Martin Zugec blog : Productivity

iPhone or Windows Mobile?

martin — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 21:06:13 GMT

After Linux-mania we can see that Mac-mania is starting (in my opinion Apple could have bigger success than Linux due to marketing)...

Few years ago everyone was buying iPods - even I bought one for my girlfriend. I really loved iPod itself, but I was never able to get used to iTunes, especially not after I gave a try to Windows Media Player 11 and XBMC ;) For MP3s I used my PDA, old Dell Axim (first version) - it had one huge advantage compared to other MP3 players, enter button was bigger, so when I bound it to Skip song button in WMP, I was able to switch to next song by simply hitting my pocket.

Right now everyone is buying iPhones - but I am still conservative and keep my WM6 device. There are 2 reasons for me:

I am still not really used to touch screens, I am faster with keyboard
my favorite and most commonly used feature from WM6 is missing

You ask which feature? Most of the time I am

calling someone
sending messages
searching emails

For calls and sms messages I first need to find person - and this is for me field where WM6 is still superior. For searching through address book WM6 is using T9, which is extremely fast if you get used to it.

For example if I would like to call my girlfriend (Iwy Janeckova entry), I can simply press either 499 (4=i, 9=w, 9=y) or 5263 (5=j, 2=a, 6=n, 3=e)... Also if I am not sure if I should use "v" or "w", I can use 1 (which acts as *). So I could achieve same result witt 4*9 (i, *, y)...

This is really killing feature for me - hope so that either WM will become competitor of iPhone in rest of categories (WM7 maybe, but it's going to be TOUGH challenge) or iPhone will implement something similar for searching (which is more probable)...

Well, I missed searching emails bit - T9 is also implemented there and most people are not aware of this... Most of the time if I want to get email I am searching for I need to type only 3-4 numbers. I wish something similar could be implemented also for desktop Outlook ;)

Martin

"Enter email to register" solution

martin — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 08:06:50 GMT

Sometimes I figure out that solution for some problem I am using is not very common between rest of world, so I will try to share such tricks.

One of them is how do I handle websites that require email address for registration. My favorite way to solve it is to use MailExpire - you simply specify your (real) mail address, when you want to expire temporary mail and that's all.

For specified time period everything that is send to that mail address (for example turziosior@farifluset.mailexpire.com) is redirected to your real mailbox. You can change expiration if you want or immediately kill that mail when it is no longer needed.

Martin

Use RunAs from non-domain computer?

martin — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 17:32:04 GMT

First I would like to make big announcement - after almost 3 years I left DHL and joined company called Login Consultants... So after long time I am consultant (again) and you can expect more posts about different problems I encountered during my consultancy career...

And I already encountered one during my first day - working with domain-based environment from non-domain computer. As mentioned before, I really love Vista (it took me however some time to get used to it) so I immediately installed it on my new laptop (that is no longer under corporate policies and rules). And then I realized that customer have (well, of course) domain and my non-domain laptop won't be able to do much (except accessing remote shares and running RDP\ICA sessions).

So I started to investigate and came with solution. I found MSDN article http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms682434(VS.85).aspx and one specific part of the article grabbed my attention:

LOGON_NETCREDENTIALS_ONLY
0x00000002

Log on, but use the specified credentials on the network only. The new process uses the same token as the caller, but the system creates a new logon session within LSA, and the process uses the specified credentials as the default credentials.

This value can be used to create a process that uses a different set of credentials locally than it does remotely. This is useful in inter-domain scenarios where there is no trust relationship.

The system does not validate the specified credentials. Therefore, the process can start, but it may not have access to network resources.

Sounds very interesting - so I started to play with this API and it turned out (to make it very simple) that it acts as token that contains multiple credentials (Logon SIDs):

Notice the Logon SID - there are 2 values

This way you can specify MULTIPLE accounts you want to use. In example below I have 3 different credentials:

Cmd with 3 Logon SIDs

Just be aware, based on my testing each credential should be from different domain, otherwise only FIRST match is used.

I tested this solution today - and it works like charm :) For accessing local PC, I am using my account (MartinNB\Martin), for accessing any domain resources, I am using Domain\Operator account automatically. I tried this with accessing remote shares, MMC console (AD Users and Computers) and also PsExec with implicit authentication (that means no username\password defined).

When I knew what I was looking for, it turned out that my whole research was partially waste of time - this functionality is already included in RunAs itself through /NetOnly parameter :)

To show you example how to use it:

We have company XYZ. They provided account SuperAdmin for me with password SuperPassword.

I will first run command RunAs /NetOnly /User:XYZ\SuperAdmin cmd and specify password SuperPassword when prompt appear. New cmd window will automatically appear.

Now I can simply kill explorer (taskkill /f /im explorer.exe) and run it again (explorer.exe) - my desktop will switch, so from now on I can normally work with XYZ domain AND my non-domain laptop :D

I am just thinking about writing some small utility that would allow you to easily switch between different customers profiles (codename Desperate Consultant)... I wrote to Joe from Joeware if he is willing to add this (NetOnly functionality) to his cool utility CPAU - if he agrees, I will wait for him and build it, otherwise I will create some wrapper around RunAs.

Idea is that you will predefine any credentials and that easily merge that credentials into your session.

SystemSherlock - snapshot using GUI or CMD

martin — Sat, 17 May 2008 21:32:00 GMT

Recently I wrote about SystemSherlock Lite - really nice snapshoting tool that supports command line... I also posted small utility for parsing log files.

After that I started to heavily use SystemSherlock - and I must say that it is really really great utility. Problem is that usually you want to have command line AND GUI interface - and SystemSherlock is cmd only :(

So I decided to create wrapper around it - and for me combination of GUI and SystemSherlock is much better snapshoting tool than RegShot or InstallRite...

SystemSherlock GUI consists of 3 different tabs - one for creating snapshots, second for comparing snapshots and third for displaying log files in friendly structure.

Create snapshot

Below is GUI used for taking snapshots:

It allows you to create snapshot configuration, specify output file and also to include exclusion list if you want to ignore particular entries. This is configured snapshot for detecting HKCU and C:\Temp folder:

I tried to implement quite logical interface, so there are feature like auto-suggest or auto-repair of entries (for example HKLM is automatically translated HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE)... Another feature is that entry type is automatically detected (you can see it in video - I don't select whether entry is registry or filesystem, it is automatically filled):

Update: Embedded video from Jing doesn't work :( So click on following link instead).

Once you specified what you want to monitor, just click on create button - dump is automatically created. Then do whatever you want - and just click on Create button again. One of SystemSherlock advantages is that it allows you to create as many dumps as you want - you can even compare current dump with one created months ago...

When finished, move to Compare snapshots tab.

Compare snapshots

Below is screenshot of Compare snapshots tab:

It is divided to two parts - on left you can see source dumps and on right target dumps. Source dumps are the ones that were taken first - this is VERY important to understand that source must be always older.

System Sherlock Lite can report unexpected results if you are not aware of this behavior - if you will swap source and target (so target will be older file and source will be newer file), results will be opposite (for example if you deleted folder between snapshots, it will report that this folder was created etc.).

For this reason I implemented some logic to processing. When you select any file on left, ONLY newer files then selected are displayed on right.

Parse logs

When you compare two dumps, differences between these two entries are automatically displayed in GUI.

Current version should be already functional, but I am sure that there will be some issues - after all, this is really first version I just finished. If you encounter any problems or you have some features requests, feel free to post them in comments - if nothing, I will at least respond (but probably also implement such changes).

Advantages compared to RegShot:

Fully supports command line - can be scripted
Imho better GUI
Supports multiple dumps - not only comparison of 2 snapshots (easily review historical changes)
Exclusion list based on RegExes
GUI for reading log files

Download

Utility to display logs from SystemSherlock Lite

martin — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:29:00 GMT

As mentioned in my post about SystemSherlock Lite, I really love this tool after few days... Only problem I had is that it can take some time to realize what really happened - you need to read pretty big log files and you can spend precious time reading through temporary entries or documents and settings and miss one important entry saying that applications copied something to your System32 folder.

I was playing with Sherlock yesterday and I spent lot of time parsing through log files generated by SystemSherlock. Then I spend 20 minutes writing some automated parser and I want to share with you ;)

Usage is pretty simple - just click on Open log file, select your log file and output similar to following should appear:

I dont know what else to add - this utility is pretty simple, however can save your time ;) One more notice - log parse is able to handle also mixed logs (so if you have one log where you store different entries together with log output from SystemSherlock Lite, you can use it and it will only show entries from SystemSherlock Lite.

Any comments, requests? Feel free to post comments...

Google maps with Wikipedia and Photos

martin — Wed, 14 May 2008 13:12:00 GMT

Yesterday I wrote blog entry about Live Maps and Wikipedia... I really like mesh ups (using existing data sources), so I just wanted to check if this isnt supported also by Google Maps.

Google Maps supports Wikipedia - and result is far better then Live Maps implementation (which feels like beta).

To test it, just go to maps.google.com, search for any location.

Then click on More button (upper-right) and select Wikipedia (and definitely try also Photos).

This is really REALLY nice and I love it :)

Live Maps with integrated Wikipedia results?

martin — Mon, 12 May 2008 17:11:39 GMT

Well, almost ;)

I love Google, but I also love Live :) For me rivalry of Google vs. Live is good thing, because it moves both of them forwards...

Talking about searching web, I still prefer Google - I use Live Search sometimes, but after they removed my favorite functionality (at beginning they were loading new entries when you scrolled to bottom of page automatically, you can still see this behavior when searching for images), I was really disappointed. Live Search is also missing Groups search, which is no. 1 when trying to find answer to some technical problem.

For some searching I prefer Live - best examples are maps (with all collections, drawing, integration with Outlook etc), videos (they include live preview if you hover mouse over thumbnail) or pictures (there are many features I love when searching for pictures - for example collections, which is really handy if you need to gather some pictures etc)...

Today I found feature in Live Maps I was not aware of - Live Search is automatically indexing Wikipedia and displaying articles that contains geographical information...

It is quite easy to use it:

1.) Search for location you want to see. When it is found, click on Explore collections:

2.) From filter, select Wikipedia:

3.) Locations defined in Wikipedia are displayed on map... Hovering above number will provide detailed information about location:

Map external drive to local folder

martin — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 13:17:00 GMT

As mentioned before, I bought new desktop - and with new computer, there comes usually new challenges.

My new PC have built-in card reader - but as you know, if you have card reader with NO media inside, it will still occupy your drive letters and this can be quite confusing. Specially because I am using external USB drive and I am used that it is mapped to drive E: on my laptop - on desktop it is drive J:

So I decided to use some less known functionality of Windows - to map disks to local folders instead of drive letters. To achieve that, you have to follow these steps:

1.) Create some local folders - I created C:\Links (which is my storage of symlinks shortcuts) and there I created folder ExternalHDD

2.) Right click on Computer and select Manage

3.) Select Disk Management

4.) Right click on selected disk, select Change Drive Letters and Paths

5.) Remove current drive letter:

6.) Click on Add. Instead of specifying new drive letter select "Mount in the following empty NTFS folder" and specify folder you created in step 1:

7.) Click OK

Now you can check that your external HDD is no longer available through drive letter, but it is instead mapped to your local drive :)

I also created C:\Links\CardReaders - and I am mapping all my (empty) card readers as folders (so SD will be SD, MMC will be MMC etc...) to better organize my stuff:

So here is after all my final picture from Computer:

I really like to use symlinks to organize my data and to make them easily accessible. Microsoft is also using symlinks - and this is one of examples where you can run into hidden implementation of symlinks.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention - it is NOT Windows Vista specific feature, it definitely works on Windows XP and probably on Windows 2000 (I am using this feature for looooooong time)

How to convert files online (...and for free)?

martin — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 09:47:00 GMT

I am sure all of you encountered this - you need to change format of some files, but you dont want to install some software on your pc and spend lot of time because one customer cant read docx files (just quick example)?

Or you are on PC and you need to extract .rar archive (not by default supported by built-in zipper)?

I can recommend ZamZar, easy to use and functional file online converted.

Usage is pretty simple:

Upload file or specify URL
Select target format you want (so for example if you uploaded PDF just select DOC)
Specify your email
Click OK - file is uploaded, converted and you will receive it to your mailbox

Usage is pretty simple and it really works. What I really like is that it is not stick with 1 or 2 file types, it supports 54 :) Including formats like .mov (so you can easily change it to mpg) or as mentioned PDF that can be easily transformed to DOC. Or quite nice conversion from PPT to flash movie...

Try it yourself :)

How to synchronize data between computers over Internet

martin — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:44:00 GMT

Recently I wrote about my new shiny desktop (we all know that after few months it will be old junk ;))... I want to use this computer for work mostly, for developement, testing etc... For that reason, I would like to synchronize some data between different computers, ideally over internet (and also share some data with my colleagues\friends - for this I am using Live SkyDrive).

Microsoft recently aquired product called FolderShare, so I decided I will give it a try. And I must say I really like it. You install (small) application that is running on your PC and it is responsible for synchronizing all data.

You can mark sync folder as private or you can share it with your friends... Nice thing is that you can also remotely browse your PCs harddrive.

Currently there are however still some problems:

- LiveID is not supported - I see this is definitely only temporary issue, but it is quite annoying (also because they have password complexity turned on, so I cant use same mail & password as is my original LiveID).

- No option to download whole folders from remote PCs (however you can download files). I understand this is not primary function of FolderShare, but I would definitely like to see it

- data limitations - of course, we always want more and more :D I know there is 10.000 files per-library limit, dont know about size limits

- automatic detection of proxy server - it is quite annoying to enable\disable proxy over and over again

- two-factor security would be nice... for sensitive data like this password is not really enough (but same applies for LiveID itself)

- public & password protected libraries would be nice. Public for projects (install FolderShare and all your projects (understand different utilities etc) are automatically up-to-date), password protected for load&wipe sharing.

Thats all... So far I highly recommend this tool - if you have few PCs and you want to synchronize some data...

Google Trends

martin — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 10:11:00 GMT

I am always curious about which articles from my blog are most interesting for people... To my surprise no. 1 (for long time) is post about changing resolution from batch script.

I wanted to find some site or something with "Great list of unanswered technical questions", but so far no luck... Just by accident I run into Google beta project called Google Trends - and I really like it :)

It allows you to search for query trend based on some words. For example if you specify Microsoft, it will show you how often people searched for this term in history together with some News extractions...

You can also compare different search strings. For example specify Microsoft,Google and you will see trends in search queries (notice big google jump in 2005).

I am not sure however how these results are if you try to specify more generic term. For example comparing Windows, Linux, Apple - are also results for "Windows Replacement" included? Or is New York results included for Apple results? ;) If results are accurate, it shows interesting trend, where less and less people are interesting in Linux and interest in Apple is growing (with Windows falling slowly).

That is quite hard to say... It you try specific query (as mentioned Microsoft + Google), you probably get good results... Interesting result is comparing Softgrid and Thinstall

Also notice regions (and time span) below - this can be very interesting if countries want to find where are people intersted about their products. For example you can see that most people interested in Citrix are from Oslo, Amsterdam and Sydney

How to open dialog for Active Directory search

martin — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 13:21:00 GMT

Project I am working right now on requires from me to periodically search for something in AD... How to do it (dont expect anything new ;)):

Standart way:

Start -> Run
Hit enter
Type mmc
Hit enter
Click file, select Add\Remove Snap-in
Click Add
Click on Active Directory Users and Computers
Click Close
Click OK
Expand Active Directory Users and Computers
Right-click on domain
Select Find
Type your object name
Click on Find now

My modified way to achieve it was to use following procedure:

Hit Winkey + R
Type dsa.msc
Hit enter
Hit Ctrl+M
Hit End
Hit <that small button opposite winkey that shows context menu>
Hit "i"
Type object name
Hit enter

Nothing really special, hehe :) Just wanted to make you more curious about my final result ;)

So after going through all this again and again, I decided to make some use out of my favourite QLiner - so I mapped following line to one of buttons:

%windir%\system32\rundll32.exe dsquery.dll,OpenQueryWindow

Pretty simple, heh? This command line just shows AD search dialog.