Looks like google wants to know what website you’re using. If you feel it’s not an invasion on your privacy, you can set your DNS servers to 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. Be warned, google would now know what websites you look at and more.

http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using.html

Chrome OS is looking very promising. This could be the beginning of the end for MS and Apple’s OS foothold.

Timing:
netbooks a plenty. windows 7 and Snow Leopard showing it’s bulkiness. What a better way prolong using your existing hardware than to run a leaner OS. Apple has shut the door on atom users hackintoshing, and windows 7 doesn’t offer significant performance over windows xp (in atom with intel 940 chipsets). Chrome OS (maybe even android) is what people are eagerly waiting for. Those that don’t know or don’t care will be easy converts once the OS is available.

Easy to Try:
Like Linux with LiveCD and windows PE (Preinstallation Enviornment), it’ll be easy to transition people first by having an OS that can boot from CD/thumbdrive.

Web Applications:
MS seems to know this for quite sometime that retail software may be at an end and that charge by service model could be what is in store next. Windows Office Live is their incarnation of just that. Not for everyone, but if businesses started using Chrome OS, they wouldn’t essentially be out of Word or Excel because they could run the web instance. Google Docs is an alternative, but I remain admit that the business world still revolves around transferring Word and Excel documents, like it or not.
Apple has MobileMe. If they retooled iWork to work as a web application, perhaps they can compete.

What Others Did Wrong:
MS released Windows CE/Windows Mobile. That also acted as a thin client with modest ability to do terminal services. Most importantly Terminal Services Remote App. This could have easily been promoted more and it’s features enhanced to compete in the Chrome OS space. However, Windows CE really needs a visual overhaul (windows mobile also. A rant I will defer later). And ideally more (.net) applications. About the only people using WinCE now is assembly line pc’s with robotics or restaurants running POS.
Apple, with their Snow Leopard/OSX proves that not only MS can really mess up when it comes to software. I love Apple hardware, but when it comes to them and software, it really disappoints me. Although underlying os is a flavor of linux, depending on library files on compiling from source other than the most common applications seems to be a pain. Apple will go through updates and remove/alter my library file dependencies because they don’t match.  with an Apple created program, it is a simple matter of dragging in to install, dragging out to (and into trash) to uninstall. Well that only works if it’s basic applications. try to do that with a database app and see how well that works.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/19/live-from-googles-chrome-os-project-announcement/

Change the drive letter and the database name as needed. This will place a file named with the database and today’s date.

declare @backupdatabase varchar(1024);
declare @backuplocation varchar(1024);
declare @todaysdate varchar(1024);

SELECT @todaysdate = CAST(YEAR(GETDATE()) as varchar)
+ RIGHT(’00′ + CAST(MONTH(GETDATE()) as varchar), 2)
+ RIGHT(’00′ + CAST(DAY(DATEADD(DAY, -1, GETDATE())) as varchar), 2);

SELECT @backupdatabase = ‘mydatabasename’;
SELECT @backuplocation = ‘F:\’ + @backupdatabase + ‘.’ + @todaysdate + ‘.BAK’;
BACKUP DATABASE @backupdatabase TO DISK = @backuplocation WITH  NOFORMAT, NOINIT,  NAME = N’Full Database Backup’, SKIP, NOREWIND, NOUNLOAD,  STATS = 10;

Finally took the time to migrate Exchange 2003 onto a virtual environment. I used the VMware converter and downloaded the necessary support files to get the physical pc converted to my VMware Server. Afterwards, I cleaned up the harddrive of unnecessary software. Turned off swap file. split the system into 2 disks. one stores the OS. the other stores the NTDS and Exchange data. Toggled the OS virtual disk into performance mode. All seemed to work well. Had to reboot due to an application error. My guess is a memory problem (I did limit the memory and turnned off swap file after all). Seems to work well now. Definitely recommend dedicated harddisk as opposed to virtual disks. I’ve had no success shrinking/defragging/cleanning up a virtual disk after it has encountered many read/writes and have been through snapshots. I had to resort to making a new virtual disk and using a drive imaging software like drivesnapshot to transfer the OS from one disk to another. in the end, the 15 gig vmdk file got trimmed down to 1.5gig. Yeah, I can’t explain why vmware’s disk manager didn’t shrink nor clean the drive. Besides all that, everything is going well. I do not recommend virtualizing Exchange server for those who have more users or have large volumes of emails. I can’t quite provide an exact formula but one should monitor the cpu and disk usage currently experienced on the physical environment and take that into account when running virtualized.

If you’ve wondered how you can get your windows to connect to a VPN server without having to pay Microsoft Terminal Services Licenses then you’re in luck. There is a linux solution called Poptop. I’ve tried Openssh and Openvpn either solution requires installing a windows client and not reusing the existing vpn connectivity interface offered by Windows. I have confirmed this working on Windows 7 connecting to Ubuntu. My Ubuntu is a small virtual machine running off another server costing little overhead. Please note however that the encryption used is not secure enough. Microsoft client supports pptp using 128bit strength which is the point of failure. Not fault of microsoft per se. they support stronger encryption that, at this time, does not exist in a free open source solution that we can use.

net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1

echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward

There doesn’t seem to be a perfect way to trans-code seamlessly out of the box from MCE. I have used MCEBuddy in the past but once Microsoft introduced WTV I had to go back to MCEbuddy developer for updates which was behind and not without it’s own problems/bugs.

There are strings attached to this process. you’ll need a thumb-drive and the process will require you to transfer the files from thumb-drive back to your computer unless you’re comfortable playing off the thumb-drive and not tight on space. I do this to archive The Tonight Show and Saturday Night Live. I’ll post later on how you can use wmv to stream to your Windows Mobile phone through the internet.

Step 1 Prepare drive
format the drive and decompress the following file into your thumb-drive. It is the files that were created from my Mobile Phone when synced with WMP. They contain the re-sized resolution and compression necessary to compress a 1.5 gig 1 hour lowest quality SD recording into a WM6 Resolution compatible WMV file approx 150megs. reasonable loss of quality for me, however if you wish to have better resolution, you may need to modify the files or grab a zune hd profile sync of WMP.
File:
WMP Sync XML Information (from htc touch paired with Win7)

Step 2 Sync
stick in thumbdrive, open WMP, remove previous sync partnership and then create one again. At this time you can specify what tv shows you want synced, by default windows media player will attempt to add everything, music, tv, video, the works. I just have 3 last episodes of Conan, SNL, and Falon. Sync should now be working

Step 3 Archiving
Now that videos are transferred, it’s time to do some cleanup. copy the files from your thumb-drive over to your hard-drive ideally from a folder that MCE can see. Recorded TV is probably not best place to put it because that folder is technically only for WTV files and you can’t be sure if files will be cleared up to save space. avoid deleting recordings from the thumb-drive, WMP will try to transfer missing videos upon next sync. Instead, delete tv recordings from MCE or in the recorded tv folder.

That’s it. All this is done without the aid of third party software. Not ideal, but it does work. I’ve investigated on possible ways to fake a shared folder as if it was a usb removable storage. However, so far, I was unable to locate one. It is unfortunate that WMP and MCE doesn’t offer an way to trans-code the file without introducing a secondary device to sync with.

Hope this helps someone out there.

A few months back (basically when I first got my Vilv S5) I had encountered a problem with win7 not rotating the touch screen. Well, finally solution has popped up provided by another user not from Viliv.

http://forum.pocketables.net/showthread.php?p=29555#post29555

We could be waiting forever for Viliv to release some updated drivers. for now this will be the best way to get portrait mode fully supported on the S5.

Now I can really enjoy scrolling up and down some blog websites.

looks like everyone’s scouring the net for jailbreaking and ways of downloading 3.0. I can’t say that I’m too excited about this new firmware version but if anyone is still looking for it. google iPod2,1_3.0_7A341_Restore.ipsw and you should find downloadable links straight from the apple.com server.

Finally decided to take the time to document my transition to my next set of cameras. A new harness is in the works. for now a straight swapping of cameras was done.

Best thing about using these newer camcorders is the flash based storage. The footage is already broken down to seperate files by when the camera was used. Previously, I had to seek to the approximate time to get to a particular shooting. Now it can all be easily categorized. Post production video syncing is still necessary since both cameras don’t start syncronously. The use of newer batterys is a big minus for me. The new batteries with integrated circuitry makes buying OEM ones a bad choice. No digital reading of how good the battery is.

It’s been a couple of weeks now using the Viliv S5 on Win7 RC. So far I’ve been unable to make the touch screen rotate along with the screen to portrait mode. I tried moving back to the original windows xp but it was missing tablet pc options. I went as far as trying to install a hack to get tabletpc components however it lacked some language file so I gave up there. I tried installing from a tablet pc 2005 disk only to find that I get blue screened during install. I already knew this ment that I needed sata drivers as these windows disks predates sata support in motherboards. As well, I tried using eeeRotate which bundled a mouse rotator. That totally made my touch screen go erratically. For now, we’re stuck waiting for Viliv to come out with an updated mouse/Video driver to fully support screen rotation.