By Brian Swanson on 9/9/2008 4:51 PM

After upgrading my AT&T Tilt to Windows Mobile 6.1, I was suddenly unable to sync with my Vista PC.  After a little poking around and 'Net searching, I found a new setting under Settings->Connections->USB to PC.  Unchecking the "Enable advanced network functionality" allowed my phone to once again sync with the PC.

 

By Brian Swanson on 9/9/2008 4:50 PM

Just a couple of quick blog posts, because I am always having to track down this information over and over again when I get an update for a phone, or get a new Windows Mobile phone...

 If you are wondering how to change the default area code that comes up when creating a new contact.  Here's the steps:

1. Go to Start->Contacts (or open the Contacts app in your preferred method)
2. Select Menu->Options in the Contacts app
3. Change Area Code from default 425 to your local area code

 If nothing else this will help me remember next time I'm trying to make the same change.

By Brian Swanson on 8/9/2008 6:51 PM

I am not sure at what point this happened, or if I even had a choice in the matter (maybe Joel is sending telepathic messages to me). Purple Ant is a monthly subscriber to Copilot.com, and we have a few licenses to FogBugz.  I'm both an email subscriber, and RSS subscriber to JoelOnSoftware.com.  I own a copy of Joel On Software the book, as well as More Joel on Software, and User Interface Design for Programmers, and Smart and Getting Things Done.  I've been listening to the StackOverflow.com podcasts (two seperate links there) since they started...Oh and Purple Ant wrote a DotNetNuke (DNN) module to support the "co-branding" of Copilot.com, and are giving it away for free to anyone who wants to use it.

I'm sure there are other things (we won't go into the shrine I have...j/k), but I can't think of them at the moment...

Why am I such an avid follower of Joel?  I agree with most of what he says...  Fog Creek Software was founded as a place where developers would...

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By Brian Swanson on 8/6/2008 7:22 AM

I came across a link in another blog, and I've since forgotten which blog that was, so I can't give proper credit.  But, I thought I'd pass it along to everyone.

You can download an add-on for Office 2007 that gives you the ability to "Save As" as PDF file.  Not sure why Microsoft hasn't added this functionality sooner.  Oh wait, yeah I am, because of their competing format XPS.

Anyway, download the add-on, after validating your Office 2007 of course, and install it, and then you can save as PDF at will!

Here's the link to the add-on

By Brian Swanson on 7/29/2008 6:54 AM

We were out at a customer's site yesterday installing a new Windows 2003 R2 Standard Edition server, and when trying to run DCPROMO to turn the new server into a domain controller we kept getting the message "The version of the Active Directory schema of the source forest is not compatible with the version of Active Directory on this computer."

Our existing server was a Windows 2003 Standard Edition server running Service Pack 2, so I couldn't understand why I'd need to run ADPREP, but I figured the system knows better than I.  I run ADPREP /FORESTPREP from DISK 1 of the Windows 2003 R2 CDs and it tells me everything is fine, that no upgrades to the AD Schema are necessary.  Well after some further investigation, I find there is a NEW version of ADPREP on DISK 2 of the Windows 2003 Server R2 CDs in the \CMPNENTS\R2\ADPREP folder.  When i ran this newly found version, the AD Schema was upgraded and the next attempt at running DCPROMO was successful.

I wish I understood why Microsoft would have hidden...

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By Brian Swanson on 7/29/2008 6:43 AM

I have several email accounts, and have always liked to be overly organized with my incoming emails.  Prior to Outlook 2007, I'd create a folder under my main Inbox folder, and after setting up a new email account would create a rule to move mail coming in on a specific account to go to a specific folder.  This always worked great, but I think Microsoft actually improved things by making it a couple steps easier to accomplish the same task in Outlook 2007.

In Outlook 2007, you still need to create the folder you want your incoming mail from a specific account delivered too (you can point multiple accounts at the same folder, I choose not to), but then after setting up the account you select "Change Folder" button (if it is a POP3 email account) and select a different delivery folder. 

I think "rules" creation was probably overly complicated for the masses for this simple task, and that's why Microsoft added the functionality. Regardless, I like the new functionality.

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By Brian Swanson on 7/23/2008 10:13 AM

If you've ever tried to use GMail or custom domain hosted email with Google Apps on multiple PCs or mobile devices, you've been frustrated.  I've typically actually pointed people to using IMAP if they wanted to check their GMail emails on multiple devices.

It turns out there is a simple trick for allowing multiple PCs/devices to check an account using GMail.  If you add "recent:" to the front of your username you enter when setting up your email account, then GMail will send you all emails that have been received in the last 30 days regardless of whether they have been previously picked up. So your username would be "recent:username@gmail.com" or "recent:username@customdomain.com"

Here's the link on Google's site that describes the same functionality.

By Brian Swanson on 7/22/2008 9:14 AM

This is a problem I noticed some time ago on my various machines I use, and just never took the time to understand why it was happening. Today, I was unzipping a relatively small zip file (~2mb) but it had quite a few files in it, and it amazed me that WinZip was taking 1-2 seconds PER FILE to unzip them.

After some investigation, I found the following FAQ page on WinZip's site: http://www.winzip.com/xattmgr.htm

It turns out that starting with Windows XP SP2, an Attachment Manager service was added that provides some security for downloading of potentially malicious file types from the different zones.

so I started thinking a bit more about it, and I can understand the Attachment Manager "watching my back" if I were unzipping the file directly from the downloaded location.  But I was having the same issue with files I had saved to my Desktop or elsewhere.  Well, if you read the knowledge base article linked at the bottom of the WinZip FAQ page above, you'll see that XP and Vista remember...

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By Brian Swanson on 7/10/2008 3:56 PM

Purple Ant Software is pleased to announce our first commercial software package, TotalRM.  TotalRM is a Relationship Management tool that will provide advanced customization and configuration options giving the user complete control over how the relationships in their business, both internal and external, should be managed.  TotalRM is way beyond a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool, it is an evolution in managing relationships that exist in each business.



The first version of TotalRM that will be released is the "Express Edition" which will limit the customization capabilities, as well as be restricted to a single user with an Access database to store information.  We feel it is important to get TotalRM out there to start receiving feedback on the User Interface and other design decisions that have been made, instead of waiting until the more advanced functionality...

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By Brian Swanson on 7/8/2008 6:32 AM

At Purple Ant, we are happily using Fog Creek's Copilot.com service for remote support of our desktop customers, and training whenever possible.

Recently (ok, not so recently), Copilot announced the ability to create your own customer launch page, to better integrate Copilot into your customer service process.

Purple Ant has created a simple module for DotNetNuke (available to all registered user's for free), to allow you to direct your customers to a page on your DNN site to start their Copilot session.

As you can see by the link, we are building out our new DotNetNuke site, but the skin has not yet been applied.  Go ahead and register for the site, and check back often, as our new skin should be up and going within a few weeks.