Metadata Consulting

Canada's naïveté leading to greater hosting of cyber criminals, malware, Wordpress break-ins - CIRA .CA issuer needs to step-up

2013-06-12T13:05:00.001-04:00

The number of Canadian websites falling victim to malware – most of them completely legitimate, like the content management platform WordPress – also increased by 25 per cent this year, slotting Canada into the 10th position of all countries hosting malware.

Chrome : This page wants to install a service handler

2013-05-21T17:12:00.002-04:00

When accessing Google Mail or Google Calendar from Chrome, a protocol handler icon may appear in the in address bar (omnibox in Google parlance) to indicate to a custom service handler for handling the opening of certain links that can open programs, such as mailto: links. These links are described by URI scheme and most commons ones are (:mailto and webcal:).

The tooltip for the protocol handler icon is: This page wants to install a service handler.

If you Use Gmail option, it will allow mailto: links in page while in Chrome to be opened in GMail. Similarly, you can enable webcal: links to be opened in Google Calendar, visit the Google Calendar page to enable.
There is no penalty for performance using this handler service.

To disable site handler requests

Type this in address bar to get to current handlers in Chrome.

Chrome://settings/handlers

Or to disable or re-enable these messages in Chrome, follow the steps below.

Click the Chrome menu on the browser toolbar.
Select Settings > Show advanced settings.
In the "Privacy" section, click Content settings.
In the dialog that appears, find the “Handlers” section:
- To allow requests, select “Allow sites to ask to become default handlers for protocols.”
- To disable requests, select “Do not allow any site to handle protocols.”

You can create your own service handlers !

For Chrome (13+), Firefox (3.0+) and Opera (11.60+) it is possible to register web application as service handler for custom URI scheme using JavaScript API:

window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler(protocol, uri, title);

protocol is the protocol the site wishes to handle, specified as a string.
uri is the URI to the handler as a string. You can include "%s" to indicate where to insert the escaped URI of the document to be handled.
title is the title of the handler presented to the user as a string.

Specifically for Chrome there is a limitation that does not allow to use custom schemes that don't start with web+ prefix (except standard ones: mailto, mms, nntp, rtsp and webcal). So if you want to register your web app as service handler as GMail do, you should write something like this:

navigator.registerProtocolHandler("mailto", "https://www.example.com/?uri=%s", "Example Mail");

OR 
navigator.registerProtocolHandler("web+myscheme", "https://www.example.com/?uri=%s", "My Cool App");

Pay attention at URI pattern, it have to contain %s which will be replaced with actual URI of the link user clicks. For example:

 href="web+myscheme:some+data">Open in "My Cool App"

will trigger GET request to http://www.example.com/?uri=web%2Bmyscheme%3Asome%20data

Oracle SQL Developer 3.2 Supports MySQL Community Server 5.6.11

2013-05-14T11:29:00.000-04:00

Just installed new version of Oracle SQL Developer 3.2 and confirming that it connects to MySQL Community Server 5.1+ by using MySQL Connector/J is version mysql-connector-java-5.1.25.(JDBC driver for MySQL).

You can get Connector/J here http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/j/

Follow these instructions (still valid) to connect to MySQL.

http://rpbouman.blogspot.ca/2007/01/oracle-sql-developer-11-supports-mysql.html

The Best Way to Obscure an Email Address on a Website

2013-05-10T14:55:00.001-04:00

It still happens, you see websites listing full contact email address on their site.

E.g. bender@futurama.com

As a general rule of thumb, if you can plainly read your email address on a site it can be spammed!

Spamming bots can scrap your webpage/HTML quite easily.

To prove the point, here's a 1 liner you can execute from Linux/Mac OS Bash shell to just that.
The best solution is not to list your email address at all. Use a contact form. However, some users don't like filling out poorly designed forms that have too many useless fields. Moreover, user's are never sure if the form delivers and that form post or email address is active. So sometimes, the immediacy of a really email address can't be beat.

The following Javascript code is a great way to hide your email address from being spammed on your webpage.

How to use:

Cut and paste the Javsacript below into your page where you want your clickable obscured email to appear.
Open a tab in your browser to http://www.rot13.com/index.php. Cut and paste your email address (bender@futurama.com) into the textarea. Click button to encode. Cut and replace the string add your ROT13 encrypted email address here in the Javascript file. You must keep the single quotes.
Replace xxxx with a name of user, such as Bender-The Robot that will be active email link, which will read on your site as Bender-The Robot's Mail.
You can change the text after </script> tag, but you need the closing </a> tag.

I DON’T THINK SO!

2013-05-10T13:39:00.001-04:00

I DON’T THINK SO!

The wp-login.php page has been disabled!

Continued failed log-in attempts, will be reported to the Federal Trade Commission at spam@uce.gov.

The Best PHP Regular Expression Tester

2013-05-08T11:57:00.006-04:00

The best PHP Regular Expression Tester http://www.lumadis.be/regex/test_regex.php

Regex Humor - Please add to this list

// # What's up, dude?

/.*/        # Whatever!  (#)
! /./       # Not!
/[#!%$&*]+/ # Screw you!

Sharepoint VS Wordpress

2013-04-17T22:00:00.001-04:00

WordPress versus SharePoint extensive article... http://weblogs.asp.net/bsimser/archive/2010/07/15/wordpress-versus-sharepoint-another-big-smackdown.aspx

2013 .NET Developer Salary Survey - Canada catch up!

2013-04-16T12:52:00.003-04:00

Canada wake up !

http://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/salary-surveys/salary-survey.aspx

TinyMCE Customization

2013-04-15T15:22:00.001-04:00

TinyMCE is a platform independent web based Javascript HTML WYSIWYG editor control and has been implemented and customized by Metadata Consulting.

WP Security Reviews

2013-04-15T14:48:00.000-04:00

Now performing WP Security reviews and penetration testing of
WP websites. Contact me for review of your website security now.

Profile Builder Search Super Optimization and Boolean Search Optimization

2013-04-10T23:12:00.001-04:00

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/profile-builder/
Profile Builder is WordPress registration done right and also creates custom profiles.

Extended WP Profile Builder plug-in and Profile Builder Premium Search to search all Profile Builder extendable custom user fields.

Re-wrote the search to be super optimized query.

Reduces search time from 1.87s reduced to 0.016s
and is 99.1% quicker = (1.87-.016)/1.87*100
OR 2 orders of magnitude quicker.

Moreover, I have extended the search to use any number of Boolean operators to handle random user input.

For example, if you search

"THIS" or OR "THAT" and and or and or "who or what AND or here" and or this

turns result into single Boolean operators between terms...

"THIS" OR "THAT" and "who or what AND or here" and this

Google Docs Viewer requiring user to log-in to view document - Fix

2013-04-05T14:08:00.003-04:00

If you get the following log-in into Google URL (call it status 1209600) while tring to view a document using Google Doc Viewer of a local resource (NOT a resource hosted on Google Drive) and get the following error;

https://accounts.google.com/SeviceLogin?service=wise&passive=1209600&continue=https://docs.google.com/viewer?url={urlencoded URL to your PDF doc }...

then your issue is you have not logged-off the Google universe or clear the cookie to view the file.

I found this to be a particular issue for Internet Explorer 7. IE 8 -> 10 worked fine.

To log-off Google-verse programmatically and flush credentials using the following before your Google Doc Viewer Iframe;

< iframe id="google-signout" 
        src="https://www.google.com/accounts/Logout" 
        style="width: 1px; height: 1px; display: none;" 
        frameborder="0"></ iframe>

Internet Explorer 9/10 Tracking Protection Lists blocks YouTube.com, Google Maps, Twitter, Facebook, Social APIs, etc.

2013-03-25T23:12:00.002-04:00

Tracking Protection in Windows Internet Explorer 9/10

A Tracking Protection List is enabled when your IE browser indicates the tracking protection icon (blue not circle) in the address bar of Windows Internet Explorer.

A Tracking Protection List (TPL) blocks third-party content is allowed or blocked according to the rules defined in the TPLs that the user has installed.

Tracking Protection Issues - Blocking YouTube, Google Analytics, Google Docs, etc

Bad Tracking Protection List can be too restrictive and will block embedded YouTube Videos and embedded Google Maps, Documents, etc.

If you see a empty placeholder with (blue not circle) icon that look like this;

then you have blocked content by Tracking Protection enable in Windows Internet Explorer!

Solution for Tracking Protection Lists that included Flash objects

Contact me for a solution, rewrote swfobject for TP awarness ->https://code.google.com/p/swfobject/

Using Tracking Protection Lists in Windows Internet Explorer 9
To turn Tracking Protection Lists on or off

In Windows Internet Explorer 9, click the Tools button , point to Safety, and then click Tracking Protection.

In the Manage Add-ons dialog box, click a Tracking Protection List , and then click Disable.

To view the contents of an installed Tracking Protection List

In Internet Explorer 9, click the Tools button , point to Safety, and then click Tracking Protection.

In the Manage Add-ons dialog box, click a downloaded Tracking Protection List, and then click More information.

What Are Tracking Protection Lists

A Tracking Protection List (TPL) is a simple UTF-8-format text file that you can host on a web server. Users can install a TPL directly from a website. As a user browses the web, some third-party content is allowed or blocked according to the rules defined in the TPLs that the user has installed. Periodically, Windows Internet Explorer checks installed TPLs for updates and can automatically download and apply changes so the latest protection is offered to the user.

Microsoft maintains a gallery of Tracking Protection Lists to which anyone can add TPL files. You can host on your own website, or upload it to the Microsoft gallery.

Reference and more information at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh273399(v=vs.85).aspx#bestpractices

Browser Max Parallel Resource Requests 2013

2013-03-18T22:57:00.003-04:00

The HTTP/1.1 spec, which suggests that browsers download two components in parallel per hostname, is currently rarely followed by browser vendors.

BROWSER	MAX PARALLEL CONNECTIONS PER BROWSER Numbers resources [.js, images, .css] that can be downloaded using a browser
IE 6, 7	2
IE 8, 9	6 Registry Tweak to 16 - http://www.enhanceie.com/ie/tweaks.asp
IE 9	6 ditto
IE 10	8 ditto
Google Chrome 1,2	6 hard coded
Google Chrome 3	4 hard coded
Google Chrome 4 -> 23	6 hard coded - Request ability to modify here.... https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=12066
FireFox 2	2
FireFox 3	6
FireFox 4 -> 17	6 Change use URL about:config -> network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server - can be changed to 1 and 255 inclusive avg. 16
Firefox 17 ->19	6 Change use URL about:config -> network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server - can be changed to 1 and 255 inclusive avg. 16
Opera 10	8
Opera 11,12	6
Safari 3,4	4 hard coded

YUI (http://yuilibrary.com/) recommendation is to increase the number of parallel downloads by using at least two, but no more than four host names. Once again, this underscores the number one rule for improving response times: reduce the number of components in the page.

Read full article here.....
http://www.yuiblog.com/blog/2007/04/11/performance-research-part-4/

IE 10 - HTML1423: Malformed start tag unlikely example

2013-03-12T17:15:00.000-04:00

HTML1423: Malformed start tag. Attributes should be separated by whitespace.

alert("Say 'Hello"); \\one cause

HTML5 ★ BOILERPLATE

2013-03-10T13:38:00.001-04:00

http://html5boilerplate.com/

IE Development Tool

2013-03-05T21:37:00.002-05:00

Limits to inline < style >< script > tags, should be used if less than ~1KB.
http://calendar.perfplanet.com/2011/why-inlining-everything-is-not-the-answer/

Request Timings

Timing details can seem a bit complex at first, but they’re fairly straightforward once you learn a few concepts.

Let’s start with a simple image request from the IETestDrive home page (after clearing the cache – see later), showing Timing details for GraySwooshWatermark.png:

Zooming in to the left-hand side:

The request/response cycle has seven timing components:

Wait – Time since start of page navigation to when the request started.
Start – From when the request was created to when it started to be sent.
Request – When the request was started to be sent to the first response. Also known as time to first byte.
Response – Time from first byte to completion of receiving the response.
Gap – Time between response completion to page load event.
DOMContentLoaded – Time of DOMContentLoaded event.
Load (event) – Time of page Load event.

Create Shutdown, Restart, Logoff, Desktop Start Tiles for Windows 8 / Server 2012

2013-02-20T13:00:00.004-05:00

Create a Shutdown/Restart/Logoff Windows 8/Server 2012 Tile for the Start menu

Download script here http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Create-a-ShutdownRestartLog-37c8111d

The PowerShell script installs tiles on the new "start" screen to shutdown, restart and log-off on Windows 8/Server 2012. I examined the script, and there is no no viruses or offsite pinging. You can customize the icons as well, if you don't like their standard ones. See part of script below.

PowerShell Code

#create a new shortcut of shutdown 
$ShutdownShortcutPath = "$env:ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Shutdown.lnk" 
$ShutdownShortcut = $WshShell.CreateShortcut($ShutdownShortcutPath) 
$ShutdownShortcut.TargetPath = "$env:SystemRoot\System32\shutdown.exe" 
$ShutdownShortcut.Arguments = "-s –t 0" 
$ShutdownShortcut.Save() 
  
#change the default icon of shutdown shortcut 
$ShutdownLnk = $Desktop.ParseName($ShutdownShortcutPath) 
$ShutdownLnkPath = $ShutdownLnk.GetLink 
$ShutdownLnkPath.SetIconLocation("$env:SystemRoot\System32\SHELL32.dll",27) 
$ShutdownLnkPath.Save()

Moreover, if you need a Desktop Tile for Windows 8/Server 2012 you can pin any item on your desktop by right-clicking and using "Pin to Start", which will create a tile. See image below.

Create a Desktop Windows 8/Server 2012 Tile for the Start menu

Jformer - Created new validation type - alphaWords = alphaDecimal + spaces

2013-02-19T20:00:00.003-05:00

jFormer is a form framework written on top of jQuery that allows you to quickly generate beautiful, standards compliant forms. Leveraging the latest techniques in web design, jFormer helps you create web forms that:

Validate client-side
Validate server-side
Process without changing pages (using AJAX)

But it does lack a basic validation type that would expect from such a library, a validation type that could allow for spaces. I took the alphaDecimal base type and added spaces.

That is exactly what I created, I called it using Jformer parlance alphaWords.

alphaWords - Accepts only letter, numbers and spaces.

Positive Validation Example : John Doe

Also extended the base type to handle periods and dashes and called it

alphaFirstNameRestricted - Accepts only letter, numbers, periods, spaces and dashes.

Positive Validation Example : John-Doe Jr.

Turning off Java for IE9

2013-02-15T18:33:00.001-05:00

Test if JAVA plug-in is turned off safely here....

http://www.java.com/en/download/testjava.jsp

How To Disable Java in IE9 (Java Version 7.07 or less) – The two methods below may not disable Java in all circumstances and therefore may not protect against malware attacks such as this week’s new 0-day Java Security Flaw. [see US-CERT.gov for a detailed list of the steps required to totally disable Java - they are extensive and very complex]

For this reason we now recommend uninstalling Java completely or using a different web browser (e.g. Firefox or Chrome) to reduce the risk of malware attack.There are 2 alternative methods – a registry tweak and a Java Control Panel tweak.

Manage Add-ons - Java is disalbe for IE9 DOES NOT WORK.

Here is the result:

Registry Tweak Be careful when editing the registry – create a system restore point first.

To disable Java in IE, close IE and then use Regedit to open the Registry and change the value of the UseJava2IExplorer registry key to 0 (zero) instead of 1.

Depending on the version of Windows and the Java plug-in, this key can be found in one of these locations:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\JavaSoft\Java Plug-in\{version}\UseJava2IExplorer
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node\JavaSoft\Java Plug-in\{version}\UseJava2IExplorer

Open IE and test Java – you should find it is now disabled – at least as far as online tests are concerned. If you want to re-enable Java in IE just change the registry key value back to 1

Better still, update your Java and follow this:

http://www.java.com/en/download/help/disable_browser.xml

Test again and this should do it.

Canadian Business Tax Expense Categories - Jump List

2013-02-10T16:33:00.001-05:00

http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/bsnss/tpcs/slprtnr/bsnssxpnss/menu-eng.html
That time of year again.

List of expenses

Google Gmail Barracuda Spam Report - Prevent Google marking you email as SPAM

2013-02-05T12:41:00.001-05:00

If you find that your website is sending legitimate mail is marked as SPAM, I have a solution for you.

Problem Statement:
A client's site used PHP mailer program (http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpmailer/?source=dlp) had been set-up to perform standard website communications with a web-user, such as sending confirmation emails for membership sign-ups and contact forms. However, Google's was reporting that emails sent from the site where reported as SPAM in Google Gmail.

Detail:
Google uses Barracuda Spam Filter and allows for custom rules that are set by the individual company so there is little documentation concerning them.
So BSF_SC0 denote custom rules, some are easier to decipher than others. There's no documentation about these rules or else Spammers could get around them.
An example of the SPAM report is shown below:

Sample Google Email SPAM report

X-Mailer: PHPMailer [version 1.73]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Content-Type: text/html; charset="UTF-8"
X-Barracuda-Connect: {your server}
X-Barracuda-Start-Time: 1360037921
X-Barracuda-URL: http://6{your server}/cgi-mod/mailer.cgi
X-Virus-Scanned: 
X-Barracuda-BRTS-Status: 1
X-Barracuda-Spam-Score: 1.57
X-Barracuda-Spam-Status: No, SCORE=1.57 using global scores of TAG_LEVEL=1000.0 QUARANTINE_LEVEL=1000.0 KILL_LEVEL=3.5 tests=BSF_SC0_MISMATCH_TO, BSF_SC0_SA620b, BSF_SC0_SA_TO_FROM_DOMAIN_MATCH, HTML_MESSAGE, HTML_MIME_NO_HTML_TAG, MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR, MIME_HTML_ONLY

X-Barracuda-Spam-Report: Code version 3.2, rules version 3.2.2.121844
 Rule breakdown below
  pts rule name              description
 ---- ---------------------- --------------------------------------------------
 0.00 BSF_SC0_MISMATCH_TO    Envelope rcpt doesn't match header
 0.00 MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR    URI: Includes a link to a likely spammer email
 0.00 MIME_HTML_ONLY         BODY: Message only has text/html MIME parts
 0.00 HTML_MESSAGE           BODY: HTML included in message
 1.05 HTML_MIME_NO_HTML_TAG  HTML-only message, but there is no HTML tag
 0.50 BSF_SC0_SA620b         Custom Rule SA620b
 0.01 BSF_SC0_SA_TO_FROM_DOMAIN_MATCH Sender Domain Matches Recipient
                            Domain

Solution:

I developed a solution to get around these errors. This can be used for any website emailer program, but primarily for PHP based solutions such as Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla!, etc.

If you need to solve these issues, contact me for a consultation.

Free S.M.A.R.T Hard Drive Monitor for Windows 98, XP, Vista, 7, 8

2013-02-01T12:30:00.000-05:00

S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology; often written as SMART) is a monitoring system for computer hard disk drives to detect and report on various indicators of reliability, in the hope of anticipating failures. Download a free for personal user PassMark DiskCheckup ™ utility here.

Another free and easier to user S.M.A.R.T utility available here and more software available from....
http://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html
but uses http://www.opencandy.com/developers/ so prevent this with firewall settings.

Windows XP Basic Optimisation Tips - Oldie but a Goldy

2013-02-01T11:04:00.002-05:00

You can spend hours tinkering with little system adjustments in the registry and ini files trying to get the most speed and performance out of Windows. While all the tinkering can make a small difference, you get 80% improvement with only 20% of the effort. It is better to do the simple stuff first before trying any of the nitty gritty. Also, once you start tinkering in the registry, there is a chance you will actually slow things down, or even worse.

The slowest part to any PC (except for the user) is the hard drive. It is orders of magnitude slower than the Memory or CPU. So it makes sense to spend a few minutes configuring Windows to make best use of your hard drive.

The following procedures work on all versions of Windows from 95/98/ME to NT/2000/XP, with a few XP specific ones at the end.

Disk Errors

Something that is often overlooked, even by IT professionals, is to make sure your disks have got no errors on them. Crashing programs, power interruptions and even the infamous computer gremlins that all computers house, eventually create errors on your hard drives.

Make sure you run the disk checking program every so often. Select all the available options for checking, do this for each of your hard drives (i.e.. c: d: ...). You may need to reboot your computer for it to complete the check at boot time.

You can find this program by double clicking My Computer, right click your hard drive, and select Tools from the dialog box.

The Paging File

The paging file (also called: Windows swap file or virtual memory file) is a system file that Windows uses when it runs out of actual RAM. Windows, by default, configures itself to control it's own paging file. This is not the most efficient method, as Windows will continually increase and decrease the size of the paging file, thus causing long, slow disk accesses and fragmenting the file. If you find your computer trashing the hard drive quite often, this is a sign of bad virtual file management (it can also be a sign that you don't have enough RAM, the more the better, always!).

It is much better to define your own paging file size. To do this, right click My Computer, select Properties -> Advanced -> Performance Settings -> Advanced -> Virtual Memory, Change. (Slightly different depending on which version of Windows you have)

You should see a box similar to the one shown here. Select to use a custom size and set the Minimum and Maximum sizes to be the same. A good size is about double how much RAM you have, or about half again what Windows recommends.

You will may get a message that this is not recommended, click Yes, and a reboot will most likely be needed.

Boot Menu

After this change, if while using your computer, it complains that it is running low on virtual memory, you can increase the values you set. If you have XP or 2000, open up all the big programs you use at once. Then bring up task manager ([CTRL] + [ALT] + [DEL]), click the Performance tab, now check the Commit Charge Peak , if it is getting close to the Commit Charge Limit, then you need to increase your paging file size.

Temporary File Cleanup

Programs and Windows use a folder for their temporary files. Not all of the programs clean up properly after they are done. So after a while your temp folder gets full of left over files. There can easily be over 100 MB of files in there that serve no purpose. To clear these out, Click Start -> Run -> type %temp% -> OK.

In the window that appears, select everything and press [Shift] + [Delete] keys together. Shift stops the files going into the recycling bin.

IE Cleanup

If you use Internet Explorer to browse the web, it is probably using up way too much space for it's temporary cache. The default value is always too high. I suggest 10 MB as it's cache size. You find this in Internet Explorer Tools -> Internet Options -> General -> Temporary Internet Files, Settings...

Defragmenting Your Drive

The next thing you can do is make sure your hard drive is properly defragmented. (Is your disk defragmenter broken? How to fix). File fragmentation occurs continuously while using your computer. What it means is that the files are not in one piece, they are split up and spread around your hard drive, thus when you go to read them, it takes longer to find all those pieces, than if the file was all in one place.

The built in Windows defrag program works well. You should run the defragmentation routine about once a month, or more if you use your computer heavily. The problem with the built in defragmenter is that it will not defragment system files that are open, like the paging file.

Sysinternals makes a program that defrags the system files at boot time, download from here. Unzip the program somewhere, then run it and set to defrag at next boot. This will defragment your paging file and other system files at boot time, before they are opened by Windows XP.

PassMark Fragger is software tool that lets you fragment or defragment existing files in a controlled environment using user-selected settings and is available for XP, Vista, Win7, Windows 8, Server 2003 and Server 2008. Free for personal use download here.

Hard Drive Temperature

Now that we have your hard drive purring away nicely, you may want to check how hot it is getting. DiskAlarm makes a program that monitors your hard drive temperatures. This is totally dependant on your hardware being able to provide this information. You can download a free program that checks your temperature and produced a dialog as shown above. It does nothing else, if you want it to continuously monitor the temperature and give alarms etc, you need to buy the full version.

Most desktop Hard Drives are rated to about 57c working temperature, so if your hard drive is over this, you need to do some work on your system cooling.

SMART Hard Drive Meters

S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology; often written as SMART) is a monitoring system for computer hard disk drives to detect and report on various indicators of reliability, in the hope of anticipating failures. Download a free for personal use PassMark DiskCheckup ™ utility here.

CPU Temperature

Another issue if you hard drives are failing or you computer is freezing allot and hanging with the blue screen of death is internal temperature of the computer. Many times I have seen clients computers clogged and filthy dirty with dust. This free utility might be able to help.

Essential Updates

Do make sure you keep your computer up to date using Windows Update, new exploits occur all the time, and there is always someone in the big bad world wanting to cause you a little grief, if you do not have Service Pack 1 on your XP machine yet, check out my XP exploit page for an example of what can be done.

Windows XP Specifics

The above tips apply to all versions of Windows, following are a few tips for XP only.

System Restore

Microsoft has included a feature in XP that takes periodic snapshots of your essential system files and configuration. The theory is, if you have a problem, you can restore your system to a previous state. Sounds nice, it even works, but the problem is that Windows uses huge amounts of your hard drive to save restore information from the day dot.

Even on it's lowest setting it is still using 200 MB, which gives me about 10 days worth of restore points, more than enough for me.

You can set it to whatever you feel most comfortable with, just pull the slider and find a point you like for safety and disk usage.

To set this right click My Computer -> Properties -> System Restore -> Select a Drive, Settings...

Adjust each of your hard drive to suit. Your system drive will have a much higher usage on minimum than your other hard drives, because of all the system files on it.

ClearType

XP includes ClearType. This is a method of sharpening up text on your LCD monitor, by using the different colours on the screen separately. It works like magic, makes the screen much easier to look at. Even though it works because of the physical layout of an LCD screen, you may like the look of it on a standard CRT monitor too.

To enable, right click your desktop -> Properties -> Appearance -> Effects... and enable the smooth edges of screen fonts box, use Cleartype

To get the best out of ClearType, you have to fine tune it, you cannot do this from Windows itself, but only online on Microsoft's web site here. Go through the tuning wizard and select what looks best for you. I selected the bottom left option.

If you have come up through the various Windows 9X OS's, you may wonder what happened to the boot time recovery options, I know I did. This is where Windows used to say Press F8 for Advanced Recovery Options. This option is still there, but it only shows for a small amount of time (too small to display on a lot of computers), if you need it, press F8 just before the first black Windows XP boot screen.

Mac OSX RDP Server and Iphone

2013-01-27T13:27:00.005-05:00

FreeRDP: A Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) Implementation for Mac

FreeRDP is a free implementation of the Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), released under the Apache license. Enjoy the freedom of using your software wherever you want, the way you want it, in a world where interoperability can finally liberate your computing.

Download at https://github.com/FreeRDP/FreeRDP, some assembly required.

CoRD is a Mac OS X remote desktop client for Microsoft Windows computers using the RDP protocol. It's easy to use, fast, and free for anyone to use or modify.
http://cord.sourceforge.net/, installer!