Worth noting is the fact that you have two choices for how to run the scan, either clamscan, or clamdscan (connecting to a clam daemon). If you run a high volume server, you will want to look into the clamd setup. There are several tutorials out there to do this, I am using the clamscan command line version.

The first thing you will need to do, is download and install the latest ClamWin antivirus release. Once this is done, you will need to reboot, and will have a nice systray icon for the management of ClamWin. You can right click on this icon, and select Configure ClamWin.

• On the “Advanced” tab, check “Treat Files As Mailboxes”
• On the “Archives” tab, check “Scan In Archives.” You will probably want to make certain the file size to scan up to matches, or exceeds the maximum mail/file size in the mail server.
• On the “Internet Updates” tab, you will want this enabled, and I would suggest setting it to hourly updates. The ClamAV team does a great job at keeping up with virii as they come out.

The next thing you will want to do, is setup a batch file for the scan. Here is the one I am using. You can save this to the root of your C: drive if you like. Or, modify as needed.

NOTE: I have my system date set to use yyyy-MM-dd as formatting for dates, the default will likely have issues with this batch file as is.

After you have ClamWin and the batch file in place, you will want to login as the admin user in smartermail. From the settings menu, click on Protocol Settings. Once you are on the Protocol Settings page, you should see an entry for “Command-line EXE or batch file to run on new mail” in this box, you will want to enter the following: c:\clamscan.bat %filepath

Once you’ve saved your settings in SmarterMail, you should be set. If you decide you need a higher performing option, you will want to download the win32 release of ClamAV instead of ClamWin, and setup the clamd service. Another option, which includes clamd and SpamAssassin support is SMFilter.

Hopefully this quick tutorial is helpfull. Many email servers support an event for running scripts, or executables against the inbound email spool. Similar settings are easily made. I will probably follow up this article with instructions for using the clamav-win32 release with clamd.
[tags]smtp, mail, batch files, antivirus[/tags]

Well, the real answer is, for now.. I can’t. Sure, I can get some HDTV tuner cards, most of which don’t work in the Media Center interface, and record over the air HD. That’s about it… there is no real option for digital content, paid or not for media center at this time. Cable-Card was supposed to resolve this, but where is it? DirectTV has finally made some indications that it will support Vista’s Media Center, but that is at some undetermined point in the future.

I really don’t want to have to mess with another DVR interface, as I like my MCE box. It works well, and the picture is absolutely beautiful on the new 56″ Samsung DLP I purchased a couple weeks ago. All I really need now is content to make it shine. Standard cable TV doesn’t cut it, as you can see every flaw on a 1080p display. Why is it, in a country where we pay higher subscription rates for premium services than pretty much the rest of the world, we have more restrictions on being able to use it?

Media Center already has (albeit, poor) DRM. I don’t intend on recording stuff, and sharing it online with a few thousand close personal friends… But, at this rate, what are my choices, living in a moderately rural area than downloading HD television episodes via bit torrent sites? I want HD, I’m willing to pay for it.. but I want it through my computer, on my happy big 1920×1080 display…

Okay, this is more of a rant than informational. It really just irks me every way. Maybe someone in the media industry can get their head out of their anus and do something about this.

[tags]Windows Media Center, MCE, HDTV, DLP, DRM[/tags]

Web 2.0 and AJAX are basically buzzwords for creating features in web based applications that flow, and work like standalone applications, without a full page refresh. For the most part the use of JavaScript and XML are used with the XmlHttpRequest object. What happens, is an event is triggered, usually by the user performing an action, or by a timed script action (window.setTimeout), which will use the XmlHttpRequest object to download a remote resource (usually XML), and use this to update/change content on the page. This is usually done without a significant impact to the user experience (UX).

The ability to do these things has been around for a long time now. There were similar methods available as far back as the mid-late 90’s. What makes it so special now, is how widespread the techniques have become. To top all this off, many web development frameworks now have integrated tools and components to perform many of these techniques transparently.

This entire post was started mainly because I came across a site today, that uses remote resources pretty well, and integrates them nicely. Weather Bonk is a site that combines Google maps with data from The Weather Channel and integrates them nicely, allong with a few web-cams of the area you are looking for.

I think the key here is not to go overboard with the AJAX interfaces, and keep an eye on usability, over just doing things for the sake of doing them. Checking if a username is available on a new user signup, without having to refresh the page is pretty nice. Having a web based application work like a stand-alone application, is also nice. Having, for instance, a travel site where you can’t bookmark the details page for a cruise, is not so nice. Hopefully some of you reading this will have found this insight useful, or at the very least found Weather Bonk to be pretty cool.

[tags]web 2.0, xhtml, xml, javascript, webservices[/tags]

[tags]browser, internet explorer, ie, ie6, ie7[/tags]

So, it’s a given that the majority of those people browsing a Web site will be using Internet Explorer. Until recently the vast majority were specifically IE6. With version 7 of Internet Explorer, it becomes a bit of a different beast. This is because of some significant changes in how IE7 will render x/html compliant pages.

So you need to test in IE6 and 7. This isn’t easy, and IE7 is only available for Windows XP, and Vista. IE6 won’t be available for Vista. What are you to do? Well there is BrowserCam. BrowserCam is a service that allows you to test a plethora of different web browsers on different platforms. It’s a web test lab, without the dramatic cost, or overhead of maintaining this many machines, and environments.

I love my Firefox browser, however, the introduction of IE7 in the mix, and having it force-fed on XP users, and the upcoming Vista will do far more to encourage better standards compliance, and a greater need for testing. My personal suggestion is to test in Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Opera, Firefox 1.5 and 2, Safari, and Konqueror as a minimum, and BrowserCam allows you to do this.

[tags]web, development, testing, QA[/tags]

Of course, this is a Windows centric thing. However, I honestly rarely feel comfortable using IE as an embedded control. Using the IEPatcher tool, you can replace the IE control in your existing programs (see winamp), which can help increase your security profile.

From a programming standpoint, however, life in windows development has moved on to the .Net framework. One down side to the control, is there isn’t a merge module (.msm) available for inclusion in MSI based installers. Meaning use of Visual Studio’s package and deployment projects are more difficult. There is also no quiet install option, meaning you have to rely on the user installing the package separately from your application.

Regardless of these issues, it’s a highly cool thing, and a welcome addition to anyone’s toolkit. Going a step farther, you can use this as a base for creating stand-alone XUL based applications.
[tags]Programming, Mozilla, Firefox, ActiveX, IE[/tags]