dae's weblog

Yesterday, I was at the golf course, doing a Google Apps migration. A young boy sat down next to me during a coffee break at the club house.

I asked: “So… Do you have a handicap?”
He replied (without blinking his eyes): “Yes, sir. 11″
I: “And how old are you?”
He: “12, sir”
I wanted to tease him a bit and said: “Well, ok. It’s good you’re still young, so you have lots of time to work on a decent handicap”

He said nothing, just nodded his head.
I finished my café au lait.

Well, there you have it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I’m off to bed, now. Have to get up early tomorrow. I imagine waking up tomorrow and… the world will be out of IPv4 addresses. That feels weird! Good night.

Hurricane Electric IPv4 Exhaustion Counters

Did you know you can use your Mac to connect to any Windows PC? Microsoft has a client, which even allows you to relay audio. It’s pretty cool!

Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac 2

Or click here for a nice chart of possibilities

Today I had an interesting challenge. I was working on an english retail Windows Server 2008 x64, that was configured as a Domain Controller, running DNS and DHCP.

It was still running SP1 and I wanted to upgrade it to SP2, which did not work using the separate download, but it worked using Microsoft Update!

SP2 installed successfully and it took a while for me to figure out that some services were not running afterwards. Those services included DNS, DHCP and… Windows Event Log. I tried to start the Windows Event Log service, but it would fail with a strange error about the service account not being the same as it used to be or so. Uninstalling SP2 didn’t solve the problem, nor did Google have a solution for me.

I checked the Services and saw the following line:

C:\Windows\System32\svchost.exe -k LocalServiceNetworkRestricted

The options on the Log On tab were all disabled (grayed out), but the radio button was set to Local System account, which was interesting, because the Path to executable referred to the LocalServiceNetworkRestricted account.

I decided to try my luck and I started REGEDIT on the server, looked up the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\EventLog

There was an ObjectName which held a REG_SZ value of LocalSystem and I decided to change it to NT AUTHORITY\LocalService

It worked! The Windows Event Log service started without any complaints and so did the DNS and DHCP. My server was safe and I was happy!

Are you using Outlook 2010, just like me and do you have a LinkedIn profile?
Give LinkedIn for Outlook a try!
If you’re still on Outlook 2003 or Outlook 2007, don’t forget to get the Outlook Social Connector (which is included in Outlook 2010)

I’ve been using ÜberTwitter for some time now and in fact it’s the only serious BlackBerry application for Twitter.

Unfortunately the started using ads a little while ago, which really bugged me, although I understand the wish of the developers to make a living out of it.

I happened to see the possibility to pay $5 and get rid of the ads (the ad supported version remains free of charge), which makes it the perfect app for me. It’s well worth the money! Do you have a BlackBerry? Take yours to the address below and pay those lousy $5. Happy tweeting!

Get ÜberTwitter – The only Twitter Client for your BlackBerry!

Did you see it coming? I wrote on Aardvark earlier and now the time has come. Google acquires Aardvark. In fact this did not come as a surprise to me, but the timing is special. Just now, after Google announced their realtime telephone translation service earlier this week (I’m speaking Dutch in my phone and it comes out in Japanese on the other end of the phone, thanks to realtime voice translation by Google), as well as the launch of Buzz…

We’re facing exciting times and I’m really curious as to how the other parties will respond to these strategic moves… Stay tuned!

Confirmed: Google has Acquired Aardvark

Foursquare (4SQ) is een location based social network. That means you can tell your friends where you are. Or your colleagues. Or your customers. Or your boss. Or the rest of the world.

4SQ contains a game element. You get points every time you tell your network where you are. Every sunday night the leaderboard resets itself, allowing newbies to make it to the top (at least for a short while).

Telling your network where you are is called “checking in”. The best way to do so is by using your cell phone. 4SQ offers applications for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Palm and for the remaining phones there is a web version. If you want to check in, your phone checks your location and 4SQ tells you where you might want to check in. These are the places that were defined by people who checked in earlier. If your place is not listed, you can add it. Mind correct spelling, addresses, upper/lower case voor cities etc. Your place will be used by future 4SQ users. If you name your place correctly, it will be easier for others to find it.

Anybody can check into public places. The person with the most checkins in a particular place automatically becomes the mayor of that place. There are places in the US that serve free coffee to the local mayor. Think what this may mean for your business in terms of customer experience or marketing!

Hot: It has become possible to mark a place as private. Only your friends can see where you are and the rest of the world can’t. This may be useful if you want to record a phone number with a place. You might even add a Twitter account to a place.

4SQ made me rethink my privacy strategy and my conclusion is that Twitter is for my contact with strangers (and friends of course), where Facebook is strictly for my friends. This means I won’t be publishing location checkins on Twitter, but only on Facebook.

I used to have a Facebook application that automatically updated my Facebook status upon every new tweet on Twitter, but I removed it. Facebook supports a number of native applications. Native applications can update Facebook status in native Facebook format, so Facebook recognizes what they are. This means you’ll find less frequent, but nicer looking status updates no Facebook from now on.

Some applications that offer native Facebookness are (but not limited to): Foursquare, Flickr, Shazam and Youtube.

Click here to get your free Foursquare account