I’m trying the new Tiny Personal Firewall V5.0 beta. So far, pretty slick!

I’ve been running the free version of Sygate on my laptop for a few months now and it does a good job but it seems to take forever to come off hibernate so I thought I’d give Tiny a try. Now, I used and liked Tiny back before Kerio split off from them and am using Kerio V2.1.4 on my desktop (yeah, the link says 2.1.5 is out but I haven’t had problems so I haven’t updated). I tried Kerio’s V3 beta on the laptop and was pretty happy with that but had two kinds of rules: simple and advanced and it kinda confused me which is why I went to Sygate. Technology changes and Sygate hasn’t been updated for a while (I’m sure there’s something in the works) so I thought I’d try Tiny again.

It looks like you’re actually configuring a firewall — not something I’d recommend for the novice user! You can define a set of protocols, ports and direction and then refer to that in the rules. It’s got IDS, file protection, application protection and verification and a pretty decent activity and connections display. This beta expires sometime this monrh. I’ll keep you posted.

Over at WebMonkey.

The article is here. It’s a little out of date, being from May, 2002, but it compares the features of what he calls “off-site” (Diaryland/Pitas and Blogger), “on-site” (Movable Type, GreyMatter), and “on the hard-drive” (Radio Userland). The last page has a pointer to another list of blogging tools.

I’ve spent the last few days immersed in RSS readers. What are they? RSS stands (according to different sources) for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary or … What is it used for? It’s a way for websites to “publish” their content on a regular basis and for me, the user, to retrieve that content on my schedule, not theirs, without subscribing to a newsletter and giving them my email address. In a manner of speaking, RSS clients go to each website that I’ve told it to and “reads” headlines from it, storing the data until I’m ready to look at it. No, it doesn’t store the entire web page and it automatically expires old articles so it really doesn’t take up a lot of room on my hard drive. A really good discussion of RSS and its uses is here.

Which sites have RSS feeds? CNet’s News.com, Slashdot, Lockergnome Windows Daily and ComputerWorld, just to name a few. NewsIsFree syndicates a lot of sites including CNN and the AP. Heck, even Amazon.com’s got a syndicator (e.g. Amazon E-books).

RSS Bandit is a the prototypical RSS client and is written about in the MSDN article entitled “Building a Desktop News Aggregator.” See here for more info about it. Other clients include

FeedReader
Awasu
NewsDesk from WildGrape
Syndirella
NewsMonster — an interesting reader that integrates with Mozilla and runs as a sidebar.
FeedDemon — a new reader in beta now, expected to be commercially available. my current favorite.

There are numerous lists of RSS clients. Here are 3:

Abbe Normal’s RSS Readers Wiki
Haiko Heibig’s Directory (a little old now)
Open Directory of RSS Readers

And there’s at least one Yahoo! group for these things: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aggregators/.

I like it!

Today’s Lockergnome Windows Daily has a pointer to a neat tool that fits right in with my entry about special folders (e.g. My Computer). Called the Shell Object Editor, it’s a small, free download that lets you add, delete and modify your own shell objects. In expert mode you can even futz with the shell folders that are already present on your machine. The author explicitly states that he’s using some undocumented functions so this isn’t something I’d count on working when you need it. Still, if you’re like me, just seeing the shell objects that are already present on your machine is a real learning experience.

Sheesh! I must be browsing a couple dozen sites to check for updates and news. I happened across a news aggregator called Daily Rotation. No, it’s not an RSS feed, it’s just a web page that shows headlines, updated regularly, of over 200 sources including places like BetaNews, VersionTracker, SlashDot, InfoWorld and CNet. Each headline is a link to the story.

OK, this one’s kinda funny. Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Consulting is distributing a bullsh*t filter for Word and Powerpoint documents. Not the first of its kind but I think it is the first to come from a major company. It’s part of DC’s Straight Talk series and is called Bullfighter. You run it, it scans the document for “readability and jargon” and suggests alternatives. Here’s the download page. Knock yourself out!

Let me give you the payoff first and then the background. Proxomitron has been sold and the free version is no longer being developed. Alternatives? Supposedly privoxy is one and Internet Junkbuster is another. As I find others that are (nearly) as as capable I’ll post them.

OK, now for those that aren’t familiar with the particulars, here’s some background. Scott, Proxomitron’s developer, finally had enough of the whining and kvetching on the the Yahoo! Group and decided to pack it in (see the group for details). Proxo, as it’s known to its friends, has been around for quite a few years and is known as one of the most powerful and configurable filters/proxies around. With it you can literally rewrite entire pages, adding, removing or changing it as you deem necessary. This power allows you to selectively block ads, cookies, manage privacy and a bunch of other things including adding your own decorations if you want. It requires a bit of knowledge to set up, though, because it’s configured by editing text filter files which are applied to your browser’s data stream. There’s LOTS of help on the group as well as a bunch of filters that you can download.

OK, now for those that aren’t familiar with the particulars, here’s some background. Scott, Proxomitron’s developer, finally had enough of the whining and kvetching on the the Yahoo! Group and decided to pack it in (see the group for details). Proxo, as it’s known to its friends, has been around for quite a few years and is known as one of the most powerful and configurable filters/proxies around. With it you can literally rewrite entire pages, adding, removing or changing it as you deem necessary. This power allows you to selectively block ads, cookies, manage privacy and a bunch of other things including adding your own decorations if you want. It requires a bit of knowledge to set up, though, because it’s configured by editing text filter files which are applied to your browser’s data stream. There’s LOTS of help on the group as well as a bunch of filters that you can download.

Remember that eWeek article about a new trojan that could eat the entire Internet’s lunch in 24 hours (see my blog posting from 6/16 at 10PM)? Well, guess what? They were wrong (gasp, no!) … at least they think they were (what, more uncertainty?). In an eWeek follow-up article from 6/19 (how’d I miss it?) called “Security Researchers Uncover Mystery Malware” but a network mapping tool that they call “Stumbler”.

eCost.com has the SMC EZConnect 802.11b wireless PC card with configurable transmit power (up to 100 milliwatts meaning greater distances) for $19. Only 58 left with the deal set to expire in about 68 hours.

They’ve also got an Adaptec 802.11b Wireless 4-Port Router for $39.99 (4 left with 70 hours to go) and the Adaptec 802.11b Wireless Access Point for $29.00 (no idea how many or how long the deal will last).

OK, I promised the answer I’m using: run wscript on the following:

function main()  {
  var i;

  // Create an instance of the scripting Shell Object
  WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell");

  if(WScript.Arguments.length >= 1) {
    // Have the Shell Object call ShellExecute on the 1st argument.
    WshShell.Run(WScript.Arguments(0), 1, 0);
  }

  // Destroy the Shell Object
  WScript.DisconnectObject(WshShell);
}

main();

Simple, no? Coming up with this led me through the confusing labyrinth of Wscript/Cscript, JScript, VBA and a few other things that I cna’t remember anymore. It’s been an intense couple of days! What I learned, though, has, as usual, been invaluable. I finally “got” the WScript object model and how it differs from the language that’s being used to implement.

For completeness (and so that I have a record of some of these incredible sites and pages), here’s where I went:

ShellExecute is in shell32.dll. Method of operation (how it decides to start a new instance, what registry keys it looks in, etc.) is in MSKB 224816.

MSKB 164787) describes the RunDLL and RunDLL32 interface and mechanism.

Then there’s this article in the Microsoft Systems Journal which describes how to script an autorun utility.

WhirlyWiryWeb has a utility called ShellExe.exe which will launch documents through ShellExecute. The download is only 14K. The article and the download is available at http://www.whirlywiryweb.com/q/%2Fshellexe.asp. It takes multiple arguments and goes through trying to open each one of them till it succeeds. Kinda overkill for me and what I’m trying to do but it’s still a good starting point.

“Fundamental Shell Concepts” at NetEZ.com explains some of the shell space naming, including how to locate the “name” of special folders. For instance, “My Computer” is “::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}” (sans quotes). You can use this as an address (like C:\WINDOWS) in Explorer, for instance.

Another good place I found some JScripting help was at newObjects in their Code snippets section. This particular article has 2 snippets: a sprintf implementation in JScript and a file preprocessor. I took some JScript hints from them.

The Google search terms I used to find most of this stuff was simply “jscript parameters” without the quotes. I found a VERY good document on JScript at http://docs.rinet.ru:8080/BumazhnyyKofe/index.htm. There are LOTS and LOTS of documents there.