Kent J. Chen's WebLog

The new iOS 4 is out as of yesterday on June 21 with many of new cool features. I actually missed it yesterday but waited no time to have my iPhone updated as soon as I heard the news.

The total update process went pretty smoothly without any surprises, despite the famous fact that it took all most about 2 hours to finish, including the time spent on upgrading iTunes to 9.2 which is the required version to be able to do the iOS upgrade. Most of the time were actually spent on backing up my data on the…

I had a small web app that requires to have a component that can easily upload the file to the website. I could use the standard File Upload control that comes with .Net framework but because it requires a postback I couldn’t use it injunction with the Ajax stuff I use on the same website.

I could also use the AsyncFileUpload control from the latest ASP.net Ajax Control Toolkit but because it doesn’t have a progress bar indicating the upload progress it still lacks of in usability at some point.

I could also use

I have a lot of PDF documents that I would like to read on iPhone in stead of in front of my computer but the problem was, I couldn’t find a good one that practically works.

GoodReader(iTune link) might be a good one because of its unique PDF Reflow feature that extracts pure text from PDF and word-wraps them to fit the iPhone for you to read. Addition to that, it also works like a iPhone download manager that not only allows you transfer the files over the wireless network, but also links you through various…

• Top 5 Hyper-V Best Practices (registration required)
• From Servers to Services. The Role for the IT Pro in the Cloud – are we ready yet?
• What You Need to Know About New Windows and Exchange Service Packs and More
• IDC: Windows Server still rules the server roost – really, good to hear, as a windows guy.

Also, some Friday fun from IT Interviews.

If in any case you are using Outlook rules to manager your email flows in your organization, you need to be aware of this limitation. I got the following error message when I was configuring the rules for one central mailbox at work the other day.

changes to the rule could not be saved. There is not enough memory or the rules are too complex. Try deleting some rules.

That’s right. There is the maximum number of rules in Outlook. According to this Microsoft KB,

The maximum number of rules depends on the size of the rules

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My previous post explained how to make the pretty permalinks on a WordPress blog hosted on IIS 6.0 platform. Since the new hosting platform is on IIS 7.0 with the URL Rewrite module installed, I have switched to a different way handling the permalinks on this blog.

All URLs to the posts still remain the same but what’s changed behind the scene is that instead of using the custom 404 error page I simply added the following codes to web.config file on the blog under <system.Webserver> section.

<rewrite>
    <rules>
        <rule name="Main Rule" stopProcessing="true">
            <match

…

After being a happy user since 2004, I am finally saying good-bye to my web hosting provider, webhost4life. In fact, even though my account with them will still keep live till my annual service contract ends this November, all my websites have been moved to somewhere else. I just couldn’t afford my websites being interrupted or poorly handled any longer.

Changing webhosting is never easy and takes up your time to set it up. Depending on the setup, some of your websites may need to be altered to reflect the change as well. So that’s why the…

I have been using Exchange 2003 for over 7 years now and am finally now thinking of moving over to 2010 in the near future. It seems that the transition from Exchange Server 2003 to 2010 is relatively painless but still requires a great detailed planning. So knowing the limits and tactics will always help you make the plan clearer with less ignorance.

Here is another great 10-things from 10 things that definitely will help me down the road.

1. Reusing your server hardware may not be possible – Exchange 2010 requires a 64-bit Windows OS.…

If you are not aware of how this could be, watch the video below, which may shock you enough with the fact that according to ars technica,

if you photocopy your butt on a modern copier, it’s probably still there, safe on the copier’s hard drive. It exists there along with medical forms, financial documents, and that list of gang members your police department was just about to arrest.

Ouch! Now,

First of all, we know that these big giant machine actually has a hard drive installed inside the machine secretly storing stuff that…

The latest Windows Tips & Tricks newsletter from WindowsITPro has a pretty good Q&A about windows server license for virtual machines, namely running on Hyper-V server. Here is my summarization for future reference and hope you can find helpful too.

• Standard Edition supports one physical OS and one virtual OS (VM), Enterprise Edition supports one physical OS and four virtual OSs, and Datacenter Edition supports one physical OS and an unlimited number of virtual OSs.
• Standard and Enterprise Edition are purchased on a per-server basis while Datacenter Edition is purchased on a per-processor (socket) basis, and at least

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