Archive for October, 2006

How to add a root certificate to a Windows Mobile Smartphone device

Oct 19th

Posted by John Pattison in Blog

I found a great write-up today on how to make a packaged root certificate that you can easily add to a Windows Mobile Smartphone.  Just make the CAB like it tells you to, then post it on a website and you can download directly to your Smartphone and automatically install.

http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2006/01/28/making_a_root_cert_cab_file.aspx

Internet Explorer 7 Released

Oct 19th

Posted by John Pattison in Blog

There are going to be a lot of significant releases over the next couple of months, and first out of the gate is Internet Explorer 7!  Starting yesterday evening, users can download Internet Explorer 7 if they’re running a genuine copy of Windows XP (or above).

For now, you have to explicitly download IE7 (i.e. it won’t come through automatic updates).  However, starting next month, everyone with Automatic Updates enabled that hasn’t explicily put a blocking mechanism in place will get the IE7 upgrade as a critical update.

I’ve been using Interent Explorer 7 in beta for a couple of months and More >

Visual Studio and Windows Vista

Oct 18th

Posted by John Pattison in Blog

I was surprised to learn today from an MSDN blog post that Visual Studio 2002 and Visual Studio 2003 will not be supported under Windows Vista.  This really comes as a suprise to me.  I’m not worried about Visual Studio 2002 (haven’t used it in years), but I do still use Visual Studio 2003 to modify older .NET 1.1 applications on a regularly-occasional basis (if I can say that).  Why don’t I just convert the applications to .NET 2.0 and use Visual Studio 2005?  In many cases, these are applications or sites that have been in production for years and my More >

Adding Registry Keys via Group Policy

Oct 17th

Posted by John Pattison in Blog

I came across a great tool today for updating registry keys via Group Policy called PolicyMaker Registry Extension.  It’s made by a company called Desktop Standard, which is now a subsidiary of Microsoft.  The product is free after registering a user account with the company (confirmed via email).

Installation was painless via an MSI.  After installation, there are two new nodes in the Group Policy Editor called Computer Settings > Registry and User Settings > Registry.  In them, you can simply set any registry value that you need to.

In my case, I was looking for a way to set the “NoAutosigOnCustomForms” DWORD More >

Windows Live OneCare beta 1.5 available publicly; works on Vista!

Oct 11th

Posted by John Pattison in Blog

I got an e-mail last night saying that Windows Live OneCare 1.5 beta is available for download (note that this e-mail also said I could share this  information with anyone who might be interested, so I’m assuming you’re interested if you’re reading this).

This is great news for anyone running Windows Vista.  As I vented in a previous post, I have a OneCare subscription for my home computers, but was really frustrated when I found that I couldn’t install OneCare on the machine I upgraded to Vista RC1.  Vista build 5500 or above is now accepted for OneCare, though RC1 is More >

Free service to remotely access your computer

Oct 4th

Posted by John Pattison in Blog

I recently ran across a great product for remotely accessing computers behind a firewall or NAT router.  Usually, I use Terminal Services / Remote Desktop for this, but there are some situations where you need to access a remote computer and you don’t have control over the router to forward ports, etc.  The most well-known solution to this problem is GoToMyPC (they seem to advertise the most).  However, GoToMyPC charges $19.95/month for one PC.

A free alternative I have found is LogMeIn Free.  This is the free version of LogMeIn’s paid product, so it doesn’t include premium features such as file transfer, remote More >

Wow!I was quoted in an article on MSNBC

Oct 3rd

Posted by John Pattison in Blog

I was going through my blog logs (that sounds funny) today and noticed a bunch of hits coming in from MSNBC.  After closer investigation, I found that the following article links to my previous blog entry about Snoopstick:

MSNBC: New ways to protect your children onlinehttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14739883/

It appears that this is a syndicated article from WPMI-TV in Mobile, Alabama, but it’s still pretty neat that one of my blog entries is quotes in an article that’s posted on MSNBC.  I’m just amused by the fact that you can now search MSNBC.com for “Pattison” and find a reference to me.  This just shows the More >