If you frequently find yourself installing Windows applications for friends, family that has wrecked their computer or because you’re a frequent Windows Beta tester there is a great tool for you.

Ninite

Simply go to the Ninite site and select from dozens of apps and then click Get Installer and Ninite builds you a Windows installer of all the apps you’ve selected.  Much like the simple process of selecting your apps, your installation runs smoothly with little or no prompts.

There are a couple of limitations to the installer – the applications must be on their list and the machine installing must have web access.  However, lucky for us the current selection has a large number of applications unlike Google Pack and it’s extremely limited selection.

The current selection of apps includes:

Web Browsers

• Chrome
• Safari
• Opera
• Firefox

Messaging

• Skype
• Messenger
• Pidgin
• Digsby
• Google Talk
• Thunderbird

Media

• iTunes
• Songbird
• Hulu
• VLC
• KMPlayer
• AIMP
• Audacity
• Spotify

Imaging

• Paint.NET
• Picasa
• GIMP
• IrfanView
• XnView

Documents

• Office (Trial)
• OpenOffice
• Adobe Reader
• Foxit Reader
• CutePDF

Anti-Virus

• Essentials
• Avast
• AVG

Runtimes

• Flash
• Flash (IE)
• Java
• .Net
• Silverlight

File Sharing

• uTorrent
• eMule

Other

• Dropbox
• Evernote
• BumpTop
• Steam
• Google Earth

Utilities

• ImgBurn
• CCleaner
• Launchy
• Revo
• Defraggler
• RealVNC
• CDBurnerXP
• Recuva

Compression

• 7-Zip
• WinRAR

Developer Tools

• Python
• FileZilla
• Notepad ++
• JDK
• WinSCP
• PuTTY
• Eclipse

Scenario

On machines where Vista/W7 is installed there appears to be an issue when checking to see if a user is in a role.  User Account Control (UAC) must be on to reproduce the issue.  The result is that the value returned is always FALSE even when the user does belong to the group.

Sample Code (UAC must be on to produce error)

If My.User.IsInRole(“My Domain\My Group”) Then

     Return True

Else

     Return False

End If

Workaround

To get around this I created a function using other .Net functions.

Public Function IsInUserRole(ByVal RoleToFind As String) As Boolean

    Dim id As WindowsIdentity = WindowsIdentity.GetCurrent
    Dim irc As IdentityReferenceCollection

    ‘ Gets a SID list of groups the user belongs to

    irc = id.Groups

    For Each ir As IdentityReference In irc

        ‘ Need to convert the SID to plain english

        Dim act As NTAccount = CType(ir.Translate(Type.GetType("System.Security.Principal.NTAccount")), NTAccount)

        If act.Value = RoleToFind Then

            Return True

        End If

    Next

    Return False

End Function

Have a shiny new Web 2.0 site where you are using just the stock busy / loading graphic (spinner.gif or waiting.gif)?  Why not go with a custom look for free. 

ajaxload.info is a new site that builds customized animated gifs for you.

Simple as 1-2-3!

1. Pick an indicator type from the Web 2.0 style drop down
2. Select your colors
3. Click Generate

Simple!  1 Site – 1 Page!

Next week I’ll be attending RailsConf 09 in Las Vegas, NV. Since I’m still pretty new to Rails I’m taking one of the tutorial classes “A-Z Intro to Rails Tutorial” and the presenter has already provided info from his site. Cool!

Background

Upon continuing a Ruby on Rails project after a few months delay, Aptana Studio’s RadRails editor installed some updates.  I suspect something that  changed in Rails itself (GEM update) caused the error I received.

Error Message

undefined method `include_root_in_json=’ for ActiveRecord::Base:Class (NoMethodError)

Solution

To fix this error rename the config/initializers/new_rails_defaults.rb to config/initializers/new_rails_defaults.rb.bak.

It appears that the old code placed in these files no longer works with ROR 2.0.2.

# These settings change the behavior of Rails 2 apps and will be defaults
# for Rails 3. You can remove this initializer when Rails 3 is released.

# Include Active Record class name as root for JSON serialized output.
ActiveRecord::Base.include_root_in_json = true

# Store the full class name (including module namespace) in STI type column.
ActiveRecord::Base.store_full_sti_class = true

# Use ISO 8601 format for JSON serialized times and dates.
ActiveSupport.use_standard_json_time_format = true

# Don’t escape HTML entities in JSON, leave that for the #json_escape helper.
# if you’re including raw json in an HTML page.
ActiveSupport.escape_html_entities_in_json = false

The file now created in a new project appears as follows:

# These settings change the behavior of Rails 2 apps and will be defaults
# for Rails 3. You can remove this initializer when Rails 3 is released.

if defined?(ActiveRecord)
# Include Active Record class name as root for JSON serialized output.
ActiveRecord::Base.include_root_in_json = true

# Store the full class name (including module namespace) in STI type column.
ActiveRecord::Base.store_full_sti_class = true
end

# Use ISO 8601 format for JSON serialized times and dates.
ActiveSupport.use_standard_json_time_format = true

# Don’t escape HTML entities in JSON, leave that for the #json_escape helper.
# if you’re including raw json in an HTML page.
ActiveSupport.escape_html_entities_in_json = false

Footnotes

See  http://www.hostingrails.com/1461/dbmigrate-undefined-method-include_root_in_json for more help with this error.

Spiceworks simply put is an IT/Network Managers best friend. Best of all – it is FREE! Building on Spiceworks strong foundation that allows IT Managers to inventory hardware, software, and other devices via WMI the new Beta 3 now allows it’s built in Help Desk to operate via LDAP and performs testing of your Exchange server. The review on Network World doesn’t do the product much justice because simply put this product is a must have. It easily saves me hours of time and notifies me of any problems that otherwise would have gone undetected. Try it for yourself. I often wonder how I lived without this software before.

Beta 3 – http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/13852
Spiceworks v2.1 – http://www.spiceworks.com/

Watch out MySpace you are about ready to be replaced.

With all the problems that plague the giant online meeting place, a shift to person-centric social networking is primed to take some share of users from MySpace and Facebook.  After all why would you want to rent space when you can own your own home.

WordPress and its upcoming sister product bbPress are offering a multitude of options for users who would are making the switch from social networking to blogging.  Why not start your WordPress site today?

Reference:

http://gigaom.com/2007/12/11/the-next-social-network-wordpress/