Security 1.0 was an afterthought: throw everything behind a firewall and hope for the best. Security 1.5 bordered on overkill: build security into everything, to the extent that end-users become frustrated and unable to get anything done.

Security 2.0 will be, I hope, based on a recognition that security is not a “one size fits all” proposition, that layered security doesn’t necessarily mean to keep piling on layer after layer after layer until your OS and apps are too bogged down to perform their original tasks. Instead it means taking the time to do a real risk assessment, to consider the importance of what’s being protected along with the threat exposure and apply the appropriate layers of security needed for the required level of protection.

Read more about my thoughts on that in my Editor’s Corner article titled Security 2.0: How Paranoid Are You? in this week’s VistaNews at www.vistanews.com

I’ve just accepted an invitation to speak at the American Bar Association’s TechShow in Chicago next April. The show is billed as the world’s premier conference on legal technology and offers CLE (Continuing Legal Education) credit.

I’ll be speaking on telecommuting technologies and data security – two topics that are very near and dear to my heart.  The keynote is being given by Richard Susskind, who was IT Adviser to the Lord Chief Justice of England. It should be an interesting experience.

More info on the conference at
http://www.abanet.org/techshow/

After my article in the November 18 edition of WXPnews, in which I noted that I didn’t find the vast majority of messages posted to Twitter very interesting or useful, many of my readers wrote and told me I should give it more of a chance. Several said “Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it.”

Well, I had in fact tried it before writing about it, but I decided that maybe they were correct that a few days of posting messages to the two people in my address book who had Twitter accounts and reading the stuff on the public timeline might not be a sufficient basis on which to judge it, so I thought about it and decided maybe I could put it to better use.

This past week, I’ve been using the service to post updates when I make a blog post or finish writing an article for one of the newsletters or for one of the tech sites that publish my work. I also took my account off the “protect my updates” option so they would appear on the public board. Well, I noticed an upswing in hits on my blog sites and I’ve gotten quite a few new “followers.”

To make it more convenient to use the service, I installed a little Vista sidebar gadget (called, appropriately enough, Twitter Gadget). It sits on the desktop and shows new posts as they come in:

 
Twitter Gadget

If you click the “Post New” link in the upper left corner, you get a fly-out as shown below, into which you can type a new twitter post:

 
Fly-out into which you can type a new post

Just click the “Update <—“ link and it posts the new message to Twitter; you never have to go to the web site.

I also put the code on my web site at www.debshinder.com so my updates are automatically pulled and displayed there. Cool.

So it appears I’ve actually found a use for Twitter, and I guess I can now call myself a full fledged twit. :)  Now that I’m using it, though, there are some things I wish they would do to improve the service:

Most importantly, make it easier to find people you know. Yes, Twitter will check your address book if you give it permission, but only web mail address books. I’d like to be able to just type in the email address of a person I know and check to see if he/she is on Twitter, without giving the service access to my whole address book.

But hey, it’s free. Can’t complain too much.

I have to admit that I was not originally enamored with the idea of PowerShell. Oh, I harbor a small bit of nostalgia for MS-DOS and I once knew my way around a command line – and still use cmd frequently in troubleshooting situations – but after all, what makes Windows Windows is, well, the windows. The GUI, that is. If I wanted to work in “the dark place” all the time, I’d just install UNIX.

And I think Microsoft really messed up by making Exchange 2007 so command-line-centric. Having the robust command set there for those who prefer it is a great thing, but forcing it on people who are used to being able to perform those tasks through dialog boxes and mouse clicks is something quite different. Give us more options, don’t take options away.

So when I signed up for Microsoft’s TechDays seminar at the Dallas Convention Center, which was held earlier this week, the presentation on PowerShell was the one I was least looking forward to. I should know better than to try to second guess myself because – yep, you guessed it – it turned out to be the best session I attended.

That might have been in part because Shawn Travers, the Microsoft IT evangelist who did all three morning sessions, was just so obviously enthusiastic about PS. But as he ran demo after demo of what it could do, it became obvious that the name wasn’t wishful thinking: it’s a tool that is indeed powerful. As he pointed out, the regular Windows command prompt is pretty limited; it’s basically the same as the old 16 bit version. It’s also text oriented, whereas PS is object oriented; every response that it returns is an object

And I began to realize that one reason I’ve never enjoyed scripting is because I’m not a programmer and scripts are based on programming languages. Shawn explained that PS was specifically designed for IT pros, not developers, and thus the cmdlets (commandlets) are in a language that attempts to mirror the way IT pros think and work without requiring programming knowledge or the programming mindset. Cmdlets are little “one liners” that let you perform single functions. For multiple functions, you put cmdlets together to form a script. PS is supposed to be a way to let us write and use scripts without the hassle factor. And that is a very good thing.

You don’t have to write your own scripts from scratch. Microsoft has hundreds available for download in the TechNet Script Center at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/hubs/msh.mspx . And if you still just don’t like that “dark place,”  Shawn noted that there are third party programs available that will provide a GUI frontend for PS. One of these is PowerGUI, which is available at http://powergui.org/index.jspa

PS 1.0 is included in Windows Server 2008, but you can download it and install it on Vista, XP with SP2 or above, or Server 2003. Just go to http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/powershell/download.mspx . If you want to be on the cutting edge, there is a Community Technology Preview (CTP) version of PowerShell 2.0 available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=7C8051C2-9BFC-4C81-859D-0864979FA403&displaylang=en 

One caveat: it was mentioned by some attendees of the session that you’re required to uninstall PS 1.0 before you can install 2.0 – and that the uninstallation in some instances may break some of your applications. That’s not good – so if you just want to play around with it, it might be better to install it on a test machine or in a VM and wait for the release of 2.0 before you put it on your production machines (of course, we can also hope that this problem will be solved in the final release of 2.0).

We made another addition to our computer family this week, due to the tragic and sudden death of an old friend: Tank, the 17 inch HP laptop that ran XP Media Center Edition and that we took on trips to do presentations and demos. When we're at home, Tom uses (used) it to watch TV programs and horse races online in his study (where he retreats if I'm working or have someone over).

After years of faithful service, suddenly one day he turned it on and had a black screen. We thought at first that it was just a video problem - and it was partially that because when we attached its VGA output to a monitor, we got video during bootup, but no Windows. Tom tried reinstalling the OS but that didn't help, so we decided it must be a sign that it was time to retire the old guy and look for a snazzy new "tank."

First thing we discovered is that prices have come down appreciably. The old one cost a little over $1100, with 2 GB RAM and a 120 GB hard drive. A little research found us a newer version of the same type of "portablel desktop replacement" for $899 at Best Buy. This one has a 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 4 GB of RAM, a 320 GB hard drive, and many accoutrements such as an eSATA port and 802.11n wireless support. Wow.

Here's the link to the specs:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9053007&type=product&id=1218012194815 

With its 512MB Geforce video card, it runs Aero just fine (and scores an impressive 4.9 on the Windows Experience Index; the only laptop I've seen that scored higher was a Toshiba Qosmio that cost almost twice as much and weighed a pound a half more. Despite being far more powerful than our old tank, the new HP is significantly thinner and weighs only 7.6 lbs., which sounds hefty compared to my little 2.7 lb. Sony but isn't bad at all for a monster machine like this.

Here's a photo:

Best of all, it comes with Vista (64 bit, and memory is expandable to 8 GB), which means Tom is finally being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the Vista world - and discovering that he actually likes many things about the OS, after all. :)

DEBRA LITTLEJOHN SHINDER, MCSE, MVP
deb@shinder.net    www.debshinder.com

In recent posts, I mentioned that due to a problem running Flash on IE 8 after an update, I made Chrome my default browser so it would be the one to open when I click links in email messages from friends who often send YouTube videos that require Flash (and no, I don’t ever click such links unless they are from folks I know well and who use good security and the accompanying text is obviously something that person would write).

I got mail from several readers with suggestions on how to fix the problem in IE8. I’ve tried some of those and so far none have worked, but there is one more that I will try this weekend. Thanks to everyone who attempted to help with that.

I also received numerous messages from people who are fans of Firefox or Opera, who tried to persuade me that I should have chosen one of those browsers instead of Chrome. I had outlined in a previous post my reasons for the choice. As I wrote before, the real “deal breaker” for me with the other two browsers was the fact that they didn’t have a “Send Mail” link that would invoke Outlook, and Chrome did.

Fixing Firefox

Adam R. was the one who gave me a fix for that, along with other tweaks that turned Firefox into my new default browser. His advice:

“For something similar in Firefox, create a bookmark in the bookmark toolbar with the following location:

javascript:location.href='mailto:?SUBJECT='+document.title+'&BODY='+escape(location.href);”

And I also found an easy way to do that. This link refers to OS X and Safari, but never mind that. Just drag the link in the grey box to the Bookmarks bar in Firefox 3, rename it from “This link” to “Send Mail” and you have a one-click way to send a link via Outlook (or, I presume, your other default email client):
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030326060534191 

 
Now I have a “SEND” button on the Firefox favorites bar

 
Clicking my SEND button invokes Outlook’s “compose mail” window with a link to the current page already inserted

Taking it to the Opera

After a little tweaking, I also got it to work in Opera, although not as elegantly as with FF. I had the same problem as with IE; I couldn’t drag it to the toolbar. I tried to right click it and save as a bookmark in the Links folder, but that didn’t work this time. So then I tried actually clicking the link and then dragging the URL from the address bar to the Links toolbar. That did create a link on the toolbar.

At first, though, it only invoked Opera’s own built in mail program. Luckily, you can change that in the Tools | Preferences dialog box. Click the Advanced tab, then the Programs choice in the left pane, then click “mailto” and the Edit button. Here you can tell Opera to open the mailto command with your default email client instead of with Opera, or even set it to open with another application.

Unfortunately, with this method, clicking the SEND link moves your browser to the javascript page and you have to click the Back button to get to the original page whose link you just sent via email.

Buttoning up IE8

This method also works with IE 8, but there’s an easier way. You can right click a toolbar, click Customize, and then Add/Remove Commands. In the left pane, there are icons for “Send Link by Email” and for “Send Page by Email.” Just highlight the one you want and click the Add button.

The only annoying aspect with IE’s button is that when you send a link, it’s not activated (clickable) unless you click at the end of it and add a space.

You can add buttons to IE8 that will send the link or the page via your default email client

Summary

I still have a gripe with Mozilla and the makers of Opera. It would have been very easy for them to put this button on the toolbar themselves (either by default, or as an option in the toolbar customization tool). And it’s not especially easy to find out how to add it in IE, either. I suspect many people who email lots of links are using Chrome solely or primarily for that feature.

Once you get the button/link into Firefox, it works better than in IE (where you have to put a space after the link to activate it) or Opera (where you have to click the Back button to get back to the page whose link you just sent) and identically to Chrome, where Google did that particular thing exactly right.

Anyway, A great big thank you to Adam, and I will write about some of the other tweaks he gave me for Firefox, as well as some ways to make all four browsers better, in next week’s VistaNews. Meanwhile, for the moment I’m firing up the Fox when I need to view Flash pages.

For the record, I still prefer IE 8 slightly and will probably return to it if and when the Flash problem is resolved, but with the configuration changes I’m discovering (mostly with Adam’s help), I like FF far more than I used to (and lots better than IE 7).