January 22nd, 2012 Digg This
I’ve been wanting to switch to a more recent smartphone for a while now.
The big contenders were the iPhone 4S and the Samsung Galaxy S II.
After a lot of comparing and considering the not so shallow price, I can now call an iPhone my own.
My previous phone was a Samsung Preston (S5600), it is almost 3 years old and it dated from before the Android/iOS era.
Don’t get me wrong, this was a trusty companion, but it started to show its age. Especially with social media in mind.
My first iPhone impressions
First on my mind seeing and handling the phone was OMG it’s beautiful, but heavy! The Samsung only comes in at 96 grams vs. the iPhone’s whopping 143 grams. So quite a difference. The glassy surface and metal on the sides do make it feel more sturdy and robust. This robust feeling is continued when you try to open the micro-SIM slot. No fiddling, just a firm push and the tray pops out!
Turning the phone on, it takes about the same time to boot the OS, but once you see the icons, the difference in resolution is amazing!
On to the migration.
The move
Moving from one phone to another is always tricky. In comparison to changing the OS on a computer, phones aren’t as open to access all your data.
First things first, the phone’s contacts.
Most of them were on the SIM, so after getting a new micro-SIM and copying the old’s data over and putting it in the iPhone, about 90% of the contacts were safe. One thing I’m still looking for but don’t know if it actually exists, the iPhone has no option to store contacts on your SIM. The few contacts that were missing, I entered in manually. (This is also a great time to do some cleaning).
Next up were the photos and videos. Since the iPhone has no slot for a micro-SD, I turned to Bluetooth.
Now this I don’t get, any respectful phone has Bluetooth nowadays, including the iPhone. But you can’t do phone to phone copies (unless it’s from iOS to iOS)?!! What’s the deal with that. File transfers is one of the Bluetooth stack’s standards, but not supported. Neither are there apps for it.
Only thing I could find how, was to transfer them using Bluetooth to my PC, then upload them to the iPhone using iCloud. In the end, it worked, but direct transfer would make more sense.
Filling up storage
Now that my data is on the iPhone, I can start with apps, music and games. The typical ones like Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter, Shazam and Wikipedia are a given… now on to finding some more goodies.
Accessorizing
The iPhone only comes with it’s headset, a USB cable and well that’s it. On the way is an HD screen protector and a case to protect the back. Suggestions for any other must-have accessories are welcome.
Filed under: Blurbs, iPhone
August 30th, 2011 Digg This
I just had one of those WTF-moments.
I needed a separate security role for people so they could clean up accounts & contacts in CRM 2011. As a result, they needed merge capabilities.
There is a separate privilege for that under the Business Management tab of a security role, obviously called merge.
So I gave the role, read, write, append and append to permissions, besides the merge privilege.
This seemed logical and with it, the user is able to view the account/contact and call up the merge UI.
Up until the point you actually want to do the merge. There you get the nice exception that you don’t have enough permissions to do so.
After some digging around in the trace-logs, it seems you also need the Share privilege on the entity you want to merge.
This absolutely makes no sense, since sharing is used for giving a user permissions on a record to record basis.
So to cut a weird story short, besides the merge privilege, you need at least the privileges in the image below.
Filed under: Dynamics CRM 2011
August 28th, 2011 Digg This
Some links I still had in my inbox of tech to come in the (near) future.
Completely artificial bird, but unlike previous attempts I’ve seen, this one looks believable and… birdlike.
Of course military and policing surveillance comes to mind.
At CeBit this year Samsung presented a fully transparent and solar powered TV. When this will be commercialized, say hello to auto dimming windows and integration of your TV etc into any glass surface, from mirrors to windows to picture frames and even car windshields (no more projecting HUDs).
And finally how to build your own plasma speaker. It’s totally useless, so why do it? Well, because you can 
Filed under: The Future
July 1st, 2011 Digg This
When you have workflows in CRM 2011 that create e-mails for other users, like say, send an e-mail from the person who last modified an account to the owner of the account, you’re probably going to end up with e-mails staying in Draft.
When you want to send the e-mail afterwards you’re greeted with a nice: “User does not have send-as privilege.” (ErrorCode: -2147203059) exception.
When you look up the privilege, it’s nowhere to be found in the UI.
You can however set it (as suggested on the Microsoft Forum) in the Personal Settings.
The downside, you only get this option when you have the System Administrator role and no other.
When looking in the database, there is actually a prvSendAsUser privilege, so after assigning it to a general role that all users get like this:
AddPrivilegesRoleRequest addPrivilegesRequest = new AddPrivilegesRoleRequest
{
RoleId = new Guid(generalroleid),
Privileges = new[]
{
// Grant prvSendAsUser privilege.
new RolePrivilege
{
PrivilegeId = new Guid("6FD3EB4F-66E3-4587-B4AB-C064F03AD783"),
Depth = PrivilegeDepth.Global
}
}
};
service.Execute(addPrivilegesRequest);
If you afterwards have a look at the user’s privileges in the database with this query:
SELECT p.name
FROM SystemUser u
JOIN filteredSystemUserRoles sur ON sur.systemuserid = u.systemuserid
JOIN RolePrivileges rp ON rp.roleid = sur.roleid
JOIN FilteredPrivilege p ON p.privilegeid = rp.PrivilegeId
You’ll see that the user has in fact got the prvSendAsUser role.
But when you try to send an e-mail the problem stays the same.
The solution however is very simple, check for this privilege is not done in through privileges, despite what the exception makes you suggest, but is checked in the user settings.
Running an easy update query will fix this for you:
UPDATE UserSettings
SET IsSendAsAllowed = 1
WHERE IsSendAsAllowed = 0
Logical, no; but does it work, yes.
Filed under: Dynamics CRM 2011
April 21st, 2011 Digg This
OK I’m at a loss here; I’m going bonkers.
I’ve created a report in CRM 2011 (which runs executes fine), afterwards exported the .rdl file, opened that .rdl file in Visual Studio 2008 with BI extensions.
When I try to get any data from VS I get an error: “Unable to connect to data source ‘CRM’.” with the details saying: “No organization was found for the user.”.
The server is running SQL 2008 R2 with accompanying SSRS.
Anyone any idea?
Filed under: Dynamics CRM 2011
April 20th, 2011 Digg This
Filed under: Blurbs
March 23rd, 2011 Digg This
Filed under: Blurbs
February 20th, 2011 Digg This
Tech companies usually have the nicest offices. Have a look.
Complete post from NerdBusiness.com
Filed under: Blurbs
January 28th, 2011 Digg This
When you have offline files enabled but want to move the cache location to a 2nd hard disk with more space (or just a faster one), here’s how you do it:
Note: I would advise to create a restore point prior to doing the following.
- Create a folder for your offline file cache. Something like D:\Offline.
- From an elevated command prompt type the following: Takeown /r /f C:\Windows\CSC
- Open the Sync Center and go to Manage Offline Files.
- Click Disable Offline Files and restart the machine.
- From an elevated command prompt issue the following commands:
rd /s C:\Windows\CSC
mklink /J C:\Windows\CSC “D:\Offline” (or whatever you folder name is, but be sure to use the quotations if you have a space in the name)
- Reopen the Manage Offline Files window and Enable Offline Files.
- Restart the machine
All files/folders that are made available offline should now be redirected to whichever folder you specified.
Filed under: Windows
November 22nd, 2010 Digg This
After weeks and weeks of searching for a solution for my broken PS3, I finally fixed it.
In my previous post, I let know that I ordered a $11 part to replace the positioning motor in the blue-ray drive. That part finally arrived and after installing it, I had good hopes. Putting everything back together, reconnecting the PS3 to my TV and turning it on. The dashboard showed up, so I didn’t make it worse. I inserted a disc and then, my PS3 ate my disc and wouldn’t give it back!
Opening up the PlayStation again, I removed the disc from the drive only to notice that some of the mechanical parts in the drive itself were broken too. I don’t know if this was due to my attempts or due to the broken motor before, but the result was the same.
I ordered another drive (cost $56 excl transport), this time a complete blue ray drive, which arrived a few weeks later.
Reassembling the PS3 with the new, drive, still nothing. WTF!
I let it rest for a few weeks, but the problem still lingered in my brain.
Read the rest of "Project Rescue PS3: Success!" »
Filed under: PS3
I’ve been wanting to switch to a more recent smartphone for a while now.
