ben.hamilton.id.au

Ok, I’m not accepting any Facebook invites. All Facebook does for me is consume my time and I’ve got work to do.

LinkedIn on the other hand is my online resume, it does keep me in touch with other working professionals. I often get asked “Why LinkedIn?” – well I’ve found this slideshow that details what and how you can use LinkedIn, go check it out.

If you want to connect to me via LinkedIn there are two questions I need to be able to answer first before I’ll accept:

• Are you (or your company) someone I know or deal with or about to deal with?
• Is there any value in us being connected?

If your invite answers those, all is good. You can find my LinkedIn Profile here.

I have to thank Kevin Chieff (ACT! guru) for pointing me to this link on how to tell the difference between versions of Microsoft SQL 2005 – and the MS page it points to re the SERVERPROPERTY (Transact-SQL) command.

The number of times I’ve had to work out just which version of SQL is running is amazing. The difficulty in doing so is amazing. There ought to be a simple utility that does it all.

So the two links above will get used a lot in conjuction with my previous post re determining SQL versions.

Talking with Mike Lazarus, self described and evident ACT! Evangelist, about HHC (aka HandHeldContact) and he passed on a list he has of some of the HHC advantages (in no particular order):

• No need to set up on each user’s PC – faster installation and implementation
• Central administration – including profiles for multiple users and the ability to delete the database from a device remotely
• Supports – Terminal services, Citrix, Web
• Syncs wirelessly up to every 15 minutes
• Uses its own database, so no sudden duplication of the database as happens in most of the link products.
• Automatically send important contacts based on activities scheduled or dynamic groups
• Records Calls, Emails and SMS made from HHC on the device
• Up to 76 ACT! fields (26 standard and 50 user-definable)
• Pop-ups (pull-downs) optionally sent to better support data entry
  i.e. if you have an ID STATUS field, HHC will sync the possible values for this field so that when you add a contact via the PDA you have those fields available
• Adding activities on the device sync correctly to the right contact
• Ability to create activities WITH multiple contacts
• View and Schedule activities for other ACT! users
• New build to support ACT!’s Custom Activity Types due very soon

At Evolution Marketing, I’ve been playing with HHC for a few clients. Setting up and deploying the HHC is easy. I’ve simply had people visit a URL, follow the prompts and with little work on the server end, which I’ve been doing remotely to the server, and within 30 min they have their Contacts, task and Calender on the Blackberry. Not only that but I’ve been setting it up so they can see selected calenders of other users. For me this is a major difference between using MS Exchange and ActiveSync.

So far, I haven’t setup HHC on a Windows Mobile device, but the documentation says it can be done. I hope it is as easy as the BB version.

[update: Mike has just said it is the same on WM6, also said setup time for 1 or two users is almost same as setting up 30 users, it only adds 2 min per user, which I can readily believe given the experience I've had so far. And if someone schedules an appointment or activity for you with a contact that you are not currently sync'ing to your PDA, then HHC will automagically include that contact on the next sync, how cool is that?]

Wow!. via Schneier on Security.

It is now two weeks in to my new digs at Evolution Marketing – and it sure is fun.

Primarily I’ve been learning how to drive ACT!, software to take care of your contact management. Yesterday and today I’ve been playing with custom tables in the ACT! MS-SQL database. While ACT! looks after contacts and tasks, meetings & calls to do with your contacts really well, some clients would like to be able to do even more, like handle job sheets etc. Which is the reason for the custom tables. These allow us to track all sorts of other information and connect them to contacts & companies.

I’ve also setup a Blackberry Bold simulator and a Windows Mobile 6 Emulator, this allows me to experience the same things as our clients, notably HandHeldContact, which allows you to sync multiple calenders, notes, histories etc to your phone – loads more than MS Exchange alone allows.

To paraphrase the paragraphs above, I’m having fun learning new stuff!

The other staff at Evolution are great to work with, the coffee is good and all the tech toys I’ve asked for have been delivered, with the exception of the telephone headset, but it is on the way so they’re forgiven ;-). Woot!

Update 20th Oct: Got the telephone headset on Friday afternoon. Cool.

If like me you need to test if network traffic is getting through a firewall then this tool will be of use to you as well.

You run it on the target/client system, specify which port you want it to listen on, a response message and click on listen. Able to listen on multiple ports even.

Get listen from here.

This is the best explaination I’ve seen so far of the US credit crisis. It runs for approx 6min on youtube, you will want speakers. Clear and simple.

Bonus link: Economics explained (this one takes the mikey, the other link above is serious).

Well. Didn’t expect to see this, but here it is, the RFCs regarding SMTP have been updated. (hat tip)

Makes for an interesting read if your into this kind of thing.

Sometimes while supporting products, it is very useful to know just what version/s of .NET are installed.

Found this tool just now shows you just that: Free DotNet VersionCheck Utility

If you’ve ever wanted a quick way to find out which versions and service packs of the .NET runtime are installed on a machine, or if you’re trying to resolve a ‘missing mscoree.dll’ error, then DotNET Version Checker is for you. VersionCheck itself does not depend on the .NET runtime. VersionCheck will also tell you whether you have the required Windows components to run .NET applications, and will prompt you with download locations if not.

Update: this page at Microsoft lists the downloads for .NET in the left menu bar.

Spotted this great list of open source tools for system administrators: 24 Great Open Source Apps for Admins & Technicians.

I can personally vouch for a number of these:

• Angry IP Scanner
• PuTTY
• DBAN
• DeltaCopy

For some tools that are not open source but free, you can’t go past live.sysinternals.com (details here) – now owned by Microsoft themselves these tools make a Windows Sysadmin job much easier.