Great software for helpdesk professionals

Last week Microsoft has released a great tool for all helpdesk professionals and system administrators called "Change Analysis Diagnostic" which is intended to track changes in your operating system.

A help-desk engineer can specify a date range and the program returns an XML report with the changes made to the OS components, installed software, BHO (browser COM objects), ActiveX controls and many more. Learn more at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/924732 . This tool could be a very nice addition to our help-desk software.

Net Profile Switch 5.3

A small note about our recent release: after 3 months of hard work we have released the next version of our network settings switcher. The new version brings a fancy new feature of assigning different icons to profiles among other improvements.

Also the new version fixes some XP/Vista visual styles incompatibilities, features faster performance, less memory usage and many other improvements.

AspNetForum: future plans

Just a short note to let you know we're working on the next version of our ASP.NET forum software which will bring:

• "closing a thread" feature to make it readonly
• cleaner source codes and a bit of optmizations
• users list will show most active forum users, most recent forum users etc.
• logging "last visit" for all users

And many more. Stay updated.

iTunes killer and "top ten lies of lawyers"

Link-List:

• Amazon has launched a public beta of Amazon MP3, its new digital music download store offering DRM-free music files. Songs cost $.89 or $.99, and full albums cost from $5.99 to $9.99 - which is very nice. But the coolest thing about this - straight, DRM-free mp3-files, that can be played with ANY player, not just iPod or iTunes.
• Guy Kawasaki (I just love the man) writes about Top Ten Lies of Lawyers continuing his "top ten lies" series. Worth a read.

Switching Network Settings vs. "Alternate Configuration"

Today we have received a letter from a very angry user, claiming that Net Profile Switch is, to put it mildly, a totally useless piece of software, cause Windows XP (and higher) has the "Alternate Configuration" tab in its network settings dialog. This tab allows you to specify alternate network settings which will be used by Windows when a DHCP server is not found in range, and thus use the computer on more than one network.

This indeed allows switching network settings but only if you deal with no more than two locations, and one of them has to be DHCP. If you have to switch between two static IP networks - you would still have to do it manually. If you have to switch between three or more network settings, you would still have to do it manually. And, finally, the Alternate Configuration feature does not allow you to specify alternate proxy servers, SMTP-settings, drive mappings, firewall settings, network shares and many other network settings that Jitbit's network settings changer allows to save.

Blogger.com "Remember Me" never works

I was sick and tired typing in my Blogger.com login/password over and over again, since the "remember me" feature does not work in both IE6 and IE7 (very annoying). And according to the Blogger.com help group many people experience the same issue for years.

I finally found a solution: in IE7 open "Tools" - "Internet Options" - "Privacy" - "Sites" and add "google.com" to the sites list. This will allow Internet Explorer to share the "remember me" cookie between "google.com" and "blogger.com" sites.

PS. Still I believe it's a Blogger's issue that should be fixed.

How to find the right idea for your mISV

Since Jitbit is a "mISV" (a software company with less than 10 employees), I'm sharing some mISV-thoughts.

Here are some tips on how to pick the right idea for your first product:

1. Find problems to solve. There are two types of successful software: problem-solvers and "fashion products". The first software product for your mISV should be a "problem-solver". Period. Not some fashionable Web 2.0 fancy social application that the crowd will hopefully go crazy about. Not a product that everyone loves just because "it's cool and all my friends use it". Ok, we all dream about it (I even started a couple), but don't. You shouldn't work on the "next Skype" since you don't have venture-capital behind you to support this kind of product. Your first product shouldn't be the "next iPod", cause you're not Steve Jobs, and you don't have an Apple-II division that makes money you can spend on a Mac-project, which can stay unprofitable for years. Even Google had an initial investment of $1.1 million dollars (including the famous $100,000 check from Sun Microsystems). So, start with a problem-solver.

How do you make a problem-solver? Find problems. You will never find them by spending your day sitting at home, surfing the Internet and reading blogs. Go and face some problems. Find them. Watch other people working with computers. Interview your friends. The best place to find problems is your fulltime job. Find a temp job if you don't have any. Find problems to face.

This may sound too obvious, but we came up with the idea of creating Net Profile Switch after buying a notebook four years ago. Jitbit was a consulting company at that time, so me and my partner spent at least one day a week working at the clients office. So I brought that shiny laptop home and discovered that I cannot connect to my home LAN! I had to change the laptop's network settings, since I had a static IP environment at home and we had dynamic (DHCP) addresses at the office. So Net Profile Switch became our first application, and the first sale came about 3 months after the initial release.

We created our Macro Recorder when I had to issue several hundred digital security certificates by submitting request-codes to a web-form on a CA-server. I had to open a text file, copy the text to the clipboard, open a web-browser, paste the text on a form, submit the form, save the file, and do it over, and over, and over... That's how the first version of Macro Recorder was born. It was buggy, it could automate mouse actions only, and it had all mouse moves and clicks hard-coded into the program, but hey, the macro worked.

2. Always carry a notebook and a pen. Luckily, I had it with me when the above ideas came to me. Forget about PDAs, they're not fast enough to accept your phrases and sketches.

3. Ask your wife. Seriously. Do what Guy Kawasaki says - ask women. He's absolutely right. Ask women about your product before making any decisions.

4. Research the market. Never ever write a single line of code without doing a minimal market research. At least create an AdWords account (you will need it anyways) and use its keyword tool to find out, if people search for the solution you are going to provide.

4.1. Look for the competition. Beware, if there's no competition in the selected niche. It means that the niche is dead. Don't think that you're the only one with this brilliant idea. Most likely someone has already tried it. Read this excellent article by Eric Sink: Choose Your Competition.

5. Stop. Relax, take a deep breath, sleep on it and think it over in the morning.

Popurls

Popurls is a site that shows RSS feeds from the websites like Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Google News, and other social and news portals. Lets you see, in one place, what the Web is buzzing about right now.

White marketing lies

Today I stumbled on a very nice blog by Starr Horne with lots if interesting stuff. You should check this post about Little Marketing Lies. I sign under every word of this. Twice.

France: the country

Continuing the series of posts "about France" (see the previous post) after my short trip.

The Country

Myth #1: France (especially the Azure Coast) is deadly expensive

The cost of living in Paris is less than in most major cities, it's an economic fact. Same for the Azure Coast: we stayed at a 4-stars two-storeyed (!) apartment and it was about 70 euros per day per person. And it was no backwoods, but a famous town of Eze, located just between Nice and Monaco (in the heart of the Azure Coast).

Myth #2: French toilets are awful

The toilets are totally acceptable, even the public ones.

Myth #3: all French women sunbathe topless

You will sure find many exposed breasts, but most women stay covered at the beach.

Myth #4: France is all about wine, berets and fashion

I've never seen anyone wearing a beret during my 9-days visit. Instead, I saw a TGV train which does 581 kilometers an hour (357 miles an hour), which is a world record by the way.

to be continued...

France: the French

I have just came back from a short trip to France, which turned out to be a very impressive country, so I decided to publish a series of "about France" posts.

The French

There are plenty of stereotypes about the French, but don't be fooled by these legends, like I was.

Myth #1: the French are rude and unfriendly

Surprisingly, this is not true. The French are very helpful and nice, even in Paris, which is considered to be the most "unfriendly" city in France. Several times when I was lost in the city, standing and stupidly staring at the subway map, trying to figure out my location, I was approached by a number of citizens who offered their help!

Myth #2: they hate English-speakers

I thought, that when you start speaking English to the French, they take it as a personal insult... Not true. They just sometimes simply don't understand you, especially in small towns. So simply learn some basics, like bonjour/bonsoir, merci and au revoir, to stay polite.

Myth #3: they smoke tons of cigarettes

OK, they do smoke a lot. So what? I don't smoke (quit 2 years ago) and I must say that France is pretty comfortable for a nonsmoker.

Now to the facts that appeared to be true:

Fact #1: the French drink

Oh yes. They do. Trust me - I saw a French wedding. A glass of finest wine... right after a shot of Russian vodka, then, maybe, some champagne, and back to vodka. They even have time to sing a pair of songs between the toasts, and what's more, they look pretty much OK in the morning.

Fact #2: French women are pretty

True. And the mixture of different nations and cultures has made them even prettier.

Fact #3: the French cook fine food

France is known for its fine food. No matter if you are buying a fresh out-of-an-oven croissant in a bakery early in the morning, or visiting a fancy restaurant - it will be de-li-cious.

to be continued...

ASP.NET: validating custom controls

A short hint for ASP.NET developers... If you want your custom control to be validated by ASP.NET validators, simply add a "ValidationPropertyAttribute" attribute to your class definition. Like this:


[ValidationPropertyAttribute(”Message”)]
public class myCustomControl
{
//"message" property, which we want to be validated
public string Message
{
get { return “My Message”; }
}
}