Missing BlogThis on Firefox?

As a blogger I was missing the "Blog this!" button on Firefox since I moved from IE but there is always an alternative in Firefox for features available in IE and most of these alternatives come with Firefox Extensions. by having this extention installed the "Blog This!" comes back on the browser but on the context menu:
Extension Room :: BlogThis

Impressed by Picasa Photo Organizer

Picasa is now part of Google and can be downloaded for free!
It is really impressing :
1- Organizes pictures very well
2- Gives an overall and clear preview
3- Emailed picture are automatically resized and the default size is configurable through the options
4- Descriptions can be set for every folder and keywords for every picture and the search works on folder names, folder descriptions and picture keywords which all makes access to pictures very fast and easy
5- Pictures can directly be imported into picasa from digital camera
6- Red-eye reduction, crop, enhancing the color and contrast and resizing are included in picasa through "Edit Picture" and "Export"
7- Slide Show available and MP3 files can be set to be played when pictures are shown in Slide Show mode
8- It can also play AVE, MPG, ASF and MWV video files
9- Google experts are working on picasa to expand its technology
Picasa: Automated Digital Photo Organizer software, instant photo albums, sharing & printing: Download

Lookout Your Desktop Search Engine!?

This Outlook Add-in is now free for everyone! And can be downloaded from Microsoft Download Center. Once installed it will index all the data on Outlook (Emails, Tasks, Calendars, Contacts, Notes and Posts) and additional folders outside outlook on any drive can also be set to be indexed which turns this add-in into a desktop search engine without exaggeration.
It also gives the option to restrict search to specific times, only contacts, only emials, only in files or results with attachment.
Download details: Lookout V1.2

UPDATE: I don't know why but Microsoft has removed Lookout from its Download Center! Lookout can be downloaded from "Lookout Software" website.

Download The Antivirus Defense-in-Depth Guide

The Antivirus Defense-in-Depth Guide provides an easy to understand overview of different types of malware, or malicious software, including information about the risks they pose, malware characteristics, means of replication, and payloads. The guide details considerations for planning and implementing a comprehensive antivirus defense for your organization, and provides information on defense-in-depth planning and related tools that you can use to help reduce your risk of infection. The final chapter of the guide provides a comprehensive methodology to help you quickly and effectively respond to and recover from malware outbreaks or incidents (More)

Download the complete solution in PDF here:
Download details: The Antivirus Defense-in-Depth Guide

Spyware and browser hijackers

I think the most important tip is to watch the freewares we download. Usually, the presence of the spyware/adware is included in the user agreement for the freeware and nearly no one reads it and many internet surfers don't even know what spyware or adware is! Fortunately some anti virus programs like Norton are detecting and removing these rubbishes these days.
5 tips for spurning spyware and browser hijackers

Windows Hidden Share Folders

When Microsoft Windows hidden folders like IPC$ (Remote IPC), ADMIN$ (Remote Admin) or C$ are removed, serious network access issues will arise... "The network name can not be found" will pop-up when trying to access resources inside Network neighborhood or My Network Places and "This server is not configured for transactions" when trying to join a workstation to a domain. The work-around is to recreate the folders by "Net Share" command:
Net share ADMIN$
Net share IPC$
Net share C$=C:
But fixing the problem gets difficult when a Trojan, Worm or Backdoor disconnects these drives as part of its process by simply issuing commands in the background like:
net share /delete IPC$ /y
net share /delete ADMIN$ /y
net share /delete C$ /y
net share D$ /delete
net share C$ /delete
net share /del IPC$ /y
net share /del e$ /y
net share /del d$ /y
net share /del C$ /y
net share /del admin$
And this is done on regular basis resulting the disappearance of system hidden shares every couple of minutes. Hard and time consuming task to find out what is really causing the disappearance of these system crucial share folders!

All-In-One Tools Download For Exchange

Exchange 2003: All-In-One Tools Download

Gmail and Firefox

Mozilla Firefox Extentions are actually plug-ins that add new functionalities to the browser and at the time of writing this post there are 196 extensions available for Firefox. The Extension Room can be reached at:
Extension Room

Many Extensions are available and I have to spend some more time on the list. Among those I have checked yet I found the GmailCompse extension interesting. This Firefox Extension Adds a context menu link for opening a GMail compose window when clicking on mailto: links and text email addresses:
GMailCompose

How To Backup FireFox Bookmarks(Favorites)

I make regular backups of my Internet Explorer favorites which are placed in a folder named "Favorites" inside the user profile. In IE for every entry added to the favorites an Internet Shortcut (*.url) is created so the backup is actually a container of files with the url extension. Now that I am switching to FireFox it is important to keep my backup schedule but FireFox is using a different mechanism to store bookmarks! Instead of creating an entry for every bookmark it uses a single HTML file to hold the entire bookmarks and this HTML file is located in the user profile:

"Drive:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\default.qfb\bookmarks.html"

So by backing up "bookmarks.html" I will have my backup in place again and FireFox gives me the ability to search through my Bookmarks by keeping all the entries in this HTML format.



UPDATE: This Firefox extension makes daily bookmark backups automatically and puts them in the Firefox profile directory:

C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\default.qfb\Backups

Extension Room :: Bookmark Backup

Switching to Firefox Browser?

Things that give me a reason to use Firefox(by priority):
1- Tabbed Browsing
2- Built-in Popup Blocking
3- Google Search supported
4- Bookmarks(favorites) Manager
5- Searching through bookmarks by Bookmarks Manager
6- Download Manager
7- Password Manager

Things That give me a reason to switch back to IE:
1- Some websites are not displayed as their are supposed to be
2- Bookmarks(Favorites) are saved on a different location and still looking for that location!!
3- Google Toolbar not supported
4- Some components are not supported natively and need plug-in downloads

Know your ExMerge Lessons?

Some interesting links that give explanations over Exchange Server ExMerge tool and how it can help:
1- EXMerge is your friend

2- Some Questions and Answers About the Exmerge Utility:

What Are the Possible Uses of Exmerge?
You can use Exmerge to extract mail from a damaged private information store. Exmerge puts this mail into .pst files that you can import back into an undamaged private information store.
You can use Exmerge to locate and remove a specific e-mail message from the private information store (for example, virus mail).
You can use Exmerge to migrate users between different organizations and sites by copying the users' mail to .pst files that you can then import into the new organization or site.
You can use Exmerge to extract folder rules.
In some situations, you can even use Exmerge as a brick-level backup agent, although Exmerge does not have the ability to write the data to a backup tape. (More)

3- Using EXMERGE To Delete Message From Your Exchange Server :

One question that seems to come up a lot is “How can I delete a message from all the users mailboxes”, this question gets asked for many reasons, such as someone sent an email to the wrong group of people, you know that a message is in your system that contains an attachments that you do not want your users opening, you can probably think of a few more reasons... More

4- How can I delete all occurrences of a message from a Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 mail database?

Although you can recall sent messages in Exchange, recalling a message doesn't reliably delete all occurrences of it. Sometimes you'll want to remove all traces of a message--for example, when a former employee sends a malicious email message to current employees. You can use the Mailbox Merge Wizard (Exmerge) utility... More

5- Cleaning the Nasty Stuff Off Your Exchange Server

Top Ten Cisco IOS Tips

I was digging into my old favorite entries and got to this old topic from James Boney the author of "Cisco IOS in a Nutshell". A great book for both Cisco newcomers and veterans. In the first part of the book some IOS and Router basics and configurations are explained and the second part is a command reference which I really like it.
Basic tips but not bad to take a look at:
O'Reilly Network: Top Ten Cisco IOS Tips

Free Online Network Tools

Although most network administrators use TCP/IP tools like IPConfig, Ping, Tracert, Netstat from the command line to diagnose and fix network problems but there are occasions that using online tools can work faster and easier so it is good to know about some online TCP/IP tools:
Codeflux.com
DNSStuff
SubnetOnline
Know other online tools?

Exchange NDRs Can Not Be Customized

Have you ever thought that customizing some of the Exchange Server non-delivery reports can reduce the number of IT support calls and help end users find out what is going wrong and whether they have to call for support or they can handle the problem on their own?
Let's say you have limited your Exchange users from sending out emails larger than 5MB in size. Now, when users send emails larger than 5MB they receive a non-delivery report with an error code and some odd text from the users standpoint! At best the user calls for support and at worst she ignores the report and assumes that all emails have been delivered! So, customizing the non-delivery report and replacing a friendly report with some instructions to scatter attachments into different emails would be a nice option IF IT WAS SUPPORTED UNDER MICROSOFT EXCHANGE SERVER!
In the last few days I spent a lot of time looking for a way to customize Exchange NDRs and couldn't find any resolution through Microsoft Online Support and searching the web. Finally someone from Microsoft PSS reached my post at Microsoft's newsgroup :

There is currently no functionality built into Microsoft Exchange that allows you to modify the text of an NDR.