Connecting to multiple IEEE 802.11 networks with one WiFi card

VirtualWiFi is a virtualization architecture for wireless LAN (WLAN) cards. It abstracts a single WLAN card to appear as multiple virtual WLAN cards to the user. The user can then configure each virtual card to connect to a different wireless network. Therefore, VirtualWiFi allows a user to simultaneously connect his machine to multiple wireless networks using just one WLAN card. This new functionality introduced by VirtualWiFi enables many new applications, which were not possible earlier using a single WLAN card.

Full article: http://research.microsoft.com/netres/projects/virtualwifi/

Ive been interested in speech recognition with Dragon and IBS's sytem for a long time.  However 90% accuracy still means a lot of slow error correction and Ive still to be convinced.  Perhaps Windows Vista will provide the technology to make this input method mainstream.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/06/01/speechinWindowsVista/default.aspx

My 12 year old son was asking maths questions the other day and we got onto the root of minus 1.  I remembered it as being "j", however it is infact "i".

Here is an extract from good article explaining "i"

What is the square root of minus one? In other words, is there a number which when multiplied by itself, produces an answer "- 1"?

In arithmetic, minus multiplied by minus gives plus. (Taking a debt away from someone is really like crediting a positive sum of money - and in a similar way, a sentence containing two negatives becomes positive). Thus, because (- 1) squared equals +1, the answer to Ö (-1) cannot be "minus one" (nor can the result be plus one).

As far as ordinary, everyday numbers go, the square root of minus one does not exist. However, mathematicians find it useful to invent a completely new kind of number to fulfil that role. They decided to assume that such a root really did exist, and wrote 'i' to represent it. ('i' was chosen because it stands for "imaginary").

We can now go on and find the square root of minus four: the answer is '2i', because

(2i)² = 4i² = - 4

Full article

Upgrade a server or virtual server
To upgrade your server to Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services, run Setupsts.exe. Running Setupsts.exe upgrades your server and the default virtual server. If you have additional virtual servers to upgrade, you can upgrade each virtual server individually by using the upgrade operation with the Stsadm.exe command-line tool.

How?

Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Command Prompt.
Navigate to the C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\60\Bin folder.
Type stsadm.exe -o upgrade -url <URL>, where <URL> is the URL of the virtual server you want to upgrade.

After finding a very good File Sync and pier to pier application for normal files.  Here is a list of items which take this to the next level.  Images, Video and even TV can be streamed from your home machine to authorised users via the Net. (Microsoft is also rumoured to be developing this feature on their Windows Media platform)

www.orb.com

Hardware solutions:

• Slingbox
• ROKU PhotoBridge HD

On instaling an Iomega 250Gb network (1Gb) external harddrive I was surprised that it had access to a service called Foldershare.

This is an online service that allows Folders to be sync'd and files accessed remotely from your home PC or device.  Because the Iomega has the FolderShare software built in it just works.

HOWEVER Microsoft found this such a good piece of technology that they have bought it and the service is to terminate.  Presumably some form of Foldershare will appear in MSN Live, however until it does here are some links to other apps that do a similar thing. (None of them seem to rate as highly as FolderShare)

BelSync

BearShare Pro 4.0 Full review

Morpheus 2.0

Qtraxmax 1.0.4

PC Mag article (full version)

Today, however, there are any number of inexpensive, Web-based applications that let you move files between point A and point B. You can use a remote access tools like Laplink Everywhere or 01 Communique's I'm InTouch. And if you'd like to swap files with friends, family, and colleagues, you can use private peer-to-peer apps like Grouper, Qnext, or ShareDirect. Then there are apps like BeInSync and ByteTaxi's FolderShare. With these tools, you can easily swap files among your own machines and also with friends and family. And you can automatically synchronize files and folders across multiple machines, avoiding manual transfers entirely. If you change a file on one machine, it's automatically changed on all the others.

Ever wanted to connect to the console session of a Win2k3 box via RDP?

'mstsc /v:machine-name /console'

ProduKey is a small utility that displays the ProductID and the CD-Key of MS-Office, Windows, and SQL Server installed on your computer.

http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/product_cd_key_viewer.html

Note: Updated 1st April 2006 for SP2

I needed to create an eventsync in Windows Sharepoint Portal 2.0.  This should have been reasonably straight forward, however with the scenario I found myself in it has taken 3 days of research and pondering to get the job done.

This is my environment and I explain after that how I managed to do it.

Dev Machine
XPSP2, VS2005
Dev Server
W2k3, Sharepoint Services 2.0

• First thing was to copy the Microsoft.SharePoint.dll from the Server to the Dev Machine so a reference could be made to it.
• Create a class library and add a reference to the sharepoint dll

Example using C#

using Microsoft.SharePoint;

namespace iwaszko.com.STS_EventHandler
{
  public class BaseEventSync : Microsoft.SharePoint.IListEventSink
  {
    void IListEventSink.OnEvent(Microsoft.SharePoint.SPListEvent evt)
    {
       DispEvt(evt);
    }
  }
}

• Strong name
  Because a strong name is needed for the assembly then in VS2003 you would normally had the path to an assemblykey as an assembly attribute:
  Such as [assembly: AssemblyKeyFile("Local_Drive:\\DocLibHandler.snk")]
  
  However it is different for VS2005.  You need to open the properties of the Project->Signing, tick the sign the assembly check box and add a path to the strong name keyfile.
  (you can create a new Strong name key file in this section if required)
  
• Build your project and the next stage is to add your dll to the servers GAC.  You can do this by dragging you dll into the c:\windows\assembly directory
  However this is where things started to go wrong !
  
• Firstly make sure you have dotNet 2.0 installed on the server.  Adding a dotNet 2.0 assembly to a machine without it gives and odd and unhelpful error.
  (I found a reboot of the server after installing dotNet 2.0 helped as well but this may not be required)
  
• Normally, to configure Sharepoint Services to handle events with your assembly you just need to enter its information into the document library advanced settings, however there are a few steps you need to watch out for !

a) Because VS2005 creates a dotNet 2.0 assembly and Sharepoint 2.0 is working on dotNet 1.x you cant register your event handler

I didnt want to revert to VS2003 so I tried to see if you could use dotNet 1.x with VS2005 - according to Microsoft you cant !

"Visual Studio 2005 ships with version 2.0 of the .NET Framework. Visual Studio 2005 does not allow you to choose to support version 1.0 or version 1.1 of the .NET Framework. You can only create projects that support version 2.0."  Details here

b) Thus I need to make Sharepoint on the Dev server run on dotNet 2.0
 1) You must make sure that the Sharepoint 2.0 SP2 upgrade is installed.  This will allow Sharepoint to run on dotNet 2.0

 2) Open IIS Administrator, open the properties on the Sharepoint Web Site, Choose the ASP.Net Tab, select 2.0.x as the ASP.Net version.
    Note: This will temporarily break you sharepoint installation, but dont panic!

If you try to access the site you will recieve the following message: This Windows SharePoint Services virtual server has not been configured for use with ASP.NET 2.0.50727.42. For more information, please refer to Knowledge Base article 894903 at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=42660.

 2) Because of the different security model in dotNet 2.0 you must run the following On the Sharpoint server [full details here]:
      stsadm.exe –o upgrade –forceupgrade –url http://URLOftheVirtualServer

3) Register and install your dotNet 2.0 assembly into the EventHandler section for the Document Library you require.  (Information below from Sharepoint SDK)      

• On the Virtual Server General Settings page in SharePoint Central Administration, select On in the Event Handlers section to enable use of event handlers on the virtual server.
  Note: To implement the handler in a document library, versioning must be enabled on the Document Library Settings page for the library.
  
• From a view of the document library to which you want to attach the event handler assembly, click Modify settings and columns, and then click Change advanced settings on the page for customizing the document library.
  
• On the Document Library Advanced Settings page, type the strong name for the assembly in the Assembly Name box. For example, DocLibHandler, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=Neutral, PublicKeyToken=0fafac2a0cc92888. You can get the values used in the strong name by right-clicking the DLL of your assembly in the Local_Drive:\WINDOWS\assembly directory and then clicking Properties on the shortcut menu.
  
• Type the fully qualified, case-sensitive name of the class in the Class Name box, which in this example is DocLibEventHandler.DocVersionHandler.
  
• Reset IIS by typing iisreset at a command prompt.

I can now use VS2005 with dotNet 2.0 dll's handling the events for Sharepoint Services site which is running on dotNet 2.0 - The best of all worlds - its just a shame these things take so long the first time around. So if you need to do something similar I hope this helps.