Well it’s that time of the year again. I have been lucky enough to be awarded MVP from Microsoft again for Windows Home Server.
Congratulations as well to all those new MVP’s and re-awarded MVP’s.
It is a great honour to receive this award, for the fifth year running, and I look forward to all the challenges the current year will bring.
Niveus are giving away their SiriusXM beta Windows Media Center plugin for free to anyone – previously you could only get it if you had Niveus hardware.
All you have to do is Like them on Facebook and you can then download the plugin for free.
Apple’s annual 12 Days of Christmas continues, and for Day 7 it’s a photo app called Snapseed.
You and your friends can download a fantastic selection of songs, music videos, apps and books for free. Each download will only be available for 24 hours. Get our special 12 Days of Christmas app to make it even easier to access your gifts while you’re on the go. Don’t have an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch? Don’t worry. Come back 26 December to download gifts from your computer.
You need to download the app and then each day for 12 days there will be something free.
I wonder what it will be tomorrow?
In the wake of the general reduction in prices of hard drives again, Tranquil have announced a price cut on their Riley Home Server Storage Units.
This is what Tranquil said today:
Prices are not quite as good as they were pre the flooding issues, but the prices are much better than they were.
These prices have been reflected in Tranquil’s products, which makes them attractive again.
The Riley (Home Server) Storage Unit prices have been reduced, ie the 4TB unit has seen a £150 price reduction, the 8TB a £200 price reduction, and the 12TB SU12 (no previous price) is now listed at £869 – which is excellent value for a RAID protected 4x HDD appliance that is not only beautiful, but near silent too (no fans).
The SU (Storage Units) can be seen here.
Get £99+VAT off, when ordered with a Riley Server!
This makes it a great time to consider a Riley Server + Storage box combo (at the same time)– as there is FURTHER £99+VAT saving to be made, if ordered with the following coupon code N114R5Y0UPZ (expires early January)
Drive Bender, the add-in for Windows Home Sever 2011 that replaces Drive Extender, has a beta for it’s forthcoming Tomcat release taking it to version 1.2.3.0.![DriveBender_thumb1_thumb_thumb_thumb[2]](https://i0.wp.com/moviesgamesandtech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/DriveBender_thumb1_thumb_thumb_thumb21.jpg?ssl=1 "DriveBender_thumb1_thumb_thumb_thumb[2]")
Drive Bender is state of the art, single point storage pool technology for Microsoft Windows. Drive Bender presents multiple hard drives as a single pool of data storage, either as one or more drive letters, or a network shared drive. Drive Bender is able to do this with any drive recognized by Windows, including external drive such as USB, Firewire etc.
Drive Bender also provides the user with the ability to seamless expand their storage pool by simply adding a new drive. Adding a new drive expands the pool by the size of the new drive. Existing data within the pool is redistributed to the new drive to ensure the pool remain balanced.
Drive Bender also offers a merge capability, allowing users to take a drive that contains data, and merge that drive (and data) into the pool. In addition there is also a drive conversion feature. This can take and existing drive letter (mounted against a physical drive) and convert this into a pooled drive. Once completed, new hard drives can be added to expand the once fixed drive.
To further ensure data safety, Drive Bender can automatically duplicate any file added to a Drive Bender pool. File duplication is determined at the folder level and occurs on the fly as data is being written to the pool. More importantly, files are only duplicated across physical drives ensuring maximum safety and data redundancy.
One of the key Drive Bender features is its non-destructive file system technology. In short, this means that all drives within a Drive Bender pool are utilizing standard NTFS format and file structures. This is to such an extent that a drive can be pulled from the pool and read on any machine capable of reading an NTFS formatted drive. More over, drives attached to the pool can be done so without modification, if a drive is added (not merged) that contains existing data, that data will remain untouched.
Because of our non-destructive file system, taking Drive Bender for a test drive is easy. Simply specify the drives to be included in the pool, and you are ready go. The drives are not formatted (unless specified), the only change made to the drive is the addition of a folder that holds the contents of the pool and a small number of configuration files.
Drive Bender employs existing, proven kernel mode file system technology. Having spent many years developing kernel mode drivers, we are able to use this experience to great extent. The end result is a product whose performance will closely match that of the underlying drive.
Early in 2010 we prototyped a Drive Extender style application with the view of releasing a product that would work with all versions of Microsoft Windows. However soon thereafter, Microsoft announced Vail (a new version of Windows Home Server) and a small business server product, codename Aurora, both of which contain their Drive Extender technology. Given this, and the possibility that Drive Extend may well make its way to other Microsoft platforms, we shelved the project.
However later that same year, Microsoft announced that they would be dropping Drive Extender from all their products (including Windows Home Server 2011), leaving the door open for Division-M to resurrect the Drive Bender project!
– Update: Support for a number of NTFS API’s including compression and junction points.
– Update: Named (alternate) stream support.
– Bug fix: The WHS Move Folder feature no longer quits with an error.
– Update: Added call trace mode from improved debugging (this is accessible from the “About” in the Manager, or “Other Tasks” in the WHS addin).
– Update: A number of file system performance improvements.
Download the Windows version
Download the WHS version
Download the client version
Everyone here at UWHS just wanted to take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy and safe New Year!
2011 has been an interesting year for gadgets and technology – the release of Windows Home Server 2011 (which just hasn’t taken off), the release of the iPad 2, the iPhone 4S, more phones and tablets than you can shake a stick at, and so much more.
2012 will also see a number of changes for us here at UWHS – more of that to come over the next few weeks and months – but we think you are going to like them.
We are off to CES in a weeks time so stay tuned for all the exciting (and probably some weird) news coverage.
And we just wanted to say thanks again to our readers, advertisers and supporters, without whom UWHS wouldn’t be what it is today.
Happy New Year and see you on the other side!
Tranquil PC are offering a massive £178 saving on their ixLS Media Center PCs this New Year. But hurry as the offer ends on January 2nd 2012.
Here is what Tranquil said yesterday:
We reviewed the iXL PC last yearJust a very short message, to let you know we have special offers on, over the Christmas holiday period, and today’s offer will never be repeated, it’s an amazing offer, on an equally amazing product, the ixLS Media Centre.
Save £178.00 (£149.00 + VAT) on any ixLS Media Centre, ordered before January 2nd.
(excludes the ixLS QUAD)
Use this coupon code ixLS149 at the checkout to save £178.00 (£149.00 + VAT)
The various ixLS Media Centres can be found on the links below:
Silver
Gold
Platinum
Platinum Net
Apple’s annual 12 Days of Christmas continues, and for Day 6 it’s David Guetta’s Nothing But the Beat Party Mix EP.
You and your friends can download a fantastic selection of songs, music videos, apps and books for free. Each download will only be available for 24 hours. Get our special 12 Days of Christmas app to make it even easier to access your gifts while you’re on the go. Don’t have an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch? Don’t worry. Come back 26 December to download gifts from your computer.
You need to download the app and then each day for 12 days there will be something free.
I wonder what it will be tomorrow?
Seas0nPass has been updated to support an untethered jailbreak of the new AppleTV 4.4.4 software, as we told you about a few days ago.
Here is what they said:
Happy New Year! Today we are happy to release an updated version of Seas0nPass that supports an untethered jailbreak of the latest 4.4.4 (iOS 5.0.1) AppleTV software. Big thanks goes to the world famous @pod2g for doing the lion’s share of the work to make this new version possible.
What’s new in AppleTV 4.4.4?
Note: If you’re already running a tethered version of 4.4.4 you will need to re-jailbreak using Seas0nPass to take advantage of the new untethered version.
Which plugins are supported on 4.4.4?
How do I get it?
As always, Seas0nPass is available as a free download from Seas0nPass.com.
Today saw the release of version 4..11 of the DVBLink TVSource product.
DVBLink TVSource v4.1.1
Download
The new installers can be downloaded from the main page of their website www.dvblogic.com.
Today DVBLogic announced an update to their DVBLink EPG Loader for Digiguide taking it to version 4.1.1.
Here is what they said:
DVBLink EPG Loader for Digiguide v4.1.1
- (Fixed) DVBLink server crash during schedules download
- (Fixed) Schedule files reduced to 1K in case of communication errors
- (Fixed) Long registration e-mail produce configuration error
Download
The new installers can be downloaded from the main page of the website www.dvblogic.com.
We told you about the Kingston Digital DataTraveler HyperX 3.0, their fastest ever USB Flash drive back in November. Now it’s time to review this bad boy.
The DataTraveler HyperX 3.0 is designed for enthusiasts, gamers, early adopters and high end consumers; it features the fastest speeds and largest capacities that Kingston has to offer in a USB Flash drive. Faster speeds and higher capacities enable users to quickly store their digital files and keep it with them at all times, in HyperX style.
Its high-speed eight-channel architecture provides USB 3.0 data transfer rates of up to 225MB/s read and 135MB/s write. Users can save time associated with opening, editing and copying large files and applications between devices. The fast write speeds also allow users to work on large files or applications directly from the USB 3.0 drive without performance lag.
DataTraveler HyperX 3.0 is backed by a five-year warranty, 24/7 tech support and legendary Kingston reliability.
From their website:
Kingston has grown to be the world’s largest independent manufacturer of memory enhancement products. Founded in 1987 by John Tu and David Sun, Kingston has grown from offering a single in-line memory module into an international company with over 2,000 products that support over 20,000 systems with sales exceeding $6.5 billion in 2010.
Reliability is the cornerstone of Kingston’s product strategy and contributes to the high degree of trust between Kingston and its customers. Kingston is dedicated to exceeding the industry standard when it comes to detail, product quality and product reliability.
The box contains the flash drive, some instructions and a key ring loop.
Microsoft usually release patches and security updates on “patch Tuesday”, but on occasion, if an issue is serious enough, they release an our of band update, which is what they did yesterday.
This is what Microsoft posted:
This security update resolves one publicly disclosed vulnerability and three privately reported vulnerabilities in Microsoft .NET Framework. The most severe of these vulnerabilities could allow elevation of privilege if an unauthenticated attacker sends a specially crafted web request to the target site. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take any action in the context of an existing account on the ASP.NET site, including executing arbitrary commands. In order to exploit this vulnerability, an attacker must be able to register an account on the ASP.NET site, and must know an existing user name.
This security update is rated Critical for Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1, Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 2, Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1, Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5.1, and Microsoft .NET Framework 4 on all supported editions of Microsoft Windows.
If you have automatic updates enabled you will probably already have the update. If you don’t have them enabled, you should go get this update now.
Apple’s annual 12 Days of Christmas continues, and for Day 5 it’s the Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing game.
You and your friends can download a fantastic selection of songs, music videos, apps and books for free. Each download will only be available for 24 hours. Get our special 12 Days of Christmas app to make it even easier to access your gifts while you’re on the go. Don’t have an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch? Don’t worry. Come back 26 December to download gifts from your computer.
You need to download the app and then each day for 12 days there will be something free.
I wonder what it will be tomorrow?
