Time to run trusty old windows update and pickup Windows 7 SP1, which has literally just gone live.

In addition to the usual raft of security, performance & stability improvements we can also expect better HDMI audio interconnectivity, and better folder restoration… but will it cure the hit-and-miss content display refresh issues (certainly hope so, or my F5 key is liable to wear out!).

On a serious note it brings RemoteFX & Dynamic Memory to the client side which, specially if you like to virtualise or provide remote support, should be a significant boon.

So expect a hefty download next time you run windows update! (Ours only came in at 87.1MB on a fully patched Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit system, but that standalone patcher is 2GB!!)

So you want to play with SSL certificates on Windows 2008 (R2)?

Well the you probably already know that SSL & Host Headers don’t mix in IIS 7 (well not via it’s GUI anyway!)!

But never fear, even though the GUI is pathetically incapable of working with host headers & SSL, you can achieve what you want via the command line;
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1. Within IIS  bind the certificate to all the sites you want to use it on (Host Header will be greyed out… hmph…).
2. Fire up good old “cmd” & go to “C:\Windows\System32\Inetsrv\” .
5. Run the following command for each website on the IP address that you want to use the certificate for (copy both lines):

appcmd set site /site.name:”<WebSiteName>” /+bindings.[protocol='https',bindingInformation='*:443:<HostHeaderValue>']

Replace <WebSiteName> with the name of the IIS site and <HostHeaderValue> with the host header for that site.

See, simple! There’s always a way!

So how many password do you have? Or, more importantly perhaps, how many sites do you log in to?

If you’re reading this the answer is most probably “lots”.

But how can we re-engineer the increasing burden of the many different sets of usernames & passwords we must manage? The answer, obviously, is for someone to invent a centralised, secure & authoritative infrastructure for controling identity verification… and luckily… they have… welcome OpenID!

OpenID is an “open source” system / standard, which is both free and widely supported, allowing you to maintain one “identity” and use it with many websites / web apps. Notable providers of OpenID include; BBC, Google, IBM, MySpace, PayPal, VeriSign, WordPress, Orange and Yahoo!, amongst others. Users of OpenID are too numerable to list, but include over a billion users and some 9 million + websites.

So, stop the rot of you’re ever increasing set of usernames & passwords & start using an OpenID, chances are, specially if you already use one of the above sites, you’ve already got one!

If you haven’t yet got one, or if you’d like a neutral, third-party, one I can recommend myopenid.com who provide the leading, independent, OpenID hosting service. Once setup with them you can use your URI to login to OpenID sites (Basically your “myopenid.com” “profile” URI becomes your username; “bobsmith.myopenid.com” and your password will be requested by myopenid.com itself when signing into any sites that support OpenID (if you are not already logged in to myopenid.com that is, in which case you would login to them automatically)).

So why not get yourself an OpenID and support this excellent evolution in Internet authentication!

http://goo.gl

URL shorteners are very useful things in our modern world & I like Google.

Thusly, I hereby encourage everyone to use this new service from Google for all their URL shortening requirements!

It also tracks how many times your shortened URL is clicked and presents this usage data in a really clean & clear way. Bonus!

Following some serious research into the leading players in the enterprise anti-virus market I am happy to reveal that my simple conclusion is that you should only really be considering either Kaspersky or G-Data.

These two products / product ranges are the ONLY two which satisfy the minimum criteria I would require of an anti-virus product at this time.

1. Highest available, independently tested, rating for both “pro-active” & “on-demand” virus detection & removal, with lowest available “false-positives”.
2. Solid, reliable, company with assets to support it long term.
3. An intuitive & practical set of deployment & maintenace tools.
4. Industry leading price point across client, server & management tool licensing.

So it really is that easy! If you are not using one of these products in your corporate environment then you should be asking questions. These are the two clear “best” options, for enterprise anti-virus, world-wide.

Just been using “Quick Config” an excellent tool for managing different system profiles in any version of Windows (inc Windows 7). It allows you to quickly & easily change; System, Network, Browser, Application & Desktop settings by swapping between profiles. You can create any number of said profiles, changing anything from a single setting to large parts of your system’s configuration, for use in different offices / client sites / home.

http://intelloware.com

NOTE: If you do want to use it in Windows 7, make sure you run the application as administrator!

Have been looking for a fast, clean, simple large file sending / sharing service recently and my findings are below!

1. http://www.filedropper.com appeals to me, simple, clean, fast & 5GB filesize cap is huge.

2. https://www.wetransfer.com confidential file? Your covered! Up to 2GB filesize.

3. I was going to add a third option for the sake of fairness & impartiality etc, but I changed my mind, the other options just don’t compare to these two! Sorry!

There are a couple of great tools I use which may help others;

DimDim : Free, No Install, Registration required to “Host”, Voice, Video (20 people) & Desktop Sharing.

TokBox : Free, No Install, Registration required to “Host”, Voice & Video (20 people) but no Desktop Sharing.

TeamViewer : Free, Install Required, No Registration Required, Voice & Video (1-to-1).

Clearly DimDim is the winner at the moment, I’ll update if / when this changes!