Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Outlook, Vista Sidebar Gadgets, New Web 2.0 Tools, Job Tracking Software and More

Outlook Category Organiser

Aladdin's sidebar to Outlook that allows instant control over your categories. Select a contact and the categories are assigned, make changes by using the checkboxes. Filter by categories is easy, select the category (or categories) and click Filter...DONE!


Make Windows and Windows Live your own

Sidebar Gadgets, Emoticons, Toolbar Buttons, Web Gadets, Display Pictures, Winks, Side Show Gadgets


Panoramio

Map your photos, show your favourite places, organize your photos with tags.


The first video guide for Hotels

Question Form

questionform is a web application for creating, publishing and analysing online surveys and forms


Side Job Track

Create projects, send estimates, track services, invoice clients.

With Side Job Track you can quickly and easily manage your side jobs with simple, straightforward project tools. Side Job Track's flexible data entry lets you to decide how to best fit your specific needs. If you have access to a web server, you can even create completely customized estimate and invoice templates.


Morgue File

A place to keep post production materials for use of reference, an inactive job file. This morgue file contains free high resolution digital stock photography for either corporate or public use.


RSS Widget

The RSS widget lets you add your own RSS feeds. Select the widget, type in a title and a URL for the RSS feed to see content for that feed. You can also configure title or description view, change the font, size, mark as read and more through the edit drop down menu. Additionally you can set up multiple RSS widgets and then apply the properties of one widget to all of them, ie color, size, etc.


“Clip to OneNote” Firefox Extension

There is a useful Firefox extension that allows you to send webclippings from Firefox to OneNote. It was developed by Gmx Lee for OneNote 2003. You can get it directly from his website. Even though it was developed for OneNote 2003, it also works with OneNote 2007.

Patrick Schmid

Labels: , , , , ,


Posted by: Lena | 3:43 PM |

Friday, June 15, 2007

Sharepoint IE Browser crash

We have been experiencing a weird problem with a client where they had a mixture of Office 2007 and Office 2003 installed.

Scenario is this.
Full Office 2003 install, One Note 2007 (rocking product) installed.
Open sharepoint 2003, or MOSS2007 in IE and try and open files - word, powerpoint, excel, PDF etc.
Browser crashes with Memory Exception Error

We found the solution from a mixture of websites, primarily LOST

The solution we foud to work was
Go to “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12” and Delete “OWSSUPP.DLL”
Go to start>control panel>add/remove programs and find the Office 2007 product that you have installed.
Highlight the product and select the "Change" button that becomes available. From the next screen that appears, choose "Repair" and hit OK. This might take longer than you expect - be patient.
Reboot your machine

Delicious Tags MOSS2007 Sharepoint2007 Office2007

Labels: , , ,


Posted by: Jethro | 11:19 AM |

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Offline Google Reader, Tweak XP, Adobe Patches

Google Reader goes offline with Google Gears and other RIA

"Google Gears is a new service the idea behind is to be able to have desktop functionality and/or to be able to use web-based services when you are not online.Sometimes it also refers to accessing web-based services when you are online, but without having to use the traditional browser, my favourite for a long time has been the Google deskbar (now only available with the Google Desktop)"

Total Idea
Download what you were missing with Windows!

"Check out OutSource-XP, our backup solution for Microsoft Outlook, or OutNote, our unique software to attach sticky notes to Outlook emails and contacts. If your want to tune your Windows XP, Tweak-XP Pro is what you need. For a free optimization software for Firefox, download our freeware FireTune. Or just download the world's first software to combine optimization and tweaking for Windows Vista: TweakVI."

Adobe Acrobat 8.1 for Office 2007 and Windows Vista
Adobe has released Acrobat 8 patch compatible with Microsoft Office 2007 programs and Windows Vista. Other than the new PDFmaker add-on for Office 2007, the second most exciting feature is the PDF Preview Handler - you can now view PDF files in Office Outlook 2007 as well as in Windows Explorer on Windows Vista without starting Acrobat or Adobe Reader.
Amit Agarwal

Labels: , , , ,


Posted by: Lena | 9:42 PM |

Monday, June 11, 2007

Installing Vista

I have had the absolutely glorious fun of installing Vista this weekend. Long weekend, not having to work Monday, combined with PC having unexplained startup failures etc hardened my resolve to try Vista. I'm still unsure if it was a wise move or not, but at least I am (much) better acquainted with the beast.

Short summary
If you are a light to medium user of a PC using internet, email, office applications and the odd windows game - eg solitaire, then go for it. Get someone else to install Vista for you. You will love the rich easy to use interface, the classy graphics and the ease of use.

If you are a medium to heavy user, have specific applications you need to run, want to install scanners, printers, cameras, gaming devices etc then please read the following carefully "DO NOT INSTALL VISTA on a critically needed machine, on your only machine, if you do not have 2-3 days to waste fixing /researching problems drivers etc or do not have broadband"

Starting with the install, heres a list of some of the problems I have had so far.

Install
I have a mirrored raid drive for a system drive and 3 500Gb other drives. Vista was good enough to pick up the Raid drive and would have installed on it if I hadn't selected the option to change things. When I wanted to back out I couldn't and had to end up exiting the install. On restarting the install the array had broken, and I had to rebuild the raid array. Vista did however find the drive an after a short (presumably quick NTFS) format (there are no options) It installed.

Connecting to the domain
Most users wont have this problem unless they are running a server with a domain for user authentication and logon. I had made the first user on Vista Admin. When I connected to the domain it created a user account for me using my user name, Tim. After I installed Office I tried connecting Outlook. However my previous use of Outlook had been in a user folder called Tim.Jethro (user_name.domain_name) Outlook refused to start. renaming the folder didn't help. After several tries at removing and re adding users I ended up reinstalling Vista and setting the first user as Tim (on the local machine domain). When I connected to the server domain it successfully created a Tim.Jethro folder in the users folder (to distinguish from the local user Tim folder). Installed Office and Outlook worked! Along the way I discovered that when installed, the Administrator account (system admin account for the local machine) is created with no password and then disabled by default. I have gone back and enabled it and then set a password. Note the only way to do this is to log in with your first user account, go to the advanced users tab and edit the Administrator account and uncheck the Account is disabled box) Then you have to log in with the Administrator account (no password) then click CTRL-ALT-DELETE and change the password.

Installing Drivers
I spent a lot of time researching and downloading drivers for my hardware and peripherals. Lots of time!
My canon scanner installed fine but refuses to find a TWAIN source to scan from. I have yet to resolve this one.
Check my Delicious tags for Vista and Drivers

Installing Applications
Lots wouldn't work at all. Some had compatibility issues. Some were outright difficult. Installed ok, then buggy when running. Some refused to recognise the options set in my user account from the previous install on Windows XP.
I found this Vista Application Compatibility page helpful.
Virtual CD / DVD software refuses to work or even install in some cases. That means I have to get the original cds from bookcases, cd folders or system boxes etc, instead of from the ISO archive I have on a file server on my network. Frustrating.

Using Vista
I have two 22" widescreen monitors. I have different applications on different screens for productivity reasons. I liked XP's ability to remember where an application opened last and its size (maximised or not) I have yet to find this feature in Vista.
Generally using Vista is ok once you get used to the new interface of explorer. There are some nice features and the graphics are pretty sweet.

Recommendations
I am not going to be installing Vista on any other PCs in the near future. I will be waiting until I have at least 12 hours free time - a luxury for me! (Doug take note!)
I will always keep an XP box available with the applications I need on it available - even after I get around to converting all my users PC's over (one day).

Labels: ,


Posted by: Jethro | 12:20 PM |

SBS2003 Service Pack 2 and WSUS 3

Well I wish I had read Susan's "Before you install Service Pack 2 guide" first. Fortunately nothing major went wrong.

2 weekends ago I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade my SBS2003 server to service pack 2. In case you were unaware, there was a fair amount of angst about this service pack within the SBS community. Susan had written numerous articles, and I had decided not to upgrade until this kerfuffle had died down.
Anyway I backed up the server first, and read through pages and pages of how to's and install notes before finally just going what the heck and doing it. As it happened, the server behaved itself perfectly. I thought I was home free!

Well nearly.

I had one PC that refused to connect immediately, but eventually I fixed its network card drivers and got it back on the network. I have had 1 other PC that also struggles to connect and 3 PC's that will only connect at 100mbs even thought they have 1GB cards and are on a 1GB switch. Very annoying. However in the light of what could have gone wrong not too bad a result. And I WILL fix them ... eventually!

I decided to go for broke and installed WSUS 3 immediately afterward. Surprisingly this also worked smoothly. My SBS box just loved it. Over the next few days as PC's reported in I got heaps of updates sorted for PS that had refused to download updates from the old WSUS 2 server. I don't have all my pcs with absolutely perfect update health yet, but I'm almost there. At the time of writing I have 2 pcs looking for 1 patch. Should be able to get that sorted soon!

Check out my delicious tags, SBS2003, Patches

Susan also has written a short post about installing the SQL server 2005 SP2

Labels: , ,


Posted by: Jethro | 10:45 AM |

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Microsoft Surface, Firefox Extensions, Flickr and the B Society

Microsoft Surface


Microsoft Surface is a exciting new concept that will change the way people interact with computers. The Surface is touch sensitive, working without a keyboard or mouse, and reacts to brushes. It has has the ability to interact with things places on it whether photos, phones, etc. The possibilities offered by Surface blur the line between virtual and reality.
Check Tim's delicious tag for Surface for more commentary and other information.

17 Firefox Extensions That Make Blogging Easy

Here's a list of 17 Firefox extensions that make blogging easy.Here's a great link to the Split Browser
More extensions on delicious

Join the B-society
Link to the B-society, check it out!

Flickr-storm
Link to FlickrStorm which is a better search for Flickr!
More flickr on delicious

Labels: , , , ,


Posted by: Lena | 9:41 PM |