The forecast I received this morning on my trusty mobile device told me it would be 73 degrees and partly cloudy, and offered the same for the rest of the weekend.

So far it's been drizzling rain all day and completely clouded over. My garden needs some sun. The lawn is too wet to mow. I drove the motorcycle to the shop in the rain to get the brake recall thing done, and got wet. I turned on the heat for the first time in forever.

Trusty mobile device. Yeah, right.

If this is partly cloudy, what's next?

If you run any version of dasBlog, this is important to you.

Thanks to Bliz for letting me know to update my dasBlog installation. A new patch is available to fix an issue with all previous versions that can allow a malicious person to gain access to your user credentials for the dasBlog app (but not the system).

• Get the patch
• Read the news
• Visit Bliz

Don't know about you, but I've had enough for one week. Three days off. W00t!

Plans: taking the motorcycle in for a brake recall, visiting a friend's coffee shop, hanging out, mowing the yard, and we'll see what else.

What's everyone else up to?

Sooner than expected, SharePoint 2003 technologies get their first service pack, with fixes and improvements in a few key areas. Note that some of the fixes in the service packs (there are two) were previously available as hot-fixes. Other changes are new in this release, and address important issues.

From Mark Harrison's weblog:

Today, customers using Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies began applying two new Service Pack 1 releases, which provide performance improvements for Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services.

Enhancements in the Windows SharePoint Services SP1:

• Support for larger files. With Windows SharePoint Services SP1, customers and partners can save and share documents as large as 2 GB.
• Easy updates. Windows SharePoint Services SP1 greatly eases the patching process by enabling customers and partners to apply patches and hot fixes.

SharePoint Portal Server 2003 customers and partners will need to apply the Windows SharePoint Services SP1 to download and apply the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 SP1, which features improvements in the following specific areas:

• Improved search results. SharePoint Portal Server 2003 SP1 improves search functionality in a number of areas, including propagation, crawling reliability, keyword or best-bet search results, alert conditions, more robust XML filtering, and linguistic accuracy.
• Content Watson functionality. This enables improved product quality for customers through streamlined issue reporting between a customer's networked computer and the Microsoft development team.

Now with Windows SharePoint Services SP1, customers and partners will be able to access language templates for 11 additional languages, including Croatian, Latvian and Slovenian. Windows SharePoint Services, currently offered in 25 languages, is a feature of the Windows Server 2003 platform.

Availability

Customers and partners can access the free SP1 downloads by visiting the following Microsoft Web sites:

Download Windows SharePoint Services SP1: click here
Updated WSS Admin Guide: click here
Download SharePoint Portal Server SP1: click here

More Info

Here are some KB Articles related to the service packs (via spsfaq.com):

• SPS fixlist
• WSS fixlist
• SPS SP 1 must be applied to all servers in the farm
• Install of patch incomplete if you install before creating configuration database
• Service pack language must match installed language
• Error attempting to patch if source files are missing and RTM files were deleted or changed
• Installing WSS SP 1 in a farm and how to verify the service pack installed correctly
• Error browsing sites if a content database could not be upgraded

Microsoft today released Windows Media Player 10 to the web.

Jump on over and grab the download, find out about some of the new and forthcoming devices that take advantage of the technology, check out the WMP 10 trailer (300Kb), or view out one of the online streaming videos just released that describe the new features of the technology:

Sync Your Portable Media Center Device with Your PC

Synchronize Music and Pictures to a Portable Media Center Device

Convert and Sync Video to Your Portable Media Center Device

Using Windows Media Player 10 to Create a Digital Jukebox

Cool stuff. I like the Bliss add-on visualization, that's nifty.

I have only found one minor glitch so far (and its one that occurred in the tech-beta version, as well, but this is a fresh install on a clean, non-beta-poisoned computer). In the upper right corner there is a broken image icon, reminiscent of Internet Explorer. I wonder how much IE is leveraged in the WMP10 interface. Interesting. A reboot did not fix the issue, either. Clicking on the broken image placeholder resultsi n the same menu associated with the down-arrow image to the right of the broken one.

Time to find a Portable Media Device!

CERT (the Computer Emergency Readiness Team) made it little more official this week and issued a Cyber Security Alert [SA04-243A] recommending that computer users upgrade to Windows XP SP2.

Taken from the US-CERT web site alert:

Recommendation

To help protect your Windows XP computer from attacks and vulnerabilities, install Service Pack 2 using Windows Update or Automatic Updates.

Note: Service Pack 2 makes significant changes to improve the security of Windows XP, and these changes may have negative effects on some programs and Windows functionality. Before you install Service Pack 2, back up your important data and consult your computer manufacturer's web site for information about Service Pack 2.

The recommendation is made specifically for home users, which stand to see the highest benefit, but applies in principle to businesses as well. However, note that many business computing environments are centrally managed. If you work in a company that has centrally-managed software and security procedures, be sure to check in with those people before you install SP2 - they may already have a plan in place.