A Modicum of Mediocrity

LastPass for Password Management

2011-07-16T13:16:00.001-05:00

LastPass is a fantastic online, cross-browser, multi-platform password management solution that I have been using for just over a year now, and I must say that it is a great service.

Most of us have multiple web sites that we use on a regular basis that require a username and password to log in and gain access to the site. I, for example, use the web quite heavily. In addition to having several traditional e-mail accounts, I do my banking online, pay most of bills through company web sites and have accounts with various vendors: Amazon and Netflix, for example, just to name two.

The problem comes in creating secure passwords for all of these various online entities. For security purposes, it is essential to use a password that is not easily guessable: long passwords that are not in the dictionary. Ideally, the password should be a mix of upper and lower case letters, numbers, and 'special characters' (%$&*@#, for example). Furthermore, each of the various web sites that you have accounts with really should have their own unique password.

So the question is how to manage this list of long, non-guessable, non-dictionary, site-by-site-unique passwords: enter LastPass. I have used other solutions for this problem (KeePass and Password Safe come to mind), but I believe that LastPass is the best.

The Basics

To use LastPass, you create an account at lastpass.com using an existing e-mail account as your username and one very good password that will be your LastPass master password. You then download a browser plugin for any or all of the browsers you use (IE, Firefox, Safari and Chrome) on either Windows, Mac or Linux.

Once installed, you use the plugin to log in to your LastPass account. Then, as you navigate the web and log in to the various web sites that you do business with, LastPass will ask if you want it to remember the site's login information for you. LastPass stores all of your various web sites login information in an encrypted database on your computer.

Now, if you were like me and had some not so strong passwords here and there, now is the time to change them. I would recommend logging in to all of the various web sites that you use and change the passwords to something secure and allow LastPass to remember it for you. And creating a secure password is easy because LastPass also has a Generate Secure Password function built in to the plugin.

Cloud Synchronization

There are lots of password storage tools available, but LastPass not only keeps a copy of your encrypted password database on your computer, it synchronizes that database to their servers 'in the cloud'. This not only means that you have an encrypted backup of you password database, but any computer on which you subsequently install the LastPass plugin can be used to log in to your LastPass account and get the same password database. Any change to your password database from one computer is synchronized to all others.

Security

One of the things that makes LastPass so appealing to me is that your encryption key is never stored anywhere, and at no time does LastPass have the key for your password database. As explained by Steve Gibson in episode 256 of Security Now, when you attempt to log in to LastPass, your username and password are concatenated and hashed via SHA 256. This hash value is used as the encryption key for your password database using AES 256. Your password is then concatenated with this AES key and hashed again. This hash value is used to authenticate with LastPass in order to synchronize your database.

Other Features

Here are just a few of my favorite features. Most are free, but some require a $12/year premium subscription.

Secure Notes - Save a simple text note that you want to keep private.
Form Fill-In - Save name, address, and credit card information securely for fast web site form fill-in.
Multi-factor Authentication using Sesame application or using a YubiKey.
Offline database decryption using the Pocket Pass application.
Mobile applications for your smart phone.

More Information

Lastpass.com
Steve Gibson's review on the Security Now podcast

iOS 4 for the iPod Touch

2010-06-22T23:41:00.000-05:00

I am sure that most people are aware that this week Apple is releasing its latest iteration of the iPhone: the iPhone 4. With the upcoming iPhone 4 release, Apple has pushed the newest version of the iPhone/iPod OS, iOS 4, to older iPhone models, as well as the iPod Touch. And while Apple claims to have added "over 100 new features", there are two new features that I find particularly useful: multitasking and folders.

Multitasking

Multitasking obviously isn't anything new to the computer world, but it apparently is to the iPhone/iPod. With the iOS 4 update, a double-tap of the Home button reveals a small horizontal bar at the bottom of the screen that shows all the apps currently running. The screen shot to the right is from my iPod Touch and shows the four most recent applications that I opened. A swipe to the left on the task bar reveals more and more apps.

Folders

Another new feature is the addition of 'folders' to the home screen. This makes it much easier to organize various related apps by simply dragging icons from one app onto another. For example, I created folders called 'Games', 'Books', 'Social', etc. To access the apps I just tap the folder icon and it opens to reveal a small horizontal bar in the middle showing the apps for me to choose.

Bruce Schneier: Uber Nerd

2010-05-10T18:56:00.000-05:00

For the past several weeks I have enjoyed reading and studying Bruce Schneier's book "Applied Cryptography". Now, while I have no aspirations of becoming a cryptanalyst, it has been an interesting study during my down time between semesters. I'm now up to the chapter on cryptographic hash functions: oh the suspense is killing me. But I digress.

One little nugget I thought amusing was something Bruce wrote in the preface of his book. I know. I know. "You actually read the preface?", you ask. Yes...sadly. Anyway, in the preface to his book, Bruce waxes poetic for a couple of pages explaining how important it is that the citizens of a free nation be allowed the right to keep their data and communications encrypted and secured against unauthorized government eavesdropping (a.k.a. illegal wiretapping). He sums up his discussion writing, "The lesson here is that it is insufficient to protect ourselves with laws; we need to protect ourselves with mathematics [emphasis added]." I have never thought of math as a weapon. Bruce Schneier: Uber Nerd.

Clean Install of Windows 7 - via the Upgrade Media

2009-10-29T19:44:00.005-05:00

Recently, Paul Thurott explained how to do a clean installation of Windows 7 using the Windows 7 upgrade version. Of course you need to actually own a previous version of Windows to qualify for the upgrade, but what PC user on the planet doesn't? Now, Paul is not advocating software piracy, and neither am I, but when I upgrade to a new OS, I want to do it cleanly: wipe the hard drive and start fresh. And what if I need to replace my hard drive at some point. Does Microsoft really expect me to first install a previous OS version just to have something on the hard drive for Win 7 to upgrade: ludicrous. Click here to go the WinSuperSite and see how to do it.

If you don't need the screen shots of the procedure, here's important part about the registry hack. Just be sure not to try to activate Windows or give it your product key during the installation itself. You'll do that later. From Mr. Thurrott:

After performing the clean install, ensure that there are no Windows Updates pending that would require a system reboot. (You'll see an orange shield icon next to Shutdown in the Start Menu if this is the case).

Then, open regedit.exe with Start Menu Search and navigate to:
HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE/

Change MediaBootInstall from "1" to "0".

Open the Start Menu again and type cmd to display a shortcut to the Command Line utility.

Right-click this shortcut and choose "Run as administrator." Handle the UAC prompt.

In the command line window, type: slmgr /rearm

Then tap ENTER, close the command line window and reboot. When Windows 7 reboots, run the Activate Windows utility, type in your product key and activate windows.

How to network Windows XP with Windows 7

2009-10-27T19:54:00.008-05:00

It hopefully won't be a surprise to anyone that the latest version of the Microsoft Windows operating system (Windows 7) was released last Thursday. Since then I have successfully installed Windows 7 at home and at the office. The one place I did not install Win 7 was on my Dell Mini netbook. I attempted that during the summer using the last beta version of Win 7 but with disastrous consequences. As a result, I was in a situation of needing to network my netbook, running Windows XP, with my desktop, running Windows 7. Having spent some time and effort figuring out how to do it, I decided to write up the procedure formally so that I would have it as a reference, should I need to redo the whole thing in the future.

If you are in a similar situation, then keep reading; I believe you'll find the rest of this post useful, but be forewarned, it gets a bit tedious. For the purposes of keeping the blog post relatively short, I am only posting the text version of the procedure here. If you're interested, you can download a PDF version (which includes screen-shots of the various procedures described) from here.

Ready? Here we go...

The following document explains how to network a computer running Windows XP with one running Windows 7. This is most likely useful in a home setting in which someone wants to connect a netbook running XP with a desktop running W7. For security reasons, if you’re connecting the netbook wirelessly via a wireless router, be sure to use WPA-2 (a.k.a AES) encryption to connect your netbook to your network (WEP is completely useless).

The procedure consists of:

1. Assigning the same workgroup name to both the XP and W7 computers.
2. Creating a password-protected standard-user account on the W7 system.
3. Configuring the network settings on the W7 system to allow network and printer sharing.
4. Choosing which folders on the W7 system to share.
5. Logging into the W7 system from the XP system.

Assigning a Workgroup name in XP
a) Log in to an administrator account on the XP machine.
b) Right-click My Computer and select Properties to pull up the System Properties window.
c) On the System Properties window, select the Computer Name tab, and click the Change button to assign your workgroup a name.
Assigning a Workgroup name in Windows 7
d) Log in to an administrator account on the W7 machine.
e) Right-click My Computer and select Properties to pull up the System window.
f) On the System window, click Change Settings under the Computer name, domain, and workgroup settings section and assign the same workgroup name as on the XP machine.
Creating a user account in W7
a) Next, create a password-protected standard-user account in W7. This will provide an account for a user on the XP computer to use to login to the W7 system. On W7, go to Control Panel, User Accounts and click Manage another account.
b) On the resulting Manage Accounts window, click Create a new account and create a standard user account. Be sure to assign the account a password
Configuring Network Sharing in W7
a) Go to the Control Panel and select Network and Sharing Center.
b) On the left pane of the Network and Sharing Center window, click Change advanced sharing settings.
c) On the Advanced sharing settings window, there are two groups of settings to configure: Home or Work and Public. In Windows, each user account has its own set of folders for My Documents, My Pictures, My Music, etc. In W7, there is also a set of ‘public’ folders: Public Documents, Public Pictures, Public Music, etc. These ‘public’ folders are meant to be a shared repository of data that can be shared with all user accounts on the computer. You need to configure the Home or Work settings separately from the Public settings. I did not want to use the ‘public’ folders, so I turned that functionality off.

I set the following Advanced sharing settings:

i.    Home or Work (current profile)

•    Network Discovery: on
•    File and printer sharing: on
•    Public folder sharing: off
•    Media streaming: N/A
•    File sharing connections: 128-bit encryption
•    Password protected sharing: on

ii.   Public

•    Network Discovery: off
•    File and printer sharing: off
•    Public folder sharing: off
•    Media streaming: N/A
•    File sharing connections: 128-bit encryption
•    Password protected sharing: off

Once finished with these settings, click the Save Changes button at the bottom of the Advanced sharing settings window.

With this configuration I am not using the ‘public’ repository of folders, but will choose which folders I want to share later. I am also requiring that a user of the XP computer provide a user name and password to connect to the W7 system (more on that in a bit).
Sharing a folder in Windows 7

a) While still logged in to the administrator account on the W7 machine, right-click any folder that you want to share, hover over Share with and then click Specific people…
b) Choose to share the folder with the password protected user that was created earlier.
c) Assign either Read or Read/Write privileges for the folder and click the Share button
Connecting XP to the shared W7 folder.

a) Now, back on the XP machine, map the remote W7 folder as an XP network hard drive. To do this, right-click on My Computer (in XP) and click Map Network Drive…
b) On the resulting Map Network Drive window, pick an unused drive letter, click the Browse button, and browse to the W7 folder that you want to connect to. Click the Finish button when you’re…um, finished.
c) Now you have a network drive on the XP system (Z: for example) that maps to the shared W7 folder. Double-click the network drive to connect to it.
d) When you try to open the mapped drive you’ll be prompted for a username and password. Use the W7 standard user account user name and password that was created earlier and click.

Ta Da

The Internet on a "Dumb Phone"

2009-09-25T08:27:00.000-05:00

I distinctly remember one particular afternoon many years ago as a college student when one of my physics professors asked me and a couple of other students to come by his office after class: he had something 'cool' to show us. I stood there that afternoon watching over his shoulder as he showed us this new computer application called Mosaic, and he explained that there was this global 'web' of computer networks that was being called the 'World Wide Web'. It was going to be the next big thing. Meh. I wasn't terribly interested. I had homework to do!

Fast-forward some 17 years, and indeed times have changed. Today, I spend an inordinate amount of time online. Not only do I hop on to the internet at work (for purely productive, work-related reasons of course *ahem*) and at home, but now I can even get there from the cell phone in my pocket. Now, I only recently decided to give the mobile internet a try, mostly to satisfy nerd curiosity, and I have to say, it has been quite a bit of work.

As I understand things, using the internet on a modern 'smart phone' like the iPhone or Blackberry, for example, is a straight forward, and perhaps even enjoyable experience. Using the internet on a 'dumb phone' like mine: not so much. Well, that's not entirely true. Having ubiquitous internet access, even on my 'dumb' Motorola V3xx, is kinda cool. But getting everything set up has been an experience as I have come to realize that mobile internet access on a 'dumb phone' is a bit of a kludge. Let me explain.

MEdia Net
To browse the web, you obviously need to launch a web browser. The one provided by my carrier is called MEdia Net. To launch Media Net, you can either push the dedicated MEdia Net button that's built in to the phone or you can navigate to Main Menu->Settings->WebAccess->MEdia Net Home. So perhaps having the dedicated launch button is a good thing.

The MEdia Net browser is very basic but functional, but it doesn't take long to see some of the 'kludginess' of the system. For example, from within the MEdia Net software, you click a box to enter a URL for a web page much as you would sitting at a computer, but as soon as you begin to type, the phone's pop-up box for entering text appears. Once you've typed in the URL and press enter, you're taken back to MEdia Net and the web page is loaded. Now, suppose you want to bookmark a particular web page. The bookmarks are not stored in the MEdia Net software, but rather in the phone's firmware. And oddly, since the bookmarks are on the phones firmware, you now have a third way to launch the MEdia Net browser. Navigate to Main Menu->Settings->WebAccess->Bookmarks. Perhaps the average user doesn't care about these sorts of things, but it just feels strange to me to be flipping back and forth between software and firmware constantly.

E-Mail
There is an included e-mail utility on the phone, but it is of limited usefulness. The application includes only a limited number of providers, those with a business deal with my carrier I expect. If you use Yahoo, AOL or Hotmail, for example, you'll be fine, but if, like me, you use G-Mail, you're out of luck. I would also like to be able to add my work e-mail address to this utility, but no. So as a result, I have an e-mail utility that can only be used to check one e-mail account.

Google
Here's where things really get ugly. I make regular use of five of Google's products: Google News for a quick check of the headlines, G-Mail for registering at web sites that require an e-mail address, Picassa for photo storage, Google Calendar to keep track of where I'm supposed to be next, and Google Maps to figure out how to get there. According to Google, you can use all of these sites on your phone by using your phone's browser to go to http://m.google.com/news, http://m.google.com/mail, etc. Well, it's not that simple for me.

News - The news site works as advertised. No problems there.
Calendar - Doesn't work on my phone. I get some sort of proxy server not found error. Google blames AT&T, AT&T blames Motorola, blah, blah, blah. But using Google search, I did find a work around. Instead of going to http://m.google.com/calendar, I have to go to http://m.google.com.my/calendar. The extra .my apparently redirects to servers in Malaysia and gets around the proxy server problem.
Picassa - Proxy error again. Meh
Maps - I was able to download, from Google, the latest version of the Google Maps application for mobile phones, and it works fine.
G-Mail - I tried to download, from Google, the latest version of the G-Mail application for mobile phones, but Google told me that it doesn't work with my particular phone and that I'd have to use the web interface instead. But that gave me the dreaded proxy error again. After some digging around, I found a help forum in which someone had provided a URL to a previous version that does work with my phone. It's simply http://gmail.com/app/v1.1.1/L1/gmail-g.jar. Now why didn't I figure that out?

Like I said: kludge. I finally have it all working, but only just. To further complicate matters, I just downloaded and installed the Opera Mini browser to my phone. At first glance, it seems a little more usable than MEdia Net, but here is yet another new thing to learn. Should it be this complicated?

Twitter: 250 Easy Pages

2009-09-09T13:03:00.002-05:00

Do we really need a 250 pg book to explain twitter? Really !

So Long Office 2010, I Hardly Knew Ya

2009-08-26T19:01:00.019-05:00

A few weeks ago, on July 31, I mentioned that I had received an invitation from Microsoft to beta test the Office 2010 Technical Preview. At that time I installed it on two different machines: one at home and one at the office. Having used it for a few weeks now, I must say that I rather like it. I am getting used to the ribbon interface that was introduced in Office 2007, and I have found some of the newer features to be quite useful. Seeing a preview of a document using a different font by merely hovering over the font selection tool, for example, is a nice addition. Despite my fondness for it, however, I will unfortunately not be be able to use Office 2010.

In my professional life I am a physics instructor whose primary responsibility is to teach the laboratory portion of our undergraduate level physics courses. The laboratory manuals that we use were written in-house, and in my role as the lab manager I have become the keeper of those manuals. Well, four years ago I had to redesign almost all of the experimental procedures in two of the lab manuals to accommodate changes in our data acquisition software. As a part of that redesign, I decided to convert the original LaTeX version of the manuals to Microsoft Word, believing that future maintenance of the lab manuals would be easier. An unintended consequence of that decision is that I have apparently forever chained myself to Office 2003.

Currently, each experiment in the lab manuals is an individual Microsoft Word .doc file written using Office 2003. However, in 2007 Microsoft replaced their .doc file format with .docx. As a result, Word 2010 opens .doc files in what it calls 'compatibility mode'. I submit that a more fitting label would be 'mostly-compatible mode', as not everything in a .doc file gets rendered correctly in Word 2010. For example, some of the symbols in the various mathematical equations are missing and have been replaced with a square small box. It's Word's way of saying, "I don't know what to put here. Want a box?". Worse yet, even the equations that look fine on the screen have the wrong aspect ratio when the document is printed. The equations are squished top to bottom, stretched left to right and are completely unreadable. For example, the sentence,
appears fine on the screen, but becomes
when printed. Like I said, unreadable.

Now, to be fair to Microsoft, it's possible that the problem with the equations is that I used Decision Science's MathType software to do the equation editing rather than Word 2003's built-in equation editor. Perhaps there are those among you who ask why I don't simply 'convert' my old fashioned .doc files to the newer more modern .docx. Well, I tried that. Word 2010 does have a built-in 'Convert' button to convert the .doc file to the .docx format, but doing that destroys all of the drawings and sketches that were created with Word 2003's built-in drawing tool. While I am willing to concede that the problems with the equations may be as a result of my using MathType, I cannot understand why the drawings didn't get converted correctly.

So, in the end, it looks like I have a choice to make. Use Office 2003 or rewrite a 200 page lab manual. Which would you choose? So Long Office 2010, I Hardly Knew Ya.

Curse you Windows Media Player!

2009-08-20T07:28:00.018-05:00

In my efforts as a hobbyist software developer I have become keenly aware of the importance of good user interface design. Years ago as a college student, user interface design didn't matter: there was no user interface. I wrote code in FORTRAN. There was me, a text editor, a FORTRAN compiler and the command line. That was it. Nerd Nirvana. I was writing code whose sole purpose was to complete a single task. Besides, no one would ever use the program but me. However, that simplicity was forever lost many years ago when I started writing Windows applications using C++. I soon realized how important it is to consider the user experience when designing the GUI. If I, as a novice developer, understand this, how is it that Microsoft can sometimes make such seemingly inane design decisions?

Take Windows Media Player for example, please! I own an MP3 player, and using the player requires that software be installed on my computer to facilitate the ripping of CD's, the organization of the resulting MP3 files into a music library, and the copying of the music to the player. At first, I used the software that came bundled with the player, but later discovered the Windows Media Player would do the same thing. Being a purest and not wanting one single unnecessary bit on my computer, I uninstalled the software that came with the MP3 player and opted instead to use Windows Media Player (WMP).

I like WMP overall, but there is one idiotic little 'feature' that I really wish Microsoft would fix. By default, whenever an MP3 player is connected to the computer, WMP instantly, without asking, begins to automatically 'Sync' the entire music library on the computer with the player. Why? Did it never occur to anyone at Microsoft that more that one person in group of people, e.g. a family, might share a computer, and that said people in that group might have different tastes in music and not want each others music on their MP3 player!

Now, the user can change WMP's sync behavior from 'Automatic' to 'Manual', but it's done on a per device basis and can only be changed AFTER you have connected an MP3 player! Notice that if you click the Sync tab in WMP, before connecting an MP3 device,

and then click the "Sync Options" button, that the "Set Up Sync..." option is disabled.

However, after connecting an MP3 player, if you now click on the "Sync Options" button, the "Set Up Sync..." option is enabled. It is only now that clicking "Set Up Sync..." gives you the ability to turn off "Sync this device automatically".

My complaint is that WMP begins copying the entire music library to the device immediately upon detecting a new MP3 player. Usually, entire albums from various artists are copied over before I can remember where to find the manual option, and as a result there is music on my MP3 player that I do not want, and I must navigate through the player to manually delete it. This can be a problem for anyone with a large music collection.

Why did they decide to do things this way? I can imagine a team of developers sitting around a conference table in Redmond discussing this, when someone mentions that, like most things Microsoft does, we should keep the user out of the loop. Keep it 'simple' by doing it automatically. As Paul Thurrott puts it, "Simple, but not easy."

Would it have really been so confusing to even the most novice computer user, who I suspect isn't the user trying to sync an MP3 player in the first place, to wait until the player is connected and simply ask which mode of syncing they want?

Automatic Updates for Windows XP (circa 2001)

2009-08-08T16:57:00.012-05:00

One of my regular stops on the information superhighway is Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows at WinSuperSite.com. Lately, he has spent quite a bit of time, not surprisingly, discussing and reviewing Windows 7. In his most recent Windows 7 article, he points out just how far Windows has come and how much things in the computer world have changed since Windows XP was released by providing a link to a review of XP that he had written back in September, 2001. As I read that review, I was quite amused, even laughing aloud, when I came across the following statement.

Like Windows Me, Windows XP also includes Auto Update, which can automatically update your system if key security updates become available [emphasis added]. This feature doesn't appear to have changed much.

The phrase "if key security updates become available" is certainly quite the understatement. How many megabytes, nay gigabytes of security patches would one need to download if installing Windows XP from one of those original XP install disks? Numerous times over the past eight years have I had to reinstall Windows XP on some system or other 'from scratch', and then sit for what seemed like hours waiting for patches to download from Redmond. When I recently had to reinstall XP onto my netbook, I used an XP disc that I had previously created by slipstreaming in Service Pack 3. Even then, after I finished the installation I had in the neighborhood of 30-40 security patches to install. With that in mind, I wonder how many updates I will be downloading on October 23, 2009.

Office 2010 Technical Preview - Installation

2009-08-01T18:55:00.020-05:00

Since I had some free time this afternoon, I decided to have a go at installing the Office 2010 Technical Preview. From start to finish, it took six minutes to install. For those who might be interested, and if so you're an even bigger nerd than me, I present a series of screen shots of the installation.

I had to first unpack some files from the compressed download,

and enter my product key,

so that I could click the "Install Now" button,

and watch six minutes of my life pass me by via a shiny green bar

to ultimately find out that I had achieved at least a modicum of success in life.

And as a reward for a job well done, I ran MS Word 2010 - Technical Preview.

The installation was uneventful and went off without a hitch. I haven't yet had much time to actually do anything productive with it, wasting time blogging you understand, but it is at least very pretty.

Office 2010 Technical Preview

2009-07-31T19:28:00.010-05:00

Well, much to my surprise I received an e-mail today from Microsoft inviting me to download the Office 2010 Technical Preview.

I had actually forgotten that I had signed up to be considered. Paul Thurrott mentioned the Office 2010 Technical Preview program during some previous episode of Windows Weekly, and I went to the URL he mentioned on the show and added my name to the list. From the sign-up page:

The Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview program is a limited, invitation only opportunity to experience early, pre-release versions of Office 2010.

That I received an 'invitation' would make me feel special, were it not for the fact that I'm sure my name came up via some random number generator. Be that as it may, I accepted the invitation and was taken to a Microsoft web page to download the preview.

After checking the security certificate of the web page, just to make sure that the invitation was legit, I downloaded the 535MB Office 2010 Technical Preview exe and obtained a product key.

It should be interesting to play with since I am still using Office 2003 and have no experience using the ribbon interface. The only hitch is that I first need to uninstall Office 2003, which means reinstalling (and patching) Office 2003 after I'm finished playing with 2010. It sure would be nice if Microsoft decided to have a pre-order Office 2010 'sale' the way they did with Windows 7.

W7 RTM

2009-07-22T18:15:00.007-05:00

Microsoft announced that Windows 7 has been RTM'd (Released To Manufacturing). From the WinSuperSite:

Steven Sinofsky, President of the Windows Division, has just announced on the Engineering Windows 7 Blog that Windows 7 has reached the Release to Manufacturing (RTM) milestone.

As I mentioned previously, RTM officially happens only after sign-off occurs. What happens is a build gets designated as a RTM contender after going through significant testing and meeting our quality bar for RTM. Then, it goes though all the validation checks required for RTM including having all languages of that build completed. If all the validation checks have passed – sign-off for RTM can occur. Today after all the validation checks were met, we signed off and declared build 7600.16385 as RTM.

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The RTM code will be delivered to our partners within the next few days who will then start preparing to deliver some amazing new products timed to hit at General Availability (GA) of Windows 7 on October 22nd.

Installing XP from a Thumb Drive

2009-07-14T18:29:00.042-05:00

What follows is a set of instructions for installing Windows XP from a thumb drive. This may seem to be an outdated topic, given that W7 is scheduled for release in October, but with the trouble I had recently with my netbook, I think that some people may find it useful. If nothing else, I wanted to document the procedure, since I'm not sure how long it will be around on the net.

I found a procedure for doing this by typing 'install xp from usb' into Google and reading a blog post from November 2007 located here. However, the links to the necessary software were broken, and I thought the instructions could use some clarification.

Installing Windows XP from a USB thumb drive

Download and extract the zip file flash_drive_setup.zip. This zip file contains two folders: bootsect and usb_prep8.

Note: I originally found the two tools bootsect and usb_prep8 in different places on the net, so for convenience I decided to repackage them in one zip file and store it on our Physics Department web server.
For convenience later on in the procedure, I suggest moving the bootsect folder to the root directory of your hard drive (Normally C:).
Plug in a thumb drive that you want to use to as your XP installer. Make sure there is nothing on the thumb drive that you want, because you're about to format it. Also, go ahead and put you windows XP disk in your CD/DVD drive.
Use Windows Explorer to navigate to the usb_prep8 folder and double-click the file usb_prep8.cmd. This will execute a script and display the following window:
As it says at the bottom of the screen shot above, press any key to continue. This will launch the PeToUSB.exe located in the usb_prep8 folder.
The default settings shown don't need to be changed. Just be sure that the 'Destination Drive' selected (E: in my case) is the thumb drive that you want to use. Once you're ready, click the Start button. This will properly format the thumb drive.
Now that the thumb drive has been formatted, it needs the proper boot loader copied to it. To do this:
- First minimize the PeToUSB window, but don't close it yet. Closing the PeToUSB window will execute the next line in the usb_prep8.cmd script that was started in step 4, and we're not ready for that yet.
- Next, open a command prompt (click Start->Run & type 'cmd'), and navigate to the bootsect folder that was unzipped earlier (by typing 'cd bootsect' ,for example).
In the command prompt window, type 'bootsect /nt52 E:' (without the quotes). E: is the drive letter assigned to the thumb drive just formatted in step 6. In my case, it was E:. This will make the thumb drive bootable. (Also be sure not to have any other windows looking at the contents of your thumb drive, using windows explorer for example, or the thumb drive will be 'locked' and the boot sector won't be written correctly.) If it works correctly, you'll see the message "Bootcode was successfully updated on all targeted volumes".
Now close the bootsect command prompt window.
Go back and maximize the PeToUSB window that was minimized earlier and click the Close button. Closing the window will execute the next line in the usb_prep8.cmd script.
Next, execute steps 1-4 (in order) shown on the screen shot below:

Press 1 and then press Enter. A folder browser will open allowing you to navigate to the folder containing your XP setup files. (e.g. your CD/DVD drive).

Press 2 and press Enter. Enter any drive letter not current being used. I picked the letter T, for example. This will create and mount a virtual drive labeled T:.

Press 3 and press Enter. Enter the drive letter of your thumb drive (again, E: in my case).

Finally, press 4 to start copying the XP files to your thumb drive.

The script will as if it's ok to format the drive T: (the virtual drive). Press y and press Enter.
Once T: is formatted, files will be copied from the XP install disk to T:.
Next, the script displays a pop-up box asking for permission to copy T: to the USB thumb drive. Click 'Yes'.

Once it has finished copying everything (and it takes a while. ~30min in my case) a pop-up window asks if you want to assign the drive letter U: to the bootable thumb drive. Click 'Yes'.

Next, select yes to unmount the virtual drive T:.

You're finally finished, and you can close the usb_prep8 window. The thumb drive is now ready to use.

Put the thumb drive in the computer on which you want to install XP. Boot the computer and go into the BIOS to change the boot order such that the thumb drive is the first boot device. Save changes and exit the BIOS setup to now boot to the thumb drive.

When the boot loader loads, you'll see two choices, 1)GUI mode and 2) text mode. Select text mode. Now you should see the old familiar blue Windows XP installation screen.

When asked where to install XP, be sure to delete all existing partitions from the hard drive and recreate a single new primary partition, or you will get a 'hal.dll not found' error message.

After the text mode portion of the installation finishes, the computer will reboot. This time, select 1) GUI mode and continue the installation. At the end of the GUI mode installation, the computer will reboot again (select GUI mode), and the installation will finish.

NOTE: BE SURE NOT TO REMOVE THE THUMB DRIVE until after the second GUI reboot completes and you see the XP desktop. If you see the Start menu, you're ok. Remove the thumb drive and reboot to make sure that everything is working correctly.

So You Want to Run W7 RC on a Dell Mini?

2009-07-11T18:43:00.010-05:00

I have been writing lately about my experiences with my new Dell Mini 10 netbook. It came out of the box with Windows XP installed, but about two weeks ago I decided to install the Windows 7 RC. I installed it on three different computers, all of which happen to be Dell machines: two desktops and the Mini 10 netbook.

I have previously discussed the stability issues that I have been having with the netbook. Over the past week the problems seemed to get progressively worse, and I have had nothing but trouble with the Mini constantly crashing for one reason or another. I even, perhaps mistakenly, believed that the hard drive was giving me problems and replaced it. Even with the new HDD, the netbook was still flaky. My wife suggested that perhaps the problem was W7 and not the computer itself. I was initially dismissive, since the two desktop machines had been running flawlessly. But after so much headache, including reinstalling W7 seven or so times, I finally gave up and reinstalled XP. This was no easy task itself since netbooks have no optical drive. However, after pouring over various web sites, I was finally able to find a way to reinstall XP from a thumb drive. That was yesterday. Since then, I have finally finished rebuilding everything just the way I like it, and the netbook is running smoothly again. The only thing I can figure is there were driver issues. The default drivers in W7 work fine on my two desktop systems, but not on the netbook.

So if you're considering installing the W7 RC on a netbook, I would caution you against it. It may be that all of my problems were driver related and that they'll all be sorted out by the time W7 ships in October, but I am not willing to try it again. I even went to Amazon and canceled the copy of W7 that I had pre-ordered for the netbook. I'm still getting two other copies for the desktops, but I'll stick with XP on the netbook.

Windows 7 Installation. . . Redux

2009-07-07T14:19:00.008-05:00

In an earlier post I was lamenting the periodic stability issues that I was experiencing with the Windows 7 (henceforth referred to simply as W7) installation on my new Dell Mini 10. In the four days since that post, 'periodic stability issues' became catastrophic. Perhaps that's overstating things a bit, but nevertheless, I have since had to reinstall W7 on the netbook.

I had noticed over the past couple of weeks that the netbook seemed sluggish, but I had chalked it up to simply being an underpowered computer since W7 was running great on my two desktop systems. But what bothered me was that it seemed sluggish at the simplest of tasks. Right-clicking an icon, for example, would result in a two to three second delay before displaying the context menu. Why? What is it possibly doing?

Well, this morning proved to be the end of the road for that install. While trying to type something or other, my thumb kept tapping the track-pad, resulting in inadvertent mouse clicks (I hate track-pads). So, I decided to install the mouse driver that had shipped with the computer so as to give myself more control over the track-pad's configuration: namely to turn the tapping feature off! After installing the driver, I was told to reboot the computer to complete the installation. Upon rebooting, the computer froze. Thinking it a fluke, I rebooted again, and again and again, each time with the exact same result. Finally, I decided to boot into safe mode, and everything was running great. Assuming that something must have gotten screwed up with the mouse driver installation (e.g. the registry), I decided to try and use system restore to 'undo' the mouse driver installation. Well, after almost 10 years of development, I can say that system restore still doesn't work! The computer did something for about 15 minutes and rebooted. . . into an infinite loop. Upon booting, W7 detected that there had previously been a problem and insisted on running a repair utility (scandisk I suppose). The utility found nothing wrong and gave me a choice of two buttons to click; 'Finish' and 'Cancel'. You can pick either one, because the result is the same; another reboot. And guess what, upon rebooting "W7 detected that there had previously been a problem and insisted on running a repair utility (scandisk I suppose). The utility found nothing wrong and gave me a choice of two buttons to click; 'Finish' and 'Cancel'". I suppose this is the 21st century version of 'Abort', 'Retry', Fail'.

I finally gave up and reinstalled W7 from scratch. The system does seem to be more responsive now. No longer do I get delays at the simple click of the mouse. But, as of this moment, I haven't found the source of the problem. I'll keep looking into it. I have some ideas.

C++ Builder 6 Now Running

2009-07-06T13:15:00.004-05:00

Well I have finally gotten around to installing Borland's C++ Builder 6 on my Windows 7 RC systems. When I ran the Windows 7 adviser tool a couple of weeks ago, prior to installing Windows 7 RC, it warned me that I might have compatibility problems with my C++ Builder software. Well, the adviser didn't lie. It installed with no trouble, but when I tried to run it, I received an obscure error telling me that it could not rename some file 'bcb.$$$' to 'bcb.dro', whatever that means. Luckily however, there is always Google. Of course this is a known problem that began with Vista. Apparently, and this was news to me, when you run an application in Vista, and now apparently Windows 7, the app. is run in a restricted mode, even if you're logged on as an administrator. Vista prevents the app. from making any changes to the hard drive. The solution turns out to be simple. Instead of launching an application by double-clicking, you must right-click and choose, "Run as Administrator", and subsequently tell the UAC box that pops-up that, 'yes. . . I really meant to do that.' At least the fix is easy. . . and free. Microsoft's suggested solution to the problem was to pay Borland to upgrade to the next version of Builder. Happily though, I don't have to give up on the past seven years of software development, and I don't have to pay out any more money to continue. Whew!

Netbook Stability?

2009-07-03T20:45:00.005-05:00

I have been using my new Dell 10" Mini netbook for two weeks now, and I must admit that I am a bit disappointed by the lack of stability. It has crashed on me three or four times now. That may not seem like a big deal, but I have grown accustomed to computers being rock solid. Once upon a time a BSOD was not an infrequent occurrence, but in recent years computers have become very reliable. And while I haven't actually been getting blue-screens-of-death mind you, on one occasion Microsoft Word crashed after simply clicking print preview. And just before I began writing this post, the entire computer froze while I was trying to load a web page: this web page in fact. It was a hard crash requiring me to hold the power button down for a few seconds to turn the computer off.

I wondered if my running the Windows 7 RC might be the problem. Windows 7 is really still a beta OS after all, but I am running it on two desktops with no problems, and I believe that the MS Word print-preview crash occurred while I was still running XP.

It may be that I need to let the thing completely boot and settle down before trying to do any work. I am running Avast antivirus, and I have Avast configured to automatically get new virus signatures on startup. I have sometimes started working immediately after booting and about five minutes later received notification from Avast that it just finished updating virus definitions.

Another possibility that comes to mind is encryption. I am using WPA2-AES encryption on my wireless home network, and perhaps the Atom processor isn’t particularly good at encryption. It may be too slow. That could also explain why I have been unable to install TrueCrypt. I can run the stand-alone truecrypt exe, but the netbook crashed on me every time I tried to run the TrueCrypt installer. And lest you think it might be that TrueCrypt doesn’t play well with Windows 7, I was able to install it just fine on two Windows 7 desktop machines. I realize that this is a netbook, not even a low end notebook, and I expected the computer to be slower, but I did not expect stability issues.

Windows 7 - Early Review

2009-06-28T08:37:00.011-05:00

I spent all of last evening working on installing and configuring the Windows 7 RC on my home desktop and on a netbook. Having worked with Windows since the 3.1 days of the early 90's, I must say that I am so far very impressed with this version. It appears that the hype is justified. The installation on both machines went off with no trouble. I was especially impressed by the driver support. Prior to wiping out my computers' XP installs, I went to each computer vendor's web site and downloaded all of the necessary drivers. My fear was that once I installed Win 7, if the NIC didn't work I obviously wouldn't be able to get to the net to get the drivers I needed to fix it. Happily though, it turns out to have been a waste of time. Win 7 either already had the drivers or went to the net and got them automatically. I didn't even need the install disk for my printer. This was the easiest installation of a Windows OS to date. Below is a screen capture of my desktop machine as it is now.

My desktop machine is a few years old and lacks a video card. I went on the cheap when I bought it, figuring I could install a video card later and that integrated graphics would be sufficient for my needs (this isn't a gaming rig). To my surprise, the Windows 7 Advisor Tool that I had downloaded onto the XP OS prior to installing Win 7 was correct; I am able to run the Aero interface even on the integrated graphics. Not surprisingly, however, when I ran the 'Rate My Computer' tool in Win 7, I scored a rather low 2.7 out of 7.9, due to the lack of a video card.

Despite this apparent limitation, however, the system is very snappy. It runs as well or better that the XP install I had been running.

The installation on the netbook went smooth as well. As a mere netbook, Win 7 knew that it wasn't up to the task of running the Aero interface, so it didn't even try. The only problem I ran into was using the new 'Homegroup' feature to setup my home network. I had installed the OS on my desktop first, and Win 7 automatically set up a 'Homegroup' for me (in response to me telling it to). Once the netbook was up and running, I tried to 'Join' the existing Homegroup but couldn't. After some digging, I found the 'Remove This Homegroup' option and removed the existing group on both machines. I then created a new Homegroup on the desktop and was able to the join from the netbook with no further problems. And for those of you who are security conscious users like myself, I was impressed to see that joining a Homegroup requires a password and that the connection is encrypted using SSL.

Windows 7 RC Install

2009-06-27T15:03:00.009-05:00

I can't wait 'till October 22 for Windows 7 to be released, so I'm trying my luck with the Windows 7 RC. First, I followed the instructions from Microsoft that explained how to download the RC and burn the ISO to a DVD. Now, I could have simply installed the OS from the DVD, but when the final version is released in October I will want to put it on my home computer and on a netbook. Since the netbook has no DVD drive, I used a computer at the office running Vista to install the RC to a thumb drive using the following instructions from technet.microsoft.com:

Putting the Windows 7 installation on a USB thumb drive has a few advantages—a small USB key is much more convenient for carrying around than a DVD, the OS will actually install much faster, and you can use a USB key to install Windows 7 on systems that do not have a DVD drive, such as a netbook. In fact, you can even install Windows 7 on netbooks that have fairly modest hardware. Dennis Chung, an IT Pro Evangelist at Microsoft recently posted a video demonstrating how easy it is to prepare your thumb drive and use it to install Windows 7. Here’s a quick look at the process:
First, you’ll need the DiskPart utility on the system you will use to prep the thumb drive. This is a free disk partitioning utility that is likely already installed on your Windows system. If not, you can download DiskPart here.
Launch the DiskPart utility by typing diskpart at the Start Menu.
Then run the list disk command to check the status of your drive.
Video
Dennis Chung, an IT Pro Evangelist at Microsoft, demonstrates how easy it is to prepare a USB thumb drive and use it to install Windows 7.

Now run select disk 1 where the "1" is actually the corresponding number of your USB drive.
Run clean.
Once the thumb drive is clean, you can run create partition primary.
Now make the partition active by entering active
Then you need to set up the file system as Fat32 by running format fs=fat32 quick (quick, of course, specifies that you want to perform a quick format to speed up the process).
Entering the assign command gives the USB drive a drive letter, making it easy to access from Windows Explorer
Then you can copy everything from the Windows 7 installation DVD onto the USB key (a simple drag and drop will do).
Now you can insert the thumb drive into the system you want to install Windows 7 onto and boot the system. The installation will now proceed as usual—but faster.

As of this moment Windows 7 is up and running. I'm still installing the applications I need, but so far it's impressive. To my relief, I didn't even need to find the various drivers!

Windows 7 Now Avaliable for Pre-Order

2009-06-26T12:13:00.011-05:00

Windows 7 is now available for pre-order. Once again, from the WinSuperSite:

In the US, Canada, and Japan, you can pre-order Windows 7 Home Premium or Professional between June 26, 2009 and July 11, 2009 (July 5 in Japan), and you will save well over 50 percent over the normal retail price.

There are several vendors here in the US (I chose to go with NewEgg.com) where pre-orders can be made. A list of verndors is available from Microsoft.

Windows 7 Pricing Announced

2009-06-25T11:49:00.018-05:00

(Credit: Microsoft)
The pricing scheme for the upcoming release of Windows 7 has been announced. From Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows:

(Credit: Paul Thurrott)

New Pool...Finally

2009-06-20T18:37:00.030-05:00

Well, the aforementioned Easy Set swimming pool is finally setup. Most of the reviews I had read prior to purchasing the pool mentioned that the most challenging part of setting up the pool was making sure that the ground was perfectly level. After two days of hard labor, I must concur. There is no actual support structure to the pool. Instead, the shape of the pool's walls cleverly keep the water in a 'balanced' state so long as the ground is level.

I began three days ago by using stakes, a mason's line and a line level (all of which I already had because of my fence building project a couple of years ago) to survey the location of the pool. Once I had determined the location, I then spent three evenings using a shovel and post hole diggers preparing the spot. The lowest spot (top right of the circle in the photo below) dropped 6" from the highest spot (bottom left, next to the post hole diggers) over the 16' diameter circle. As a result, I had to purchase about 15 cubic feet of top soil and a few bags of sand to fill in the low areas.
Finally, last evening around 6:00 I started filling the pool.
When I checked on the pool first thing this morning, I was pleased to see that apparently none of the water had leaked out over night. This was another concern of mine, as several reviewers reported having to immediately repair leaks.
A few more hours of filling this morning finally got the job done.
That was quite a bit of work. I hope this pool lasts for a while.

Working on a 10" Mini

2009-06-19T21:14:00.010-05:00

In my previous post, I mentioned that I had just purchased a new Dell 10" Mini netbook. It has taken some five hours to finally get the thing configured the way I like. As I began, I was puzzled to see that Dell had installed Internet Explorer 6 and Media Player 9. Are you kidding me! Those versions are several years old. You'd have to go out of your way to include those. Jeez. On the other hand, Kudos to Dell for not filling the thing with crapware the way they used to. I know they sell these things on razor thin margins, but I don't want to deal with removing all of the junk, and fortunately there wasn't much to remove.

The first order of business was to get it connected to my wireless network, (WPA2-AES encryption enabled of course) so that I could download & install the numerous windows updates. Once the updating was finally finished, I removed the included Adobe PDF reader in favor of Foxit, and I also removed the included Microsoft Works and was able to install Office 2003 (followed by more updates). Luckily, the wireless networking was much easier than I had anticipated, and I was quite happy at being to install software over the network, as a netbook has no optical drive. Then there were other minor tweaks, like installing Firefox, etc, but I think I have finally finished with it.

Having used the new Dell to write this post, I must also say that this keyboard is quite usable. I have played with an Asus Eeepc and found the keyboard difficult to use. I'll return with another more in depth review once I've had more time to play with it, but I am liking it so far.

New Dell Mini netbook

2009-06-19T16:32:00.001-05:00

New computer means I'm off to Windows update for an hour!

End of Analog Broadcast TV

2009-06-12T06:21:00.015-05:00

I had forgotten that today marks the official switch from analog to digital broadcasting of over-the-air television in the U.S. until I visited You Tube to watch some video or other, and I noticed that their logo was animated. Cute. I saved a copy of the animated gif (which apparently doesn't play when posted on Blogger) on my web site here.

The New Phone Platform and the Prisoner

2009-06-09T11:29:00.007-05:00

I found this latest PC Mag article from John C. to be a bit of a stretch. He's comparing the obsession people have for smart phones to carburetors and prisoners. Huh? Some of his analogies are somewhat nonsensical, but I found the following excerpt amusing.

People are closing down, cocooning, folding their tent, turning inwards. They are acting like prisoners. The phone represents the prisoner's "shiv," the little carved knife that he uses for protection. The only reason people are obnoxious on their cell phones and make such public scenes while talking on them is because they need to show the other prisoners that they have friends "on the outside." The annoying phone ring turned up too loud shows the other prisoners that they have a visitor. The collection of useless apps represent smokes. Earbuds induce solitary confinement. I could go on.

Microsoft...The Evil Empire?

2009-06-03T15:21:00.008-05:00

Back in February of this year, as a part of Microsoft's monthly patch Tuesday, Microsoft apparently added some sort of a .NET update. Harmless enough I suppose, but part of the update involved installing an 'Add-On' to the Firefox web browser. And this was done without ever asking the user. From Brian Kreb's Security Watch column:

A routine security update for a Microsoft Windows component installed on tens of millions of computers has quietly installed an extra add-on for an untold number of users surfing the Web with Mozilla's Firefox Web browser.

It's appalling to me to think that Microsoft would 'update' another companies software. And this stupid thing is designed to make it easier for web sites to install software on your computer. Security problems with Internet Explorer is surely one of the main reason that geeks tend to move to Firefox in the first place!

Apparently, the .NET update automatically installs its own Firefox add-on that is difficult -- if not dangerous -- to remove, once installed. Annoyances.org, which lists various aspects of Windows that are, well, annoying, says "this update adds to Firefox one of the most dangerous vulnerabilities present in all versions of Internet Explorer: the ability for Web sites to easily and quietly install software on your PC."

What's more, they intentionally wrote the add-on so that the add-on's 'Uninstall' button is disabled.

Big deal, you say? I can just uninstall the add-on via Firefox's handy Add-ons interface, right? Not so fast. The trouble is, Microsoft has disabled the "uninstall" button on the extension. What's more, Microsoft tells us that the only way to get rid of this thing is to modify the Windows registry, an exercise that -- if done imprecisely -- can cause Windows systems to fail to boot up.

After a bit of backlash from the public, Microsoft has apparently provided a patch-patch to enable the Uninstall button on the add-on.

...someone pointed out that Microsoft has issued a patch in an apparent bid to appease those who have cried foul about this silently installed add-on.

The link to getting the patch-patch is here.

The Geek Atlas - 128 Places Where Science and Technology Come Alive

2009-06-03T14:12:00.019-05:00

(Credit: Amazon.com)I hope Steve Gibson is getting a cut of book sales of "The Geek Atlas". I just heard him mention it on the Security Now podcast. It sounds like an interesting read.

From Amazon's web site,

Product Description
The history of science is all around us, if you know where to look. With this unique traveler's guide, you'll learn about 128 destinations around the world where discoveries in science, mathematics, or technology occurred or is happening now. Travel to Munich to see the world's largest science museum, watch Foucault's pendulum swinging in Paris, ponder a descendant of Newton's apple tree at Trinity College, Cambridge, and more.

Each site in The Geek Atlas focuses on discoveries or inventions, and includes information about the people and the science behind them. Full of interesting photos and illustrations, the book is organized geographically by country (by state within the U.S.), complete with latitudes and longitudes for GPS devices.

Can't wait to get my copy. I just ordered it, but I'm too cheap to pay extra for shipping, so I'll have to wait a week.

Windows 7 Coming Soon

2009-06-02T21:11:00.019-05:00

(Credit: Paul Thurrott)From Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows:

Microsoft today revealed that it will complete development of Windows 7 in late July
and then make the system broadly available to customers on October 22, 2009. (This is called General Availability, or GA). This date is one week later than what my sources previously told me (October 15, 2009.)

Of course I'm still using XP. I have only dabbled with Vista. But everything I have heard indicates that Windows 7 in very nice and stable. Most likely because it's actually Vista with prettier clothes.

Uber Nerd

2009-06-02T16:04:00.003-05:00

I actually took the time to make this for my cell phone wallpaper. Bonus points for translating correctly.

Mobile blogging setup...finally

2009-06-02T11:45:00.018-05:00

After two days and around 20 wasted text messages (no small issue w/o an unlimited text messaging plan), I have finally solved the problem of registering my cell phone with blogger.com. The instructions given here leave something to be desired.

As I see it, there are two complicating factors: (i) neither the instructions given in the video nor those given at go.blogger.com make it clear to me whether or not there is a difference between sending the text 'REGISTER' to the number 256447 (BLOGGR) versus sending it to the e-mail address go@blogger.com and (ii) it doesn't address the fact that in some cases the cell phone provider (e.g. AT&T) use different return e-mail addresses when sending text via SMS or MMS. So, 20 messages later, here's my procedure.

Setting up to send plain old text messages (SMS). (There are actually 3 choices here.)
1. While logged in to blogger.com, go to Settings | Email & Mobile. Click Add mobile device. You'll be give a code that you need to either text to 256447 or text to go@blogger.com to confirm the setup.
2. OR Send the text 'REGISTER' to 256447 from your phone as explained on go.blogger.com.
3. OR Send the text 'REGISTER' to go@blogger.com from your phone as explained on go.blogger.com.
4. By following either step 1, 2 or 3 above, you'll have a claim token sent to your phone to be used at go.blogger.com as explained in the video. However, before giving the claim token to go@mobile.com, be sure you're logged in to your blogger.com blog. If you're not logged in to blogger.com before giving the token, you won't be prompted to merge your mobile blog with your existing blog. This point wasn't clear in the video.
5. Once you've entered the claim token, you should be sent a confirmation text to your phone. Also, if you look back at the list of 'mobile devices' in your blogger.com settings, you'll see your phone listed as the device phonenumber@txt.att.net
Setting up to send texts with attached pictures (MMS)

To send pictures to your blog, you must register your phone again with go.blogger.com. This is because plain text messages send through AT&T servers are given the e-mail address phonenumber@txt.att.net whereas MMS messages are given the address phonenumber@mms.att.net. At this point, if you try to send a text message to your blog that contains a picture, you'll be sent an 'unregistered device' error from go@blogger.com because you have only registered the device phonenumber@txt.att.net, not phonenumber@mms.att.net. This was perhaps the most confusing point until I finally found this help page.

To re-register your phone, send a text to go@mobile.com that contains only the word 'REGISTER' and attach a picture. The attached picture will not be posted to your blog, but it will cause AT&T to send the message to blogger.com via MMS from phonenumber@mms.att.net, and go@blogger.com will send you a new claim token. Finally, go through the same token redemption process as before, and you'll tie your phone to your blog using MMS.

As a final confirmation, if you now look in you blogger.com account's Settings | Email & Mobile, you'll see two devices listed. Namely, phonenumber@txt.att.net and phonenumber@mms.att.net. Now you can send either a plain text message or a photo to go@mobile.com and it will be posted to your blog.

It's still not clear to me if I could alternatively send either a text or picture post to the number 256447 (BLOGGR) rather than sending an e-mail go@mobile.com. I suspect that it doesn't matter, but I'll have to wait until next month when I get more text messages to test it.

2009-06-02T06:37:00.004-05:00

I thought this rather creative. It at least shows some imagination. But perhaps my daughter has a few too many toy animals.

2009-06-01T21:25:00.000-05:00

Trying to get the 'mobile blogging' working correctly is not as easy as I would think it should be.