Various cool software and more

Repetitive tasks – the easy way..

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Now this fall under the category, easy solutions to complex problems…

I recently had to remove about 150 computer objects from a MOM 2005 console, it was not possible to select all and choose remove so you had to right click each and every one of them – click “remove” and then answer “Yes” to the “Are you sure….” dialog…  Now imagine how long this would take to do manually!?  Well you could probably do some scripting that would solve the problem – however that would require some research to find, test and then implement..  but then it struck me, a flashback from back in Windows 3.1 where you had a macro recorder, this macro recorder would allow you to record keyboard and mouse actions and then play it back as many times as you would like (I remember making a macro sending emails and thus spamming some of my fellow students, great fun at the time), now someone must have made a freeware tool that will do this under modern versions of Windows, and sure enough – “Do it again” to the rescue…  “Do it Again” will allow you to make macros and play them back as many times as you’d like, it’s free and easy to use..

1. Get the util from here; http://www.spacetornado.com/DoItAgain/

2. Install it

3. Start “Do it again” and click “create new task” and perform the task you want repeated.

4. Press “Scroll lock” (the button) once you are done with your task.

5. Name the macro in “Do it again” (a dialog box will pop up).

6. Under options set the number of times you want the task to repeat

7. Double click the macro you just created

8. Sit back in amazement and watch someone else making all the hard work for you, now it will still take time but you can sit back and drink coffee while it does.. NICE..  a simple solution to a time consuming problem…

UPDATE;
Sadly I found out this does NOT work on Vista/Win7 🙁 – bummer, however I guess there will be some other util out there that will…

UPDATE2;
I just found a util  “Windows Macro Recorder” that claims to work on all windows versions, same concept as the above;
http://www.freelabs.info/MacroRecorder.aspx

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TestTube

Want to keep up on what the guys at YouTube is working with/testing currently?

http://www.youtube.com/testtube

Here you can check out some of the possibly to come features of YouTube.

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Sparkle Sparkle little server

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http://www.sparkleshare.org/ is a new project on the Internet inspired by Dropbox (a clever fileshareing/collaboration and file syncronising util that uses cloud based storage), SparkleShares force is that it supposodly will be free/open source and you can thus setup your own servers, sounds like something to make a mantal note of..

The first version will be in Linux but should be followed by a windows version, presently no version is publicly available though (as it’s very early in the program, announced June 10th 2010).

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/06/sparkleshare-aims-to-better-dropbox.html

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Boot Windows faster with Soluto

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Soluto offers to minimize your boot time, even with Windows 7 boot time is time wasted and a spark for frustration but this utility states it can cut a significant portion of your boot time.

http://www.soluto.com/
They even call it “Anti-Fustration software” 🙂

I have not tested it yet, but it does sound promising.

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Office online

Just got around to try out the online version of MS Office 2010 http://online.office.com, it’s free all you need is an MSN account/login.

It is however a VERY basic version, eg. I found no way to print the document you are editing (other than the print function in your browser)..

But for very basic needs it works, and it’s free 🙂

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Free vulnerability/update scanners

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Hopefully you have your Windows machine set to receive updates automatically?  But do you ever check that updates are actually downloaded, and installed and what about third party software?

Well, this tip is an oldie, but still quite good and worth a mention;
Secunia (a very skilled security company) offer several products for evaluating your Software readiness (ranging from corporate products to free online personal scanners).
Check it out at (at the very least do an online scan);
http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/online/

CNet also offers a new product called TechTracker which more or less does the same thing;
http://www.cnet.com/techtracker/?tag=mncol;pm

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BSD – Blue Screen of Death analyzer

Have you ever had a machine BSD (blue screen) on you?  and have you ever felt helpless in understanding why and what the problem is?

Well here is a Freeware product that can give you a little insight or at least give you ample time to read and analyze the BSD info.  It analyzes the minidump file that is generated on BSD..

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html

If you have a SA agreement with MS as part of your license, then you have access to yet another utility via “Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance” Crash Analyzer Wizard..  But as mentioned this require a SA agreement.

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MXToolbox – Debug smtp and more online

If you need to debug mail flow problems then make sure to visit www.mxtoolbox.com, it will offer you some quite useful insights quite intuitively – including eg. Analyze headers, blacklist checking, mx checking and much much more.

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How to Enable, Disable and Maintain LCS (Live Communications Server) User Attributes using VBScript

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Just a quick link if you ever need to implement Microsoft Live Communications Server, here is a script that can assist you in modifying your AD users.

http://www.activedir.org/Articles/tabid/54/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/15/Default.aspx

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Windirstat – graphical overview of your harddisk usage

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I actually thought I had written this post long ago, but it would seem it somehow slipped my mind.

Anyhow, have you ever found yourself running out of diskspace – wandering what the h… is eating up all your diskspace… most have and it can be a complex matter to find that strange .zip or .log file (or whatnot file) that is floating around somewhere and taking up hundreds if not thousands of megabytes.

The solution is a cool freeware util Windirstat that will convert your drives filestructure to a graphical display, here you can just click on the large objects and see which file it is and thus quickly find those large files that is taking up space..

Sure there are other util’s like this, some may even be better I don’t know – but this one is simple, small, free and works..

http://sourceforge.net/projects/windirstat/

a fairly good alternative is;
http://www.jgoodies.com/freeware/jdiskreport/
this works much the same way just with a pie chart instead, and as I recall requires java installed.

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