Various cool software and more

The easy way of “Show me how!”

Have you ever had the need to show someone how to do this and that, its easy you say – just click on “browse” and then select “This and that” and then click “ok”…  You as well as I know that the person in the other end will say, where is that – no I don’t show that…  in other words, a Video is worth a thousand words..

Introducing; http://www.jingproject.com/
This is a very easy and simple “screen grabber”, it will allow you to make screenshots and screen’videos’ in a second, and best of all allow you to share these with others instantly (via the something called Screencast)..

Visit; 
http://screencast.com/t/MvC6djgp

for a live demo of a video capture (there is no sound here, but that’s only because I did not have a microphone nearby)..

For now the service is free, but I suppose that will not last forever. The driving force behind the product is Techsmith, known for products like SnagIT and Camtasia Studio.

I use Jing for documentation all the time now.

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“Cross reference” your E-Mails

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Xnobi 3
www.xobni.com If you as I recieve and send a ton of mails daily you quickly loose ‘the big picture’, when did you send that mail to whomever@whereever.com well, here is a plug-in for Outlook that will assist you in “data-mining” your email contacts.  It is very simple and cool, but also somewhat hard to explain in a simple manner.

Basically, once installed you can click on any mail and the plug-in will immediately give you a lot of information about the sender (what ‘contacts’ you have in common based upon CC’s in e-mails between you, a list of the latest mails to and from this person and finally a list of files exchanged in e-mails to and from you and this person)..  Go to www.xobni.com website for a more detailed presentation.. 

I’m sold to this concept.

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Seeing is believing

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house.jpg
When I fist saw this house on YouTube I actually thought it was a model or something, but…. its not, some guy actually did create this utterly cool Christmas display…

It makes my few Christmas ornaments look like nothing…  Its SOOOOOOO cool..

So for a few idea’s for your next christmas display goto this site and see the walkthrough;
http://www.holdman.com/christmas/projects.asp

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The remote assist challange

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Have you ever had the need to assist your friends or family on their PC’s, sure if they live nearby its always nice to drop by and get a free dinner or beer and fix their problem, but should the trouble pc be located in say Milan and you are in Denmark that approach could prove costly..

Messenger claim to be able to do remote assist, however my experiences show that once you pass the first router (that is leap anywhere but in your own home) this proves impossible.. Anyway, take a look at;
http://www.teamviewer.com/products/firststeps.aspx
its simple, works and its free 🙂  You can now do remote control of pc’s on the other side of the world if you need…

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The good, bad and ugly way of managing productkeys

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ProductKeyExplorer
Here is a tip for backing up all those product keys you have on your system today (be that the key to your CD burner software or the latest version of World of Warcraft).

We all hate to reinstall our PC, but every now and again it is necessary.  One of the very annoying things are all those serial keys you enter for your products, where DID you write that down or print it out to when you bought it.

Well this product will assist you with this, it can extract serial/product keys for a ton of programs all in one convenient sweep and at a price of just 29$ it is a bargain, just run in before a reinstall and print a report, that was the good news.  Good news often is accompanied by bad and this is no exception, the very same product can be used by evil doers to extract YOUR serial/product keys from YOUR machine all they need is to have physical access to it, or if they know your credentials they can even do so via the network.

http://www.nsauditor.com/product_key_finder.html

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Linux (Debian based) bug warning..

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Linux warning; Debian/Ubuntu and other linux installations are in extreme risk as a very serious vulnerability has been discovered that can allow relatively easy bruteforcing security codes generated with the affected systems.

Truth be told I don’t know much about linux so I cant really describe what the problem is and how it may affect your setup, I do however know enough to recognize that this is a very serious issue.  Actually, I used to have a Debian based VOIP server (Trixbox) up and running (guess many other are in the same situation) and the problem here is that systems like that suddenly are vulnerable.

If you have any kind of Linux installed (be that Ubuntu, Debian or just some print server in the corner office) be SURE to check the with the supplier if you have an issue and need to do some patching.

Want to know more;
http://itradio.com.au/security/?p=72

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MS-Steadystate

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Microsoft has (some time ago actually) released a utility (or security addon if you wish) for Windows XP called Steadystate;

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/sharedaccess/default.mspx

What is does is basically to add very strict control to your desktop and to allow for guest or kiosk pc’s.
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Lets say you administer a library pc, and daily have to deal with users changing settings downloading strange software/malware and basically just giving you a hard time.  Well with Steadystate you can inflict strict rules on what a user can and can not do, you can add time-limits for usage and finnaly (and this is the neat part) you can have the computer restore to a predefined setup at fixed intervals (or at every boot/logoff if you prefer).

In a corporate domain setup the software does not seem that interesting as many of the settings can be set via GPO’s, but for kiosk pc’s it’s neat.  And as the author of a commercial predecessor I should know 😉 www.security-setup.dk did basically the same thing just not in the same dept and detail.

If you have a kiosk pc environment, hared pc’s or your kids just keep messing their installations up this may be worth a look.  and the final good news, ITS FREE!!

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Google the translation

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As you may know, Google have for a long time had a translation service (equal to the Babelfish service on Altavista.com), the new thing is that it now offer translation to and from Danish also…  It is even capable of dealing with the famous sentence “Rødgrød med fløde!” (a Danish sentence that is almost impossible to pronounce if you are not Danish) well sort of in English the translation reads “Rødgrød with cream!” but hey its close 🙂

Kan man det (which is what this site is called www.readmydamnblog.com) become “Can it”, hmmm not quite that close but hey it is a step in the right direction..

For a few cheap laughs go to;
http://www.google.com/translate

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US Court on subpoenaed Password

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JEROME J. NIEDERMEIER, United States Magistrate Judge. has ruled in favour of the defendant in a case of a subpoenaed Password for a laptop.

The case concerned a computer user which laptop was ceased during a border-crossing, the laptop allegedly contained child porn but was encrypted using PGP, a grand jury had subpoenaed the defendant to turn over the password but the defendant denied and claimed the “Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination!”. This was later backed up by “JEROME J. NIEDERMEIER, United States Magistrate Judge”.

I do in no way condone any possession or usage of child pornography, but even though I am pleased with the ruling – as it in my world is a victory for personal privacy.  The issue is today of little relevance, as it could be avoided using Truecrypt with a hidden secret partition (a hidden encrypted partition within a regular encrypted partition – refer to Truecrypt.org for further details).

Links;
http://www.news.com/8301-13578_3-9834495-38.html
http://www.volokh.com/files/Boucher.pdf

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Batch job troubble (%~dp0)

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kedit.png
Just spend a few hours on a simple batch job issue 🙁

I had a job.cmd file I executed, but the containing commands was not executed as Windows could not locate the filename.exe files 😐  The problem was rather simple, the current directory (%cd%) while executing the job.cmd file was “c:windowssystem32”..  doh 🙁

Anyhow, found out that there is actually a simple way around this;

@Echo off
set IDP=%~dp0
set OLDDIR=%cd%
cd /d %IDP%
filename.exe /S
cd /d %OLDDIR%

This is rather simple, IDP (%IDP%) is set to the executing batch file’s directory via the IDP=%~dp0 and finally OLDDIR contain the ‘before’ current directory.  If you need to set the %cd% at the end, well no probably not (but hey I’m a nice guy 😉 )..

For further details;
http://weblogs.asp.net/whaggard/archive/2005/01/28/get-directory-path-of-an-executing-batch-file.aspx

http://technet2.microsoft.com/windowsserver/en/library/97731e49-ffa3-4918-87fb-5318743f29321033.mspx?mfr=true

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