MSN Still Can't Keep Up with Google

Despite massive investments, and the new "Live" search moniker, Google is still kicking search butt and taking names . Google searches grew 40 percent in 2006, and account for nearly half of all searches. MSN is responsible for roughly a tenth.

Posted by Doug Barney on March 06, 20070 comments


Service Account Manager Boosted by Lieberman

Lieberman Software, a mainstay in the Windows marketplace, has a new rev of Service Account Manager . The software, as its name indicates, automates the management of Windows services.

Version 5.04 of the tool "allows Windows administrators to change service dependencies and set service security permissions and auditing settings, providing greater oversight and control of users' activities and access to services," the company said.

Posted by Doug Barney on March 05, 20070 comments


Obese, Online-Obsessed and Dead

Sometimes, when a person dies, some good comes of it -- lessons learned, the world made better. In the case of a 330-pound Chinese man who played video games for a week straight, and then keeled over More

Posted by Doug Barney on March 05, 20070 comments


Exchange Patch Blows Hole in BlackBerrys!

This letter from a reader was so well-done, I figured I'd run it verbatim rather than making it worse by rewriting:

"I am an IT manager working for a medium-size law firm in downtown Seattle, Wash. This last weekend, I installed several new patches on our servers and was quite surprised to find Microsoft's Exchange Server DST patch broke our BlackBerrys. Perhaps you could make others aware of this issue?

Microsoft Exchange DST patch 926666, released Feb. 13, 2007, bundles two previous patches, 912918 and 907434, apparently because all make modifications to Exchange's store.exe file. However, I had deliberately not installed the 907434 patch because it breaks the ability for BlackBerrys to send e-mail, due to the removal of the Send As permission.

After spending all day on the phone with Cingular and RIM, and coming to no resolution, RIM finally said I would need to contact Microsoft for a resolution. At the behest of our president (currently outside the office and very unhappy), I instead began removing patches that I had installed over the weekend, until the issue was resolved at approximately 12:30 this morning.

As stated above, patch 926666, 'Update for daylight saving time changes in 2007 for Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2,' was the culprit, and once removed, allowed our BlackBerrys to send e-mails again.

According to RIM, the resolution should have been to give BESadmin (our internal BlackBerry Exchange Server administration account) rights to Send As for non-administrator-permission users (e.g., domain users) in Active Directory. However, each time I did this, within an hour the permissions were automatically removed. Per Microsoft's knowledge base article on the 907434 patch, this is expected behavior and their resolution is as follows:

If you do this, you must prevent the AdminSDHolder from overwriting permissions that are granted to a BlackBerry Services account on protected groups. To do this, use the following command line with DSACLS:

dsacls "cn=adminsdholder,cn=system,dc=mydomain,dc=com" /G BlackBerrySA:CA;Send As"

Note: In this command, BlackBerrySA is a placeholder for the name of the BlackBerry Service account. Also, make sure that you do not add a space between BlackBerrySA and ":CA".

Alternatively, we recommend that you do not use accounts that are members of protected groups for e-mail purposes. If you must have the rights that are given to a protected group, we recommend that you have two Active Directory user accounts. These Active Directory accounts include one user account that is added to a protected group, and one user account that is used for e-mail purposes and at all other times.

I haven't attempted the above repair as of yet, due to time constraints, but I would be interested if you knew whether it would resolve the issue or were aware of another resolution.
-Rann"

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Posted by Doug Barney on March 05, 20070 comments


FoxPro Lives!

I spent years covering databases for InfoWorld and Computerworld , and perhaps the liveliest market of all was FoxPro. Originally a dBase clone, it grew to outshine the Ashton-Tate tool and was eventually bought by Microsoft.

I even spent a week in Orlando at a FoxPro user group, and boy, those folks were hardcore. Some looked like they hadn't left their keyboard in a decade!

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Posted by Doug Barney on March 01, 20070 comments


Exchange Not Standing Still

Exchange Server 2007 is far from being a year old but is already ready for its first service pack . The update, due for testing next month, boasts new replication features, including Clustered Continuous Replication and Standby Continuous Replication. I have no idea how these things work, but I do know you'd better start buying bigger disks!

Posted by Doug Barney on March 01, 20070 comments


The Scary Side of RFID

Radio frequency identification devices (RFID) are amazing if you're Wal-Mart trying to keep track of thousands of pairs of Wrangler cargo pants, cheap TVs and copies of the National Enquirer.

But with RFID devices getting smaller and smaller, there is also the potential for abuse. Previously small enough to embed under one's skin, Hitachi now has RFID tags so small you can barely seem 'em More

Posted by Doug Barney on March 01, 20070 comments


Google: Ozzie Impressed, But Won't Imitate

Ray Ozzie told Wall Street this week that Google's success is forcing Microsoft to respond , and respond fast! But while Google rakes in billions from online advertising, Microsoft won't simply copy the Google plan and go 100 percent Web.

Instead, Microsoft plans to complement existing hard drive-based tools like Office with Web services, a model Ray calls "Software Plus Service."

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Posted by Doug Barney on March 01, 20070 comments


Google Is So Serious About Software, It's Charging for It

Google has been nibbling around the edges of Microsoft's huge Office market with free, low-end, Web-based software. Now, the online giant is kicking into high gear, with software that is actually worth money .

For $50 per person, per year, you can get an Office equivalent (or at the least the same basic range of apps) along with calendaring. And you get 10 gigs of Google storage. Whadda you think? Have you used earlier Google apps? Does this model make sense for corporate America? Let me know at More

Posted by Doug Barney on February 28, 20070 comments


Not So Fast, Google

Before going gaga over Google's goods, keep in mind that Google has security holes like everyone else. Just last week, Google announced it had to fix a major hole in its Desktop Search tool (which I can't live without).

If left unpatched, the hole could let hackers see your files, like the password.doc file that holds all your passwords!

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Posted by Doug Barney on February 28, 20070 comments


$1.5 Billion: To Anyone Else, That's Real Money

French company Alcatel is now about a billion Euros richer, having won $1.5 billion in a lawsuit against Microsoft . The court decided that the way Windows converts sound files into MP3s violated patents Alcatel gained when it bought Lucent.

How worried was Wall Street? It drove Microsoft stock down all of 3 cents!

Posted by Doug Barney on February 27, 20070 comments


Vista Apps List Growing

The list of "Certified for Vista" applications is now over 100, which sounds impressive until you think about how many apps exploit Vista versus how many are merely compatible. Our analysis is that it's going to take many months and perhaps several years before we see a groundswell of software that truly taps the power of Microsoft's latest desktop OS. Check out More

Posted by Doug Barney on February 27, 20070 comments