Tracking down music from TV adverts

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Have you ever heard a song on an advert and thought “I really like that – I wonder who it’s by and what it’s called”?

Well, I did exactly that tonight and a few minutes later a Google search for t mobile mates rates ad music turned up a fantastic link – the HMV music from TV page, which told me that the track I was looking for was “Ooh La La” by Goldfrapp.

Unfortunately for both HMV and T-Mobile neither of them made any money from this (I switched my mobile back from Orange to Vodafone today and I bought the Goldfrapp track at the Apple iTunes Music Store) but it’s definitely worth a look if you like the music you hear on a TV advert!

Microsoft developer road trip CD

Posted on By Mark Wilson

In a few days time, Microsoft are launching a whole host of products including Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005. To complement the launch events and associated webcasts, Microsoft have produced the Microsoft developer road trip CD – a 45 minute audio download featuring information on Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 and the .NET Framework 2.0 from Microsoft’s own developer and platform group experts.

Designed to be listened to on the move, either in the car or on your favourite media player, this should allow you to get up to speed on what these new product releases are all about in just a few short trips.

An interesting approach to information management

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Most of us have far more information in our feed readers than we can ever cope with (on top of all the unread e-mail newsletters) but a couple of nights back Microsoft UK’s Paul Flaherty gave out a great tip for searching for information contained in favourite blogs. He suggested adding all your favourite RSS feeds to an Outlook-integrated feed reader and then using Lookout (or any desktop search tool) to search Outlook when trying to find that snippet of information that you’re sure you saw something about somewhere…

Windows management technologies

Posted on By Mark Wilson

At the Best of the Microsoft Management Summit 2005 event a few weeks back, Vlad Joanavic gave an overview of some of the “free” Windows Management technologies that are available (in addition to the “paid” products under the System Center brand).

These basically break down into:

  • Windows Software Update Services (WSUS).
  • Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and WS-Management.
  • Group Policy Management Console (GPMC).
  • Microsoft Management Console (MMC) v3.0.
  • Windows Installer v3.1
  • Microsoft Scripting Host (codenamed Monad).

The rest of this post discusses each of these in turn.

WSUS

WSUS is Microsoft’s update management offering for corporate customers, effectively allowing customers to host a local copy of Microsoft Update and to manage update approval accordingly. Free to licensed users of Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003 (with appropriate Windows Server/core client access licenses) it is a core component of Microsoft’s patch and update management roadmap.

Unlike its predecessor, Software Update Services (SUS), WSUS supports more than just Windows updates, and allows selective targeting of computers based on group membership and automatic approval of updates (if required). It also uses a database rather than flat file storage for its configuration data (storage of the actual updates is still file-based) and offers a much richer user experience. At the time of writing, WSUS supports 8 types of update for a number of products (with more to be added over time). WSUS is also localised to provide for international support and has multi-language user interface (MUI) support.

WSUS does not require a new client component to be installed as the automatic updates client within Windows XP is self-updating. Most client functionality is implemented via a Win32 service with an extensible architecture for MSI, update.exe and driver handling and automatic updates can also be controlled via group policy.

WSUS servers uses the background intelligent transfer service (BITS) to ensure that the network is utilised effectively during the transfer of updates. Microsoft recognises a number of WSUS deployment options:

  • Single server – for small organisations or simple networks.
  • Multiple servers – for a large organisations or a complex network, allowing a hierarchy of WSUS servers to be created.
  • Disconnected network (e.g. on a ship), whereby updates are downloaded to one WSUS server and then exported for transfer via removable media (e.g. DVD) to a disconnected WSUS server which validates the Microsoft certificates on the content and services clients on the remote network.

WMI and WS-Management

WMI is the Microsoft implementation of web based enterprise management (WBEM)/common interface model (CIM), allowing access to over 600 WMI classes and 3000 properties. Provided as a standard Windows component since Windows 2000 (and downloadable for Windows NT 4.0), the number of WMI providers has grown from 15 in Windows NT to 29 in Windows 2000 and 80 in Windows Server 2003. WMI supports a variety of clients including the Windows Script Host (WSH), native C++ and managed code using any language supported by the Microsoft.NET Framework. It also supports command line operations (WMIC) and DCOM-based remoting.

The goal of WMI is to provide a single API for access to large volumes of system data. WMI providers expose data from content sources; this information is placed into a repository, and WMI consumers (e.g. applications and scripts) consume this data.

I previously blogged about web services (WS-*) and WS-Management is a joint effort to provide a WS-* protocol for interoperable management. Implemented as a web service, WS-Management is XML/SOAP-based and runs over HTTPS to access most existing WMI objects. WS-Management also allows for out of band access (i.e. when there is no operating system installed, or the operating system has crashed) to service processors (e.g. remote management hardware). In-band access provides a richer set of capabilities, specifically for software management.

The first version of WS-Management will ship as part of Windows Server 2003 R2, with access to hardware instrumentation, HTTPS access to Windows instrumentation and a command line functionality (WSMAN).

GPMC

I’ve blogged previously about the GPMC but even though it has been available for a couple of years now, it seems that many administrators still do not use it. I’m not sure why (I guess it’s because it is a separate download), but GPMC represents a huge step forward in the management of group policies and I find the ability to create XML/HTML-based group policy object (GPO) reports a significant advantage in documenting group policy (much better than trying to capture it in a set of Excel spreadsheets).

Many of the GPMC tasks are scriptable, including:

  • Creating/deleting/renaming GPOs.
  • Linking GPOs and WMI filters.
  • Delegation of:
    • Security on WMI filters.
    • GPO-related security on sites, domains and organizational units (OUs).
    • Creation rights for GPOs and WMI filters.
  • Generating reports of GPO settings and resultant set of policy (RSOP) data.
  • GPO backup/restoration/import/export/copy/paste/search.

MMC v3.0

MMC v3.0 (previously known as MMC v2.1) is intended to offer a number of benefits:

  • More reliable (recognising the issues related to loading third party code such as MMC snap-ins into a core process) through improved detection and reporting of snap-in problems and an ability to isolate hung snap-ins from the console (new snap-ins only).
  • Improved usability with an asynchronous UI model, simpler console customisation and discoverability of actions (including sub-panes providing actions for a selected tree node and item, along with a helpful description).
  • Richer snap-ins with simplified customisation, template-base snap-in design, and functionally rich views.

Windows Installer v3.1

Windows Installer (.MSI) v3.0 shipped with Windows XP service pack 2 (and v3.1 is the latest version, as described in Microsoft knowledge base article 893803). Whilst it does not support Windows 95, 98, ME or NT, Windows Installer offers:

  • Improved logging.
  • Scripting objects.
  • Sourcelist API enhancements.
  • Enhanced inventory API.
  • Command line switches.
  • Enhanced patching.
  • New software development kit (SDK) tools and documentation updates.

Microsoft Scripting Host/Monad

Monad is a new command shell for Windows, designed to address some of the problems associated with the existing Windows shell, i.e. a weak “language” and sporadic command line coverage, combined with a GUI that is difficult to automate. Monad provides command-oriented scripting capabilities for administrators and systems integrators, including an integrated shell, “commandlets”, new utilities and a scripting language. Wikipedia has a good description the MSH shell including links to additional resources.

IT and the law

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Some time ago, I stumbled across the About Cookies site which contains a really interesting (and useful) description of what cookies (of the browser variety) are, how they are (and should be) used, and how web site designers need to act in order to comply with the law. AboutCookies.org was produced by a law firm – Pinsent Masons – and they have another site called OUT-LAW which they claim has “5,000 pages of free legal news and guidance, mostly on IT and e-commerce issues. These issues can affect any organisation, and OUT-LAW is as much for those in a software start-up as it is for the compliance team at a bank”.

It’s certainly true that the legal issues surrounding IT are becoming ever more complex (and are something I find interesting reading – itself a worrying observation!). I’m neither qualified to comment on the law, nor affiliated with any legal firms, but it seems to me that OUT-LAW is probably worth a read for anyone who wants to ensure that their site (and business IT) is compliant with all necessary legislation.

Time for a new feed reader

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Ever since I started using an RSS aggregator, I’ve used Feedreader. It’s a simple, but functional RSS and ATOM feed reader and I like it a lot, but twice now it has lost my headlines. The first time was probably about a year ago, so I downloaded the latest version and installed it. Then, a couple of days back, my PC crashed and when I restarted, Feedreader couldn’t read the headlines file. There was no option to retry. It just recreated it, downloaded the most recent headlines again, and I didn’t have a clue what I’d read and what I hadn’t (and of course had lost most of the earliest posts that were cached). I was running version 2.7, build 646 (the latest version is 2.9) but instead of upgrading (that’s the mixed blessing of open source software – there’s always a later version), I think I’ll try something different…

I thought about using Firefox’s Live Bookmarks, but they are just not quite what I’m after (and I couldn’t import my blogroll via OPML). Then I found Sage – a feed reader for Firefox.

Sage: a feed reader for Firefox

One of the things I love about Sage is the “newspaper style” rendering of feeds, as shown above. Another thing that I found out is that the line breaks do actually work in the RSS and ATOM versions of the feeds from this blog (sometimes there seems to be problem whereby the text appeared in Feedreader as one long block and I thought the problem was Blogger‘s ATOM generation).

It’s early days yet, but Sage is looking good so far.

Starting to look at Microsoft Operations Manager

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Earlier this year, I was given a boxed copy of Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Workgroup Edition at a Microsoft event. This was not an evaluation copy but a fully operational boxed copy (I guess the thinking at Microsoft was that once I’m hooked with a maximum of 10 devices to manage, then I’ll go out and buy a grown-up version). It’s been sitting there waiting for me to install it for some time now, and yesterday I finally got around to doing it.

Installation was straightforward enough as the setup program has a pre-requisites checker and once I’d upgraded Windows Server 2003 to an application server (including ASP.NET), installed an instance of the Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine (MSDE) with SP3A, then set the startup type for the Background Intelligent Transfer Service, MSSQL$MSDEinstancename and SQLAgent$MSDEinstancename services to automatic (and started them) it was just a case of following the setup wizard (creating a domain user account to act as the MOM management server action account, although I later relaxed the security and made this a domain administrator as I didn’t have a suitable method of adding the account to the local administrators group on each client).

After I installed MOM, I needed to set up my clients. Setting up a computer discovery rule was easy enough, as was installing agents remotely on my Windows Server 2003 SP1 computers (they still have the Windows Firewall disabled – something which I aim to resolve soon), but the Windows XP SP2 computers just would not play. Every time I ran the Install Agent Wizard, I got the same result:

The MOM Server failed to perform specified operation on computer “computername.domainname“.

Error code: -2147023174
Error description: the RPC server is unavailable.

Microsoft knowledge base article 885726 gave some insight (along with articles 904866, 832017, and 842242) but even though this was on my home network, I wanted to apply enterprise principles – i.e. I didn’t want to disable the Windows Firewall or install agents manually.

I spent hours (well into the night) applying different firewall exceptions via group policy, and even disabling the Windows Firewall completely (disabling and stopping the service) but remote installation just wasn’t working.

Strangely (before I disabled the Windows Firewall), the MOM server was trying to contact my client on TCP port 139 (2005-10-27 00:33:38 OPEN-INBOUND TCP momserveripaddress clientipaddress 1744 139 – – – – – – – – –) so I even installed File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks but all to no avail.

I tried installing MOM service pack 1, but that made no difference (except that I had to approve agent upgrades for my existing MOM clients, taking them from version 5.0.2749.0 to version 5.0.2911.0).

Eventually, I gave up and installed the agent manually, following the instructions in the troubleshooting section of the MOM SP1 installation guide but I find it difficult to believe that it is not possible to do this remotely, provided the correct firewall exceptions are in place. If anybody has any ideas (remember it didn’t even work with the firewall disabled!) then I’d be pleased to hear them.

Finding that elusive Microsoft support site

Posted on By Mark Wilson

The Microsoft website is not always the easiest place to find things – especially when in the middle of a crisis.

Blake Hall has published a comprehensive list of Microsoft support resources on the Industry Insiders blog.

Well worth checking out next time you’re researching an issue, if only for the advice on how best to search the knowledge base.

Introducing VMware Player

Posted on By Mark Wilson

I just read on Owen’s blog that VMware have released a a free player that enables PC users to easily run any virtual machine on a Windows or Linux PC. According to VMware, VMware Player runs virtual machines created by VMware Workstation, GSX Server or ESX Server and also supports Microsoft virtual machines and Symantec LiveState Recovery disk formats.

I haven’t tried it yet, but it sounds interesting. Could this be a master move that leaves Microsoft’s Virtual PC dead in the water?

How to get rich quick

Posted on By Mark Wilson

Let’s face it. Some people have really good ideas that make them lots of money. Unfortunately I’m just not that clever/lucky/devious.

A few minutes back I was recounting a story to my wife about someone who sold a leaky tent on eBay, telling people how bad it was, that it had enough water in it when the morning came to make a cup of tea and a boil in the bag meal, starting off at 99p and finally selling it for something like £300 (I wish I could find the link to put it here!), when she told me about another story which appeared on this morning’s BBC Breakfast news.

Basically, a student called Alex Tew came up with the idea of selling advertising space on his home page for $1 a pixel (total 1 million pixels, with a minimum purchase of a 10×10 block) to help him meet the cost of getting through uni’ (and then some, unless Student Union prices have gone up a bit since my days at the University of Glamorgan in the early 90s!). He plans to leave the site online for ever (but has committed to 5 years) and so at the time of writing has sold 437,500 pixels (in just under two months) .

Of course the idea is flawed – it’s all fuelled by the press interest and once the initial interest has died down, there is no reason to visit the site but it’s a great idea. $437,500 is about £236,250 – about what we paid for our 4-bedroom house three years ago! Even with hosting costs and taxes taking a chunk out of the total, it’s still a tidy profit.

Bloody students!

(Of course, I’m only joking. And jealous!)

Actually, I say good on him for coming up with the original idea. As Alex notes in his FAQ page, there’s bound to be copycat sites but The Million Dollar Homepage will always be the first to have made it big – I just like the way he signs off the FAQ piece about copycats: “Am I bothered?” (for those reading this from outside the UK, that’s a reference to “Lauren, the modern-day schoolgirl constantly troubled by current parlance and infecting the country with the catchphrase ‘Am I bovvered?'”, in the BBC’s Catherine Tate Show).

You can read the whole story since the site was set up at the end of August 2005 on The Million Dollar Blog