Going to Remix!!

Got my tickets to Remix Australia yesterday. Looking forward to checking out Silverlight, IE8 and ASP.net 4.0!

More info can be found on the Remix site @ http://microsoft.com/australia/remix

Solution – “Please stay off the internet until your parents can open Trend Micro Internet Security and fix the Parental Controls for you.” Trend Micro Internet Security

I have been getting the following error on my notebook with Trend Micro Internet Security Pro 2009

“Please stay off the internet until your parents can open Trend Micro Internet Security and fix the Parental Controls for you. After that, you can restart the computer and use the internet.”

Up until now I have not been able to find a solution to the problem.

For the benefit of all of you experiencing this problem, the following instructions below will resolve this problem which i found buried in posts on this blog

1. Close all open programs on your computer. If the Trend Micro Internet Security main console is open, close it.
2. Click Start > Programs or All Programs > Trend Micro Internet Security > Trend Micro Support Diagnostic Toolkit.
Note: If you are using Windows Vista, right-click on Trend Micro Support Diagnostic Toolkit then select Run as administrator. If a User Account Control window appears, click Continue, or enter the password for an administrator account then click OK.
3. Click the [A] General tab.
4. Under “Start and Quit”, click 2. Quit All Components.
5. Close all windows
6. Open My Computer and click the C: drive
7. Double click the Program Files folder to open.
8. Double click the Trend Micro folder.
9. Look and double click the Internet Security folder to open
10. Open the Profile folder.
11. Check if there files that has an extension name of “.USR” and “.PEX”, if there are, please delete them.
Examples format of the file (abcd can be any letters and/or numbers):
abcd.usr
abcd.pex
12. Restart you computer.
13. Open your Diagnostic Toolkit (Step #2).
14. Click the [A] General tab.
15. Under “Start and Quit”, click 1. Start All Components
16. Restart you computer.

I hope this helps you in stopping this message from occurring.

Post your experiences below.

Long time… No Blog!

Well it’s been some time since I last sat back and posted one of these. Quite a few things have changed since I last blogged.
Personally

• Moved out of home
• Purchased a house
• Was in the local paper for a Facebook group (Who hates the new Bendigo Mall)
• Worked hard
• Had Christmas holidays
• Had 4 teeth removed

The world has changed too.

• The ass fell out of the world economy
• Interest rates are at an all time low (Hence me getting a house)
• We have a new leader of the free world
• Petrol prices are almost reasonable

But some things haven’t…

Stephen Conroy is still on a plot to destroy the Internet in Australia! – More on that one in a later blog post.
Update – Filter will be no more!! http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2009/02/26/1235237810486.html

More posts are on the way, stand by

FlexiRent… Not so Flexi… More like FlexiFAIL!

You have seen it on the Television, heard it on TV “FlexiRent to save”, “FlexiRent to get the latest technology”, FlexiRent to save tax”. In reality FlexiRent is far from what they promote it to be!

Lets step back and take a look at some of the facts. In the promotions for Flexirent, they promote the tax benefit of renting your equipment and if you are using it for business purposes you can claim the tax back.
All their pricing claims use the assumption that the equipment will be used for 100% business use. In reality unless your FlexiRented computer never leaves the office you can never claim that amount.

Lets use the FlexiRent Quote tool on their web site. Lets say we are going to buy a Notebook computer for $2700.00.

• Over 36 months this will cost you $135.54 per month. Over the duration of the “Lease” period this will set you back $4860!
• Over 24 months this will cost you $170.64 per month. Over the duration of the “Lease” period this will set you back $4095!

In both scenarios above you are paying significantly more for the product.
Due to a loophole in Australian leasing and renting laws FlexiRent do not have to disclose the full term rental amount to you in the rental contract! So there are quite a few people who get stuck in these agreements when stores such as Harvey Norman have sales on.
The sales reps at the stores get commission from FlexiRent for every customer they sign up. This can range from cash incentives, Playstations to holidays! So beware of staff who will push you into a FlexiRent term to get their summer vacation.
The sales rep will usually compare the monthly costs of the 3 year FlexiRent to the 2 years interest free, as the monthly payments between the two are fairly similar. The extra cost in the FlexiRent will be explained as insurance premiums and accident cover.

Lets look at the cost of the same $2700.00 notebook with a standard 2 year interest free structure.

• Over 24 months you will make monthly payments of $112.50 plus a monthly service fee of $2.95.

So when you think about it, getting this notebook on interest free is only going to cost you an additional $70.80 in account keeping fees, compared to the $2170 in pure profit that FlexiRent is making out of you.

At the end of your 24 month interest free period, you have a laptop to keep forever. At the end of your FlexiRent period you have to pay a “small amount” deemed by FlexiRent to own the equipment that you have rented. If you don’t you can either keep paying the monthly cost or upgrade to a new machine.
Now this is where it starts to get messy. FlexiRent will encourage you to upgrade your machine starting from 12-6 months before your lease finishes. When you take out your new lease for your upgraded computer you are not getting anything for your existing machine, you are adding to the balance of your existing FlexiRent term.
Using the same example above, we still “owe” $1631 with 12 months remaining on the contract. If you were to buy a new computer at 24 months of the 36 month term, they would give you the cost of 1 or 2 payments for the current machine then add the cost of the new machine on to of the balance. So if your new machine cost $2500,
$1631 (Existing Balance)
- $270 (FlexiRent Payment for Goods)
+ $2500 (Cost of new Goods)
= $3861 (Total cost of new FlexiRent term)

• Over 36 months this new agreement will cost you $187.26 per month. Over the duration of the “Lease” period this will set you back $6741.36!

As you can see, the further you get into FlexiRent the bigger financial hole you start digging yourself into.

The contract that you sign with FlexiRent pretty much give you no rights as a consumer at all. For starters, there is no cooling off period if you change your mind about your purchase. If your equipment fails and FlexiRent don’t want to fix it, you are left with nothing and a bill. If you want out of the contract or want to increase your payments to end your term sooner you can’t. They won’t even negotiate with you.

So from the above, you would have worked out that FlexiRent is pretty much a big scam for cash, to suck in any unsuspecting person who wants a computer and wants it now.
Just a a comparative, I have included the same example using Dell’s rental plan calculator.

• Over 36 months Dell will charge you $110.48 per month. Over the duration of the “Lease” period this will set you back $3977.
• Over 24 months Dell will charge you $140.77 per month. Over the duration of the “Lease” period this will set you back $3378.

Dell finance has a saving of nearly $1000! You are still paying more for the product in the long run, but it just puts into prospective how much FlexiRent are gouging their customers, plus with Dell finance you actually own the equipment once the rental term is complete.

As you have probably guessed, the main point of this blog is to advice you to STAY AWAY FROM FLEXIRENT and also for you to be careful when purchasing a big ticket item. If you cannot afford to lash out the lump sum, should you really be purchasing the goods? Do your research and check the total cost of the rental agreements. After the sales assistant has worked out the cost, walk away think about it. Do some calculations. Ensure that you know the financial commitment you are about to make.

Web sites and 120 DPI Screen fonts.

Recently my company launched their new corporate web site (www.objectify.com.au). Once the new site was launched I discovered that when Windows was set to use 120 DPI screen fonts, the text on the web site in Internet Explorer became too big for some of the content areas, most notably where our contact details are located.

After doing some research on Google I discovered that when you increase the font DPI in Windows, it also increases the font DPI in Internet Explorer. This isn’t surprising as the browser is still fairly integrated into the operating system. This issue did not occur in Firefox as it uses 96 DPI as its font size base no matter what the setting in Windows.

Digging deeper I came across this blog post where William posted a script which decreased the base font size of the site down to a smaller size so the page would render the same at 96 or 120 DPI in Internet Explorer. Using this information as a base, I did some further searching and wrote the following script on the Objectify site to ensure that the site looked as designed at 120 DPI.

  1: <script type="text/javascript">

  2:      var normDPI = 96;

  3:      var browser=navigator.appName;

  4:      //Test Internet Explorer for 120 DPI mode and adjust the font size.

  5:      if ((screen.deviceXDPI == screen.logicalXDPI) && (screen.deviceXDPI > normDPI) && browser=="Microsoft Internet Explorer")

  6:      {

  7:           document.body.style.fontSize='.6em';

  8:      }

  9: </script>

What I am doing in the above script is testing for Internet Explorer and if it has a screen DPI above 96, it sets the body font em size .15em smaller than the normal size of .75em.

Now when users with large screen fonts visit the site in Internet Explorer the site will render the same in both Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Anyone else got any good tips in handling users viewing web sites at 120 DPI?

Exchange Direct Push – It may be your mobile network

Well after looking into the router, the Exchange server and trying a couple of different devices I have a theory as to what is causing these errors.

As you may be aware, ActiveSync Direct Push uses a heartbeat interval to keep an open connection to the phone, so it can “push” update notifications to begin a sync. I’m thinking this problem may be caused by the data connection that accesses the on the device.

Take my iPhone for example. It can connect back to my Exchange server in three ways. WiFi, 2G and 3G. What I believe may be happening is that when the networks switch, the heart beat connection is broken which causes the Event 3033 to be logged.

My other thought is the GPRS connection to the mobile network is timing out due to long periods of inactivity. BlackBerry devices have their own exclusive access APN to connect back to the BlackBerry server. This would have have longer connection timeouts to the standard Internet access APN’s that the iPhone and other Windows Mobile devices use. I would assume BlackBerry themselves have fairly strict settings for these APN’s that would need to be adhered to to ensure smooth performance of the BlackBerry devices. ActiveSync devices use the normal mobile Internet APN’s to connect back to your Exchange Server, not a special dedicated APN like the BlackBerry so this may be where the problem lies.

What I have done on my iPhone is not use the “Push” notification at all. My iPhone is currently set to sync hourly. Although it does not fix the “Push” problem, it does give a lot better battery performance on the device.

Feel free to comment if you agree or disagree

New Website, Dead Server and my notbook still isn’t here!

Man, I’ve had a busy couple of weeks! My company went live with our new website:

• http://www.objectify.com.au

The server in my parents shop decided to kill a motherboard and a hard drive! (More on that  later )

And to top it all off… my new notebook still hasn’t arrived!

For the people who have left comments RE the MS Exchange Heartbeat issues, still no dice! I’m preparing a post with my theories around this.  Stay tuned.

Now.. Back to this Small Business Server Build!

New Notebook on the way

I’ve finally taken the plunge and purchase my new notebook computer!

It is the new Dell Latitude E6500! I was able to obtain a good price due to a special deal from my Dell rep. I configured it up with the following:

• Processor: Intel T9600 2.8Ghz 6Mb Cache 1066Mhz Bus
• RAM: 4Gb
• Screen: 1920 x 1200 Ultrasharp
• Video: Nvidia Quadro NVS 160M
• Drive: DVD +/- RW
• Battery: 6 Cell
• Hard Drive: 200Gb 7200RPM
• Wireless: Intel 5100 A/G/N
• OS: Windows Vista Ultimate
• Other: Backlit Keyboard, Fingerprint Reader

It’s due to arrive sometime next week. Will post my thoughts and review when Ig get it

iPhone 2.1 is now Available

Apple have finally released the anticipated update to the iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.1.

According to the Apple site, the following was addressed.

• Decrease in call set-up failures and dropped calls
• Significantly better battery life for most users
• Dramatically reduced time to backup to iTunes
• Improved email reliability, notably fetching email from POP and Exchange accounts
• Faster installation of 3rd party applications
• Fixed bugs causing hangs and crashes for users with lots of third party applications
• Improved performance in text messaging
• Faster loading and searching of contacts
• Improved accuracy of the 3G signal strength display
• Repeat alert up to two additional times for incoming text messages
• Option to wipe data after ten failed passcode attempts
• Genius playlist creation

First Impressions
Well the first change I noticed was the new 3G and GRPS icons. They have lost their “Box” that surrounded them. Good work from Apple there effectively making all the marketing posters with the 3G in the box out of date .

  vs

3G Reception doesn’t seem to have changed. My phone still needs encouragement (Airplane trick) to connect to the Bendigo Optus 3G in my bedroom. Works fine outside and in the family room. It is reporting more signal bars, but I believe that is only for the people who were complaining about how their N95 is so much better. I also tried a speed test and managed to pull 600kb/s, which is double what I was getting previously. Not sure if that’s an improvement on Optus’s part of of the iPhone.

Finally applications install quickly! This has been something that has been bugging me for a while. It’s good that that issue has been resolved.

I love the Genius playlist feature that has come from iTunes 8 and the iPhone 2.1! Makes it really easy to listen to a particular style of music depending on your mood. If your not up with what Genius is about, check out the Apple site.

At a first glance the iPhone 2.1 update seems to have addressed the issues that were of annoyance from the initial release. Hopefully now Apple can focus on the new features like

• Copy and Paste
• Data Tethering (Job’s said they were!!)
• Application Push Notifications

Remove XML Namespaces from Transformed XML / XSL

The company that I work for uses a combination of XML and XSL to render website content. Obviously when we start to get into the trickier XSL we need to include some additional XML Namespaces. We do this by adding the namespace and a schema link to the xsl:stylesheet element of the XSL template, as seen below.

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
version="1.0" xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt" 
xmlns:objDotNet="urn:my-scripts">

Although this gives you additional functionality in what you can do with the template, it will append the namespace to each element that is produced as part of the transform.

<div id="test" xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt"
xmlns:objDotNet="urn:my-scripts">
Content
</div>

After some intense digging on Google I finally found a solution to this problem. All you simply need to do is add another tag to the xsl:stylesheet element.

• exclude-result-prefixes=”msxsl objDotNet”

In the value, add the name of each namespace you want to exclude and separate by a space.

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" 
version="1.0" xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt" 
xmlns:objDotNet="urn:my-scripts" exclude-result-prefixes="msxsl objDotNet">

The outputted XHTML will now not contain the xml namespaces the elements.