ASP Script to Save All Documents from a Sharepoint DB

Here’s an ASP script I’ve written that extracts all documents from a Sharepoint (MOSS 2007) site database. I used this when I corrupted a Sharepoint instance of mine but the DB was still intact. Use at your own risk.

<% response.buffer = true
Set cn = CreateObject(”ADODB.Connection”)
cn.Open “Provider=SQLOLEDB;data Source=<SQL Server DB\instance name here>;” _
         & “Initial Catalog=<the DB name of your WSS_Content DB>;” _
         & “User Id=<DB username here>;Password=<DB password here>”
Set rs = CreateObject(”ADODB.Recordset”)
rs.Open “Select LeafName, Content from ” _
        & “AllDocs,AllDocStreams where AllDocs.id = AllDocStreams.id”, cn, 1, 3
‘Loop through the Recordset
Do While Not rs.EOF
    Set mstream = CreateObject(”ADODB.Stream”)
    mstream.Type = 1
    mstream.Open
    mstream.Write rs.Fields(”content”).Value
    filePath = “c:\<some path that has IUSR write access here” & rs.Fields(”LeafName”)
    mstream.SaveToFile filePath, 2
    mstream.close
    set mstream = nothing
    rs.MoveNext
Loop
rs.Close
cn.Close
set rs = nothing
set cn = nothing
Response.Write(”done”)
%>

New Silverlight for Windows Mobile Demos from MIX08

Check out these nine new Silverlight for Mobile demos from MIX08:
http://blogs.msdn.com/giorgio/

Cisco Connected Stadium

An interesting video produced by The History Channel has recently been released featuring Cisco’s vision of the Connected Stadium. RIActant has been working hard since last Summer on some exciting new mobile services which use Cisco’s Unifed Wireless Infrastructure which enable consumer experience similar to those featured in the Cisco promo video.

See it here and stay tuned for more to come later this year!

Apple’s iPhone SDK will be four months late to the prom

So, let’s step back a moment and examine all that’s happened in the mobile world in 2007.

In January at MacWorld Steve Jobs announced that in six months time the iPhone would go on sale, delivering applications with a desktop-class feel. In June, as promised, the iPhone was released and it had sold over 1.1 million units by November. No doubt a revolutionary device (I speak from my own experience using it since day one), but as a developer I admit it has serious shortcomings. The “desktop-class” apps Steve Jobs were there if Apple provided them. Developers eager to deploy apps to the iPhone would have to be content with “iPhonified” web sites and applications that only worked through the iPhone Safari browser.

Then a clever bunch jailbroke the iPhone and provided a means to load native applications. This opened a door through which many developers eagerly ran, developing the usual games, proxy tools to services such as Flickr, and some obvious apps, such as voice recorded which seemed as obvious an app for the iPhone as MacPaint was to the original Macintosh. However, no sooner had a world of application development been opened than Apple shut it down with the release of the now infamous iPhone firmware 1.1.1 update — a heavy-handed, ham-fisted, and hasty approach to the problem of iPhone unlocking which made developers with legitimate intentions casualties of war.

Then came the outcry from developers who wanted to make something more of the iPhone than a $400-$600 phone/alarm clock/MP3 player. It took a few weeks, but Apple announced they’d release an SDK for the iPhone in February 2008. All the while, Apple missed (or perhaps ignored) the demand for an SDK — the had to have known since the earliest internal discussions that there would be a demand for an iPhone SDK. On second thought I think Apple did ignore developers, not something inconsistent with Apple’s past. Call it Jobs’ Ego or just Apple Paranoia (leftover from the days when they were scrapping it up with Microsoft in the 1980’s), but Apple has repeated the same mistake they made in the original OS wars — they’ve failed to respect the developercommunity as the real vehicle to their success. Steve Jobs and Woz have admitted as much in interviews — Steve Jobs even reflected in a recent video interview where he appeared with Bill Gates that a talent of Microsoft’s that he always admired was their ability to play well with others, meaning developers. Steve excused Apple’s failure at doing so with the fact that he and Woz were completely self-reliant when they built and marketed the original line of Apple computers. Fine, you make a mistake like that once (which cost them 90%+ of the personal computing market), but to make it TWICE?

And that’s exactly what Apple has done with the release of the iPhone with no SDK to date. The hardware, OS, and out-of-the-box apps only get it so far — the killer app(s) that would solidify the iPhone’s position as the #1 phone for years to come lies in the minds of developers, waiting to be unleashed. But alas, Apple has again failed to believe in developers.

Now we have the introduction of Google’s Android Mobile OS. Yesterday they released the Android SDK, complete with an emulator, videos, sample apps, prolific documentation, ways to collaborate with other developers, and $10 million in prizes to incent developers to let loose their great ideas on the Android platform. In contrast, Apple now has a very high bar to meet when they release the iPhone SDK in February 2008. Apple could have set the pace and put thousands of developers to work on making the iPhone an even more appealing device by releasing an SDK and embracing developers. I have to believe that Apple has now relegated themselves to the #3 or worse position for the foreseeable future in the mobile phone market. iPhone sales are great now, but once the first Android phones start shipping and Microsoft redoubles it’s Windows Mobile efforts, Apple will find themselves in the familiar position of owning less than 5% of consumer (non-business) mobile phone market. You might say, “So what, Apple had 0% phone market share before the iPhone.” True, but the tragedy (especially to shareholders) is that by embracing developers Apple could have probably realized double-digit market share in the 3-5 year range worldwide.

Apple is hard to love when they make enormous mistakes like this . After working with the Android SDK last night and seeing the vast resources Google has offered up to developers I just can’t find a compelling reason to develop native iPhone apps. The mobile wars going forward won’t be with the handset manufacturers (they’re being demoted to utlility status for the most part), it will be Google Android vs. Windows Mobile for the massive dollars that will be spent in the consumer mobile market and it’s unfortunate to think Apple may have missed their seat near the head of the table.

MacBook Pro Vista Experience Index 4.3 out of 5.0!

I’ve been using Windows Vista Ultimate since it was at RC2 stage and in that time I’ve run it on half a dozen different machines, ranging from a Dell Inspiron to an HP zv6000, each with plenty of horsepower (or so one would think) to handle Vista. The HP, in fact, was labeled “Vista Ready.” In each of those cases I used Vista on a daily basis on those machines so I got a good sense of its performance and idiosyncrocies.

However, just recently I installed Vista on my MacBook Pro (non-Santa Rosa, 3GB RAM) and Vista runs better on my Mac than on any of the traditional Microsoft OEM machines. To prove it I checked the Vista Experience Index found in Vista under Control Panel > System — I was blown away when I saw that Vista on my MacBook Pro scored a 4.3 out of 5.0!

I setup my 120GB MacBook Pro hard drive with two partitions, equally divided, one for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and the other for Boot Camp install of Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate. Note that with the new version of Boot Camp that ships with Leopard the MacBook Pro hardware drivers are now on the Leopard DVD, you don’t need to nor can you burn your own Mac driver disc from within Boot Camp.

Try out Vista on your MacBook Pro — I think you’ll be very pleased with the performance, but remember to use a Genuine copy of Windows Vista!

Dear Steve Jobs: Don’t punish legitimate iPhone developers

A Letter to Steve Jobs

Dear Steve:

The word today from the blogosphere is that iPhone firmware update 1.1.1 not only re-locks iPhones unlocked from the AT&T network, but also prevents access to any third-party apps installed on the iPhone, such as installer.app and other community apps installed by installer.app.

For those of us trying to develop legitimate businesses and services for the iPhone and iPod Touch, this action by Apple turns us into casualties of war. While it can be argued that you, as a result of your committments to AT&T, must actively counter the efforts of hackers and developers who have released apps that unlock iPhones from the AT&T network, there is no argument for punishing legitimate developers from producing useful, in-demand services and applications for the iPhone by preventing the installation of third-party applications. If Microsoft prevented the installation of applications on Windows they would be subject to public rage in a matter of seconds and most likely a cadre of lawsuits; why has Apple taken this blanket offensive approach against developers who simply want to let consumers take full advantage of the “revolutionary Internet device” they carry in their hands? If Apple’s concern is that such apps might pose danger to the AT&T network, then create a protected mode for iPhone’s OS like was done with DOS years ago. Additionally, there should be no reason to prevent third-party apps on the iPod Touch since there is no connection to AT&T’s network.

iPhone developers are, indeed, some of your most vocal evangelists. If these tactics continue to impact legitimate development our current enthusiasm will quickly evaporate and cause us to devote our time and money to developing for other mobile platforms (Windows Mobile, Symbian, etc.).

I urge you and Apple to reconsider your tactics against the iPhone unlocking effort and choose a course that doesn’t penalize legitimate development.

Sincerely,
Mike Brophy
CEO, Riactant Development
Seattle, WA

[Update 09.27.2007 14:08 PDT]
Gizmodo puts it perfectly in a post from today: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/iphone/iphone-re+reviewed-verdict-dont-buy-302075.php

Readying your iPhone for Use in Europe

Update November 2, 2007
We got back from Italy on October 19 — it will still be another month or so before all roaming charges come through on my AT&T bill, but I wanted to provide an update on my service experience with the iPhone in Europe.

While in the UK the service provider on the iPhone was Orange; while in Italy it was vodafone. Signal coverage wasn’t a problem, even when we were winding our way through rural Tuscany and Abruzzo. Outbound dialing was a little quirky; the AT&T rep told me before we left that while in Italy we dial as a local would, meaning no country code prefix, etc. However, that didn’t always prove true in practice. In some areas dialing as a local worked fine, in others I had to dial the full country code, city code, etc.

Text messaging was flawless and is how we communicated most with family we were visiting. I have the International Date Roaming plan and used my 20MB allotment of data pretty quickly towards the last few days of our trip as I was trying to catch up on email that was piling up. Data performance was worse than the standard EDGE connection in the USA, but was sufficient for what I needed to do.

Overall, my experience using the iPhone in Italy and the UK was as good as my experience using on a daily basis in the USA. Just remember to have that Data Roaming option turned off (if you’re running iPhone firmware 1.1.1)…it is off by default but you should double-check — this will save you from a data roaming bill that will send you into cardiac arrest. If you aren’t running 1.1.1 and aren’t comfortable hacking a config file on the iPhone then I suggest you upgrade to 1.1.1 so you toggle data roaming on/off as needed while overseas.

BTW, pics from the trip are here.

Original Post
I’m headed in to Italy in a few weeks and one of the most stressful parts of preparing for the trip has been whether my wife and I would be able to use our iPhones. The question isn’t one of technical compatibility with the Italian cell networks (they are GSM 900 and the iPhone is a quad-band phone which supports that protocol).

No, rather the looming worry is how we could disable data on our phones so we don’t get one of the many-thousand dollar roaming data bills folks have been blogging about over the past few months.

This lead me on a search for a way to disable the EDGE/GPRS connection on our iPhones, but still preserve the ability to make/receive calls. I found this posting http://www.blogsmith.com/profile/1353419/ which seemed logical so I tried it.

Thusfar it seems that the recipe for disabling EDGE/GPRS works. After making the edit to the configuration file using Mobile TextEdit, I reset my Usage Statistics via iPhone Settings. With the hack in place my EDGE transmit/receive stats still read zero. Also, I get the “Cannot connect to EDGE” error when I try browsing to a website in Safari.

Now I’m going to add the $5.99 International World Traveler service to my plan so I can make calls for the relatively low price of $0.99 minute while I’m in Italy (compared to $1.39 for Mobal, not to mention the cost of a phone rental/purchase).

I will post again once I’m in Italy and upon return to let you know if there are any hiccups or surprises.

Text Messages Remain on iPhone Long After “Deletion”

The other day I installed MobileFinder.app, a third-party, native iPhone application that allows browsing of the iPhone’s file system. While I was poking around the iPhone file system today I noticed a file called sms.db under the ~/Library/SMS directory. I opened the file in MobileTextEdit.app and saw that it was a SQLLite database file; no surprise there.

But what did surprise me was that every text message I had ever sent or received since I bought my iPhone on June 26 was stored in sms.db, despite the fact that I “deleted” these text messages via the iPhone SMS app user interface long ago.

It seems the iPhone SMS delete function is a soft delete. Perhaps Apple should implement a hard delete function similar to the Safari “Clear History” function, which incidentally now has me questioning whether “Clear History/Cache/Cookies” really deletes them.

Two Year Around-the-World Sailing Adventure Nearing End for Three Seattle Men

Three men from Washington State and their trusty 44-foot sailboat, the S.V. SohCahToa, are about to complete a remarkable journey. The crew — Casey McNeese, Matt Smith and Jeff Stewart, who all met in college at Washington State University, shoved off from Seattle in August 2005 for an adventure that would take them to far away lands, almost land them in jail in Australia, and ultimately take them around the Earth plus some.

Technically, the crew of S.V. SohCahToa completed their circumnavigation of the globe a few months ago, but they will be pulling back into the port from which they left over two years ago in a matter of days.

Check out their ship logs — it’s compelling reading and the stuff of a great novel. And for goodness sake buy the guys a celebratory drink via their “Buy Us a Drink” page!

AT&T and iPhone - Your world delivered… for $20 per web page.

Courtesy Adam Aronson

So here again we have an example of AT&T sucking the positive energy out of the otherwise revolutionary and exciting iPhone experience. More and more, AT&T seems to be the clumsy, dottering older sibling in the Apple/AT&T relationship.

Adam Aronson, owner of San Francisco-based Arc Design, was floored (literally) when he opened his latest AT&T wireless bill. After spending two weeks in the UK and taking along his iPhone, Adam returned to a special gift from AT&T in the form of a $5000 phone bill, mostly data roaming charges. He did the math and figures that his web surfing worked out to the low-low rate of $20 per web page (two cents per kilobyte).

How can AT&T justify this? Do they have some superfast, 25th century wireless fat pipe in the UK that, for those willing to pay, provides blazingly fast connections? No — it’s the same slow EDGE network we enjoy here in the USA.

Check out Adam’s story.

 [Update - Aug 30, 2007]
I heard from today Adam that after turning down several offers from AT&T to reduce the bill, he finally threatened to file a formal complaint with the FSS and BBB. AT&T responded by removing all of the data roaming charges from his bill.