Daily Cup of Tech

I have been racking my brains for some time now trying to figure out a better way for people to interact with the information overload that is constantly coming at them. One of the ways that I have discovered is through augmented reality. And now, there are even tools that are available for free that can help with this.

Microsoft has released some technology that, when combined with heads up displays and GPS tracking could provide a very useful and informative way of seeing the world. When you combine the mapping capabilities of Virtual Earth with trueSpace, a 3D development environment, you can modify the way you see the virtual world.

Now, take this modified virtual world and add a heads up display in the form of glasses which interacts with very precise GPS systems, you have a very good start at something amazing!

Here is a demo that has been put together to show what a trueSpace building looks like in Virtual Earth:

The implications of something like this are astronomical! Some potential uses include:

• Tourist attractions to historical areas showing where building once existed
• Military real-time monitoring of a remote mission
• Real estate agents showing future expansion and growth of a neighborhood
• Architectural businesses performing a virtual walk-through of future building

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2008/08/12/reality-20-like-the-real-world-only-better/trackback/

I was doing some research the other day on getting your self out of a difficult situation when you don’t have access to some vital system resources because you are running as a normal user and you lost your local admin password.

I discovered that there is a way to reset your user interface and run interactively as the LOCAL SYSTEM account. This is important because the LOCAL SYSTEM account has a lot of privileges available to it. According to Microsoft:

The system account and the administrator account (Administrators group) have the same file privileges, but they have different functions. The system account is used by the operating system and by services that run under Windows. There are many services and processes within Windows that need the capability to log on internally (for example during a Windows installation). The system account was designed for that purpose; it is an internal account, does not show up in User Manager, cannot be added to any groups, and cannot have user rights assigned to it. On the other hand, the system account does show up on an NTFS volume in File Manager in the Permissions portion of the Security menu. By default, the system account is granted full control to all files on an NTFS volume. Here the system account has the same functional privileges as the administrator account.

A little while back, some enterprising individuals discovered a way to run the LOCAL SYSTEM account interactively. Here are the instructions according to one website:

1. Start > Run > cmd.exe > type: at 12:03 /interactive “cmd.exe” (replace 12:03 with a time 2 mins from now). > close command prompt
2. New command prompt will open, when it does > Hit CTRL+ALT+DEL > find explorer.exe and End Process.
3. At command prompt type: cd.. > type: explorer.exe

This all words fine except that it is a bit confusing for someone who does not understand how all this works. So, I thought I would make it easier for those who do not have my background. I created a little program in AutoIt that completely automated the process. Simply run the program, wait for a couple of minutes, and you’re running as the LOCAL SYSTEM account.

You can download this program and play with it all you want.

WARNING: I have tested this program to the best of my abilities but this does not mean it is perfect. I did not have any problems with it but that does not mean you will not. If something goes wrong, don’t blame me! You’ve been warned.

For those of you who are interested, here is the source code for this little program I wrote. Feel free to hack around and make it do different things:

#include <Date.au3>
If $CmdLine[0] = 0 Then
;No command line options
;First run
$RunTime = _DateTimeFormat(_DateAdd(’n', 1, _NowCalc()),5)
$Command = @ComSpec & ” /c AT ” & $RunTime & ” /interactive “”" & @ScriptFullPath & “”" 2″
Run($Command)
Else
;Second run
$Command = @ComSpec & ” /c taskkill /IM explorer.exe /F & ” & @WindowsDir & “/explorer.exe”
Run($Command)
EndIf

Update: Someone asked in the comments how you get back to your normal account. Simply log out and then log back in as yourself. You should be back to normal.

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2008/05/22/access-locked-resources-be-the-machine/trackback/

Building forms for your website is a real pain in the backside. There are so many different aspects of the form that you need to know in order to get everything just right.

When a friend from work asked me if I knew of some easier way to create forms, I realized that I didn’t have a quick and easy answer for him. So, a bit of time on Google and some typing later and I have created a nice list of useful form building resources.

• pForm - a really good online form building tool that lets you create a customized form and then download the form for use in your website. Really easy to use and set up.
• JotForm - offers a free and a premium account option. If you are looking at using the forms on your own website, there is very little reason to purchase the premium option. Provides a number of very professional tools that provides you with a maximum of flexibility. It even includes a really nice form building wizard.
• PageBreeze - while this is not an online tool, it is an HTML editor that will allow you to create forms using a simple drag and drop method. You just need to do some basic HTML changes to connect it into your website.
• FormMaker - much like our first two entries, FormMaker is also web based. One of the advantages that it has over the other forms is that it allows you to capture data and store it on their servers for later access. There is no charge for the form maker but it does require an account.
• <STRONG><CONTACT> - An application designed specifically for creating contact forms. It will generate both the PHP and the CSS code required for the contact form to create the look and feel you want.

I know that all of the major IDEs out there have some sort of a form builder in them but if you are looking for a fast and dirty form, this may be a quick alternative.

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2008/05/13/form-building-resources/trackback/

If you have ever done a trace route on where information goes when it travels over the Internet to your computer, it is actually pretty staggering to see how far it goes. It is pretty funny sometimes to see an e-mail travels half way around the world and back just to get to your neighbor!

I got thinking about this and an idea came to mind that could change how we look at file sharing.

How It’s Done Now

Let’s say, for example, I want to share a 600 Mb ISO file with my neighbor. There are several different ways of doing this but let’s say that the easiest way to do this would be to transfer the file via a peer to peer program.

This would cost both of us about 600 MB of bandwidth that we would have to pay each of our Internet provider’s for.

WiFi Transfer

Now, my neighbor gets smart when he realizes that both of us have WiFi networks available to our systems. So we connect our two WiFi networks and decide to transfer the file over our WiFi networks.

We’ve now transfered the file between the two of us and it didn’t use any of our Internet bandwidth. In fact, we were able to transfer that file much faster because we were not limited by the upload speed of our Internet connections (Upload speeds are usually less that download speeds.).

WiFi Hops

Now, let’s say that I want to get a file from a second neighbor. But, he is unfortunately outside the range of my WiFi signal. But, my first neighbor, who is located between us, is in range of both of our WiFi signals. He connect to both of our WiFi networks and acts like a relay connection between our two networks.

So, we have now transfered a file using WiFi between two systems that are outside of each other’s WiFi signal range.

Spreading the Quilt

Theoretically, the more people we connect together with this WiFi quilt, the more access we have to information and data.

Each one of these systems would have access to information on each of the other systems, allowing for data to be shared freely without the need or restrictions of their Internet connections.

Stitching Together the Quilt

Just like a quilt is made up of separate pieces of cloth, each metro WiFi network will be limited to the range of its WiFi area. This is where we use the Internet to make data available to each of the metro areas.

Whenever a system needs to go outside of its metro area to access information via the Internet, it can maintain a cache of the information so that it now becomes available to the rest of the metro area.

Concerns and Issues

This idea is not without its problems. For example, I do not think I would give just anyone unfettered access to my home computer or network. Rather, I would probably want to segment my network so that only a certain computer works on the shared.

Another problem is coverage. In order for this idea to work well, there needs to be a relatively large percentage of area covered to see a benefit. But, this might be one of those things where you do not see a lot of benefit at the beginning of the project but, as time goes on, it becomes more and more feasible and useful

The other issue is with this project is just how do people find the information that they want and how does the system go about determining which is the best route to access the information?

Discussion

Even though there are some definite challenges with this idea, I still think that it would be a really interesting thing to try and set up. It could even include some contributions from things like the OpenWRT project, DIY WISP, and cantennas.

But, I’ve talked enough.  Time for you to add your two cents.  What do you think of this type of an idea?

Trackback link - http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2007/09/10/the-wifi-quilt-project/trackback/