Calendar synchronisation… shouldn’t it all be a bit easier than this?

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 17 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

It was supposed to be easy. All I wanted to do was to synchronise Microsoft Outlook 2007 (at work) with Apple iCal or Microsoft Entourage 2004 (at home) using Google Calendar (GCal) as a broker (also allowing access from the web, wherever I am). I know that there are three software companies there who are largely competitors, but surely someone has done this before and anyway, isn’t that what iCalendar (RFC 2445) all about – the exchange of calendar data between applications?

Outlook 2007 also includes the ability to subscribe to other calendars using a process known as Internet Calendar Subscriptions but it’s a one-way process. The reverse process is known as publishing a calendar, either to WebDAV server (which I don’t have) or to Microsoft Office Online, which (in theory) is accessible from anywhere. This works, sort of, as long as I log in with a Windows Live ID or make my information public. The Windows Live ID option is fine from a browser but doesn’t work for other applications, such as iCal, which returns the following:

Error subscribing to the calendar
Unexpected secure name resolution error (code -9813). The server name calendars.office.microsoft.com may be incorrect.

Meanwhile, making my information available publicly is not a great idea (although iCal can subscribe to this, albeit read-only).

Next up, I tried getting GCal to subscribe to my Office Online calendar. Google refuses to read the webcal:// version of the address:

Error
Could not fetch the URL

and if I try the https:// variant then it says:

Error
Could not fetch the URL because robots.txt prevents us from crawling the URL

So that rules out the Office Online calendar.

I had some success with RemoteCalendars following the advice on Jake Ludington’s Mediablab site with a couple of changes for Windows Vista/Office 2007:

Unfortunately there wasn’t anything coming back the other way even though I was using version 6.3, which does include support for two way synchronisation and, despite checking the advice in the Grinn Productions post on incorporating Google Calendar into Outlook (there are lots of useful comments on this post), I didn’t get very far (the advice is to use a separate calendar in Outlook for a 2-way sync and that defeats the object of merging my individual work and private calendars into one universal calendar that I can access anywhere). I also noticed that somewhere along the way, my GCal entries were getting bumped forward an hour, probably as a result of timezone differences somewhere along the chain.

Next I looked at GCALDaemon (complex configuration and lots of articles for how to use it with other mail clients but not Outlook… which I suspect illustrates a contempt for working with anything from Microsoft).

SyncMyCal seemed to need me to make my GCal public (the opposite problem to syncing iCal with Office Online), so that’s a non-starter. It also threw an error during installation (probably because I had missed one of the many prerequisite applications that it requires) but then said installation had completed successfully, not exactly filling me with confidence in the error checking built into the product. Uninstallation also seemed to remove the buttons from the RemoteCalendars toolbar – possibly something to do with the fact that they both use the Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) second edition runtime.

SyncUpwards seems to be a dead project as the website says the latest version is 7 August 2006 (over a year ago) and that it doesn’t work with the Outlook 2007 beta.

I’d been avoiding one approach that appeared to be the holy grail of calendar synchronisation – using ScheduleWorld/Funambol to manage the synchronisation. it did look pretty good, but I didn’t really want ScheduleWorld (or any other Funambol server) in the middle of my architecture. Nevertheless, I gave it a go and it was reasonably successful but I had some issues with the Funambol client (v6.0.14), which seemed a little problematic with unhelpful error messages like:

Sync not completed. Network Error.

Most critically the Funambol Outlook Plugin kept on prompting me for agreement to use or register a product called Outlook Redemption which it was obviously using to work around some of the Outlook security restrictions. That meant three products working together… as well as Outlook, GCal and the others – this was all starting to look a bit too Heath Robinson.

Then I panicked – all of a sudden Outlook had duplicate appointments, all an hour out of place and without any category information. It seemed that despite having supposedly uninstalled RemoteCalendars it was still working (I hadn’t rebooted) and I had a synchronisation loop from Outlook to Funambol/ScheduleWorld to GCal and back to Outlook. I quickly stopped Funambol and took full advantage of ScheduleWorld’s flexibility, deleting all entries in that calendar and forcing a one-way sync to GCal (effectively emptying that calendar too), which RemoteCalendars picked up and used to remove all the duplicates from Outlook. Phew! Once that was over, I rebooted the PC, removed Funambol and VSTO, and rebooted again, just to be sure that nothing was still running (I also manually deleted the RemoteCalendars VSTO toolbar from within Outlook).

Googling for other products that might help me, I looked at GMobileSync, Goosync and GCalSync, but they all seem to be primarily for synchronising between GCal and a mobile phone. There was also the cleverly-named Calgoo but it required me to register for an account and (much like ScheduleWorld that I tried earlier).

Then I found a link to David Levinson’s gSyncit. Not only is it a tidy Microsoft.NET application with minimal prerequisites that integrates well as an Outlook plug-in but its options appear to be well thought out and it is very clear about being able to perform single or bi-directional synchronisation between Outlook and GCal. I tried it out on a limited date range and synchronisation worked, including no timezone issues between the two platforms. Although I found the version that I used (v1.9.19) to be a little temperamental at times (sometimes clicking the sync button doesn’t seem to do anything, and annoyingly the GCal feed path changes of its own accord), when it works it does exactly what I need it to – bi-directional synchronisation between Outlook 2007 and a private GCal, although it would be nice if it also worked with Outlook in cached mode. I’ll was going to give it a bit longer and see if it settles down, thinking that if it works well enough then it would only be $9.99 to register but after waiting over an hour for it to synchronise almost 1500 entries with GCal, I noticed that some were missing. After a resync it didn’t copy the missing appointments to Google, instead it removed them from Outlook! Arghhh! If I can’t have 100% confidence in a synchronisation product then I might as well not bother.

I decided to have a look at another product I’d found – Oggsync. Oggsync tries to install the Office 2003 PIA (even if the Office 2007 PIA is already installed) as well as VSTO and shared add-in extensibility/support updates for Microsoft .NET framework 2.0 (see Microsoft knowledge base article 908002 for details) but unlike some of the products I tried earlier (RemoteCalendars and SyncMyCal), the OggSync installer does the work for me (much better than having to install a bunch of individual packages before installing the application I’m really after). I really wanted to like OggSync, and then it started doing weird things like moving events out of Outlook and into Google and syncing only a fraction of my entries across a wide time frame. I was not impressed. Thankfully I was able to pull them back from a PST export of my Calendar that I had made earlier today.

At this point, I was ready to give up on the whole process – but I decided to try one more option – CompanionLink for Google. Despite some initial synchronisation errors, the support team at CompanionLink were really helpful and I got it working quite well. I was seriously considering buying this product but my confidence in calendar synchronisation had been shattered by the earlier failures and I still hadn’t got everything working on the Mac end of things…

I found that Apple iCal can subscribe to a GCal calendar (to private calendars too – not just shared calendars as shown in the article) but I still needed to work out how to get iCal to sync with a GCal private calendar (iCal can subscribe to GCal calendars but only for read-only access). Calgoo or Spanning Sync may have been able to help me out there. iCal automatically detects the presence of Entourage and can edit the Entourage calendar but I still needed some further work on 2-way synchronisation (not just display) between iCal and Entourage (it looks as though there is another product that could help here)

In all, the whole experience was… problematic. I didn’t think I was trying to do anything difficult, but clearly there is still a long way to go before simple calendar synchronisation using the iCalendar protocol will be a reality for me.

First post from Windows Live Writer

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 17 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I have a strange relationship with Microsoft’s Windows Live services.  To some extent, I have the same issue with Google in that sometimes I find them really useful but then I get uncomfortable with storing all of my information "in the cloud", rather than on a server that I control (and don’t get me started on the data that the UK Government stores on me…).

Well, for once, Microsoft seems to have the right idea.  It may all be based around shoring up their traditional cash cows of Windows and Office, but instead of saying "forget the desktop… switch to the webtop", they are developing applications that bridge the gap between desktop and web (as are Google with Google Gears).

A few months back I wrote about blogging from within Microsoft Office and this is my first post using Windows Live Writer.  Although I’ve only been using it for a few minutes I’m impressed – and this is why:

  • Firstly, although the installer told me about the other Windows Live applications that I might like to try, it didn’t force them on me.
  • Secondly, it was perfectly happy to accept that I don’t use Windows Live Spaces for blogging.
  • Thirdly, it was able to detect the settings for my WordPress site without me supplying any more than a URL, username and password – and then the advanced settings were quite happy with the idea that I publish images via FTP rather than storing them in the WordPress database.
  • It also downloaded the stylesheet that I use, so as I write this (offline), I can see what the post will look like when I publish (there are options to view unstyled, with the layout that I use on the site, preview the post on the site, or view the code).  I can also see that it’s also using valid XHTML.

For the last few years, I’ve been writing on the train using Windows Notepad or gedit, then coming home and finishing the post with weblinks and additional information.

Now I can streamline the process with Windows Live Writer (including setting categories and a publishing date) so that the rework when I get home should be fairly minimal.

Links

Windows Live Writer team blog

UK time WordPress plugin

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 17 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Probably the only gripe that I have with my hosting provider is that the clock on their server is permanently set to UTC (i.e. no timezone changes for daylight saving – I’m told that’s normal practice for web hosting but it’s not something I’ve come across in my experience of corporate computing). Until recently that’s meant that, twice a year, I’ve had to tell WordPress to update the timezone offset but not any longer. You see, my buddy Alex (who also runs the company that provides my hosting) has written a WordPress plugin to handle UK time changes:

The UK Time plugin for WordPress checks the time of each post that’s being displayed, and if it falls inside the British Summer Time window the post time is incremented by 1 hour and you no longer need to change the UTC offset every March and October.

Of course, you may already have hundreds of posts spanning several years and you switched the UTC offset at the right time, so they already show the right time. That’s okay, they will still show the correct time.

I tested Alex’s plugin last weekend when the clocks changed and everything seems to be working just as I expected. UK-based WordPress users might want to give it a try.

Quick guide to getting video content onto an iPod

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 17 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Apple iTunes can play back a variety of video formats but the iPod (5th generation) and Apple TV each have their own limitations and only play videos that are created in specific formats. I understand that not all codecs will be available for all platforms but I’m a techie and it’s taken me a lot of time to work out what can and can’t work on my iPod. And yes, the the iPod may only have a 320×240 pixel QVGA screen but it can play back at larger resolutions using the iPod AV cable (or another cable if you can get it to work) – it might not look great on a high definition display but I only have standard definition TVs and it’s perfectly good enough for them (sure, there are a few compression artefacts but I get them with satellite TV too).

I’ve been fighting with video incompatibilities for a few days now and think I’ve pretty much got everything sussed, so, here’s my quick guide to getting video content onto an iPod (some of the software mentioned below is Mac-only and so Windows/Linux users might need to search for something else… sorry).

  • Firstly, (courtesy of Apple’s frequently asked questions about viewing and syncing video with iTunes and iPod), iTunes is your friend. Not only is it the centre of the Apple digital experience but it can convert files to iPod or Apple TV format. Simply select the video or audio content that you require, right- (or Ctrl-) click and select convert selection for iPod or convert selection for Apple TV as appropriate. This seemed to work for much of my video content that has come from an eclectic mix of locations using a multitude of codecs (the main changes seem to involve converting from QuickTime movie file to MPEG-4, using a low complexity profile and the H.264/AAC codecs) although I have a few files that seem to have lost their audio track along the way. For these files, I used iSquint to retry the conversion and it seems to have got around whatever the encoding issue was. Using iSquint’s default settings, content is resized to either 320×240 or 640×480 (depending on whether the output is optimised for iPod or TV) but I did find that by using the option to Optimize for TV there was a noticeable increase in the picture quality, even though the source file was only 320×240 (obviously the quality will not increase from the original but, when viewed on a TV, the 640×480 version that was optimised for TV had a noticeably clearer picture with fewer compression artefacts than the 320×240 version that was optimised for the iPod).
  • The tip above for converting content to an iPod/Apple TV format seems to be non-destructive, which is good but does require some management to ensure that only the correctly formatted content is synchronised (in order to avoid errors like the one shown).iTunes error message explaining that some of the videos in your iTunes library were not copied because they cannot be played. Also, note that the duplicates may not appear in the same location as the originals – some of my video podcasts have relocated themselves within iTunes to the movies section and whilst the video type can be changed (between movies, music videos and TV shows), I’m not familiar with any method to move the content into iTunes’ podcast section. Some video podcasts are available in alternative formats via different RSS feeds, but that’s a nuisance where you might want to watch a high-definition version on the computer but still have it available on the iPod when out and about. Consequently I have multiple copies of podcasts like Systm, where I have both the small QuickTime and large QuickTime feeds in iTunes and different episodes marked as played in each. I’ve yet to find a way around that particular issue and it is relatively minor.
  • Assuming that it is legal where you live, applications like HandBrake will rip DVDs into a format that can be transferred to the iPod via iTunes and videos look surprisingly good on the iPod screen (yes, really – certainly good enough for entertainment on a long train/plane trip). Add to that the potential to use an iPod connected to a TV and it’s an easy method for watching video content in the living room, hotel or even hooking the iPod up to a screen in the car to keep the kids amused without spending lots of money on an expensive in-car entertainment system (I haven’t tried it yet but I may do soon). Encoding video (and re-encoding via an iTunes conversion) is time consuming and also the quality will degrade with each conversion, so it pays to get it right first time – I had some difficulties using the previous version of HandBrake to rip a DVD using the HB-iPod preset but version 0.9.0 seems to be working well for me (although if it doesn’t work, some advice suggests ripping to disk before performing the conversion, using a tool such as Mac the Ripper). If the content is already on the computer, then QuickTime Pro may help with the conversion (although iTunes is based on QuickTime so I recommend trying the conversion in iTunes first).
  • Finally, for content producers, Apple provides a tutorial about creating video for iPod.

These techniques have allowed me to transfer most of the content that I want to access on the move to my iPod. There are a couple of issues to iron out (as mentioned) but I’m a lot further forward than I was a few days back. Please leave a comment if you can add to the advice.

Scrobbling audio at Last.fm

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 17 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I hate it when websites gather more information about me than is necessary and more than a few sites now have nonsensical entries in their marketing databases as a result; however I have found one site recently that I’m more than happy to give information too – because I get something in return. You see, as I write this, I’m listening to a mixture of laid back beats, chilled house and trance, recommended to me by Last.fm (incorporating audioscrobbler). It’s being streamed to me over my Internet connection, free of charge, based on my musical tastes. How did it find out what I like? Well, I have a client application on my computer, which hooks into iTunes and each time I synchronise my iPod, play a track in iTunes or listen via the Last.fm website it “scrobbles” my recently played tracks to my profile.

I’ve been using the service for a few months now and still can’t get my head around just how useful (and varied) it’s many features are – so I’ll point you to this review by Steffie for a better idea of just what Last.fm can provide for your listening pleasure. For a review from a more mainstream media source, try CNET. Meanwhile, Steve Krause looks at the differences between Last.fm and Pandora – another popular music recommendation site that is often referenced alongside Last.fm but which, as Steve explains, is fundamentally different in the way it determines its recommendations.

If you’re anything like me, you’re probably wondering how sites like Last.fm can stream music free of charge whilst others wrangle with the complications of DRM-protected content. Well, that’s because it’s not just a free online music library – whilst you can hear “radio stations” based on your preferences there is no choice in what is played next and if you do search for a particular track then only a 30 second sample is played. As for the viability of the site (a question that should be asked of many “web 2.0” sites) – it’s viable enough for CBS to buy it (for $280m – and hopefully not just to shut it down). The theory is, that if I like what I hear, then I’ll buy some more music and to some extent that’s feasible. If I enter the name of a well-established band then I’ll probably recognise the names of similar artists (those who like Kylie Minogue may also enjoy Madonna or Britney Spears – or, closer to my tastes, if I like Faithless then why not try Groove Armada and Moby, etc.) but for something more obscure (e.g. The Age of Love), then I’d never have known to try something by Kamaya Painters, The Thrillseekers or Nalin & Kane. As for CBS, they get access to a huge database of musical tastes (whilst others are relying on a combination of software and intuition to predict their next hit).

When standard Windows utilities are just not enough

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 17 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

Lifehacker often features great articles – I should read it more (as should I read so many of the feeds in my reader but I just can’t keep up). Gina Trapani‘s Geek to Live column from last Friday is just one such example – power replacements for standard Windows utilities. I already use some of these, but others may soon be finding their way on my systems.

Useful digital photography utilities

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 17 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I’ve just got back from a weekend in the Peak District National Park and, rewarded with clear blue skies as dawn broke yesterday morning, I rushed to the top of Mam Tor to rekindle my long-dormant desire to make great landscape photographs (I’m no Joe Cornish, but there has to be some reward for leaving my tent at 5.15).

It gave me a chance to try out a number of things that I’ve wanted to do for a while – shooting camera raw (.NEF) images and using the Lee Filters 0.6 ND graduated filter that I bought a couple of years ago. I have to say, that I am definitely a convert to these features (although they would not be practical for the majority of my photography which falls into the “snapshots of the kids” category). Both the OS X Preview application and my post-production tool of choice (Adobe Photoshop CS2) had no difficulty opening the camera raw files and the quality is excellent (Windows users might find this post useful). Meanwhile, whilst using a large graduated filter on a camera with only a 24mm image sensor makes it slightly difficult to position, using the 0.6 ND filter to tone down the sky by two stops meant that I was able to take pictures with a well-exposed foreground, without washing out the highlights.

Renamer4MacI also found a couple of little programs came in useful when I got home. Firstly, having had some issues with my CF card before leaving home, I formatted it and the file numbering recommenced from DSC_0001.* – thanks to a little recommendation from my buddy Alex, I used Renamer4Mac to bulk rename the files. Also useful (although not for the RAW files) was Simple EXIF Viewer for Mac OS XAli Ozer’s Simple EXIF Viewer for Mac OS X, which let me easily examine the EXIF data on my images (something sadly lacking in the OS X Finder).

Finally, whilst writing about OS X and digital photography (apologies to Windows readers but my digital photography workflow is based on a Mac) it’s worth mentioning one little tip that can come in useful (much as I hate to publicise anything from Scott Bourne, whose “advice” often serves only to fuel Apple elitism and general Mac vs. PC bigotry, I think I picked this up from an iLifeZone podcast). Previewing multiple images in Mac OS XUnlike the Windows Preview function, which lets viewers page forwards and backwards through a directory of files, the OS X Preview default is to open just a single file. Switchers are often frustrated by this (I know I was) but it is possible to open multiple images in Preview (by selecting multiple files, then choosing to open with Preview), after which the cursor keys can be used to scroll through the list.

Recovering images from a Compact Flash card

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 17 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

My Nikon D70 uses Compact Flash (CF) storage – not the smallest form factor but certainly one of the more established types (and when I bought the camera it was important for my camera to also support IBM/Hitachi microdrives, although with the increasing availability of large-capacity flash cards that’s no longer an issue). I use Lexar Professional cards – usually a 2GB 133x speed card with write acceleration – but this week I’ve had some problems.

In the middle of taking photos of my children, struggling to get them to sit still with my grandparents and for everyone to look towards me (I hate taking portraits), my camera reported an error before it decided that the card was not formatted. I turned the camera off and on again, then shot off a few frames, before the battery indicator told me that I needed to recharge (maybe that was the issue all along). I switched to my spare battery and then continued taking photos with no issues.

When I tried to read the card on my Mac, everything seemed fine (pictures were all there), except that when I ejected it (by right clicking and selecting eject, waiting for the icon to disappear and then waiting a few more seconds) OS X told me that I had removed a device incorrectly and there could be some damage to files. That would be fine if I had just removed the card, but as I had ejected the card properly and the icon had disappeared, it was logical to think that it was safe to remove (Windows may have many faults but at least it confirms when it’s safe to remove a device).

This afternoon, I wanted to copy files from the card before wiping it for a new shoot. Strangely, instead of all my files being neatly numbered DSC_xxxx.JPG, I had DWC_xxxx.JPG and DSC[xxxx.JPG files. They all seemed to preview with no issues in-camera, but some of the files failed to copy to the Mac. I tried again on a Windows Vista PC but with similar issues (at least Windows let me skip the offending files and continue the copy) then, after removing the card and looking again in-camera, I switched back to the Windows machine, where Vista told me that the media appeared to have some damage – did I want to scan and fix it. Thinking that might help me, I let Windows do it’s stuff and, after a very brief interval, it told me that it had succeeded; however all I could see was one 32KB file where the folder used to be with over 700 images in it!

After a mild panic (I had most of those images backed up but there were 16 still to recover), I remembered the Lexar Image Rescue 2 software that came pre-loaded on the CF card when I bought it. I loaded that up on a Windows XP machine (in case there were compatibility issues with Vista) and successfully recovered 747 files from a low level search (which took about an hour for my 2GB card). The 747 resulting .THM files appeared to be JPEGs – at least renaming them *.JPG seemed to work. Then I tried a high-level search – this time I got a number of .CHK files including 712 which corresponded to JPEGs – the difference would appear to be the number of files present in the directory compared with files on disk marked for deletion but not yet overwritten.

Crucially, the recovered files still have the EXIF data letting me work out when they were taken (and therefore helping to narrow down the search for my missing pictures). Once renamed to *.JPG, I could also preview the images with the exception of one files which appear to have been irretrievably corrupted, either by my camera losing power during a write, or by my Mac failing to eject the card properly.

Some free Windows tools

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 17 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

I was recently alerted to the presence of Joe Richards’ PSOMgr tool for managing Windows Server 2008 fine grained password policies and it turns out that Joe has a whole heap of useful tools available for free on his website.

Crowdsourcing for advice on PC security software

Posted on By Mark Wilson
This content is 17 years old. I don't routinely update old blog posts as they are only intended to represent a view at a particular point in time. Please be warned that the information here may be out of date.

What would you do if you received a message that started like this?

Hi chaps,

In a somewhat strange experiment, you have found yourself BCC’d on this e-mail as the people whose technical and professional opinion I value the most. If that doesn’t feel right to you, perhaps Outlook auto-complete ended up selecting the wrong person from the GAL or my Personal Address Book! ;-)

If your spam filters hadn’t already picked it out you might stop reading right there, except that this was the start of a message from one of my colleagues, who was experimenting with an alternative method of gathering information – crowdsourcing. The theory is good – after all, why spend hours reading lots of highly subjective reviews of software, probably biased by the vendors public relations efforts, when you can ask some trusted colleagues to spend ten minutes telling you what they think (in this case, which anti-virus/anti-spam/personal firewall products they use and why they use them?). For those who are unconvinced by this method of research and say that those ten minutes are valuable and that you could be doing something worthwhile instead, think about this… we’re talking about people who trust one-another’s advice here – one day that favour will be returned.

In this case, my colleague returned the favour by sharing the information – and allowing me to post it here! What follows is the Garry Martin guide to selecting PC security software:

Anti-virus
Most of you swear by AVG Free and those that don’t, use “commercial” products instead (such as those from Symantec, McAfee or Microsoft etc.) that were either free, or that they have paid very little for under various special offer programmes. Only two of you appear to have paid retail prices for a product. Whilst there was some anecdotal evidence of issues with different programs, no one strongly warned me away from a particular product or manufacturer.

Anti-spyware
Again, most of you use the free Windows Defender (http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx) and those that don’t, use the anti-spyware capability of their “commercial” suite products (Symantec, McAfee etc.). Some of you supplement this real-time scanning with the occasional run of Ad-Aware 2007 Free or the freeware Spybot – Search and Destroy just to be sure. Many of you have found things that Windows Defender has let through using this method.

Firewall
Most of you are happy with the Windows Firewall built in to Windows XP and Windows Vista. Those of you that use something different do so generally because it is part of your “commercial” suite. Many of you mentioned that you were happy anyway as you were also behind the hardware firewall of your ADSL router.

Content Filtering
Only one of you uses web content filtering. This use is primarily to protect the prying eyes of little ones, and the product used is CyberPatrol.

Others
One notable mention from me is that I also use the freeware CCleaner to clear my tracking cookies on every boot and through a batch file when required. CCleaner allows you to tag cookies you want to keep, so is very effective in protecting your privacy. I’m sure it has hundreds of other features, but this is the only one I use it for and it works very well.

So in summary, my personal “crowdsourcing” experiment worked, and worked very well. I didn’t need to research this myself, and hopefully in the process have put together some useful information for all of you. Result. Oh, and hopefully my PC is now at least as secure as your PC is!

[I was one of the mugs who paid retail prices for a product… although in fairness it was for my wife’s business…]

Garry’s experiment doesn’t have to stop there though – if you have any views on either the crowdsourcing concept or on PC security software, please leave a comment on this post.

Totally protected