This weekend and back to blogging

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Well this is my first entry in a while, and I hope everyone had happy Easter. This weekend I decided to lay low and hardly check e-mail or my computer at all. But in the week and started and there’s all kinds of things to do. First off a new product arrived this morning for us to test and review. We’re trying and axis 207 W wireless web network camera. While these cameras are little expense, so far the preliminary tests show excellent picture quality and good wireless connectivity. We’re running into a few little glitches using them with Windows Vista. Keep an eye out for our full review of these wireless cameras in the very near future.

In other use news, some of you may have started seeing a strange error message on windows XP or Windows Vista over the last few days. The error message may come up as a data execution prevention error saying that a certain file was allocated into the wrong space. This is a result of the emergency patch push down by Microsoft last week to solve the animated cursor vulnerability. As a result several systems with Realtek audio cards would run into this in error. Microsoft is releasing a correction for this that will be available in windows update on Tuesday April 10th. I have seen this error so far on my media center PC. You can download the patch at a time from the Microsoft support site at http://support.Microsoft.com.

I’m still playing around with voice recognition in Windows Vista, in fact this is the second blog entry that I am using voice recognition for. So far it has been pretty good but I am finding it depends on the quality of your microphone.

Other than having a little cabin fever from not been able to golf, and being depressed about the forecast for more snow this week, the weekend was nice and relaxing.

That’s all for now, I will soon be posted some more, so keep coming back for new content.

Stephen

Say it don’t type it – Vista’s speech recognition

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I read an interesting article today; I almost forgot that Windows Vista included speech recognition. Speech recognition is nothing new, it was available with Office XP and Office 2003 with Windows XP, but now speech recognition comes built into Windows Vista, and it really works! In fact I am writing this entire entry using speech recognition and dictating the post into word. Even Windows Vista home basic comes with speech recognition, you can use it to dictate into your computer or even perform commands a mouse clicks using it. It does take a little bit of getting used to but for the most part it works extremely well.

In fact using speech recognition I can open documents, save documents, change text formatting and more without having to touch the keyboard or mouse.

To use speech recognition in Windows Vista click on your start button, and type speech. You’ll see the speech recognition program appear in the search results. Click on it and the wizard will start and walk you through setting up your microphone, adjusting the levels and starts the tutorial for speech recognition. Tutorial walks you through how to dictate into your computer, how to control applications and how to issue voice commands. If you ever run into problems all you have to remember is to say “What can I say”. This will open up the help for speech recognition. Under control panel and the speech options you can trade the system even further.

Like I said earlier, I have done this entire post using speech recognition. I had to touch the keyboard a few times but that was more because of my own screw ups then problems with speech recognition and recognizing what I am saying. I am sure that dictation will only get better as the computer learns the way I speak and the words that I commonly use. But so far it has been really neat to be able to dictate this in as opposed to try to type everything myself. I think for the first time that I have used it it has done a very admirable job, it has been slightly slower than me typing everything in but the mainly because I am still learning the system and it is still learning me.

I will update my experiences with voice recognition as I use it more and more often.

In fact I have even use speech recognition to go back through this post and correct things that I found wrong again without touching the keyboard.

Stephen

Vista Security Patch posted

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Well it finally happened. Today (and away from the regular patching schedule) Microsoft posted a security patch for Windows Vista. This is dealing with the animated cursor attack that started on Friday. At first it was thought that Vista was protected due to IE7 and protected mode. Turns out though that this only partially protects the user (much better than XP). Update your systems ASAP and you can read more on the security bulletin here:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS07-017.mspx

If you don’t have the auto update icon. Go to help and support, select Windows update and trigger it to look for required updates. Alternatively the patch can be downloaded above.

Stephen

Whoops I got caught

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Whoops, I got a little cocky over the last little while and got caught today with my own server. My ISP Shaw Cable was doing some maintenance work this morning (if I ever checked that email account I would have known) and it looks like my IP addresses for home finally were changed. Unfortunately I didn’t have my router set up for Dynamic DNS updates, nor did I have any software running that does the same thing. As a result my server was off line for a little bit this morning. This also had the side effect of disabling my Blackberry Enterprise server as well so my BB didn’t function properly. The problem is now fixed and everything should be good to go. As well I have configured my routers for Dynamic Updates.

Strange though, it appears that Shaw has a new block of IP addresses as both of my routers got IP’s starting with 70.

Stephen

New Virus out, new method of distribution

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Looks like there is a new virus out in the last couple of days with a new way of distributing it. In fact I got an email for this yesterday and deleted it after inspecting it and not feeling right about it.

The email comes in and looks like it came from Microsoft. There is an image there to click and download Beta 2 of Internet Explorer 7. If you click on the link it then downloads and attempts to install the virus.

I actually got one of these messages last night but things didn’t add up. IE 7 is out and has been out for sometime so why would I want to download a beta for it? I also looked at the properties of the message and saw that in the source it appears that there is an email letter written there. This email is invisible when you get the message. My guess is that this is there to fool SPAM filters, as it looks like someone writing an email with a picture instead of just send a picture hyperlink.

If you get an email with a link to download IE 7 Beta, delete it as soon as possible.

After seeing this last night, I decided to finally goes ahead and install AV software on my Vista PC. I had been going the last month without it (although it didn’t complain about it as much as XP SP2 did). Still to this date there are no security patches for Vista from Microsoft. Even the new animated cursor zero day attack that popped up today does not affect users with Outlook 2007 and Vista IE7 because of protected mode.

Here’s a link to a story on this:

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/033007-new-virus-comes-disguised-as.html

Stephen

Canon Vista Support

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While I was able to view most of my pictures taken with my Canon Digital Rebel XT on my Vista PC’s the built in Windows Vista apps (Windows Photo Gallery) could not open the Canon Raw Files (CR2). Today I noticed during my daily Vista Driver check that the Canon software and drivers are finally available for Windows Vista. They have updated the Eos Utility, Digital Photo Professional, a driver, Zoom Browser and finally a Vista Codec for Raw files..

If you are a Canon camera user and have Vista you might want to head to www.canon.com and see if the drivers for your camera and Vista have been loaded

Stephen

Alberta Only SBS Promo Starting soon

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Starting April 2nd listen for a new Microsoft Campaign in Alberta promoting one of our favourite SMB Solutions, SBS 2003 R2. MS will launch on the top radio stations in Calgary and Edmonton a promotional deal with HP. This will soon be followed by a direct email campaign. If you are looking at getting a server for your small business, now would be the time to start looking.

As a Microsoft Small Business Specialist, Sysguy Consulting will be involved with the promotion and we should be getting some referrals from MS. Please contact us if you are interested in finding out more about this promotion!

Stephen

Little Problem running BES and BIS

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You may have seen my earlier entry regarding setting up my Blackberry Enterprise Server on my SBS 2003 Server and also running Blackberry Internet Service at the same time. I actually found a small problem tonight with this set up.

I usually try to sync my blackberry to my main PC with Outlook at least one a week. Tonight I tried to sync it up and I couldn’t sync my calendar or my contacts from my Outlook to my blackberry. The reason was because of the BES setup. My BB calendar and contacts are set up to sync wirelessly. The problem is most of my contacts and calendar appointments are in my outlook on my main pc and not on my exchange (SBS server).

It is actually fairly easy to fix, and there are two things you can do. Firstly you can temporarily turn off wireless sync on the BB, sync it with the desktop then turn wireless sync back on. This can be done for any part of the software that uses wireless sync. The other alternative is to forward the info to the exchange server account via email, but this would be a little cumbersome.

I hesitate to use my SBS server full time for email etc. Because I do use it as a test platform and am prepared to blow it away and rebuild it on a regular basis.

Stephen

Sysguy now sells Consumer Electronics!

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Just wanted to let our clients know that we now have access to several lines of consumer electronics products and more are being added regularly. We can now get LCD TV Displays, Plasma TVs, DVD Players and Recorders and more.

LCD TV Venders include, Acer, Viewsonic, VisionQuest, Olevia (several models recently received Consumer Reports Best Buy Distinction), Samsung, LG, and more.

Plasma TVs from Samsung, Toshiba, Sanyo, LG and Sony

DVD Players and DVD Recorders from Samsung, LG, Sony, VisionQuest and more.

So if you are looking for a large display for an office or an upgraded TV for your home, please contact us for pricing and availability.

Stephen