stuart test blog

Google have just released a couple of important updates to the Google Reader application. The biggest update is the search feature that has now been added. It seems strange that it’s taken them this long to add it, but it’s here now and it works well. This also gives you the ability to search in your shared items which is great for keeping track of posts that you’ve shared.

The other feature, which I haven’t yet heard anyone else mention yet, is that they have updated the number that displays your unread items to a larger number. Previously if you had more than 100 unread items, it would just say “100+” whereas now it gives you the exact figure. I don’t know how high the new number goes, perhaps if it gets to over a thousand it will say “1000+”.

I’ve been persevering with Vista 64 bit over the last few weeks, but I’m failing to see any benefit in sticking with it. Very few applications are native 64 bit and some applications just do not run at all.

Microsoft is probably the worst culprit – last year they released Exchange 2007 and forced all customers that wanted to use it to upgrade to 64 bit hardware and software. At about the same time as Exchange was released, Office 2007 and Vista were released too.

MS made a big deal about Vista 64 bit – just read the blurb on this page and you’ll think that 64 bit is the only way to go: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/editions/64bit.mspx. But there was no 64 bit version of Office 2007 released. Sure Office 2007 runs fine on 64 bit, but why wasn’t there a 64 bit edition?

And today Microsoft is making a big deal about the new upgrades to the Live suite of products, including a new unified installer that lets you install a bunch of Live applications at once, like the Google Pack. BUT NO 64 BIT SUPPORT! None of the applications will install if you’re stupid enough to be running a 64 bit operating system, you’re just greeted with a lovely error.

So I’m running an operating system which Microsoft says, “… deliver premier performance, reliability, and security,providing you access to the next generation of PC innovations.” but I can’t install the latest updates to Microsoft’s own software. (end of rant)

There have been a lot of gadget related announcements over the last couple of days.

Apple Announcements

Obviously Apple stole the show with their latest lineup of iPods: (images © Apple)

iPod Shuffle

New colours, same form factor and still just 1GB storage.

iPod Nano

New, ‘squashed’ form-factor, allows for a wide screen for watching videos and using the cover-flow feature. Not sure I like the look of this, but it may grow me – especially with the choice of cool colours.

iPod Classic

Similar form-factor to the 5th generation iPods, but thinner and an all-metal casing makes it look very cool. Incredible increase in storage means you can now get up to 160GB! This also gets the new cover-flow feature – this lets you flip through your album art like you were flipping through a stack of CDs.

iPod Touch

This was the big announcement. As expected, the iPhone form-factor comes to the iPod and includes 16GB flash storage, multi-touch screen, Wi-Fi, and internet browsing. Not to mention the beautiful, 3.5 inch widescreen display. Apple have also done what the Zune team couldn’t do, and that’s to allow downloads of tracks directly from the iTunes Store to the iPod Touch over wi-fi. Plus the awesome Safari web browser, gives you a great internet-browsing experience anywhere there’s wi-fi. Unfortunately no Bluetooth though – this is how I access the internet on my PDA, by using my phone’s 3G connection over wi-fi. It’s too cumbersome to use CafeNet on the PDA as you have to log in to the CafeNet website each time you connect.

HP Announcements:

In a more sensible, business-oriented approach, HP announced 5 new iPAQs aimed mainly at business users. (images taken from the press release)

HP iPAQ 100 Series Classic Handheld (Data sheet)

This is a standard looking PDA with a 3.5 inch screen and 240×320 resolution. Has all the goodies though, like wi-fi, Bluetooth 2.0, Windows Mobile 6.0, etc.

HP iPAQ 200 Series Enterprise Handheld (Data sheet)

This is the mother of all PDAs: 4 inch screen, 480×640 resolution! Designed for business use, this has all the features that a serious PDA user would want – apart from, oddly, no fingerprint reader. Runs Windows Mobile 6.0 with all the standard apps you would expect.

HP iPAQ 300 Series Travel Companion (Data sheet)

This is an interesting one as it isn’t actually a PDA but is a 3D navigation system with GPS functionality. It runs Windows CE 5.0 with an HP customised interface and has the most powerful CPU that I’ve heard of in a device this size – a dual-core 600MHz Titan processor. The 4.3 inch, 800×480 resolution screen makes it perfect for viewing maps in landscape mode.

HP iPAQ 600 Series Business Navigator (Data sheet)

This is my favourite of all the gadgets announced – it’s a PDA/phone with a 2.8 inch 240×320 resolution screen mounted above a standard phone keypad, with some additional function keys on either side of the key pad. It has been designed for single hand use and has a Smart Touch wheel and a three-way thumb wheel, but I’m not sure how these work yet. This also has GPS, wi-fi, and Bluetooth 2.0 as well as Quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and Tri Band HSDPA. I’m really looking forward to checking these out and I may have to purchase the 610c model which has the additional 3 megapixel camera too.

HP iPAQ 900 Series Business Messenger (Data sheet)

This follows the more conventional, ‘Treo-like’ shape of a 320×240 resolution screen mounted above a full qwerty keyboard. This has similar specs to the 600 series.

Palm Announcement

The Palm announcement was the complete opposite to Apple and HPs announcements in that they announced a non-release of a product. Specifically, they announced that their controversial new product, the Foleo mobile companion, has now been canceled despite the face that it was due to ship shortly. The Foleo, was a device that looked like a small notebook, but ran a customised, stripped-down Linux operating system that operated in tandem with a Palm mobile phone such as a Treo. Many people couldn’t see the point of the device that was useless without an accompanying Palm device.

I think this was a brave decision by Palm, and usually brave decisions work out for the best as you’re more motivated to make them work. Here’s what the device would have looked like:

Elliot made me a lovely picture for Fathers Day, but I suspect that she had some help from Mummy too.

The usually sensible David Farrar, is suggesting that lawyers and other high-earning couples should not be entitled to as much paid parental leave as those who earn less than them. Targeted support is one of those idealistic things that look good on paper but are usually far from fair when implemented.

How do you target the support – would it be based on just income, or income plus assets? I know of couples that earn a lot less than my wife and I, but are probably better off as they have a small mortgage whereas we haven’t yet been able to buy a house.

I think that extended paid parental leave is a good thing for all families – whether you’re high-flying lawyers or minimum wage families. We should be encouraging parents (mothers and fathers) to spend more time with their babies while not having to worry about losing their jobs or being able to pay mortgage/rent.

(and by the way – Good on you, National and Labour, for supporting the recommendations.)

Now that I have a 64 bit notebook, I get to do fun stuff like install the 64 bit version of Windows Server 2008 (beta 3). I wasn’t too sure how well the experiment would go, but so far it’s been pretty successful.

Drivers weren’t such an issue as most of the Vista x64 drivers worked flawlessly. I still have 3 unknown devices in the device manager and I haven’t yet tried to configure the finger print scanner, but everything else is good.

Obviously the first thing I did once the graphics drivers were installed, was to make it look like Vista with all the eye-candy. You need to install the “Desktop Experience” option from the “Add Features” section of “Server Manager”. Once that’s installed and you’ve rebooted, you need to enable the “Themes” service and enable all the performance options by going in to the “Advanced System Settings” and turning on all the visual stuff. Then reboot again and you can select the “Windows Vista” theme and the “Windows Aero” appearance settings. As you can see from the screenshot below, it’s all working well.

I also needed to configure wireless networking which isn’t installed by default (this is a good thing!) Just get back to the “Add Features” section and you can install the wireless networking option from there.

I have my key apps installed (Firefox, Live Messenger, Live Writer) and it all feels quite solid so far. Now to get some real server stuff running…

I attended a briefing session at Microsoft this morning to learn about how the legislative changes to daylight savings time (DST) in NZ affects Microsoft’s products and other I.T. related technologies. Nathan Mercer from Microsoft also blogs about the DST changes and briefings that are coming up around the country.

Here are my notes from the meeting I attended.

Date:
Changes come in to effect on the 30th September which is one week earlier than usual. (Background: New Zealand Standard Time and Daylight Time)

Microsoft Products Affected:
There are around 40 Microsoft products that are affected by the changes. Updates will be provided free-of-charge to all currently supported products. Those products that fall into mainstream support require manual adjustment, or patches can be purchased with a support request.

Here are some of the more common products that are eligible for free patches:
Windows Server 2003 – Service Pack 1 or higher
Windows XP – Service Pack 2
Exchange Server 2003 – Service Pack 2 (but the updates only need to be applied if CDO calls are being made against the Exchange server – e.g. OWA, or ACT!)
Windows Mobile clients – version 5 or higher

The most commonly used Microsoft products that will not receive updates are the members of the Windows 2000 family. I know of lots of Windows 2000 Servers out there and several large organisations still running Windows 2000 Professional. Exchange 2000 servers also seem to be in abundance, as well as many client computers not on the latest service packs. Microsoft are not providing free patches for these products, but they have provided several tools that can be used to configure the time zones.

Tools:
Microsoft recommends using TZedit to manually adjust the time zone on a single server.
For multiple machines, use scripting techniques to roll out registry files to the affected machines.
More info on the manual updating techniques are found here: http://www.microsoft.com/nz/msdn/timezone/manual.mspx

Patching plan:
Try to patch all servers/clients/devices in your organisation within a windows of 72 hours.
Patch domain controllers first.
Then Exchange servers.
Then all other servers.
Then all clients and other devices.

International organisations:
If you are a branch office of an international organisation, or if you have branch offices in other countries, all servers/clients in your organisation should be patched – not just the ones in this country.

What could go wrong?
Don’t forget – the time is going forward, so if your systems aren’t up to date, you will be an hour late for everything.
The most common problem for end-users will be missing appointments by an hour if mobile devices haven’t been patched. This may not seem critical until you miss an important flight, or arrive an hour late for a high-profile meeting.
Other extreme problems could arise, for example, in the medical field where medicines are administered to patients based on the time.

Other notes:
These changes do not just affect Microsoft products, or even just I.T. products. Any device you have in your organisation which relies on the time could be affected by the changes. This includes things like ATMs, alarm systems, medical equipment, aviation equipment, and any other equipment which uses time for input or output.

More information:
Microsoft will be keeping the following URL up to date with all the information required to prepare for the changes: http://www.microsoft.co.nz/timezone

I’ve been using a lot of evaluation software at home recently to build up a virtual lab that I’ll use for testing and demos. I needed to know when my eval copies of Windows Server 2003 were due to expire but couldn’t figure it out without having to trawl through Google Groups first.

Turns out it was fairly simple, just run “winver” and it tells you the exact date and time that the copy is due to expire.

Just a few interesting links from this morning’s news reading…

From Boing Boing:

LA Times religious reporter loses faith

My favorite news magazine, The Week, reprinted this fascinating personal account written the LA Times’ former religious correspondent.

Nine years ago, William Lobdell was assigned to cover religion for the LA Times. He was a born-again Christian when he got the gig. In 2001 he started studying to convert to his wife’s religion, Catholicism. That was when the trouble began for Lobdell.

Another from Boing Boing:

Boing Boing reader’s steampunk cloque

Bill sez, “I built this steampunk clock after seeing other steampunk items on BoingBoing and just got inspired to make my own. This one is built on an empty vintage clock case from around 1910, and the parts came from local radio repair shops, a bicycle repair shop, Home Depot, and various car wreck sites that I pass on my daily walk. There’s also a part (see if you can spot it) from an old Model T car. Besides the funky steampunk look, the best thing about this is that it tells the actual time, a good thing, since I’m an obsessive punctuality freak.”

From Mark Pilgrim:

Elephants

Why? Because the internet needs a page with 648 elephants. You may not have realized that, but now that I say it, you’re thinking, “Of course! Where are my elephants?” I got your elephants right here.

Update: fixed link.

Just looking through my site stats and I noticed that someone had found my blog through a Google search for “Blue Oyster Bar moustache“

The page they found was my Movember page with photos from last years attempts. Simon had commented that it reminded him of the Blue Oyster Bar (from Police Academy!) Here’s the photo for your amusement: