Update - January 11, 2010
The uploading of the modified files has been completed and the InteseDebate comment system is now active. Please help by leaving your comments and if you encounter any problems, please inform me by filling up the Contactform with subject IntenseDebate. Thanks in advance!

Recently I was visiting this of which I don’t remember the name but had this really nice comment system. First of all, I assumed that it might be a native implementation but then I received an email from IntenseDebate verifying my subscription to comment thread and it was then I realized the existence of this amazing site that looked promising.

So, after going through the site, I decided to integrate the comment system into my blog. But the question was? Has ever IntenseDebate been integrated into BlogEngine.Net? I googled over it and ofcourse, I couldn’t find anything. Hence, I had to start from the scratch. Based on my past experience on creating few Widgets & Extensions for BlogEngine.Net, I thought I could do it. After modifying couple of files, I found a little bit of success. I wanted to restrict all my code modification to Theme folder but with current structure of BlogEngine.Net, the possibility was far stretched. I had to modify a few files outside theme for this comment system to work. I’m uploading the modified files to live blog to test and it all goes OK, I’ll post the steps on How to implement IntenseDebate into BlogEngine.Net.

Wish me luck!

While going through a thread at Microsoft Answers, it came to me that how confusing task it can be, to restore files backed up using Windows Vista’s Backup and Restore Center. So, I decided to write up a post describing steps on how to restore your files using Advanced Restore.

Preparation

If you have stored your back up on a removable drive then keep it handy when you start this procedure.

Procedure

• Insert/Connect the removable drive containing your backup to your system.
• Click start and type “Backup and Restore Center” in search box and press Enter.

• Click on the Advanced Restore link under “Restore Files” button.

• A new window titled “Backup Status and Configuration” will open.
• Click “Advanced restore” to continue to next step.

• In the this step, select “Files from a backup made on different computer” and click Next.

• A new window will ask you to select the source drive/network share where the backup is located.

• Select the first option and select your partition/removable media where the backup is located and click Next.

• After searching through the selected drive, a list of backups present on your drive will be presented to you.
• Select the most relevant one and click Next.

• Here you would be asked to select Files/Folders that you want to be restored. If you want to perform complete restore, select “Restore everything in this backup” and click Next.

• Next you would be asked to choose the destination drive/folder where you want to restore your backup. Select one and click continue.

• Now you are done. Your backup has been restore.

I hope this has helped you in restoring your back-up. All the best.

Sygate Personal Firewall had been my favourite free firewall for Windows XP box since ages and I’d been using it even after Symantec took over Sygate and discontinued the products, including the personal firewall. If you still want use the firewall for your Windows XP box, it’s latest version is still available at Softpedia.

Okay, so back to the main topic. Since I got my Dell Studio 15(pre-loaded with Windows Vista Home Premium) in early April, it had been a nightmare for me to use my BSNL Broadband connection because Sygate Personal Firewall is not compatible with Windows Vista. And therefore there was no way to put check on bandwidth eating softwares like Adobe Acrobat who aren’t courteous enough to ask for your permission before downloading updates and therefore my bandwidth used to get wasted. I tried to use Commodo firewall but it sucks like hell and and leaves a mess when you try to un-install it.  Me and my two other friends had to reinstall OS just to get rid of the mess created by Commodo Firewall.

So, after getting my bandwidth wasted and paying for extra bandwidth for two continuous months, I struck upon Vista Firewall Control by Sphinx Software. God bless them. I had totally lost hope on finding a decent firewall that would be able to replace SPF but after using Vista Firewall Control, life had never been easy. The software isn’t that complicated. Infact, I just wanted that all outgoing connections should go through my approval and permanently block the applications that are rejected. And, Vista Firewall Control does it very smoothly. With size under 1.5 MB, the application is very light weight on system(so unlike Sygate Personal Firewall!!!) So if you want a firewall that should control which applications should connect to internet, Vista Firewall Control is there for you.

Regards,

Mayank

Recently I was going through the comments I received on my posts and I was shocked to see Spam all over it. These comments seem so genuine that it’s hard to identify that they are spam unless you do a little search over it. For example, I received a comment from a person(or rather a  bot) which seemed so faithful that I couldn’t stop replying to it thanking for his interest over my blog. But when I ran a google search over it, the result page was full of such comment from different BlogEngine.Net sites.

Infact, I’m already using Akismet extension to protect against comment spam but it is clearly visible that it has severely failed to do so. Anyways, it will always be hard to protect your blogs from Comment Spam but what we can do is stop the spammer getting benefit from it.

Let’s first understand the motive behind comment spam. This has to to do with Google’s PageRank feature which, lets just say, works based on the links to different websites. For further information check this page and this page. So, what spammers want to do is increase page rank of their(or their clients’) PageRank by posting comments with links to their sites. So all we need to do is stop Google from indexing these links. And the best way to do it is by using the well known rel=”nofollow” attribute. So let me show you how to implement this feature on your blog.

First of all, it is necessary to know that how comments are shown at the bottom of your blog posts. Well for this, BlogEngine.Net uses a user control called CommentView.ascx that resides in your theme folder. Yes, the control is theme specific and so the c

hanges, we’ll need to make, will be theme specific. I’m just going to show you how to do it in Standard theme that comes out-of-the-box with BlogEngine.Net

Open CommentView.ascx in your favourite text editor(if your don’t have one, I suggest you to try Notepad++).

Look for a line similar to the one given below.

<%= Comment.Website != null ? "<a href=\"" + Comment.Website + "\" class=\"url fn\">" + Comment.Author + "</a>" : "<span class=\"fn\">" +Comment.Author + "</span>" %>

Now, just after class attribute, add rel=”nofollow”. The code should look something like this…

<%= Comment.Website != null ? "<a href=\"" + Comment.Website + "\" class=\"url fn\" rel=\"nofollow\">" + Comment.Author + "</a>" : "<span class=\"fn\">" +Comment.Author + "</span>" %>

This will tell Google not to index the links in the comments section and therefore, the links in the comments in the comment would remain futile.

Your comments and suggestions are always welcome :)

Recently, I wanted to use Google Talk plugin(comes along with installation of Google Talk) for Windows Media Player that sets the currently playing song as your status message(Wow! Why Yahoo! couldn’t think of something like that????). Now as long as I used to use MS Windows XP, it wasn’t an issue et all. But the problem started when I tried to used in WMP 11 on Windows Vista Home Premium that came bundled with my Dell Studio 15 laptop. As soon as I tried to enable the plugin, WMP would crash and I couldn’t understand why!!!

After a wee bit of Googling, I came accross this thread which actually explained the cause behind it. While you can obviously visit the thread for info, I’m including the steps, here, for your ease.

Basically, the problem is caused as Google Talk fails to properly register gtalkwmp1.dll. So what we need to do is register it manually.

• Goto Start > Run.
• type cmd and press Enter.
• type cd\ and press Enter in the newly opened Command Console Window.

cd "Program Files"
cd Google
cd "Google Talk"
regsvr32 gtalkwmp1.dll

• As soon as you hit enter on line 4, a window will show that the file has been registered successfully.
• Now re-enable the plugin from Windows Media Player and it should work smoothly (atleast it worked for me :) )

Links

http://groups.google.com/group/Finding-Solutions/browse_thread/thread/b07627597f49979e
http://www.google.com/support/talk/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=46532