Sometimes technical, sometimes not, never a kitty

Walt Mossberg has a review today of Sharpcast sync service.  What sets this service apart is that no only will it sync with PCs, it will sync with your cell phone.  Specifically, Walt used a Treo 700w for his tests.

Now, a small Silicon Valley start-up called Sharpcast is introducing an impressive, free service that synchronizes data among PCs, phones and a Web site at lightning speeds. I tested Sharpcast for several weeks, and found that it works really well.

The service is limited to photos right now, which means it's more mashed potatoes than gravy:

With Sharpcast Photos, any change you make to an album of photos on one of your devices is replicated within seconds on your other devices. If you add a photo to an album on your PC, it shows up within seconds on your phone and on your Sharpcast Web page. If you rotate a photo on the phone, the same photo is rotated within seconds on the PC and Web page. If you delete a photo on the Web page, it's immediately deleted on the PC and the phone. And if you take a photo with the camera on your Sharpcast-enabled phone, it will show up in seconds on your PC and your Web page.

It's not a huge leap from instant replication of modified photos to instant replication of spreadsheets, Word docs, etc. 

You can also share your albums with other Sharpcast users, and receive shared albums from them.

Sharing = collaboration.  MS's next version of SharePoint will be mobile enabled, but there's a large buy-in and overhead, not to mention connectivity issues.  Instead of sharing a photo album, imaging sharing a project folder.  By the time your plane lands, you have the updated files on your phone, and will get them as soon as you connect your laptop to the Internet.  Sweet!  And, probably with less overhead.

Planned improvements include sync of contacts, appointments, etc.  Not such a huge issue for me, since we have an Exchange server, but very useful for a lot of people I know.

Full story at http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20060713.html.  The possibilities are exciting--this is definately a company to watch in the near future.

When you install the MSFP on your Treo 700w, you can use Exchange 2003 SP2 to enforce security policies on the PDA functions.  One policy includes an access PIN, which locks the phone after a certain period of inactivity (5 min doesn't seem bad in testing, but you might want to make it longer in real life).  This policy seems to be a must for the remote wipe to work correctly.  Additionally, in case the phone is ever lost, you can send a command from Exchange to the phone to wipe it clean of data the next time it tries to sync.

As a proof of concept, my phone was wiped 7 or 8 times yesterday.  Here's a short overview of what happens:

1. The phone retains full functionality.  Whomever finds the phone is free to make all the calls they want if you don't have a PIN policy.  This means that if you do get the phone back, you don't need to go through that Verizon configuration procedure again.
2. Even if you enforce a PIN policy on the PDA functions, the phone can still recive calls.  The ringing phone can be answered without entering the PIN, but no caller ID information is displayed.  Calls cannot be made from the phone until the PIN is entered.  You can set the PIN policy to wipe a device after a certain number of failures, too.
3. The phone basically undergoes a hard reset.  Any aftermarket software that was installed is removed.  Any data stored in system memory is lost.  All configured e-mail accounts (be they POP3 or Exchange) are deleted, as is all the e-mail.  All contacts, appointments, tasks, etc are removed.  Registry settings are removed.  The MSFP is retained.
4. Custom ringtones and other add-ons are also removed.  I have to find that WAV of the Monday Night Football theme again.
5. Data stored on a storage card is not lost.  Don't put confidential/incriminating information on the storage card, or at least don't leave the cards in your phone all the time.  There is an option to store e-mail attachments on the card, and it appears these are removed when the e-mail is wiped.
6. If you get the phone back, or get a new one, your contacts, tasks, etc. will be restored with the next ActiveSync.  You will probably have to reinstall the software yourself.  Make sure you keep good records of your registration codes.

The Remote Wipe will not function if the device doesn't have MSFP installed.  The Remote Wipe functionality is an Exchange plug-in, apparently something you need to download separately from SP2, but I'm not the Exchange admin.

The PIN policy (called the password policy in most of the forums) seems to be key in getting the wipe to work.  If you don't set this policy, then the user is prompted to apply a security setting when the wipe is triggered.  Choosing No means the device isn't wiped, and this is a very common thing in the forums.  Also key is that the phone is sync'd directlty to a Windows 2003/Exchange 2003 SP2 server.  Our bastion Windows 2000 server doesn't pass out the policies to the phone, but the phone can be sync'd against the bastion server, and the wipe is passed through the server as well.  But we had to sync against the Win 2K3 server once (and probably every time we want to upgrade the policies).

Kevin Remde is reporting that as of 9am PST (noon Eastern), VPC 2004 SP1 will be released free of charge:

Now, like Virtual Server 2005 R2, you can download and use Virtual PC 2004 (SP1 version) for free.

After working with XMod for about an hour and a half last night, I’m of the opinion that 90% of the modules available on Snowcovered.com can pack their bags and go home.  The 90 minutes is rougly the time from purchase, through installation, to finishing my first working form.

Installation isn’t difficult, but you do need to read the installation guide.  There are several PAs for different versions of DNN.  After you upload the correct PA, you need to do a little manual configuration (easy, and well guided in the installation instructions).

Lats night’s task was to build an input form for a client’s site.  This is one of several forms my client needs, and is the shortest.  The complete documentation is 370 pages, but the vast majority is reference and examples.  The Getting Started is about 10 pages, and was all I needed for last night’s task.  It’s intimidating when you first see the size of the documentation, but it doesn’t take long to get rolling.

Creating the forms is a snap—there’s a simple editor for beginners.  All you do is select the type of input you want, and a little properties box shows up.  You enter some information about that input, and add the field.  You can change the input’s characteristics manually in the editor as well, and trak your progress with the handy preview.  You even have complete control over how the confirmation e-mails look, if you need those.

The authors claim XMod “Can’t do everything, but you may never notice”, and they’re not kidding.  I’ll have a longer review when I get this site finished.  But my first look is very positive.

In order to help turn TestDriven.NET from a hobby into somethig that pays the bills, Jamie has released a Professional and Enterprise version of TestDriven.net. There's still a free version, non-crippled and non-nag, but he asks if you regularly use TestDriven.NET in one of the licensing scenarios, please buy a license.

Full story at http://weblogs.asp.net/nunitaddin/archive/2006/07/10/EnterpriseAndProfessional.aspx.

Bil Simser responded to Shaun Walker's DNN vs. Sharepoint Feature Matrix, and for some reason I can't get the Submit button to work on Bil's blog.  So I'm posting my comments here.  Two points to add to Bil's great list:

1) Unless there have been some changes made, storing files in the file system with DNN is not secure.  This is the only way to store files in DNN 3 (unless the newest release changes this), and one option in DNN 4.  Someone paying attention can access files by direct URL.  In SharePoint, files are stored in the database, and acceses to these files can be strinctly controlled at several levels.

2) It's actually far, far easier to develop and deploy SP webparts with the free SmartPart than it is to develop DNN PAs.  The distribution method of PAs is great, but development of DNN modules can be a pain.  The SmartPart allows any ASCX control to be used in SharePoint, and has found significant use in my SP installations.  Without the SmartPart, developing for either can be a miserable experience.

Recently, a question came up in the ASP.NET security forums about the lack of a remote membership/role configuration tool in ASP.NET 2.0.  Being able to remotely manage users is important in pretty much any site where you have users.  Fortunately, QualityData has stepped in and developed that plus a little more in their Membership Manager Control.  Apparently works in AJAX and exposes an API as well.  At $59, it's pretty darn cheap, too.

If you need a free license (beyond the trial version) for your needs, they also have a link-for-license program.  Add a link like Asp.Net Server Controls by Quality Data, and let them know.

The result of the problem is that search engines won't index the content on your Community Server based site.  That's bad if you're counting on being found in the SEs.

The problem appears to be a bug (or a feature nobody wants) in the URL Rewriting part of ASP.NET 2.0.  When the URL is rewritten and the response is redirected to the destination URL, a result code of 302 (temporary redirect) is returned, instead of 200 (destination found OK).  Most SEs won't index pages that return a 302, since that is a trick heaviliy used by SE spammers.

Matt Cutts has a post about this at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/asp-net-2-and-url-rewriting-sometimes-harmful, and there's discussion at Telligent at http://communityserver.org/forums/536640/ShowThread.aspx.

This isn't to call out Telligent, since anyone using the built-in URL Rewriting will be affected.  I just think the thread on their site is a good one to watch.

In a comment to my Web Application Settings in ASP.NET 2.0 article, I was asked about overriding default web.config values by replacing external files using the file attribute, as he could in .NET 1.1.  The web.config has several new sections, and none support the 'file' attribute--instead, the configSource is used.  This wasn't so satisfactory to the commenter, so I recommended MS Build for the task.

Over the weekend, I worked a little with Web Deployment Projects, and there is functionality to replace web.config sections built in to the tool.  You could create several different build configurations--Debug (Dev), Debug (Test), Release (Test), Release (Prod) for your web application.  Then, create a different deployment project for each build config, and specify different SMTP or connection strings as necessary.  This is probably where the commenter wanted to go, but I found this out a little too late.  Hope it helps someone else down the road, though.

This one is an oldie (in Internet terms) but a goodie.  Even though it was published in 2002, The GigaLaw Guide to Internet Law is still an extremely valuable resource today.   Written by Doug Isenberg, who founded GigaLaw.com, an Internet site consolidating news relating to Internet law (long before RSS feeds and newsreaders were popular, Doug hand edited the home page with fresh content daily).  The daily e-mail updates almost always include an interesting story.

If you've never read Doug before, you'll be surprised at how well he explains complicated legal issues, with technical detail, in an easy to understand manner.  Over the past several years, this has been a valuable reference on my bookshelf.  This isn't a book you read cover to cover; it's broken down into major parts (Copyright Law, Domain Names and Trademarks, Patent Law, Privacy, Free Speech and the First Amendment, Contract Law and High Technology, and Employment Law), with chapters focusing on specific topics in each part (COPPA, Spam, Message Board Misconduct, etc).  Pick the topic you need and read that chapter for an overview of the issues and precedents.

Since its original writing, additional cases have decided in many important areas, especially in Spam and privacy laws, so you shouldn't take the case studies as a comprehensive list.  Just to take a trip down memory lane, one of the case studies invloves a Playboy Playmate using "Playboy" in the META tags of her website.  Blogs aren't mentioned, but there is good discussion about message boards.  The issues and arguments regarding each of these topics are still relevant, but finer issues have been worked out by additional precedents.  It will be worth watching if Doug publishes an updated version.  If so, it would be a good idea to get a copy immediately.  If not, chapters such as "The Basics of Copyright Law" and "Website Development Agreements" make this is still an excellent (and understandable) introduction to complicated legal issues surrounding Internet law.  This book is available in both print and downloadable electronic format from Amazon.