Category: Internet

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blog DNS Internet OpenDNS OpenDNS Updater

OpenDNS Updater 2.0 for Windows

Well it looks like OpenDNS released OpenDNS Updater 2.0 for Windows according to an e-mail I got today. At the time I wrote this the article on their site to download the OpenDNS Updater was pointing to the 1.3.0.187 version.

Here is what they said in the e-mail about it.

If you’re using OpenDNS at home, we recommend you download the new OpenDNS Updater 2.0 for Windows, a major step forward in stability, features and performance. This little piece of software does many great things, including:

  • It will update your dynamic IP quietly in the background. This makes sure your OpenDNS settings follow you if your IP changes and ensures your filtering, shortcuts and customization stay functional.
  • It will automatically detect NetBios devices such as file servers, network printers and media servers on your network and create VPN typo exceptions for them so they continue to work without issue.
  • It lives in your system tray (or you can choose to make it completely invisible) and alerts you by changing color from orange to red if, for some reason, OpenDNS stops working properly.

It’s also extremely stable and lightweight. Download it now. Note: clicking the link will start the download.

The previous version did update the IP & run in the tray but it didn’t have a way to not get bubbles. Sorry but that isn’t what is the most exciting features to me.

The one that I’m really happy for is that “It will automatically detect NetBios devices”, yes that’s right I will no longer have to manually add every single computer on my network to the “hosts” file or to my OpenDNS dashboard. Both of which would require me to update it if the IP addresses ever changed for any reason whatsoever. So this will make file & printer sharing with OpenDNS running on my network even easier for me to configure & maintain. I just have to have my computer set to a network on my account with them which I already had done since my IP address changes every time I reboot my router.

I hope this is enough to convince my family & anyone else that reads my blog to upgrade their DNS to OpenDNS. Remember with OpenDNS being used on your network your Internet should be faster & safer because you can block stuff like porn sites & phishing sites or other sites you just don’t want to be able to go to.

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blog Internet Internet Explorer Microsoft

Microsoft encouraging people to install IE8

I find this really funny last night Major Nelson tweeted about a site encouraging people to “upgrade” to Internet Explorer 8, but they still have <meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”IE=EmulateIE7″ /> in the source code of their site, that is over here. Yes you read that right Microsoft still have people using Internet Explorer 8 using the Internet Explorer 7 rendering engine on their homepage. The only explanation I can think of is even they can’t figure out how to make a site work with Internet Explorer 8 as well as Internet Explorer 6 & Internet Explorer 7, but that is only a guess.

I find it somewhat ironic that they released Internet Explorer 8 back on March 19, 2009 according to wikipedia which sounds right as that sounds about the time that I told Windows update the first time to hide that “High Priority Update”. I’m sorry but they still have not fixed it & the Internet was not ready for all the changes that they made to the rendering engine.

About the only good thing I can say about Internet Explorer is that does not support the <blink> tag. I really with the Firefox developers would realize that is a bad tag & isn’t even a part of the standard HTML tags.

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blog DNS FrontPage Internet Microsoft work

FrontPage Server Extensions

Well I guess it is time I make another post.

Here is what I know about the Microsoft FrontPage Server Extensions & how to troubleshoot them.

1) Go to http://www.yourdomain.com/_vti_bin/shtml.exe (replace “www.yourdomain.com” with the domain in question. This works on Windows based web servers, Unix based web servers, & Linux based web servers.). You should get the following message ‘Cannot run the FrontPage Server Extensions on this page: “”‘, anything other than that indicates the server extensions are broken, that means they need to be reinstalled. The exact procedure depends on your web host so I won’t post directions for doing that.

2) If you are not able to open site with http://www.yourdomain.com (replace “www.yourdomain.com” with the domain in question.). If this lets you sign in, only asks for user name & password once. They are working otherwise they are broken or something is preventing you from signing in. The causes of it not signing in are vast and many if the extensions are not truly broken. On Linux & Unix servers it is frequently the “.htaccess” file has something screwed up in it. On Windows servers I’m not sure because I never had this happen with the extensions not being broken.

3) You can’t publish in FrontPage on a 16-bit TCP/IP stack as it requires a 32-bit stack, I’m not sure which version this started with, but I know that at least FrontPage 98 required it & above. This means AOL customers, unless AOL decided to actually use a 32-bit TCP/IP stack.

Oh Microsoft has a good article on how to tell if the FrontPage Server Extensions are installed & working. OH & yes I did write the article, I have no idea why they said it is for FrontPage as it is for the FrontPage Server Extensions versions 98, 2000, & 2002. That’s right even though Microsoft made FrontPage 2003 the last extensions were the 2002 extensions.

Well thats all for now I’ll post more another time.