1n73r.net

2011 Tech Predictions

After doing this two years I figured I needed to continue my tradition. If you want to see how right or wrong I was in previous years check out my 2009 predictions and 2010 predictions.

Computers

1. First of all 2011 will be the year of the tablet. That isn’t a prediction, it’s more of a fact. I think the big winner in the tablet world will eventually be Google with Android simply because they will have the cheapest and most devices. This has already been proven true with cell phones.
2. Even though the company with the cheapest and most devices will eventually win, advertising will win the tablet market in the short term. It doesn’t matter who has the best device or the best software. The company who has the most successful marketing campaign will win. This makes me think that the iPad will continue to sell well, the Blackberry Playbook will have a decent market, even though it will suck, and HP won’t have much traction unless they change their strategy. In the end, Android will still probably take the lead because they will have the most companies pushing Android tablets.
3. Because of tablets in the <$500 range I think laptops will begin to take a hit in sales. While this has already been reported with the iPad, it will actually be true in 2011. Oh and desktops don't have a chance. Even businesses will begin to go away from desktops and start offering more laptops, tablets, and thin clients.
4. Apple and Microsoft will begin to change their strategy for their computer operating systems. I think Microsoft will begin to rely heavily on "cloud computing" and try to offer some of their own services but mainly focus on always connected devices with instant on. Apple, on the other hand, still won't embrace 3rd party cloud services and will expand their own Mobile Me platform and continue to segregate their users. While this won't cause an Apple revolt in 2011, I think there may be an uprising in 2012.
5. Microsoft won't have a real answer to Windows on a tablet. While they will have lots of plans and still push out devices, they won't have something that is finger friendly until 2012. Even though what they should do is put Windows Phone 7 on tablets.

Cellphones

1. Smartphones will continue to expand their market and the Verizon iPhone will finally come out. The iPhone market share won’t go up as much as some people expect because most people that want a smartphone are already entrenched in the platform they are on now. And 2011 will have so many good phone operating systems that the iPhone won’t be “the best” anymore. iPhone market will still go up, but it won’t catch Android.
2. AT&T will be forced to stop riding the iPhone success wave and either slash their prices or finally get some decent devices. My theory is they will reach out to HP and Blackberry for exclusive devices rather than lowering prices to Sprint and T-Mobile level.
3. Network will be the big marketing push for carriers at first but that will die down near the end of the year because most of the networks will begin to share the same coverage and network technology. Also phones will become less exclusive because quad-band and penta-band phones will become the norm. Although 2011 will still see very few LTE voice devices.
4. Customers will start adding devices to their contracts because more devices will have cellular radios and the wireless data will finally became fast enough to use. I think there may even be a push for people to ditch their traditional internet provider and just tether their phone/buy a modem because it will be cheaper for them.

Video Games

1. Nintendo will finally have to announce a new console. The Wii sales will drop so much that Nintendo will updated it to a Wii HD that has Blu-ray, HD graphics, and 3D capabilities. They will also incorporate the Wii Motion Plus controller into the standard remote and probably have a standard webcam with a high focus on video chatting and video integration into games. I am hopeful that people will finally become tired of the same thing and Nintendo’s success will plummet until they are innovative again.
2. Microsoft won’t announce a new console at E3 but will probably hint at something coming in 2012. They will continue to update the Xbox 360 to add value to the system, but developers will need more processing power and more storage space to push the envelope. And they won’t get that from the 360 because of the fragmentation of the console install base.
3. Sony won’t come out with a new console but will finally create better online services that will allow developers to easily take advantage of cross game chat, universal lobby rooms, and video chat without having to program it from scratch.
4. A new company, or possibly existing company, will come out with a “console” with the main focus of bringing PC games to the TV. It will be similar to OnLive but will have a better library and subscription model that will actually be successful. They will also include support for iOS and Android if they truly want to “make it”.

Other

1. There will be a decline in major technology breakthroughs because the economy will finally level out and companies will realize that they can’t just keep pushing new products because people aren’t buying them. This won’t stop companies from coming out with new things, but big breakthroughs won’t happen as often as they did in 2009 because people don’t have the money to buy it and companies don’t have the money to develop it.
2. Streaming services will continue to try and eat away at the cable TV market but it will take big companies like Google, Microsoft, or Apple to make it truly successful. I am hopeful that Microsoft will finally make a all-you-can-eat video service, a la Zune pass, that will work on the 360 and Windows that might compete. No matter what, a pay-per-view model will not work, and content providers will be stubborn to allow this type of model.

That is all I got for this year. Let me know if you have any predictions in the comments or if you agree/disagree. Either way I hope everyones 2011 is great and I am looking forward to all the announcements to come.

How to turn on Remote Desktop remotely

Occasionally you need to get something done on a remote computer (or a clients computer) but the computer doesn’t have an easy way for you to connect to it. Luckily, if you have admin rights to the remote computer, you can still connect without needing to turn on remote desktop before hand. To do that you will just need to download one thing. PsExec is a Microsoft tool part of their PsTools. PsExec is a portable program that you can copy to any USB drive or run it anywhere from your hard drive. Once you have PsExec download you just need to open a command prompt and browse to the folder with psexec.exe. Once the command prompt is open, type in this command and it will enable remote desktop on the machine you specify.

psexec \\machinename reg add “hklm\system\currentcontrolset\control\terminal server” /f /v fDenyTSConnections /t REG_DWORD /d 0

Make sure you replace “machinename” with the computer you are trying to control remotely. Once this command has run you should now be able to connect with mstsc.exe to the remote computer.

Biometric Devices Missing from Windows 7 Control Panel

AuthenTec, a company that makes fingerprint scanning devices, worked closely with Microsoft to enable fingerprint authentication without third-party software for Windows 7. Unfortunately, the settings to set up the fingerprint scanner do not always show up in the Windows 7 control panel. To set up the fingerprint scanner you usually can navigate to Control Panel -> Hardware and Sound -> Biometric Devices. From there you can enter your password and register your fingerprints. What if biometric devices is missing from control panel?

To get the biometric devices to show up in Windows 7 control panel download the drivers from AuthenTec’s website (mirror here). I am not sure if this next step is necessary, but the directions I found said to extract the driver with uniextractor. I have extracted the driver for you and zipped it up here (x32, x64) so you don’t have to. Open the zip file and extract the files somewhere and run setup.exe. This installer will create a folder under C:\Program Files\ called WIN7TS and will install the drivers for your finger print scanner. It will also load the necessary components so you can use the fingerprint scanner from the control panel. Once the biometric devices option shows up you can set up everything from the control panel.

If you are getting the ‘Set-up Failure’ error, then try running C:\Program Files\WIN7TS\TrueSuiteApplication.exe directly. It is the same program that runs from the control panel but sometimes has less errors on setup.

Let me know in the comments if you have any problems or questions.

Winter 2009 Theme Pack for Windows 7

Greetings 1n73r.net readers! I am excited to be here for my first post where I will be creating and posting Windows 7 themes for you.

In case you don’t know, when Windows 7 was released it came with a great feature for creating customizable themes. These themes include the Desktop Background, Sounds, Window Color, and Screen Saver.

Within my work place it is no secret that I love to find great wallpaper and I end up changing it quite often. Now I get to share them with you!

First off I thought I would share with you my Winter 2009 Theme Pack. All you need to do is download the linked file to your computer (this will only work if you are using Windows 7). Next double click on the icon that downloads and it will open your Personalization window and automatically install the theme. Let me know if you have any comments, questions, or suggestions.

Right Click on the link below and click “Save As” to download the theme pack. Enjoy!
Winter 2009 Themepack

How-to Create a default user in Windows Vista/7

In Windows Vista and Windows 7 there are two ways you can create a modified default user profile. One is automatic and the other is manual. The automatic way is the recommended way according to Microsoft. However, you may run into some problems using this way so I will explain it the manual way too.

First up is the automatic way. For the automatic way you have to use the system preparation (sysprep) tool that Microsoft provides built into Windows Vista and 7. This tool is used for a variety of things but is mainly used for when you need to create a single computer image to put onto multiple machines. To see all the crazy things sysprep can do read the technical documentation on creating an unattend.xml file for sysprep to change everything from your sidebar widgets to your computer name.
Once you have your unattend.xml file created you just need to make sure you have the CopyProfile option turned on in the “specialize” pass and you should be all set.

<CopyProfile>True</CopyProfile>

A few things to note if you are going to do it this way.
1. The account you run the sysprep command from is going to be the account that is copied to the Default profile. So make sure the account you are running sysprep from has admin rights and is set up exactly as you want it.
2. The administrator account is removed during sysprep. Even if you have everything set up the way you want it to be admin will get the same settings as Default user unless you do some fancy scripting.
You can do some more reading on using this method with the following KB article.

Now for the manual method. This method is good if you don’t want to sysprep the computer because all you want to do is change some items for all the users that are going to be logging into a computer. I got all this information from this technet thread but I have used this mothod pretty extensively.
First thing you have to do is to create the profile just as you want it (same as the automatic steps). In this situation though you need to create a second user account because you are going to use the local administrator account to copy all of the settings from the second account to the default profile.
Once everything is set up just the way you want it, restart the computer and log into the local administrator.
After you log in follow the steps below.

1. Right click Computer and select Properties
2. Select Advanced System Properties (elevating as required)
3. In the system properties dialog click the Settings button under User Profiles
4. Select the account you want to use as a template
5. Click Copy To
6. Change the “permitted to use” option to “Everyone”
7. Use the Browse button to select the location of the default profile (C:\Users\Default) You will need hidden files shown to see this.
8. Click OK
9. Click Yes to overwrite the existing default profile

The steps above copy all the files and settings to the profile but there are still things in there that probably reference your old account you had created. To get rid of all those references to the other account you will need to edit the registry hive of the Default user. Follow the steps below to remove all traces of your template account from the default user.

1. Enable “Show hidden files and folders” in Folder Options
2. Disable “Hide Protected Operating System files” in Folder Options
3. Launch Regedit
4. Select HKEY_USERS and go to File -> load hive
5. Navigate to the profile directly of the user you want to load (e.g. C:\users\default for the default user)
6. Open the ntuser.dat file
7. Provide a name for the hive, this will be used as the root key name for that hive under HKU
8. Search the hive for any reference to your old user account.
9. When you find any keys that reference your old user account you can delete the keys (they will be re-created when someone new logs in).
10. Unload the hive before attempting to log in as the user

After you have finished you can log in with a new user to test that all the correct settings transferred to the default profile. If you are satisfied with everything go ahead and go back to System Properties -> Advanced System Properties -> User Profiles and delete the account you set up for the Default User template.

If you have any questions, comments, or problems feel free to leave a comment. I hope this helps.

Video Podcast 3

I recording a “video podcast” which was more of a review of the Logitech PS3 bluetooth to IR adapter, Windows 7 media center, SecondRun.tv, and Hulu desktop.

And here is part 2

How-to enable blank passwords in Windows

If you set up a user account in Windows and you want to allow the user account to have a blank password you may find it a little difficult. In order to accomplish this you probably need to change a couple settings in Windows.

The error message you probably got is:

The password does not meet the password policy requirements. Check the minimum password length, password complexity and password history requirements.

To allow a blank password go to Start -> Run and type in gpedit.msc then hit enter.
You should get a window that pops up and has a whole bunch of settings you may have never seen before. On the left side expand Windows Settings -> Security Settings -> Account Policies and then click on Password Policy. On the right side you will need to change a few of the settings.

The three settings you will need to change are Maximum password age, Minimum password length, and Password must meet complexity requirements. Change maximum age and maximum length both to zero and disable the complexity requirements. Once you have these three settings changed you can just close out the window and now you should be able to set a blank password for your user account.
If you cannot change these settings you may be joined to a domain which has these settings locked down. I can’t help you there, but this should help in most other cases.
Let me know if this helps, or doesn’t help, in the comments.

Windows 7 RC Login Background

I installed the latest Windows 7 RC because I wanted to try it out and I needed to do something with my media computer. When I first went to log in I saw the login screen background and thought it was great! Unfortunately, you can’t set that picture as a background within Windows 7 (it is only a login screen image).
Using a tool called ResHack I was able to extract the image from the dll. Feel free to download the image below.

They have a lot of “tall” images and I am guessing because they are expecting tablets to start taking a more dominate market share. The tall image makes the screen much more “paper-like”
Please be nice to my bandwidth. And if I happen to get this post taken down (not sure why I would when it is a public beta) I will try to find a mirror somewhere.

My 2009 predictions

I have never done this before but I thought I would take a swing and making some predictions at what I think is going to happen this year with technology.

Computers:
1. Smaller, faster, better. Duh. That is obvious but I think there will be some big improvements in “alternate” input for computers. Apple is rumored to release a multi-touch imac. Windows 7 has multi-touch support and is just waiting for hardware/software to take advantage of it. In 2009 I expect to see the biggest improvements in multi-touch software. Games will probably be first, with the iPod touch and iPhone helping with lots of ideas, and then we will get some cool browser and media solutions. I for one would love to see cooliris with some multi-touch support. After multi-touch will probably come touchless input but I don’t think that will gain a lot of ground in 2009.

2. GNU Linux will gain at least 1% (double) market share (putting it up to 2%) before the end of the year spearheaded by Ubuntu. At this point I believe every major computer retailer (except Apple of course) offers GNU Linux on at least 1 model line, and when people see the boot speed and stability improvements of the next Ubuntu release more and more people are going to start “giving it a shot”.

3. 2009 will be the year of Microsoft solutions. I know Apple is gaining on Microsoft’s market share and they still will for a good part of 2009. But I don’t think market share ever really tells a full story. All I hear about now is how Apple is the coolest thing since super cooled capacitors, but I sense a bit of a change in the wind. I think Windows 7 will launch in 2009 and will greatly restore faith in Microsoft as a company. I also think that the next version of Windows Mobile will finally catch Microsoft up in the mobile platform market. The Windows Mobile OS won’t surpass what is currently out with Android or iPhone but it will make it respectable in what it can do and how it looks. I also think that the Windows Home Server market will gain popularity and the Xbox line will continue to grow. Finally, I think Zune sales will skyrocket (mainly cause Zune media player will be in Windows Mobile 6.5). Right now the Zune is in spot 3 behind Scandisk and Apple. I think as more and more people become unhappy with their iPods but they don’t want to upgrade to iPod touches or iPhones they will turn to the Zune. Last I checked Zune had 5% market share, but by the end of the year I see that number doubling to 10% of the mp3 player market. A big jump but it is truly a worthy mp3 player in my book.

Video games:
1. The Wii will crash. They have enjoyed a crazy amount of sales for far too long and they haven’t come out with any good software for months. I am so glad this day will finally come because I haven’t liked the Wii from the start. They will quickly be outsold for a few months by the Xbox 360 and the Wii will drop in price (my guess is to ~$180). Either way it will be hard to recover and it will probably just die out until Nintendo unveils the Wii HD or something ridiculous. By this time the Wii will not be “the console to have” and most people will finally see the console for what it truly is.

2. The PS3 will jump in sales. I already see this at my work. Two of my co-workers who previously bought Wii’s finally want to either A. Play real video games again or B. Watch Blu-ray movies. Their obvious choice was the PS3. Although the price is a big jump, people will finally realize all the features you get out of a PS3 and will start buying them mainly for Blu-ray players and eventually for gaming systems. The PS3 will also start to gain popularity because the Xbox 360 will run out of juice (aka. storage space) and the PS3′s potential will finally start to be tapped into. Sony will begin to push out better programming tools and maybe even Valve will come to the dark side and program their own crap for the PS3.

3. Online systems will be key this year. Xbox Live is fantastic but costs money. More and more people are getting tight on money and Xbox Live will probably suffer because of that. The PSN has been mediocre at best, but at the cost of free I think more people will sign up for this than ever before. Also Nintendo will realize the error in their ways in not offering a online service and will make plans for it with the Wii HD.

4. I think the PS3 will offer 3D gaming to some extent. Most people don’t realize their Samsung HDTV can display the 3D content and the market is ripe for the picking. I think the PS3 will be the only console that can really handle the amount of power it will take and storage space to contain 3D content.

Other:
1. February 17th will be a very dark day for a lot of people. Best Buy will be crowded as hell, and people will be very upset their antenna doesn’t work anymore. The biggest impact will be in low income/minority neighborhoods. There will probably be some bill passed to make sure they are not forgotten about in the future. HDTV sales will continue to decline until after February 17th when they will get a small kick in the pants until the economy levels out.

2. Because of the DTV transition online television distribution systems will benefit. Hulu, Vudu, Boxee, Apple TV, Windows Media Center will all see a lot more users than ever before. It is going to be a big quantity over quality issue but the amount of free content online will win in the end. After online distribution systems gain some ground they will start to push better quality to the users.

3. Displays are going to rock. Not just TV’s either. Laptop displays, computer monitors, projectors are all going to improve. OLED will make a big push (“organic” isn’t just for your foods) and I think we will probably see some sort of built in projector for a laptop this year. Pocket projectors will also finally become something worth looking at.

4. The internet will have a new awesome site. There will be some new MySpace/Facbook site for 2009 and it will include all the other sites in one. It will finally truly be able to combine your online accounts (at least social accounts) in one place. I have a feeling this site will be run in some way by Google (or at least bought by Google in the end). I think the first step to this will be Google NOT buying Facebook. If they do buy them then there would be no point in making an all inclusive social site. Their new site will easily tie in with YouTube, Blogger, Google Calendar, etc. The next step would be for Google to buy Twitter.com. As more people don’t have time to blog, they will turn to Twitter to allow them to blog on the go.

Well that is it. I know it was a heck of a lot of reading and I thank you for reading it (or at least skimming it). I will hopefully follow up 1 year from today to see how these predictions were met.
Let me know your predictions in the comments or if you agree/disagree with any of mine.