I was reading the notes from the CES conference and saw the tag wireless usb. I did not think much about it. Because I thought they were talking about usb wireless cards (which have been around for a bit). I just saw this post (wireless usb) on digg.com and now realize what they were talking about. It is the ability to access your usb peripherals through a wireless connection. Now this is very cool. I have actually thought about this feature before. I typically have a few items attached to my computer through usb. It would be great to be able to access these items when using my laptop as well. For example, I take my portable usb drive everywhere; I use it for backup and music storage. With wireless usb I would be able to keep it connected to a central place when at home. You could also use this for printers, and things like the griffen Radio Shark (my favorite).

I will be purchasing this when it is available.

A friend of mine is currently in the process of writing a AJAX .NET book. He is expecting a May / June release. The publishing company released a summary of the contents of the book today. Head on over to Apress and view the upcoming “Pro Ajax and the .NET 2.0 Platform” summary.

Dan keeps his blog (www.danwoolston.com) up to date with upcoming AJAX topics

I have had a few people ask me questions on some open-source or alternative portal sites to sharepoint. I have seen a few linux based systems that perform similar tasks to sharepoint but nothing that was on the windows side. Until recently, I ran across (http://www.alfresco.org/)

Alfresco is a great project that allows for a good alternative. I was able to install in a few min (about 20) on windows. They also make a linux version. So go look at the site and view the flash demo.

Well I got some flack the other day about not posting to my blog. I will have to make up for that in the next few days. So get ready for some more strange, rude, and possibly informative posts.

I just read this interesting article about the life span of CD media. (http://msn.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,124312,00.asp?GT1=7645)

They are determining that the life of a burned CD is not that long, and that you should either reburn the media every few years or use Tape. Over the course of the last few years, I have gone away from tape. This is due to Tape being expensive, and difficult to manage. It is really easy to burn a DVD or CD to backup my pictures / files and store them. If the Media is unable to last, like the article says. I may have to move to some alternative methods.

Methods may be
1. Raid hard drives
2. Network shares
3. Online backup solutions (I like Mozy)
4. Newer Tape drives.

I am working with a client that deals in Film and has a business model around film community. I just read a great blog post on how theaters make their money. It was very interesting to me and I thought I would share with the rest of you. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060105-5905.html

I seem to be doing more lately with ISO files. These are disk image files (Definition). I have had 2 instances in the last two days that I have needed to either burn an ISO image (CD and DVD) and also extract files from an ISO image. In the past I have just relied on gold old Nero to handle this for me. But I realized that I do not have that on all my computers. So here is a quick list of tools that work well with ISO images.

1. CD ISO burning software

Free - ISO Burner Powertoy (ISO burner) - this little application allows you to just right click on an ISO and send to your CD-R burner. It could not be any easier to do.

2. DVD ISO burning software

I am sure there are lots of programs out there but I was able to use Nero without any issues to create a DVD from an image file. It is fast and reliable

3. Extract specific files from an ISO image

I had an issue were I needed some files (specifically the i386 directory from W2k3) from an ISO image. You can extract files from an ISO with Daemon tools
. This tool set allows you to create a virtual CDrom or DVD drive on your computer.

I have to thank the guys I work with for suggesting Daemon tools. With these handy applications you can do a lot with ISO files.

There is a new windows vulnerability (Security Bulletin) that effects all windows users. This issue is very interesting because a user does not have to do anything other than view a web page or email that contains an infected image. As of this moment Microsoft does not have a fix or patch for this issue, however there are a few work around available. 1.) unregister the dll that is effected. You can do this by going to a dos window and running this command “regsvr32 -u %windir%\system32\shimgvw.dll” 2.) download the patch from Ilfak Guilfanov.(http://www.hexblog.com/2005/12/wmf_vuln.html#more)