Get Yer Own Free DNS Service!

…prepare for an onslaught of GSD posting.  The bookmark log-jam appears to be breaking up!

cc attribution: Outfall of Moraine Lake on flickr by ahisgett

OpenDNS – Still the Best in my book

I’ve been a huge fan at home of the fast and free OpenDNS service.  I have my home router hard-coded to OpenDNS for all our web-domain addressing lookups.  It has never let me down.  Truth be told, I’ve no desire to change it.  Highly recommended by me and other tech gurus for a long time.

Their OpenDNS > System Status Page is chock full of volume and reliability goodness for the geekily curious.  If you are like me and are a hard-core OpenDNS user, you might want to bookmark http://208.69.38.170/ to keep track of their uptime and incident status.  Or you can also subscribe to their OpenDNS System RSS Feed to get an early warning of any issues (rare though they may be).

Besides basic and no-issue DNS lookup handling, OpenDNS can also provide advanced web-access control, security (such as phishing and typo-misdirection protection), stats and reports, and other features as well; for free.

As OpenDNS says:

For the nerds

Our nameservers are always:

• 208.67.222.222
• 208.67.220.220

It doesn’t really matter if all you have is a single PC/laptop and are connected to the ISP pipe directly, or if you have a more advanced setup with a home router, OpenDNS has wonderful guides to walk you through the easy (and did I mention FREE) configurations needed.

For specific visual guides on how to change your current DNS (or ISP provided) default settings for various operating systems, routers, and servers to OpenDNS, please refer to the following OpenDNS guided how-to tours:

• Choose your computer including Windows 7, or XP,or Vista, as well as older versions such as 2000 / NT, or 98, or or ME.  Links also exist on that page for Mac builds, Unix/Linux and even the Wii.

• Choose your router – including 3Com, Apple, Belkin, Buffalo, D-Link, Linksys, NetGear and more…setting up my own DIR-655 and DI-604 D-Link routers was a piece of cake!  Not finding yours? Try these general router instructions.

• Choose your server – Support for Windows servers, OS X Server, and various Unix/Linux ones as well.

Curious as to what one of their newest OpenDNS datacenter hardware configurations looks like?  If that sounds pretty hot to you then you must check out this sexy Amsterdam server-p0rn photostream.  Blog post here.

Google Public DNS – A new Sheriff in Town?

There are other publically available and free DNS services peacefully living in harmony under the OpenDNS shadow, but two weeks ago, a storm rolled in; Google’s own free DNS service.

Google Public DNS

And after an Introduction into DNS for the masses, their own spin was offered on why GoogleDNS provides Performance Benefits and Security Benefits

Curious?  Well then hop over to Using Google Public DNS as explained by Google and you are good to go!

Naturally, the Interwebs caught fire again, briefly.

• Google Launches a Public DNS Service – Webmonkey.

• Geez, Google Wants to Take Over DNS, Too – Threat Level | Wired.com.

• Official Google Blog: Introducing Google Public DNS – Official Google Blog.

• Google Public DNS vs. OpenDNS: It’s on!. -- Techblog

• A List of Google’s DNS Servers – Daniel Miessler

In that post, Daniel shared not just the two public DNS addresses for Google’s DNS Servers but a unreported 3rd one as well.

1. 8.8.8.8
2. 8.8.4.4
3. 4.3.2.1 // the one google hasn’t talked about yet

Still unsure?  Then get lost in the detailed FAQs page.

David responds to the Goliath’s challenge

If you care to see OpenDNS’s response to the hoopla from Google, then read this great OpenDNS Blog post by the founder/CEO himself, David Ulevitch, Some thoughts on Google DNS.

I’m convinced to stand behind the guy with the slingshot.

And then there were the forgotten: Other Free DNS Services

Of course, while I’ve seen nothing to sway me to try Google’s DNS (yet) and switch from OpenDNS, that doesn’t mean there haven’t been other options around.  Depending on your specific need and location, you might actually find one of this other (of many) free DNS services able to meet your need.

• DNS Advantage.

Not sure what DNS is or if you need it?  Our first alternative DNS Advantage has some nice primers to get you going as well as a guided setup.

• What is DNS? - DNS Advantage
• DNS Primer - DNS Advantage.
• Multimedia Presentation (flash) - DNS Advantage
• Comodo Secure DNS—Yep from the same security team that brings you free VPN Remote Access and Internet Security and Antivirus and Firewall and Anti-Malware and SecureEmail and System-Cleaner and Backup and Disk Encryption and…well…you get the point.  Comodo offers folks a bunch of technical solutions at a great price; Free.

• OpenNIC Public DNS Servers. For more info see this Migrate To OpenNIC  page.

• ScrubIT.  Read the Faq’s adn then if you have a Windows XP or 2000 system, you can even download a utility (exe link) to change the DNS settings auto-magically.

As listed by PenTestIT.

See also this list from Vivek Gite at the Hakuna Matata blog: Free Fast Public DNS Servers List

The Valca DNS Takeway?

As for me and my house?  We have chosen to follow OpenDNS.

Don’t let my conviction dissuade you.  Try some of the alternatives.  Your results may vary from mine.

--Claus V.

PS: This is really meant for home users and sysadmins who know what they are doing when they play around with DNS settings.  I seriously don’t recommend you using any of these in your corporate or workplace PC system unless you have the blessing of your system-admins/Help Desk.  Doing so may break access to your company Intranet pages (on your system) and act like a confundus-charm on your IT staff who have to fix things.

You’ve been warned!

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Valca Mobile Phone Upgrade

…posted while waiting for my 500 Gig HDD to be zero’ed out before setting up the partitions.

One of the things I’ve been working hard at doing is staying more in touch with my little brother.  Well, he’s not physically little, but he is a few years younger than me so I guess that fits for something.

He and I are both quite busy during the work-week, and due to the distance, it’s not always easy to just pick up the phone for a telephone-based conversation.

However I’m finding great joy and shared accountability in feeding our relationship with more time and conversations.

To that end, we have of late become great texting buddies, sending multiple messages during the day to each other.  This seems to work well as they are more unobtrusive and allow us both to keep focused on work tasks but do present a nice quick keep-alive “ping”. 

Little Bro has a nice shiny and l33t iPhone.  He can do some power-texting with it.

Me?  Up until recently I’ve been having to keep up with my Samsung SGH-A727 multimedia phone.  It’s a fantastic phone, slim, looks incredible, and sports some long battery life.  No moving parts means nothing will break without effort.  However, texting on the numeric keyboard is a pain in the *ss.  Seriously.  It’s embarrassing.

So I needed to find one with a QWERTY type keyboard.  I didn’t want an iPhone and since I didn’t want to ding the budget with a data-plan upgrade (unlimited family texting is fine for now), my choices with AT&T were a bit limited.

So I hit the Net and began researching.  I had narrowed it down to the following models.

• Solstice (SGH-a887) – via Samsung and Solstice A887 at AT&T Wireless.
• Impression (SGH-a877) – via Samsung and Impression A877 at AT&T Wireless.
• Mythic (SGH-a897) – via Samsung and Mythic at AT&T Wireless.

The Solstice seemed nice enough but it just didn’t inspire me much for some reason.

I really liked the Impression with the physical slide-out keyboard.  However reading the user’s guide I learned that it didn’t have voice-dialing, a feature I used heavily on my old Nokia flip-phone, my current Blackberry, and is painfully missing on my A727 phone.  However, the Impression’s QWERTY “real” keyboard might still win out.  They Mythic was a fresh model release, looked really beautiful, but didn’t have a “real” keyboard, only the virtual touch-screen one.  It did have the voice-dialing feature that the A877 did not.

So more research was in order.  Luckily Google is my dearest friend (next to Lavie…).

• Samsung Mythic A897 Review - Phone Arena Reviews
• First Impressions: Samsung Mythic (AT&T) - PhoneDog Cell Phone News & Articles
• Samsung Mythic tries to revive AT&T Mobile TV service - InfoSync
• Samsung Mythic SGH-a897 (AT&T) - At A Glance - Reviews by PC Magazine
• Samsung Mythic - Google Videos full of reviews

The “print” reviews seemed quite positive about the phone, while the video reviews were a bit harsher, particularly regarding feedback and touch-screen in general.  I weighted those with some thought they were using the iPhone touch screen as a gold-standard of sorts.

I also pre-downloaded and read (yes, read) the Mythic User’s Guide booklet to make sure I understood and could benefit from the features.

In the end it would come down to a visit and some Valca “hands-on” time at one of the local AT&T storefronts.

I quickly learned just how small and awkward the Impression’s physical keyboard felt while texting in my hands. On the other hand I could compose a novel with very few mis-registers on the Mythic’s touch-screen.  It does provide “haptic feedback", which means it vibrates to confirm each key press. Nice touch. So the keyboard feel sold me, coupled with the voice dialing feature.  When the store manager learned that I planned to just order it from the AT&T on-line store due the great discount offered, they said they wouldn’t just match, but would beat it (something they wouldn't do when I picked up my A727.  And they did. Quite nicely.  I’m not sure that was a late night “Black Friday” thing or maybe sales were slow.  Regardless I walked out with a new phone, the Samsung Mythic.

Thoughts

If you want a real, technical review of the device, go back up and hit the links provided above. After a week’s usage I’d say they are all generally fair and accurate.

One other thing I heard mentioned in some of the video reviews of the device was that it was described as a “chick” phone (chick as in “girl”).  Moving from the tech-cool A727 style, I was a bit concerned.  As we all know, a guy can’t be seen with a “chick” cell phone right?

ad as spotted in post Should a Phone be Masculine or Feminine? – at Sociological Images blog

Well, I’ve had it in heavy use for a week now and have more than a few thoughts.  I still don’t regret the decision.  For a text-only needing, non-data-plan using dude, it works very well.

Size, heft, and physical styling are all high marks.  I wish it were just a bit less rounded on the edges as I feel it might tend to slide out of my hands.  The design also lends it to perform like a curling-stone on ice when placed on the passenger’s seat and I stop or corner too fast.  It is more secure left in the cup-holder station.  The front has the big screen with some black framing and chrome edging.  The back side actually has a deep rich burgundy/dark-cherry color with some tech-abstract Spirograph-like black striping.  It looks very professional and the color surprised (in a good way) from what I had expected from the web-images.

The camera/photo package is nice.  Photo resolutions are great, it has a “real” flash built in, lots of photo-editing and filter effects, and will auto-resize pictures before text-message sending them. Handy.

The video playback is very smooth in my testing.  I’ve no interest to use the AT&T streaming TV feature, but copying video files over and watching them on it is not too bad.  Though for my use it is more of a novelty and show-off thing.  I’m not the demographic that feature was designed for.

Call quality is nice.  No complaints from my voice parties.  I do prefer to use my Jawbone with it however.

The main screen has three different “desktops” which you can then put and rearrange “widgets” onto.  Each can be wallpapered separately.  This is where things break down a bit for me.  I’ve got a different desktop image for each one I resized/cropped for my personal pleasure.  However the widgets don’t always stay put where placed when they “activate”  That ends up covering up much the nice wallpapers and kinda defeats the purpose.  As a Windows guy I’m used to putting desktop icons in place and them staying locked there.  This doesn’t happen on the Mythic.

(my personally crafted Mythic “beautiful things” wallpapers currently in service on my phone; P-51 Mustang, a retro Amy Adams, a retro Moon Radio.  I’m sure a psychoanalysis of me based on these images would be fascinating…)

Now imagine having the widgets jump from their unobtrusively placed locations (bottom 1/3 area of pics above) to the center or top areas when “activated” and not return to the original place.  Who wants to cover all that beauty up? But “hiding” the widgets on the otherwise handy sidebar feature also doesn’t always work as they will re-pop on the desktop in some cases, or require even worse digging in the menu system to launch.  Bother.

Also the Menu screen has three pages (expandable to 4-5 total) with a wealth of additional application icons, settings buttons, etc.  Many, many of them deal with applications for streaming media services, social media (Twitter’ish) apps, Yahoo stuff, things like that.  Some can be removed. Most cannot and are locked in place.  What results is a bunch of locked in iPhone like icons that I have to wade through to find the six or seven I really care to use.

As mentioned, while you can change the wallpapers, the “lock” screen provides a screensaver slideshow of locked images full of flowers, butterflies and other pretty things.  While I don’t need “girlie” (as in Playboy) wallpapers, I also don’t find it too appealing to be locked into “girly” (as in Alvis and Lavie loving) images either.  You can’t change the images shown.  You can’t change the screensaver.  Yep.  It is a really pretty phone.

Luckily, I can set the “fade to black” timeout period to 8 sec or so.  That takes care of that a bit.  Though I wish they had at least offered this one as a default along with an “alternative” guy or neutral-image (abstracts only) screensaver.  That might expand the appeal to more guys.  Fortunately for Samsung I’m flexible and am one of those more emotionally sensitive tolerant types.

Another thing moving from the A727 to a “feature” phone like the Mythic is I am getting used to is the battery time.  Like I said, going 3-4 days of call/texting use between recharges on the A727 was common.  Now I can usually make it two days (tops) on the Mythic.  I don’t think it’s a bad battery or unit, it’s that the screen is so much larger, and brighter and on more as I compose text messages.  Typically it shows all battery bars for one day. Then drops one or two bars…looking like a 1/2 charge remains.  Then I do a text or have a voice call and BAM the battery indicator is showing emptied.  So for this month I’m letting it fully discharge a few times and then will be hooking it to the charger nightly.

I got a clear-plastic case for it while in use on my desk or weekend running in my jeans.  For the daily work-week I found a nice Blackberry mag-latch vertical holster fit it perfectly (sans the clear-plastic weekender shell). I did allow myself to be sold on the clear-plastic screen protectors as well.  They work well and don’t impact feel of the touch-screen whatsoever.

One last quibble.   As a Windows guy, I’m used to the double-click the icon rhythm to launch an application.  On the Mythic I’m still getting trained by the device if it is long-hold push to execute the application/widget, or if it is a double-tap, or a single-tap.  Different things seem to require different actions.  Please Samsung. Sick with a double-tap activation.   This is driving me a bit batty.  I need some consistency!

Voice-dialing is quite useful.  Although I still have to find and push the widget button to get it activated first.  Awkward while driving but an improvement over hunting through the contacts as I did before on the A727.

Overall texting is great now, and the device really does look smashing in both form and function.  I just wish it was a bit more refined and, well, customizable.

Management with a Windows 7 x64 bit System

Silly me.  I thought I could just download the PC/phone management link software and go.

I mean, the driver/software package was just released in late November.

Wrong…at least for x64 bit Windows 7.  Tons of driver installation issues.

Fortunately, after a wasted-night’s worth of banging the drivers into the system, I gave up, and just plugged the sucker into the Win 7 system via the USB cable and amazingly Windows 7 picked it up as a mass-storage device (because of the SSD micro card in it).

This finding means that while I can’t manage any contact info or stuff like that, I can copy images, files, music, and videos back and forth easily with no fuss.

So instead of using the Samsung software I’ve been using the following freeware Windows tools to create wallpaper and convert video files for playback on it.  Your results may vary.

Free FLV Converter – A Simple Freeware To Convert FLV Videos To AVI and Format Factory - Free media file format converter have been my cherished friends in this endeavor.  Using Firefox and the DownloadHelper add-in, it’s a piece of cake to capture and save most all web-based video files.  Then Format Factory can be used to covert them into a Samsung-device supported video file format.  It’s really that easy.

As for picture files and wallpaper making, the “desktop” screen takes a 800x480 ration sizing.  So in most cases I just use FastStone Image Viewer or Photoscape or even Hornil StylePix to resize and crop my preferred images for application as wallpapers.

Then I just transfer it all over USB onto the memory card on the phone. Done.

Of course, you could always just find some pre-made wallpapers (and other media items) already done for your Samsung Mythic:

• Free Samsung Mythic SGH-a897 Wallpapers - mobile9
• Samsung Mythic SGH-a897 – mobile9
• 480x800 Wallpapers for Cell Phone – MobiNations.com

Still to do: make a few United States Military Academy at West Point wallpapers with that stunning coat of arms. (more regarding the USMA’s coat of arms and motto here.)  (And to clarify for the curious Google led visitor to this page, I did not attend and am not a graduate in any form or fashion of West Point.  I did make a run at selection to the US Air Force Academy my senior year in high school, but bowed out during the process (story for another day.)  Dad was an decorated US Army officer who served in the Vietnam “conflict”. And I still deeply hold to the many core values held by the various proud US military branches of service; and try to apply specific USMA-West Point leadership examples in my daily work and home-life: The West Point Way of Leadership by Larry Donnithorne.

Hmm. I’m digressing.

I’ve also got to clip a sound-sample of this awesome “Let A Stranger Drive You Home” Heineken Commercial .  As much as I like the Biz Markie’s - Just A Friend “original” remake of the original Just a Friend by Freddie Scott, I have to say, I’d buy a single from iTunes just to hear the cabbie’s (Timm Cooney) entire rendition of Just a Friend. Timm not only sings the song, but owns it with soul!

.Still digressing I see…

Additional Resources for the Mythic Hacking Geeks

Here are some more links for tips, tricks and hacks of your Samsung Mythic.

Most of the info is both helpful and great reference.  But some is hard-core programming-code feature hacking so “here be dragons” and proceed at risk of bricking your phone.

• Samsung Mythic Forum – Samsung-Mythic.com
• Mythic - AT&T Cell Phones blog (disclaimer: site is not endorsed or affiliated with AT&T btw…)
• User Manual(a897 Mythic User Manual) – Official Samsung provided documentation.

Hope someone considering or owning a Samsung Mythic finds this useful.

Oh..and what of my cherished cool-tech Samsung A727 phone?

Funnily enough, Alvis has ditched her AT&T Quickfire phone (with both a “real” and virtual QWERTY keyboard, swapped out SIM cards, and is now using it as her cool-chick phone. 

Ironic.

And to make matters more embarrassing, she said she can text message her friends faster on the cursed numeric keypad than the QWERTY keyboards of the Quickfire.

Sigh.

--Claus V.

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More to come…but for now…drive recovery first

As usual I’ve been sidetracked yet again by hard-drive discombubulations.

Needless to say, the pile of linkage in my “to blog” closet is threatening to blow out my JSON file. I’m making frequent backups of that as well.

I went to boot the Shuttle-SFF XP system (my primary desktop system but rarely booted due to the comforts of laptop use in the living room with the girls) and after about two minutes, it locked up with the hard-drive light solid-on.  Diagnostics and troubleshooting led me to various theories, but in the end, wisdom and time led me to the conclusion it would be best to data-recover, wipe, and rebuild.

So this morning I kicked off the recovery response.  I pulled the drive, placed in on my USB drive interface and set to work trying to recover files from it to my Western Digital portable USB drive, through the Win7 system.  Only this didn’t work quite as planned.

SMART information and other drive checks reported the drive was physically OK. CHKDSK found some errors but said they fixed them.  However I had four volumes on it, all NTFS, but now one is showing RAW.  Sometimes attaching the physical drive would lock up my Windows 7 system or cause my specialized file-copy power utilities to lock up or not even launch.

Eventually I was able to recover “most” of the important data and files with much patience.

I’m leaning to some bad file/disk structure corruption, but I’m not certain.

I’m next about to blow out the drive in diskpart and repartition it with two NTFS volumes, then install Win 7 RC x32 on it. Lets see how that works….

I should be back on the air for some normal blogging tomorrow.

Hang tight.  And yes.  Recent reports of snow on the Gulf Coast of Texas are accurate.  However despite the local hype, it nothing to compare with regular snowfalls up north.

Claus V.

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Diminished Linkfest

Here are a collection of links that probably deserve a lot more attention than I am giving them at the moment.

I’ve got a date at a Chinese buffet waiting for the annual “my-side'-of-the-family” post-thanksgiving meal. And UH plays Rice at 7PM for the Bayou Bucket game.

So be it:

• Delete TCP-IP printer port - Bink.nu – despite my skill in adding/removing printer devices from Windows, I was always plagued at work with the number of network printers I have to add/delete from my system as I travel between office sites.  I would delete the IP printer, but it would still should up as a “ghost” in my printer port list.  Finally got large enough to force me to figure out how to remove the.  Who knew I had to click on the whitespace to get the option to deal with the printer port items?   “Go under control panel to "Printers", right click in the middle of the white space on the right side of the window and choose "Server Properties".  Go to the "Ports" tab, select the port you want to delete, and choose "Delete port".” - johlos

• Create universal flash boot disk with fbinst. – BootLand Forums.  New tool to help with making flash devices bootable.  My method of bootsect and diskpart has worked great but this might be an option on certain types of other storage devices.

• VMLite XP Mode – free – neat application alternative to replicate Windows Virtual PC XP-Mode for systems that cannot support it (due to Windows 7 OS level).  I haven’t tried it yet but it looks promising.  Spotted over at Even More Linky Goodness... by Harlan Carvey.

• Haiku Project | Home of the Haiku Operating System – cute retro BeOS style Linux build (correction caught by TinyApps: “Haiku has been coded from the ground up as a BeOS clone, and does not contain
  any Linux code: http://www.haiku-os.org/about/faq#2.”)  My Linux LiveCD work pretty much centers around forensic LiveCD builds now, but I still love seeing these projects.  Related: Using build images with Virtual PC | Haiku Project.

Windows x64 Driver Signing Links

Back when I was trying to get the ImDisk Virtual Disk Driver (now updated to version 1.1.5 on 11.23.09) up and working on my Windows 7 x64 bit system, I ran into one of the headaches of x64 bit life.  Drivers need to be signed to install/load/work.  You can work around this several ways but often it involves either turning off UAC mode and/or dropping the system into “test” mode.

It can be a headache.

Here are related links I collected while getting ImDisk to work on my system (despite the wonderful help in the link); it still is a bit cranky.

• Driver Signing Issue PLEASE HELP - Windows 7 Forums.  References use of the “…testsigning switched on (type bcdedit /set testsigning on at Command Prompt and reboot to activate this) method.

• Microsoft: Windows 7 - "Test Mode" on Desktop. – Tek Tips forum reference the consequence of above which places a “Test Mode” watermark on the desktop area.  Bummer and kinda freaky if you didn’t expect it to be there.

• Driver Signature Enforcement Overrider 1.3b - NGOHQ.com. One of a few tools that might allow you to override x64 driver signature requirements.  I haven’t needed to try it yet.

• How To Remove Watermark From Windows 7 Builds [Both X86 & X64]. – another method to then remove the “Test Mode” watermark from the desktop if you wish.

• How To: Load Unsigned Drivers on Windows 7 | Apartment Therapy Unplugged. – More techniques and background to be aware of.

• Newsletter #76:  Solving Windows "driver is not signed" problems. – Mark Minasi takes the time to explain and detail advanced methods to cope with these issues.  Probably a definitive guide to doing so.  Read this only after you have covered the ones above.  For hard-core geeks, sysadmins, and everyone (who probably already falls into one of those two groups) who is running x64 Windows flavors to begin with.

Cheers!

--Claus V.

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Free! (Beta) MS Office 2010 (+ Open Source / free alternatives)

About a year ago I upgraded our MS Office 2003 (Student/Teacher edition) pack to MS Office 2007 (Student/Teacher edition).

We still are using MS Office 2003 at work, but the church projection desk uses 2007 so for PowerPoint design compatibility while working on slideshows at home and hauling to the church, I decided it was time to bump up.

Alvis and Lavie needed MS Project capability which these packs don’t come with so I then got an employee purchase program pack of MS Office Enterprise 2007 for one PC as this does come with Project and at about $10 it was a steal.

About a week ago, Microsoft released Office 2010 in beta form to first their technical subscribers.  An even earlier “technical release” version had been out long before that.  What made the Office 2010 beta release so special was that a few days later it was released for public consumption along with some other 2010 Office application betas as well.

I’ve been running most of them in a Windows 7 virtual machine at work and am very pleased. While the jump from Office 2K to 2003 was fairly easy, the jump from 2003 to 2007—particularly with the “ribbon” interface—has been more challenging.  That said, it now feels like home and is preferred over 2003 interfaces.  2010 continues with the ribbon interface and adds a few more additional features, making much more user friendly, particularly for power-users.

So I wanted to round up the linkage on the Office 2010 beta for myself and my readers.

I also know that some folks are quite anti-Office so I will also provide linkage on suitable alternatives (Open Source/freeware) to most of the Microsoft Office applications.  If you subscribe to the “team-Open Source” rather than “team Microsoft” you probably won’t feel slighted in the least.

First things first: x32 or x64 version?

Believe it or not, one of the first considerations you will need to make is whether to go x32 or x64 with Microsoft Office 2010 beta.  Yep.  It comes in both flavors!

Now, if you are only running a x32 bit version of Windows, then there is no problem.  You must go with the x32 version.

However, if you (like Lavie and I) are running x64 bit OS of Windows (ours are x64 Windows 7 Home Premium) then it gets a bit more complicated.

Here’s my thoughts after some research and consideration; if you have a x64 bit OS of Windows, don’t use any plug-ins (particularly third-party) for Office, and want to realize some possible performance gains (though not much unless you are doing heavy calculations or graphics work) then go ahead with the x64 version.

If you do depend on third-party plug-ins for Office and/or don’t really push the limits of what MS Office can do under the hood, the x32 version should give you greater compatibility and support.  So (for now) any slight gains in performance with x64 will be more than offset by the extended support of the x32 flavor of MS Office.

• For more perspectives, see this Office 2010 32 bit vs 64 bit forum thread over at MS TechNet.

Second: Do I need to play with MS Office 2010 beta?

To this I say only this; absolutely, positively, not-to-be-overlooked, stop—drop—and—roll, you must really put down the remote and turkey sandwich and go try this out…maybe.

OK, I know I need to clarify that a bit.

If you already have MS Office 2007 and are an average Office user, then you probably won’t see a whole lot here to justify the work and considerations in installing and using MS Office 2010.  Seriously.

If you aren’t experienced with “beta” products and causing the possible destruction of Alderaan and/or your Office documents and system, then take a pass.

If you don’t feel like uninstalling your current MS Office 2003/2007 installation to make way for the Office 2010 beta, call for a cab-ride home.

However,

If you do like driving in the fast lane on the freeway even if it is supposed to just be for passing, sign up.

If you are running a version of MS office that is earlier than MS office 2003, sign up.

If you can/will be willing to risk nuking your system, sign up.

If you want to keep both your current Office 2003/2007 and are willing to try to install/run both, or know how to create a virtual machine to run it in, sign up.

If you must live on the cutting edge of MS Office deployments, sign up.

If you have a new x64 install of Windows and want to see what (if anything) a x64 bit version of Office can do, sign up.

If you haven’t ever installed or been able to take out a 2nd mortgage to afford MS Office around the house, sign up.

If you are a system admin, provide MS Office support to your workplace, and need to check application/document compatibility before deployment, sign up.

Me?  I’ve swallowed the Microsoft Office 2010 beta punch and am trying to hand it out to all the faithful I can.

Features?

Rather than try to do a full review of all the MS Office 2010 beta features, here are some links that do a good job covering that already.

• Office 2010 beta coming Wednesday [Updated] -- TechBlog Chron.com.

• Hands-On Look at What&’ New in Office 2010 - Lifehacker

• Microsoft Office and business productivity -- Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows.

• Office 2010 Public Beta, Part 2: A Tour of the New User Experiences. -- Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows.

Microsoft Office 2010 beta expiration date?

One question any Microsoft beta tester comes to look for very quickly is “…when does it expire?”

Sorry, Virginia, you can’t ride this free bus trip forever.

In the case of MS Office 2010 beta, Microsoft provides a generous timeframe until it either quits outright or drops into RFM (reduced functionality mode).  Per the Microsoft Office 2010 Beta FAQ  (emphasis mine)

Office 2010 Beta will become non-functional on October 31st, 2010. The non-functional product may be removed from your computer by using the Programs and Features option from within the Control Panel. If you selected to perform an upgrade to a previous version of Office when you installed you will need to manually reinstall your previous version, or you may choose to download a new trial or purchase the full version of Office 2010.

So you get almost a full year to use a very feature-stable, super-full version of MS Office 2010, along with any other related MS Office 2010 components.  Hard deal to pass up, particularly if you never had been able to afford an MS Office release.  Of course, by then you may be addicted and have to pony up for it when the expiration hits.

Enough Already!  Link it to me!

OK.  Here you go.

Be aware of these first.

1. At some point you will have to get a (free) Multiple Activation Key (MAK) and activate it.  It should install and run fine up to 30 days or so without one.  You can also do a “rearm” to stretch it out a bit longer.  But since the key is free, I don’t see why you wouldn’t get and use one immediately.  The MAK allows you download the setup file(s) once and then use the same key on different systems.
2. You will need a different MAK for each Office application you wish to use/install.
3. You will need to provide a registered Windows LiveID to get one.  No big deal (free) if you don’t have one already, just be prepared to register during the process and get one.
4. By nature, Microsoft will be pulling data from your uses, crashes, etc. of the product(s).  So though it is free to you, Microsoft will collect impersonal data on how it operates on your system, how you use it, etc.  If that freaks you out then jump below to fully-free alternatives.  Way I see it, it’s a small price for a year’s worth of MS Office 2010 and the possibility to provide good data that may enhance the final release version.
5. A silly smiley-face feedback tool will get installed and added to your auto-runs list.  This allows you to text message feedback to Microsoft on the product.  It’s kinda cute but really unnecessary for most testers/users.  You can turn it off and/or remove it from the auto-starts without harm.
6. Some folks complained about download issues of the setup files when using Firefox.  Yeah.  Big surprise. I didn’t have any issues, but if you can, just use Internet Explorer to snag them and return to Firefox when you are done; fewer hiccups this way.
7. By default, MS seems to offer you the x32 bit installers by default from the download pages. However, if you scroll down to the bottom, you should find the link to the x64 bit version.  I grabbed both, and the same MAK should work for either one.
8. You can actually go into the “Options” feature on each application and set it to save your MS Office 2010 beta documents/files in an earlier version of MS Office by default. Great for ensuring your co-workers can still use your stuff without issue or need for compatibility packs.  Yes, you may not get as much benefit (whatever it may be) with saving them in the newest MS Office file-formats, but it makes it much easier to use this version in a production environment.

Microsoft Office Beta - Office.com – The starting place for most users;

This will net you the following MS Office 2010 beta apps:

• Word
• Access
• PowerPoint
• Publisher
• Outlook
• InfoPath
• Excel
• SharePoint Workspace
• OneNote
• Communicator

This should more than satisfy most of the curious.

Too many specialized apps for the home/SOHO user?  Probably so.  Try this instead:

Microsoft Office Online (Office Home and Business 2010 beta):

• Word
• PowerPoint
• Outlook
• Excel
• OneNote

Probably won’t seem as intimidating.

However, wait!  There’s more!

Microsoft Project “Professional” 2010  (Fancy product landing page) --also available and free in both x64 and x32 flavors.  Not radically different from the Project 2003 version I use, but the ribbon actually makes it much easier for me to use.  I think it’s an improvement over earlier versions.

Microsoft Visio Premium 2010 (Fancy product landing page) but use the Microsoft Visio Premium 2010 Beta – for a more helpful link to download and get info.  See also: Microsoft Visio Training Links – Microsoft.  Besides the ribbon again, I don’t see a radical difference between the Visio Professional 2003 I use daily at work and this one.  It handled all my 2003 version Visio files with no complaints.  Saving them back from 2010 beta into 2003 format and opening them up in Visio 2003 I found no issues so far.  Again, me likey.

Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Beta – Now we are going hard-core for the pros.  Not for general end-users.  It requires sysadmin knowledge to get this puppy up and going.  That said, it should bring additional features and interconnectivity for sharing with Office 2010 documents.

Microsoft SharedView – OK. This isn’t really part of the Office 2010 beta pack, but it has been updated to version 1.0 and should be included by anyone (sysadmin or home user) who is a MS Office fan-boy/fan-girl.  For more information on what it does and how it can help you, see this GSD post: Microsoft SharedView: OMG this is Free?!!!

More MS Office 2010 beta resources

Here are some additional links that would be good to bookmark as you deploy and use MS Office 2010 beta

• Microsoft Office 2010 Beta FAQ – I highly recommend reading this closely before you deploy. Full of good info.
• Office 2010 Category – Microsoft TechNet Forums for Office 2010.  Great resource for features and issues.
• Microsoft Office 2010 Beta Forum – Specific forum for Office 2010 beta/issues.
• BETA: “Wave 14” – Office, Sharepoint & Forefront 2010 Beta’s release - Windows Live.  Good linkage to Office 2010 betas as well as additional on-line and downloadable resources related to this project.
• Office 2010 Click To Run: App-v from the cloud - Bink.nu.  This is more of an enterprise deployment benefit, but I wanted to include it anyway for the sysadmins.

Open Source and Freeware Alternatives to Microsoft Office

Goddess knows I’m all for freeware, portable, and other Open Source applications.  Office productivity apps aren’t the exception.  In the world I live, work, and earn a paycheck in, Microsoft is the way it is. Period.  However, I do think that they did earn that position not just from marketing and cramming their product down enterprise and business IT department’s throats but because, fairly said, they do provide damn-good tools to do what they do in the business world…and that has spilled over into schools and homes.

That said, there are a number of great and free products that are beloved and can keep pace (if not sometimes outdo) Microsoft Office.

So if you don’t want to drink the MS special punch, but do need the same features, consider this fantastic options:

• OpenOffice.org - The Free and Open Productivity Suite and OpenOffice.org Portable – provides almost a match-for-match application for the standard Microsoft Office ones. Even if you use MS office, you can’t really take it with you on your USB stick, something you can do with OO.
• Open Workbench and/or OpenProj.  Two very mature alternatives to Microsoft Project.  Even more options here in this older GSD post Project Management Tips and Software.  I really like (and used) Open Workbench until we got licensed for MS Project at work.
• Scribus Open Source Desktop Publishing – Wonderful alternative to MS Publisher.
• Dia – Who needs Visio with Dia around?  Except for highly specialized networking/drafting and flowcharting folks, Dia should save the day for free.
• openmeetings or TeamViewer (also available as TeamViewer Portable) should do a nice job as an alternate to the (also free) Microsoft SharedView tool.
• Open Source Collaboration by Alfresco and o3spaces are worth checking out as alternatives to MS SharePoint.  Truth-be-told: I use SharePoint heavily, but haven’t (but coming in the near future) had to deploy or administer a SharePoint server so while I can tell you what I like about SharePoint, I can’t really fairly compare these alternatives from a behind-the-scenes perspective. Yet.
• Zimbra. – Alternative for MS Outlook Exchange server software.
• eM Client or Thunderbird + Sunbird should be a fine alternative to MS Outlook email client.
• WikidPad or SEO Note would be alternatives to MS OneNote.  I used to be a rabid fan of Evernote which offered one of the best OneNote alternatives for free/$ there was.  However they have moved to a “cloud-based” model now.  It still effectively provides the same “features” as before for note taking…plus with multi-device/system synchronization/access, but I just don’t feel the warm-fuzzies that I did from their old product iteration.  I wish they would bring it back as a “retro” version.  It was just so damn good.
• FreeForm – Possible alternative to MS InfoPath.

If you know of any others and can recommend some additional ones that are off the radar, please drop a tip/suggestion/link in the comments!

Hopefully somewhere in all this you will find more than enough office productivity options for free to upgrade and bring you current with the capabilities now out there.

I highly recommend you not pass the chance to play with MS Office 2010 betas in some form.  A year is a long time to learn and take advantage of these awesome free (though beta) office applications; particularly if you are still using MS Office 97/2000 (or even MS Works!).

Cheers!

--Claus V.

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Messing with Windows 7 Themes

Using, making, and sharing Windows 7 themes has gotten very simple.

Though I still grab specific images for my desktop wallpaper, I have to confess, the standard sets of Microsoft-provided themes for Windows 7 are very nice.  I particularly like the scenic ones.

However it was a drag having the images rotating on my desktop a bit limited. By default the stock themes only contain five to seven wallpapers.  If I wanted to rotate to additional ones I had to switch to a different theme set.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have, say, just one theme with all the landscape/scenic themes?  But how?

Easy.

Get your Theme Material

First I had to get the source material by downloading or identifying all the themes with wallpapers I wanted to use.

• Extract 5 Hidden Windows 7 International Themes (AU, CA, GB, US, ZA) – ITechnobuzz .  Offers that there are some additional “hidden” themes in the “…MCT folder with Path = “C:\Windows\Globalization\MCT” consists of 5 Hidden International Themes of Australia , Canada, United Kingdom, United States and South Africa.”
• [How To] Add More Wallpapers to Existing Themes in Windows 7 - Windows 7 hacker post informs us that “…the default theme configuration files that come with Windows 7 are all located in c:\windows\resources\themes folder. You can find 6 of them there after you first installed Windows 7.  But all wallpaper files are not saved in the same folder. Instead, you can find them in c:\windows\web\wallpaper folder, in each organized subfolder.”
• Personalization Gallery - Windows 7 themes, wallpapers, and gadgets - Microsoft Windows site has some wonderful commercial and scenic themes you can download.  I took a lot of of my scenic ones from these beautiful locations.  Download as many as you need, but I chose to “Save As” rather than download/install them.
• my 7 themes . net – Additional collections of pre-packaged Windows 7 themes. I found just a few more here I downloaded as well.

Fill-Her-Up!

OK.  Next I made a folder on my desktop so it would be easy to navigate to.  I simply named it “Wallpapers”.

I also made a 2nd folder on my desktop called “Extracted Themes”.

Into the “Wallpapers” folder I just copied the accessible desktop wallpaper files from the c:\windows\web\wallpaper subfolders that I wanted.

Next I copied the various filename.theme files from the various locations where I had downloaded or located them (as noted above) into the “Extracted Themes” folder.

Now, we need to get into those theme packs to extract the wallpaper files.

Method One:  If you already have 7-Zip handy, you can use it to de-compress the filename.theme files you have directly with no fuss.

Method Two: If you don’t have it or don’t want to, just rename the file extension for each of the themepacks to .cab

That turns them back into their true format as a Microsoft “Cabinet” file format.  Then you can just use Windows 7’s own ability to open/extract them.

So once you have them all extracted, copy the appropriate wallpaper files you find within into the “Wallpapers” folder you made.

When you are all done, you should have quite a few desktop image files in the Wallpaper folder.

Move it and Set it

To tuck the “Wallpapers” folder away, I simply moved it to my user “Pictures” folder for safekeeping.  You can put it anywhere that makes sense to you.

Then I right-clicked on the desktop and selected “Personalize”

I clicked on the “Desktop Background” item at the bottom of that window.

I clicked on the “Browse” button to go to my Pictures\Wallpaper folder location and selected it.

I then verified the images I wanted to include as well as tweaked the rotation time and set them to “shuffle”

I saved the settings.

My super-duper scenic rotating wallpaper image theme was now ready to go!

(Note, you could easily add any additional images to this folder as well; these could be your own personal photos, other images downloaded from the net, whatever.  You don’t have to stick with just these theme wallpapers.)

Additional Diving

For more tips and background on Windows themes and the format that drives them, you might find these posts good reference material.

• Creating, Saving, Sharing Themes in Windows 7 - Engineering Windows 7 blog
• Creating and Installing Theme Files – Microsoft Developer Network
• Download and Install Windows 7 Themes on your XP or Windows Vista Computer – Digital Inspiration
• Windows 7 themes: how to unlock them or create your own – ARS Technica

Cheers!
--Claus V.

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I Clausius Domesticus

I’m trying to get my feet back on the carpet at home this weekend.

Very trying week at work, coupled with a daughter out Friday night to help leading in a girl’s sleepover function, and a cold, wet, dark Friday night seemed to be a recipe for adventure.

Alas, wonderful and exhausted couple we were; this only led to a late-night turn-in and fitful slumber as the child-unit wasn’t in her bed.

Parenthood.

For reasons that probably need a therapist to decipher, I’ve been hooked lately on the fascinating world of research in higher education courtesy of  Dr. Isis’s On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess blog.  Got to give the Dr. her due, she really has a classy taste in shoes.  I know. Right?

Anyway, I do like Dr. Isis’s views on women in science and the challenges that are faced both from within and without.  Popular culture seems to see such women as either mousey shrews or subtlety-sexualized brainiacs whose real value comes in counterpointing the heroic male stud.

So when I read Dr. Isis post Ask Dr. Isis - How Do I Convince a Young Girl That Math = Hot? : On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess it really hit home.  Particularly since Alvis and I spend many hours on Thursday trying to sort out electron charges and configurations for her advanced placement sophomore chemistry class.  I’m not a chemistry dude so most of that has been long forgotten.  I kept encouraging her to call my little bro who has a masters in chem engineering (with honors) but she was determined to figure it out.  Fortunately, I had loaded both the incredible freeware tools Periodic Table and Periodic Table Explorer from Paul Alan Freshney and they ended up saving both our butts.

Alvis, if you are reading this…check out that post then go back and bookmark her blog and have fun looking a her shoes as well.  (You can be smart and empowered, and classy at the same time.)

It was amazing watching her struggle to get the notations down, and then I felt pride as she had a few “eureka” moments when concepts seemed to click in her brain.  She really seemed to be getting into it.  She excels in both math and science and really loves the science channels.  But she is also confronted on a daily basis at school with teachers who don’t seem to engage the girls seriously in science. Not to mention how geeky girls are considered socially in high school.

Reading Dr. Isis post on her own conversion from brawling to a pursuit of contribution to the body of science (and not just a body in science) was both refreshing and scary as a father.  How indeed can I continue to encourage dear Alvis to cherish the pursuit of scientific learning while fostering a sense of wonder and encouragement that she really could excel in those fields, if she so chose?

In other news, I found this post of 20 New High Quality Free Fonts at Smashing Magazine pretty neat.  While some of the fonts seemed a bit tired, others were more than cool and will make nice enhancement to some of the PowerPoint work I’ve been doing lately.

The Icon Archive has recently taken top honor in my icon-related bookmark set.  It contains an amazing collection of full-set icon files for Windows (Vista/Win7 high-res quality) carefully culled by the maintainer from across the net.  Yes, many can be found at other sites as well, but for one-stop shopping, this has got to be one of the best sites. Just be aware that your IP is monitored and if you try to download too many at once, you will have to wait for 6-8 hrs before being allowed to resume your downloads.  So don’t be greedy!

Tonight I’m trying to re-create a wonderful roasted-chicken dish Boss brought last year to our work holiday luncheon.  She has some kind of connection to Argentina so it had an amazing roasted flavor and seasoning that didn’t fit anything from around here.  Alas, I’ve not yet been able to get the recipe from her yet.

So I’m trying my first attempt at a pale shadow of it.

The From Argentina With Love blog held this workable foundation for me: Chicken and Potatoes-Pollo con Papas.

It seemed close but didn’t capture the seasoning rub that I seemed to recall.  So more research on the web led me to this Chimichurri Mix & Rub : Asado Argentina.

Between the two I’m hoping for some success.  It has roasted chicken skin which will delight Alvis and lots or roasted potatoes which will make Lavie happy.  Me?  Let me dig into the meat.

And on top of it, UH won their game and UT is slated to kick off in a few more hours.

Maybe the weekend is shaping up OK after-all.

And for insurance against the botched Friday date-night with Lavie? I’ve got a Dutch Apple pie ready to go into the oven, two packages of fresh strawberries, and chocolate-covered almonds.  If the Argentine roasted-chicken/potatoes doesn’t help me I’m counting on a strong finish with the Missus from the dessert offerings.

Yummers.

Claus V.

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