eDiscovery and Microsoft Office Trust Center

Using eDiscovery products to catalog and convert mass files into data and images works well, but often the unattended processes get hung up on security prompts or prompts from macros. Manually processing hundreds or thousands of those "errors" can be a real pain.


Office 2007/2010 Trust Center settings can save you a lot of hassle.
 
Things to do (make these changes on all reprocessing workstations and "worker" servers):
2007: Office button - Word Options -
2010: File - Options -

1. Disable all macros without notification.

Trust Center - Trust Center settings - Macro Settings
* Disable all macros without notification


2. Create Trusted Locations
Trust Center - Trust Center settings -Trusted Locations
* "Allow Trusted Locations on my network" (Don't you trust your network?)
* "Add New Location" and enter a path to trust. IPro eCapture's QC app has a temporary work path that starts with:

c:\programdata\application data\ipro tech\

Make sure to trust the sub-folders as well.

3.  Disable "Protected View" (Office 2010 only)
Trust Center - Trust Center settings - Protected View

I would not recommend turning these off because #2 (Create Trusted Locations) should cover you. Odds are, if you are processing eDiscovery, you have put the files in a trusted location before you begin processing. Turning these settings off would be my last resort, but it should allow you to process files without extra prompts and interruptions.

The Protected view allows you to completely disallow saving, editing, printing of files that may be unsafe. The default things to protect are files from the internet, Outlook attachments, and files in potentially unsafe locations (like temporary internet files). You can also choose to turn on/off DEP (Data Execution Prevention) mode.



Keep in mind that these settings may affect a workstation that may be intended to work with those macros. Use these if you have a special workstation for faster reprocessing or if those settings will not affect the regular workstation use.

MyBB Plugin "Signature settings per group"

On MyBB, the "Signature settings per group" plugin does a great job of letting you control signature settings and grant different settings for different groups of users. One great use is to limit number of images for those who are not advertisers. The problem with the plugin is that smiles count against the number of images and most users like to have a few smilies in their signature.

It was easy to get around this. (applies to MyBB 1.6+)
In the forum install root, find this file: usercp.php
Edit it and search for this:

$plugins->run_hooks("usercp_start");

If you've broken out the more or less proper line breaks, it should be around line 57, but the files come from MyBB without line breaks.

Change this:

if((($mybb->settings['sigimgcode'] == 0 && $mybb->settings['sigsmilies'] != 1) &&
substr_count($parsed_sig, "<img") > 0) ||
(($mybb->settings['sigimgcode'] == 1 || $mybb->settings['sigsmilies'] == 1) &&
substr_count($parsed_sig, "<img") > $mybb->settings['maxsigimages'])
)

To this (focus on the - substr_count images/smilies/):

if((($mybb->settings['sigimgcode'] == 0 && $mybb->settings['sigsmilies'] != 1) &&
substr_count($parsed_sig, "<img") > 0) ||
(($mybb->settings['sigimgcode'] == 1 || $mybb->settings['sigsmilies'] == 1) &&
(substr_count($parsed_sig, "<img") - substr_count($parsed_sig, "images/smilies/")) > $mybb->settings['maxsigimages'])
)

What's going on here is... say you allow one image in a signature. Well a smilie is an image because when it all comes down to the code, there is an "<img" tag. The code counts the images and checks the count against the "maxsigimages" setting. All I am doing is counting the number of instances of "images/smilies/" and then reducing the number of images found by that number before it is compared to the "maxsigimages" setting.

This works because smilies are kept in a specific directory.

It comes down to this:

(substr_count($parsed_sig, "<img") - substr_count($parsed_sig, "images/smilies/")) > $mybb->settings['maxsigimages'])

versus this:

substr_count($parsed_sig, "<img") > $mybb->settings['maxsigimages'])

Using schnapps flavors in wine making

In wine making the fermentation process eats up the essence of the fruit and usually leaves very little flavor. Sometimes I add pure juice to the finished product in order to boost the flavor. The problem with that is that it really sweetens the wine and "waters" it down, reducing the alcohol content. One way around this that works pretty well is to use a flavored schnapps liqueur essence. This boosts the flavor  without increasing the sweetness and volume too much.

I've had success with the "Top Shelf" brand. Tons of flavors (60+) and one small bottle will make a difference to a 5 gallon batch.

WinRAR is great for extracting ISO files to a folder without needing to mount or burn the files to disc.

I needed it today to extract all of the recent downloaded NIST NSRL iso files.

Simple. Right-click -> Extract to ...

Custom ringtones for WP7 - ChevronWP7

Before I updated to WP7.5 (mango), I tried using the ChevronWP7 custom ringtone manager to get my ringtones on the phone. This requires an unlocked phone, and when I got it to work, I was able to create a XAP package and "install" the ChevronWP7 ringtones on my phone. Clicking on the "app" would simply list the 5 ringtone files that I installed, but I could never figure out how to get those files to show up in my ringtone list.

Microsoft's WP deployment tool worked, the XAP creator worked, and the app installed, but no ringtones. I've seen no answer to why this may be. Since 7.5 mango came out we can simply roll our ringtones out to WP7.5 via the Zune software.

Custom Ringtones for WP7.5 (mango)

I upgraded to a WP7 device from a Palm Pre Plus and the device was inherently wide-open. Microsoft isn't quite that nice, unfortunately, and it gripes my ass. First thing I wanted to do was load up custom ringtones.

With WP7.5 (mango) it's simple. Ringtones must be:

1. 39 seconds or shorter
2. smaller than 1 megabyte (1MB)
3. saved in MP3 or WMA format
4. not copy-protected (i.e. DRM free)

Change the genre tag on those files to "Ringtone" and then synch them with your phone via the Zune software. The downside is that they only show up under the "Ringtone" list, which is the list of ringtones for your *phone ringer*. Nothing under the alerts for email, SMS, VM, etc. I'm still looking into making the alerts show up as well.

Intro

As a developer, I'm always searching for answers to bugs, problems, workarounds, etc. People rarely come back and give us the solutions to the problems they find. That's why I'm here. This blog will be random. I deal with Windows Phone 7, older VB stuff (VB6), SharePoint 2007, 2010, Javascript, CSS, .NET, PHP, hardware, gaming, hobbies, etc.