Updating Windows and Outlook for Daylight Savings Time

Last August Congress passed the Energy Policy Act, which makes daylight saving time (DST) start three weeks earlier and end one week later. The law goes into effect this year, which means we will all “spring forward” our clocks at 2:00 A.M. this Sunday (March 11, 2007).

Normally, with Microsoft Windows you don't have to manually change the time for DST. The operating system does it for you. However, the operating systems (except for Vista) aren't aware of the Energy Policy Act. You will need to install updates to make the change.

Here are the links for instructions on downloading and applying the updates.

Windows XP and Windows 2003

Microsoft Outlook

Unfortunately, there is not a patch for Windows 2000 - you will need to update the computers manually.

ASP.NET and AJAX

This is an excerpt from the Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Team Blog.

Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX 1.0: A Background

Microsoft ASP. NET AJAX 1.0 lets developers build Web 2.0 sites using the latest Ajax techniques. 

ASP.NET AJAX extends ASP.NET 2.0 and makes several new tools and techniques available to help you build applications more quickly:

• Extensions to JavaScript.  ASP.NET AJAX extends the JavaScript library to bring standard object oriented concepts to JavaScript.  It brings a formal type declaration system, with support for inheritance.  It also provides a significant number of out of the box types, including types such as Sys.Net.WebRequest for working with web services.  Finally, it helps to abstract some cross-browser issues such as XML element traversal.  This makes it much easier to create robust JavaScript libraries and frameworks which are commonly needed by rich internet applications.
• ASP.NET Control Extenders.  Extenders are additional ASP.NET controls which can extend the functionality of existing controls with additional Ajax capabilities.  A common example is an extender which allows existing textbox controls to have autocomplete functionality with no modification to the extended control.   (The autocomplete extender is included with the ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit.)
• UpdatePanels.  UpdatePanels allow your existing ASP.NET controls and web parts to achieve the fluid, no-postback updates of Ajax-based applications with minimal re-coding of your control or part.  Quite simply, controls within the UpdatePanel control which ordinarily would post back to update their data will now be routed through an Ajax-style callback, resulting in a silent update back to the server.  This makes your application “postback” much less, making interaction with your control more seamless.

With Microsoft ASP.NET AJAX 1.0, you can build more dynamic applications that come closer to the rich style of interruption-free interaction you may see in standard client applications.

Are you Truly the Master of your Domain?

A few recent incidents have made me realize that most of us have a false sense of security when it comes to the Internet domains that we have registered.

First, people who have domains registered at Registerfly.com have experienced difficulties lately in renewing their domains. Many valuable domains have been lost because of this. These problems had become so numerous and the complaints so loud that Enom has dropped Registerfly as a reseller.

Second, I discovered last week that I could not access any of my domains that used Enom’s DNS. After some investigation I discovered that for some reason Comcast Internet subscribers were not able to see domains using Enom’s DNS. I would never have noticed if I had not been a Comcast subscriber myself. Considering that Comcast is the second largest ISP with over 11 million subscribers - that was a large section of the population cut off from my domains for about six hours.

Because of this I have formulated the following rules to protect our domains.

1. Multiyear registrations – For domains that are important to you, never put yourself in the position of sweating out a renewal. At 10 dollars or less per year the cost is negligible, so always be paid up several years ahead. This way if your registrar merges or runs into financial or legal trouble you are protected. Also, it can help with the search engines as a multiyear registration is a sign of quality and that your website will be around for a while.
   
2. Bullet Proof WHOIS information – Your WHOIS information can be a time bomb waiting to go off.
   
• Don’t use private registration – I hate getting spam emails as much as anyone, but private registration is asking for trouble. Under ICANN rules the registrar or "private registration" company is the legal owner of the domain! Private registration can also hurt you with the search engines.
  
• Register-Lock setting – Always have your valuable domains locked so that they cannot be transferred to someone else without your knowledge. If your registrar does not offer the locking service, change to a different registrar!
  
• Use an email address that you will always have – Never use someone’s personal email address for the WHOIS technical and administrative contacts. If they get hit by a bus or loose their email address, you can have trouble in the future changing your WHOIS information. Instead, use an email address that you will always be in control of – such as hostmaster@yourdomain.com .
  
• Use a strong password for your Registrar Account – the above protections are worthless if someone can break into your domain’s registrar account. Protect this password like it is the password to your bank account.
  
3. Third Party DNS – Not all DNS servers are made equal. For most registrars and hosting companies, DNS servers are an afterthought. For instance, most hosting companies offer only two DNS server addresses to point your domains to - even though five are allowed. To make matters worse, both of these servers will often be using IP addresses from the same C block and will be placed in close physical proximity to each other! Any kind of Internet disturbance, power outage or adverse weather condition could put all their hosted domains off the air. If you are paying for Internet advertising, this can be a huge waste of money as well as lost of profits. You can quickly check your domain’s DNS vulnerability by using Cricket Liu’s free DNS Advisor Tool at http://infoblox.com/services/dns_advisor.cfm . To prevent these potential problems, use a third party DNS for your domains. I recommend dnsmadeeasy.com as they are inexpensive, have multiple redundant servers around the world and offer a 100% uptime guarantee.

By taking the above steps you can now truly be the master of your domain

Microsoft unveils its new SharePoint Community Portal

At the European SharePoint Conference in Berlin Germany yesterday, Microsoft pre-announced their new SharePoint Community Portal build entirely on SharePoint Server 2007. It's in the experimental stage at present, but you can view it at http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/sharepoint/default.aspx.

MSNBC SharePoint Web Parts to be Discontinued Jan 25th

If you have SharePoint installations that are using web parts from the MSNBC online gallery, be aware that they are being yanked by MSNBC and that you will end up with broken links!

See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929197:

On January 25, 2007, the following MSNBC Web Parts will no longer be offered through the online Web Part gallery for Windows SharePoint Services:

•	MSNBC Business News
•	MSNBC Entertainment News
•	MSNBC News
•	MSNBC Sports News
•	MSNBC Stock News
•	MSNBC Stock Quotes
•	MSNBC Technology News
•	MSNBC Weather

On February 6, 2007, these Web Parts will be discontinued, and they will not display data. Beginning on that day, the Web Parts will link to this article. At the end of February, the Web Parts will return an error that resembles the following:

Cannot display information. This Web Part requires a connection to the Internet and Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or later running on a Windows operating system. Customers are advised to remove these web parts as soon as it is convenient to do so.