Do you find yourself describing how the car accident happened to your friends and family members when they ask you about it?

It can be tough to explain how the accident occurred verbally, but a car accident diagram shows it all.

It may not be that important to show the car accident diagram to your friends and family members but it may be useful if you need to talk to the insurance company when making a claim.

A car accident diagram also helps when making a police report.

When I had a car accident a few years back, I remember that the police officer asked me a few details on how the accident occurred while he sketched / drew the event on a piece of paper for records purposes.

There’s nothing wrong with drawing on a paper, but if we want to be consistent and professional, we can make use of a car accident diagram software to help depict the event.

One such online car accident diagram software which is free and available online for you to use is AccidentSketch.com

With AccidentSketch, you can:

• Choose your vehicle details which includes the type of vehicle and its color

• Choose your opponent party’s vehicle details which includes the type of vehicle and its color

• On the left pane, you can select street, vehicles, traffic signs and drawing tools such as arrows.
• On the middle pane is your drawing area where you just need to drag and drop the various images from the left to the middle drawing area. As you can see above, I drew a simple sketch of my last car accident where by I got knocked at the back of my car by a van which caused me to hit the car in front of me.

The image on the left is another sample of  an accident sketch. It’s clear that the green car and the orange car collided from within a car park.

There are many ways how this road diagramming software can be utilized. Driving schools can also use this online tool to sketch some car driving instructions for their students to look through before they actually get on the car.

For more info about AccidentSketch.com, check out their site today!

Since the previous AD administrator left without providing any sort of documentation or details on how the AD was organized, you’re on your own to find out some answers.

From all the users in AD, you wonder how many user accounts:

• Are disabled
• Whose password never expires
• Do not require passwords to logon
• Can logon to just about any workstations

One key task given by your immediate supervisor is for you to find out all the user accounts which do not require passwords to logon. This task is considered important to accomplish because there have been cases where by these user accounts were being misused to gain access to company information.

Your supervisor instructed that as a general rule of thumb, all future user accounts must be created with a password which expires every 2 months.

But now, you need a way to easily list all all those whose user accounts do not require passwords to logon.

In today’s post, I’ll be recommending a free tool called GoldFinger to help you maintain security, perform audits and demonstrate compliance  in within a Microsoft Active Directory Server.

GoldFinger can be deployed in within 2 minutes to gain immediate access to real time AD analysis via its accurate reporting capabilities. Various IT personnel such as AD admins, IT auditors, IT managers and Compliance auditors can benefit much from this tool.

What I’m really impressed with is GoldFinger’s ability to generate up to 225 security reports. These are some of the common ones:

Account Management Reports

• List of all enabled domain user accounts
• List of all domain user accounts created in the last few days
• List of all domain user accounts that do not require passwords to logon

Exchange Management Reports

• List of all mail-enabled accounts
• List of all mailbox-enabled accounts created in the last few days
• List of all mailbox-enabled accounts for which proxy addresses are specified

Security Group Management Reports

• List of all security groups
• List of all security groups that have members
• List of all security groups for which a manager is specified

Contact Management Reports

• List of all contacts changed in the last few days
• List of all contacts for which an office is specified
• List of all contacts for which direct reports have not been specified

Computer Management Reports

• List of all domain controllers in a domain
• List of all domain computer accounts that are trusted for delegation
• List of all domain computer accounts for which Kerberos name mappings are specified

Group Policy (GPO) Management Reports

• List of all group policy objects
• List of all disabled group policy objects
• List of all group policy objects changed in the last few days

Container Management Reports

• List of all containers
• List of all containers changed in the last few days
• List of all containers for which a description is not specified

Service Connection Point Management Reports

• List of all service connection points
• List of all service connection points changed in the last few days
• List of all service connection points for which DNS service names are specified

Organizational Unit Management Reports

• List of all organizational units
• List of all organizational units changed in the last few days
• List of all organizational units to which GPOs are not explicitly linked

Active Directory ACL Management Reports

• List of all AD objects on which a security principal has permissions
• List of all AD objects on which a security principal has list child permissions
• List of all AD objects on which a security principal has read permissions permissions

The above are just a few reports out of the over 200 security reports which can be generated by GoldFinger.

To find out more on how GoldFinger Free Edition can assist you in your AD management and auditing purposes, check out GoldFinger today.

A common question that CTO and IT managers usually ask is, should we build or buy? Image by AppGini Templates.

If we buy, we get a working system much faster but the cost may be quite high especially when we need to purchase licenses, hardware and pay for consulting fees.

If we build, the process to get the system up and running usually takes longer as it requires more time to plan, code, test and deploy. However, the system can be developed to be very detailed and unique. Organization who build their own systems give themselves a competitive advantage over their competitors without such systems.

Today’s post will be about a tool called AppGini which helps IT folks develop PHP web applications easily by just defining a MySQL database structure. Once a database structure has been defined, creating a web application is as simple as clicking on the Generate PHP Code button.

Sometimes when I’m doing programming and feeling the pain of coding in the middle of the night, I just wished that there’s a Generate PHP Code button for me to just click and head straight to bed. However, this button only exist in AppGini as well as in my dream!

Before I proceed to go in detail what AppGini can help us do, check out this simple visitor management system that I’ve created using AppGini. All done in within 10 minutes. See the screenshot below.

The app above is a simple visitor management system which allows visitors to enter their name, social security number and the datetime they check in to visit. Looking at the screenshot, I think I should have also added in the check out time so that the records look more complete.

In case you’re wondering what I did in order come out with the system above, these are the steps:

1. Launched AppGini
2. Added a new table and added the fields (for e.g, Name, SSN, etc)
3. Clicked on Generate PHP codes
4. Copied the generated PHP codes into my XAMPP htdocs folder
5. Ran the system from a browser
6. Entered MySQL admin details to create the database
7. Renamed administrator password
8. Created a group

Well, that’s about all the steps I ran to create a simple PHP web application with AppGini.

Some of AppGini’s other features includes:

• Automatic PHP code generation
• Easily search the entered records
• Easily export data to .csv format
• Easily sort data by column ascending or descending
• Admin interface to manage users, permissions and data
• Create multi users with different access rights, for eg. to add, edit, delete can be 3 different users

I personally think that AppGini is a great tool to get a simple system up and running really quickly. Since the codes are automatically generated for you in less than a minute, you can easily add in more codes of your own to enhance the system capabilities and to make it look nicer. Oh ya, there are also additional AppGini Themes which you can download and use if you’re not happy with the default colors.

To find out more about AppGini, I’d suggest you to look through AppGini’s Website and Video Tours. Enjoy!

In case you’re wondering if your php skills have gone to waste, well not really.

You can actually utilize your PHP skills to connect to the SAP system and call ABAP Function Modules to reveal certain information.

This functionality can be achieved using SAPRFC – an extension module for php 4 and php5.

With SAPRFC you can call ABAP function modules in within SAP R/3 through php scripts. You can also write a RFC server program in PHP and call the PHP functions from SAP R/3. SAPRFC can be downloaded here.

If you’re a pure PHP developer and have very little knowledge on SAP especially on BAPI and FM, then it’s good to try to pick up more knowledge on it as it’ll be helpful to know which function module to call in order to get the right information.

Another way to get things done, would be to work together closely with the SAP system developers in order to exchange information and develop the output together.

If you’re planning to access data and information from SAP via php, the following are two links which you should read through thoroughly just to get a feel of what the integration process is prior to diving in directly into the codes.

Hope it helps!

These article directories allow anyone to republish an article of their choice as long as they do not make any changes or amendments to the article especially the links which were placed by the author of the article.

Many website or blog publishers love to republish articles written by others, especially if it’s a good article. At the same time, many writers place articles into article directories hoping that their articles will be republished by many other website owners, which eventually leads to a higher possibility of targeted users reaching to their websites.

The other day I mentioned about an effective way to advertise your services online through Google Adwords. While Google Adwords requires that you invest some money in order to place an advertisement about your site on Google, writing an article to promote your business online cost nothing except for your time required to write the article.

Let’s say that your organization is an IT consulting company which purely implements Microsoft Sharepoint for clients. A good way to get potential customers to visit your site would be to write articles related to Sharepoint such as:

• Sharepoint tutorials
• Sharepoint tips and tricks
• Sharepoint best practices

By releasing these sort of articles to the public, those who have read your article will become more aware of your organization and Sharepoint consulting is your expert area.

There are many article directories out there for you to submit your article. Here is a list of top 50 article directories ranked based on the highest traffic. But one in particular which I would like to mention is Article Alley’s Computer Software topic.

This computer software directory receives about more than 50 article submissions in a day which proves how popular it is.

To see a sample of how an organization has written an article to promote its custom software development services, see this article – Custom software company: outsourcing doing the trick for them as well

You will read that the article talks about outsourcing software development to other countries like India, China and Taiwan. In the article are links to various pages of their web site.

If you havent submitted an article about your service offiering, try to create and submit one today. You can write about how your services have helped your clients and also write about your experience dealing with the various challenges you’ve faced. Hopefully the article brings good quality traffic to your business website.

Or are contracts and projects for goods and services simply awarded to just any supplier based on gut feeling? Photo by mr.throk

When it comes to purchasing something for the organization, are there any rules to govern the entire purchasing flow within your company such as:

• Which suppliers to request a quotation from?
• Request for quotations (RFQ) are requested from how many suppliers?
• What criterias are contracts awarded based on?

It is important for all organizations to have a procurement process in place so that:

• Products and services can be obtained at the best possible price.
• The administrative cost for procurement is low and predictable.
• Award of contracts based on direct negotiations can be eliminated if possible.
• There is transparency when it comes to how projects and contracts are awarded.

If currently your organization doesn’t have a strategic sourcing procurement process in place, then it’s good to begin creating one now.

If there is already one, then you can try to automate the processes to the next level by utilizing software applications which streamlines the procurement workflow and processes.

One open source sofware which you can utilize to manage tenders online is:

Tender System – a web based system to source, award and manage the total procurement process from creating a tender, allowing suppliers to provide quotations and streamlining the entire tender management process.

I have installed and tested Tender System on a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySql, PHP) environment. The installation went smoothly without any problems.

Looking through the SourceForge Tender System download page, there are already more than 30k downloads since 2005.

Trying out TenderSystem, I found out that the basic key requirements for a tender management software is fulfilled with abilities to:

• Manage company details such as key info, state, area, branches
• Add common suppliers information
• Add commonly purchased products
• Add product or service categories / sub categories
• Allow buyers to create tenders online
• Allow suppliers to respond to RFQs online

WIth this system, the management can also view via summary reports the number of tenders that have been created and at what stages they are at, such as:

• Open tenders
• Awaiting approval tenders
• Closed tenders
• Awarded tenders

I find TenderSystem to be comprehensive because the system caters for system administrators, procurement staffs and the suppliers. I liked the fact that suppliers are allowed to:

• Upload and indicate their valid product / services
• Submit quotations online
• View public tenders

To give Tender System a try immediately without having to install anything, check out the TenderSystem Demo where you can try to log in as either the:

• Administrator
• User
• Supplier Agent

Whether or not your organization will choose to adopt TenderSystem as the software to manage tenders online, I believe this system has provided all of us some value in terms of how systems can be utilized to better manage purchases and further improve relationships with vendors and suppliers. A special thanks to the developers of TenderSystem, and do keep up the good work.

Also check out a video on Bristol’s E-Procurement System

Although you have Excel version 2003 installed in your machine, you can’t seem to open it and you might be wondering if the file is corrupted. Well, the file is fine. You just need the right application to launch the file.

Before I proceed to provide a solution, you might be wondering what’s the main difference between .xls and .xlsx Excel file format.

The new version of Excel 2007 by default creates a .xlsx file extension every time you create a new Excel document. This new .xlsx extension indicates it supports the use of a new XML based file format so that it is more efficient in saving data which also leads to smaller file size. With this XML support, integration with external data sources such as web based applications becomes much easier through XML interchange.

There are a few ways how you can open and edit a .xlsx Excel file:

1. If you need editing capabilities, download Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for 2007 (27.5 MB). For this to work, you must have at least Office 2000 version installed.
2. If you just need to view the .xlsx Excel file without any editing, download Excel Viewer (74.1 MB)

Note that both ways above requires you to:

1. Download the files,
2. Then install the application on your machine.

I foresee that you’ll need at least 15 minutes before you get to view the content of your .xlsx file, depending on the speed of your Internet and your PC.

A quicker way for you to view the .xlsx file would be to do it online. This method requires you to just upload your .xlsx file online and the SAAS application will launch the file so you could view, edit and even save the file in .xlsx format.

I have tested this method on Google Apps Spreadsheet and yes, you can open .xlsx file with it. But today, I would like to take the opportunity to mention another online spreadsheet application called:

Sheetster.com – a free Open Source web spreadsheet for everyone, developed by Extentech.

With Sheetster, all you need to do is upload your file and begin all your spreadsheet tasks.

Some key observations about Sheetster:

• If you like the spreadsheet web capabilities, you can actually host this web based application on your own server or even laptop. Since it is open source, you can download the source codes here while the Sheetster Server PRO installer can be downloaded here.
• You can share your spreadsheet with others and collaborate on it together.
• The spreadsheet web interface looks and works just like Excel, so if you have been an Excel user, there won’t be any learning curve to Sheetster at all.

I think the fact that Sheetster is Open Source is really cool as there’s so much that can be done together with this web application. Soon, Sheetster will also be able to integrate with other major apps like Alfresco, Facebook and Twitter.

If you’re reading today’s post on how to open and edit Excel 2007 .xlsx file online, check out Sheetster.com and Extentech today!

As far as I know the common OSes like Vista or XP doesn’t allow us to automatically logoff or shutdown the computer completely upon any inactivity. To achieve this capability, a 3rd party tool has to be installed.

The tool that I’m talking about is called Romaco Timeout – A software to limit the amount of time a user spends on the computer.

There are a few ways how we can utilize this free tool:

Limit employee’s Internet usage

I have seen some departments within an organization disabling Internet usage for all PCs within that department. Only emails are allowed, but no browsing. Instead of disabling the Internet for all, occasionally some staffs really do need the Internet for work related matters such as research purposes.

In this case, the department can prepare one or two machines dedicated for Internet research, however, the PC usage will be limited to a certain timeframe by utilizing Romaco Timeout tool. This way, the employees using this PC are aware of the time limitation they have on the Internet, thus forcing them to use the Internet more productively rather than idling away time on the Internet surfing non work related matters.

Logoff or Shutdown a PC after a certain time

Sometimes we download files in the middle of the night, then go to bed and leave the machine turned on the whole night. If we know that the download will be completed in another half and hour and wouldn’t want to wait that long just to shutdown the PC, this tool can be utilized to automatically shutdown our machine after a certain timeframe.

For example, if your download will be completed in 3o minutes, simply set the timer to shut down your machine after an hour, and it will do just that saving you hours of electricity.

Limit PC usage time for a Cybercafe user

Most Cybercafe owners would invest on a cybercafe system to help automate the management of Internet usage within the premise. But if you’re looking for a simple solution to limit a customer’s time based on the number of hours he / she paid for, then this tool can help you restrict the usage time for the user.

For example, if a customer requested for 2 hours of usage, all you need to do is set it in Romaco Timeout the 2 hours limit and start the timer. After the customer has been on the PC for 2 hours, there will be a pop up to warn the user that the machine will log off in X minutes.

Limit student’s usage on a school PC

I remember that many years ago I didn’t have a PC to work on my school assignment. The only place where I could get access to a PC is in school. The problem is, most of the time it’s being used by others since it’s based on first come first serve basis with no time limitation. And those days, some people can really use the PC for a very long time not to mention the slow running machines.

If your school is allowing students to use the PCs for free, it’s good to use this tool to set a timeframe on the PC usage so that everyone gets a fair use of the school PCs.

Limit kid’s time online [Hat tip: MakeUseOf.com]

Just like playing video games or watching the tv, some kids can basically surf and use the Internet the whole day. With this tool, we can set it so that after they use it for a certain time, say an hour, the PC will shut down on its own, thereby limiting their computer usage to a certain timeframe.

I haven’t tested this on my kid yet since he is only 2 years old. I hope I need not turn to this tool to stop him from using the computer for too many hours but rather teach him the importance of having a balance lifestyle.

The above are some ways how Romaco Timeout can be utilized to logoff or shutdown the computer in order to limit the amount of time a user spends on it. See a sample screenshot below:

For find out more on how the tool works, head on over to Romaco Timeout to download and use the tool. Thanks to Mark Furneaux for making this tool available.

Depending on how you use your computer, I believe most corporate users would say that it is their data in Outlook since it contains:

• Important task lists
• Client email address (contacts)
• Important email messages
• Important files attached in emails
• Meeting and appointment dates (calendar)

For many including myself, I seldom back up my Microsoft Outlook emails because it is a hassle to do so. Since my .pst file is quite large, it does take some time to copy over to an external drive.

For others who are not as technically savvy, backing up the data in Outlook can be a difficult task since he /she needs to take many steps in order to copy the .pst file out to an external storage. One important step includes ensuring Outlook is completely closed before it allows you to copy the file.

See a video below on how to backup your Microsoft Outlook email manually without the help of any software /tools:

If you prefer alternative ways to backup you Outlook, then in today’s post, I’ll be recommending three tools to help you backup your Microsoft Outlook emails easily. Hopefully this post helps you select a tool to backup your emails just in case anything terrible happens to your machine and your Outlook becomes inaccessible.

I like DriveHQ Email Manager because it allows individual emails to be backed up on an online storage. This is very handy especially when you need to only backup certain important email rather than the entire .pst files. Backing up emails is as simply as dragging and dropping emails from the locate to the remote location. See a sample screenshot below.

Microsoft Outlook Personal Folders Backup tool helps to backup the .pst file to an external location. What I like about this tool is its ability to remind us to backup our Outlook every X number of days, which we can set. This small sized (160kb) tool by Microsoft comes in very handy to remind the busy ones to perform a backup of their .pst file to an external storage. This tool however makes me wonder why this feature isn’t built in Microsoft Outlook in the first place.

Amic Email Backup is a handy and easy to use backup tool for Microsoft Windows based PCs designed to create and restore backup copies of your Outlook database. Amic Email Backup can save emails, address book, settings, mail and news accounts, message rules, blocked senders lists and signatures to a single, compact, compressed backup file that can be easily restored when necessary. Download a free trial (aff).

* Updated (20 Oct 2009)

Another Outlook backup tool worth mentioning is Handy Backup which has an advanced Outlook Backup preset which is common for all versions of Outlook, Outlook Express and Windows Mail and lets you perform Outlook backup and restore easily.

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There you go, three tools to easily backup your Microsoft Outlook data.

For me, sitting in the office right after lunch feels quite uncomfortable as I need to fight against the sleepy feeling while trying to hard to focus on whatever needs to be accomplished by end of the day. Photo by swanksalot.

I remember once that I felt so tired, I went to the toilet for a quick snooze. Trust me, it not an easy task to fall asleep in the toilet. Not all toilets are clean and smell good!

Different organizations have different rules for staffs especially when it comes to napping at work. Some organizations allow an extra 30 minutes for staffs to take power naps after their lunch. While some would prefer their staffs to get back to work immediately right after lunch.

For me, I personally feel it’s good to take a power nap whenever it’s necessary so that we feel more energized and can continue to be more productive and creative. I have worked in strict work environments before whereby sleeping at work is considered to be for the lazy and unproductive. So the only way out, is to drink more coffee and try to be as effective as possible. Over many years, I find that feeling sleepy and having to work on an important task such as programming don’t go well together. It’s a terrible feeling.

If we have 4 hours after lunch time before we head home, I feel it’s good to have a 30 minutes power nap in order to gain 3 half hours of productive hours rather than a full 4 tired hours trying hard to put things together.

Now the big question is, can you fall asleep in within 30 minutes?

I find it hard most of the time but a few days ago I managed to do it with the help of a software called Pzizz.com

Pzizz is a software application that creates soundtracks that are designed to relax, de-stress and re-energize you during the day.

With the Pzizz software, you can get unique soundtracks to help you:

• Get a good night sleep
• Feel more energized in the morning
• Reduce stress
• Increase productivity and efficiency
• Improve your overall health

Without hesitating, I downloaded a 15 minute sample of Pzizz soundtrack.

In the download, there are two mp3 files:

1. Quick_Energizer.mp3
2. Quick_Sleep.mp3

Now to put it to test. On Tuesday after lunch, I knew I had to write and complete my daily post. But I was way too sleepy to get anything going on. So I thought maybe a power nap helps. I played the Quick_Sleep.mp3 file and tried to doze off.

I was impressed at how the sound from the mp3 made me feel much more relaxed. Usually if I were to get a power nap during working hours, the thing that is still on my mind is usually related to work, making it difficult to just fall asleep. With the Pzizz sound, it brings my focus elsewhere. There were sounds of the seaside, birds chirping and a monotone person speaking to you.

I find Pzizz to be really cool and effective. When I woke up after 30 minutes which felt very short, I could immediately focus on my work and came out with my last post – Plan IT budget effectively with a free IT budget template in within 2 hours of researching and writing.

I seriously don’t think that the post would have been written if not because of the power nap. Writing isn’t easy as we need to research, put our thoughts together and sit down with full focus to write. And the most important thing when we write is being able to focus our mind.

If you too take power naps from time to time, do check out Pzizz.com and see if it helps you get to sleep faster and better. Watch this quick review on Pzizz by Gina Schreck from GettinGeeky.com: