Thursday, September 29, 2011

How To Block Users From Sending Emails Outside Your Organization In Exchange 2007

A question that comes up many times in forums is how to block users from sending emails outside the organization in Exchange 2007. Though the process is simple, I though I will blog it & make it easier for me to answer those questions in the forum by providing the link!
If you have many users or say a department that you want to block from sending emails outside, you can create a transport rule in Exchange 2007. In order to create a rule that blocks people from mailing outside, follow the steps.
  • Create a distribution group, say “No Outbound Emails” and add all users whom you want to block into it.
  • Navigate to Organization Configuration -> Hub Transport -> Transport Rules.
  • Click the “New Transport Rule” from the actions pane.
  • The wizard starts, give a sensible name.
  • Select “from a member of distribution list”, click on distribution list and select the group that we have created before.
  • Select “send to users inside or outside the organization”, click on Inside & change it to Outside.
  • Click Next
  • Select “send bounce message to sender with enhanced status code”.
  • You can change the default message “Delivery Not Authorized, Message Refused” to something more meaningful.
  • Click Next.
  • Click Next again.
  • A summary will be displayed, click New & Finish.
TR1
The rule will be active straightaway. If you want to block more users in the future, just add them to the group that we had created in step 1.
What if you want to block receiving external emails?
With the above method, users in that group will note be able to receive emails, as all groups in Exchange 2007 are protected by default. All groups have “Require that all senders are authenticated” option enabled by default. It’s in group properties -> mail flow settings -> message delivery restrictions -> properties.
TR2
You have to enable this option on the user properties if you want to block one user (may be few) from receiving emails from outside.

Free Antivirus From Microsoft – Security Essentials


Microsoft has released a FREE antivirus solution for home PCs – Microsoft Security Essentials. It provides real-time protection for your home PC that guards against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software. The software supports Windows XP SP2+, Vista and 7.
Security Essentials is a free download from Microsoft that is simple to install, easy to use and always kept up to date so you can be assured your PC is protected by the latest technology. Download it here

Configuring External Postmaster Address In Exchange 2007

The external postmaster address is used as the sender for system generated messages that are sent to users outside the organization. All domains which are not in the accepted domain’s list are treated as external domains. By default, the External Postmaster address is set to $null. Though it is set to $null, the behaviour is different. It doesn’t mean that there is no email address at all. The transport servers use Postmaster@defaultaccepteddomain as the external postmaster address if it is not explicitly set by the administrator.
This will work fine for organizations that have their default domain as their external domain name (externaldomain.com rather the AD domain.local). But, if you have your AD domain as your default accepted domain, you need to change the postmaster address to an external routable address. As per RFC standards, all domains should have a postmaster address configured and should be able to receive emails that come to that address. Hence you either need a mailbox for the postmaster or add the email address to an existing account.
Running Get-TransportServer gives you the current status of external postmaster address.
1
Set-TransportServer cmdlet have to be used to set the external postmaster address. Run
Set-TransportServer –identity “transportservername” –ExternalPostmasterAddress “emailaddress” This command will only set the postmaster address on the transport server specified.
2
If you want to set the address on all hub transport servers, run
Get-TransportServer | Set-TransportServer –ExternalPostmasterAddress “emailaddress”
3
If you have edge transport servers in your environment, the postmaster address has to be set on a per server basis using the Set-TransportServer cmdlet (you can’t pipe).

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Switch Between Classic & Metro Start Menu on Windows 8 from Context Menu

We have covered an article on how to manual disable metro start menu and get back windows 7 style classic start menu on Windows 8, we had also covered a utility Start Menu Toggle which lets you to quickly switch between metro & classic start menu.
Now here is yet another small tweak Start Menu Selector which is designed to quickly change the Windows 8 Start Menu from Metro to classic style on Windows 8. When you download Start Menu Selector it comes with two executable files, one lets you to install Start Menu Selector and second executable lets you to delete the entry made by Start Menu selector in context menu.

Upon double clicking Start Menu Selector.exe it simply inserts the “Start Menu Selector” into system context menu. Right clicking anywhere on desktop you can bringe up context menu, click on Start Menu Selector so change the Metro start menu to classic Windows 7 style start menu.

If you want to revert back then again click on “Start Menu Selector” in context menu. To uninstall click on Delete Start Menu Selector From context menu.exe file and it will remove the entry from context menu.
Download Start Menu Selector.

Googlebot, Search Engine Bot, Crawling Bots and Robots

With the start of dylx-infotech I was keeping eye on my latest visitor and webserver http logs . I was surprised with googlebot. it was just two days and more and googlebot has knocked to my blog.
Still I am not able to find how googlebot got my blog traces and reached to my site. Same is the case with other crawling bots. Every day I see some new robot hitting my blog. Well but my favorite is only googlebot. Day after crawling my blog it has already started showing search result.
I assume googlebot also keeps look on new entry in DNS servers that’s only possibility to reach to my blog as I don’t have any backlinks from other site. Here is screenshot of spider, robots visitors to my blog.
googlebot,robots,spiders-visitors
WordPress has very good plug-in for stats and also for googlebot visitor
I really want to understand how all this robots and other crawling bots gets site links As per my understanding googlebot and other bots follows to links so until and unless you get link from other site to your site called as backlinks, No bot will be able to reach to your sites. Lets see when I will be able to get answer of this mystery.
Google webmaster has really good post on All about Googlebot and also check out Googleblog for all latest news about googlebot
Webmasters need to keep close eye on http server logs since apart from crawling bots you will see some other bots – Spam Bots, Junk Bots, Research Bots, Search Engine Bot, and News Bot etc. Every day new bots are getting added to internet word. Webmasters will be happy with Search Engine Bots but might not with other bots.
Since bots do eat up lots of hosting bandwidth and this is not good for those webmasters who have less bandwidth or their site traffic is huge and bots will add up more load on network and whole site will be under Error 404 Page Not Found .If we try to calculate Quality traffic of internet then it will be only 40-60% remaining percentages accounts for all this bots. Our Main concern is Spam bot and all those useless bots.
For webmasters ultimate goal is to protect their site from spam bots. Following are ways to block any bot from accessing or crawling your site
1) Robots.txt
2) .htaccess
3) IP deny thru Control panel
Will continue in next post…

Twitter Icons For Blogs and Twitter bird

Twitter
Twitter is free Social Networking and Micro Blogging site which allows the users to send tweets a text based post upto 140 character long on Twitter site. Twitter is found to be most useful application for sending instant updates about your new post, links and sharing content to hundreds of followers.
After searching for about two hours on Google and Flickr finally I have got good collection of twitter icons and twitter bird for using on Blogs.

Twitter Icons:

Normal TwitterTwitter Black and WhiteTwitter BlueTwitter RedTwitter CuteTwitter SharpTwitter Full
Twitter FluidTwitter WaveTwitter KingTwitter CleanPower By TwitterTwitter MoonTwitter RssTwitter BlackTwitter BoldSmall Twitter

Twitter Bird :

Twitter BirdTwitter Bird DeadTwitter Flying Bird

Twitter Bird

Twitter Nice BirdTwitter Bird Twitter Rss BirdTwitter Circular

If you are new to blogging word and not using twitter yet then I will recommend start using it. It has amazing traffic driving capability.So start using above twitter icons on your blog
Download Twitter Icons and Twitter Bird. (Link Rmeoved)

Update :- I have removed on of Copyrighted Twitterrific software Bird image which was Iconfactory’s copyrighted artwork, since I wasn’t ware of it was Copyrighted and was got it from Google Images Search,  I apologies for this. Thanks tuaw.com

Compose & Schedule Your Twitter Tweets for Future Release with Twuffer

Twitter Logo
Twitter is a popular Microblogging web service among Bloggers. More and More Bloggers are using twitter to keep their reader updated with latest blog post as well as life streaming. One option which you might be missing in twitter is ability to post tweets for future.
Here is one nice Web service Twuffer which lets you to compose a list of future Twitter tweets and schedule it for release. Doesn’t this sounds existing? For me it’s defiantly most useful service since while I am in office I don’t have access to internet and I can’t keep myself busy by sending tweets from mobile but with Twuffer i can now schedule my tweets for future release.

Creative Uses of Twuffer

1. Tweet hourly/daily/monthly announcements
2. Appointment/milestone reminders
3. Run a time-based scavenger hunt
4. Notify subscribers about upcoming podcast or video episodes
5. Appear to never sleep

Screenshot of Twuffer

Twuffer Schedule Futuer Tweets
So start Composing Your Future Tweets and schedule it for Future Release.

Display Latest Twitter Tweets on Your Orkut Profile

Orkut With Twitter Bird
Most of the users have accounts on various Social Networking websites like Orkut, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter etc. You might be more active on one social network then other and if you are twitter users then you will more addicted to it then your Orkut account. How about displaying your latest twitter tweets on your Orkut Profile page.
Do you think it will be easier for your Orkut friends to know what you are doing now with twitter tweets? If yes then here is Twitkut, A Orkut Application to display your latest twitter tweets on your Orkut profile page.
Twitkut is an Orkut Application which displays latest Twitter tweets on your Orkut Profile page. The only disadvantage of Twitkut is it can only update three times a day.

Screenshot of Twitkut Orkut Application

Twitkut Orkut Application
Add Tweetkut Orkut Application and display your latest Twitter tweets on your orkut profile page.

Change or Style Facebook Profile Layout with Naevius Facebook Layouts

Facebook Logo
Facebook users are unfortunate compared to Myspace or Friendster social networking users. Myspace allows the users to change layout of their profile by pasting HTML codes. You can change the background, text color, and layout of your personal page. As a result, it is not uncommon to chance upon a gaudy and poorly designed personal blog, MySpace, or Friendster page.
However on Facebook there is no such feature which can allow you to style your Facebook profile page, Here is Naevius Facebook Layouts with which you can is an easy-to-use application that can help you style your Facebook layout. Using the application you to embellish your Facebook layout beyond recognition.

Naevius Facebook Layouts




Download NaeviusFacebook Layouts.

How to Activate & Setup Facebook Video Calling on Mac OS X Lion


Finally yesterday Facebook unveiled video calling feature for its users. Facebook video calling is powered by Skype and supports one to one calling right from facebook inside your browser. No need of downloading any desktop app for that, however you do need to download Facebook video chat browser plugin to activate Facebook video calling.
Facebook Video calling supports Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer on all three major operating systems, Windows, Mac & Linux except latest Mac OS Lion developer build which is seeded to registered developers of Apple Mac program. Unfortunately Facebook Video calling is blocked on Mac OS X Lion browsers.
But well there is way to get Facebook video calling working on Lion OS browser. Thanks to besttechie.net for finding this trick. Follow below steps to activate Facebook video calling on Lion OS.

How to Activate & Setup Facebook Video Calling on Mac OS Lion

On Safari
1. Go to System preferences under Safari advanced tab & enable the developer menu. A new menu option on the menu bar labeled “Develop” will appear.
2. Now click on Developer menu and access User Agent settings & change to either  of the following Safari 5.1 (Mac), 5.0.1 (Mac), or Firefox 4.0.1 (Mac)

On Google Chrome
1. Run following command on terminal
open /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app   –args -user-agent=”Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_6_8; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.19 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.2.1 Safari/525.19?
On Firefox
1. Download & Install User Agent Switcher extension.
2. Now Navigate to Tools -> Internet Explorer 8 -> Internet Explorer  and select “Internet Explorer 8” as user agent string.
That’s it now access facebook.com/videocalling and click on get started and enjoy Facebook video calling on Mac OS X Lion.
via 9to5Mac

How to Activate & Enable Facebook Timeline for Profile (Video Guide)


At F8 2011 conference Facebook unveiled the new profile layout named as Facebook Timeline, as it says its timeline of your entire life on Facebook. The status updates, stories shared, pictures you uploaded, everything you did on your Facebook account will be now an open book, a timeline.
Facebook Timeline is still in development and only accessible to developers. Though users can singup and wait for beta invites to test Facebook new Timeline feature but we are sure none you would like to wait for that long considering the trick to bypass wait and get the Facebook timeline is already up on internet.
We are not going to tell you 10-12 steps guide on how you can enable and activate Facebook timeline today, instead we have a video guide up for you. So just watch this video to better understand the procedure to activate Facebook timeline and enable for your Facebook profile today.

How to Enable & Activate Facebook Timeline Today

Thanks to Techcrunch for publishing this guide.

Retrieve Private Browsing History on Firefox with PrivateBrowsingHistoryRecovery

Firefox Private browsing was introduced in Firefox 3.5 with the goal to protect user privacy. In a regular browsing session Firefox or any other browser tracks and records lots of data such as the site user visits, search bar entries, download lists, cookies & web cache files but if you don’t want Firefox to record this stuff then that’s where private browsing comes to the rescue.
You can enable Firefox private browsing by hitting Ctrl+Shift+P shortcut or via Firefox Menu -> Start Private Browsing option. You might be thinking private browsing will save you from other users of computer snooping into browser history; unfortunately that’s not true. Your private browsing history can be easily recovered with one of the Firefox extension, PrivateBrowsingHistoryRecovery.
The Nicoleta developer behind this extension says that, “The extension was implemented as a part of my dissertation project with the aim to illustrate the limitations found on private browsing mode.”
To install PrivateBrowsingHistoryRecovery visit this extension page and hit Add to Firefox button and restart your browser.

Once installed you can load the private history sidebar using CTRL+SHIFT+U as the shortcut keyboard key, or otherwise by selecting on Firefox View-> Sidebar-> PrivateBrowsingRetriever. Once sidebar is loaded every sites you visits in your private browsing session will be recorded proving Firefox Private Browsing is not truly that private.

Burn ISO Image on USB Drive or Make Bootable USB from ISO with ISO To USB

In past we have covered several utilities for burning ISO images to CD & DVD, creating bootable CD using ISO files, mounting ISO file as drive, converting BIN, DMG files to ISO files and much more. Now here is yet another utility related to ISO files. ISO to USB, as the name suggest is the small freeware utility which lets you to easily burn ISO files to USB drive. You can also create bootable USB drives using Windows ISO file.
ISO to USB is 1.43 Mb in size and works on Windows 7, Vista & XP. Once you have downloaded & installed ISO to USB the rest of the process of burning ISO is pretty simple. Using browse button you can browse and select ISO file you want to burn.

If you have connected USB drive to PC then you can see that in drive list. The other options which ISO to USB offers is setting volume label & file system (FAT,FAT32, exFAT, NTFS) you want on USB drive. If its bootable Windows ISO file then you can make bootable USB drive by checking Bootable option. Click on burn button to start the ISO file burning process.

A warning message that all the data present on drive will be erased, Click on OK button to start the process and wait for ISO to USB to complete the process. That’s it.
Download ISO to USB.