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Research In Motion (RIM) today introduced BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express – free new server software that wirelessly and securely synchronizes BlackBerry smartphones with Microsoft Exchange or Microsoft Windows Small Business Server.

I’m a little confused about this announcement today by Dynamic Business, given that there has been a ‘free’ version of the Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) around for a while now. First it was called Blackberry Enterprise Server Express, then renamed to Blackberry Enterprise Server Professional, and now we seem to be back to Blackberry Enterprise Server Express. Technical details are a little slim, even on the official Blackberry Page, so it’s hard to piece together what’s so ‘new’ about this. The one bit however that does stand out is that this version is supported on SBS 2008, a definite improvement over the previous (?) version of the professional/express edition.

The product isn’t available until later this quarter, and we’re yet to see what ‘free’ actually means in this instance. One can only hope that RIM are pushing back against competitive platforms such as Windows Mobile and iPhone (which require no additional server software to function), and therefore free truly will mean free.

For all of you office worker warriors out there like me, you may find yourself in word 2007 doing certain actions day in, day out wishing there were a keyboard shortcut. Guess what? You can make one.

For me it’s using the paste special function so that I don’t lose my formatting when I’m pasting from the web or another document. So here’s how you do it.

First of all click on your ‘Office’ button  then right down the bottom on the

right hand side you will see the ‘word options’ button  click on it.

This will bring up you ‘Word Options’ page

Now click on ‘Customize’ in the left options bar. This will bring up the following screen:

Right down the bottom you will see the option to customize keyboard shortcuts, click this button and it will bring up all of your options for creating keyboard shortcuts. Just as an aside if you’re wondering what all that stuff is above the keyboard shortcuts, it is a list of commands that you use frequently and can add them to your ‘Quick Access Toolbar’ which is…

Anyway, back to customizing your keyboard shortcuts, click on the customize button to bring up this screen

Then find which category the shortcut you require is under. For the paste special function I just look at what I normally do.

E.g. I notice that the ‘Paste’ function is under the ‘Home’ tab

And then I found ‘EditPasteSpecial’ in the ‘Commands’ list on the right, I clicked on it and found that it already had a short cut which is displayed in the ‘Current Keys’ box (it’s Alt+Ctrl+V in that order  if you’re interested)  or you can ‘Remove’ the current key and create your own.

So there you have it warriors. Happy wording

I have just closed a ticket for a client who was having problems activating Windows 7 on his PC. As a result of these problems, he was getting a warning message popping up claiming that his copy of windows might not be genuine. Obviously, considering we had just sold them multiple activations of Windows 7 under a volume licensing agreement, this was of some concern to them.

The bizarre part is that the license key was legitimate and the workstations were behaving perfectly, except for the fact that they couldn’t check in to Microsoft to activate. The error code they were getting was 0×8007232b, which is apparently related to several problems with activations. In this case however, all that we needed to do was re-enter the activation key and re-submit the activation request. 10 seconds later, the activation was successful! Welcome to the fun world of Microsoft licensing

We’ve just started working with a new client and after the first day of audit work I’ve been thinking about one of the, to date unwritten, design rules that we follow; Simplicity. By integrating simplicity into the network design the network can become not only more manageable, but also far quicker and easier to diagnose, repair and change when required. That’s certainly not to suggest that more complex networks are unnecessary, or indeed less manageable, simply that in my experience it is best not to over complicate things unnecessarily. Of course as design requirements themselves become more complicated and involved so too may the network design follow.

Now in no way am I casting judgement on the network we are working with, or the IT people who have gone before us. We have very little knowledge of the requirements and constraints under which they designed this network, and essentially no pre-existing documentation. We will quite likely discover, once we have uncovered the original design intent, that the solution in place is actually quite elegant and appropriate. On the other hand, we may not. Either way the point is that this process has made me think on the virtues of simplicity.

Here’s an oldie but a goldy that I came across again today. Client has a brand new Windows 7 workstation running MS Office 2007. Workstation is fully patched and updated. When opening MS Word the Word splash screen would appear, but then nothing further. We worked through the usual process of ensuring the machine was fully patched did a repair installation of MS Office, and so on, without success. It turns out that there was a little cheapy Dell inkjet printer shared on the network somewhere that this particular user had connected to. For whatever reason, Word has a strong dependency on installed printers, so due to some conflict with this Dell printer driver, Word was hanging on startup. Delete the Dell printer, and it’s associated driver from the workstation and happy days! Everything back to normal.

Now I’m no celebrity fan-boy. Quite seriously. In fact I struggle with actors in general. The whole concept can just feel so deceitful that you’re never actually talking to the person themselves, but one of their characters. Having said that, I stumbled across a video of Will Smith the other day, and was impressed. Whether this be him in character, or the true person, he’s got great energy, and some great (if not novel) ideas. Check it out.

One of the benefits of having a laptop is being able to log on anywhere and have access to your stuff. This is especially true of things like emails, but there are a few settings that need tweaking before you can open your mailbox from anywhere in the world.

To Set Up Outlook Anywhere in Office 2007:

1. Open the Control Panel and select Mail if you are in Classic View, or User Accounts and then Mail if you are viewing Categories. In the popup window, select Show Profiles.

Select Add and enter a profile name when asked. This is just a label, so name it whatever you like.

2. This will bring up the Add New Email Account dialog. Select Manually Configure server settings or additional server types and then click Next.

3. Select Microsoft Exchange and then click Next.

4. You will probably need to check in with us for your server name. Your user name is the name that you use to log on to your work network, and will often be the same as the first part of your email address. Enter these details and then select More Settings. 

5. Choose the Connection tab and select the Connect to Microsoft Exchange using HTTP box, then select Exchange Proxy Settings.

Exchange Proxy Settings:

1. Your Connection Settings URL will usually be mail.domain or remote.domain, where your domain is usually the part of your email address after the @ symbol.

Select both the Connect using SSL only and Only connect to proxy servers that have this principal name in their certificate boxes.

2. This will be either msstd:mail.domain or msstd:remote.domain. The bit here after msstd: will be the same as you entered in step 1. above.

3. If you often use your laptop in the office, leave On fast networks, connect using HTTP first, then connect using TCP/IP unchecked. If you work mostly remotely check this box. In either case, make sure that you tick On slow networks, connect using HTTP first, then connect using TCP/IP.

4. Your Proxy Authentication Settings will depend on the type of server you are connecting to. If you are running a 2003 server the Authentication type will be Basic. If you are running a 2007 server the Authentication type will be NTLM. If you aren’t sure, try basic first- if it doesn’t work you can come back and change this setting.

When you click OK you will be notified that you need to restart Outlook for these changes to take effect. When you restart Outlook you will be prompted to log in:

Your credentials will need to be entered as internal domain\username, which should be the same username that you use to log on to your workstation. Confusingly enough, your internal domain is not necessarily the same as the domain name used in your email address- you might need to check with us if you aren’t sure what it should be. Once you log in you will be able to access your email wherever you go.

If you let us know that you want to set up Outlook Anywhere we can give you all the details of your domain and server that you will need. If your email still isn’t connecting properly after all this there are a few geeky behind-the-scenes tweaks that we can try to get it up and running (we can’t give away all our tricks!). If you get stuck or if you have any questions please let us know!

Further to David’s excellent opinion on the recent Internet Explorer vulnerability, I’d like to put forward some additional information for your consideration.

• The recent criticisms of IE were specifically prompted by version 6, although the underlying flaw was present in all subsequent versions as well. IE6 was released in 2001, which makes it a dead set dinosaur in internet years.
• Any windows based computers that have had any patching done in the last few years will have automatically been updated to newer versions of IE, most recently version 8.
• As David details, Microsoft has released an urgent out-of-band security update for IE6, 7 and 8
• All computers covered by a Grassroots IT support agreement will not only have been upgraded from IE6, but will also have had the recent targeted security fix pushed out to them.

For any business concerned about the efficient and secure functioning of their systems, a regular process of patching and updating software is, unfortunately, unavoidable. In this instance the peice of software that has gained the press coverage has been Microsoft IE, but is next time just as likely to be Firefox, MYOB, Adobe Reader, or any other piece of software in common use. Grassroots IT can certainly help with this, but an acceptance and understanding of this will help put the recent press regarding IE in perspective.

I agree that IE6 must be retired, and not before time. But I do suggest a pinch of salt with the recent hyped up press.

Update: Minor edits to clarify the relevance the security flaw to all versions of IE, not just IE6.

The French and German governments have recently announced that everyone should move away from Internet Explorer. A big call. This announcement has come about because there is a specific security flaw in Internet Explorer which, as highlighted by Google, was used in a very deliberate, highly sophisticated attack, originating from China, to try and access the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. (For more geeky details on the specifics of the security flaw, head down below to **)

Now, I don’t really like Internet Explorer. I don’t care whether it’s IE6, IE7 or IE8, I don’t like it. In fact, I even agree with the general sentiments put forward by France and Germany when they suggested that people use a different browser… but that’s just my personal opinion. It *is* an insecure browser and there *are* problems with it. Admittedly, Internet Explorer 8 is a significant improvement over earlier versions.

Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as switching to a different browser. As much as I want to say, “Switch to Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox or even Opera”, a lot of the functionality of your company intranet and SharePoint specifically requires Internet Explorer. Without it, you’ll have a hard time doing anything other than simply looking at pages hosted by SharePoint etc.

Being fair, Internet Explorer isn’t the only web browser that has security issues. Over time, vulnerabilities and security flaws have been and will continue to be discovered in every single web browser available. Switching to a different web browser won’t suddenly make you impervious to attacks from the web. If it did, then there wouldn’t be any need for anti-virus solutions, firewalls or malware removal tools. The fact that these things all exist (and have billions of dollars spent on them annually) are a pretty good indicator that there is more to it than simply switching browsers.

To ensure that your computers are as safe as possible, we deploy and monitor a range of security products including anti-virus solutions, malware detection software, hardware and software firewalls, in addition to keeping all of your systems patched and up to date with Microsoft patches and hotfixes.

If you have any concerns or queries about your system security, please contact us on 1300 554 138 and we’ll be happy to have a chat with you.

**If you want to get your geek on, feel free to continue reading for a bit more of a breakdown of the issue that brought this to light and caused all the fuss. Be warned, it might get a little geeky.

Right, still with me?

Google announced on their blog at 3PM on 12/01/2010 that there had been a security attack originating from China. Within 48 hours, Microsoft had published a security advisory (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/advisory/979352.mspx), letting people know that they were aware of the flaw and that they were working on fixing it. Since then, they’ve kept that advisory updated and as of 21/01/2010, they had developed a fix, published it and made it available for download.

Now, you may not be aware of this, but Microsoft normally releases its updates and patches on a specific release schedule. Given the serious nature of this issue, Microsoft chose to release it “out of band”. Meaning that instead of waiting to release it with their next scheduled updates and patches, they released it as soon as it was ready. Now, let’s have a look at the timeline of events:

12/01/2010 – Google announce an attack on their systems using this exploit

14/01/2010 – Microsoft release security advisory acknowledging the problem

15/01/2010 – Microsoft update their advisory with more accurate information following developments in their investigation; The same day, the German Office for Information Security issued a press release advising people to switch to another browser

18/01/2010 – France echoes Germany’s advice that people switch to a different browser

20/01/2010 – Microsoft released details of a work around to avoid the problem until they had finished testing the patch to correct the problem

21/01/2010 – Microsoft released a fix for this security flaw (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms10-002.mspx)

Interestingly, most of the calls we received about this issue have come in since the 21^st. So, in essence, by the time people became aware of this and grew concerned enough to contact us, the fix had already been released and been pushed out to the systems under our management. If you currently don’t have a managed support agreement with us and you’re not sure if you have adequate security measures in place, drop us a line or shoot us an email and we’ll be happy to help.

Your username and password are the keys to your virtual identity. Setting a unique password allows you greater security and more control over who has access to your confidential files. Changing the password you use to log on to your computer is a simple task that you can do from your workstation- it doesn’t need to be set on the server.

To set a new password:

To reset your login password, press CTRL+ALT+Delete. This will bring up a Windows Security pane. This will look a little different depending on whether you are working in Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7:

If you are logged in to a Terminal Server or working remotely, CTRL+ALT+Delete will function on the workstation that you are locally logged in to and not your terminal server session. To send the same command to the terminal server, user CTRL+ALT+End instead. You can also go to the Terminal Server ‘Start’ menu and select ‘Windows Security’ to reach the same options.

From the security pane, select ‘Change Password’.

Once again, the screen you see will vary depending on whether your operating system is Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7.

Enter your old password to confirm your identity, choose a new password (don’t forget to enter it into both the ‘New password’ and ‘Confirm password’ fields) and you’re all set.

When choosing a new password:

With words like identity theft and fraud being thrown around so much these days it can be a little intimidating trying to think of new passwords that don’t leave us scratching our heads when we go to type them in.

• Try to strike a balance between what will be secure and what you can easily remember and type.
• Mix upper and lowercase letters with numbers or symbols to dramatically increase the strength of your password.
• Try not to reuse the same passwords in many different places- especially not the passwords that you use for internet banking! That way even if someone manages to guess they will not have access to all of your data.
• Remember that a phrase can be just as effective as a random character string and much easier on your memory- ‘W0rk1ngClassM@n!’ or similar is a strong password, but one that will be very easy to recall.

Many people do not change their passwords at all, so as long as ‘password,’ ‘changeme123,’ and ‘letmein’ are not in your repertoire you have a leg up on the competition.

If you forget your password:

Passwords are not stored in any way that we can access, not even with IT superpowers, sorry! If you forget your password we have no way to tell you what it was. We can, however, change your password back to a default, which will let you log in as normal.