I stumbled on Rick Laplante's blog entry today where he gives some details on how Microsoft is responding to customer feedback about Team System.  He links to a couple of important charts that will help us all make decisions about which versions to buy.  The other exciting piece of news is that each of the Team System role sku's will include a 5 developer license of Team Foundation Server.  That should help the small shops find it easy to get started with.

Compare Visual Studio 2005 Team System Software Editions

MSDN Subscriptions for Visual Studio 2005

This information simply must be propagated on the net.  I have been going back on forth with Creative support via Email and they have suggested the standard stuff, all of which I tried.  After I upgraded my Zen Micro to support subscription media via their latest firmware I ran into a serious problem.  My laptop would no longer recognize the device.  It showed up in device manager, but no software would acknowledge it.  I am so glad to have this solved.  I really did not want to play for format c: game on my machine to get this working.

So here is the fix that I finally discovered at: http://hardware.mcse.ms/message94329.html

1. Log in as an administrator (if you are not already logged in that way).

2. Go to Start, Run and type "regedit" (without the quotes).

3. When the registry editor starts, navigate to the following location in
the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum

4. Right-click the Enum hive and select Permissions.

5. In the permissions dialog, add the Everyone group.

6. Give the Everyone group Read access.

Close the registry editor and connect the Personal Media Center device.

Last Friday I decided to see how well the 30 day return policy at Best Buy would work.  I returned my Samsung MP3 player and they gladly exchanged it for whatever I wanted.  As previously mentioned I decided to go for the Creative Zen Micro since it supports subscription DRM services.  BestBuy.com has the player $10 cheaper than the store and they had no problem taking the extra $10 off during the trade in.  Best Buy gets a +1 for this!

Of course I could not wait to rip into my new device and give it a spin.  All was well until I did the latest flash upgrade.  This was required for it to support subscription music.  After the upgrade my laptop refused to see the device.  I assumed it was defective and returned it to Best Buy and got it replaced, again with no problems.  You can imagine how bummed I was when the 2nd Zen had the same problem as the first.  After searching the net for others with the same problem I found that I was not alone.  Since Creative Tech support is closed on weekends I decided to wait until today to call them.  I brought the device to the office to see if my work PC liked it.  Guess what, no problems.  Now I have an interesting dilemma.  My cool MP3 player will not work with my home PC.  Next thing is to rebuild the home PC and see if that takes care of the problem.  Forget calling Tech Support, at least for now.

Microsoft, Creative and other players in the subscription audio world are going to have to make this stuff work flawlessly or they may find MP3 players thrown through the Windows.  I don't mind being on the bleeding edge of technology, but when my very recent hardware and completely up to date software do not work together I am not a happy boy!

About 3 weeks ago I decided it was time to join the MP3 revolution.  I did some research and decided that I wanted to go with portability over extreme storage size.  Initially I thought I would go for a 60 Gig Zen Xtra.  iPod is absolutely not a consideration for me because I prefer WMA format and I don't want to load iTunes just so I can use it.  I ended up walking out of Best Buy with the Samsung YP-MT6Z (1 Gig).  I went to the store thinking that I would prefer the Creative Zen Micro because I wanted to store several albums at a time.  When I saw the size of the flash based devices I changed my mind.  The in stock Zen only came in black did not look appealing to me either.

The Samsung player has been fantastic.  I am still running on the battery that came with it in the box.  They claim 42 hours on a single AA battery and I am convinced that must be accurate.  My player still shows no sign of battery weakness.  I have loaded about 10 albums on it in addition to several hours of spoken audio.  I give a solid A-.  Read on to learn why I cannot rate it higher.

Yesterday I read that Yahoo had a new subscription music service.  I decided to give it a run because the price point was only $4.99 /mo.  I was excited to start downloading anything I wanted to listen to.  With a click I get almost any album I can imagine.  I am now convinced that CD based music as we currently know it is going to disappear in the near future.  I will go so far as to predict that even MP3 players as we know them today will change.  What I believe will happen is that we will end up with devices like car stereos and cell phones that have some flash memory for caching a short playlist.  That playlist will sync with a subscription service whenever the device can get connectivity to the Internet.  Wireless broadband technologies will enable this.  Devices will even allow you to request songs on demand, probably through a speech interface.

Now that I have tasted the beauty of subscription music on demand at an affordable price point I have a huge complaint about my WMA/MP3 Player.  It does not support DRM10 or whatever the standard is for enabling subscription content on portable devices.  The current list of devices supporting subscriptions is very short.  There are only 13 devices in the list.  None of them are high capacity flash devices.  Matter of fact none of them are flash devices at all except a cell phone.  My plan now is to see how far I can get with the 30 day return policy at Best Buy.  If they will take back the Samsung I am going to get the Zen Micro.  In my opinion the Micro is the best option for a portable device that supports subscription music and everything else I want in a player.  I hope that we don't have to wait long for the industry to catch up with DRM standards and devices.  At $5/mo. I will probably become a subscriber for life and never buy another CD again.  Instead I will outfit my home, vehicles, and my pocket for the Any Music, Any Time future!

I have been having a discussion with one of our developers about SSL.  He is updating some code and wanted to make sure that anyone who used the application would be doing so via SSL.  I believe the discussion will be valuable to many so I wanted to share some tips.

There are a couple of simple ways to guarantee that users are using SSL.

#1 In IIS you can set the application to require SSL so anyone trying to access it over HTTP will get an error.  I do not like this option for 2 reasons.  It requires extra IIS configuration to implement and I like to avoid throwing errors if possible.

#2 Applications can check for the use of SSL and force a redirect if it is not being used.  This is my preferred and recommended approach for all applications that involve sensitive data. 

Here is some simple VB.NET ASP.NET code that does the trick for option #2.

‘ Force users of this application to come in using SSL

If Not Request.IsSecureConnection Then Response.Redirect(Request.Url.ToString.Replace("http:", "https:"))

The biggest question this creates is how to handle the development and testing environments where SSL certificates may not be installed.  I have good news for you there.  Microsoft has a couple of tools for creating self-signed certificates that are prefect for development environments.  You can easily install a test certificate on your own development machines.

The IIS 6.0 Resource Kit includes a tool called SelfSSL that you can use to make certificates.  I prefer to use MakeCert.  I use it enough that I put together a simple Create_Cert.BAT file to make it even easier to use.  The file takes in the machine name as a parameter (%1%).  You can find documentation on the various options in MSDN.

makecert -r -pe -n "CN=%1%" -b 01/01/2000 -e 01/01/2036 -eku 1.3.6.1.5.5.7.3.1 -ss my -sr localMachine -sky exchange -sp "Microsoft RSA SChannel Cryptographic Provider" -sy 12 -nscp

• Copy the MakeCert.exe tool and create the Create_Cert.bat file on your machine.
• Open a Command Prompt window and change to the directory where you put the makecert.exe and the create_cert.bat files.
• Execute the create_cert.bat using the machine name of your PC as a parameter.  Typically we use LOCALHOST on our local machines. (ex. C:\tools\create_cert.bat localhost)
• In IIS you can now set the Default Web Site to use your test SSL certificate. 
  My Computer -> (right-click) Manage -> Services and Applications -> Internet Information Server -> (right-click)Default Web Site -> Properties -> Directory Security -> Server Certificate – Assign Existing.

I hope you agree with me that it is easy to develop and securely interact with customers over with SSL.  If you are looking for affordable SSL certificates for production servers you can now get them for as little as $29.95 at www.GoDaddy.com.

Last year Forbes ranked Boise #7 in the list of Best Metros for Business and Careers.  This year my home town hits #1!  As an employee of Idaho Commerce and Labor I know that Boise and Idaho are both doing well in large part because of the leadership in my own agency and within State government.  Pay a visit to Idaho this summer and see why so many of us love it here!