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Geek Squad Employee Busted

Usually, technology and convergence of digital devices are wonderful things.  But when a Best Buy Geek Squad employee abuses technology to *allegedly* use his cell phone to video record a female customer showering in their own home, that’s disgusting.  Just imagine if that was your wife or sister – it’s unbelievable!

Best Buy does background & credit history checks before they hire people.  Yet with over 90,000 employees, there are obviously some rotten apples in the bunch.  How many other bad apples are out there (at GS & other companies).  Have you done background checks on your employees?

I’ve got to wonder what the backlash and ramifications for everyone in the SMB market will be.  It seems like industry regulations for IT can’t be far behind.

One thing is for sure, this dude will never be a “Sleeper“, and that’s a good thing.

Source:  Gizmodo

(I use the word ‘allegedly’ for legal purposes.)

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Adding Macs to a Windows Vista Workgroup

Back in January at the EVO Launch in Louisville I met a ton of new people.  One of them was Erik Eckel from Computer Troubleshooters (super-nice guy!) 

Erik recently had an article published on TechRepublic (April 6, 2007) that I’d like to share with everyone who works in smaller Windows networks that include Macs.

This article provides step-by-step instructions on how to add Macs to a Windows Vista Workgroup.    This article is a great reference with screen shots, and it’s well worth reading and bookmarking.  Saving it as a PDF is probably a good idea too, and you can do that right from the TechRepublic site.

When I met Erik, I had no idea just how prolific a writer he really is.  You can check out Erik’s bio and other articles (over 300 of them) on TechRepublic here.

Nicely done Erik!

P.S.  He’s also got an article on how to add Windows Vista machines into a Mac network.

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How to Web-Enable LOBs on SBS

Do your clients have employees and remote workers who want to access mission-critical line-of-business (LOB) apps that weren’t designed to work across the web?  Now they can, and you can learn how install it on top of their existing Microsoft SBS 2003 infrastructure:

Webcast #1:  Web-enabled Line of Business Applications Automatically with Small Business Server and Citrix Access Essentials

Event Dates:  4/10/2007, 5/8/2007 or 6/12/2007 (same content)
Presenter: J.J. Antequino & Augie Gonzalez
Event Time:  1:30 PM Eastern, USA & Canada (DST) = GMT – 05:00
Duration: 60 minutes
Course Level: 100

Description:
Sure, we’d all love to have our line of business applications rewritten for the Web. But what can we do right now, quickly and inexpensively, while we wait on the original developer to pull it off? It’s actually pretty straightforward using Citrix Access Essentials software. And you don’t have to write a line of code. Learn what you can achieve for under $250 per user including Windows Terminal Server CALs.

Citrix Access Essentials enables small organizations to access their central business systems over the Internet from home, hotels, airports, customer sites, wireless hotspots and across firewalls. The software makes it possible for remote and mobile personnel to run line-of-business applications on a central Windows server as if right at the main computer site.

Webcast #2: Citrix Access Essentials and Small Business Server – Behind the Scenes

Event Dates:  4/12/2007, 5/10/2007, or 6/14/2007 (same content)
Presenter:  J.J. Antequino & Augie Gonzalez
Event Time:  1:30 PM Eastern, USA & Canada (DST) = GMT – 05:00
Duration: 60 minutes
Course Level: 100

Description:
In Webcast #1 You heard what Citrix Access Essentials can do. Now see it from the system administrator’s perspective. We’ll start with a basic configuration that builds on Windows Terminal Services to get you off the ground, and then move into an advanced environment that kicks in must-have features for a rich, secure, responsive Web experience.  

Source:  Ron Grattopp – TS2 Presenter Extraordinaire

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SharePoint PDF Icon Tool Gets Even Better

acrobat_pdf_iconDoes your SharePoint http://companyweb site running on SBS 2003 or R2 still show missing icons for PDF files you’ve uploaded?  Tsk-tsk.

Solutions:

GOOD – Back in the day we used to fix this problem manually by uploading the 16×16 PDF icon, updating the XML file, and restarting IIS.  Tedious, but effective.

BETTER – Then in 2004 Chad Gross [SBS-MVP] created a cool ZIP / batch file to automate the PDF insertion process for Windows SharePoint Services 2.0.

BEST – Skip forward to 2007 and Chad’s super-handy tool has gotten WAY better.  The new version works with WWS 2.0 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0!  Chad’s rewritten it in VBS, updated the icon to a newer PNG, and it creates an output logfile at C:\pdficon.log so you can make sure everything went smoothly.  Mega sweet!  Download the NEW PDF icon tool and try it out today!

I carry it on a USB drive keychain with my other must-have utilities.  Getting a PDF icon to display in SharePoint has never been easier.  Thanks Chad! You rock!!

Source:  Chad’s Blog

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How to Fix Time Synchronization Errors

Handy Andy [SBS-MVP] posted this helpful time sync info to the SBS Group Leaders mailing list and on his blog today, and I thought I’d pass it along.

If your servers are not able to time sync lately, check out the batch of commands below.  This set of instructions is for servers that have been synching fine, and all of a sudden just stopped.  (If your server has never been able to time sync, see the M&M’s article on synching time on SBS. )

Here are the commands;

w32tm /configure /manualpeerlist:time-a.nist.gov,0x8 /syncfromflags:MANUAL
net stop w32time
net start w32time
w32tm /resync
pause

Copy and paste those commands into notepad, save the file as timefix.cmd on the desktop of your server.  Then just double-click it to run the batch of commands.  Be sure to watch the last command and make sure it says the sync was successful.

Note: you may want to change the time source to one local to you (here is a list of time servers), but time-a.nist.gov works fine for me (GMT -5 Eastern USA).

Source:  Handy Andy [SBS-MVP] & SmallBizServer.net

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Deepfish – It’s About Time!

Filed under “Why didn’t someone think of this before?”

Video link:  On Channel 10
Deepfish blog: RSS feed available too
Deepfish website:  http://labs.live.com/Deepfish

What is Deepfish? 

Deepfish is a lightweight client application that leverages a powerful server side technology for delivery of content such as web pages to a Windows Mobile device. Content is displayed in a familiar desktop format that requires no additional work by the content or site author.

Deepfish provides:

  • A familiar look and feel of web pages on mobile as seen on desktop
  • Bandwidth optimized rendering for faster content delivery
  • Address bar web navigation
  • Intuitive zooming, panning and cue map for quick navigation and browsing
  • Support for simple link navigation and form submission

Source:  Funboard

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Unified Messaging the Xbox 360 Way

Microsoft announced yesterday (8 April 2007) that they’re opening up the Xbox LIVE IM network (6 million-strong) to the Windows Live Messenger (260 million-strong) network.

“Who cares,” you say?  Gamers, clients, employees, your kids.  Today is a travel day for Matt (hello Cleveland!) but I’m sure he cares too.  And so should you.

Think about it:

Scenario 1 (uncool) – You’re tired of playing with ios games for money and gaming away on PGR3 and your boss pops up an IM to ask how those TPS reports are coming.  Icky!

Scenario 2 (kinda cool) – Unified messaging becomes a reality with Exchange 2007, the whole ‘access anywhere’ scenario could conceivably include getting email and voicemail on your 360.

Scenario 3 (totally cool) – Knocking out those simple IM questions without getting off the couch and exiting your game.  Nice!

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MCPS and MCNPS

I was moving my Microsoft Certified Professional ID over to Applied Tech today and noticed “MCPS and MCNPS” listed under “Tracks and Specializations”. 

If you’re not familiar with the alphabet soup of Microsoft Certifications:

  • MCAD – Microsoft Certified Application Developer
  • MCDBA – Microsoft Certified Database Administrator
  • MCDST – Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician
  • MCITP – Microsoft Certified IT Professional
  • MCLC – Microsoft Certified Learning Consultant
  • MCP – Microsoft Certified Professional
  • MCPD – Microsoft Certified Professional Developer
  • MCSA – Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator
  • MCSD – Microsoft Certified Solution Developer
  • MCSE – Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer
  • MCT – Microsoft Certified Trainer
  • MCTS – Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist
  • MOS – Microsoft Office Specialist
  • MSBC – Microsoft Business Certifications (New)
  • Microsoft Certified Architect Program

Oddly, the following certs don’t show up on the Microsoft site:

  • MCNPS – Microsoft Certified Networking Product Specialist 
  • MCPS – Microsoft Certified Product Specialist

They do show up in a Google search (albeit usually in people’s sig lines on message boards).  Apparently, the MCPS and MCNPS show up when you pass the 70-282.  I called Russ Grover and chatted up Susan on IM, but still no URL of proof. 

I’ve also seen this one:

  • MCPSI – Microsoft Certified Professional in Systems Integration

Not sure if that one is real or not.  I’ll do some research and post back when I get an authoritative answer.

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1,000,000 Viruses

How many new viruses come out per month?  Back in the day we quoted 300 per month, then 400.  And today some say 1,968 per month.  That’s 64 new viruses per day / 21 each night while you sleep / 2.6 per hour.  Sobering thought, isn’t it?

Fortunately, you’ve got anti-virus software to protect you.  But how good is it?

Austrian firm AV Comparatives unleashed 1,000,000 virus samples on the top anti-virus products in their 13th comparative test of on-demand detection of malicious software.  The 17 victims were:

Obviously, some AV companies are MIA from that list.  How did your favorite AV software stack up? 

Hit the jump to the PDF report to find out (9 pages – 0.6 MB).
http://av-comparatives.org//seiten/ergebnisse/report13.pdf

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