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Embedding YouTube Videos into PowerPoint 2007

Mar 2009

By Michael

These instructions were originally posted on Clay’s Blog. I’ve modified them a little and added screenshots.

First turn on the Developer Tab on the Ribbon by clicking on the Microsoft logo at the top left of the window and selecting PowerPoint Options all the way at the bottom of the menu. Next put a check next to the unchecked item to show the Developer Tab
Go to YouTube and select a video to embed
Copy the URL
Open Notepad and paste the URL
In the URL delete "watch?" and change the = sign to a ⁄
Copy the new URL
Back in PowerPoint, on the Developer menu choose "More Controls"
Select Shockwave Flash Object
Click and drag on the PowerPoint slide to draw a box in which the video will appear
Right Click the box and select properties
Paste the URL into the Movie Property field
Adjust the options for Looping or AutoPlay if desired
Close the Properties window
You can now adjust the size of the video by dragging the corners as needed

Your YouTube video will now play directly in your presentation provided you are connected to the Internet.

Category: microsoft, office2007, presentations, youtube 16 Comments

SlideShare Ribbon for PowerPoint 2007

Dec 2008

By Michael

Anyone who reads this blog knows I’m a SlideShare user. Well, as of this morning, SlideShare just got 100x better as it is now fully integrateable with PowerPoint 2007. Just install the SlideShare Ribbon for PowerPoint (don’t forget to install the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 first as instructed) and then you’ll have a new SlideShare ribbon right in PowerPoint.

As you can see from the buttons much of what they do is self-explanatory. Simply put you can upload to, search, and download from SlideShare directly in PowerPoint. Here’s a screenshot of what the search/preview/download interface looks like.

What I also found surprisingly impressive is the program’s ability to give you detailed statistics about your account with just a click of the Presentation Stats button.

There’s more I could say but instead I’ll leave you with the intro video that the folks at SlideShare put together.

SlideShare Ribbon Demo from slideshare on Vimeo.

Category: microsoft, office2007, ppt, slideshare, video, vimeo Leave a Comment

Cloning Windows Vista using the Sysprep tool

Aug 2008

By Michael

So I’ve previously cloned the thirteen Vista computers in out lab without any significant problems. Well, problems that I can point to the cloning process as the cause of the problem anyway. What have I been using to do the cloning? That would be the free linux-based Clonezilla. Just boot from the CD and follow the prompts. But, there’s been this issue nagging at the backs of the minds of our computer team that we’d been ignoring since they’re our computers in our control so until there was a problem, we could ignore it.

Then came ten new computers as part of a Gates grant that are going out to small rural libraries here in Nebraska. Hey, I’ll just set one up and clone the other nine. But, in this case, once we’ve set the machines up, they’ll be sent out across the state and out of our hands. Ah, that nagging problem starts shouting at us again. That problem is the issue of Security Identifiers (SIDs). What are those? Let’s ask Microsoft:

“Security identifiers (SIDs) are numeric values that identify a user or group. For each access control entry (ACE), there is a SID that identifies the user or group for whom access is allowed, denied, or audited.”

Yeah, that’s a lot of help…

The gist of this is that for certain security features of Windows Vista this unique SID is used. The SID is generated as part of the initial setup of Windows. i.e. When you first boot the computer after you take it out of the box. If you have more than one computer with the same SID, this could cause problems. The trouble is, cloning a hard drive also clones the SID. Bingo! I’ve now got ten computers all with the same SID. In fact, Microsoft has a Web page that specifically tells you not to do what I did. It’s title: Do not disk duplicate installed versions of Windows. Here’s what it says:

“Computers that are running the Windows operating system use a Security ID (SID) to uniquely identify themselves. When you use disk-duplicating software, it is important to take steps to ensure the uniqueness of these Security IDs.”

Yep, the computer team’s fears were based in fact. I even double-checked by downloading a small program named PSGetSid to verify the duplication of the SID in question.

“Have you performed a rollout, only to discover that your network might suffer from the SID duplication problem? In order to know which systems have to be assigned a new SID (using a SID updater like our own NewSID), you have to know what a computer’s machine SID is. Up until now, there’s been no way to tell the machine SID without knowing Regedit tricks and exactly where to look in the Registry. PsGetSid makes reading a computer’s SID easy, and works across the network so that you can query SIDs remotely. PsGetSid also lets you see the SIDs of user accounts and translate a SID into the name that represents it.”

So, now the ultimate question: How to clone a computer and yet still have unique SIDs on each of the clones. After way to much searching and reading I found a handy little program from Microsoft that supposedly solves this problem. That program is Sysprep.

“The System Preparation (Sysprep) tool prepares an installation of Windows for duplication, auditing, and customer delivery. Duplication, also called imaging, enables you to capture a customized Windows image that you can reuse throughout an organization.”

Turns out that Sysprep comes with Vista. You can find it at C:\Windows\system32\sysprep. (Don’t run this on your computer! ONLY run this on a master that you plan on cloning. If you run it on a computer you actually want to continue to use, you might just mess it up a smidge.)

So more reading and more reading and I finally found the following from Microsoft:

Creating a Build-to-Plan (BTP) Windows Image

In the build-to-plan (BTP) scenario, you create a single Windows reference image to install computers that use the same hardware configuration. You customize the single Windows reference installation by installing Windows and then adding additional drivers and applications. You then capture the Windows image and use it to install your computers. No additional modifications are made to this image.

This scenario comprises the following stages:

You install Windows on a reference computer.

After the installation is complete, you boot the computer and install any additional device drivers or applications.

After you update the Windows installation, you run the sysprep /oobe /generalize command. The /generalize option instructs Sysprep to remove system-specific data from the Windows installation. System-specific information includes event logs, unique security IDs (SIDs), and other unique information. After the unique system information is removed, the computer shuts down. The /oobe option instructs the Windows installation to run Windows Welcome the next time the computer boots.

After the computer shuts down, you can boot to Windows PE or another operating system on the computer.

You then capture the Windows installation with ImageX, [I'm using Clonezilla instead, M] by creating a reference image with which to install computers with the same hardware configuration.

Well, that sounds like what I want to do so I gave it a shot. I set up one computer just how I wanted it (a full set up updates, installed Firefox, AV software, Steady State, and created the accounts I needed,) then ran Sysprep on that computer. Here’s what the program looked like:

What you see here are the setting that I used. I chose the OOBE option to get the cloned computers to act like it just came out of the box when first booted, and checked Generalize to reset certain settings, most importantly the SID which was central to why I was going through all of this.

I clicked OK and the computer did a few things and then shutdown. Next, I hooked up my drive to clone to and ran Clonezilla. When that was done I removed the cloned drive from the master computer, popped it back into it’s original case and booted up the cloned computer.

I was told the the computer was setting itself up and it rebooted itself once during this process. I was then Welcomed to Windows, asked to accept the licenses, set the time, and create a new account. The account creation bit worried me a bit since I’d already created the accounts I needed but I had to follow through. So, I created an account named “m” with a password of “m” just to make things simple.

Once setup completed I was presented with the Windows logon screen which contained the two previously created accounts and the new “m” account. I logged into the admin account and found that all of my updates, settings, and software were exactly as they should have been. I just deleted the “m” account and I was pretty much all set. There were just two other things:

First, I ran PsGetSid on the cloned computer to make sure this one had a different SID from the original. Yes, it did.

Second, I did have to delete and re-create the second account that was on the cloned computer that I’d originally created on the master. I’m not exactly sure why but I have two theories.

Theory one:
It had something to do with cloning a computer that had Windows Steady State installed and locking that account. If this was the problem the solution would be to not clone a locked account, but to lock the account on the cloned computers.
Theory two:
The Sysprep tool doesn’t like computers with multiple accounts. This theory is based on the idea the OEMs like Dell and Gateway don’t ship computers with multiple accounts (if any) pre-installed on a computer. If this was the problem the solution would be to have just one account created on the master and then create additional needed accounts on the clones.

UPDATE 03 Nov 08: Turns out theory one seems to be the correct one. I’ve since cloned other computers where the public account wasn’t locked by SteadyState and the account came through the cloning process in tact.

Despite this final “problem” it was more just an annoyance. This whole process was still much shorter than if I’d had to boot all ten computers and install all the software and updates individually. Also, each time I did it, the process took a little less time as a result of the repetition of the process. I’ve got another 30-40 computers I’ll be doing this to in September and plan on following this process. If I find any additional details then, I’ll be sure to post them.

Category: microsoft, vista, windows 5 Comments

My work gets Meshy

Jul 2008

By Michael

I’ve been using Windows Live Mesh for a week now and color me impressed. Honestly, I never want to not work without this ever again. I previously gave you an overview of the features but this time I’d like to take you through a simple scenario that I’ve already found myself in do demonstrate just how folder synching makes my work so much easier.

First, a correction: In my previous post I said that copy & paste wasn’t available in the standard Widows Remote Desktop. This is incorrect. You can copy & paste across computers using Remote Desktop, I’d just not realized that. (There’s a longer story here but I’m going to leave that out.)

So, what’s my scenario? The fact that I’m constantly creating documents on one computer not on the office network and needing the files on another computer which is on the office network. In the past, I’d need to use FTP or a flash drive to get the files from one computer to the other. No more!

Yesterday I found myself needing screenshots from one computer since that had the software I was writing about, but the Web page I was inserting them into was on the other. Using what I’ll show you here, I just saved the screenshots to a particular folder and by the time I was done, they automatically appeared on the other. Here’s the steps involved in setting this up:

Here’s my My Documents folder on my office laptop. As you can see, I already have two folders synched up with Live Mesh: Searching 2.0 and Speaking. I could save the screenshots into one of those folders but organizationally that’s not appropriate since these files have nothing to do with a speaking engagement or my latest book. What I really want is some sort of temp folder into which I can stick files that I’m working on right now.

So, I created a new folder within My Documents named !Transfers. (Starting a folder- or file-name with a "!" will move it to the top of the list when you alphabetize.)

With Live Mesh already installed, I right-click on the folder and select Add folder to your Live Mesh…

The Add Live Mesh folder to your devices dialog box appears and I’m given the opportunity to rename the folder at this point. (There is also Show synchronization options here in which you can changes settings for other devices in your Mesh but I prefer to handle these on a computer-by-computer basis, as I’m showing in this post, for for a finer level of control.) Choosing not to rename the folder I just click OK.

My !Transfers folder is nor blue indicating that it is part of my Mesh.

Opening that folder I now see the attached Live Mesh panel. I’ve put some files into the folder and the panel is telling me that the files are currently being uploaded to my Live Mesh Desktop.

Logging into my Live Mesh Desktop I can see a new !Transfers folder containing the files in the folder. The files with the green and white arrow icons are the files that have not yet been uploaded from the computer to the Mesh Desktop version of the folder.

Now it’s time to look at my office desktop. A new shortcut icon to a blue Live Mesh folder named !Transfers has appeared. (Second column from the left. Fifth icon down.)

At the moment, this does nothing. But, when I right-click on it I see an option named Sync with this device… (Since this is in bold, it’s what would happen if I was to double-click on the icon.)

Choosing that option opens the Synchronize folder dialog box which should look familiar. In this instance however, I don’t get to choose the name of the folder but I do get to choose where the folder will live on this computer. So, I’ll click Browse…

…and decide to put this folder under My Documents. Please note that the location of this folder on this computer does not need to match the location of the folder on any other computer. I could have left it on the desktop, or stuck it on a completely different drive for that matter.

Once I’ve chosen the appropriate location I click OK.

Then I click OK again.

The !Transfers shortcut no longer appears on my desktop.

But, if I open My Documents I will see the blue Live Mesh !Transfers folder right where I told it to be.

Opening up the !Transfers folder I see that my files are being copied down from the Live Mesh Desktop into this folder. (Some of them are MP3 files so they’re going to take a little longer to synch between computers than some JPGs will.)

Now, whenever I put a file into my !Transfers folder on either computer it will be automatically synched to the other. (If the other computer isn’t turned on or logged in, the synch will occur the next time the computer is on and logged in.)

Once I’ve moved the files out of my !Transfers folder into their appropriate storage location (or into the recycle bin) they’ll automatically be removed from the other computers. In other words, Live Mesh cleans up after itself.

When I get home this evening I’ll also see a blue !Transfers folder on my home desktop. There I can either choose to not synch the file to my home computer or set up the synch. In this case I probably will set it to synch since I do find myself often downloading files at home that I want to use at the office. All I’ll need to do is dump them in my !Transfers folder and when I log into my office computers in the morning, my files will auto-magically appear.

Seriously, if you use multiple computers you’ve got to try this software. The word on the street is that the "synching with Windows Mobile devices" feature is coming soon (I have accessed my files via http://m.mesh.com on my phone but that’s just remote access to the files, not synching) with a soon-to-follow Mac version. Give me a shout if you try it out as I’m looking for someone to test the sharing features with.

Category: Live Mesh, microsoft 5 Comments

Mesh the cloud and your desk

Jul 2008

By Michael

I don’t suspect that I’m a "typical" computer user with my daily working with four different computers and constant travel but most of my readers I’m sure have at least a home and office computer. I’m also pretty sure that at some point you’ve "left that important file on the other computer" and have no easy way of getting it short of calling someone to get them to e-mail it to you. Great if your office is open and the file is small, but getting a file at 7am when you’re presenting at 8, and it’s a 10MB PPT file and you’re basically screwed.

I’ve played with many different services to synchronize devices in the past my most of them are cumbersome at best, hardly functional at worst. However, yesterday I was given access to the "tech preview" of Windows Live Mesh and all I can saw is "where have you been all my life." (Supposedly this is open to everyone in the US but I’ve heard reports that so many people tried to access it yesterday that they’ve since closed it to new users again. So, your ability to register may vary.)

So, let me take you on a tour of Live Mesh and explain to you what it does and (basically) how it works.

First you head over to http://www.mesh.com/ and select the Sign in button. (I recommend you do this in IE as opposed to Firefox. I’ll explain why later.)

All you need to log in is a Windows Live ID. (This is what was originally Windows Passport.) If you already have one, just use it to log in. If not, follow the instructions for getting one.

Once signed in you’ll be presented with the Devices screen. At first you’ll only see choices for "Live Desktop" and "Add Device". Here you’ll see that I’ve already added three devices and currently two of them are running and connected to Live Mesh. (NLC Desktop is not. Why, later.)

To add a device to your Mesh select the Add Device icon, choose from the list of available device types (right now just 32-bit XP/Vista and 64-bit Vista PCs) and click the Install button.

I don’t have screenshots of the install process since most of it happens behind the scenes. You’ll be asked to Run a downloaded install.exe and once run a status balloon will appear in above your system tray telling you that Live Mesh is being installed. You’ll eventually be told that Live Mesh is starting and ultimately be asked to log in with your LiveID. At this point you’ll also be asked to name your computer to be able to tell it from the others in your Mesh.

Once this process has been successfully completed your device will be listed on your Live Mesh devices screen.

In the case of my "NLC Desktop" the installation program did run but I was asked for the admin username and password for the computer. Since I didn’t have that information I clicked cancel thinking that was that. Well, it still lists my device and I still have access to the synching functions of Live Mesh. However, I do not have the remote desktop feature. Go figure..

This next screenshot shows the listing for my "Home Desktop" which did install completely and correctly. For this device I have both synching and remote access.

Even if you don’t add any devices, Live Mesh will give you access to a "Desktop" which I’ve shown below. Here you can store files and create folders just as you would with other online storage services such as Windows Live Sky Drive. This feature alone is worth taking a look at.

In my case I’ve created a folder for upcoming speaking engagements and can upload files into it. When I’m later at a different location and don’t have one of my computers with me I can simply log into my account, and download the file to that new local computer without installing any of the Live Mesh software.

For example, I’m at a library to give a presentation and they do not have the ability to hook my laptop up to their projector. All I need to do is get on their computer, launch the browser, log into my Live Mesh account, got to the desktop, find my PPT file, and open it. This will download the file to the local computer and open it accordingly. A great way to backup files you might need later. Total amount of online storage allowed at this time: 5GB.

What you’ll also see attached to the folder off to the right is a secondary window displaying information about your account and the files contained within the folder you’re currently viewing. The next screenshot shows the "News" about that folder. I’ll get back to this in more detail when I talk about folder synching.

Next you can see the Members information for this folder. Live Mesh has the ability to share files and folders between account holders. As I do not yet know anyone else using Live Mesh I’ve not yet had the opportunity to play with this feature.

The third bit of information is about which Devices this folder is synched with. Again, more about this shortly.

To create a new folder select "Create new folder" on the desktop and give the new folder a name.

Additionally, when you create a new folder you can set the synchronization options for that folder, essentially choosing which of your devices you wish to have copies of the content of that folder.

The "News" link at the top of the window will show you the recent activity (mostly relating to synching of data) for your account. I’m assuming that this information is more useful when you have multiple people sharing folders and documents so you can see who’s done what with which files.

Once you have created a folder on your Live Mesh desktop you can then choose to sync the content of that folder with a folder on one or more of your devices. I’ve done that with my Speaking folder. Below shows what that folder now looks like on my NLC laptop. The shiny blue folder indicates that this folder is being synched via Live Mesh. (The folders do not need to have the same name but I’ve done so just to keep things clear.)

Once I open that folder I’ll get the additional information window attached to its right side. This info window contains the same content as the one on the Live Mesh desktop: News, Members, and Synchronized Devices. (Shown in the next three screenshots.)

This information window can also be collapsed by clicking on the "<<", reducing it to a smaller bar of icons. Click the ">>" or any of the icons to open the information window.

That’s what it looks like, but what exactly does it do? Well, synched files will mirror exactly what’s been done in all the versions of that folder across your Live Mesh desktop and any synched devices. Here’s what I’ve done:

I’ve got a "Speaking" folder on all four of my computers. This folder should contain copies of all the files relevant to my upcoming speaking engagements. The trouble has always been keeping track of which computer held the most recent version. This is no longer a problem. Once I set up the sync across all my computers, Live Mesh took over and made sure that the content of my Speaking folder on all the computers had the exact same content.

Now, whenever I change a file by renaming it, moving it, copying it, deleting it, or editing it’s content, at the soonest available time, Live Mesh will cause those changes to be reflected on all the other computers. For example, if I’m at home and decide to work on a PowerPoint presentation, I just open it on my home laptop, make the changes, and click save. When I get into the office the next morning and turn on that computer, Live Mesh will notice the changes and replace the now old version on the office computer with the new version from my home computer.

At all times, the versions sitting on my Live Mesh desktop will always be the current version.

If I upload a new file to the Live Mesh desktop version of the folder, copies will be sent down to all my devices automatically.

In other words, I no longer have to worry about making sure that the correct version of the files I need are on any of my computers. No matter where I work on them, they’ll all have the correct version. What could be better?

There are different options for controlling how files are Synched. These options can be found by right-clicking on the folder on the Live Mesh desktop and selecting Change sync settings.

You’ll then see the Change synchronization setting for this folder window.

You can now choose to change the method of synching, including turning synching off, on a device by device basis.

The other major feature of Live Mesh is the ability to create a remote desktop session. To do this go back to your Devices list, select the appropriate (connected) device, and click the Connect button.

Here’s the IE vs. Firefox bit. The remote desktop feature will not work in Firefox as it relies on ActiveX controls. Everything else, will work in Firefox just fine. (I’ve just used the "Open in IE" Firefox extension to automatically launch IE whenever I go to the Live Mesh site so I don’t every have to be frustrated when I try to open a remote session.)

The first time you connect to a new device some ActiveX controls will need to be installed. This is only a problem for some as you need admin privileges for these to install successfully. (This is why in earlier screenshots you see that "NLC Desktop" is not connected. I don’t have admin-level access to that computer.)

Once the ActiveX controls are installed you’ll see a screen telling you that it is attempting to connect. In my experience this can take up to 30 seconds to work.

Once connected it works just like the traditional, but hard to set up, Windows Remote Desktop.

Tips are displayed off to the right including links to send a CTRL-ALT-DEL to the remote computer, blank the screen on the remote computer so no one can watch what you’re doing at the remote location, and to show the remote desktop at 100% instead of the default "fit to window" as I’ve show above.

Additionally, there’s an arrow in the bar across the top which when clicked switches you into a full-screen mode, essentially turning your computer into the remote computer.

But, you may ask, why is this any better than the traditional Windows Remote Desktop? That’s easy, with Live Mesh you can copy and paste across computers! This is something you couldn’t previously do. You still can’t drag and drop between the local and remote computers but you can easily find the needed file on the remote computer, copy it, switch to the local computer and paste. It’s a little slow (a 250MB video file insisted that it was going to take four hours to copy so I didn’t bother) but if you forgot a 5MB PPT file, this is a great solution.

AS you may expect, not all is roses. Live Mesh is definitely impressive and solves a lot of the issues that I’ve been having keeping four different computers in sync, and for retrieving remote files while I’m on the road. However, there’s definite room for improvement.

The support for mobile devices, and maybe more importantly, Mac clients will be essential for large scale implementation.
I have yet to get Live Mesh started on my home Vista laptop. It seems to have installed just fine but keeps telling me "Failed to start Live Mesh". I’ve searched all the forums and I do know that I’m not the only person with this problem. Considering that it did install and run earlier in the day I suspect that this may be due to the alleged closing of the tech preview.
Remote desktop is a bit slow. In the past I’ve been using a combination of Hamachi & RealVNC for my remote desktop sessions and that is faster. This is due to RealVNC reducing the umber of the colors displayed in the remote session thus allowing the screen to redraw faster. Live Mesh keeps full colors and only removes the wallpaper. I’d like to see an option to change the number of displayed colors based on connection speed.
This last one is a bit odd. It turns out that Live Mesh requires User Account Control (UAC) to be enabled in Vista before it will install. On my home laptop I’d completely disabled UAC. (This isn’t something I actually recommend.) However, when I first tried to install Live Mesh on that laptop I got the following error message. (It looks like Microsoft isn’t kidding about this UAC thing.)

So there you have it, my initial impressions of Windows Live Mesh. I’m sure there’s features I’ve missed and I’m looking forward to using it to share documents with others. (Is you’re willing to play, get an account and let me know. I’ve got five sharing invites to give out.) The bottom line: this is a great product and could only get better.

Category: cloudcomputing, microsoft, web2.0, windowslive 5 Comments

The end of an era for Windows

Jul 2008

By Michael

No, not XP. Yep, here’s proof for everyone that’s so totally worried that they won’t be able to buy XP any more. (BTW: Get over it!) Come November 1, 2008 OEM’s will no longer be able to sell Windows for Workgroups 3.11. (The OS I used in grad school in 1994-95.)

Category: microsoft, windows Leave a Comment

Microsoft on Copyright

Jun 2008

By Michael

I use Windows Live Writer to write most of my blog posts. (BTW, I love this program!) When I used the Insert Video function while writing my previous post on Obama I noticed a little link down at the bottom of the window labeled "Please respect copyright".

Here’s what you get when you click on that link:

COPYRIGHT NOTICE & FAQ.

© 2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

The following is provided for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice. If you need legal advice, contact a lawyer.

What is copyright?

Copyright law protects original works, such as websites, books, music, paintings, photos and video. A work is “original” if it contains some elements you created and did not borrow from others. Typically, when you create an original work, you own the copyright. As the copyright owner, you can control how others use your work. For example, if you write a movie script, you have the right to, and can prevent others from, copying your script, sharing it with others (“distributing it”), making a movie or book from your script (a “derivative work”), or publicly performing your script as a play or movie. You also have the ability to sell or give away these rights. In other words, you could sell the right to make a movie based on your script to a movie studio.

If you use someone else’s copyrighted materials without permission, that use generally violates the copyright owner’s exclusive rights, and is copyright infringement. So if you create a new work and include parts of other people’s works in it (such as an existing photo, lengthy quotes from a book or a loop from a song), you must own or have permission to use the elements you borrow. For example, if your script is based on an existing popular series, you should obtain permission to use the elements you borrow from the series.

Copyright law is different from the law of personal property. If you buy a physical object, such as a movie on DVD, you own the physical object. You do not, however, obtain ownership of the “copyrights” (the rights to make copies, distribute, make derivatives and publicly perform or display) in the content of the movie. The fact that you have obtained physical possession of a DVD does not automatically grant you the right to copy or share it.

If you make your own movie, it may include many copyrighted works in it. So, if you decide to make a movie based on your script, you must either create all elements of it on your own, or have permission to use the elements you borrow. Especially keep in mind that photos or artwork hanging on the walls of your sets and music on the soundtrack (even if you own the CD or MP3) may be copyrighted. You should not include copyrighted works such as these in your movie without authorization.

A few other things to keep in mind are:

1.

Just because a work does not include a copyright notice (e.g., © 2006 Microsoft Corporation) does not mean the work is in the public domain. Copyright notices are generally not required for works to be protected by copyright.

2.

Just because a work is easily available on the internet or elsewhere does not mean you may use the work freely. Look for terms of use, such as Creative Commons, that explain how works you find on the Internet may be used.

Isn’t it in the public domain?

Just because a work is freely available, does not mean it is in the “public domain.” Copyright is for a limited term; it does not last forever. In the copyright context, “public domain” means the copyright term has expired. Once a work is in the public domain, it may be freely used without permission from the copyright owner.

Determining the term of copyright can be complex, particularly because copyright laws vary from country to country. Also, even if the copyright on a work has expired, you should be careful about how you use a public domain work. For example, a book may be in the public domain, but it might not be ok to scan the book cover to cover and post it on the internet. This is because the particular version of the book may contain new copyrightable material that is not in the public domain, such as cover art or footnotes.

What about fair use?

In limited situations, you can use copyrighted works without permission from the copyright holder. It can be difficult to figure out whether use of copyrighted works without permission is legal, though, because the laws in this area are often vague and vary from country to country.

The copyright law in the United States has a doctrine called “fair use”. Fair use provides a defense to copyright infringement in some circumstances. For example, fair use allows documentary filmmakers to use very short clips of copyrighted movies, music and news footage without permission from the copyright owner. Fair use is a difficult concept because determining whether something is a fair use involves weighing four factors. Unfortunately, weighing the fair use factors rarely results in a clear-cut answer.

Rather than applying a fair use test, many other countries have specific exceptions to copyright infringement. The number and type of exceptions vary by country, but they frequently allow copyrighted materials to be used without permission from the copyright holder for activities such as nonprofit research, teaching, news reporting, or private study.

If you incorrectly decide that something is a fair use or falls into an exception to copyright infringement, you could be held criminally and civilly liable and have to pay damages. We suggest you talk to a lawyer if you have questions regarding fair uses of copyrighted works.

What happens if you upload copyrighted materials to one of our websites without permission?

By law, we are required to take down videos, music, photographs or other content you upload onto a website hosted by Microsoft if we learn that it infringes someone else’s copyright. If you believe that we have mistakenly taken down content you uploaded that you own or have permission to upload, you can also let us know that. Finally, if you upload infringing content repeatedly, we will terminate your account and you could face criminal and civil penalties. So please, respect other people’s copyrights.

What if my stuff is on a Microsoft website without my permission?

If you believe that anything on a website hosted by Microsoft infringes your copyright, let us know. Just provide us with the information requested here and we will see that your copyrighted works are taken down.

I want to share my content, but…

Many of our websites and services allow you to share content you create, such as video, music and photographs. Though there is no way for us to ensure that your content will not be misused when you share it online, you may consider making it available under a Creative Commons License.

Creative Commons licenses are a simple way for you to let people know what uses they can make of your creative works and under what conditions. Creative Commons licenses are customizable based on your preferences and are automatically generated through the use of an online form. The form includes questions such as whether your work may be used only for non-commercial purposes and whether the work may be modified. As such, a variety of licenses are possible. For example, an “attribution only” license allows others to make any use of your work as long as they indicate that you are the copyright holder.

Creative Commons is continually developing new licenses tailored to needs identified by creative people like you. To learn more about Creative Commons, or to prepare a Creative Commons license, visit their website (http://creativecommons.org/).

What if I don’t want my website crawled?

Microsoft search services (MSN Search and Windows Live Search) follow the Robots Exclusion Standards. This means that you can control which pages Microsoft search engines index and how often Microsoft bots access your website. To learn how to do so, or for more information regarding Microsoft’s webcrawling and site indexing practices, please visit http://search.msn.com/docs/siteowner.aspx.

Over all I’d say that this is a reasonable document. Nothing here particularly made me cringe and that surprised me when reading a document from such a company as Microsoft. I will say though that I’m not exactly a fan of this advice: "We suggest you talk to a lawyer if you have questions regarding fair uses of copyrighted works." Why not at least attempt to explain how Fair Use works instead of pointing in the direction of a lawyer. (Yep, Microsoft’s afraid of liability issues I’m sure.)

Category: copyright, microsoft One Comment

Your OS is no longer valid

Nov 2007

By Michael

One of the things I learned at IL2007 (I’ll get to that post eventually) was that "all OSes suck" and yesterday morning this was only reinforced. Here’s what I saw on my laptop’s screen when I woke up Sunday morning and went to watch the latest episode of Bionic Woman:

How’s that for a scary error message. Basically, something happened overnight that caused my Vista installation to believe it was no longer a valid installation. So, I went to learn more…

Microsoft’s first suggestion was to run the online Genuine something-or-other tool that validates your OS installation. Yep, it failed. I "officially" have an "invalid" (read "illegal") version of Vista on my laptop.

Then they presented me with a list of incompatible software that I should uninstall. I didn’t have any of those programs on my laptop so scratch that.

Next it suggested I run CHKDSK to see if there’s any problems with the hard drive. (The theory being that if the right OS files get corrupted Vista could invalidate.) Run CHKDSK, no errors. Next.

I found lots of others who have reported this problem but most of those were people who had been playing with beta versions last year. I did however find a link to a Microsoft page in which I could report my error and get a response within 24 hours. I filled out their form, downloaded the diagnostic tool, ran that to collect the relevant data, and sent my report off to Microsoft. (I’m still waiting BTW.)

Not willing to give up I kept searching and found another Microsoft page that suggested it might be my anti virus program and I should uninstall that. (I’ve been using Avast! on the laptop since I upgraded and I’ve not liked it, too slow, so that sounded like a good plan regardless.) The trouble was, when you’re running an "invalid" copy of Vista it locks you out of certain OS features, most importantly in this instance, the control panel. So, how to uninstall a program without the control panel. (No, there wasn’t a standalone uninstaller to be found.)

Ah ha! I remembered MSCONFIG. Launch that and instruct Avast! not to load at startup. Apply the changes, reboot, and my OS is valid again! I quickly uninstalled Avast! and downloaded/installed the latest (now Vista compatible) version of AVG. System running smoothly again.

Granted, it was Vista that was yelling at me and it’s Microsoft’s "fault" that their DRM is touchy but right now I’m placing the blame at the feet of the makers of Avast! I suspect that it updated itself overnight as it should but that something in the update was incompatible with Vista enough to cause it to invalidate. Well, I won’t be recommending that product in class any more.

Category: microsoft, vista Leave a Comment

Testing the Insert Amazon Link plugin

Sep 2007

By Michael

I poked around the Windows Live Write plugins and found a few more interesting ones. This one does an ISBN search in Amazon.com and inserts the book information, cover, and link (including your associates ID). Here’s the plugin interface:

Here’s the result:

Amazon.com: The First Quarter : A 25-year History of Video Games: Books: Steven L. Kent

ISBN: 0970475500
ISBN-13: 9780970475503

The code is a tad messy as it includes some specialized MS code, and is a non-CSS table but it sure does make for easy insertion of this content. (From a validation standpoint, it is close. The only errors are no alt attribute on the cover image, an ‘unselectable’ atribute which MS seems to have made up, and the code itself is HTML, not XHTML (i.e. mostly missing the trailing slash on empty elements). This last one is only a problem since my blog is XHTML. I’ll probably write to the author of the plugin asking for fixes in the next update.)

Category: amazon.com, blog, microsoft Leave a Comment

First test of Windows Live Writer

Sep 2007

By Michael

Not much to say yet, but the software did seem to successfully detect all of my Blogger account settings despite the fact that I publish to my own server, not blogspot. (One kudo point so far.)

Also, the interface seems nice and easy to use. There is an edit code view and a live preview of what this post will look like on my blog once it’s published. (12 kudo points for that feature!)

Images can be inserted by browsing local/network drives and through a URL. It doesn’t seem to be able to pull images from flickr directly, but I can just do the usual copy/paste of the flickr code so that’s not too troubling.

There’s more features. I’ll post more if/when I find things worth mentioning. My initial opinion: a pretty sweet app.

Category: beta, microsoft Leave a Comment

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The Travelin' Librarian

Archive for the Category »microsoft «

Embedding YouTube Videos into PowerPoint 2007

SlideShare Ribbon for PowerPoint 2007

Cloning Windows Vista using the Sysprep tool

My work gets Meshy

Mesh the cloud and your desk

The end of an era for Windows

Microsoft on Copyright

COPYRIGHT NOTICE & FAQ.

Your OS is no longer valid

Testing the Insert Amazon Link plugin

First test of Windows Live Writer

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