The Best of Web Matrix. Web Matrix is a great way to get your feet wet using ASP.NET without shelling out the money for a full copy of Visual Studio .NET. Here are the seven best things about Web Matrix. [Inside SQL Server Magazine - 25 Oct 02]    USE ISA SERVER TO SECURE EXCHANGE. What none of these Exchange 2000 services can do, alas, is replicate the full Outlook experience. For example, remote users can't easily synchronize with a handheld or use Outlook's Journal, Tasks, or Notes features. These shortcomings exist because Outlook is a Messaging API (MAPI)-based client and expects to be able to pass remote procedure call (RPC) traffic directly to the Exchange Server system. Exposing your Windows computers to RPC traffic directly from the Internet, however, is a Really Bad Idea, so administrators who want to offer Outlook to remote users either need to depend on direct dial-up connections or a VPN. VPNs work well but require a certain degree of care and feeding, particularly when you're deploying a VPN solution for many users or using hardware VPN devices that require special client software. Another solution exists, though, to the dilemma of how best to provide access to remote users: Deploy Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2000. ISA Server functions both as a firewall for inbound and outbound traffic and as a Web-caching device; its primary value for Exchange lies in its ability to secure traffic at the application level. Ordinary firewalls secure traffic at the network layer: They block or accept specified types of packets from and to selected network addresses but can't look inside those packets. ISA Server, however, is designed expressly to analyze the contents of HTTP, SMTP, and RPC packets to make sure that the packets contain legal requests. And Microsoft and third parties are working to add filtering capability for additional protocols. To better secure your Exchange 2000 or Exchange Server 5.5 systems, you can use ISA's application-inspection capability in two key ways. The first way is to publish the Exchange RPC ports so that Outlook clients can access them directly. The clients communicate with the ISA server, which forwards all legal RPC packets to the Exchange server. (This process is similar to the function of an Exchange front-end server, except that front-end servers can't proxy MAPI traffic.) If you take this approach, Outlook clients who connect directly to your ISA Server get much the same experience as operating on the LAN--they have full connectivity and access to all Outlook features. Every road warrior I know who has tried this feature has come away wanting it badly. The second way to leverage ISA Server is to use it to publish OWA. In this mode, you can use ISA Server to proxy OWA traffic with additional Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protection, which lets the ISA Server decrypt and inspect incoming traffic before reencrypting and retransmitting it. This option provides a welcome degree of additional security. You can also use ISA Server to perform more exotic tricks. With the right third-party plugins, the server product can filter and archive Exchange Instant Messaging (IM) traffic, scan inbound SMTP mail for viruses, and filter, quarantine, or block specified content. In the future, I expect Microsoft to enhance ISA Server so that it works with the next version of Exchange (code-named Titanium) to provide MAPI-over-HTTP mode and to support Outlook 11's roaming-user enhancements. [Exchange & Outlook UPDATE - 8 Nov 02]    How can I clear my customized folder settings in Windows XP? To clear any customized folder settings, perform the following steps: 1. Start a registry editor (e.g., regedit.exe). 2. Navigate to the HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsShell registry subkey. 3. Delete the Bags and BagMRU subkeys. 4. Navigate to the HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsShellNoRoam registry subkey. 5. Delete the Bags and BagMRU subkeys. 6. Close the registry editor, then reboot the machine for the changes to take effect. [Windows XP and 2000 Tips & Tricks UPDATE - 4 Nov 02]    How can I configure the number of customized folders that Windows XP remembers? XP lets you customize different appearance settings for different folders (e.g., some folders might display details while others display thumbnail images). XP remembers these settings for as many as 400 customized folders and stores this information under the HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsShellBags registry subkey. However, you can increase or decrease the number of customized folders that XP remembers by performing the following steps: 1. Start a registry editor (e.g., regedit.exe). 2. Navigate to the HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsShell registry subkey. 3. From the Edit menu, select New, DWORD Value. 4. Enter the name BagMRU Size, then press Enter. 5. Double-click the new value, set it to the number of folders that you want XP to remember, then click OK. 6. Repeat Steps 3 through 5 under the HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsShellNoRoam registry subkey as well. 7. Close the registry editor, then reboot the system for the change to take effect. [Windows XP and 2000 Tips & Tricks UPDATE - 4 Nov 02]    FILM SCANNERS: HIGH-QUALITY IMAGES AND FRUSTRATING WAITS. Earlier this summer, I contacted several film-scanner makers to see whether I could evaluate their products and determine whether the technology is a viable solution for consumers who have mountains of legacy (i.e., film-based) photographs. After 2 months of silence, only one manufacturer contacted me, so my impressions are based on my experience with only one such product. Regardless, I think film-scanner technology is worth watching. Film scanners are essentially miniature versions of the machines professional photo shops use to scan photo negatives and slides to create digital images that online (and brick-and-mortar) photo stores can print. The advantage of film scanners is that the resulting images are of tremendously high quality. For example, the 2 mega-pixel digital camera I own produces images at 1792 x 1200, which is perfect for 8" x 10" enlargements, but no larger. And although I can scan 4" x 6" or 5" x 7" prints on a flatbed scanner, the resulting images are limited by the low resolution of the source prints. For the best quality, you should start with a negative (or slide). I tested SmartDisk's SmartScan 3600, which features 3600dpi resolution, the equivalent of 17.2 million pixels, high enough quality for the biggest enlargements you'll ever want. The SmartScan is available for various Windows versions (including Windows XP, which I tested it on), Mac OS 9x, and Mac OS 8x (but not Mac OS X). The product retails for about $500, which is comparable to other consumer-and hobbyist-oriented film scanners. Whether this cost is prohibitively expensive will depend on your needs: Certainly, having a lifetime's worth of negatives converted to digital format would be far more expensive. Sadly, the SmartScan doesn't integrate with XP's excellent Windows Imaging subsystem and instead requires that you install Adobe Photoshop Elements or Adobe Photoshop. I own PhotoShop Elements 2.0, so I used that version rather than install the bundled copy of PhotoShop Elements 1.0. However, I did install the two Photoshop plugins that SmartDisk supplies; they add scanning support for the film scanner and various color and contrast enhancement capabilities. I'd prefer that SmartScan had native OS support so that I could use XP's excellent "Camera and Scanner Installation Wizard" or another tool instead of Photoshop. That said, the Photoshop plugins worked fine, and I used the scanner to obtain images from negatives I've collected. The results were somewhat surprising. I obtained massive 5174 x 3445 pixel images by using the default plug-in settings. But these images, stored in Photoshop's native PSD format, are about 50MB each and take a whopping amount of hard disk space. Converting them to compressed JPEG format saves space, however: Ignoring Photoshop's warnings about performance concerns, I converted the images to 4.4MB files by using the default JPEG "Save to Web" settings. The conversion makes a big difference, especially if your goal is to archive images to recordable CD-ROM or DVD. One problem I had with my old, supposedly protected negatives was particularly vexing: Each of the images I scanned had numerous visible scratches. When I scanned some newer negatives (the ones that were relatively unprotected in cardboard sleeves), they had the same kind of scratches, making me wonder whether such scratches are an inherent problem with negatives. Also, regardless of the negative, I had to manually enhance each resulting image's color and contrast after the fact (which is admittedly easy in Photoshop Elements), but I wish a more automated approach existed. Indeed, the process of initializing the scanner--select File, Import, then select Cyberview 35 v 1.73 from within Photoshop--is so nonintuitive that it's almost nonsensical, especially in a product aimed at consumers and computer hobbyists. We're not all graphics professionals. I can already tell that I'll forget this procedure 3 months from now unless I use the scanner regularly. As far as the hardware goes, the SmartDisk device is a large bricklike device with both FireWire and USB connections. I tested the FireWire version for speed but was still disappointed with the amount of time it takes to scan a strip of negatives. In fact, the lack of speed is the biggest problem with this technology, according to the folks I recently spoke with at a local camera store, so it's not a problem unique to the SmartScan device. You can elect to scan single images or an entire strip, and SmartDisk includes a couple of plastic frames so that you can cut out individual images, when needed, and place them in the front-mounted slot typically used for slides. (I didn't test the unit's ability to scan slides because I don't have any readily available slides.) I had hoped that the current generation of film scanners would eliminate one of my long-lasting digital-media-related dilemmas--I have thousands of photographs that I want to convert to digital images. The problem is that professional conversion is too expensive, and now I've found that converting the photographs manually with a film scanner is so slow it's almost impossible. (OK, maybe I'm exaggerating, but I told my wife recently that if I started scanning my photos today--beginning with photos from 1985 and working forward--I'd complete the conversion just in time for my retirement.) But this technology is far from useless. The quality and size of the resulting images is tremendous, even though you need to manually correct color and contrast and edit out some scratches. So I've revised my thinking about this technology and will probably spend some time working through my negatives and picking only the pictures I simply have to have in digital format. If film scanning is like other computer-related technologies, it will only get better with time. But what we have today isn't bad, depending on your requirements. [Connected Home EXPRESS - 25 Sep 02]    TIP: SHARING CALENDARS ON THE WEB. A recent spate of standards-compliant electronic calendars is making it easier than ever for people to make, maintain, and share their schedules. Mozilla Calendar (Windows and Linux, soon on Mac OS X too): One of the coolest things about the open-source Mozilla Web browser suite is that it's extensible, and people are working on add-ons that build on the Mozilla platform. One of the most useful, Mozilla Calendar, will be rolled into the wider Mozilla suite at a later date, but it's available today in beta form and works well (it's free and always will be). Mozilla Calendar, like iCal, supports Web calendaring standards, so you can also use this product to publish and subscribe to Web calendars. And that means that Mozilla Calendar is interoperable with iCal (and you can use the library of calendars that Apple supplies for iCal). The Mozilla Calendar folks also supply a set of holiday files for various nationalities. [Connected Home EXPRESS - 18 Sep 02]    WINDOWS VIDEO EDITING PULLS AHEAD OF THE MAC, PART 1. Greetings,<br>For the past few years, I've confidently recommended Windows-based systems to all kinds of users for every conceivable computing task with just one caveat: Apple Computer's Macintosh systems were always better than Windows for digital-video editing. And because Apple set its sights on the so-called "digital hub," with digital media and home-networking applications receiving special attention, I believed that the Mac--especially the DVD-burning iMac that debuted early this year--was a good choice for anyone who wants to work with digital video, audio, or photos.<br>Now I'm not so sure. With Microsoft's recent digital-media-related releases such as the Windows Media 9 Series and Windows Movie Maker 2, Windows XP has finally pulled well ahead of the Mac in digital-video capabilities and has always been the superior system for digital photos and music. And an inexpensive third-party release I'll discuss in the next issue of Connected Home EXPRESS brings elegant, beautiful DVD movie-making capabilities to XP as well. Is Apple's advantage ending? Let's look at the applications and technologies that are bringing XP to the forefront of the digital-video revolution.<br>Windows Media 9 Series<br>Now in the almost-final release candidate stage, Windows Media 9 Series includes a new version of Windows Media Player (WMP)--WMP 9--and new audio and video codecs, or formats, called Windows Media Audio (WMA) 9 and Windows Media Video (WMV) 9. I've reviewed the Windows Media 9 Series on the SuperSite for Windows (see the first URL below), and although Microsoft's latest player is the best yet, the codecs make this technology notable. Thanks to new compression capabilities, you can now rip CD audio and create home movies that take up far less space than is possible on a Mac. For example, you can store 1 to 1.5 hours of full-resolution (720 x 480) WMV 9 video in just a gigabyte of hard disk space. With the Mac, you can store only 6 minutes of full-resolution digital video per gigabyte. And WMV 9's quality is as good or better than what you see on the Mac. WMV 9 lets you create video libraries on your hard disk the same way you create libraries of digital photos and audio. You can't do so on the Mac because its underlying video technology doesn't offer low bit-rate, high-quality encoding at native resolutions. The Release Candidate 1<br>(RC1) build of WMP 9, which includes the WMA 9 and WMV 9 codecs, is available for download from the Microsoft Web site (see the second URL below).<br>Windows Movie Maker 2<br>High-quality video codecs with good compression are nice, but to take advantage of WMV 9 you need a video-editing package. XP's bundled Windows Movie Maker application has always been the butt of jokes, although I've often defended the product for its simple video-capture interface. But the new Windows Movie Maker 2 not only surpasses the Apple iMovie and PC-based competition but takes video-editing state-of-the-art to a new level.<br>Now available as a public beta release (see the third URL below), Windows Movie Maker 2 is visually similar to its predecessor but is far more powerful. The application is divided into four areas. A new Movie Tasks pane features simple task-based links for capturing video, editing your movies, and finishing (or saving) your movies; it also includes various movie-making tips. The old Collections pane is still available as a toggle; it makes the Movie Tasks pane appear and disappear. You use the Collections pane to organize your movie library from the video you capture from a Digital Video (DV) camera and other sources. The Collections view--which displays the video and audio clips, bitmaps, and other resources that make up the selected collection--is in the center of the application window. The newly resizable preview window is on the right. And the familiar Timeline/Storyboard pane, which also has a lot of new features, is on the bottom.<br>Windows Movie Maker 2's goal is to let you easily capture, edit, and create movies. Microsoft has found that consumers have good intentions when it comes to home video, but the reality is that editing video is difficult and overly time-consuming (and this has been my experience as well). For average users (i.e., most people), Windows Movie Maker 2 will automate literally every step of the video-editing process. More advanced users can tweak those results or simply choose to manually slog through the entire process. Windows Movie Maker 2 is one of those rare applications that works equally well for experts and newcomers.<br>Let's walk through a typical Windows Movie Maker 2 movie-creation process. First, you need to capture your raw video footage, typically from a camcorder. Unlike iMovie, Windows Movie Maker 2 supports analog and digital video, so any video (or audio) source you can connect to your PC is automatically supported. Windows Movie Maker 2 includes a new Capture from the Video Device wizard that completely automates this process, and you can also import video, pictures, audio, or music from your hard disk.<br>After you import the video, Windows Movie Maker 2 splits it into clips and creates a collection, as before. But now your options are exponentially expanded. Windows Movie Maker 2 includes more than 130 new professional-looking, high-quality effects, titles, and transitions (compared with just one in Windows Movie Maker 1 and about 27 in iMovie). Instead of looking at the manual process, let's look at Windows Movie Maker 2's exciting new AutoMovie feature, which uses Microsoft Research technology to analyze your video clips and create a professionally edited movie that includes the best parts of each scene you selected. It sounds impossible, but AutoMovie does an amazing job, effectively eliminating the time and effort barriers to video editing. AutoMovie supports various movie types--Flip and Slide, with cool video transitions; Highlights Movie, for the traditionalist; Music Video, for a movie that syncs edits to beats of the underlying song, which you get to select; Old Movie, which uses film age and sepia-tone effects; and Sports Highlights, which uses quick editing techniques and zooms, so you'll probably be happy with the results. I've been making music-video versions of my home movies all week, and the effect is simply stunning.<br>There's more--much more. I haven't gotten to the DVD-recording part of the story yet, but I'm out of space. Next week, I'll wrap up this overview of Windows Movie Maker 2; in the meantime, XP users should give this download a try. It's an amazing, change-your-life product if you're interested in working with digital video.<br>"Windows Media 9 Series reviewed"<br>http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/wm9series.asp<;br>WMP 9 RC1 download<br>http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9series/player.asp<;br>Windows Movie Maker 2 beta download<br>http [Connected Home EXPRESS - 13 Nov 02] [Eric's incoming newsletters]

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"Data! data! data!" he cried impatiently. "I can't make bricks without clay."
— Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson in "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches" by Arthur Conan Doyle. 

"I like deadlines," cartoonist Scott Adams once said. "I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

"There is nothing like that feeling of spending days and days banging your head against a wall trying to solve a programming problem then suddenly finding that one tiny obscure and seemingly unrelated piece of the puzzle that unlocks the solution. Oh yeah!"

- Chris Maunder, CodeProject Newsletter 28 Jan 2002

"Management at eSnipe, which is me, is also feeling the pain of the 2002 bear market. So rather than pout about it, I bought some stuff on eBay that I really didn’t need, but made me feel better."

- Tom Campbell, president of eSnipe