PCIN.net Update

I work as an IT Manager at a hospitality company. As is the case with many companies, IT is seen as an expense. We make money from the attractions, restaurants, and hotel. The less money that is spent on IT, the better. Well, thankfully there are sorts of free/open source options out there. One that we just came across but will try soon, is Spiceworks. It seems to be an all-in-one helpdesk/inventory management/network management software package.

We are in the process of moving, and renting out our existing house. We have been measuring rooms, windows, trim, etc, and I wanted to do up some basic drawings. I searched online, and there are all sorts of options. I haven’t decided on the best one (this isn’t a review), but I figured I’d share a few of the ones that I will be seriously taking a look at:

• Easy Blue Print Software
• Autodesk Homestyler
• SmartDraw
• Gliffy

I’m sure you’ve seen some sites that use Adobe Flash, and it just seems like a waste of time. Of course there are sites that use Flash in interesting and innovative ways. I had someone forward me a link last week that is one of those. If you visit http://htwins.net/scale2/scale2.swf (skip the ad), you’ll see a presentation about the scale of the universe. There is a slider at the bottom, so you can “zoom” in or out. It is hard to explain, but check it out. It’s cool!

Have you ever wondered what colours would go best with a picture you have? Sometimes our brain can trick us into thinking that we see more green in a picture than is really there. It’d be great if there was a way to have a machine do that. What, there is! If you visit http://www.colorhunter.com/ you can upload a picture, and it gives you a selection of colours to use (your palette). This is what I got for my PCIN logo.

I haven’t managed to go paperless yet, but I do try to keep as little paper around as I can. I scan a lot of things to PDF and save them in Google Documents. Whenever I do that, I like to have the text in the documents searchable. If all I do is scan a page, and the image becomes the PDF, then there is no text to search. However, if you use Optical Character Recognition (OCR), you can turn the picture into text.  This is also very handy when you do not want to have to retype something entirely.

There is a web site at http://www.free-ocr.com/ that lets you upload an image, and it will find the text for you. This doesn’t really help with PDFs (as you aren’t actually putting the text back in the PDF), but if you are looking to avoid retyping something, this is a good place to start.

I recently learned how to jailbreak an iPhone 3G and unlock it. At around the same time, I’ve had a few people offer me their old cell phones. I have a nice new Blackberry, but my wife has an old flip phone, and texting is very painful. Several of these phones are slide phones, and they are unlocked with a code. I’ve looked online, and some places are offering the codes for $30 or so, but one place has them for around $7. I haven’t tried it yet, but when I decide which phone I’m going to use, I’ll probably try CellUnlockedNow.

UPDATE: I tried to use their service to unlock a Samsung Evergreen that someone gave me, but they couldn’t do it. That’s disappointing! They will refund me my money.

I saw this a couple of weeks ago. It is from Jim McBee’s Mostly Exchange Web Log. He lists 20 observations that indicate his frustration with work:

1. There are rarely good technological solutions for bad behavior. (this one comes from Ed Crowley)
2. Any meeting that gets off track more than twice will not achieve its intended goal.
3. Projects that are not well scoped will come in late and over budget.
4. “On time and under budget” are misnomers in IT.

Click here to read more…

If you work at a company with a more than a few computers, you are probably familiar with Terminal Services or Remote Desktop Connections. This is a way to connect to computers (workstations/desktops/servers) from another computer and control them as if you are in front of them.

With Windows XP, Vista, and 7, the consumer version of the operating systems did not allow you to connect to the computer via TS or RDP, but the business versions did. As often happens, people have figured out a way to hack the operating systems so that you can enable these remote connection options on the consumer/home versions.

I can’t say for sure whether these work, but if you are looking for a place to start, try these links:

• Enable Remote Desktop On Windows 7 Home Premium – 64 & 32 Bit
• How to Enable Concurrent Sessions in Windows 7 Service Pack 1 RTM
• Windows 7 RTM concurrent remote desktop patch

Do you have still like to use different hard drives on your system to keep your data separate? If so, then perhaps Profile Relocator by Joseph Cox will be useful for you.

Profile Relocator is a step-based application that allows the re-locating of the Windows Users profile directory. Once re-located, any created profiles will appear in the new location in their entirety. The advantage to doing this allows profiles to be stored in a location that doesn’t reside on the system drive, ensuring that profile data isn’t compromised as a result of re-installation or system failure.

Profile Relocator has been designed to work with Windows XP, Vista, and 7.

Please note that this application should ideally be used on new installations of Windows; PR should be used, and then the final profile should be created. See the included documentation for step-by-step information. PR will not move existing profiles as this can be dangerous

NetWrix is a company that makes utilities for comporate network management. Most of the utilities have to do with Active Directory. You may not have to worry about this if you just look after your computer at home, but if you do look after some computers on a network, then there might be some here that are useful. Visit the NetWrix Top 10 Free Tools: New & Updated page for more details…