Windows Install CD Customizer

nLite's WinOS Boot CD customizer

Here's another "note from the field", a post about a tool tested and proven in a customer environment. Ok, so here's the technical backgrounder: Customer orders a Lenovo tower PC and of course it comes pre-loaded with Vista, but with XP downgrade rights. We're wanting to use this as a staging server for document images to be burned to Blu-Ray disks (hey, they hold 25GB of data) using CyberLink's InstantBurn application. We've also ordered a SATA Raid controller and (2) 250GB SATA disks so we can RAID-1 mirror the drives where the images will be stored. The bonus problem is that the system didn't ship with an XP boot CD, but a system recovery CD set with Vista (ie we're going to have to download and install a bunch of video/motherboard/ethernet/etc. drivers after the OS install). So, we put in the XP SP2 boot CD we have and as the system boots we hit F6 to install the 3rd party drivers for the SATA Raid controller and viola, the dreaded "Insert disk into Drive A:" message appears. Hmm, ok, so what system ships with a floppy drive anymore? We consider a USB Floppy drive for a minute and then realize that this early in the boot sequence there are no USB drivers loaded yet; what to do?

Enter the solution for this type of dilemma from nLite. It's actually a very ingenious but simple solution, which makes it even more appealing. We downloaded and installed the nLite software on a laptop and then (after a few minutes of reading) launched the app. Note: it does require the .NET Framwork 2.0 in order to run. It prompted us for our XP CD (it works with Windows 2003 as well) and then a target directory, where it proceeded to copy the entire XP CD; that said, you'll need around 1.2GB of available disk space to use this tool. Next we were presented with a menu of choices for modifying the now copied XP OS and we chose "Install Drivers", clicked "next" and were prompted for the location of the SATA Raid drivers we wanted to install. True confession here it took us a couple of tries to get the right driver set for the controller, but hey it was a learning process. The nLite utility then proceeded to copy the drivers and then the tool presented us with an option to Finish. We relaunched the application and then selected the "Create Bootable ISO" option. The nLite utility then used the now modified on-disk copy of XP to create a bootable CD ISO file. At this point you launch your favorite CD burning tool and burn the ISO to CD.

Next comes the true test of the tool - the boot of our newly created XP CD. While we failed on our first try (wrong drivers), the second try resulted in a boot sequence that saw the SATA Raid controller drivers load and then we were able to proceed with the installation of XP. Mission Accomplished.

The nLite utility has the following features which you may find helpful:

* Service Pack Integration - update that old SP1 boot CD to SP2/SP3.
* Component Removal - remove unwanted components prior to install.
* Unattended Setup - scripting of installation(s)
* Driver Integration
* Hotfixes Integration
* Tweaks
* Services Configuration
* Patches
* Bootable ISO creation

Calendar sync

Tungle Calendar Sync

In a perfect world everyone would use the same e-calendaring system, but of course that is not (and never will be) the case. What would be the benefit of everyone having access to each other's calendar? So that when you want to schedule a meeting with one or more people you wouldn't have to endure dozens of emails trying to get everyone to agree on a date and time to meet. Enter Tungle, a web service that crosses over the proprietary calendaring boundaries so that you can easily schedule meeting with people using their own calendar system. Currently Tungle supports Outlook (with or without an Exchange server), Google Calendar, iCAL and Entourage on MAC, and soon Lotus Notes.

The question becomes - how simple is it? Very simple. Not only that, you can get a vanity URL by signing up at their Tungle.me site. When you sync your calendar with Tungle, it publishes your busy and available times, not the details of your calendar entries. This allows others to see your available times. They even have an iPhone app that gives you full functionality for using the scheduling application. Sweet.

The added bonus is that even if you don't use one of the supported calendaring systems, you can still use your Tungle calendar to coordinate and schedule meetings with others. Oh, and yeah, it auto-updates across time zones (duh, of course they thought of that).

So, if you have need of sharing calendars and making meeting appointments with people outside (or even inside) your company who don't share a common calendaring system, you might want to give Tungle a try.

CyberLink's InstantBurn for Optical Media

Use CD-RW and DVD-RW like a removable disk



Cyberlink's InstantBurn-5 software turns your CD-RW, DVD-RW and rewritable BlueRay discs into a removable media drive. You can drag and drop files from folders, send unwanted files to the Recycle Bin for deletion, rename files, and change file property information. The verification function checks whether data has been written properly, ensuring the reliability of the data. InstantBurn supports UDF (Universal Disk Format) versions 1.02, 1.5, 2.0, 2.01 and 2.5. The only unfortunate fact is that it's a MS Windows-only product, supporting Vista, XP, etc., but no Linux or OS-X support at this time.

One suggested use of this product would be to put a DVD-RW or BlueRay-RW drive in a PC with InstantBurn-5 software and then share the re-writable disk across the network as NAS storage, using it for instant archiving of data to an optical disk. The beauty of the solution is that you don't have to master the disk and do write-at-once burns of your data - you can keep writing to it as needed until full and then replace and continue archiving data onto a new re-writable optical platter.

All-in-all another great product from CyberLink. Check out the rest of their media editing and mastering software as well as PowerBackup for PC data archiving.

NAS adapter is too cool

Addonics NAS Adapter for USB




In my quest to provide some networked storage on my home network I stumbled upon the Addonics USB to NAS adapter. Priced at only $55.00, this adapter provides two much needed features in a very small form factor and inexpensive to boot. In a nutshell, you can take any USB hard disk, attach the Addonics adapter and turn that disk drive into a NAS storage device accessible via SMB or FTP. The real BONUS feature here is that this adapter can also serve as a network print server if you attach a USB printer.

Product Features

* Convert any USB 2.0 / 1.1 mass storage device into a Network Attached Storage device
* Great for creating a custom Network Attached Storage appliance.
* USB port can be used to power most 2.5" USB hard drives or any low powered USB storage device.
* Support Fast Ethernet 10/100Mbps.
* Simple to install
* Small and light weight. Size slightly longer than a C size battery. Can be installed practically anywhere
* Can be set as DHCP server or client.
* Support Samba server for up to 64 concurrent clients.
* Support FTP server for up to 8 concurrent users.
* Can be set as a print server to attach any USB printer to the network
* Built-in Bit Torrent client for direct download to the attached USB storage device
* Can be set as a UPnP AV server to share photo/music files stored on the file server with XBOX 360 video game consoles connected to the LAN
* User management to allow read only or read/write access to folders
* Administrative management access via web browser with password security.
* Compatible with all Windows OS, Mac OS, Linux 2.6.x and above

OpenProj for Project Management

I had the opportunity the other day to test out OpenProj, an open source project management tool. I was sent a MS Project (.MPP) file to review a project plan for a website development effort but did not have MS Project installed on my laptop. Unlike some other MS applications like Powerpoint, Microsoft does not have a viewer app available for MS Project files. Enter Serena's OpenProj software, a free open source alternative to MS Project. After downloading the OpenProj software and installing on my Windows XP laptop, I was able to not only easily open the .MPP file but was also able to modify the project milestones and view all of the project details. While I didn't have a chance to test them, other open source options for project management are DotProject and Open Workbench. For collaborative project management in a hosted environment, I'd also recommend taking a close look at BaseCamp's software-as-a-service solution which starts at only $24/mo. for 15 projects, 3GB of storage and unlimited users. Also worth a close look is Zoho Project, part of the comprehensive suite of SaaS apps from Zoho.com.