That's right kids, the Samsung SPH-I700 Windows Power Pocket PC phone is now available in Canada for use on the Telus Mobility network. A limited number of devices are available through The Phone Experts Communications in Alberta. This slick little Pocket PC can be activated on their 1X data network and also used on a regular voice package as well. The device also features a built in digital camera.

If Santa's listening, I've made an addition to my list!

Posted in Telephony  | Comments [0] 

I thought this was worthy of placing here in hopes that it might be of use. A while ago we deployed an Acer TabletPC with built in wireless and had nothing but problems connecting to the network. We seemed to browse fine, but when it came to sending any data (such as printing) it would fail. The soultion turned out to be creating an MTU entry for the wireless interface with a value of 1472. Info on adding this entry can be found at microsoft.com

Hopefully this helps somebody solve the problem more quickly than we did.

UPDATE: Originally I had thought this problem we encountered seemed to be limited to the Acer product but it would seem that others have it as well. My Toshiba M200 just wasn't right when running wireless. Even some web pages, especially Microsoft.com had real problems trying to load. The above fix of the MTU setting has made a huge difference. I hope to do some more testing, but if you have problems, create and MTU entry for the interface as described equalling 1472.

Posted in Network  | Comments [1] 

The December TRINUG user group general meeting included an ASP.Net Security presentation by Travis Murray. Travis is a .Net Trainer for New Horizons Learning Center Raleigh and President of Artiem Consulting Inc. It was a great presentation and I highly encourage anybody that has the opportunity to hear Travis speak or to attend one of his classes to do so.

His presentation did a really good job of going through the three primary authentication models supported by ASP.NET and IIS. (Forms, Windows, and Passport) and some authorization methods to control user access to sites, and more specifically parts of sites.

A key point brought up was the importance of understanding the difference between the terms "Authentication" and "Authorization" which are often incorrectly interchanged.

Thanks Travis for a great presentation!

We had a number of new people in attendance thanks to a little floor time given by Juan Nassiff to mention the group at an MSDN event held in Cary, NC. The well attended presentation was focused on migrating from VB6 to VB.Net. I hope that we can work even closer with Microsoft at future events in the area to promote user groups as a community resource to more current and potential .Net developers.

Posted in TRINUG  | Comments [1] 

In the time I have spent using .NET I have found myself saying “Thank you Duncan!” many times when a problem I was having was quickly resolved by reading one of the many MSDN articles written by Duncan Mackenzie. His many contributions include the MSDN “Coding 4 Fun” column. He has always been a great resource providing great material that really teaches instead of just providing code.

I have finally been able to pick up his new book “Microsoft Visual Basic .Net 2003 Kick Start” written with contributors Andy Baron, Erik Porter, and Joel Semeniuk. I congratulate all of them on work well done. The book offers quick and concise information that helps a beginner get up to speed quickly, while still providing some very solid information for the more experienced. I especially like the “Shop Talk” inserts that give quick answers to some common, but often difficult to find answers for questions. This is an excellent resource book that also provides specific information for anybody moving from VB6 to .Net.

Great job Duncan, and thanks for all the information you have contributed to the community.

Posted in Software  | Comments [0] 

Today at an MSDN event I ended up talking with a number of people about an issue relating to security in ASP.NET. The problem was presented where the authentication would only restrict access top .aspx files and not other files such as Word (.doc) or Excel (.xls) files that might also need to be secured. I recently had a similar problem which I was able to resolve by registering the appropriate extensions in the Application Mappings within the Application Configuration within Internet Services manager. By mapping the .doc and .xls file extensions to the same executable as the .aspx pages (aspnet_isapi.dll) they will have their access restricted as well by the application security. 

Posted in Software  | Comments [0] 

Did you know dear friends that when logging onto a Windows 98 system the OS does not care about the case sensitvity of your password, From that 98 system, with your incorreclty enttered (Let's just say you entered it upper case, and it's really lower case) you are able to access a share on Windows 2000 Professional system that an account for you has manually be created on (with the correct lower case password) but you are unable to connect to the Windows 2000 Server accross the WAN or the SQL server it also houses. So the next time your .Net app loads from the file share, but can not authenticate with SQL this might just be why. Who knew?

On that note, to allow that .Net app to run from that file share you might need to make use of the following:

>caspol -machine -addgroup 1 -url file://machinename/sharename/* FullTrust

And now I know.

Posted in Software  | Comments [0]