Kent's Tech Blog
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Printable Version: Search Engine Spider Index and Ranking
Shari Thurow | Contributing Writer | 2004-11-29
Reader question: I think my site has been banned in Google. It used to have all of these top positions for the past three years, and it suddenly disappeared. Can you help?
Answer: In search engine optimization (SEO), there are many terms that are confusing. For example, many firms that specialize in search engine advertising claim that they are search engine marketers, even though search engine marketing encompasses a wide variety of skills (search engine optimization, directory paid inclusion, search engine paid inclusion, vertical search, and search engine advertising).
In SEO, the terms spider/crawler, index, and rank have three completely different meanings. This article will address the different meanings, and why each term is important in the optimization process.
Search engine spiders
Search engine spiders are also known as crawlers. Search engine spiders find and fetch Web pages, and build a list of words found on each Web page.
So if a search engine "spiders" your site, the spider arrives at your Web server by following a link to your site, requests that URL from your server, and then builds the list of words found on that URL.
If a search engine is unable to spider a page, then it cannot include the information about that page in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Common reasons that search engines are unable to spider a site include:
· Problematic site navigation schemes
· Problematic URL structures
· Poor cross-linking
· Web server issues
Interestingly, your Web analytics software (WebTrends, ClickTracks, Omniture, Urchin, Hitbox, etc.) will tell you how often your site is crawled by search engine spiders. If you change your content frequently, search engine spiders will revisit your site more frequently because search engine companies want to deliver the most accurate, current, and relevant search results.
However, a page will not rank higher just because a spider visits your site more frequently. Spidering and ranking are quite different processes.
The search engine index
After a search engine is able to spider a page and records the words and phrases on a page, it places that data into an index. Whenever you perform a search on Google, for example, the data about a URL is stored in the search engine index. Some search engine marketers call the index a "search engine database."
A page can be included in a search engine index but not rank. However, a page cannot rank unless it is in the search engine index.
Web site owners should monitor their sites' index count every month. An index count is the number of pages that are in the search engine indices. Each search engine has its own way of determining the index count. Below are current ways of determining the index count of your site:
· Google and Teoma
site:yourdomain.com yourdomain.com
· FAST Search
domain:www.yourdomain.com
· AltaVista
domain:www.yourdomain.com
· Yahoo
site:yourdomain.com or domain:yourdomain.com
· MSN Search
site:yourdomain.com
Take the time to perform these types of searches. Do not rely on link popularity checkers and other software that performs automated queries to the search engines. Unless the software owners have permission from Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, Teoma and other search engines to perform these queries (none of them do), the results might not be accurate.
If your pages are not included in a search engine index, then a site might have problems with server issues, site navigation, and URL structure. In addition, a site can be spidered by a search engine but not be included in the search engine index.
Search engine rankings
Okay everyone, repeat after me: No SEO knows what the search engine algorithm is. Say it five times. Say it 10 times. Say it 100 times or say it more until it sinks in.
No search engine marketer knows what a search engine's algorithm is. Nice sales pitch, but one that is just not true.
No one knows exactly how a search engine ranks Web pages. What ethical search engine marketers do is follow the terms and guidelines set forth by the search engines. Unethical search engine marketers try to exploit the loopholes in the terms and guidelines. It is often the unethical search engine marketers who claim to know Google's search engine algorithm.
Search engine rankings tend to rely on three components:
1. Keyword rich text - A page must contain the words and/or phrases that people type into search queries.
2. Search engines must be given easy access to that text.
3. Other people must consider a page's content to be valuable. If a person thinks content is valuable, that person tends to link to the page that contains the content.
Of course, no search engine measures these components in the same manner. For example, all search engines remove common words from a page, called stop words or filter words. Filter words are common words (a, an, of, or, and, the) that the search engines ignore during a search. Search engines filter out these words because using these words in a search query can slow down the retrieval of search results without improving accuracy.
Google's stop word list is not going to be the same as Yahoo's stop word list. Additionally, no keyword density checker (from any search engine marketer) is going to have the same stop word list as Google. Likewise, each search engine measures link popularity in a different way.
Does that mean I advise people to create different pages for different search engines? Of course not. A well-written, user-friendly, and spider-friendly site can get plenty of traffic from all of the search engines without resorting to search engine spam.
So remember, being ranked in a search engine does not have the same meaning as being indexed in a search engine.
Related links
· Optimize Your Entire Site for the Search Engines
· Web Site Architecture and Search Engines - Part 1
· Location of Global Navigation for Optimal Search Engine Indexing
View All Articles by Shari Thurow
About the Author:
Shari Thurow is Marketing Director at Grantastic Designs, Inc., a full-service search engine marketing, web and graphic design firm. This article is excerpted from her book, Search Engine Visibility (http://www.searchenginesbook.com) published in January 2003 by New Riders Publishing Co. Shari can be reached at shari@grantasticdesigns.com.
Shari Thurow Answers SEO Questions: Click Here For Free Answers
More ebusiness_seo Articles
Source:
http://www.webpronews.com/ebusiness/seo/wpn-4-20041129SearchEngin eSpiderIndexandRanking.html
JotSpot draws crowd for beta tool - Wiki
A Silicon Valley startup aiming to catapult wikis into the mainstream and transform the editable website into an application development platform has attracted a flood of interest for its product beta. Nearly 3,000 companies, small and large, have signed up for free beta test accounts with JotSpot Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif.
Wiki is a term derived from the Hawaiian word for "quick" and describes websites that can be accessed and changed using a simple browser-based user interface.
JotSpot is still taking applications for its beta at http://www.jot.com/request_beta/index.php.
Friday, November 26, 2004
Top 10 skills of a business analyst
by Kathleen Barret, a senior business consultant at BMO Financial Group.
1. Analytical or systems thinking - being able to see how things work together.
2. Client relationship management
3. Coaching and mentoring - driving out shared skills and learning from peers
4. Consensus and agreement building
5. Change leadership
6. Modeling - including data and process modeling and functional design
7. Facilitation or requirements solicitation - the ability to pull together experts to get the right information from them.
8. Professional knowledge - an understanding of the business
9. Requirements planning and management
10. Verbal and written communications
If you want to be a business analyst, take a look at yourself and where you stand on these things and address any gaps and figure out what you have to do to fill in your experience.
Cisco and Microsoft Shake Hands on Security
from ComputerWorld Canada on November 12, 2004
Cisco Systems Inc. and Microsoft Corp. have gotten the word: IT managers are tired of constantly plugging security holes in their networks. As a result, the two technology giants have hatched an agreement to develop and promote interoperability between their network access technologies. The two companies will collaborate by sharing technical information on Cisco's Network Admission Control and Microsoft's Network Access Protection to ensure interoperability.
The end result is that, by 2007, when Microsoft releases its latest version of Windows server software, the two security technologies should be compatible, allowing companies to examine Windows software and Cisco network infrastructure simultaneously.
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
A great site for Non-profits to get software
If you are a non-profit organization, you may want to check out techsoup.org
The major software makers donate all kinds of software all the time, and by getting software through this webiste all you have to pay is administrative costs.
There are some limitations. For example, any non-profit is allowed only 6 title purchases per 2 years. Also, some of the vendors place other limitations such as Symantec's not allowing telephone techsupport for donated software. So, other than a few small hangups, this appears to be a great way for any non-profit to obtain the software they need a near-rock bottom pricing.
Saturday, November 20, 2004
RDP to Windows Remote Desktop from Linux
Windows Remote Desktop provides wonderful feature to allow the IT Pros to administrate the server remotely and allow the users to run application from more powerful server. We can remotely RDP into the server from Windows and Mac machine but how can we do the same thing from Linux box, which would definitely extend the ability for the Pros at a mixed environment.
Well, here is one that provides this function. The program called rdesktop from the open source rdesktop.org. Rdesktop is a Linux_based program that allows Linux users to connect to Windows-based machines running Terminal Services or Remote desktop.
Thursday, November 18, 2004
Microsoft Software Update Services
SUS (Software Update Services), the free patch management provided by Microsoft for Windows 2000 and up platforms, provides dynamic notification of critical upates to Windows client computers whether or not they have Internet access. Additionally, this technology provides a simple and automatic solution for distributing those updates to your corporate Widnows desktops and servers.
Components
1. A computer running Windows 2000 or 2003 running SUS.
2. An update to the automatic updating technology in Windows 2000, XP, and 2003.
Installation and Configuration
1. Enable IIS on the server, and make sure the anonymous is enabled on the root site.
2. Download SUS from Microsoft, and install it on the same server.
3. From any computer, access http://servername/susadmin from IE to start configuring SUS.
4. Configure the Group Policy to force the workstation to get updates and patches from SUS server rather than Microsoft Update site.
Resources
Microsoft Site: Software Update Services
Microsoft Software Update Services Newsgroup
SuSServer.com
FAQShop.com
Omea Reader by JetBrains
Omea Reader is a tool which combines an RSS/ATOM feed reader, a newsgroup reader and a Web bookmark manager in a single easy to use interface. Omea Reader includes the full range of information management features of Omea Pro, including fast searching, views and categories, flags, annotations and much more. Omea Reader can be extended with new features or even new resource types through its powerful plugin development Open API.
I have only been using for about an hour but so far it looks pretty cool. I will be using it as my primary one for a while to see how it goes. It looks like it might eventually be a commercial product, but so far they are offering a free key by registering an email address.
See the huge feature list here.
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
Locking Down Terminal Server
Microsoft has redesigned many aspects of Terminal services. In the new OS, Remote Desktop supplants Windows 2000 Terminal Service's Remote Administration mode, client server encryption has increased, and use AD Group Policy to centrally perform most Terminal Services configuration management.
Restricting user access
The new Windows 2003 has a new built-in local security group called Remote Desktop Users. We can use this group to manage access to the computer when it's configured as a TS machine. Only members of this group and the local Administrators group have permission to log on remotely to the TS system. In addition to that, we can further manage basic user permissions and privileges by assigning users to the local computer's various security groups.
Restricting data access
To restrict access to particular application, you can apply a Software Restriction Policy GPO or set NTFS ACLs on the directories of the applications that you want to restrict. The GPO route is advantageous because you can link the GPO to a Domain, Site, or OU AD object, and that GPO will be enforced for any objects within that container. For example, if you need to add a server, you can configure it an move it to the GPO-enabled OU. After you restart the computer or run the command gpupdate.exe to update the GPO for its new OU, it will be locked down like the others in that OU. Generally, NTFS ACLs don't scale as well as GPOs, which you can manage centrally; however it lets you discretely restrict access on a per-file or per-folder basis.
Fine-tuning security configuration through a GPO
You might prefer that the user have greater access at his or her workstation that at the TS system. Unfortunately, because the user configuration is associated with the user object, the same user-configuration GPO will be applied regardless of which computer the user logs on to. However, you can solve this problem by using a GPO setting called loopback processing.
With loopback processing, you can apply a GPO on an OU containing the TS computer object that also applies to users contained elswhere. Any user who logs onto the TS server will be governed by that system's user-configuration GPO instead of any other GPO that might be applied to the user. In the GPO editor, navigate to Computer Settings, Administrative Templates, System, Group Policy and enable the GPO policy called User Group Policy loopback processing mode. When you enable this policy, you must select whether to replace or merge the user-configuration settings between the Terminal Server computer GPO and the user's native GPO.
Fine-tuning security configuration through TSCC
You can also configure most Terminal Server security settings directly on a Terminal Server computer by using the TSCC tool. However, if you have set a GPO, the GPO will have priority and the equivalent setting in TSCC will be unavailable.
Windows Server 2003 Rights Management Services
RMS Overview
RMS helps businesses keep their most sensitive information within the organization and lets content owners control how their content is used - who can open and modify a certin document, how long users can access it, and so on. RMS lets you prevent accidental distribution and control what people can do with the information. Further, that protection remains with the file wherever it goes - if someone gains access to a diskette that contains RMS-protected information, that person must have a valid use license against that file in order to read it.
Requirements
RMS requires Windows Server 2003, a database such as Microsoft SQL Server, Windows Server Active Directory, and an RMS-enabled application or browser.
Implementation and Use
One of the goals of RMS is that it's easy to deploy. RMS is an Active Directory - intergrated technology, so it can be rolled out by GPO to get the client bits out.
Components
Server Software: download
Client Software: download
RMS-enabled Applications
Licensing
To use RMS, organizations need the following licenses:
• Windows Server 2003 Server License
• Windows Server 2003 Client Access Licenses (Windows Server CALs)
• Windows Rights Management Services Client Access Licenses (RMS CALs)
For more detail information about Microsoft Rights Management Services, click here
Friday, November 12, 2004
Blog, RSS, Feed ...
All these terminologies are sitting in my mind these days. What are they? Are there any points why we are using it? How can we take advantage from them? All those kind of questions.
Blog is such a great tool that people can easily post their thoughts on the web, record their own comments or notes, communicate with their friends, and more. It is for sure that more and more and more people would start using it and love it. Just look at Microsoft, almost every tech in Microsoft has their own blog ( blogs from MSDN).
RSS and Feed, even Atom ... basically they are similar, all gives you the ability to track and view the content you subscribe. And bascically they all need some kind of reader to be read. More, there are a lot of tips, notes and articles on the web telling you how to boost your web or generate more revenue by benifiting from them. At least, I suggested that every one using blog to record or post their stuff use at least one RSS reader to backup your blogs in your own computer. Auctually not only that but also lets you to find your own post much easier as well especially for those people like me who records the stuff here all technique related.
I had my first blog created last month. Since then, I couldn't stop thinking what I can do to make it better, even thought it looks still poor. I tried a lot of things like revising the templates, adding links, and I even subscribed Ad-Sense from Google to see how it works. Even thought my account was disable by them as they thought I was cheating them by using some sort of tool to clicking the link automatically, at least I learned how it works.
OK, that is enough for me at this point. I am going to continue studying the other two popular teminologies, XML and Web Service.
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Email was down
There are a lot of reasons why your emails are not delieveried but this is the first time I saw the message like "domain does not exist" happened on a valid domain, which caused all incoming messages got bounced back to the original sender. I knew there must be something wrong for the domain registration or domain hosting immidiately when the users reported problem. I called the domain host company (hid the name here to keep them safe even though I don't want to) right after confirming our domain is still valid and got confirmed they were facing the serious problem on their hosting server. Anyway, it all come back to work after they fixed the problem.
It is definitely not acceptable for a domain hosting company. It would lose the customer like me within a blink. Now I am planning to transfer out domain to the other more reliable company like register.com, and get an alternative domain in-place at the different place in case it happens again.
Monday, November 08, 2004
Fax Solution
It sounds like an ancient topic but is always a critical service for any kind and any size of the business. I was doing some researches to see if there is any solution that could fit into our company but unfortunately no. GFI FaxMaker, my favourite product from my favourite vendor, seems not working for us as it lacks one feature that is quite important to us. One of the important thing for our business is that every incoming or outgoing fax especially for outgoing has to be tracked and recorded into our tracking system that will send the bill information to the accounting system. And also, not every fax program could convert the incoming fax into a PDF version of file, which is another important part for us as almost every incoming fax needs to be imported into our document management software for record.
I am out of choice now. It seems to me that I have to stay where I was and keep my eyes open on this to see if any new one comes out.
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
Ten ways to boost your search appeal
from Computer World volume 20, Number 21 by Alan K'necht on Oct. 15th, 2004.
To get visitors to come to your site via search engine results (SERPs), you need to rank in the top 20 - if not the top 10 - for searches on spcific keywords/phrases that your firm is targeting. While writing search engine-friendly content is out of the control of the Web development team, there is a lot you can do to optimize your site markup for search engines. Here are 10 tips to help you mark-up your code properly.
Tip 1. The first rule of SEO is not to design your site in such a way that the code itself prevents a search engine bots/spiders from being able to index the site. The bottom line: don't build a web site entirely in Flash if you want any traffic from search engines.
Tip 2. To find out what a spider sees on your site, run a spider simulator on a given page. The simulator will show you what text the spider sees and what links it finds. Here is the one.
Tip 3. Each website should have a file called robots.txt, which tells the spiders what directories they should not spider.
Tip 4. Determine the main topic of the page and use it as the page title.
Tip 5. Write a unique description meta tag for each page - something you should ask the content provider to give you.
Tip 6. Put all your JavaScripts in external files and link to them. You will be increasing the ratio of content to code on your page, which helps make your message clearer to search engines and you will be making your markup cleaner and website management easier.
Tip 7. Search engines love content that appears in header tags (h1, h2, etc.) yet very few website actually use them.
Tip 8. Don't spend time creating JavaScript mouseovers, trying using the hover feature of CSS instead. If, for specific reasons, you can't use CSS, then repeat the menu options at the bottom of the page with plain text.
Tip 9. Avoid unnecessary tables where possible. Limit your table embedding to a depth of three. Where possible avoid the whole table thing and start using XHTML with div tags and CSS to define position.
Tip 10. Use either or to mark up important words on your page.
By following this basic outline, you'll be creating search engine-friendly pages. The search engine bots will easily index your pages, and with important words and phrases appropriately tagged; those words will receive proper valuation by the search engines.
inetinfo.exe occupied huge memory usuage on Exchange server
Problems on our Exchange server 2003 on Windows server 2003.
Symptopm: The SMTP service stopped working due to InetInfo.exe process occupied huge memory usage.
Road to Fix:
- restarted IIS services, that didn't help;
- rebooted Exchange server, that didn't help;
- looked up Microsoft knowledge base, this article says that there is security update specifically for SMTP on Windows 2003 would help. Downloaded, installed, and rebooted the server again, that didn't help either. The SMTP service still kept stopping.
- ran tool FileMon on the server, and found the InetInfo.exe file were executed by GFI MailEssential, the 3rd party anti-spam system. Great, then manually disable all real-time monitoring inbound and outbound mail and re-enable it. It works this time. The inetinfo.exe was back to the normal status and SMTP service wasn't interrupted again. The problem was solved.
Monday, November 01, 2004
Top 10 Features in Windows XP SP2
from magazine Windows IT Pro.
10. Security hotfixes rollup
9. Security Center
8. Internet Explorer (IE) Add-on Manager
7. Outlook Express image blocking
6. Popup blocking for IE
5. Data execution prevention (DEP)
4. Integrated Bluetooth support
3. Improved wireless support
2. Secure wireless configuration
1. Windows Firewall
Click here to see the full version of the article.
Active@ UNDELETE - A Great Tool to Recover Deleted Files
Recently, one of my user accidently deleted 6G data from a shared network drive, and unfortunately these data was not on the daily backup job list. As we know, Windows recycle bins don't protect files deleted over the network. I have been searching on the Internet to try to find a good tool that could help me easily undelete those files. The first choice I could find is Undelete from Excutive Software but unfortunately they don't provide me a download version and I have to wait a couple days to get the copy after I put the order, which is not acceptiable to me at this point. Then I went to my second choice, Active Undelete from Active Undelete. After I installed and ran it at my server, I was surprised the result I got. It was easy, efficiency, and more important, it recovered all files back without lossing anything. My opinion for this product is, putting it to your tool box. You don't need to order it now, but you would definitely need it when you encounter the situation what I had.
Printable Version: Search Engine Spider Index and Ranking
Shari Thurow | Contributing Writer | 2004-11-29Reader question: I think my site has been banned in Google. It used to have all of these top positions for the past three years, and it suddenly disappeared. Can you help?
Answer: In search engine optimization (SEO), there are many terms that are confusing. For example, many firms that specialize in search engine advertising claim that they are search engine marketers, even though search engine marketing encompasses a wide variety of skills (search engine optimization, directory paid inclusion, search engine paid inclusion, vertical search, and search engine advertising).
In SEO, the terms spider/crawler, index, and rank have three completely different meanings. This article will address the different meanings, and why each term is important in the optimization process.
Search engine spiders
Search engine spiders are also known as crawlers. Search engine spiders find and fetch Web pages, and build a list of words found on each Web page.
So if a search engine "spiders" your site, the spider arrives at your Web server by following a link to your site, requests that URL from your server, and then builds the list of words found on that URL.
If a search engine is unable to spider a page, then it cannot include the information about that page in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Common reasons that search engines are unable to spider a site include:
· Problematic site navigation schemes
· Problematic URL structures
· Poor cross-linking
· Web server issues
Interestingly, your Web analytics software (WebTrends, ClickTracks, Omniture, Urchin, Hitbox, etc.) will tell you how often your site is crawled by search engine spiders. If you change your content frequently, search engine spiders will revisit your site more frequently because search engine companies want to deliver the most accurate, current, and relevant search results.
However, a page will not rank higher just because a spider visits your site more frequently. Spidering and ranking are quite different processes.
The search engine index
After a search engine is able to spider a page and records the words and phrases on a page, it places that data into an index. Whenever you perform a search on Google, for example, the data about a URL is stored in the search engine index. Some search engine marketers call the index a "search engine database."
A page can be included in a search engine index but not rank. However, a page cannot rank unless it is in the search engine index.
Web site owners should monitor their sites' index count every month. An index count is the number of pages that are in the search engine indices. Each search engine has its own way of determining the index count. Below are current ways of determining the index count of your site:
· Google and Teoma
site:yourdomain.com yourdomain.com
· FAST Search
domain:www.yourdomain.com
· AltaVista
domain:www.yourdomain.com
· Yahoo
site:yourdomain.com or domain:yourdomain.com
· MSN Search
site:yourdomain.com
Take the time to perform these types of searches. Do not rely on link popularity checkers and other software that performs automated queries to the search engines. Unless the software owners have permission from Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, Teoma and other search engines to perform these queries (none of them do), the results might not be accurate.
If your pages are not included in a search engine index, then a site might have problems with server issues, site navigation, and URL structure. In addition, a site can be spidered by a search engine but not be included in the search engine index.
Search engine rankings
Okay everyone, repeat after me: No SEO knows what the search engine algorithm is. Say it five times. Say it 10 times. Say it 100 times or say it more until it sinks in.
No search engine marketer knows what a search engine's algorithm is. Nice sales pitch, but one that is just not true.
No one knows exactly how a search engine ranks Web pages. What ethical search engine marketers do is follow the terms and guidelines set forth by the search engines. Unethical search engine marketers try to exploit the loopholes in the terms and guidelines. It is often the unethical search engine marketers who claim to know Google's search engine algorithm.
Search engine rankings tend to rely on three components:
1. Keyword rich text - A page must contain the words and/or phrases that people type into search queries.
2. Search engines must be given easy access to that text.
3. Other people must consider a page's content to be valuable. If a person thinks content is valuable, that person tends to link to the page that contains the content.
Of course, no search engine measures these components in the same manner. For example, all search engines remove common words from a page, called stop words or filter words. Filter words are common words (a, an, of, or, and, the) that the search engines ignore during a search. Search engines filter out these words because using these words in a search query can slow down the retrieval of search results without improving accuracy.
Google's stop word list is not going to be the same as Yahoo's stop word list. Additionally, no keyword density checker (from any search engine marketer) is going to have the same stop word list as Google. Likewise, each search engine measures link popularity in a different way.
Does that mean I advise people to create different pages for different search engines? Of course not. A well-written, user-friendly, and spider-friendly site can get plenty of traffic from all of the search engines without resorting to search engine spam.
So remember, being ranked in a search engine does not have the same meaning as being indexed in a search engine.
Related links
· Optimize Your Entire Site for the Search Engines
· Web Site Architecture and Search Engines - Part 1
· Location of Global Navigation for Optimal Search Engine Indexing
View All Articles by Shari Thurow
About the Author:
Shari Thurow is Marketing Director at Grantastic Designs, Inc., a full-service search engine marketing, web and graphic design firm. This article is excerpted from her book, Search Engine Visibility (http://www.searchenginesbook.com) published in January 2003 by New Riders Publishing Co. Shari can be reached at shari@grantasticdesigns.com.
Shari Thurow Answers SEO Questions: Click Here For Free Answers
More ebusiness_seo Articles
Source:
http://www.webpronews.com/ebusiness/seo/wpn-4-20041129SearchEngin eSpiderIndexandRanking.html
JotSpot draws crowd for beta tool - Wiki
A Silicon Valley startup aiming to catapult wikis into the mainstream and transform the editable website into an application development platform has attracted a flood of interest for its product beta. Nearly 3,000 companies, small and large, have signed up for free beta test accounts with JotSpot Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif.Wiki is a term derived from the Hawaiian word for "quick" and describes websites that can be accessed and changed using a simple browser-based user interface.
JotSpot is still taking applications for its beta at http://www.jot.com/request_beta/index.php.
Top 10 skills of a business analyst
by Kathleen Barret, a senior business consultant at BMO Financial Group.1. Analytical or systems thinking - being able to see how things work together.
2. Client relationship management
3. Coaching and mentoring - driving out shared skills and learning from peers
4. Consensus and agreement building
5. Change leadership
6. Modeling - including data and process modeling and functional design
7. Facilitation or requirements solicitation - the ability to pull together experts to get the right information from them.
8. Professional knowledge - an understanding of the business
9. Requirements planning and management
10. Verbal and written communications
If you want to be a business analyst, take a look at yourself and where you stand on these things and address any gaps and figure out what you have to do to fill in your experience.
Cisco and Microsoft Shake Hands on Security
from ComputerWorld Canada on November 12, 2004Cisco Systems Inc. and Microsoft Corp. have gotten the word: IT managers are tired of constantly plugging security holes in their networks. As a result, the two technology giants have hatched an agreement to develop and promote interoperability between their network access technologies. The two companies will collaborate by sharing technical information on Cisco's Network Admission Control and Microsoft's Network Access Protection to ensure interoperability.
The end result is that, by 2007, when Microsoft releases its latest version of Windows server software, the two security technologies should be compatible, allowing companies to examine Windows software and Cisco network infrastructure simultaneously.
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
A great site for Non-profits to get software
If you are a non-profit organization, you may want to check out techsoup.org
The major software makers donate all kinds of software all the time, and by getting software through this webiste all you have to pay is administrative costs.
There are some limitations. For example, any non-profit is allowed only 6 title purchases per 2 years. Also, some of the vendors place other limitations such as Symantec's not allowing telephone techsupport for donated software. So, other than a few small hangups, this appears to be a great way for any non-profit to obtain the software they need a near-rock bottom pricing.
Saturday, November 20, 2004
RDP to Windows Remote Desktop from Linux
Windows Remote Desktop provides wonderful feature to allow the IT Pros to administrate the server remotely and allow the users to run application from more powerful server. We can remotely RDP into the server from Windows and Mac machine but how can we do the same thing from Linux box, which would definitely extend the ability for the Pros at a mixed environment.
Well, here is one that provides this function. The program called rdesktop from the open source rdesktop.org. Rdesktop is a Linux_based program that allows Linux users to connect to Windows-based machines running Terminal Services or Remote desktop.
Thursday, November 18, 2004
Microsoft Software Update Services
SUS (Software Update Services), the free patch management provided by Microsoft for Windows 2000 and up platforms, provides dynamic notification of critical upates to Windows client computers whether or not they have Internet access. Additionally, this technology provides a simple and automatic solution for distributing those updates to your corporate Widnows desktops and servers.
Components
1. A computer running Windows 2000 or 2003 running SUS.
2. An update to the automatic updating technology in Windows 2000, XP, and 2003.
Installation and Configuration
1. Enable IIS on the server, and make sure the anonymous is enabled on the root site.
2. Download SUS from Microsoft, and install it on the same server.
3. From any computer, access http://servername/susadmin from IE to start configuring SUS.
4. Configure the Group Policy to force the workstation to get updates and patches from SUS server rather than Microsoft Update site.
Resources
Microsoft Site: Software Update Services
Microsoft Software Update Services Newsgroup
SuSServer.com
FAQShop.com
Omea Reader by JetBrains
Omea Reader is a tool which combines an RSS/ATOM feed reader, a newsgroup reader and a Web bookmark manager in a single easy to use interface. Omea Reader includes the full range of information management features of Omea Pro, including fast searching, views and categories, flags, annotations and much more. Omea Reader can be extended with new features or even new resource types through its powerful plugin development Open API.
I have only been using for about an hour but so far it looks pretty cool. I will be using it as my primary one for a while to see how it goes. It looks like it might eventually be a commercial product, but so far they are offering a free key by registering an email address.
See the huge feature list here.
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
Locking Down Terminal Server
Microsoft has redesigned many aspects of Terminal services. In the new OS, Remote Desktop supplants Windows 2000 Terminal Service's Remote Administration mode, client server encryption has increased, and use AD Group Policy to centrally perform most Terminal Services configuration management.
Restricting user access
The new Windows 2003 has a new built-in local security group called Remote Desktop Users. We can use this group to manage access to the computer when it's configured as a TS machine. Only members of this group and the local Administrators group have permission to log on remotely to the TS system. In addition to that, we can further manage basic user permissions and privileges by assigning users to the local computer's various security groups.
Restricting data access
To restrict access to particular application, you can apply a Software Restriction Policy GPO or set NTFS ACLs on the directories of the applications that you want to restrict. The GPO route is advantageous because you can link the GPO to a Domain, Site, or OU AD object, and that GPO will be enforced for any objects within that container. For example, if you need to add a server, you can configure it an move it to the GPO-enabled OU. After you restart the computer or run the command gpupdate.exe to update the GPO for its new OU, it will be locked down like the others in that OU. Generally, NTFS ACLs don't scale as well as GPOs, which you can manage centrally; however it lets you discretely restrict access on a per-file or per-folder basis.
Fine-tuning security configuration through a GPO
You might prefer that the user have greater access at his or her workstation that at the TS system. Unfortunately, because the user configuration is associated with the user object, the same user-configuration GPO will be applied regardless of which computer the user logs on to. However, you can solve this problem by using a GPO setting called loopback processing.
With loopback processing, you can apply a GPO on an OU containing the TS computer object that also applies to users contained elswhere. Any user who logs onto the TS server will be governed by that system's user-configuration GPO instead of any other GPO that might be applied to the user. In the GPO editor, navigate to Computer Settings, Administrative Templates, System, Group Policy and enable the GPO policy called User Group Policy loopback processing mode. When you enable this policy, you must select whether to replace or merge the user-configuration settings between the Terminal Server computer GPO and the user's native GPO.
Fine-tuning security configuration through TSCC
You can also configure most Terminal Server security settings directly on a Terminal Server computer by using the TSCC tool. However, if you have set a GPO, the GPO will have priority and the equivalent setting in TSCC will be unavailable.
Windows Server 2003 Rights Management Services
RMS Overview
RMS helps businesses keep their most sensitive information within the organization and lets content owners control how their content is used - who can open and modify a certin document, how long users can access it, and so on. RMS lets you prevent accidental distribution and control what people can do with the information. Further, that protection remains with the file wherever it goes - if someone gains access to a diskette that contains RMS-protected information, that person must have a valid use license against that file in order to read it.
Requirements
RMS requires Windows Server 2003, a database such as Microsoft SQL Server, Windows Server Active Directory, and an RMS-enabled application or browser.
Implementation and Use
One of the goals of RMS is that it's easy to deploy. RMS is an Active Directory - intergrated technology, so it can be rolled out by GPO to get the client bits out.
Components
Server Software: download
Client Software: download
RMS-enabled Applications
Licensing
To use RMS, organizations need the following licenses:
• Windows Server 2003 Server License
• Windows Server 2003 Client Access Licenses (Windows Server CALs)
• Windows Rights Management Services Client Access Licenses (RMS CALs)
For more detail information about Microsoft Rights Management Services, click here
Friday, November 12, 2004
Blog, RSS, Feed ...
All these terminologies are sitting in my mind these days. What are they? Are there any points why we are using it? How can we take advantage from them? All those kind of questions.
Blog is such a great tool that people can easily post their thoughts on the web, record their own comments or notes, communicate with their friends, and more. It is for sure that more and more and more people would start using it and love it. Just look at Microsoft, almost every tech in Microsoft has their own blog ( blogs from MSDN).
RSS and Feed, even Atom ... basically they are similar, all gives you the ability to track and view the content you subscribe. And bascically they all need some kind of reader to be read. More, there are a lot of tips, notes and articles on the web telling you how to boost your web or generate more revenue by benifiting from them. At least, I suggested that every one using blog to record or post their stuff use at least one RSS reader to backup your blogs in your own computer. Auctually not only that but also lets you to find your own post much easier as well especially for those people like me who records the stuff here all technique related.
I had my first blog created last month. Since then, I couldn't stop thinking what I can do to make it better, even thought it looks still poor. I tried a lot of things like revising the templates, adding links, and I even subscribed Ad-Sense from Google to see how it works. Even thought my account was disable by them as they thought I was cheating them by using some sort of tool to clicking the link automatically, at least I learned how it works.
OK, that is enough for me at this point. I am going to continue studying the other two popular teminologies, XML and Web Service.
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Email was down
There are a lot of reasons why your emails are not delieveried but this is the first time I saw the message like "domain does not exist" happened on a valid domain, which caused all incoming messages got bounced back to the original sender. I knew there must be something wrong for the domain registration or domain hosting immidiately when the users reported problem. I called the domain host company (hid the name here to keep them safe even though I don't want to) right after confirming our domain is still valid and got confirmed they were facing the serious problem on their hosting server. Anyway, it all come back to work after they fixed the problem.
It is definitely not acceptable for a domain hosting company. It would lose the customer like me within a blink. Now I am planning to transfer out domain to the other more reliable company like register.com, and get an alternative domain in-place at the different place in case it happens again.
Monday, November 08, 2004
Fax Solution
It sounds like an ancient topic but is always a critical service for any kind and any size of the business. I was doing some researches to see if there is any solution that could fit into our company but unfortunately no. GFI FaxMaker, my favourite product from my favourite vendor, seems not working for us as it lacks one feature that is quite important to us. One of the important thing for our business is that every incoming or outgoing fax especially for outgoing has to be tracked and recorded into our tracking system that will send the bill information to the accounting system. And also, not every fax program could convert the incoming fax into a PDF version of file, which is another important part for us as almost every incoming fax needs to be imported into our document management software for record.
I am out of choice now. It seems to me that I have to stay where I was and keep my eyes open on this to see if any new one comes out.
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
Ten ways to boost your search appeal
from Computer World volume 20, Number 21 by Alan K'necht on Oct. 15th, 2004.
To get visitors to come to your site via search engine results (SERPs), you need to rank in the top 20 - if not the top 10 - for searches on spcific keywords/phrases that your firm is targeting. While writing search engine-friendly content is out of the control of the Web development team, there is a lot you can do to optimize your site markup for search engines. Here are 10 tips to help you mark-up your code properly.
Tip 1. The first rule of SEO is not to design your site in such a way that the code itself prevents a search engine bots/spiders from being able to index the site. The bottom line: don't build a web site entirely in Flash if you want any traffic from search engines.
Tip 2. To find out what a spider sees on your site, run a spider simulator on a given page. The simulator will show you what text the spider sees and what links it finds. Here is the one.
Tip 3. Each website should have a file called robots.txt, which tells the spiders what directories they should not spider.
Tip 4. Determine the main topic of the page and use it as the page title.
Tip 5. Write a unique description meta tag for each page - something you should ask the content provider to give you.
Tip 6. Put all your JavaScripts in external files and link to them. You will be increasing the ratio of content to code on your page, which helps make your message clearer to search engines and you will be making your markup cleaner and website management easier.
Tip 7. Search engines love content that appears in header tags (h1, h2, etc.) yet very few website actually use them.
Tip 8. Don't spend time creating JavaScript mouseovers, trying using the hover feature of CSS instead. If, for specific reasons, you can't use CSS, then repeat the menu options at the bottom of the page with plain text.
Tip 9. Avoid unnecessary tables where possible. Limit your table embedding to a depth of three. Where possible avoid the whole table thing and start using XHTML with div tags and CSS to define position.
Tip 10. Use either or to mark up important words on your page.
By following this basic outline, you'll be creating search engine-friendly pages. The search engine bots will easily index your pages, and with important words and phrases appropriately tagged; those words will receive proper valuation by the search engines.
inetinfo.exe occupied huge memory usuage on Exchange server
Problems on our Exchange server 2003 on Windows server 2003.
Symptopm: The SMTP service stopped working due to InetInfo.exe process occupied huge memory usage.
Road to Fix:
- restarted IIS services, that didn't help;
- rebooted Exchange server, that didn't help;
- looked up Microsoft knowledge base, this article says that there is security update specifically for SMTP on Windows 2003 would help. Downloaded, installed, and rebooted the server again, that didn't help either. The SMTP service still kept stopping.
- ran tool FileMon on the server, and found the InetInfo.exe file were executed by GFI MailEssential, the 3rd party anti-spam system. Great, then manually disable all real-time monitoring inbound and outbound mail and re-enable it. It works this time. The inetinfo.exe was back to the normal status and SMTP service wasn't interrupted again. The problem was solved.
Monday, November 01, 2004
Top 10 Features in Windows XP SP2
from magazine Windows IT Pro.
10. Security hotfixes rollup
9. Security Center
8. Internet Explorer (IE) Add-on Manager
7. Outlook Express image blocking
6. Popup blocking for IE
5. Data execution prevention (DEP)
4. Integrated Bluetooth support
3. Improved wireless support
2. Secure wireless configuration
1. Windows Firewall
Click here to see the full version of the article.
Active@ UNDELETE - A Great Tool to Recover Deleted Files
Recently, one of my user accidently deleted 6G data from a shared network drive, and unfortunately these data was not on the daily backup job list. As we know, Windows recycle bins don't protect files deleted over the network. I have been searching on the Internet to try to find a good tool that could help me easily undelete those files. The first choice I could find is Undelete from Excutive Software but unfortunately they don't provide me a download version and I have to wait a couple days to get the copy after I put the order, which is not acceptiable to me at this point. Then I went to my second choice, Active Undelete from Active Undelete. After I installed and ran it at my server, I was surprised the result I got. It was easy, efficiency, and more important, it recovered all files back without lossing anything. My opinion for this product is, putting it to your tool box. You don't need to order it now, but you would definitely need it when you encounter the situation what I had.
A great site for Non-profits to get software
If you are a non-profit organization, you may want to check out techsoup.orgThe major software makers donate all kinds of software all the time, and by getting software through this webiste all you have to pay is administrative costs.
There are some limitations. For example, any non-profit is allowed only 6 title purchases per 2 years. Also, some of the vendors place other limitations such as Symantec's not allowing telephone techsupport for donated software. So, other than a few small hangups, this appears to be a great way for any non-profit to obtain the software they need a near-rock bottom pricing.
RDP to Windows Remote Desktop from Linux
Windows Remote Desktop provides wonderful feature to allow the IT Pros to administrate the server remotely and allow the users to run application from more powerful server. We can remotely RDP into the server from Windows and Mac machine but how can we do the same thing from Linux box, which would definitely extend the ability for the Pros at a mixed environment.Well, here is one that provides this function. The program called rdesktop from the open source rdesktop.org. Rdesktop is a Linux_based program that allows Linux users to connect to Windows-based machines running Terminal Services or Remote desktop.
Thursday, November 18, 2004
Microsoft Software Update Services
SUS (Software Update Services), the free patch management provided by Microsoft for Windows 2000 and up platforms, provides dynamic notification of critical upates to Windows client computers whether or not they have Internet access. Additionally, this technology provides a simple and automatic solution for distributing those updates to your corporate Widnows desktops and servers.
Components
1. A computer running Windows 2000 or 2003 running SUS.
2. An update to the automatic updating technology in Windows 2000, XP, and 2003.
Installation and Configuration
1. Enable IIS on the server, and make sure the anonymous is enabled on the root site.
2. Download SUS from Microsoft, and install it on the same server.
3. From any computer, access http://servername/susadmin from IE to start configuring SUS.
4. Configure the Group Policy to force the workstation to get updates and patches from SUS server rather than Microsoft Update site.
Resources
Microsoft Site: Software Update Services
Microsoft Software Update Services Newsgroup
SuSServer.com
FAQShop.com
Omea Reader by JetBrains
Omea Reader is a tool which combines an RSS/ATOM feed reader, a newsgroup reader and a Web bookmark manager in a single easy to use interface. Omea Reader includes the full range of information management features of Omea Pro, including fast searching, views and categories, flags, annotations and much more. Omea Reader can be extended with new features or even new resource types through its powerful plugin development Open API.
I have only been using for about an hour but so far it looks pretty cool. I will be using it as my primary one for a while to see how it goes. It looks like it might eventually be a commercial product, but so far they are offering a free key by registering an email address.
See the huge feature list here.
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
Locking Down Terminal Server
Microsoft has redesigned many aspects of Terminal services. In the new OS, Remote Desktop supplants Windows 2000 Terminal Service's Remote Administration mode, client server encryption has increased, and use AD Group Policy to centrally perform most Terminal Services configuration management.
Restricting user access
The new Windows 2003 has a new built-in local security group called Remote Desktop Users. We can use this group to manage access to the computer when it's configured as a TS machine. Only members of this group and the local Administrators group have permission to log on remotely to the TS system. In addition to that, we can further manage basic user permissions and privileges by assigning users to the local computer's various security groups.
Restricting data access
To restrict access to particular application, you can apply a Software Restriction Policy GPO or set NTFS ACLs on the directories of the applications that you want to restrict. The GPO route is advantageous because you can link the GPO to a Domain, Site, or OU AD object, and that GPO will be enforced for any objects within that container. For example, if you need to add a server, you can configure it an move it to the GPO-enabled OU. After you restart the computer or run the command gpupdate.exe to update the GPO for its new OU, it will be locked down like the others in that OU. Generally, NTFS ACLs don't scale as well as GPOs, which you can manage centrally; however it lets you discretely restrict access on a per-file or per-folder basis.
Fine-tuning security configuration through a GPO
You might prefer that the user have greater access at his or her workstation that at the TS system. Unfortunately, because the user configuration is associated with the user object, the same user-configuration GPO will be applied regardless of which computer the user logs on to. However, you can solve this problem by using a GPO setting called loopback processing.
With loopback processing, you can apply a GPO on an OU containing the TS computer object that also applies to users contained elswhere. Any user who logs onto the TS server will be governed by that system's user-configuration GPO instead of any other GPO that might be applied to the user. In the GPO editor, navigate to Computer Settings, Administrative Templates, System, Group Policy and enable the GPO policy called User Group Policy loopback processing mode. When you enable this policy, you must select whether to replace or merge the user-configuration settings between the Terminal Server computer GPO and the user's native GPO.
Fine-tuning security configuration through TSCC
You can also configure most Terminal Server security settings directly on a Terminal Server computer by using the TSCC tool. However, if you have set a GPO, the GPO will have priority and the equivalent setting in TSCC will be unavailable.
Windows Server 2003 Rights Management Services
RMS Overview
RMS helps businesses keep their most sensitive information within the organization and lets content owners control how their content is used - who can open and modify a certin document, how long users can access it, and so on. RMS lets you prevent accidental distribution and control what people can do with the information. Further, that protection remains with the file wherever it goes - if someone gains access to a diskette that contains RMS-protected information, that person must have a valid use license against that file in order to read it.
Requirements
RMS requires Windows Server 2003, a database such as Microsoft SQL Server, Windows Server Active Directory, and an RMS-enabled application or browser.
Implementation and Use
One of the goals of RMS is that it's easy to deploy. RMS is an Active Directory - intergrated technology, so it can be rolled out by GPO to get the client bits out.
Components
Server Software: download
Client Software: download
RMS-enabled Applications
Licensing
To use RMS, organizations need the following licenses:
• Windows Server 2003 Server License
• Windows Server 2003 Client Access Licenses (Windows Server CALs)
• Windows Rights Management Services Client Access Licenses (RMS CALs)
For more detail information about Microsoft Rights Management Services, click here
Friday, November 12, 2004
Blog, RSS, Feed ...
All these terminologies are sitting in my mind these days. What are they? Are there any points why we are using it? How can we take advantage from them? All those kind of questions.
Blog is such a great tool that people can easily post their thoughts on the web, record their own comments or notes, communicate with their friends, and more. It is for sure that more and more and more people would start using it and love it. Just look at Microsoft, almost every tech in Microsoft has their own blog ( blogs from MSDN).
RSS and Feed, even Atom ... basically they are similar, all gives you the ability to track and view the content you subscribe. And bascically they all need some kind of reader to be read. More, there are a lot of tips, notes and articles on the web telling you how to boost your web or generate more revenue by benifiting from them. At least, I suggested that every one using blog to record or post their stuff use at least one RSS reader to backup your blogs in your own computer. Auctually not only that but also lets you to find your own post much easier as well especially for those people like me who records the stuff here all technique related.
I had my first blog created last month. Since then, I couldn't stop thinking what I can do to make it better, even thought it looks still poor. I tried a lot of things like revising the templates, adding links, and I even subscribed Ad-Sense from Google to see how it works. Even thought my account was disable by them as they thought I was cheating them by using some sort of tool to clicking the link automatically, at least I learned how it works.
OK, that is enough for me at this point. I am going to continue studying the other two popular teminologies, XML and Web Service.
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Email was down
There are a lot of reasons why your emails are not delieveried but this is the first time I saw the message like "domain does not exist" happened on a valid domain, which caused all incoming messages got bounced back to the original sender. I knew there must be something wrong for the domain registration or domain hosting immidiately when the users reported problem. I called the domain host company (hid the name here to keep them safe even though I don't want to) right after confirming our domain is still valid and got confirmed they were facing the serious problem on their hosting server. Anyway, it all come back to work after they fixed the problem.
It is definitely not acceptable for a domain hosting company. It would lose the customer like me within a blink. Now I am planning to transfer out domain to the other more reliable company like register.com, and get an alternative domain in-place at the different place in case it happens again.
Monday, November 08, 2004
Fax Solution
It sounds like an ancient topic but is always a critical service for any kind and any size of the business. I was doing some researches to see if there is any solution that could fit into our company but unfortunately no. GFI FaxMaker, my favourite product from my favourite vendor, seems not working for us as it lacks one feature that is quite important to us. One of the important thing for our business is that every incoming or outgoing fax especially for outgoing has to be tracked and recorded into our tracking system that will send the bill information to the accounting system. And also, not every fax program could convert the incoming fax into a PDF version of file, which is another important part for us as almost every incoming fax needs to be imported into our document management software for record.
I am out of choice now. It seems to me that I have to stay where I was and keep my eyes open on this to see if any new one comes out.
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
Ten ways to boost your search appeal
from Computer World volume 20, Number 21 by Alan K'necht on Oct. 15th, 2004.
To get visitors to come to your site via search engine results (SERPs), you need to rank in the top 20 - if not the top 10 - for searches on spcific keywords/phrases that your firm is targeting. While writing search engine-friendly content is out of the control of the Web development team, there is a lot you can do to optimize your site markup for search engines. Here are 10 tips to help you mark-up your code properly.
Tip 1. The first rule of SEO is not to design your site in such a way that the code itself prevents a search engine bots/spiders from being able to index the site. The bottom line: don't build a web site entirely in Flash if you want any traffic from search engines.
Tip 2. To find out what a spider sees on your site, run a spider simulator on a given page. The simulator will show you what text the spider sees and what links it finds. Here is the one.
Tip 3. Each website should have a file called robots.txt, which tells the spiders what directories they should not spider.
Tip 4. Determine the main topic of the page and use it as the page title.
Tip 5. Write a unique description meta tag for each page - something you should ask the content provider to give you.
Tip 6. Put all your JavaScripts in external files and link to them. You will be increasing the ratio of content to code on your page, which helps make your message clearer to search engines and you will be making your markup cleaner and website management easier.
Tip 7. Search engines love content that appears in header tags (h1, h2, etc.) yet very few website actually use them.
Tip 8. Don't spend time creating JavaScript mouseovers, trying using the hover feature of CSS instead. If, for specific reasons, you can't use CSS, then repeat the menu options at the bottom of the page with plain text.
Tip 9. Avoid unnecessary tables where possible. Limit your table embedding to a depth of three. Where possible avoid the whole table thing and start using XHTML with div tags and CSS to define position.
Tip 10. Use either or to mark up important words on your page.
By following this basic outline, you'll be creating search engine-friendly pages. The search engine bots will easily index your pages, and with important words and phrases appropriately tagged; those words will receive proper valuation by the search engines.
inetinfo.exe occupied huge memory usuage on Exchange server
Problems on our Exchange server 2003 on Windows server 2003.
Symptopm: The SMTP service stopped working due to InetInfo.exe process occupied huge memory usage.
Road to Fix:
- restarted IIS services, that didn't help;
- rebooted Exchange server, that didn't help;
- looked up Microsoft knowledge base, this article says that there is security update specifically for SMTP on Windows 2003 would help. Downloaded, installed, and rebooted the server again, that didn't help either. The SMTP service still kept stopping.
- ran tool FileMon on the server, and found the InetInfo.exe file were executed by GFI MailEssential, the 3rd party anti-spam system. Great, then manually disable all real-time monitoring inbound and outbound mail and re-enable it. It works this time. The inetinfo.exe was back to the normal status and SMTP service wasn't interrupted again. The problem was solved.
Monday, November 01, 2004
Top 10 Features in Windows XP SP2
from magazine Windows IT Pro.
10. Security hotfixes rollup
9. Security Center
8. Internet Explorer (IE) Add-on Manager
7. Outlook Express image blocking
6. Popup blocking for IE
5. Data execution prevention (DEP)
4. Integrated Bluetooth support
3. Improved wireless support
2. Secure wireless configuration
1. Windows Firewall
Click here to see the full version of the article.
Active@ UNDELETE - A Great Tool to Recover Deleted Files
Recently, one of my user accidently deleted 6G data from a shared network drive, and unfortunately these data was not on the daily backup job list. As we know, Windows recycle bins don't protect files deleted over the network. I have been searching on the Internet to try to find a good tool that could help me easily undelete those files. The first choice I could find is Undelete from Excutive Software but unfortunately they don't provide me a download version and I have to wait a couple days to get the copy after I put the order, which is not acceptiable to me at this point. Then I went to my second choice, Active Undelete from Active Undelete. After I installed and ran it at my server, I was surprised the result I got. It was easy, efficiency, and more important, it recovered all files back without lossing anything. My opinion for this product is, putting it to your tool box. You don't need to order it now, but you would definitely need it when you encounter the situation what I had.
Microsoft Software Update Services
SUS (Software Update Services), the free patch management provided by Microsoft for Windows 2000 and up platforms, provides dynamic notification of critical upates to Windows client computers whether or not they have Internet access. Additionally, this technology provides a simple and automatic solution for distributing those updates to your corporate Widnows desktops and servers.Components
1. A computer running Windows 2000 or 2003 running SUS.
2. An update to the automatic updating technology in Windows 2000, XP, and 2003.
Installation and Configuration
1. Enable IIS on the server, and make sure the anonymous is enabled on the root site.
2. Download SUS from Microsoft, and install it on the same server.
3. From any computer, access http://servername/susadmin from IE to start configuring SUS.
4. Configure the Group Policy to force the workstation to get updates and patches from SUS server rather than Microsoft Update site.
Resources
Microsoft Site: Software Update Services
Microsoft Software Update Services Newsgroup
SuSServer.com
FAQShop.com
Omea Reader by JetBrains
Omea Reader is a tool which combines an RSS/ATOM feed reader, a newsgroup reader and a Web bookmark manager in a single easy to use interface. Omea Reader includes the full range of information management features of Omea Pro, including fast searching, views and categories, flags, annotations and much more. Omea Reader can be extended with new features or even new resource types through its powerful plugin development Open API.I have only been using for about an hour but so far it looks pretty cool. I will be using it as my primary one for a while to see how it goes. It looks like it might eventually be a commercial product, but so far they are offering a free key by registering an email address.
See the huge feature list here.
Locking Down Terminal Server
Microsoft has redesigned many aspects of Terminal services. In the new OS, Remote Desktop supplants Windows 2000 Terminal Service's Remote Administration mode, client server encryption has increased, and use AD Group Policy to centrally perform most Terminal Services configuration management.Restricting user access
The new Windows 2003 has a new built-in local security group called Remote Desktop Users. We can use this group to manage access to the computer when it's configured as a TS machine. Only members of this group and the local Administrators group have permission to log on remotely to the TS system. In addition to that, we can further manage basic user permissions and privileges by assigning users to the local computer's various security groups.
Restricting data access
To restrict access to particular application, you can apply a Software Restriction Policy GPO or set NTFS ACLs on the directories of the applications that you want to restrict. The GPO route is advantageous because you can link the GPO to a Domain, Site, or OU AD object, and that GPO will be enforced for any objects within that container. For example, if you need to add a server, you can configure it an move it to the GPO-enabled OU. After you restart the computer or run the command gpupdate.exe to update the GPO for its new OU, it will be locked down like the others in that OU. Generally, NTFS ACLs don't scale as well as GPOs, which you can manage centrally; however it lets you discretely restrict access on a per-file or per-folder basis.
Fine-tuning security configuration through a GPO
You might prefer that the user have greater access at his or her workstation that at the TS system. Unfortunately, because the user configuration is associated with the user object, the same user-configuration GPO will be applied regardless of which computer the user logs on to. However, you can solve this problem by using a GPO setting called loopback processing.
With loopback processing, you can apply a GPO on an OU containing the TS computer object that also applies to users contained elswhere. Any user who logs onto the TS server will be governed by that system's user-configuration GPO instead of any other GPO that might be applied to the user. In the GPO editor, navigate to Computer Settings, Administrative Templates, System, Group Policy and enable the GPO policy called User Group Policy loopback processing mode. When you enable this policy, you must select whether to replace or merge the user-configuration settings between the Terminal Server computer GPO and the user's native GPO.
Fine-tuning security configuration through TSCC
You can also configure most Terminal Server security settings directly on a Terminal Server computer by using the TSCC tool. However, if you have set a GPO, the GPO will have priority and the equivalent setting in TSCC will be unavailable.
Windows Server 2003 Rights Management Services
RMS OverviewRMS helps businesses keep their most sensitive information within the organization and lets content owners control how their content is used - who can open and modify a certin document, how long users can access it, and so on. RMS lets you prevent accidental distribution and control what people can do with the information. Further, that protection remains with the file wherever it goes - if someone gains access to a diskette that contains RMS-protected information, that person must have a valid use license against that file in order to read it.
Requirements
RMS requires Windows Server 2003, a database such as Microsoft SQL Server, Windows Server Active Directory, and an RMS-enabled application or browser.
Implementation and Use
One of the goals of RMS is that it's easy to deploy. RMS is an Active Directory - intergrated technology, so it can be rolled out by GPO to get the client bits out.
Components
Server Software: download
Client Software: download
RMS-enabled Applications
Licensing
To use RMS, organizations need the following licenses:
• Windows Server 2003 Server License
• Windows Server 2003 Client Access Licenses (Windows Server CALs)
• Windows Rights Management Services Client Access Licenses (RMS CALs)
For more detail information about Microsoft Rights Management Services, click here
Friday, November 12, 2004
Blog, RSS, Feed ...
All these terminologies are sitting in my mind these days. What are they? Are there any points why we are using it? How can we take advantage from them? All those kind of questions.
Blog is such a great tool that people can easily post their thoughts on the web, record their own comments or notes, communicate with their friends, and more. It is for sure that more and more and more people would start using it and love it. Just look at Microsoft, almost every tech in Microsoft has their own blog ( blogs from MSDN).
RSS and Feed, even Atom ... basically they are similar, all gives you the ability to track and view the content you subscribe. And bascically they all need some kind of reader to be read. More, there are a lot of tips, notes and articles on the web telling you how to boost your web or generate more revenue by benifiting from them. At least, I suggested that every one using blog to record or post their stuff use at least one RSS reader to backup your blogs in your own computer. Auctually not only that but also lets you to find your own post much easier as well especially for those people like me who records the stuff here all technique related.
I had my first blog created last month. Since then, I couldn't stop thinking what I can do to make it better, even thought it looks still poor. I tried a lot of things like revising the templates, adding links, and I even subscribed Ad-Sense from Google to see how it works. Even thought my account was disable by them as they thought I was cheating them by using some sort of tool to clicking the link automatically, at least I learned how it works.
OK, that is enough for me at this point. I am going to continue studying the other two popular teminologies, XML and Web Service.
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
Email was down
There are a lot of reasons why your emails are not delieveried but this is the first time I saw the message like "domain does not exist" happened on a valid domain, which caused all incoming messages got bounced back to the original sender. I knew there must be something wrong for the domain registration or domain hosting immidiately when the users reported problem. I called the domain host company (hid the name here to keep them safe even though I don't want to) right after confirming our domain is still valid and got confirmed they were facing the serious problem on their hosting server. Anyway, it all come back to work after they fixed the problem.
It is definitely not acceptable for a domain hosting company. It would lose the customer like me within a blink. Now I am planning to transfer out domain to the other more reliable company like register.com, and get an alternative domain in-place at the different place in case it happens again.
Monday, November 08, 2004
Fax Solution
It sounds like an ancient topic but is always a critical service for any kind and any size of the business. I was doing some researches to see if there is any solution that could fit into our company but unfortunately no. GFI FaxMaker, my favourite product from my favourite vendor, seems not working for us as it lacks one feature that is quite important to us. One of the important thing for our business is that every incoming or outgoing fax especially for outgoing has to be tracked and recorded into our tracking system that will send the bill information to the accounting system. And also, not every fax program could convert the incoming fax into a PDF version of file, which is another important part for us as almost every incoming fax needs to be imported into our document management software for record.
I am out of choice now. It seems to me that I have to stay where I was and keep my eyes open on this to see if any new one comes out.
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
Ten ways to boost your search appeal
from Computer World volume 20, Number 21 by Alan K'necht on Oct. 15th, 2004.
To get visitors to come to your site via search engine results (SERPs), you need to rank in the top 20 - if not the top 10 - for searches on spcific keywords/phrases that your firm is targeting. While writing search engine-friendly content is out of the control of the Web development team, there is a lot you can do to optimize your site markup for search engines. Here are 10 tips to help you mark-up your code properly.
Tip 1. The first rule of SEO is not to design your site in such a way that the code itself prevents a search engine bots/spiders from being able to index the site. The bottom line: don't build a web site entirely in Flash if you want any traffic from search engines.
Tip 2. To find out what a spider sees on your site, run a spider simulator on a given page. The simulator will show you what text the spider sees and what links it finds. Here is the one.
Tip 3. Each website should have a file called robots.txt, which tells the spiders what directories they should not spider.
Tip 4. Determine the main topic of the page and use it as the page title.
Tip 5. Write a unique description meta tag for each page - something you should ask the content provider to give you.
Tip 6. Put all your JavaScripts in external files and link to them. You will be increasing the ratio of content to code on your page, which helps make your message clearer to search engines and you will be making your markup cleaner and website management easier.
Tip 7. Search engines love content that appears in header tags (h1, h2, etc.) yet very few website actually use them.
Tip 8. Don't spend time creating JavaScript mouseovers, trying using the hover feature of CSS instead. If, for specific reasons, you can't use CSS, then repeat the menu options at the bottom of the page with plain text.
Tip 9. Avoid unnecessary tables where possible. Limit your table embedding to a depth of three. Where possible avoid the whole table thing and start using XHTML with div tags and CSS to define position.
Tip 10. Use either or to mark up important words on your page.
By following this basic outline, you'll be creating search engine-friendly pages. The search engine bots will easily index your pages, and with important words and phrases appropriately tagged; those words will receive proper valuation by the search engines.
inetinfo.exe occupied huge memory usuage on Exchange server
Problems on our Exchange server 2003 on Windows server 2003.
Symptopm: The SMTP service stopped working due to InetInfo.exe process occupied huge memory usage.
Road to Fix:
- restarted IIS services, that didn't help;
- rebooted Exchange server, that didn't help;
- looked up Microsoft knowledge base, this article says that there is security update specifically for SMTP on Windows 2003 would help. Downloaded, installed, and rebooted the server again, that didn't help either. The SMTP service still kept stopping.
- ran tool FileMon on the server, and found the InetInfo.exe file were executed by GFI MailEssential, the 3rd party anti-spam system. Great, then manually disable all real-time monitoring inbound and outbound mail and re-enable it. It works this time. The inetinfo.exe was back to the normal status and SMTP service wasn't interrupted again. The problem was solved.
Monday, November 01, 2004
Top 10 Features in Windows XP SP2
from magazine Windows IT Pro.
10. Security hotfixes rollup
9. Security Center
8. Internet Explorer (IE) Add-on Manager
7. Outlook Express image blocking
6. Popup blocking for IE
5. Data execution prevention (DEP)
4. Integrated Bluetooth support
3. Improved wireless support
2. Secure wireless configuration
1. Windows Firewall
Click here to see the full version of the article.
Active@ UNDELETE - A Great Tool to Recover Deleted Files
Recently, one of my user accidently deleted 6G data from a shared network drive, and unfortunately these data was not on the daily backup job list. As we know, Windows recycle bins don't protect files deleted over the network. I have been searching on the Internet to try to find a good tool that could help me easily undelete those files. The first choice I could find is Undelete from Excutive Software but unfortunately they don't provide me a download version and I have to wait a couple days to get the copy after I put the order, which is not acceptiable to me at this point. Then I went to my second choice, Active Undelete from Active Undelete. After I installed and ran it at my server, I was surprised the result I got. It was easy, efficiency, and more important, it recovered all files back without lossing anything. My opinion for this product is, putting it to your tool box. You don't need to order it now, but you would definitely need it when you encounter the situation what I had.
Blog, RSS, Feed ...
All these terminologies are sitting in my mind these days. What are they? Are there any points why we are using it? How can we take advantage from them? All those kind of questions.Blog is such a great tool that people can easily post their thoughts on the web, record their own comments or notes, communicate with their friends, and more. It is for sure that more and more and more people would start using it and love it. Just look at Microsoft, almost every tech in Microsoft has their own blog ( blogs from MSDN).
RSS and Feed, even Atom ... basically they are similar, all gives you the ability to track and view the content you subscribe. And bascically they all need some kind of reader to be read. More, there are a lot of tips, notes and articles on the web telling you how to boost your web or generate more revenue by benifiting from them. At least, I suggested that every one using blog to record or post their stuff use at least one RSS reader to backup your blogs in your own computer. Auctually not only that but also lets you to find your own post much easier as well especially for those people like me who records the stuff here all technique related.
I had my first blog created last month. Since then, I couldn't stop thinking what I can do to make it better, even thought it looks still poor. I tried a lot of things like revising the templates, adding links, and I even subscribed Ad-Sense from Google to see how it works. Even thought my account was disable by them as they thought I was cheating them by using some sort of tool to clicking the link automatically, at least I learned how it works.
OK, that is enough for me at this point. I am going to continue studying the other two popular teminologies, XML and Web Service.
Email was down
There are a lot of reasons why your emails are not delieveried but this is the first time I saw the message like "domain does not exist" happened on a valid domain, which caused all incoming messages got bounced back to the original sender. I knew there must be something wrong for the domain registration or domain hosting immidiately when the users reported problem. I called the domain host company (hid the name here to keep them safe even though I don't want to) right after confirming our domain is still valid and got confirmed they were facing the serious problem on their hosting server. Anyway, it all come back to work after they fixed the problem.It is definitely not acceptable for a domain hosting company. It would lose the customer like me within a blink. Now I am planning to transfer out domain to the other more reliable company like register.com, and get an alternative domain in-place at the different place in case it happens again.
Monday, November 08, 2004
Fax Solution
It sounds like an ancient topic but is always a critical service for any kind and any size of the business. I was doing some researches to see if there is any solution that could fit into our company but unfortunately no. GFI FaxMaker, my favourite product from my favourite vendor, seems not working for us as it lacks one feature that is quite important to us. One of the important thing for our business is that every incoming or outgoing fax especially for outgoing has to be tracked and recorded into our tracking system that will send the bill information to the accounting system. And also, not every fax program could convert the incoming fax into a PDF version of file, which is another important part for us as almost every incoming fax needs to be imported into our document management software for record.
I am out of choice now. It seems to me that I have to stay where I was and keep my eyes open on this to see if any new one comes out.
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
Ten ways to boost your search appeal
from Computer World volume 20, Number 21 by Alan K'necht on Oct. 15th, 2004.
To get visitors to come to your site via search engine results (SERPs), you need to rank in the top 20 - if not the top 10 - for searches on spcific keywords/phrases that your firm is targeting. While writing search engine-friendly content is out of the control of the Web development team, there is a lot you can do to optimize your site markup for search engines. Here are 10 tips to help you mark-up your code properly.
Tip 1. The first rule of SEO is not to design your site in such a way that the code itself prevents a search engine bots/spiders from being able to index the site. The bottom line: don't build a web site entirely in Flash if you want any traffic from search engines.
Tip 2. To find out what a spider sees on your site, run a spider simulator on a given page. The simulator will show you what text the spider sees and what links it finds. Here is the one.
Tip 3. Each website should have a file called robots.txt, which tells the spiders what directories they should not spider.
Tip 4. Determine the main topic of the page and use it as the page title.
Tip 5. Write a unique description meta tag for each page - something you should ask the content provider to give you.
Tip 6. Put all your JavaScripts in external files and link to them. You will be increasing the ratio of content to code on your page, which helps make your message clearer to search engines and you will be making your markup cleaner and website management easier.
Tip 7. Search engines love content that appears in header tags (h1, h2, etc.) yet very few website actually use them.
Tip 8. Don't spend time creating JavaScript mouseovers, trying using the hover feature of CSS instead. If, for specific reasons, you can't use CSS, then repeat the menu options at the bottom of the page with plain text.
Tip 9. Avoid unnecessary tables where possible. Limit your table embedding to a depth of three. Where possible avoid the whole table thing and start using XHTML with div tags and CSS to define position.
Tip 10. Use either or to mark up important words on your page.
By following this basic outline, you'll be creating search engine-friendly pages. The search engine bots will easily index your pages, and with important words and phrases appropriately tagged; those words will receive proper valuation by the search engines.
inetinfo.exe occupied huge memory usuage on Exchange server
Problems on our Exchange server 2003 on Windows server 2003.
Symptopm: The SMTP service stopped working due to InetInfo.exe process occupied huge memory usage.
Road to Fix:
- restarted IIS services, that didn't help;
- rebooted Exchange server, that didn't help;
- looked up Microsoft knowledge base, this article says that there is security update specifically for SMTP on Windows 2003 would help. Downloaded, installed, and rebooted the server again, that didn't help either. The SMTP service still kept stopping.
- ran tool FileMon on the server, and found the InetInfo.exe file were executed by GFI MailEssential, the 3rd party anti-spam system. Great, then manually disable all real-time monitoring inbound and outbound mail and re-enable it. It works this time. The inetinfo.exe was back to the normal status and SMTP service wasn't interrupted again. The problem was solved.
Monday, November 01, 2004
Top 10 Features in Windows XP SP2
from magazine Windows IT Pro.
10. Security hotfixes rollup
9. Security Center
8. Internet Explorer (IE) Add-on Manager
7. Outlook Express image blocking
6. Popup blocking for IE
5. Data execution prevention (DEP)
4. Integrated Bluetooth support
3. Improved wireless support
2. Secure wireless configuration
1. Windows Firewall
Click here to see the full version of the article.
Active@ UNDELETE - A Great Tool to Recover Deleted Files
Recently, one of my user accidently deleted 6G data from a shared network drive, and unfortunately these data was not on the daily backup job list. As we know, Windows recycle bins don't protect files deleted over the network. I have been searching on the Internet to try to find a good tool that could help me easily undelete those files. The first choice I could find is Undelete from Excutive Software but unfortunately they don't provide me a download version and I have to wait a couple days to get the copy after I put the order, which is not acceptiable to me at this point. Then I went to my second choice, Active Undelete from Active Undelete. After I installed and ran it at my server, I was surprised the result I got. It was easy, efficiency, and more important, it recovered all files back without lossing anything. My opinion for this product is, putting it to your tool box. You don't need to order it now, but you would definitely need it when you encounter the situation what I had.
Fax Solution
It sounds like an ancient topic but is always a critical service for any kind and any size of the business. I was doing some researches to see if there is any solution that could fit into our company but unfortunately no. GFI FaxMaker, my favourite product from my favourite vendor, seems not working for us as it lacks one feature that is quite important to us. One of the important thing for our business is that every incoming or outgoing fax especially for outgoing has to be tracked and recorded into our tracking system that will send the bill information to the accounting system. And also, not every fax program could convert the incoming fax into a PDF version of file, which is another important part for us as almost every incoming fax needs to be imported into our document management software for record.I am out of choice now. It seems to me that I have to stay where I was and keep my eyes open on this to see if any new one comes out.
Ten ways to boost your search appeal
from Computer World volume 20, Number 21 by Alan K'necht on Oct. 15th, 2004.To get visitors to come to your site via search engine results (SERPs), you need to rank in the top 20 - if not the top 10 - for searches on spcific keywords/phrases that your firm is targeting. While writing search engine-friendly content is out of the control of the Web development team, there is a lot you can do to optimize your site markup for search engines. Here are 10 tips to help you mark-up your code properly.
Tip 1. The first rule of SEO is not to design your site in such a way that the code itself prevents a search engine bots/spiders from being able to index the site. The bottom line: don't build a web site entirely in Flash if you want any traffic from search engines.
Tip 2. To find out what a spider sees on your site, run a spider simulator on a given page. The simulator will show you what text the spider sees and what links it finds. Here is the one.
Tip 3. Each website should have a file called robots.txt, which tells the spiders what directories they should not spider.
Tip 4. Determine the main topic of the page and use it as the page title.
Tip 5. Write a unique description meta tag for each page - something you should ask the content provider to give you.
Tip 6. Put all your JavaScripts in external files and link to them. You will be increasing the ratio of content to code on your page, which helps make your message clearer to search engines and you will be making your markup cleaner and website management easier.
Tip 7. Search engines love content that appears in header tags (h1, h2, etc.) yet very few website actually use them.
Tip 8. Don't spend time creating JavaScript mouseovers, trying using the hover feature of CSS instead. If, for specific reasons, you can't use CSS, then repeat the menu options at the bottom of the page with plain text.
Tip 9. Avoid unnecessary tables where possible. Limit your table embedding to a depth of three. Where possible avoid the whole table thing and start using XHTML with div tags and CSS to define position.
Tip 10. Use either or to mark up important words on your page.
By following this basic outline, you'll be creating search engine-friendly pages. The search engine bots will easily index your pages, and with important words and phrases appropriately tagged; those words will receive proper valuation by the search engines.
inetinfo.exe occupied huge memory usuage on Exchange server
Problems on our Exchange server 2003 on Windows server 2003.Symptopm: The SMTP service stopped working due to InetInfo.exe process occupied huge memory usage.
Road to Fix:
- restarted IIS services, that didn't help;
- rebooted Exchange server, that didn't help;
- looked up Microsoft knowledge base, this article says that there is security update specifically for SMTP on Windows 2003 would help. Downloaded, installed, and rebooted the server again, that didn't help either. The SMTP service still kept stopping.
- ran tool FileMon on the server, and found the InetInfo.exe file were executed by GFI MailEssential, the 3rd party anti-spam system. Great, then manually disable all real-time monitoring inbound and outbound mail and re-enable it. It works this time. The inetinfo.exe was back to the normal status and SMTP service wasn't interrupted again. The problem was solved.
Monday, November 01, 2004
Top 10 Features in Windows XP SP2
from magazine Windows IT Pro.
10. Security hotfixes rollup
9. Security Center
8. Internet Explorer (IE) Add-on Manager
7. Outlook Express image blocking
6. Popup blocking for IE
5. Data execution prevention (DEP)
4. Integrated Bluetooth support
3. Improved wireless support
2. Secure wireless configuration
1. Windows Firewall
Click here to see the full version of the article.
Active@ UNDELETE - A Great Tool to Recover Deleted Files
Recently, one of my user accidently deleted 6G data from a shared network drive, and unfortunately these data was not on the daily backup job list. As we know, Windows recycle bins don't protect files deleted over the network. I have been searching on the Internet to try to find a good tool that could help me easily undelete those files. The first choice I could find is Undelete from Excutive Software but unfortunately they don't provide me a download version and I have to wait a couple days to get the copy after I put the order, which is not acceptiable to me at this point. Then I went to my second choice, Active Undelete from Active Undelete. After I installed and ran it at my server, I was surprised the result I got. It was easy, efficiency, and more important, it recovered all files back without lossing anything. My opinion for this product is, putting it to your tool box. You don't need to order it now, but you would definitely need it when you encounter the situation what I had.
Top 10 Features in Windows XP SP2
from magazine Windows IT Pro.10. Security hotfixes rollup
9. Security Center
8. Internet Explorer (IE) Add-on Manager
7. Outlook Express image blocking
6. Popup blocking for IE
5. Data execution prevention (DEP)
4. Integrated Bluetooth support
3. Improved wireless support
2. Secure wireless configuration
1. Windows Firewall
Click here to see the full version of the article.