EFS - Back up encryption key – popup in Win7

Today I got a popup from the task tray on Windows 7 advising me to back up my EFS (Encrypting File System) certificate (key). This came out of nowhere and I haven't seen it but once before a long time ago, so I was a little concerned (that it might be a virus etc).

Here's some other folks who got the warning:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1004&message=35959900&changemode=1
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11699/efs-encryption-key-pop-up

Here's some info on how to tell if you have encrypted folders or files:
http://superuser.com/questions/37896/efs-find-out-whats-encrypted

I ran -      cipher /s:c:\ |findstr "^E"        -as administrator from the command line, and it didn't find anything.

Here's some info on how to turn EFS off:
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/102501-encryption-disable-enable.html

SPB TV – a working IPTV mobile solution?

http://tv.spb.com
http://www.spb.com/pocketpc-software/tv/
http://www.spb.com/android-software/tv/
http://www.spb.com/iphone-software/tv/
http://www.spb.com/blackberry-software/tv/
http://www.spb.com/symbian-software/tv/
http://www.spb.com/webos-software/tv/

http://www.spb.com/press/pressreleases/2010/spb-tv-reaches-the-2-million-users-milestone-and-comes-to-ipads.html

As a long-time Windows Mobile fan I’m familiar with SPB. They were one of two or three suites of software that really made Windows Mobile useful.

They created this SPB TV for Windows Mobile about the time that I transitioned away to the iPhone, so I never did more than play with it a little. I remember being unimpressed with the channel selection.

However they have parlayed this into something pretty amazing, a cross-platform mobile IPTV solution, if I understand things right.

They have Windows Mobile, iPhone (/iPad), Android, Blackberry, WebOS, and Symbian clients! There’s a WAP version available for other mobile platforms. They have 2 million users now, and over 150 channels.

Even though the clients appear to be free on most platforms, you only get a couple of channels to try out. There’s actually a roughly $10 charge as best I can tell, to get full functionality and content. However there are no recurring subscription fees, instead there are ads.

I’m just getting started in trying it out, so I can’t comment much on quality yet. On Android over wifi I only seem to get a minute or two before the video dies or buffers, but that may not be an app problem.

As I understand they are working on carrier agreements as well, which could play heavily into the long-term viability of the solution.

RIP Neuvasync

Neuvasync (http://nuevasync.com , http://blog.nuevasync.com), which I have been recommending for years for people who want to sync their iPhones and other smart phones to Google PIM services (contacts and calendar basically), has decided to stop offering a free version of their services, if I read this right - http://blog.nuevasync.com/blog/nuevasync/entry/new_services .

As Google offers the same syncing for free, I’m afraid most people, me included, will choose to move to the Google version. Well thanks for the memories..

Why Microsoft fails

Check out this error dialog from Microsoft Outlook below.

“The rules on this computer do not match the rules on Microsoft Exchange. Only one set of rules can be kept. You will usually want to keep the rules on the server. Which rules do you want to keep?

The point I want to highlight, is that you can’t see the rules without choosing Client or Server from this dialog. You have to choose which rules to keep, without seeing the rules! So you are forced to throw away personal data, without getting a chance to look at it.

In fact there were some rules I wanted, but I did not know which spot they were on, and I chose wrong and lost the rules.

How hard would it be to show me both sets of rules, and allow me to craft a flexible solution to any replication or collision?

Anybody who thinks this is an ok way to treat customers, will never succeed completely.

Firesheep and standardizing on https

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/networking/herding-firesheep/293

Finally vindicated! I’ve been saying for years that the whole web needs to run on https. That means that every client – > web server connection would be securely encrypted, not just the banking/shopping ones. Take some of that ever-growing processor capacity from Moore’s law and do something useful with it.