YouTube: My First Post

I found YouTube really easy to work with.  I created my video and saved it in the MP4 format and uploaded it.  A couple of weeks later and I have 1400+ hits.  The web is a great way to have fun expressing yourself.  Let me know what you think about my first YouTube video:

The Dubstep Wingsuit Base Jump Video

You Have Downloaded - We show what you downloaded

A new website to help you determine if anyone at your residence or business is illegally downloading copyrighted materials from the Internet. To determine what your Internet address is type "what is my IP" into your web browser. Input that IP address into www.youhavedownloaded.com. Read more about this service at:

You Have Downloaded - We show what you downloaded:

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Great news on closing the digital divide! ViaSat - WildBlue - Faster Sat Internet Is Coming

A new type of satellite will help speed up bandwidth for rural users who can receive Internet services from Wildblue. Read the article for more information:

ViaSat-1 Satellite Pings WildBlue Network Gateway: Faster Sat Internet Is Coming - HotHardware:

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FCC mandates TV broadcasters to turn down their ads

And there was much rejoicing!  Finally the FCC has told the TV companies to reduce the volume on commercials!  Sorry the exclamations, I'm just glad this change is happening.  The TV companies have fought this mandate and technologies that would automatically reduce the volume or skip ads entirely for decades.
Read more at: http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-volume-loud-tv-ads.html

Pricewatch - Web's first Price Comparison site. Find the lowest price, Black Friday deals and store reviews on tech and more

I've used Pricewatch for several years. As a technician, I'm asked to purchase hardware and software. Pricewatch does a great job of gathering pricing information from around the web and placing the results in easy-to-read lists. Give it a shot, you'll like what you find.

Pricewatch - Web's first Price Comparison site. Find the lowest price, Black Friday deals and store reviews on tech and more

Active Directory Authentication via Microsoft FTP 7.5 on IIS 7.0 and IIS 7.5

I was struggling to find a FTP product which allows secured FTP connections while also authenticating to Active Directory and being able to redirect the user to any specified folder and not to the root.  I tried Filezilla, Sysax Multi Server, WebDAV, and others but none could satisfy the requirements of my staff and web users.  I found Microsoft's own FTP version 7.5 encapsulated all these requirements, though took a bit to configure.  For those of you who want to create this solution, follow these instructions:


1.  Install IIS 7.0 or 7.5 on your Windows 2008 + server.
2.  Download FTP 7.5 for IIS 7, if you're using IIS 7.
3.  Install FTP 7.5 on your IIS server.
4.  Add FTP Publishing to an existing site or create a new FTP site.

5. You'll notice a new selection of FTP related items in your sites IIS menu.

6.  Double-click the FTP Authentication and disable Anonymous and IISManagerAuth, enabling only Basic.
7. Double-click the FTP Authorization Rules icon and create a new Allow Rule.  I created a new local group and placed my FTP users in it from the various domains in the forest.

8.  Double-click the FTP SSL Settings icon and select Require "SSL connections." To perform this action, you'll need to either create a local certificate or have purchased one from GoDaddy, Verisign, Comodo, Digicert, Thawte, or some other SSL certificate provider.

9. Double-click on the FTP User Isolation icon and select "User name directory."  This allows the creation of Active Directory domain-based user Virtual Directories.   

10.  Now you have the ability to redirect each FTP user to their virtual folder based on their domain.  For instance, if you have a domain named mybusiness.net, you'll make a new virtual folder off the root called mybusiness (excluding the root suffix).  For local server accounts, create a folder called LocalUser.  In the picture below, I have a MyBusiness domain FTP user named Bob and a server-based FTP user named Tom.  Also remember that all these users have to be added to the local FTP Users group added in Step 7.

11.  Step 10 illustrates how easy it is to create FTP user home folders.  From there, you can create sub virtual directories and point those to any file location your server has access to.  This makes it nice when a user needs access to multiple folders.  Instead of having the perusing your server folder structure and securing NTFS so they don't accidentally manipulate file unintentionally, have IIS make a clean folder structure for them.

12.  Firewall: Configure your firewall to allow port 21 and a range of consecutive ports for file transferring.  IIS.Net recommends ranges so FTP doesn't step on other ports.  To manually set up a range of ports, access the FTP Firewall Support section on the actually IIS Server link in IIS, not your site.

13.  In step 12, I added a 30000 - 30015 port range.  After this setting is applied, add the rule to your server's Firewall settings and any other network firewall too.

14.  Click on your site then the FTP Firewall Support section and you'll see the ports added but grayed out.

15.  After researching numerous websites, I found no way to effectively limit the data channel ports.  Yes I can manipulate the port range in step 14 but found it not working.  As such, every other aspect of Microsoft FTP 7.5 is great but if you need to tighten your firewall, this product is NOT for you!  You would have to open approximately 20,000 ports in the RPC range -- not viable.  I'm going to try WFTPD instead and see if I have better success.

Windows Sysinternals: Documentation, downloads and additional resources

If you use utilities to fix Windows computers, this repository by SysInternals should be in your arsenal. Mark Russinovich started making Windows tools many moons ago and now his site is integrated into Microsoft's site and I believe he is a Fellow for Microsoft. His Process Explorer and Autoruns are just two quick examples of no frills get the job done technical tools.

Windows Sysinternals: Documentation, downloads and additional resources:

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Android Market "10 Billion Promo" Day Five Deals: Apparatus, The Sims 3, Pano, And More Just 10¢ Each

Hurry while it last! Google's discounting a handful of nice apps for 10 cents each in celebration of their 10 billion app downloads. I'm sure this won't last long so gettem while they're hot!


Android Market "10 Billion Promo" Day Five Deals: Apparatus, The Sims 3, Pano, And More Just 10¢ Each:

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Google Currents reader application

Currents! A new Google app worth downloading. Currents provides a nice list of websites to choose from and downloads current articles in the background for your viewing pleasure. A quick and clean application where perusing sites while waiting for your meeting or at lunch is a cinch. Links below include a review and information from Google:

Google Currents reader app: Hands-on first impressions:

Click here to read more about Currents from Google

Apple hits 15 billion app downloads, Android hits 10 billion

Apple and Google are leading the way into new the model of purchasing software. Their application download stores have reached over 25 billion! I think it's safe to say that the mobile market is here to stay. Phones have taken over as cameras, music players, GPS guides, time-wasting game players, web browsing, email recipients, book readers, and more.

Google’s Android Market Hits 10 Billion Downloads - HotHardware:



How many ways can you say 15 billion App Store downloads? - Apple 2.0 - Fortune Tech:

One of the best Web Debugging Programs, and it's free

I've used Fiddler bunches of times. It's easy to use too. Open Fiddler, browse websites, then look at Fiddler's log. It'll show you exactly where you've directed when browsing sites. If there's backend redirects, you'll be able to see them.
Fiddler Web Debugger - A free web debugging tool:

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Eating your own dogfood - Google Ice Cream Sandwich

A term to live by when creating new products or software: dogfooding.
Google employees are receiving Ice Cream Sandwich over-the-air (OTAs) updates on their Nexus S phones - Dogfooding Has Begun:

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