Tech Stuff

Google recently announced the launch of their new browser.  I downloaded it as soon as it was availible.  I have been very impressed with it.  I figure if I am running GMail, Reader, and Analytics in a browser I might as well do it in a browser designed by Google.  Good to see some more innovations in the browser space.  The JavaScript engine that it is using (V8) was designed for speed.  I don’t know if it is the fastest out there as I have seen some speed tests where it did beat Firefox, but in some others it did not.  With more and more sites using JavaScript and Ajax to improve the user experience and make online applications more like desktop ones hopefully Google as a player will help push along the development of JavaScript Engines. In term allowing even more interactive sites.

– Watch more free videos

It is good to see that Amazon released a pretty detailed statement detailing the events of the S3 outage on 7/20.  Some people have been complaining about the stability of the environment, but I think it has been overall really good.  When there are problems they are fixed extremely quickly and if there was going to be any delays they kept everybody up to date.  I think the Service Health Dashboard is great information tool.  I may not be happy when there is a problem, but atleast I don’t feel like I am in the dark like I have in the past with some other hosts/service providors.

Today I found out the hard way that if you have Crystal Reports XI already installed on your machine and you are going to upgrade to Crystal Reports XI Release 2 you should uninstall the original as the Release 2 “Upgrade/Service Pack” is a whole new installer and doesn’t remove the previous version automatically.  Once I had installed Release 2 each time I tried to access a report in Visual Studio I was prompted that Windows needed to setup the software.  This process would take about 10 minutes.  Also if I tried to save changes I had made to a report they would be lost and I would get an Active X error.  After several hours of researching the problem I found the solution.  It was a “good” waste of a day.  After uninstalling Crystal Reports XI and Crystal Reports XI Release 2 and then just installing Crystal Reports XI Release 2 I had an installation that works correctly.

A friend told me about this cool SSH client that you can run on your Blackberry.  It has already come in handy for me when I needed to reset a service on linux box and I was out running errands.  It is called MidpSSH.

AT&T announced the global launch of AT&T Synaptic Hosting(SM), its next-generation utility computing service with managed networking, security and storage for businesses.

More information on the Synaptic Hosting Service can be found on their website.

It is good to see more companies jumping into Cloud Computing.  Competition and variety of services is a good thing.

Google adds a new setting to Gmail to allow the user to specify that all their activity should be done over a SSL connection.  You could change the URL before manually from http to https, but now you can have it done automatically.  This allows you to encrypt the data the transfers between your computer and the Gmail server just like you do when working on your bank’s website.

Earlier this week I installed the Crystal Reports 10 run time on a client’s Citrix server.  After installing I tried to run our application and the run time kept on giving me an error saying “Load report failed”.  Doing some research we found that the Crystal run time when installed assumes there is going to be a C drive.  In this case we didn’t have one.  The main system partition was W.  The below knowledge base article describes what needs to be done to get the run time to work on a server that doesn’t have a C drive.

Symptom

A Microsoft Visual Studio .NET application uses Crystal Reports 10 for Visual Studio .NET SDK as the reporting development tool.

When the application is deployed to a computer that does not have a C drive, the following error message appears:

“Load Report Failed”

Why does this error message appear and how can it be resolved?

Background Information

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It is common to not have a C drive on Terminal servers and Citrix servers.
Resolution

This error message appears because the application sets registry values that point to the C drive. To resolve the error message, use the following steps to change these registry values in the Registry Editor.

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WARNING:

The following resolution involves editing the registry. Using the Registry Editor incorrectly can cause serious problems that may require you to reinstall the Microsoft Windows operating system. Use the Registry Editor at your own risk.

HELP:

For information on how to edit the registry key, view the ‘Changing Keys And Values’ online Help topic in the Registry Editor (Regedit.exe).

RECOMMENDATION:

It is strongly recommended that you make a backup copy of the registry files (System.dat and User.dat on Win9x computers) before you edit the registry.

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1. On the ‘Start’ menu, click ‘Run’.

2. In the ‘Run’ dialog box, type “Regedit” then click ‘OK’.

3. In the Registry Editor browse to the following subkey:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Crystal Decisions\10.0\Report Application Server\InprocServer\LocalConnectionMgr

4. Right-click the ‘ConnectionDirectoryPath’ string value, then click ‘Modify’.

5. In the ‘Value data’ text box, change “c:\” to the drive letter where the following directory exists (You may need to search your computer to find where this directory exists):

\Program Files\Common Files\Crystal Decisions\2.5\bin

Click ‘OK’.

6. Right-click the ‘LocalConnectionMgr’ subkey, click ‘New’ then click ‘String Value’.

7. Name this String Value “ReportDirectoryPath”.

8. Right-click the ‘ReportDirectoryPath’ string value and click ‘Modify’.

9 In the ‘Value data’ text box, type the same drive letter as you typed in step 5.

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NOTE:

After making changes to the registry, restart the affected service or application as required.

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Now, when the application is run, the error message will not appear.

Came across these cheat sheets today:

Cheat Sheets for Front-end Web Developers

Windows, Google Search, Gmail, Google Reader

For Developers

Linux

Various

The video is of a presentation done by Steve Sounders who now works for Google. He used to work for Yahoo where he created the YSlow for Firefox. He talks about how to make your page load faster for the visitor instead of the common part of how to generate the page on the server faster.