Friday, December 31, 2010

WakeMate Warns Users Of Major Safety Issue With Product After One Bursts Into Flames

It was only days ago that we wrote that after nearly a year of delays, the first WakeMate units were finally shipping to customers. And now there's some more bad news ? really bad. Some of the initial units are apparently bursting into flames because of any issue with the USB charger included. Repeat: Do not use the USB charger included with the shipping WakeMate units. The company has just sent out the following notice to customers:

Jennifer Gimenez Katie Cassidy Estella Warren Cinthia Moura Monica Potter

BarMax, The $1,000 App (That?s Actually Worth It), Hits The iPad

It was just about a year ago that we first wrote about BarMax, an iPhone application meant to help law student pass the Bar exam. But if you've heard of the app, it's more likely because of its price: $999.99. And now you'll be able to part with the $1,000 at the click of a button for the iPad too. BarMax, which, believe it or not, actually seems to be a good deal at $1,000, has just launched the iPad version into the App Store this evening. Specifically, the California (each state has different Bar exams) version is ready to roll.

Kim Yoon jin Melania Trump Summer Glau Mía Maestro

Windows Phone 7 Marketplace Hack Demonstrated

broggyr writes "Seems it didn't take long to hack the Windows Phone 7 marketplace. Quoting WPCentral: 'For developers, the weakness in Microsoft's DRM for Windows Phone 7 applications has been well known for quite some time, and there have been calls for Microsoft to address these concerns ... Since then, a "white hat" developer has provided WPCentral with a proof-of-concept program that can successfully pull any application from the Marketplace, remove the security and deploy to an unlocked Windows Phone with literally a push of a button. Alternatively, you could just save the cracked XAP file to your hard drive. Neither the app nor the methodology is public, and it will NOT be released ... It is important to note that this was all done within six hours by one developer.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.




Ivanka Trump Blake Lively Christina Applegate Shana Hiatt Tara Conner

Indie iPhone Holiday Sale

Soft Cell Beyoncé Nelly Furtado Leeann Tweeden Bali Rodriguez

Solar Cells Integrated In Microchips

cylonlover writes "In a new, more efficient approach to solar powered microelectronics, researchers have produced a microchip which directly integrates photovoltaic cells. While harnessing sunlight to power microelectronics isn't new, conventional set-ups use a separate solar cell and battery. What sets this device apart is that high-efficiency solar cells are placed straight onto the electronics, producing self-sufficient, low-power devices which are highly suitable for industrial serial production and can even operate indoors."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.




Rhona Mitra Kelly Rowland Danica Patrick Josie Maran Leighton Meester

What lies ahead: Publishing

Kristin Cavallari Brittany Murphy Britney Spears Amanda Swisten Scarlett Chorvat

The Most Reliable (and Unreliable) Hosted Blogging Services

Sarah Mutch Gabrielle Union Alessandra Ambrosio Amanda Detmer Emma Stone

Barnes & Noble Declares Nook Best-Selling Product in Its History

nook-260Hot on the heels of Amazon’s announcement that the Kindle 3 is its bestselling product in history, Barnes & Noble is reporting today that its line of Nook e-readers are also hot items — the biggest sellers…

Kasey Chambers Megan Ewing Kristanna Loken Aubrey ODay Drew Barrymore

Skype Looks to Accelerate Mobile Video Chat With iOS App

Skype makes it official; it's pushing ahead with a major mobile video chat effort starting with an update to its iOS client. Skype believes this will be a major step in further mainstreaming video chat in general and accelerating the adoption of mobile video conferencing.

Ana Paula Lemes Vanessa Simmons Chyler Leigh Julie Berry Lori Heuring

TLAF Holiday Bundle

Majandra Delfino Maria Bello Jennifer Gareis Ashlee Simpson Donna Feldman

OSI Refers Novell Patent Deal To Authorities

WebMink writes "Worried that the unholy alliance of Microsoft, Apple, Oracle and EMC — hardly known for their collaboration — is establishing a patent troll called CPTN to attack open source software, the Open Source Initiative has announced that they have referred the Novell deal over to the German competition authorities."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.




Lake Bell Amerie Rachel Bilson Karen Carreno Bijou Phillips

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Father Creates iPad App to Help Disabled Son ?Speak?

Taylor Swift Milla Jovovich Maggie Grace Luján Fernández

Blog Post: Lync GroupChat 2010 (UCMA Application) does not work, even after successful installation, with EventID 5286.

 

Symptom

========

Lync GroupChat 2010 (UCMA Application) does not work, even after successful installation with EventID 5286.
 

Cause

=====

 During installation if the Application Pool Name box is empty, you can specify an application pool name. This is an FQDN and must match the subject name for the certificate that was previously assigned.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg398345.aspx

Execute Get-CsTrustedApplicationPool. ?If the entry for Group Chat Server Pool shows Application Pool Name, different that subject name on any of the Certificates in the CA than we need to flag it.

EventID in the Event Log.

Log Name:      Lync Server
Source:        LS MGC TRANSPORT
Date:          12/8/2010 7:02:06 PM
Event ID:      5286
Task Category: (1096)
Level:         Error
Keywords:      Classic
User:          N/A
Computer:      chat.corp.lync.com
Description:
The Group Chat server can not establish or maintain MTLS connection to the Lync Server.
Reason string: RemoteDisconnected
Error code: -2146233088
Cause: This problem is usually caused by an invalid MTLS certificate configured on the Group Chat Server or Lync Server.
Resolution:
Review certificate related sections in Group Chat Planning and Deployment Guide. Ensure the MTLS certificates configured on the Group Chat Server and Lync Server are valid.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
  <System>
    <Provider Name="LS MGC TRANSPORT" />
    <EventID Qualifiers="50248">5286</EventID>
    <Level>2</Level>
    <Task>1096</Task>
    <Keywords>0x80000000000000</Keywords>
    <TimeCreated SystemTime="2010-12-09T03:02:06.000Z" />
    <EventRecordID>135</EventRecordID>
    <Channel>Lync Server</Channel>
    <Computer>chat.corp.lync.com</Computer>
    <Security />
  </System>
  <EventData>
    <Data>RemoteDisconnected</Data>
    <Data>-2146233088</Data>
  </EventData>
</Event>

Repro Steps:

 Install Group Chat Server.

At this step: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg398345.aspx

Enter an incorrect Application Pool Name.

Group Chat Server will be installed correctly, but no clients or Admin tool logins will work.

Resolution

=========

The way to correct this, is NOT uninstalling and re-installing Group Chat Server with the correct Application Pool Name. Since uninstallation does not remove the entry from CsTrustedApplicationPool and hence on all future installations the Application Pool Name is pre-populated and grayed out. Customer would have to execute Remove-CsTrustedApplicationPool, to start fresh and allow him to re-enter the correct Application Pool Name.

 

Kristin Cavallari Brittany Murphy Britney Spears Amanda Swisten Scarlett Chorvat

Evan Williams: The Challenges of a Web of Infinite Info

Evan Williams and I have known each other for a long time. From a struggling entrepreneur who started Blogger, to a successful founder who got liberal funding for his podcasting start-up Odeo, to the accidental launch of Twitter — to me, he has been pretty much [...]

Alice Dodd Kate Walsh Autumn Reeser Camilla Belle Blu Cantrell

Blog Post: Exchange 2010 SP1 Hosting ? Part 1 ?Overview?

In this series of posts I will go through Exchange 2010 SP1 Hosting details starting from Overview, Deployment, Migration, Multi-Tenant,...etc.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 SP1 supports hosting deployments and provides Hosting Partners the core feature-set of Exchange Server in a manner that can be deployed to multiple customers in a single installation, and provides ease of management and flexibility of provided features to end-users.

The hosting solution available for Exchange 2010 SP1 includes most of the features and functionality available in Exchange 2010 SP1 Enterprise deployments, but also includes features and functionality that will allow hosters to create and manage tenant organizations; however Exchange 2010 SP1 doesn't support the following features in Hosting mode:

  • Exchange Management Console
  • Public Folders
  • Unified Messaging Server role
  • Federation
  • Business-to-Business features such as cross-premises message tracking and calendar sharing
  • IRM (Information Right Management)
  • Outlook 2003 support (EnableLegacyOutlook)
  • Edge Transport Server role

The Exchange Server 2010 SP1 Hosting supports the following three separate server roles required to perform the tasks of a carrier-class messaging system

  • Client Access Servers (CAS) - Support the traditional components such as Post Office Protocol 3 (POP3) and Internet Message Access Protocol 4 (IMAP4), Exchange ActiveSync®, Microsoft Outlook Web App, and Outlook Anywhere
  • Hub Transport Servers (Hub) - Perform the internal message transfer, distribution list expansions, and message conversions between Internet mail and Exchange Server message formats
  • Mailbox Servers (MBX) - Maintain mailbox store databases, with high availability provided by Database Access Groups (DAGs)
Flexible Systems Scaling Approach

Although it is technically possible to combine multiple Exchange 2010 server roles onto a single physical or virtual server, one of the goals of this Exchange 2010 SP1 Hosting architecture is to recommend against combining server roles. By implementing a single-role server deployment methodology, service providers can designate server hardware more accurately according to specific tasks, and increase the capacity of the messaging environment selectively, according to specific demands and changing trends. For example, as demand for mobile messaging services continues to grow, service providers can increase the number of Client Access servers without affecting other areas in the messaging environment

Role-Specific Load Balancing and Fault Tolerance and High Availability

Different server roles support different techniques and architectures for load balancing and fault tolerance. For example, if multiple Hub Transport servers exist in the same Active Directory® site, Exchange Server 2010 balances the message traffic automatically between these servers, whereas Mailbox servers are not load-balanced in the same way. Redundant copies of mailbox databases can be replicated across multiple servers arranged into Database Availability Groups (DAGs) to achieve fault tolerance.

Table below shows the load balancing technology per server role that service providers should use in a production environment to implement high availability and fault tolerance.

Server Role

Load Balancing Technology

Mailbox

Exchange Database Availability Groups (DAGs)

Hub Transport

Automatic load balancing through Mail Submission Service

Hardware load balancing for incoming mail connectivity

Client Access

Hardware load balancing

Exchange 2010 Database Availability Group (DAG)

The new concept of the Database Availability Group (DAG) is exciting Exchange 2010 technology to bring low cost high availability without costly hardware SAN infrastructure.

clip_image002

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 clients will connect to Client Access Servers, which will proxy the requests to the client.  No more LCR, SCR, or CCR…DAG (or Super CCR) uses low cost DAS storage to leverage a “Raid 5” striping of databases to multiple servers.  Client Access Servers (set in load balanced server farms), will provide primary HTTP and a new “distributed RPC endpoint” for Office 2010, Office 2007 emulation of a “standard exchange mailbox server” without needing to upgrade the clients.

Since clients connect to the CAS servers to proxy requests to the mailbox servers, failover from mailbox server to another in the DAG happen in less than 30 seconds in a failover or move command.

Some other notable highlights in Exchange 2010 database and HA architecture:

  • Replication between databases will change from being a RPC method, to a TCP socket method which will increase performance on heavily loaded servers.  
  • Replication can be locally or remote (cross-subnet).  You will need CAS servers at the DR site however if you lose the primary datacenter.
  • You can have to 16 mailbox servers in a DAG.
  • There will be no integration with Microsoft Online at the DAG level.   Microsoft Online cannot be used as DR site for a on-premise hosted mailbox.  Either it’s on-premise or hosted, not a mixture of the two.
  • You still Windows Server 2008 Enterprise, as failover clustering feature is required.
  • The concept of Storage Groups is depreciated.
  • Jet is still the storage engine for Exchange 2010 databases.
  • Exchange IO has been reduced 50% from 2007 to 2010 (and already a 70% IO reduction from Exchange 2003 to 2007).
  • Single Instance Storage is going away, as well as the per database table.  A new table is created for each mailbox, creating the scenario for 10,000+ messages in mailboxes due to the sequential read capability. 
  • Server based PST files allows archiving with anywhere access. Helps for e-discovery, OWA searches, and compliance management.

In the next post I will go through Exchange 2010 SP1 Hosting description.

Melissa George Cameron Richardson Chandra West Kasey Chambers Megan Ewing

HOW TO: Keep Your New Year?s Resolutions Using Social Media

new years imageMollie Vandor is the product manager for Ranker.com where she likes to make lists about reading, eating and bad-TV-watching. She’s also the media director for Girls in Tech LA. You can find her on Twitter @Mollierosev and

Victoria Beckham Missy Peregrym Sarah Gellman Eliza Dushku Bonnie Jill Laflin

Skype?s New App Brings Video Chat To The iPhone, iPad And iPod Touch

We've been hearing reports that Skype is debuting a mobile video chat service and D-Day has arrived. The company is launching a brand new version of its iPhone app that includes the ability to turn on video in any Skype chat. The beauty of the app is that it brings free video calling to iPhone 3G devices, iPad and iPod Touch, all of which couldn't run Apple's video calling feature Facetime (the feature only works with iPhone 4 devices and Mac computers). Of course, iPad owners won't be able to initiate a video call, but these users can receive any video chats from contacts.

Jodi Lyn OKeefe Emma Watson Amy Smart Sarah Wynter Jaime Pressly

An industry challenge: build ?MicroSXSW? to bring back fun times at SXSW

Tonight after work I went to Starbucks with the CarWoo team. They are building a better way to buy a car. Got funded to the tune of $6 million. Are one of Paul Graham’s favorite Y Combinator companies. He’s been telling people he thinks they have potential to go public. Why? Because they are “crushing [...]

Mary Elizabeth Winstead Piper Perabo Anna Kournikova Esther Cañadas Kate Beckinsale

Court Rules Website Doesn't Have To Remove Defamatory Comments

DustyShadow writes "In the case of Blockowicz v. Williams, The US Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals refused to force Ripoff Report to remove allegedly defamatory comments posted by a user. The Ripoff Report has a well-publicized no-takedown policy, even if the author wants to remove his/her post, so the Ripoff Report refused. The Blockowiczs then claimed that the Ripoff Report violated FRCP 65(d) because the Ripoff Report was 'in active concert or participation' with the initial posters by refusing the injunction's removal order. The district court (and the Court of Appeals) disagreed with the Blockowiczs. Absent the 'active concert or participation,' the website was outside the court's control. Ripoff Report has released a statement concerning this case: 'In keeping with our core mission of protecting speech to the fullest extent of the law, we decided that it was not just our right but also our duty to ask questions and dig deeper before we could comply with such an order. Other sites claim they support free speech, but when the going gets rough, they will usually protect their bottom line rather than the Constitutional rights and freedoms this country was founded upon. Unlike other sites, even when the speech involved is harsh or negative and even if our position sometimes generates negative press for us, we think that the First Amendment requires us to put our principles before our pocketbook and fight against censorship.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.




Thandie Newton Liz Phair Aaliyah Katherine Heigl Lorri Bagley

What K-O?ed Skype Last Week

Skype, the Internet telephony service went on the blink last week, stranding millions who rely on it to communicate. In conversation, CEO Tony Bates revealed that the problem might be some errant Windows clients, but that only hinted at the true cause, which I explain here.

Amber Arbucci Christina Aguilera Kate Hudson Adriana Lima Brittany Daniel

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

WATCH: Dwight Howard Become A Fan Favorite In Cleveland In One Easy Step

Prior to last night's game in Cleveland, Dwight Howard went to the scorers table, appeared to take some talcum powder, and...

....well, we'll let the video tell the story:

 

Pretty clever, Dwight. Maybe some bad blood is brewing between the Florida rivals.

Join the conversation about this story »


Lena Headey Ali Larter Angelina Jolie Erica Leerhsen