to your Gmail. There is also a Google Calendar tab and a New Tab tab. The little chrome sphere appears in the upper left corner, but when you click on it you don’t get a menu as you see in some of the Chrome OS videos. Instead, you get a Google.com account login page.

As you can see, it looks very much like the Chrome OS screenshots that had surfaced last month. Of course, being that this is running on a virtual machine without any decent video drivers on the operating system, the resolution is quite low (800×600). Your dear old granddad may be the only one that actually finds it visually appealing at this resolution.

Right now the most impressive thing is how fast this operating system loads. Of course, it should load fast because there really is hardly anything there. In any case, it is rather neat to see an early release in action. The fact that it actually works on a virtual machine is quite promising. Eventually as drivers for more hardware are incorporated into it, it should be possible to run it your own real hardware.

I also found a VMWare virtual disk image on a Google Wave about the Chrome OS. You can download it here:

Download the Chromium OS VMWare Virtual Disk Image

As of now, the link to the VMWare disk image is valid and the download works. However, I haven’t tried using it, so I can’t confirm that it will run on VMWare without issue. Enjoy your Google Chrome OS virtual machines!

[Via GeekLad]

Sounds awesome right? And it is! Let’s take a look at Keyboard Tweaker from Buturga Alex.

I started by downloading the 732kb zip file containing the installer. I know everything has been portable lately but this needs to be installed. We can see that the install will only use 1.5 mb of space on your hard drive and it’s memory footprint is also very small. But we will take a look at that in a little bit.

Once the install is complete you can check a check box to have it launched automatically or load it up from your start menu. Once it is launched you will see this screen and a new System Tray icon.

That is the system tray icon it looks like a cross between a bowling ball and a smiley face. When the bowling ball starts winking at you – it will become apparent that it is a smiley face! Right clicking on the icon will give you two options to either show or exit the application.

Once you have the console open you can start tweaking your keyboard. I first tried to modify some of the commands the author included. The first example is Control + Shift + E – this will open and email message in your default email client to the recipient in the hotkey. I changed his address to mine by highlighting the line and modifying it below:

Now when I hit Control + Shift + E – it does this:

Cool so you can test your shortcut by hitting the test button and you apply the changes by hitting the APLLY button. Now what I really wanted to do was to use my function keys as hotkeys. Let’s see how that worked out.

I went back to my console and scrolled down until I found Volume Up. I then modified it to just use F2 like this:

Hitting Test or F2 after clicking APLLY now not only brings up my volume but it also shows it on screen like so:

The possibilities are endless! You can have your machine doing anything at a push of a button. And if you write scripts, batch files or AutoIT scripts – this can launch those as well.

We would love to hear what you are using this or another hot key application for. Put us on in the comments!

Well if you can get to your desktop you should be able to run Double Driver and copy your drivers off your machine to a USB stick and then restore them right back into your fresh clean formatted system! We covered something a little while ago for backing up and restoring printers/print drivers.

Combine these two small apps with the Windows Files and Settings Transfer Wizard and you have yourself a powerful tool kit.

With Double Driver you can view which drivers are installed in your system and you can backup the drivers you choose, save and print the drivers list, and more.

Double Driver is freeware. Feel free to use and give this program to anyone you know. Your donation or feedback would be greatly appreciated.

_TheBackUpAdmiN_

The new “Disk I/O” chart allows you to monitor which applications utilize most of your disk at the moment:

Features:

* Displays disk input/output activity with information about related applications
* Displays network port activity with IP addresses of external computers
* Displays information about applications that utilized most of the CPU or memory at any time presented on the charts
* Displays all files locked by a select process.
* Finds all processes locking a specified file.
* Includes “Summary” tab for quickly assessing the overall state of the Windows system
* Allows freezing individual Windows processes
* Offer various visual and functional improvements over the standard Windows Task Manager

http://www.extensoft.com/?p=free_task_manager

[Molly via EeeUserForums]

Fortunately, windows has an option that allows you to get one step closer to avoiding those very annoying lockups.  This isn’t a cure-all, but can be helpful.  This only requires a simple tweak to your registry. Here’s how….  (note: I always make a backup of my registry before making changes, so I recommend you do this first but not required).

1) Go To Regedit: Start -> Run ->  Type: Regedit

2) Find the correct directory: HKey_Current_User -> Control Panel -> Desktop

3) Find the correct file: Look on the right side and scroll down to find WaitToKillAppTimeout.  You’ll notice that this likely says 20000 today.  That’s the time in miliseconds that it waits before it stops an application that has locked up.  That’s 20 seconds!  But we’ll change that…..

4)  Modify the File: Double click on WaitToKillAppTimeout.  You’ll then get a new window that allows you to edit the “Value Data”.  I changed mine to 1000 (1 second).  Then click “OK” to complete the modification.

5) Close out of the registry. Click the big x on the top upper right.

6) You’re done….

One step closer to a finely tuned machine.

Kerry enjoys writing about a variety of topics.  Her favorite website is CallCatalog.com which is a reverse phone directory website that allows you to lookup and report unwanted phone calls.  You can also read her blog which discusses phone number privacy issues.

Michele from Spiceworks just gave me a shout that the new version is officially in Beta. We wanted you to be one of the first to know that Spiceworks version 4.0 Beta has just been released – which you can download now & play with here: 4.0 Beta Group

You can check out the new bells and whistles in this video here: http://spiceworks.com/tv/?cat=previews&video=40-Preview-1 

SOME COOL NEW 4.0 HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:

• Network Map – Allows you to see and graphically navigate the details of your network as well as determine the connections that exist between your devices.
• Events Collaboration – You can now see the most common events, collaborate with others and find out the best way to troubleshoot the issue (all decided by Spiceworks users – yet another way that Spiceworks is making IT ‘social’)
• New Customizable End User Portal – Now you can have a custom intranet up and running in no time! Create the “face” of your IT organization by adding new pages and content areas, changing color schemes, even re-arrange the page layouts. Learn More
• Updated UI – Our fresh new UI helps you speed through your day! In addition to faster load times, the inventory "icon view" now shows more items (plus has a new handy drop down menu of common useful actions) and the tabs on the left-side navigation panel have been moved to the top for better accessibility. Read More
• Help Desk Now Supports Collaboration - One of the most requested help desk features! Collaboration allows you to cc: your boss or someone else on a ticket….and keep them informed as you work on the ticket. Learn More
• Tickets Anywhere – Now, you can work your tickets from any email client simply by including special commands in the body of the email. You can create, work, assign, and even close a ticket from anywhere! Learn How

For more details on the new 4.0 features visit the 4.0 Beta Group

And of course we want to support the awesome free software from Spiceworks so here is a little link love for them…

Free Network Monitoring Software for Network Management

If you download and try it out let us know how it goes for you!

_TheSpiceyAdmiN_

Check out http://www.instanthousecall.com and install their free Remote Support tool. It really is awesome and saved my ass yesterday when I needed to connect to a remote Vista machine on the fly and my Single Click Vnc just wasn’t doing it! What do you guys use for remote support? We would love to hear your favorites in the comments.

_TheRemoteAdmiN_

Upon running the application a window will come up. Don’t be alarmed that it says No devices found…. Check for administrative privileges first. This is normal as it starts querying your machine. You can see at the bottom of the window it is already searching and getting to know your system’s devices.

You can select which items you want to backup or select everything and do a full backup. After clicking the Start Backup button you will see this screen.

Hit the browse button to select your path to backup to. For this instance I am putting it on my external second hard drive. I choose Make New Folder and continued.

I hit OK and then Start Backup…

And then it was done… Almost instantly!

I hit OK and then attempted to restore my drivers…

I hit restore from the main menu and got this window:

I opened the file and hit blamo all my drivers were listed. And restoring was as easy as clicking Restore!

Do you have a tool you use or another method of backing up your drivers? If you do – please share them with us in the comments!

Starting to use Windows Live Writer more and more it becomes apparent that it would be really nice to take it with me between computers. If you have more than one blog it is tedious to set everything up every time you need to install again. You have all your blog settings, ping server settings and FTP settings to redo.

Over on PortableApps.com a lot of work has been done to get apps such as Firefox, Thunderbird even Open Office to run in a portable environment. So I figured WLW was a natural for this environment. It takes a bit to figure it out but once you do it works really well.

This is my first portable app! I’ve posted my Windows Live Writer Portable launcher here: WindowsLiveWriterPortable.zip

The zip file does NOT contain everything you need to run Windows Live Writer. This is simply a launcher which will run Windows Live Writer in a self contained environment so you can take everything with you between computers via your USB memory stick or other portable device.

To get this portable app to work you need to follow these steps closely:

1. Unzip this file to your USB or other portable drive
2. Download Windows Live Writer from: http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com
3. Install Windows Live Write as usual. You don’t even have to run it, just so long as it is installed.
4. Copy ALL of the files FROM c:\program files\windows live writer TO the new structure on your USB drive that looks like the graphic below \WindowsLiveWriterPortable\App\WindowsLiveWriter

5. You can now uninstall Windows Live Writer if you want

To use Windows Live Writer from your USB drive simply double click on WindowsLiveWriterPortable.exe and it will take care of the necessary registry settings and document paths. If you have used WLW on your computer before, the launcher will copy all your settings and files to the USB drive.

This is my first portable app so hopefully it will work well. So for so good for me in limited testing.

[Via TechLifeWeb]

The PSTools suite is comprised of the following utilities:

• PsExec – execute processes remotely
• PsFile – shows files opened remotely
• PsGetSid – display the SID of a computer or a user
• PsInfo – list information about a system
• PsKill – kill processes by name or process ID
• PsList – list detailed information about processes
• PsLoggedOn – see who’s logged on locally and via resource sharing (full source is included)
• PsLogList – dump event log records
• PsPasswd – changes account passwords
• PsService – view and control services
• PsShutdown – shuts down and optionally reboots a computer
• PsSuspend – suspends processes
• PsUptime – shows you how long a system has been running since its last reboot (PsUptime’s functionality has been incorporated into PsInfo)

While these tools work locally (and in most cases work better than the native Windows utilities, or provide functionality that is not available natively), they really shine when it comes to working with remote machines. If I had nothing else but a fresh (default) Windows install, I could probably continue to administer my network using the PSTools.

Notice I said nothing but a default windows install. Microsoft has done something rather unique with the PSTools suite (in fact with the entire Sysinternals utilities collection), and made them usable from a “live” website (to get an overview of what is available, just type live.sysinternals.com\tools into your browser’s address bar).

Now all these tools are stand alone executables (no need to install), so they can be run from a USB drive (SWEET!!!), however being able to run them without even having the executables on the machine is just awesome!

I quickly found out that Microsoft provide a tool to back up and restore your printers. Score!

It said it will back up all your printers, settings, and drivers into a .cab archive, and then it allows you to restore the cab file on a different machine.

This small app grabbed ALL my printers including the local ones, copied all their drivers and crap to a single cab file. I was able to run the PrintMig on the new server and import the printers.

In 15 minutes or so all my printers were installed and working properly except one USB guy that needed to have its port switched. All in all it went very well. And I discovered another thing while testing:

So you can copy printers from one machine to another, create cab files for different off domain laptop configurations. Or this is great if you don’t do the Active Directory thing and want to semi-automate printer installation.

The latest version of Printmig is 3.1 and is available for downaload here.

more details available from:
http://www.microsoft.com/printserver

A special thanks goes out to the internet on this one. Thanks for always being there for me man!